The latest addition to the Irish film catalogue is Apocalypse Clown, written and directed by BAFTA-nominated George Kane. The talented tv and film director has been praised for his work on hit shows such as Crashing and Wedding Season. With a resumé as impressive as Kane’s, it’s fair to say that he has a keen eye for onscreen comedy.
Filmed on location in Dublin and Kildare, this film “tells the tale of a troupe of failed clowns and an ambitious reporter who embark on a chaotic adventure of self-discovery after a mysterious solar event plunges the world into anarchy.”
We were lucky enough to sit down with George just a few days after the film made its triumphant premiere at the Galway Film Festival this year. We spoke about how the film came to be, creating distinct characters, and whether or not this film will cure anyone’s phobia of clowns…
How did the idea for this film come about?
It’s been a long journey so I’ll try and keep it short enough! Me and Dead Cat Bounce became friends nearly 15 years ago and were looking for something to do together which ended up being a film that was in Galway 10 years ago called Discoverdale. It was a very impromptu project that became this mockumentary feature that did very well at a bunch of festivals. The film peaked at Galway winning best international feature that year as well. I think that evening or two days later, out at the back of the rowing club in Galway, we were thinking, “Well, we’re on a high, what should we do next?”
They had written and performed a play called Clowns in the Dublin Fringe in 2010 and it was very, very funny. They played the three clowns themselves, and it was just a thinly veiled takedown of their own failings as a musical comedy act but, they recast themselves as clowns and just argued for an hour. The idea was James Walmsley, as I remember it, suggested putting those characters into the context of Clowns Without Borders, which was not something I’d ever heard of, but it’s a real organisation that does a lot of good work around the world. The idea that we put these three assholes into this humanitarian clowning scenario, high stakes Hollywood action level (as much as we could achieve) where they’re just not wanted is the kernel that began it all.
Were there any movies, television shows, or plays that you drew inspiration from when crafting the script for Apocalypse Clown?
I think initially the notion of having a Roland Emmerich-style event happen in an Irish context seemed funny to us. To be able to play on the tropes of those films and the structure of that road trip where a mismatched band of people gathers together to travel across a dystopian chaotic wasteland also just seemed really funny with these clowns in it. So the references were things like Tropic Thunder, but also your over-the-top The Day After Tomorrow and Geo Storm where there’s a formula to it… Jared Butler is usually in it and we reflect him with five clowns.
That was the initial thing that made us laugh but tonally, I don’t know, it’s always been its own thing. We weren’t looking to make a movie like a certain kind of comedy, it just was what it was. I’ve tried to compare it to other things since, and it’s quite difficult. It’s got a bit of Tropic Thunder, a bit of The Three Amigos, maybe a bit of Withnail and I when they’re in the wasteland having their existential breakdowns, and a bit of Zombieland at times… It’s a very odd Venn diagram.
Often the first image that pops into our heads when we think of clowns is Pennywise from the IT franchise etc. How did you go about creating your own different kinds of clowns in this film?
Well on a basic level, they were very clearly defined characters and types of clown from the off. I’m not a fan of clowns particularly, I don’t have any strong feelings about them, but I did feel that if you make a comedy film and everybody’s in wacky makeup the whole time, it can actually be detrimental to the comedy of it. I just thought the makeup looks were really important and they needed to disintegrate over the course of the movie too as they fail and travel through the wilderness so I wanted looks that weren’t going to be immediately alienating and distancing from the performances but also, to be distinct and interesting.
Funzo (Natalie Palamides) was always going to be a scary clown. I always pictured her like a lit match or a dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park. I found these amazing black-and-white photographs of a harlequin outfit and I thought it was a great silhouette. It had that chaotic head-on-fire look, the base of it is an orange jumpsuit so it’s a bit mental asylum prison that’s been painted over, and the idea that she’s just pulled together some horrifying version of a clown suit over the years and it’s just become her. She never takes her makeup or her nose off because she doesn’t know who she is anymore.
