Renfield Director Chris McKay Wanted To See Familiar Characters Through A New Lens [Exclusive Interview]
"Renfield" was the right movie at the right time for director Chris McKay. Having originated from a pitch by comic book writer and screenwriter Robert Kirkman, the upcoming horror/comedy needed a keen eye behind the camera with a knack for keeping a tight grip on tone. With "The LEGO Batman Movie," McKay proved that he could deliver the comedy goods by reinventing the relationship between one of the most famous superhero/supervillain pairings of them all. Meanwhile, the alien invasion flick "The Tomorrow War" gave the filmmaker a chance to wild out on a massive budget with an A-list leading man, delivering on action spectacle through a creature-feature lens.
Meet somewhere in the middle of those movies and you end up with "Renfield," starring Nicholas Hoult as the titular put-upon servant and Nicolas Cage as the domineering Dracula himself. Packed with F-bombs, splattered gore, and some absolutely impeccable makeup and prosthetics, the film certainly lives up to its horror billing. But, as the marketing has made abundantly clear, fans of the classic Universal Monster movies are in for a much more modernized retelling of the classic Renfield/Dracula dynamic in the vein of Batman and the Joker in "The LEGO Batman Movie" — one filtered through the lens of toxic codependency.
For McKay, it proved to be a full-time job juggling these wildly differing tones, learning from the mistakes of Universal's "The Mummy" and the aborted Dark Universe, and directing famous faces like Cage, Hoult, Awkwafina, and Ben Schwartz. I recently had the chance to sit down one-on-one with McKay, where we discussed the first time he saw Cage in full Dracula getup, the horror/comedy/action influences on "Renfield," and much, much more.
Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
'If Hoult couldn't do it or Cage couldn't do it, I don't think we would've made this movie'
I remember the day when the set photos first started making the rounds on the internet with Nicolas Cage in his full Dracula regalia and everybody lost their minds over just how perfect he looked. Did you have a moment like that when you saw it? Maybe during a costume test?
Oh, literally the exact same feeling. When we did our camera test, that was the first time that we saw Cage in makeup, in costume. The fact that he looks so much like Christopher Lee, or a weird combination of Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi, and he had his mannerisms ... I like to do camera tests where you build a little bit of a set, you add some atmosphere, had candlelight and things like that. So you get to see Cage coming out of the smoke in the outfit with the teeth, with everything. I got really emotional, because it's just like, you know that at least that's going to work. That image is going to work. That was amazing. That was a great day.
Did you have any backup plans in place, just in case Cage's schedule couldn't work out?
No, honestly, this was one of these things where if Hoult couldn't do it or Cage couldn't do it, I don't think we would've made this movie. Honestly, it was down to that. It was literally, "These are the guys." The movie doesn't work without them.
'It forced us to be a little more creative'
Between this and "The LEGO Batman Movie," I feel like you've taken these old, classic character dynamics and modernized them. Batman and Joker were like this satirical lovers' quarrel sort of thing, and now you've reinvented Dracula and Renfield with this. Is this sort of your niche now?
Yeah, I guess [laughs], right, if you're trying to find a connection to all these different things. Being able to work in the Batman universe, in some ways, and work in the Dracula universe, but be able to do in a cockeyed point of view, see it through a distorted lens, the lens of codependent relationship. Not something that you would necessarily have thought of for Dracula and Renfield, but it's so intuitive when you actually hear it. That was my experience, anyway. That to me was super exciting and super fun, and why I want to try to do things that are original or as original as possible, or taking an IP like that and trying to see it through a new lens. That was really exciting. Also, because the codependent relationship gave Renfield something really powerful to fight against. He had a really clear antagonist and it was a very emotional story. That, to me, was really exciting about the script and why I wanted to do it.
How close or how different was the final movie from the original Robert Kirkman pitch?
Well, the original pitch was probably ... given that we were going to make an R-rated movie no matter what, the budget had to hit a certain number. So there were a lot of things that we had to cut for budgetary reasons, and that sort of thing. So we had to deviate, but sometimes it was just the matter of just going, "Okay, we're just going to scale it down. It won't be this elaborate." Yeah. There were some changes we had to make, I think ultimately for the better, honestly, because I think it forced us to be a little more creative in the way we made the movie.
'I wanted it to feel like a Sam Raimi movie'
I feel like, influences-wise, there was a little bit of Edgar Wright humor, maybe a little John Woo in the action, that sort of thing.
Oh, yeah.
What were your specific inspirations?
