Robert: You’re not the first person to ask that question, but very few have. It certainly was in my intention, so the films that I like, such as Bergman and Drier who are so close to my heart, are a big part of this film. Bergman comes from the theatre, so his films are very play-like, and most of Drier’s films, while he didn’t direct theatre, are adaptations of plays. So certainly there are these movements that feel like the best part of silent cinema since there’s non-diegetic sound and things are moving in a way that you could never do on a stage, and those parts are certainly what our DP Jarin [Blaschke] prefers, but there are these scenes that tend to play themselves out like a full on “scene”.
Eric: You obviously put a ton of research, time and effort into making the movie; when you were making it were you ever afraid it would be marginalized as just a horror film, just another entry into that genre?
Robert: I mean, I hope it’s marginalized as a horror film because I wanted people to see it. I had such a hard time getting anyone to make any feature I had written and so it seemed to me in the climate at the time, and I think it’s still true now, it was going to be much easier for me to get a film financed and seen if I could make a personal film that was within a genre.