The Taking made waves when it premiered in 2013. After meeting with several accolades at A Night of Horror Festival in Sydney, Australia, and L’Étrange Festival in Paris, France, the movie was released on Blu-ray. In October, I had the chance to sit down with writer/directors Cezil Reed and Lydelle Jackson (known as the BAPartists) to discuss their first feature-length project.

Søren

Hey, guys! I’m glad we’re getting the chance to talk about your movie.

Cezil

Oh definitely, definitely.

Søren

So I guess, just to start off – why a horror film? I’ve looked at a lot of your work and The Taking seems a little bit different than your other stuff.

Cezil

Well, we were talking about what our next feature could be. And we kind of decided together to go into horror because it seemed as though it would be a very accepting place for new ideas, and new filmmakers. I’m starting to think The Taking was a little too new.

Søren

Too new?

Cezil

Yeah well it’s – I don’t know if you want to speak on this, Delle –

Lydelle

Yeah, I could jump in. It’s funny because just this year we went on our festival run and we’d been having some good success on the festival circuit. We premiered in Sydney, Australia, at the Night of Horror and won the Independent Spirit Award over there. And then we were in competition at Stiges, which is the biggest genre film festival in the world. So, you know, we’re competing with people are just legends in these festivals – people like Jean-Luc Godard and people like that.

Cezil

(Laughs.)

Lydelle

And it’s funny because just this past weekend – the film was just released on Blu-ray – Cezil discovered on Sunday morning that the film had been leaked and pirated. And so we checked Pirate Bay, isoHunt – and it’s everywhere. 6,000 leaches on every site. Last time I checked it’d been downloaded 16,000 times.

Søren

Wow. In some ways that almost seems gratifying that people want to check out your movie.

Lydelle

Yeah, I think it’s kind of cool. So going back to the question you asked earlier, we really stepped out there to something new with horror and it fell into the hands of not the target audience we had in mind.

Søren

Interesting.

Lydelle

So we saw this giant response online that was like, “What the f*** is this movie?” And then you go to IMDB and you just see the rating change immensely. And you know, people are really responding strongly. Mainly harshly, but every now and then we get that one person that says, “Oh man, this film is amazing – this is some next-level  stuff.” And so maybe that’s what Cezil meant by saying that maybe it was a little  “too new.” Correct me if I’m wrong –

Cezil

Well yeah, the whole point was to do something different in the horror genre, in the horror world. But I think for the masses – I think people went into it thinking they were going to see a horror film. When in reality you’re seeing an experimental film with horror sensibilities.

Søren

Right.

Cezil

Most people, I think, they don’t have the patience for experimental filmmaking or telling stories in experimental ways. But I think if, for those who are open to that genre and then want to see some of their favorite elements from horror kind of put inside of it, I think it can be something very exciting for them.

But it’s cool, though. I think if people really hate what you do, it’s better for people to feel some kind of emotion, some type of response, than no type of response at all.

Søren

Better to be hated than be ignored.

Cezil

Yeah, it’s funny how angry people are – people are really angry. They’re very angry with us. It’s funny that most of the feedback is that most of the people haven’t been able to get past the first 10 minutes.

Søren

Mhmm.

Cezil

They kind of turn it off. You know, Andrei Tarkovsky said for his films he would intentionally make everything very slow and boring for the first 30 minutes so that he could get all the people who weren’t there to see the movie to just leave. So then people who were really “there” could then watch it. But yeah, it’s cool that –

Lydelle

That we even got a response at all –

Cezil

Yeah, that people were like I wanna check this thing out. That there was even an interest. And maybe, as cliché as it sounds, maybe this film is for that one person who’s like, “Oh wow, that was different.” You know, as opposed to it being something for millions and millions of people.

Søren

It’s interesting that you framed it like that. Experimental films are a very divisive genre – if you can even call it a genre. I think by its very nature that it has that game-changing or visceral hatred dichotomy.

Cezil

You’re right, there’s definitely that divisive nature of it – to experiment. So you have to kind of embrace what it is. The rep for the film from Real Suspects – a phenomenal company – he explained it to us saying [The Taking] is “video art.” Which is interesting because we’ve never heard someone define it as that.

Søren

I see.

Cezil

I guess if you present things in different spaces and look at it with different lights, there’s a certain openness that starts to unfold. And I think one is able to go into something and accept things and say that this is the filmmaker giving us this reality. It’s not something that you may have some other way of putting together yourself. You may not have those certain patterns you’ve gotta watch in other movies. And you’ve gotta use the filmmaker’s sensibilities in understanding it.

Søren

Maybe if this was shown in an experimental or avant-garde setting, it might have had a different experience. Hollywood films attempt to hide the filmmaker. And it tends to be that the most successful directors are those who manage to hide the director, camerawork, editor, etc. from the audience. Conversely, in experimental or avant-garde film, there’s no effort made to keep you immersed in the movie. So it’s really interesting that you opted for this route.

Now back when you were making The Taking, what did you feel you wanted to do with the film? Were you trying to challenge genre conventions?

Lydelle

We went in wanting to do something different. And we wanted to do something that would fall into this “arthouse” fair – so that was our approach when creating this. We wanted it to be bold. We wanted you to feel the filmmaker’s hands inside the film. We wanted sound to be very striking, very prominent – excruciating.

This type of filmmaking lends itself to something very impressionistic. I think it’s a misnomer when people label the film as “existential.” I don’t know where those references are coming from – I was never big into existentialism or anything like that. But more than philosophy, it’s more about the form and use of filmmaking techniques to make a presentation. The story itself is very simple and a very morality-based tale. It’s not like a mindf*** story.

