Underground genre filmmaker Scooter McCrae previously gave us provocative takes on zombies with Shatter Dead and cyberpunk in Sixteen Tongues, and his latest feature Black Eyed Susan is his most confrontational work yet.
Just released on Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome, it stars Yvonne Emilie Thälker as Susan, an AI-enhanced artificial human programmed to take and respond to physical abuse. Her creator, Gil (Marc Romeo), enlists his old friend Derek (Damian Maffei from The Strangers: Prey at Night and Haunt) to give Susan a “test run”; the down-on-his-luck Derek has misgivings at first, which are overcome by the money Gil offers. A series of private sessions lead to Susan and Derek spending more sustained time together at a remote house, and as Susan encourages Derek to push the boundaries of their physical relationship, his deep psychological traumas begin to surface as well.
Dealing with issues of BDSM, consent, and toxic masculinity among other hot-button subjects, Black Eyed Susan uses a very-near-future science-fiction lens to examine troubling yet engrossing themes. Shot on 16mm by DP Anton Zinn, with a score by Italian genre maestro Fabio Frizzi (Zombie, The Beyond), Black Eyed Susan is seeing its home release following a 2024 festival tour. After visiting the movie’s set (see issue #25 for that report), Fango spoke in depth with McCrae just before its world premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
What led to the decision to shoot Black Eyed Susan on film?
I was introduced to producer Justin Martell through my friend Fabio Frizzi, because Justin produced Fabio’s first concert in the U.S. I gave him the script, and then maybe six months later, Justin came back to me and said, “Stop whatever you’re doing, I’m going to find money for this.” He introduced the idea of working with Vinegar Syndrome, but then he said, “If we do the project with them, it needs to be shot on film.” And I was like, “Are you fucking kidding? We don’t have enough money to shoot on film.”
Then Justin found more money. Vinegar Syndrome initially was involved with paying for the film stock, the processing and the 4K transfers for me to edit with, which was a sizable investment, because that’s not cheap. That was the only way we were able to make our days, because this was a nine-day shoot on a 100-page script. There was no day when we were shooting less than ten pages, and a few days worked out like, “We’re shooting seven or eight pages this day, but that means we have to shoot 15 pages the next day.” It was nightmarish.
Did anyone at Vinegar Syndrome, or anyone else involved in producing the movie, have any concern about the subject matter?
The interesting thing that I don’t fully understand is that no one seemed nervous about the subject matter until it was done. I feel like some kind of Pied Piper who walked everyone through the script, and then we shot it all, and everything went fine. Then once it was edited and scored, suddenly everyone went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what the fuck are we doing? What the fuck were we thinking?” That’s been interesting to me. I have no real explanation as to how I tap-danced my way through that minefield.
Maybe it’s just more shocking when you see it, as opposed to reading it on a page.
The weird thing is that so many people I know who read the screenplay and have seen the movie say it was much worse on the page. I put a note at the front of the script that said, “Listen, there are very graphic descriptions in this,” because I didn’t want to try to write around things. It takes up more words, it takes up more time. It helped being able to write, you know, “They fuck,” “She sucks his dick,” whatever it might be, and not have to write every time, “Now, we don’t really see this on screen, you understand?”
It was one note up front, just so people were aware that we wouldn’t be showing the acts described in explicit detail. And there is no explicit detail here; it’s not a porn film by any stretch of the imagination. And yet I think people are more emotionally invested in the characters on screen than they were when they read them on the page, so that stuff feels stronger.
How did you find two actors who could go to the places they needed to go and be convincing, and do all this in a very short amount of time?
I found Yvonne on Instagram. They’re a model, and I knew right up front that they were comfortable with nudity. They were available for modeling sessions, so I scheduled one with them, and didn’t say anything about wanting to make a movie together. The shoot was actually at their apartment, and I noticed that they had a whole section of Philip K. Dick books on their bookshelf, and I thought, yeah, they’re the one. I always tell people they’re like my David Bowie; you know, like David Bowie is the Man Who Fell to Earth, I feel like Yvonne is Black Eyed Susan. They have similar magnetic qualities, almost an alien quality.
I gave them the script and said, “Look, you’ll want to read this first and let me know, because there’s some uncomfortable sexual stuff in here, so let me know if you’re OK with that.” I was thrilled when they got back to me and said, “I see what’s going on here. It’s totally fine. This is smart, this is interesting. I’ve been asked to be in movies before, and it’s always been like stripper #3 on the pole in some club. I don’t want to do garbage like that, but this is something I would do.”
I was so happy when they said yes, because I probably would not have made the movie without them. I never saw another actor who I thought would be just right for the role.
I knew nothing about Damian, and the producers suggested him. We had an audition, and I was immediately taken aback. He was not someone I knew of, and I wasn’t aware he had this long history in the horror genre. We joked about it; I guess he’s always wearing masks in those movies, and he said, “I think it’s time to take off the masks and give it a shot.” It was really weird—I initially wanted someone else for the role who said no, but even though Damian was brought to me, I was instantly like, “Yeah, this guy’s great. He’s perfect for the part.” It’s the first time I’ve had that happen.
How did you get the two of them comfortable with each other for their intense scenes together? Was there enough time to prepare in advance?
