Hal Kitchen
Hippo is a forthcoming indie dark comedy written and directed by Mark H. Rapaport and starring Kimball Farley and Lilla Kizlinger and was one of the highlights of this year’s PanicFest. The film tells the story of Hippo and Buttercup, two sheltered and dysfunctional teenagers living out of a small suburban home in the late ’90s, and their growing fear and curiosity about the world outside which seems destined to lead to disaster. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with some of the filmmakers and discuss the influences, themes and creation of Hippo.
Film Obsessive: So to kick off, in what terms would you describe Hippo to someone who knew nothing about it? How would you like to contextualize it to our readers?
Mark H. Rapaport: I would say that Hippo is a coming of age tale that hopefully makes you nostalgic but also not miss your teenage years. That’s the tagline I’d say.
What would you say is the relationship between Hippo and your earlier short film Andronicus?
Mark H. Rapaport: Great question, I think that the main relationship is that they both come from a personal place for me, they’re both stories about childhood angst. Andronicus feels more directly about parents who are growing out of love with each other, and Hippo is more of me growing up with questions about sex and becoming a man. I wanted to make them different, I didn’t want to do another film about parents so I really focused in on the growing up part. So given that they’re both personal stories, the lead characters of Hippo in Hippo and Simon in Andronicus, share some similarities as well, they’re both angsty in similar ways. Simon is a more violently charged version where Hippo is a bit more lovable, naive and a little more mentally unwell, a little more delusional, I wanted Hippo to feel a little lighter than Andronicus. And so getting Kimball to play both was like a really fun thing, cause you can look at both as companion pieces about a similar type of young man.
Kimball Farley: When Mark and I first met he told me that he had written this film that was like an extreme version of his situation because his parents were divorced and it was like this mix of Funny Games and The Parent Trap. And so he was like “I’d love for you to act in this”, and at first we wanted to make it as a feature but of course it was Mark’s first film it was one of my first things and so it’s difficult to get funding for a thing like that, and so we did it as a short, in COVID in July of 2020 and we just really hit it off, we have the same tastes, we have a lot of the same favourite films, we work similarly, and so we were just like, “let’s do something as a feature”. And so we wrote a few films and they were expensive and so finally we landed on Hippo, and it really was the spiritual successor to Andronicus, they were very similar characters. Hippo is maybe a little more niave and sheltered and maybe a little more schizophrenic and sociopathic, while Simon is just deeply hurt and angry, but they’re both very similar in terms of what they’re going through and where they’re coming from. So it’s cool because we did dream of doing an Andronicus feature and that’s still not completely out of the equation, but it does feel like we got to accomplish that story in Hippo in a way and it was the natural next step for sure.
Film Obsessive: You say you had similar visions and instincts when it came to the writing process, did your visions for the story clash in any way?
Kimball Farley: Totally, for Andronicus it was like, I came in and I didn’t want to touch any of it because it was so particular to Mark’s story. Of course Mark didn’t hold his parents at gunpoint and force them to get back together, but it so particular to him, and I loved where the story was at anyway. But with Hippo, Mark and I had very similar upbringings in terms of being raised in these kind of hyper-religious communities, and so we were able to kind of bounce ideas off one another and be like “oh yeah, that is like, the natural way for this story to go”. And it was a very cool process because for me writing is kind of like an extension of acting in a way, I’ll write now and then but for me it’s always an exercise in character and I always think “where would I want to see this character go if I was viewing them?” Mark is looking at the big picture as a whole and I’m kind of already getting to play around with the character and he’s asking like “okay, where do you think Hippo would go from here?” So it was nice, it made for a very quick and easy writing process, cause we were just having so much fun, and I think it took just like a month in July 2021.
Film Obsessive: What, in your opinion, is the source of the dysfunction in Hippo and Buttercup’s household? What’s the issue they’re grappling with that you really wanted to deal with?
Mark H. Rapaport: So, I think that for me its about the absence of a father figure is the central theme and a central starting point for all of the chaos, opening on the grave, you know, “the father’s dead” it’s important to make that clear. These are wayward children without a full two parent structure, they have a mother. I didn’t grow up in a single parent household, I had a father but he was often not there or later cheating on my mom, whatever, what have you. So I wanted to instill that same feeling in a more dramaticized way. Obviously by making the father dead. So I think raising the children alone is a big source of it, but also because the mother is also mentally unwell, I wanted to do a bit of “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” there and show that if you have someone who is mentally unwell raising a biological son, chances are, if she’s been in the looney bin he’s going to have issues too, and if she doesn’t have a partner or someone else to keep tabs on that, and so you lead to this sort of detonation of the nuclear family. Which is what the movie used to be called, the original title was “Hippo: Or (The Spectacular Detonation of an American Nuclear Family)”. But it’s such a mouthful and then I’m being like too much. So I cut that part but hopefully the essence still remains. It’s just about guardrails and how hard it is to raise a family and how much can go wrong if you don’t do everything right, which is hilarious and also horrifying.
