Playing with time
Following his 2017 feature Sequence Break, actor, writer and director Graham Skipper delivers The Lonely Man with the Ghost Machine. A genuine talent and purveyor of horror, Skipper was the original Herbert West in Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator: The Musical, also starring in Beyond the Gates, Bliss, The Leech, and last year’s FrightFest favourite Suitable Flesh. Founder of the Fangoria-approved Rated R: A Horrror Speakeasy he also provides the perfect horror pop-up bar and party experience over in L.A., having returned in January after a four-year hiatus.
After a global catastrophe, Lonely Man sees him play last man on Earth, Wozzek; the apocalypse providing all the time (and space) he needs to question his purpose and sanity as both his deceased wife and a mysterious stranger confront him with his past, his present, and whatever future might remain in the wastes of a dead world. Touted as I am Legend meets A Christmas Carol by way of Lovecraft, this is a filmmaker exploring something profoundly heartfelt and self-contained, as the following interview highlights…
Where did the premise of the film come from?
I had witnessed my father’s grief process the previous year after the untimely death of his wife, and so I arrived at the idea of exploring the nuances of death and grief through the eyes of someone attempting to defeat that process rather than accept it. Grief is a powerful thing to experience, and our brains can do serious backbends to try to make sense of a nonsensical situation. So that was the nugget of the idea that led me down this path.
Isolation and longing are key themes here which make the story particularly relatable to those who feel alienated. What personal circumstances are you drawing from here and how deep-rooted are they?
A lot of what I was drawing on in the writing of the film was seeing my father suddenly be so alone and seeing the effect that had on him mentally. Then, shortly after we finished filming, my wife and I decided to amicably get a divorce. So, while that hadn’t been in the front of my mind while filming, during the post process the experience of sudden loneliness absolutely began to influence the editing process, as well as the choices made in colour and sound as we finished the film.
Were there specific films and literature you drew from with similar themes?
A Christmas Carol was definitely one of the big ones, as well as The Twilight Zone and post-apocalyptic films such as The Omega Man and I Am Legend (in that case the book more than the film). Solaris was a film that my DP and I watched together to help define our tone and the use of color, and I certainly drew inspiration from Jeremy Gardner and Christian Stella’s The Battery, for its incredible ability to build scope on their fantasy world without relying on a huge budget.
What other major influences as a filmmaker — within and beyond the realms of cinema and genre filmmaking?
One huge influence on me with this film was Samuel Beckett’s plays Krapp’s Last Tape and Endgame. In fact, I flat out stole the idea of a man talking to himself via tape recorder from Krapp’s Last Tape, and with Endgame — as is true of a lot of Beckett’s plays — there is a brilliance in the juxtaposition of classic comedy with the ruin of the end of the world. There’s a sadness within the humour of Beckett’s work, and I’ve always found it really captivating and enigmatic. I’d always wanted to make something within that type of world and with The Lonely Man… those ideas all just kind of seemed to fall into place.
“… there is a brilliance in
the juxtaposition of classic
comedy with the ruin of the
end of the world.”
— Graham Skipper
I like the central McGuffin. How was the idea behind the analogue elements developed both in terms of a concept and story device?
One thing I love about sci-fi and fantasy films is when there’s a device or object that does something very powerful, but you don’t get any explanation of how or why. That annoys some people, but for me, there’s a beauty in the mystery. I don’t need to know how this thing works, just that it does. So, with this, I have a film that in the title says “There’s a Ghost Machine,” then I have this rickety machine that I’ve clearly built that… makes ghosts. How? I don’t care! It just does. Same with the creature design of the puppet. I wasn’t interested in realism; I was interested in the emotion of what it meant. What was important to me was that it felt real and in the room, so I worked with my designer more from a Jim Henson-style starting place rather than what you might traditionally see in a creature design. One thing I kept saying in regard to all aspects of the production was, “It’s okay for the audience to know they’re watching a movie.” This is a fairy tale. Where a guy mercilessly shits in a bucket. We don’t have to fool people into believing it’s real, we just have to get people to feel real things while watching it.
Last man. Graham as Wozzek
What have you learnt from working on this film that you would build upon further for your next feature?
My first film, Sequence Break, came from a personal place, but it wasn’t nearly as raw as this one turned out to be, no doubt because of the personal events going on in my life at the time while I was making this. I also enjoyed directing myself, which wasn’t something I expected, but there was a certain freedom in just doing what I started my career doing and jumping in front of the camera and letting my emotions take over for a little bit while handing a tremendous amount of trust to my DP to capture it. I think next time I’d like more time to be able to balance that aspect a little better so that I can both act in the film but also have time to try new setups and get a little more ambitious with things. We just had a very small amount of time to shoot this one, so that necessitated moving quickly, but with more time I think we can really build on what we have here and make something even more personal and special.
What do you want an audience to take away from The Lonely Man and the Ghost Machine?
As with any movie, I want audiences to walk out feeling something. Love it, hate it, be confused by it, feel it in your own life and experiences, laugh, feel some heavy emotions… just feel something. The greatest honour I could have is for someone, someday, to have a personal experience of their own and have a part of their brain think back to this film that helps them process a little bit of what they’re going through. I know just making this film helped me process the same for myself.
Follow Graham on Instagram and keep up to date over at his official website.
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