Alfonso (Ivan Kaye) was the classic ringmaster, nothing too unusual about him other than we wanted to make him look a little bit evil and a little bit Italian because of his name and the eye patch was going to be a big factor there too. It was a long process, but I did think about it a lot because it was such a big choice. They’re going to be wearing this look throughout most of the movie so it’s got to be interesting, not distancing.
What was it like finally getting to premiere Apocalypse Clown at Galway Film Fleadh last Friday?
It was brilliant. It was sold out relatively early. We knew it would be a home crowd because people were very curious about it. We had a lot of friends and family and industry friends at it. It was just excellent. I got slightly choked up unexpectedly on stage introducing it just because it was such a warm crowd and it’s been in my life a decade in some form while I’ve done everything else. It was just lovely to hear people laugh at it for the first time because we’ve only really shown very small groups of people and we were trying to look at rough cuts and improve it but this is the first public audience and because it’s a comedy, the whole point is to make everyone laugh and to hear that start to happen was very gratifying. It just built over the course of the movie and it ended well. There were laughs right till the very end.
After last year’s historic number of Irish Oscar nominations, do you feel that it’s important to showcase even more Irish talent?
It was a huge year. I think internationally there’s probably an image of Ireland that permeates and people focus on particular types of Irish films that do well internationally and The Banshees of Inisherin plays into that and obviously something like An Cailín Ciúin for such a small, independent film to be so well received was enormous and to have the Irish language showcased like that as well, it just opens up another little door of people’s perception of the place.
With this film, my hope for it was people would look and think, “What is that?” and the fact that it’s Irish adds an extra weird flavour to it where people are like, “What?” because it’s not expected of the place. Clowns are not associated with Ireland and apocalypse movies certainly aren’t. I like the idea of something weird and surreal and very idiosyncratic coming out of the Irish film scene and people thinking, “What else is going on over there?”
Clowns have quite the reputation for scaring people, how do you think you have challenged this perception with your film?
Obviously, Funzo is the scary clown trope but, the whole point was to subvert it a bit in that she’s scary when she emerges from the darkness in that first scene, but she’s instantly funny and ridiculous. Her scariness is supposed to be the funny thing about her and she’s oblivious, she doesn’t realize that she’s horrifying. She keeps doing everything in extremely terrible, violent, and strange ways. She doesn’t get it, she just wants to be part of a troupe. She’s a big puppy dog who happened to murder all of her friends when she was seven years old.
For me, I hope it gets over the scariness of her look immediately because that’s the joke and the funny thing for the rest of the film. It might cure some people of their fear of clowns. Pepe’s not scary, he’s not typically a scary clown, he’s more of a mime. Bobo doesn’t have a lot going on. Alfonso might freak a few people out because he is a bit more traditional and he’s aggressive. My hope is that the scary clown has been made funny in this film, rather than leaning into the twisted nightmare version we’ve all seen a million times.
Do you have any upcoming projects that you can tell us about?
I’m regularly directing TV comedy in the UK so I’m in post-production on them. Me and Ben Palmer, a British director who did The Inbetweeners movie and a lot of other great stuff, we’re doing three episodes each of the new Dick Turpen comedy series for AppleTV+. They’re about to press release it but what’s already been announced is that Noel Fielding is playing Dick Turpen. They haven’t announced the rest of the cast yet but I think that might happen next week.
I think it’ll be out next year so I’m in post-production with that. It’s got an incredible cast and it’s very funny and silly and in the spirit of something like The Princess Bride and Blackadder and those historical spoofs. I’m developing my own other films that are very different so I’m hoping to get one going next year. Otherwise, it’s just TV comedy. I recently did a few episodes of Inside No. 9 and then after this job, I’ll be looking for the next thing.
Interview by Elliott Salmon
Apocalypse Clown is at cinemas from Sept 1st