Director didn’t maintain again when he approached the reclusive Lara Flynn Boyle about showing in his new movie “Mother, Couch.”
“I needed someone for the character to be broken,” Larsson says. “Instead of faking a broken person, I did some research of who is really broken, and this is something I’ve been very open with Lara about.”
He continues, “I went back to the ‘90s. My mother was a hairdresser and always had all these celebrity magazines. Lara was on the cover throughout my whole childhood. Hollywood fucking raped her. That’s what they do with the starlets.”
Boyle, Ewan McGregor and Rhys Ifans star as siblings who reunite when their mom, performed masterfully by Ellen Burstyn, sits on a sofa in a furnishings retailer and refuses to go away.
“I didn’t want any verbal characterization between the siblings telling the audience where Lara’s character comes from, or what has happened to her,” Larsson says. “I just needed a close-up.”
Despite not working a lot lately, Boyle signed on fairly rapidly. There was just one actual impediment: getting Boyle to dye her hair blonde. “She was like, ‘Can I do a wig?’ Larsson says. “But we definitely couldn’t do a wig because of Ellen.”
Burstyn dons a platinum blonde wig within the film that’s laborious to look away from. It’s worn tilted, hair sprayed inside an inch of its synthetic life and turns into nearly its personal character within the film. “When you see a wig like that on a person, it’s clear that the person is mad,” Larsson says. “Ellen picked the wig. That’s the truth. When she came to me with this fucking crazy wig, I was like, ‘I don’t love it.’”
Ellen Burstyn in “Mother, Couch.”
To keep away from a spoiler, I received’t reveal how Larsson lastly agreed to this specific wig, however the director is completely happy he did: “In retrospect, it’s the best choice ever.”
“Mother, Couch” marks Larsson’s function directorial debut following the eye and awards he earned for his industrial work and a number of shorts, two of which have been for Vogue and starred Alicia Vikander and Anna Wintour.
A one-time youngster actor in his native Sweden, the 33-year-old Larsson now lives in New York City. He counts Spike Jonze as a mentor.
“Mother, Couch” isn’t a straightforward movie to classify. Is it a comedy? A darkish comedy? A dramedy? Or, as Larsson sees it — a horror film that he says was impressed by “The Shining”?
“I felt it was important to take a big swing,” he says. “I feel every part is so fucking boring proper now. Everyone’s so secure and every part is so generic. And as a younger filmmaker, we are able to’t be scared. If anybody ought to take huge swings, it’s younger filmmakers.
“I miss the good old days where people were young filmmakers and didn’t care about critics,” he continues. “They didn’t care about the audience necessarily. They just made the movie they wanted to make. I think there’s something pure in that. So I wrote the craziest movie I could think of. It’s not for everybody, but for the ones who it is for I think they will really like it.”
Niclas Larsson directing Lara Flynn Boyle in “Mother, Couch.”
Not that he has something in opposition to mainstream motion pictures. One of his favourite movies is “Freaky Friday.” He needs he had gotten the possibility to helm the upcoming sequel with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. “I told my agent yesterday if they’re making a remake of ‘13 Going on 30,’ I should be the one,” Larsson says. “I’d love to do that.”