Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer is a 2025 dark comedy feature film that stars Steve Buscemi as a retired serial killer who becomes an unlikely mentor to a struggling novelist. In this interview, writer-director Tolga Karaçelik delves into the absurdity of his new film (and his mind), adjusting to a llama's shooting schedule (yes, the animal llama), and creating his own imaginary worlds.
Psycho Therapy is available on VOD and digital.
Listen here. The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity:
Hello, I'm Shaurya Thapa of Borrowing Tape, and today, I'm joined by Tolga Karaçelik, who is the writer and director of Psycho Therapy. This is a dark comedy that stars John Magaro from Past Lives, Britt Lower from Severance, and Steve Buscemi, who plays a very interesting, nonchalant, retired serial killer in this film. Welcome, Tolga, first of all. And your movie is about a novelist who befriends a retired serial killer, who also, in some way, becomes the novelist's marriage counselor — this is quite an absurd storyline. What exactly inspired the story? Was it a real incident? Or, was it a person that you knew of?
Thank you for having me. And I think this story had occurred to me like around eight years ago, and I was just playing on this idea of — can I tell a story where the marriage counselor is also like a psycho killer — a counselor for how to be a serial killer thing with the same verse. Is it possible, if I can pull this off writing with the same lines, how to try to save a marriage, and how to kill a person — can it be talked the same way? So, it was a good exercise for me in the beginning. And then I had always had this idea of writing about these comic characters, [which] had occurred to me around eight years ago. So, I like playing around with that idea. And I enjoyed the writing process of this film, actually, a lot.
What I liked about the film was how unexpectedly weird it can get. One of the things that struck my fancy was John Magaro's character, who was a writer. He wants to write a book about a homo sapien woman falling for a Neanderthal man in Slovenia in 4000 BC. My question is: Who even comes up with that?
I was trying to write a script like that before this one, which didn't work, obviously. This movie is about being a couple, trying to become a couple, or continue being a couple. It's about beliefs, in that sense. Don Quixote is mentioned a couple of times in the movie — it's like, if you believe in something, then it can become a reality. Especially with these issues like being a couple, being married, or being [a] family, it's all about trusting in each other's existence and belief in that existence. That part of the story is, I think, symbolizing a little bit that, although they are trying to kill each other every day at night to keep each other warm, they cuddle in the same bed. That's kind of like what marriage is, isn't it, sometimes.
Yeah, that's deeper than I thought the answer would be. What I liked about your film, other than the fact that it was so weirdly funny, was that Psycho Therapy also gets very chaotic. In a way, it reminded me of films by Alfred Hitchcock and the Coen Brothers. But what directors of films did you look upon while writing and directing Psycho Therapy? What inspired you?
I don't look on other directors while I'm writing or directing, but what we eat becomes who we are. We are what we eat. Of course, all my life I've been watching films, and I like typical genres, multi genres, lots of genres, and lots of directors. Fellini is one of them, [and the] Coen brothers are totally one of them. And I can name lots of directors who have inspired me, most probably. But while you're writing, you don't think about these things. You just write and try to make a movie that you want to make, that will make you entertained, and that will make you thoughtful about issues, because writing and directing are a long process. The only person that you can satisfy while you're doing that and continue for seven years, eight years, is to satisfy myself, actually. It's all about the movie that I want to watch.
Let's say, talking about making movies. Tolga, you have previously directed some Turkish movies and TV series. Psycho Therapy being an English-language, American production. Was there any difference in shifting from Turkish to English?
There was not too much difference, to be honest with you, sorry, because it's like it is whatever language, it is something that I had written, and I'm sharing it with the actors who are coming to my land, actually, to my country. So I don't care if it's English or Turkish. It is a world that I know. I know the world of Keane, Suzie, and Kollmick. And then we, after me introducing them with this script, and with the way that I want to shoot it, then it becomes all our land with the actors, with the production design, with music, with everything. So, with the writer and director, you got that advantage to be able to shoot. That's, I think, what makes us to be able to shoot anyway. Director's set is director's set; I don't care if it's up on the moon, or Mars, or the States, or Turkey, or anywhere. So far, I've always written and directed. My first film was the opening film of Global Lands. The archives of MoMA. It premiered at MoMA in New York. My second film premiered at Sundance, and then it was shown at TIFF. My third film premiered at Sundance and got the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival. So I can say that my films are all, I can't say, tell them that they're Turkish-Turkish. They always open their premieres in some festival, other than Turkey. So it is, I think, my land. Not States or Turkey or anywhere.
Yeah, so it's like the world that you have created of your own.
Talking about different countries and different worlds, one interesting scene in your film Psycho Therapy is when we see a llama, a llama probably from Peru, in a bar at midnight. My question is, how do you get that llama while filming? What's the story behind that?
You know that's not the original llama. We had another llama, and we had to recast her because her timing was not all right with us, and I was always thinking — what is the schedule of a llama like? Is she going out in a stand-up show in Philadelphia or something like that? How can a llama schedule cannot fit into a movie? [Laughs] I had to recast that llama. That llama is another llama. I don't know why I came up with that, but for example, in my third film, there [was a] chicken exploding. In my second film, there are thousands of snails. In my first film, there was a car coming from high up in space, falling down onto the highway road. I don't know where I came up with those ideas, but that surreal or absurd thing always sneaks into my ideas. Always. I don't know why. I think we need therapy to find out that. Why it's there, I don't know.
It's open to interpretation, why there's a llama in your film [Laughs]. But my final question for you is, what were some of the challenges while writing and directing Psycho Therapy, like any technical challenges?
I'm not such a calm person on the set; I'm always excited and high on energy. So the biggest challenge was at that moment, sometimes you got to say cut and tell the actors exactly what you need without being rude. And you don't know the limits of being rude in another language. Sometimes that might be hard. I was always trying to be cautious with that. And you have to say it in a limited amount of time, which is also kind of like a bummer. That limitation was something that I was always aware of. I was aware of myself while I was directing in that sense. That was a challenge, but that was not something that was really bothering me. It was alright shooting over there. It was the same thing.