Kinds of Kindness, the latest from art-house provocateur turned multiple Oscar nominee Yorgos Lanthimos—whose last film, the wildly acclaimed Poor Things, came out just six months ago—opens in theaters this weekend. Here, GQ culture editor Alex Pappademas talks to contributor Esther Zuckerman, who compiled an oral history of the press-averse director told in the voices of his collaborators, including Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, and Lanthimos’ muse, Emma Stone.
Esther, my introduction to Yorgos’ work was his first English-language movie The Lobster, from 2015. Even though that film has a bunch of so-to-speak Hollywood actors in it, I don’t think anybody watched it—or any of the Greek films he made before that—and came away thinking, “Here’s a director who’s on the fast track to Oscar gold.”
But then Yorgos started working with Emma Stone, and suddenly he was on a very different trajectory. I know you’re an Emily fan. Why do you think she and Yorgos have connected the way they clearly have?
It’s a weird, hard-to-define creative match. Talking to her, she said, “We like the same stuff,” which is funny, when you think about it. But obviously she was an actress who, at the moment they met, really wanted to try to push herself, and he’s a director who likes to push people—in really interesting ways. The appeal isn’t, like, We’re going to delve into the darkest corners of human emotion. He plays theater games as a rehearsal process. It’s more about this liberation of your physicality. And I think that’s one of the reasons they’re so right for each other. She’s such a physical performer, and really goes body-first into things. She’s always been willing to scrunch up her face and do really slapstick things. I think that appeals to him.
Right. It makes sense that Margaret Qualley, another actor who could go a very different route but seems drawn to weird physical stuff as well, is part of Team Yorgos now too. She’s got that instinct.
100%. Girls who are willing to get fucking gross.
So, Kinds of Kindness. What a picture. Coming off Poor Things—which you point out in your piece is probably the most accessible of his movies, weird as it is—this one feels like a return to the Greek movies in sensibility. There are terrible things that happen in it—self-mutilation, a sexual assault—but I found it really, really funny, too. Where does this one sit in the Yorgos continuum for you?
I’m not the first person to say this, but it’s a little bit of a “Fuck you.” Even though they filmed it before Poor Things had this enormous awards run, it feels like he knew he’d made his most mainstream film, and like he felt like he had to go back. He’s collaborating once again with Efthymis Filippou, who co-wrote all Yorgos’ films other than The Favourite and Poor Things. It feels like he had to get this out, after making something as crowd-pleasing as Poor Things.
It’s a three-segment anthology and each segment is in some way or another about control, which seems to be his great subject—authority, and why people submit to it. What I found interesting, reading the things people told you about working with him in this oral history, is that he doesn’t seem to have any of that controlling Kubrick/Fincher thing to him as a director. There’s a great anecdote Plemons shares, about doing something weird in a bathroom scene, and he’s waiting for Yorgos to tell him to do something different and he just keeps not saying anything. He seems to give people a ton of latitude creatively.
Yeah. Everyone I talked to said he’s really not prescriptive as a director—which is surprising, because there’s very much a rhythm to his movies. He will correct you, according to the actors. If something’s not working, he’ll be very blunt about it. But if you get his tone and you can play within that, you have free reign to do whatever.
Yorgos’ next project is Bugonia. Emma Stone will be in that, and so will Jesse Plemons, who’s part of the Yorgos repertory company now, as is Willem Dafoe. Please tell me one actor you’d like to see become part of the Yorgos Cinematic Universe next.
Wow. That is such a hard question. Let me think…
I’ll give you mine: Kaitlin Olson from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Hacks. Another truly gifted physical comedian. That meeting needs to happen.
Honestly, bumping off that—I wouldn’t have come up with this if you hadn’t said that, but: Glenn Howerton. That would also make a lot of sense. After Blackberry, we know he can really do it, in a way we all suspected but didn’t know for sure.
Read Esther’s Yorgos oral history right here.
