Wyrm

Written and directed by Christopher Winterbauer
Starring Theo Taplitz, Azure Brandi, Tommy Dewey, and Rosemarie DeWitt

by Jaime Davis, The Fixer

Was high school a good time for you? Were you like, the most popular? Did you have a ton of friends? Did you have something to do every Saturday night? A boyfriend or girlfriend or partner to do something with every Saturday night? Did you ever feel pressure to be like everyone else? To do things that others did? Keep up and be on their level? I guarantee that even if you were über popular in high school or didn’t feel the need to be a lemming, you still struggled in some way, didn’t have everything figured out. For Wyrm, high school is proving difficult for him - he’s gangly and awkward and a bit on the quieter side. In ordinary life this would be manageable in some way, but in the unique satirical world of Wyrm the movie, it’s much worse.

In writer/director Christopher Winterbauer’s vibrantly fun alternate universe, teenagers are expected to keep up with each other sexually. Kids wear collars until they pass particular sexual milestones, showcasing to the world their level of experience (or lack thereof). At the start of the film, Wyrm (sensitive, funny Theo Taplitz), still donning his awkward neck collar because he hasn’t yet kissed anyone, is about to progress to the next grade when a school administrator threatens to hold him back because he’s the last one in his class to “pop his collar.” For me, the prospect of living in the world of Wyrm as a teen is enough to make me run and hide, but Winterbauer infuses dialogue and sequences with so much wit and heart, you can’t help but be wooed by this film.

Wyrm is a delightful comedy that’s just as quirky as the title character with a dash of absurdist humor and satire thrown in for good measure. As Wyrm struggles to navigate the horrors of growing up, he must also fight for unconditional love within his wacky home life. There’s his incorrigible sister Myrcella (confident newcomer Azure Brandi), his goofy but loveable Uncle Chet (a game Tommy Dewey), Uncle Chet’s quiet but caring girlfriend Flor (a sweet Natalia Abelleyra), his bathroom-confined father, and his distant mom (the always perfect Rosemarie DeWitt), off on a trek of her own. We follow Wyrm on his quest to kiss someone via a variety of channels at his disposal, all while mourning the recent death of his older sibling despite absentee parents and a tricky relationship with his sis.

At the center of the story is his somewhat fraught relationship with Myrcella; it’s lovely to see them move closer to an understanding amidst the typical hilarity, awkwardness, and anguish of growing up. The film is visually vivid, exciting, quirky, with solid performances from all leaning into the unique aesthetic and world-building Winterbauer displays. It’s garnered numerous comparisons to Napoleon Dynamite, but I feel Wyrm brings forth so much more. While Wyrm is our central player, Winterbauer’s script features multiple strong female characters offering significant insight to Wyrm as he moves along in his journey. After my screening at Fantastic Fest this year, I wanted to know more about Winterbauer’s ability to write from such an engaging female perspective. In an interview for Moviejawn, Winterbauer explained, “Every insight I’ve ever gotten into the experiences of women…the credit for that goes to my sisters who are younger than me but have always been more mature. My sister Jessica gets a lot of credit because she read the script like 30 times and offered a lot of great one-liners to throw in the script.” Winterbauer went on to say that this film is a testament to his mother and sisters, and the things they taught him when he was Wyrm’s age.

Wyrm is a refreshing, beautiful ride that will make you feel so much at once - I laughed pretty much from moment one to the end, but there’s so much heart and warmth to the film. I can’t wait for more people to experience it. Read more from my enjoyable interview with Winterbauer - he’s seriously just as funny in conversation as he is in his writing.

Jaime Davis: I read that you studied economics at Stanford and spent some time working in finance at Intel. What made you make the decision to shift into film and apply to USC’s graduate film program?

Christopher Winterbauer: I was an analyst…so, very interesting stuff. But film is what I always wanted to do. I was going to go to USC for undergrad for film and I somehow got into Stanford, and was like, “If I go here, even if I’m mediocre (which by the way I was), that’s fine,” as opposed to going to USC for film. If I wasn’t good at making movies, what would my life be like after that? So I went to Stanford and basically ran away from the creative things I really wanted to do for a few years. I was okay at math so I majored in econ and worked for a big tech company. I worked at Intel, which, by the way, great company. Loved the people I worked with, I had great bosses. I got paid regularly, which was very nice, And I was working there for a couple years when my wife, who had been on a track to become an attorney, realized she had no interest in it and was in the middle of a career change. She said to me like, “You always talk about eventually wanting to do this movie thing and if you turn around when we’re 40 and say I’m gonna go to film school, I will leave you” [laughs]. Which was a pretty good motivator so I turned around and applied to film school. One of my bosses at Intel was super supportive and wrote all my recommendation letters. And I got into USC and moved down to LA in 2014 and it was like a total left turn that led me here. But basically, it was my wife, to answer your question.

JD: So we have your wife to thank for your films, that’s awesome.

CW: Or to blame [laughs].

JD: Was USC your dream school or were there any other film programs you really liked?

CW: To be honest the program I really wanted to go to was Columbia but they totally rejected me – like I didn’t even get an interview. NYU also seemed great but my wife got a job in LA so it didn’t make sense to do a bi-coastal long-distance relationship. And USC’s program is three years, versus NYU’s four. UT Austin’s program is great too but Texas is a little too hot for me. USC’s program is amazing so it worked out.

