Interview with “Late Night with the Devil” Co-Writers/Co-Directors, Colin & Cameron Cairnes

Full transcript of Interview with “Late Night with the Devil” Co-Writers/Co-Directors, Colin & Cameron Cairnes.

0:15KT: Melbourne writer-director duo Colin and Cameron Cairnes continue to bring fresh and exciting stories to film. The nightmarish ode to the talk shows of the seventies is at its core, a tale about the cult of personality and the price of fame with plenty of supernatural thrills along the way.

0:32KT: Late Night with the Devil will be in Australian cinemas, April 11. Colin and Cameron, thank you so much. And welcome to the For Your Reference Book Club.

0:41Cameron: Thank you, KT. Thanks for having us, KT.

0:44KT: First off, I just want to say congratulations on a gorgeous, great, all encompassing film. Thank you. Um, and it's so exciting to be able to talk about it today.

0:54KT: My partner, Oti, we have a podcast together and we're still together. I think that's like a level up from Ikea shopping together.

1:02Colin: Right. We've done three films together and somehow, yeah, we still want to do more.

1:05KT: Exactly. Um, but premiering at South by Southwest in 2023 and making its way around the world and film festivals, including Sydney Film Festival, which, you know, We're in our thirties, so even the 8pm screening is a bit too late for us.

1:20KT: So, unfortunately, we did miss it during Sydney Film Festival, but we're so glad we had the chance to watch it. And it's so interesting doing interviews because usually this is the time to, you know, be like, Oh, these are things that I was wondering, but like everything was in it and I'm just happy to be here.

1:40Colin: Wow. Thank you.

1:41KT: Okay. Thank you.

1:42Colin: Job's done.

1:43KT: Yeah, so no pressure. We can just, we can just have some banter.

1:46Colin: Can you tell us how much, you keep saying how much you love it? Yeah.

1:50KT: Well, I think even just talking about like working together and I've seen the interviews and it's probably annoying hearing about like brother duos.

1:58KT: But, you know, shout out to the Philippou brothers. I had the chance to interview them for Talk to Me as well. Um, so it's an exciting time, you know. Um, but how is it like working together? Is it, are you full on like MMA fighting each other? Like the Philippou brothers or like, do you just know each other's strengths and you know where to go together?

2:15Cameron: Yeah, I think it's more of column B if that's, that's the latter, right?

2:19Colin: That's, that's the latter. Well, we've seen the Philippous in action and we've met the guys and seen their Q&As and they're constantly trying to. Outdo each other and shit talk each other. And it's hilarious. I know it's in good jest, but yeah, it's, it's interesting.

2:35Colin: We're different. We're pretty, pretty laid back. Like we're, we're trying to, you know, we're trying to be energetic today, but normally we're, you know, We're very enthusiastic about anything,

2:48KT: but it's so interesting because you guys are chill, but this goes full balls to the wall, pedal to the metal sort of film, right?

2:56Cameron: Of course. Yeah. Um, yeah. Look, our dynamic is Oh gosh, I don't know. We just, we get on okay. You know, I think that really helps and films has always been the great leveler for us. You know, any differences we might have kind of put aside because we have this shared love of cinema. So, um. The greater good of movies.

3:21Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

3:23KT: And it's a little bit of a shorthand, right?

3:25Cameron: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, you know, we often, we don't need to say anything to each other. It's just a little nod or a look, um.

3:34Colin: I like that.

3:36Cameron: And, um, yeah, it just, it, I think on set, it's, it just makes things run really smoothly. Uh-huh, we're just across everything.

3:44Cameron: Mm-Hmm. no one sort of needs to go to both of us at the same time to get a question, a question answered. We, they can, you know, we can spread ourselves a bit thinner.

3:53KT: There's no like cloak and dagger shit going on, like in the background.

3:57Colin: Not at all. No, we're still, I mean, you know, we're humans, we've got egos, but for us, it's the, it's the work comes before that.

4:04Colin: So I think that's a good thing because people see that we can kind of have, you know, either come to a, What's the word, a consensus, or we might have a little discussion. It's never, never, ever heated. We might disagree occasionally, but they can see that we can come together and come up with a solution.

4:19Colin: Then it means the rest of our cast and crew can also come to us and have a, and they know it's not going to get, you know, there's never an ego thing on our sets. Um, I think it's cause we're. It's pretty much an ego free zone, the way we work. The work, yeah, it's the, the film comes first, the story, what's the best way of saying whatever it is you're trying to say.

4:38Colin: Um.

4:38KT: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that comes really great to the tone. Um, I think the tone can really, Stretch the realms of where you can go from a storytelling point of view. And at least from, at least from watching Late Night with the Devil, it didn't take itself too seriously. So it was like, we were able as an audience, be able to stretch perhaps believability and in places where it's like, what just happened, you know?

