Sunlight – Interview with Film Director Nina Conti and Co-writer Shenoah Allen

Listen here. The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity:

Hello everyone, I'm Shaurya Thapa of Borrowing Tape, and today I'm joined with the team behind Sunlight, this new buddy comedy drama which explores the friendship between a woman in a monkey costume and a suicidal radio jockey. Sunlight is weird, it's funny, it's one of a kind, and today I'm joined with Nina Conti, who is the director, lead actor, and co-writer of the film, and Shenoah Allen, who is also one of the lead actors and writers. Welcome, Nina. Welcome, Shenoah.

SA: Thank you.

NC: Hello, thank you.

 

My first question to both of you is, without spoiling too much for the audience, Sunlight is definitely a story with some eccentric characters. Like Nina, you're playing a woman escaping a toxic relationship, and you have this alternate personality inside a monkey costume. Shenoah, you are this uptight radio jockey with a controlling mother. How did you come up with these characters and the story? What inspired the idea behind the weirdness of the film?

NC: Well, the building blocks are in us, in our real selves, I would say.

SA: Mmhmm. [responds in agreement]

NC: You say the next sentence. We can do one word each.

SA: Yes. I think lives are dynamic, crazy things. It's massively insane to be a human and live in the world. And, we end up confronting all sorts of things, whatever our life story is. And I don't want to make this too much about a point about mental health or anything. But, I've grappled a lot with depression and anxiety. I don't always know where these things come from. I know that there's a lot of things that have happened in my life that might help to have contributed to that. But, for a movie, we needed a framework that made some digestible sense out of depression. So we created a backstory for them and a surroundings for them to make it make sense, so that you weren't just left watching me be depressed. You had some reasons behind it.

NC: Yeah, we both met [during] fairly a bleak time in our lives. And it was at a point where I was subjected by my own comedy routine to the point where I wanted to remove myself from it. So I'm a ventriloquist talking to a monkey puppet. That's what I've been doing all these years. And I wanted to get rid of Nina, because I thought she was just baggage to the monkey who would otherwise be much funnier. Yeah, so I stepped into that costume and thought, oh, at last I can be free, or at least now I can breathe. If only there was oxygen in the suit, I could really breathe. But that was, yeah, it was truthful. Came from a sort of truthful need. And so, yeah, it was all sort of natural and organic, I think, the way it came about.

 

Nina, as you mentioned, your career as a ventriloquist. So, how was the shift from spending years as a ventriloquist to now making your first-ever feature film as a director? So what was that experience like?

NC: Well, it was quite scary, and the film was privately financed. So, everybody who financed it, I felt a great sense of responsibility towards, and then learning to work with a crew. It was another thing. The whole thing, as long as we kept it fairly simple, it felt like Shenoah and I knew it to be from having improvised it, and worked the script into life. And then just someone to film it, someone to record sound, and someone to design it. It felt fine. It felt lovely. And it'd be a great pleasure to bring it into film.

SA: It seems like it's great that you're giving credit to all of the departments and everything, but a lot of your direction got its chance to shine in the edit, I would say.

NC: The edit was very, very important to me, and you could really nail down every single beat of the story and make sure that it kept moving forward all the time. It was like a relentless process that I walked to the edit every day. It was like an hour and 20-minute walk, and that helped to sculpt it in my head — that walking time — as well as the time with the footage.

 

During your writing process, were there any films that specifically inspired Sunlight, in terms of style or story?

NC: Yeah.

SA: Yeah, I'm trying to think of what we talked about along the way.

NC: Yeah, there were films that I loved like Waves and Little Miss Sunshine, something about that was kindred. Darkness and light all in one, shining away, that was kind of what we wanted. And what other films?

SA: Yeah, Napoleon Dynamite a little bit, just in its vintage flavor.

NC: Eternal Sunshine. I mean, these have sun in the title as well — Eternal Sunshine and Little Miss Sunshine.

SA: It seems like Charlie Kaufman, in general, has been an inspirational figure. Ari Aster is somebody that we both really love.

 

When it comes to the humor of your film, Sunlight has several hilarious, how can I describe, out-of-pocket moments between your characters. So there's this fun, crude sense of humor. For example, for me, there was a standout scene where both of you are singing a song about all the holes in our bodies. And in scenes like these, very crude, weird scenes, were you two improvising along the way, or was it all in the script?

SA: That song was not in the script.

NC: Not a single line of that song was in the script. No. I mean, we've spent seven years improvising together and stuff. And so it was like, I don't know. It just sort of happened. We realized, oh, we're doing this now. We're singing about holes.

SA: Yeah, it was a really fun discovery. And then, we started to make sure we got enough footage of that whenever we would drive out doing a scene. And then we'd have to go back to the beginning and drive again. So on the return trip, we would keep the cameras rolling and do another rendition of the whole song. So, we had a few takes.

NC: Yeah, we like, have we got maybe one? Have we got time for a few more holes?

SA: It really permeated the set. There were a lot of people, maybe annoyingly in their minds, I don't know, there was an earworm. There was a lot of crew walking around singing about holes.

NC: Hahaha.

 

Yeah, I mean, that song was catchy. I wish you could release it as a single on Spotify.

NC: Getting out the feelers for anybody with a recording studio.