JD: Are there any skills from your undergraduate education or life in finance that have helped you as a filmmaker?

CW: All directing is, I’ve learned, is making 10,000 tiny decisions every single day and having to make them quickly and understanding how things like opportunity costs, for example, are a big aid that will help a director and producer on set. And understanding that for every choice you make, for everything you decide to do, you will be sacrificing the opportunity to do something else and understanding those trade-offs is incredibly useful. I think there can be a temptation on set that when you put a lot of time or money or energy into achieving a specific effect/shot/scene and it’s not working, there can be a temptation to think, “We’ve put so much into this scene, we have to make it happen” which is a fallacy. Instead it should be, “It’s not working; realistically, is it going to happen quickly and if not, let’s pivot, figure out something different, creatively problem-solve, and move on so we can make our day.” It’s helped me think a little more like an AD sometimes, and especially on Wyrm, we were shooting like six to seven pages a day, and using all kids 16 and under, so we were only shooting seven and a half hours a day so we would get like, three takes. And luckily the actors were amazing. So I would say something like, “Do it a little with more heart” or something, giving them terrible direction and they’d just nail it. Taking an analytical approach when you’re on set I think is actually really helpful. I think prep is the time to be really creative and plan for all the exotic, unique ways you want to shoot something and then when you’re on set it’s really just problem-solving. You have a certain amount of time, and you have a certain amount of people at your disposal, and you need to somehow make magic out of that. And I think that’s where the econ background is helpful.

JD: Who are your biggest influences? Film-related or not!

CW: In terms of what I like to read, I love the short story author George Saunders – I love his absurdist style.
Another author I recommend is Wells Tower, specifically Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. I’ve read every single Stephen King book – I was the weird Stephen King kid in school. I love what Taika Waititi does. I love what Yorgos Lanthimos does. The Favourite is outstanding. Also Phoebe Waller-Bridge – the way she wrote Fleabag, it’s one of the best written shows of all time. And the best tv show ever is The Sopranos. It’s like the pinnacle of human achievement in my opinion. My wife and I have watched it three times.

I’m also a big believer in listening to music while writing – not just film scores but also popular music – more like indie stuff you’d expect a 30 year-old white dude to listen to. Most recently I did a deep dive into the 2017 Brand New album, Science Fiction. It’s pretty great. I’m from Seattle and a huge Modest Mouse fan and I love their side project Ugly Casanova as well.

I’m also really into Spanish and Latinx movies – Guillermo del Toro is amazing. I love movies from South America, Spain, Mexico, which speaks to my mom’s Latin heritage. And of course I’m inspired by my weird family.

JD: Can you tell us anything about future projects you’re writing or working on? Or is that like special top-secret stuff?

CW: I’m adapting a horror film for Amblin. I’m writing it and it’s like 13 Reasons Why meets A Ghost Story meets Stand by Me. It’s so unique in tone and I think I have a unique take on it so I’m excited about that. I have another script that’s done but I’m figuring out what to do with it – it’s basically Harriet the Spy meets the Coen brothers. After Wyrm I was thinking I can’t do another movie with kids in the lead; it’s just too hard logistically even though I love working with kids – it’s such a blast. And of course the first thing that pops in my head is a story about an 11 year-old gumshoe detective and it’s like, “Well I guess I have to make this now” [laughs]. And then there’s a bunch of other random stuff I’m working on not ready to see the light of the day.

JD: What’s your favorite movie theater or fave place to watch a movie?

CW: Growing up I loved Factoria Cinema which has been remodeled since then but it was the rundown theater near my house. It was like a nine-minute drive…my dad and I went all the time, they had great popcorn, it was super comfy. I snuck into my first rated R movie, Constantine, when I was supposed to see Brother Bear. I don’t even remember the movie because I was so nervous I would get caught. And then my family’s playroom growing up as a kid – we were a big movie family. The giant plate of nachos they all eat in Wyrm, that’s what we did in my house. On a cookie sheet, full bag of chips, full bag of cheese, ground beef, we put it on the floor and sat picnic-style around it while we watched a movie and my mom would proceed to fast-forward any parts she felt were remotely inappropriate while my sisters and I screamed at her. That was my childhood.

JD: Are you down with movie snacks? If so, what are your go-to’s besides nachos?

CW: I’m totally down with movie snacks. My wife and I have been on a collective diet recently because I gained a little weight while editing Wyrm. But our go-to movie snacks are: a frostee Diet Coke and a large popcorn that we dump peanut or plain M&M’s into, but never caramel M&M’s. I’m not down with those.

JD: Got it, no caramel M&M’s! How about a favorite movie from the last year or so?

CW: I watched this French-Canadian horror film recently called Les affamés (Ravenous). It’s a Quebecois zombie movie – I just thought it was really great. It won best Canadian feature at TIFF a couple years ago, I think. I thought it was so well-made, so different than other zombie movies I’d ever seen – artistic without being slow with something really beautiful about it. I tend to over-write dialogue and this is the opposite – there’s like not a waste of words across the entire thing and I found it really, really compelling. Also, A Dark Song on Netflix – horror film about a woman trying to commune with her dead son through an occult ritual – it’s the best occult movie I’ve seen in like 10 years. It does an amazing job of creating scares, tension, and has really cool sound design.

Keep an eye out for news on Wyrm’s theatrical distribution! In the meantime, you can watch the original short version of the film in its entirety here.