Film Obsessive: As you say, the longer title evokes this archness of Kubrick, or Birdman which was obviously parodying Dr Strangelove, but Hippo is more like Gummo, or Clerks or Kids, it’s calling back to that era of ’90s indie movie. There’s this very independent, direct quality to the title and also this mystery, like “why’s this kid called Hippo?” But as you say, aside from changing the title during the development, how, if at all, did your vision for the film change during the process of its completion? If we looked at that first draft, what would be different from now?
Mark H. Rapaport: I think that story-wise things remain very similar. Darwin when we filmed it became a little longer and drawn out than it was on the page and more drawn out in the final cut, but we trimmed it back a little bit. Darwin’s important because he comes in and he’s the outsider, but we didn’t want to harp on him for a whole miniseries. I think one thing that changed or that was unexpected in a pleasantly surprising way, was how funny some people think the movie is. We didn’t set out to make it any genre, but I did think this may lean into the thriller space, with some laughs but maybe it’ll lean more to the psychological thriller, and so it was a sort of pleasant surprise when the tone became more like a pitch black comedy, in filming it. Because I think that is really where like my tastes lie. I’ve been trying to unlearn you know, the things that they teach you in school or in Hollywood which is like “write a horror movie!”, “make it scary!” So I always have a little of that and I do like some scary stuff, but I also want to make it my own and this became my version of scary. There’s a version of Hippo that’s much darker and more like We Need to Talk About Kevin, which I love, but I realize, I’m don’t know if that’s my tone or if I did that it’d be a little different. And I think Andronicus was also kind of weird. So I think the thing there is, I never really know until I’m on set, what it’s going to feel like or how it’s going to come together. Which is a fun thing.
Film Obsessive: You can conceptualize something in your head but it’s only once you see someone act it out that you realize, “oh, this is funny, this is an amusing situation”.
Mark H. Rapaport: Exactly, and my editor Nik Voytas did a great job drawing out the comedy.
Film Obsessive: Would you say that was your influence on the script as well Kimball, making it more comedic?
Kimball Farley: I think it’s a mix. I think it was like, cause we wanted to make it a psychological thriller and we wanted to make something dark and edgy and I think we’re both drawn to kind of dark, tortured stories. It’s maybe a basic quote by now but like, “good art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”, and so for me, the movies that I enjoy watching the most are darker movies and darker characters. I think it’s because I want to explore those darker parts of life in the sense that, you want to know what makes a human act like that? And so we went into it going fully, “let’s make this dark, let’s make this intense”, but then you get there and you’re joking and you’re playing around a bunch and I think it really does kind of become like a playground where you can lay out any kind of ridiculous jokes. I think the big thing that really kind of hammered that home was when Darwin came in, because then we were like, “let’s come up with the most ridiculous stuff to say, let’s make him the most ridiculous character.” We didn’t have the intention of it, but then it became much more of like a Todd Solondz movie, especially once Darwin came in.
I think also we just sort of subconsciously—this is so random—but we always, in every movie we write a role for Philip Seymour Hoffman. Even though he’s not around, he’s just obviously the greatest of all time, so in your dream scenario you’re like, “okay, Philip Seymour Hoffman would be playing this”. And Jesse’s amazing, Jesse’s amazing, but like, I just think the second Darwin came in it just became so much more funny.
Film Obsessive: It is an interesting dynamic because throughout the first half of the film you’re introduced to this strange, dysfunctional, uncomfortable family, and then you’re introduced to this outsider, this character representing the world outside, and yet he’s ever weirder than them. But in a way that feels much more like a parody of and a satire of societal attitudes, in terms of his attitude towards women an all that. Mark you also explained that that sequence with Darwin was the part that expanded the most throughout the process of writing and planning the film, would you say that that trio, of Hippo, Buttercup and Darwin, did that become the heart of the film?
Kimball Farley: I would say honestly, it’s funny because Darwin comes in an he’s the most perverse freak of a character, that in any other film he would be like the outright villain, and he still is like, “the villain” in the film, obviously Hippo is as well. But when he comes in it’s almost like “God I’ve been with this family for so long and they’re bonkers” and then he comes in and he is like, he’s an awful person but I’m thankful that he’s here because it’s like finally a breath of fresh air, which is saying something because it’s like the least fresh air. But I would say that the heart of the film is in Hippo and Buttercup because Hippo in all of his monstrous decisions and the things that he does that are so evil and sociopathic, but like the one bit of good in him comes from him wanting to protect his family and specifically wanting to protect Buttercup. And so there is like a slight purity and a real love there so I think that’s for sure the heart yeah.