5:07KT: So how was it working on that sort of tone? Cause you don't want a full sort of clown show. We kind of just, um, we just finished a whole round of watching Scorsese films, so King of Comedy is like at the front of mind here. Um, but how was it on trying to balance the tone of this is a late night show, all of the background scenes production.

5:27KT: Yeah. We're also not gonna take ourselves too seriously about it.

5:30Colin: That's a good question. I, I mean, it looks, it's, it's probably not as hard for us as it. Um, cause I think it's just a sensibility, a taste thing. And when you've worked on a script for that long and you know what you got, you want people to buy into that world, you're credible, but you also know that it's completely farfetched and outrageous.

5:50Colin: What, what the premise is. So it's just, yeah, it's knowing, it's knowing when to go for a bit of levity. But then that buys you a bit more confidence, I think, to go into those weirder, strange, darker places as well. So,

6:04Cameron: yeah, your mention of King of Comedy is, you know, that that's a perfect reference because you go to the cast and you say, you know, these are the kinds of films that have inspired us and that, you know, In one way or another find their way into our film.

6:18Cameron: So, you know, not that they needed a viewing list or anything, but you sort of, you know, you share that. So we had

6:24Colin: one,

6:25Cameron: we did, we did, we

6:26Colin: did, we had a long view.

6:27Cameron: I don't think anyone,

6:28Colin: I think people would say we're making a horror movie, but that list was Network, King of Comedy, A Face in the Crowd, was all these films about, you know, media and ambition, ambition, and cult of personality, all that stuff.

6:41Colin: So. Horror films definitely don't, like, the cast didn't have to worry about that. They, I don't think we ever wanted them to think they were in a horror movie. I don't think any character in a horror movie thinks they're in a horror movie. They're just living their lives and trying to get whatever it is that they want in that story.

6:55KT: I'm doing acting now, I'm scared.

6:58Colin: Yeah, so hence there's no real jump scares or anything like that in the film, because we wanted to feel, it needed to feel grounded in a certain reality. Reality is a talk show, which is not real anyway. It is already hot and a bit frothy and bubbly. And there's jazz music playing in the background.

7:14Colin: What's scary about that?

7:15KT: It's more of like a insidious seeping, simmering. Sort of feeling, I would say, um, throughout the film, but.

7:23Cameron: That banality of evil as well. It's just like, yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're, where's the disturbing stuff coming from in this? Brightly Brit. Brightly lit. That's a spoonerism.

7:35Cameron: Brightly lit environment, you know, so, um, they're the challenges, but also the things you really embrace.

7:41KT: And I think like, cause even talking about the tone and like bringing the audience in, which I think it was, it was immersive enough to be like, okay, this is where, yes, it's not in reality, but this is the world.

7:51KT: Um, I want to talk a little bit about skeptics versus the believers because generally in a lot of things, you're not going to catch me getting scammed. I'm pretty much a skeptic on a lot of things, but I buy into the matrix of films. Like if you tell me. This is the world. These are the rules. Um, I'm very much in them and I really love the way it was explored in Late Night with the Devil because we have literal characters that embody a skeptic and a believer and potentially maybe where the audience might be going as well.

8:23Colin: Yeah.

8:23KT: I want to hear a little bit about that if that's okay.

8:25Colin: Sure. But you've said it so perfectly. You just nailed it. But you're right. I mean, it was important to, I think it's great for the audiences Who might be of different sort of, you have different belief systems to feel like there's someone in the, in the ensemble who kind of represents them to a degree, she went into it a bit more, but it also makes sense.

8:46Colin: This is the beauty of it, that that's what you would do on a show like that. That's how you get. An audience engaged, you know, you have conflict. I mean,

8:52Cameron: create the conflict. Yeah.

8:53Colin: So get the psychic, get the parapsychologists, get the girl, you know, get the psych, the, yeah. So it, it brings con conflict to it, but it does bring different points of view that I think in all, a lot of horror movies play with that stuff anyway.

9:04Colin: You know? Mm-Hmm. much, do you believe? Can we make you change your mind? And so, and that, you know, that's, yeah. I think that's part of the, the fun of, of this experience.

9:15KT: Are either of you one or the other in regards to being skeptics or believers or does it depend?

9:19Cameron: Uh, Col is a true believer and look, look, I'm, yeah.

9:27Cameron: I'm, I'm a, I'm a, an acolyte of James Randi. I, I'm, I'm the skeptic. Um, yeah, we're both skeptics. I

9:35Colin: mean, on the, on the spectrum of, you know, believers, skeptics, Cam's like all the way here, I'm just the, maybe, you know, a couple of millimeters towards the, but not much, but I, you know, like James Randi character, I think he's, He's, he's brilliant.

9:48Colin: And he was obviously a great magician. This is the real life version of Carmichael Haig. But there's something also a little bit troubling about those characters that they so dedicate their lives to unmasking these two bit, you know, psychics and magicians, really, really hacks. And we all know it's a joke.

