Director Panos Cosmatos talks Beyond the Black Rainbow

Playing at last weekend’s Tribeca Film Festival 2011 was the debut feature film from director Panos Cosmatos called Beyond the Black Rainbow. The film, a weird blend of the best of 70s and 80s sci-fi, has been labeled Kubrickian, a distinguished honor if there ever is one. The plot synopsis has been suggested as: “Set in the strange and oppressive emotional landscape of the year 1983, Beyond The Black Rainbow is a Reagan era fever dream inspired by hazy childhood memories of midnight movies and Saturday morning cartoons.”

Killer Film caught up with the young director prior to another screening at Tribeca (“I’m good. I’m in a cab!” he said, referencing where he is at the time of our interview) to talk about Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Jon: I read as a kid you would go into Video Attic and obsessively look at the cover of R-rated VHS tapes you were too young to see. What was it about those covers versus today’s DVD covers, that ignited your imagination?

Panos Cosmatos: Well, back then all of the covers, as you know, used to be beautiful paintings. They’re beautiful; even if they were cheap paintings, they were just cool and imaginative. Now days we just get these Photoshop heads on DVDs.

Jon: Everything in the genre now seems like an ode to yesteryear. Everything’s a homage, everything’s retro. There’s a fine line between a homage and a wanna-be, so describe this self-proclaimed “poisoned nostalgia” you were trying to obtain.

Panos Cosmatos: Well, I think this isn’t a homage as I once did. Instead it’s an exploration of my feelings and ideas at the time. On one hand, I do have a very nostalgic attitude, but at the same time darkness entered me too, so I tried to infuse them together.

Jon: Some have described Beyond the Black Rainbow as Kubrickian, yet at times his films are too cold and impersonal. Your film is not. While it is a personal film to you, its ambiguity keeps us intrigued. How hard was it to play that note?

Panos Cosmatos: I just kept my eye on it the entire time, because as a director I know just as much of what I want as what I don’t want. So it was just a matter of keeping those levels on the tone I wanted, you know. That was the most important thing.

Jon: Was it hard to get the film funded?

Panos Cosmatos: I self-funded it.

Jon: Talk about casting Michael Rodgers (Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Mortal Kombat: Legacy) as Barry?

Panos Cosmatos: Well, we looked at a whole bunch of different actors but as soon as Michael walked into the room, I had this great feeling about him. After the line readings, I pretty much knew he was born to play Barry (laughs). We did test a few more people, but I had already made my decision.

Jon: How did composer Jeremy Schmidt get involved?

Panos Cosmatos: I wanted a synth score from the very beginning before I met Jeremy. He is a friend of a friend, and they thought that I might like his music, his solo work. After they sent me some tracks, I was blown away by them. I showed him some of the film while we were editing, so he agreed to score it. It worked out really good.

Jon: Can we expect an isolated track on the DVD?

Panos Cosmatos: I think that will be great, I might do that. That’ll be awesome. I would love to put it out as a soundtrack too, as this pure, uncut score. There were some tracks for a deleted scene that were just amazing, but it fit into the film badly, so they got cut. Hopefully, we’ll put that back too.

Keep it here for more on the film after its Tribeca run and until then, check out the trailer:

Jon Peters

I love film. That is all.

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