No. Everything pretty much had to happen on set, because there was no rehearsal time with a budget like this. One reason I wanted someone like Yvonne for the Susan role was that they had to be comfortable being naked around people, because when you have that on set, it makes everyone else a little more comfortable. If they feel like someone doing that sort of role is nervous, it kind of poisons the set, you know? Yvonne was so at ease in those situations, it made it much easier for Damian to function, because this was his first time doing anything resembling nudity on screen.
So there was no intimacy coordinator on the movie?
We had a running joke on set about intimacy coordinators, because when we took out an ad for casting, I think it was in Variety, they gave us a hard time. We were told, “If you’re going to have nudity on set, you need to have an intimacy coordinator.” So we just lied [laughs]. I was like, “Fuck you assholes. This is my fucking movie, and you don’t tell me I need an intimacy coordinator for it. I’ve done this before. I know how to work with people. We’re not doing any real explicit sexual activity here.”
There are so many assumptions made by the corporate powers that be who control casting and whatnot that if people are naked, they’re instantly being exploited. God, I hate that; it’s so obnoxious. So we joked around on set: “If an intimacy coordinator shows up, just grab that bat over there and start swinging.”
Let’s talk about Fabio Frizzi and his involvement.
Fabio scored my previous short, Saint Frankenstein, so the second there was even the idea of doing this movie, in my head it was like, of course I’ve got to ask the maestro to score this. So he was technically the first person assigned to Black Eyed Susan. I sent him the script as soon as I could, because I wanted to make sure he was cool with it. I don’t know if he had done anything quite like this, and he was fine, he loved it.
One interesting thing about Black Eyed Susan is that there’s only scoring in the scenes with Susan. Otherwise, if there’s music in any other scene, it’s source music, from a radio or something, and there’s not even much of that. I wanted the score to be centered specifically on that character. It kind of acts as an audio perfume to make her more seductive, because you need to be drawn to her, and there’s a lot of talk about, “She’s giving off pheromones,” and how do you make a mechanism attractive to people? It’s not just a look; you need a smell, a sound, something.
I also didn’t want any scary music at all. The opening scene is the only one that has anything resembling “horror music,” and the rest I wanted to be beautiful, romantic, seductive, even during the most vile moments. The maestro loved that, and he said, “Listen, we need a voice.” And I agreed; I felt it would be perfect to have this lilting vocal to guide us through the valleys of the most horrifying moments.
So he checked in with the famous voice from the Ennio Morricone soundtracks, Edda Dell’Orso. She’s retired from singing now, but she teaches, so the maestro asked her for a gifted student. And she provided one, Clara Trucchi. The first time I heard her voice, I just melted, and the maestro loved her, too. He’s very happy with the movie and the score, which makes me happy, because if I ever make another movie, it’ll just be to get one more score out of the maestro. I’ll just keep working as long as I can keep getting music out of him.
How do you anticipate viewers responding to Black Eyed Susan?
Well, I figure I’m going to make more profits at the back of the theater, selling the pitchforks and the torches and the rotten fruit and vegetables to be thrown, than from any actual ticket sales [laughs]. You know, it’s hard to say how audiences are going to react, but I do think that especially now, in a very, very conservative time, it goes against the grain of what people probably want or expect from a movie—which I think is great.
I didn’t make the movie to antagonize people’s beliefs or thoughts because that’s not very interesting. I just wanted to make a movie that meant something to myself personally. I do hope people embrace it and say, “Wow, this is what people should be doing. Instead of trying to bury toxic masculinity and sweeping stuff like this under the rug, it should be out in the open. We should be talking about it.
There’s so much that goes on in this world that excuses shitty male behavior in ways that are sometimes subtle and sometimes outrageous, and hard to believe that people get away with it. But it needs to be addressed, and if this dinky little low-budget movie shot in Brooklyn helps start that conversation, that’s great.
Talking about conservative times, movies have gotten very conservative about sex and nudity in the last 20 years. Do you have any thoughts on why that might be?
That’s an interesting question. I feel like there’s been a rise in religious conservatism, which has all these contradictions where, you know, sex is evil or there are issues with sex, but then you open up the Bible and Lot is fucking his daughters or some such thing. It’s this contradiction, and it goes back to the Madonna-whore thing, right? You get the Madonna, you get the whore, and that’s it. There’s nothing in between. I feel like we’ve unfortunately been seeing that take root again.
Roe v. Wade is an issue again, which it sure shouldn’t be, and it seems like any time a woman tries to show any kind of sexual independence from the patriarchy, in whatever way it might be—as an artist, as a business person, in her choice of sexual partner—anything that colors outside the lines is considered verboten. I just feel like it’s embarrassing, and for anyone with any feeling for equality of the sexes, it’s a pretty shitty time right now. It’s been gestating for a long time, but it really seems like the worst of it has taken root, and it’s actually starting to bear fruit again.
I’m as curious as anyone to see what reactions this movie gets, whether they like it or hate it. I hope that no matter what, it will spark interesting dialogue and that enough people will see it to make some small dent in the cultural conversation. I would love to hear those conversations and be part of them, whether or not people like the movie. I just hope the movie gives people something to talk about.
For more, check out our list of the best Blu-ray releases coming our way this month, and watch the Black Eyed Susan trailer below.