10:07Colin: And even the people who pay good money to see them kind of know that it's bullshit.

10:11Colin: I've dedicated their lives to. You know, bringing them down. I think there's some, I don't know, I think there's a little part of those characters as well that wants to believe. Why, then why pursue these people?

10:20KT: Yeah. Yeah.

10:22KT: Cause he, unfortunately I am a skeptic, but I did like, And then he was saying, he was being like really gruff and I turned to Oti and I'm like, is that me? And he's like, yeah, that's you.

10:34Colin: Yeah, maybe it becomes a point where it just gets a bit nasty and it's a bit, yeah, a little bit sadistic. Like, I mean, yeah, they're charlatans and some of them, you know, they're just outright con artists, but, but some of them believe in what they're doing.

10:45Colin: And, you know, okay, there might be the odd case of people throwing away their life savings, but really it's like, it's 20 bucks to have some tarot cards read or someone look into a crystal ball. Yeah. How, how harmful is it really? So,

10:59KT: exactly. Um, it's, it's really interesting. Cause I'm usually like, you can't get me in the third act sort of gal.

11:08KT: Like if there's any sort of like twist, I want to talk about twists and obviously no spoilers and that sort of thing, but I got to a moment. I'm like, okay, I've got this tempo. Like I'm cool with this film. There's a film with Rebecca Hall called The Night House. There aren't many films that get me, but that was one that was like, Oh, I say, I can't do twists, but you got me.

11:29KT: And this film Late Night with the Devil did that with me. Cause there was a moment where, okay, we're, we're riding on, like, we know where we're going. And then it shifted in a way that I don't think either myself or Oti were expecting. How far in the cutting room floor was that or was that always from the start when you know, to take your,

11:50Colin: I

11:50Cameron: guess you're talking

11:51Colin: about can we climax is that we can

11:53KT: edit it out, but I'm telling you it's

11:55Colin: a clue like a visual image or something that helps.

11:59KT: Um, it's, it's literally at the ending and our understanding of his reality.

12:04Cameron: Okay,

12:04KT: does that help. Yeah, it does. Yeah.

12:07Cameron: It took us a lot of goes to get to that. Yeah, I think, you know, it was maybe only until the sort of the last few drafts that we'd settled on and then felt right to us felt like it would be satisfying for an audience, but also leave the audience questioning things a little bit.

12:28Cameron: Um, you know, I think they're the twists that work for me and in movies where. It's not just a, you know, a kind of gimmicky thing. It's like, Oh, okay. It's just been a dream all this time. You know, I think the twists that work have a little more depth to them and then make you sort of reconsider everything before it.

12:46Cameron: So,

12:47Colin: and I think, yeah, like if you go back and, you know, and yeah, like a Sixth Sense or something like that, which was the classic, you go back and watch it a second time and you're suddenly watching a different film, you realize that character's eyes. And it has this whole other layer of meaning. Don't know if we quite do that.

13:02Colin: But yeah, we, we've found people like just coming back from the U.S. people, we went to a few, did a few Q&As and people coming up to us afterwards saying they'd seen the film, already seen it three times. And it's like, Oh, we get a little bit more each time, which is really cool. I mean, we were hoping that we would joke about it, you know, when we were cutting saying, Oh, people will say it gets better by the third screening.

13:21Colin: Then the fourth one, it kind of falls flat and then it comes back, you know, but. Yeah, there's a, if you've got to, you've got to earn that moment, haven't you? So, um, yeah, it feels like we did enough of the hard work upfront to pull that off.

13:34KT: Oh, absolutely. Because we were having a good time throughout and then at the end, respectfully, I'm like, you motherfuckers.

13:41KT: I was like, you got me. I love this. This is like top list. We should have like, Taken a nap to go to the 8 p.m. screening film festival, but, um, I'm wrapping up now. Thank you so much for your time. Um, I'd like to end with our final question. We finished off our reviews with a recommendation. So what would you pair with Late Night with the Devil?

14:00KT: That's a double feature.

14:01Colin: Double feature. Double feet. Can we do a Joe Dante film? Yeah, let's do it. The one you always talk about.

14:08Cameron: Oh, The Howling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pair it up with The Howling. Cause there's a scene. There's a few scenes in The Howling that sort of live in that TV studio world. Uh, particularly, you know, the, the final scene.

14:21Cameron: Yeah. So, and I think also the period, um, you know, it's maybe it was 80, 81, I think The Howling. So it's set a few years after that fateful episode of Night, Night Owls. Um, I think that, yeah, and they're, and they're also fun, you know, The Howling is fun. It's funny and it's a romp and, um, yeah, I think that's a good pairing.

14:42Cameron: Yeah. Let's, let's go with that.

14:44KT: Well, based on Ms. Respectfully, I will follow you guys anyway. Thank you so much for your time guys.

14:50Colin: Great talking to you.

14:51KT: All the best.

14:52Colin: Take care. Bye.