Yeah. Well, you're certainly dead-on with Edgar Wright and John Woo, but also Sam Raimi. I wanted the "splatstick" humor of "Evil Dead 2," and that sort of thing. I wanted it to feel like a Sam Raimi movie. And Jackie Chan, in the way that the fight scenes were choreographed around humor, trying to find moments of levity in the fight scene. That was stuff that we really studied, Jackie Chan's work.
I love talking to directors about balancing tone, straddling these lines. How hard was it to know when to commit to something, and when to pull back?
[laughs] On set, you've got to go for it. I want to give myself a lot of latitude to push it, to bend it until it breaks, but also give me a few notches below that in case something goes too far. Again, movies are things that happen to us and we experience them over time. So being able to control that a little bit, because once you're in [post-production], sometimes it's like, "Oh, there's too many things that are hitting a certain level of intensity," and you want to bring it back a little bit.
You have to find rhythms and be able to make the audience — because sometimes you can get fatigued, whether it's action fatigue or hitting the same joke fatigue and stuff like that. You've got to be able to have levels. So a lot of improv, doing takes and really going for it to make sure that you don't leave any money on the table, emotionally or tonally on the table. You want to try to get as much as you can, and you're only there for, in this case, 40 days or whatever. So you want to try to get as much as you can out of the actors and everybody.
'I got really lucky that these guys wanted to do this movie'
How was it working with both Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult? Were they giving you all those different takes for the edit?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. You couldn't ask for two better partners in Nick Hoult and Nic Cage. They both love making movies. Hoult works super hard. He threw himself into, obviously, the character, but also the action choreography. He did a lot of his own stunts and he doesn't mind eating bugs [laughs], because he had to eat some real bugs at times. Also, we had a dance sequence that we ended up cutting and he threw himself in the choreography for that, so a great, giving partner.
And Cage is the most enthusiastic person. He's filled with joy. He loves filmmaking, he loves movies, and creating characters and being on set, and he's fully committed. So he's the guy who's going to sit in the makeup chair for four hours to do some of the makeup, because I want to do all this stuff practically. He's going to sit there for four hours and do that and then do a 12-hour day and he never complains or anything. He's just really inspiring to be around. So I was really lucky. I got really lucky that these guys wanted to do this movie.
You mentioned the cut dance sequence. Will there be deleted scenes or even a director's cut?
I don't know if there'll be a director's cut, but there'll be definitely deleted scenes on the Blu-ray and then streaming and stuff like that.
'Where movies go wrong is when they're trying to do too much'
You filmed on location in New Orleans, but looking at the lighting and the set design, were you going out of your way to make "Renfield" visually pop compared to the old black-and-white movies?
Yeah, Basil Gogos is this illustrator, this painter who did a lot of the old famous monsters covers, Famous Monsters Magazine. He was the guy who first interpreted these black-and-white, what at the time were traditionally known ... no one had seen Frankenstein's Monster or Dracula, Wolf Man, in color, and he interpreted them in color. How he did that is he created these really garish, really saturated colors and paintings of these characters.
So, to be able to do something like that was something I was really interested in. But also, I knew that for our movie, for the humor to work, you couldn't just desaturate this whole thing and make it a gray movie or whatever. You have to be able to create permission to laugh. So I knew that by making it garish, by making it oversaturated, by working with [production designer] Alec Hammond on the sets, and just the way that New Orleans ... New Orleans is a very colorful place and the architecture is this combination of French and Spanish influences, that was all really important to me. There's this history there, the Anne Rice novels and things like that. There's a vampire history there.
So there's a lot of reasons why New Orleans and Basil Gogos and all this stuff made sense for our movie to help it be its own unique thing. A lot of the movies look the same, and I wanted ours to look different and be a little more fun.
The elephant in the room is that Universal tried doing a shared universe with the classic Universal Monsters before that didn't work out so well.
Yeah.
When you were approaching this project, was it like, "I want this to be a standalone feature"?
Yeah. When I read the script, it felt like it was a standalone thing. No one ever talked about doing anything other than that. I love these characters and I think there's a lot more. Sure, you could absolutely tell more story in [box office] success, but we wanted to tell a self-contained thing. I think that everyone, even if you are in a Marvel universe or a shared universe situation, you should always just focus on that movie. Make a good version of that movie, regardless of whether it's a sequel or the trilogy or whatever, just concentrate on that.
I think sometimes where movies go wrong is when they're trying to do too much. The Dark Universe thing could've worked there. There's compelling ... who wouldn't want to see Angelina Jolie play Bride of Frankenstein or Javier Bardem play Frankenstein's Monster? That would be really cool. I think, when you try to also do all these other things and you haven't established what the tone is, what the world is, I think that's where things go wrong.
"Renfield" arrives in theaters on April 14, 2023.