Everyone tells filmmakers to write what they know, so Nina Conti Wrote a movie about a woman who can’t stop pretending to be a monkey.
If you know a lot about Ventriloquism, Conti’s name should be immediately familiar to you. The actress and the comedian, a fixture in the worlds in live theater and comedy during the last quarter of the century, is best known for his signature Monkey Puppet, whose sweet and innocent face masks an unfiltered, cynical personality. She has performed with Monkey in various stage programs and integrated it into a performance into often partner Christopher Guest 2006 film “For your consideration.”
Now she is adding a new job to her apentric resume: filmmaker. Conti directs and stars in the new movie “Sunlight“As she wrote with comedian Shenoah Allen, as stars with her. The film follows a suicide man who becomes friends with a woman who refuses to take off a full body APA costume when they collaborate to dig up his dead father and sell the clock he was buried in.
The pitch-black comedy explores deeper ideas about mental health and human connection, but it originates from a simple place: Conti’s lifelong band with her monkey character and her gradual insight that she felt most like herself when she spoke through the dock. During a new conversation with IndieWire, she explained the chaotic journey that led to her debut film.
“I started doing (The Monkey character) around 2001. Which is a bit cool because of the monkeys in the movie ‘2001.’ I started making ventriloquism with him then and found very immediately another voice that came out of me that I had not had before and it was very liberating. Full body suit. “And when I met the Creature Department of ‘Star Wars’ and they told me that he could be as large exterior. ”
Conti soon began to collaborate with Allen for a series of improvised comedy gigs that saw her perform in full Monkey costume. The character was the same, but she no longer needed to appear together with the doll as a separate character. It removed a creative safety net, but it created endless opportunities for even wilder behavior as an audience that browses in small comedy clubs.
“We never had material,” Allen said about the gigs. “We improvised these gigs and it was completely unpredictable and I could never say what was actually going on under the mask, like how Nina felt or what the actual look on her face was. I had to do my best to read the situation and look at Monkey’s empty stare.”
Conti suggested, “You want to write a love story about a woman who doesn’t want to get out of an apad?” And the rest was history.
In many ways, “sunlight” is a complic comedy about two broken people who find each other at the right time in their lives. But it is also a love letter to a character that has defined much of Conti’s career. She explained that the composition between Monkey’s empty face and her own unpredictable thoughts represented the essence of her comic persona, and “sunlight” gave her an opportunity to show it on the biggest canvas in her career.
“I’ve always loved that face,” she said. “I have always thought it is very oblique, very dry. Looks like he is thinking or not at all. He has either a great thought or no thought. It is so reliable, comical, because it is not needy. While I always find with my own face, the needy things seep out and I can not do anything about it. But that face is an armor.”
The armor costume made the logistical experience of shooting the majority of a feature film inside a hot, heavy apad in New Mexico worth. While I showed photos of looking at a camera monitor dressed in the suit, Conti explained that she would not have wanted to be anywhere else – even though her next director’s effort is unlikely to involve animal scares of any kind.
“There is a lot about the suit that was very difficult,” she said. “There is some oxygen. It is very hot, very heavy, very limited visibility. And yet when I was in it I thought:” This is kind of my happy place, this hell under fur. I feel extremely anonymous and free. “
A Vertigo release, “Sunlight” now plays in selected theaters.