SA: Yeah, we want it to happen.

 

But talking about songs, what I also love in your film was the needle drops. I love "Hey" by Pixies — that's one of my all-time favorite songs. And of course it was Radiohead as well, like "Weird Fishes", I think. So, was there any specific idea behind using Pixies or Radiohead within the film?

NC: It was a heartfelt connection, and whilst I was location scouting those tracks, I was listening to music all the time to try to help my world, make it all fit, and see it. And those tracks just leapt out. I listened to weird fishes when we went to the Grand Canyon the first time, and I got up really early and walked in and just walked amongst the trees and stuff and heard that and thought, oh my God, this fits, this fits. So they just fit. It wasn't intellectual. They just fit. And then, I made the mistake of putting them on the footage before we had the rights, and then I fell in love with them so deeply that I had to work incredibly hard to get them. And I absolutely wasn't going to stop until I got them, and lo and behold. I mean, thankfully, the artists agreed, but it was terrifying to me that I would have to replace them.

SA: There's a nostalgia element in the movie, also. It doesn't, but I'm not sure exactly when it takes place, 90s, maybe. And it's a little bit open. We didn't want to have iPhones and things like that. And because they get in the way, they can get in the way of storytelling, because things are too convenient. And so, that led us a little bit into the past, but also just in developing the script, we talked to each other about our pasts so much that I feel like the Pixies made a perfect backdrop to the nostalgic feel of what it was to create the script and the movie itself, because it just immediately takes you, or it takes me to a different kind of time in life. And it's just, I mean, they're just such a great band.

NC: I remember in an early improv, you were doing a radio show as Roy, you were just ending your radio show, and you said as you finished up talking This is '_________' by the Pixies, and Roy played the Pixies. So you kind of introduced me to them, and that's why I was listening to them, because I felt like something Roy would play. And then when I heard, hey, that was the one that really felt like the one, the lyrics of that match in a discordant way.

SA: Yeah, I guess I'm just gonna praise Frank Blax more. He's also such a free performer and artist, and he's just really his own kind of guy. And I think that that lines up with what we were really trying to do with this, also.

 

And Nina, you mentioned somewhere about the shooting in the Grand Canyon, so can you tell me a bit about the filming locations for Sunlight?

NC: Well, actually, the Grand Canyon was a six-hour drive from where we were filming, but we escaped there for a weekend, just for the feeling of the scope of the place. We shot in New Mexico, which is where Shenoah is from. Although we grew the thing in London, Shenoah painted a picture of New Mexico verbally that had me completely set on the idea.

 

And how long did it take you to film it all, the shoot?

SA: 22 days?

NC: 24.

SA: 24 days.

NC: 24 days.

 

I see. And the final question is that, again, without giving away too many spoilers to anyone, both of you have a fair share of getting inside costumes in this film, and shooting it in New Mexico, a dry desert backdrop. Was it sweating? Was it claustrophobic being inside those costumes for long periods?

NC: It's cumbersome and, for sure, very, very difficult to see.

SA: Very difficult to drive.

NC: Impossible. To drive. And very difficult. Monkey only drove for one tiny bit. But wow, he was gunning it.

SA: Yeah, slow down, monkey.

NC: Thankfully, a closed road. But yeah, it's very bothersome. It's sticky and furry; you burn your mouth, you can't see, it gets hot, and you can't breathe. I mean, all of that was ridiculous. You can't take the head off without rupturing the mic connection, and then you're going to have to waste time putting that back. So it was tough and I spent a lot of time with this bruise on my forehead because I would just up it, but not take it off the whole way, and it really pinched. I mean, you had to have a sense of humor with all of that kind of nonsense. You couldn't ever really take yourself too seriously when you're doing it like that, which I think is a grand rule for life. Not to take yourself too seriously.

 

Fair enough. I'm here in London right now, and it's burning. I was watching your film and sweating myself looking at you guys. I was like, yeah, it could never be me. I would always need a stunt double if I were acting in a monkey costume. Anyway, my last question to you guys is, based on whatever you told me about making this film, what was the most challenging and wholesome part of making Sunlight together?

SA: It's a long road.

NC: It's the hustle that's the hard bit. It's the hustle in the first place for the money, all of that. And then for distribution and all of that, it's like the workings of the film industry are tough. They're making it a joy.

 

Let's see. And what would your advice be to filmmakers not to do after your director and debut, like a word of warning?

SA: Yeah, I don't know. A word of warning: don't listen to too many people who tell you why something won't work. A lot of people want to sound smart by telling you what won't work. So, maybe it will work, and maybe they don't know everything.

NC: Yeah. And maybe trust yourself and do things yourself. As much as you can, any bit you want to try to do yourself, you might as well give it a go, because then you can forgive yourself for your own wrong. But when you've got somebody else's wrong and you're delegated, that's more annoying. I don't know, it's harder to live with.

SA: Yeah, really hard to live with putting your life blood into something for years that comes out badly because you kowtowed to someone else. Make your own mistakes.

 

Words to live by. And on that note, I'll end this interview. Thanks a lot for your time, Shenoah and Nina. And best of luck for Sunlight. And I hope we get to see more monkey movies from you guys.

SA: Thanks very much.

NC: Thanks so much.

Read our spoiler-free review of Sunlight