That’s why we like to call it an “experience of light and sound.” The best way to experience the film, if not in a theater, would be in your home with a really nice sound system, on Blu-ray, so you can really feel it.

Søren

Talking to independent filmmakers, it’s always fascinating seeing the different reasons and goals they have for making movies. They’re all really varied. And this sounds like something more classically avant-garde, which isn’t something I knew going in.

Cezil

And maybe part of it’s our fault in not promoting it the correct way. We tried – we always said it was an arthouse horror film with “balls and guts,” but maybe that there was a little too much classic American marketing behind it. I think we definitely should have pushed it more as experimental. Because when people think about arthouse, they think more Truffaut or Godard.

Søren

Or even Let the Right One In.

Cezil

Right – but no one’s thinking Man with a Movie Camera.

Søren

(Laughs.)

Cezil

And I think when you do that, you kind of throw people for a loop. There was one person who said they hated the movie so much there wasn’t even anything to make fun of. Because usually when you hate something, you can make fun of it to get some sort of pleasure out of it. But there wasn’t any of that for them to pick on, and I think that made people mad.

People were saying, “Oh, I hope they don’t show another shot of the trees and the sky.” (Laughs.) And then they’re like, “Oh sh**, they did it again.” And you know, we have a lot of shots like that. We have shots when we’ll hold on some trees for about 20 seconds. It’s definitely about mood and atmosphere. It’s not like watching Gravity – it’s not that type of film. But that was never the point.

Lydelle

I know it sounds like we’re kind of chewing ourselves out. But this is certainly a film that we stand by and we’re proud of.

Cezil

Oh it’s a beautiful film.

Lydelle

And just being in Spain at Stiges, I mean – I had people walk up to me and say, “Thank you for making this film.” So not to doubt ourselves too much. (Laughs.)

Søren

Right. Especially in the age of the internet, it’s tough to deal with immediate feedback. I mean, there are video game creators who have left the industry because of things like that. And the other thing is, if you put Man with a Movie Camera as a new movie in independent theaters now, you’d probably get a lot of backlash. That’s the nature of experimental films.

Cezil

In Man with a Movie Camera, in the first opening images, there’s a piece of subtitle text – I’m paraphrasing here – that says “This is a movie for all languages.” The point was to use a collage of visuals to communicate without the use of language. That was the experiment –

Søren

To tap into a universal pictorial language –

Cezil

Yeah. And I think with experimental film, that’s the whole point. To find a new way to communicate and use film and cinema to convey ideas – and if not convey ideas, to explore forms.

Søren

Now that you have this experience making this very experimental film, are you going to keep at it despite the lack of mass appeal? Or are you more interested in giving a more classical film a shot?

Cezil

Delle, you wanna take that?

Lydelle

We’re working on a number of projects right now. Actually, our next one we’re gonna do is definitely going to be more accessible. Definitely a more classic approach. I mean anything we do, we’re going to want to turn things on their head a little bit. As an artist, you’re always afraid of regurgitating – it’s all about progression.

We’re hopefully working on two soon: one’s going to be completely independent, and the other one’s going to have investors. But both are actually horror, and they’re very – as far as the presentation’s concerned, they’re both classic, but different.

Søren

Now is change in direction because of anything in particular? Or –

Lydelle

No, these are projects we thought up years ago. So it’s not a direct response to what happened in the past week at all.

Søren

I was just curious!

Lydelle

(Laughs.)

Søren

I think it’s interesting when someone who’s played with the form goes back to something more classic because then they bring some new perspective on the project.

Lydelle

I agree.

Søren

I know a lot of indie filmmakers have a lot of opinions about the direction of modern independent cinema. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Cezil

I love it. I think it’s a super exciting time to be a filmmaker. We would have never been able to make The Taking without conditions being the way that they are now. Anybody can pick up a camera, use Final Cut, throw something together. And I think it’s great everybody has the ability to gain access to these things. You have all sorts of new voices that can emerge.

At the same time, you have over-saturation of works that aren’t that great. But if someone shines through who wouldn’t have been able to before, I think that’s great, too.

(At this point, Cezil had to leave the interview for a prior engagement.)

Søren

Before we get to our last question, I just want to ask: how do you two know each other?

Lydelle

Well, we met each other in eighth grade, back in Virginia – right on the outskirts of D.C. We didn’t really start hanging out until 10th-11th grade, but we’ve just hung out ever since. He went off to Chicago for film school, and I studied graphic design. And we just started writing stories together in our freshman year, and we’ve been writing together ever since.

Søren

So now that you’ve made a horror film, do you have a favorite film or director in the genre?

Lydelle

Hmm… I guess I would say Jaws? But I don’t know if that counts…

Søren

Spielberg – that’s an interesting choice, considering –

Lydelle

And I wouldn’t say Spielberg as my favorite horror director, that’s the funny thing. But Jaws is really good! And another film would be Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I think currently, as popular as he is, I love how great Rob Zombie’s stuff is. But I don’t know if I have a director who is my absolutely favorite in the horror genre.

Søren

I know I mentioned it earlier, but I’m a huge fan of Let the Right One In –

Lydelle

Okay, yeah – you know what? Let the Right One In, hands-down, is my favorite vampire movie ever.

Søren

(Laughs.) Alright, well it was a pleasure talking to you! Thank you so much for being here.

Lydelle

Alright. You too, man.

The Taking is available on Blu-ray and Instant Video via Amazon.de. The BAPartists’ website can be found here.

~ Søren