Film Obsessive: And what about the cast? Because obviously with just this quartet, having the right performers and having them each bring something to it is really important.
Mark H. Rapaport: Yeah, it’s funny. We didn’t audition anybody, and I think that goes to my style of filmmaking that I’m trying to develop, knowing the people and having them in mind for the script just makes it that much more like a play, it creates a deeper connection to the material. The cast came together really organically, Kimball wrote it with me and we met on the last film and that’s where I met the Roberts’s Eliza and Eric, on Andronicus. And them Lilla, who plays Buttercup, was sort of the missing link. I didn’t have a female actress in my Rolodex that I thought would be incredible, and then I met Lilla at the Berlin Film Festival in 2021, she had won an award for best supporting performance, she was incredible in this movie called Forest: I See You Everywhere, a Hungarian anthology film. I thought to myself wow, if I can get an actress like that I could really make a good movie but I thought “she’s never going to want to do it with me, I’ve never even made a feature and she just won an award for her acting”, but she jumped at the opportunity to go to America for the first time. So she said “yeah, go ahead, write the script”, so I wrote it with her in mind, and that helped a lot. So usually the cast comes second, but I do like the cast to come in during the writing period cause I think if you find the cast later you’re going to end up rewriting the whole thing. Cause you’re going to do a table read and be like “oh this person’s really good at this, now I’m going to have to rewrite this whole thing because they’re funny…” it’s nice to know that going in. And Jessie, who plays Darwin, I know him from a movie called Pledge, that I produced back when I only produced and didn’t direct, he played an intimidating frat brother. Then during COVID, I guess he kind of put on a little weight and let himself go, and we were texting and I was like “do you want to play this role as like a creep?” and he was like, “I’m ready. My body is ready to be a creep”. And I’m like, alright you’re cast. And it’s kind of offensive, going to your friend like “do you want to play like a…” so I was kind of joking and he was like “no I do! I am ready to play that!”
Film Obsessive: Now that you’ve finished Hippo, what’s next?
Kimball Farley: There’s definitely some exciting fun things in the works, a few fun things in the can, a few indie movies that are all I think hoping to do the festival run in the next few months, and one horror film that I’m doing at the moment that I’m really excited about. And then there’s one other thing that I don’t know that I’m able to talk about, but lots of fun things coming up for sure! Fun things on the horizon for sure. And fun things with Mark as well, we’re working on our next one which I think we’re shooting in January.
Mark H. Rapaport: So the next thing is a movie called “Godhead“, like the holy trinity, and it’s somewhat of a blend of the tones, between Andronicus and Hippo. I want to shoot it in black and white, it’s a dark, darkly comedic psychological thriller about a priest and a pair of twins that come to him one day and ask him to complete a very very challenging task that goes against his morals. So yeah, it’s very bizarre but I’m trying to instill a little of that dark humor from Hippo, but it’s mostly like a Hitchcockian thriller type thing. I love premises of like Hitchcock movies and of course M Night Shyamalan does his best to keep that tradition alive sometimes, and I do love a lot of M Night’s movies. So that’s the goal with Godhead, I’d like to shoot that in January, after we release Hippo. We’ll make it similarly, sort of on a modest budget and hopefully make something just as crazy.
Film Obsessive: Where will people be able to see Hippo?
Mark H. Rapaport: So Hippo comes out in New York city on November 8th, it’s coming to the Quad Cinema. We’re going to have a week long run, and then the following weekend we come to Los Angeles at the Brandon Studios, and then we have a couple of other theaters as well, Lemley Theaters, Freeview Cinema, right after that we go to Seattle, and LA and New York are all Q&A screenings, I’m going to be at most of them with Kimball and most of the cast. And yeah then we have a bit of an unorthodox approach where after we play in theaters we’re actually going to BluRay before we go to TVOD we’re releasing a BluRay and a VHS to go with the ’90s theme. And then we’re just going to keep touring with the movie in theaters in late January, we’re lining up some more theaters after our initial run. So that’s the hope, just keep going on theaters and physical media and then bring it to TVOD.
Film Obsessive: Well, I wish you the best of luck with it, it’s a great film! Thank you for the time it went really quickly!
Kimball Farley: Well thank you for taking the time! Have a great day.
Mark H. Rapaport: Thank you Hal, I really appreciate it and your questions were awesome, thank you so much!
