While “Swiss Army Man” left the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered earlier this year, known as “that farting corpse movie,” that’s not quite accurate. The film is about the universal human experience of defecation, and examines the cultural norms that cow people into hiding pieces of their identity out of shame. That’s still not an easy sell, but if you skipped the film based on its premise, you missed out. “Swiss Army Man” is puerile and lowbrow, certainly, but it’s also chock full of great filmmaking and unexpected intellectual depth to complement its coterie of flatulent antics.
But what kind of director do you have to be to take the basic idea of “Swiss Army Man” and turn it into art that’s open to philosophical thematic analysis? Daniel Scheinert, or Dan Kwan, or both as the case may be, since it’s by their joint efforts (under the name Daniels) that the film went through production and hit theaters this summer. Last week, as “Swiss Army Man” became available for home viewing on Blu-ray, The Playlist spoke with Scheinert and Kwan about their utterly, wonderfully bonkers film, how it all came together, and why there is great value in the scatological.
So, the movie came out in June. What’s been going on with you guys since the this movie came out? I know we’re not talking about a huge window of time, but how has this movie already changed things for you?
Daniel Scheinert: Well, [Dan] Kwan found love, and got married, and went on a honeymoon –
Dan Kwan: I met her at a Q&A.
Scheinert: Yeah, he met a girl at a Q&A and he married her. [laughs]
Kwan: That’s not true at all. Yeah, I got married, went on a honeymoon…we got a chance to do a Nike campaign for the Olympics this year, which is kind of crazy. That was kind of funny because the entire budget of that campaign was bigger than our entire movie, so it was kind of surreal. But that was an interesting next big career step, I guess! Scheinert just bought a minivan yesterday.
Scheinert: Yeah! Life’s changing.
That’s a huge step.
Kwan: Yeah. For the most part, we’re just getting ready for the next one, which has kind of been a fun, fun transition. I’m enjoying it.
Please tell me that the next one is the remake of “White Chicks” you guys were talking about earlier this year.
Scheinert: [laughs] I mean, that one is, you know, percolating. We just want to make sure we do it right. So we’re not going to rush anything. We told the studios, like, “Thank you for all the money, but please don’t put a flag on a date, because then we’ll just rush it out for 2018 and it might not be ready.” But we’ll see. It might take “Boyhood” type length to finish it.
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I will wait if that’s how long it takes. So, what is coming up next for you guys? I’m super curious to see how you move forward from “Swiss Army Man,” which I should say I absolutely loved…
Scheinert: Yeah, we’re curious too. We’re so glad you loved it. Like Dan said, we’re trying to write another movie, but I think we also just want to experiment a bunch. “Swiss Army Man” is kind of the result of six years of making music videos and stuff, so we want to make sure we bring something new to the table. We’ll see! [laughs] We’re not sure. Do you know, Dan? What’s next for you, Dan?
Kwan: [laughs] I mean, this next movie that we’re working on is going to be different enough from “Swiss Army Man.” I think we enjoyed the challenge of trying to make scatalogical content beautiful and profound, but we kind of need a break from that stuff. I think our next movie’s going to be a lot less…I don’t want to say immature, it’s going to be very immature, but a lot less focused on farts, for sure.
Scheinert: Body parts in general.
Kwan: Body parts in general. But it’s still gonna be really hard, and I don’t know long it’s gonna take. Right now, the idea’s kind of a sci-fi action film that’s really stupid. But we’re really excited about the challenge. I think that’s all we can say for now, but yeah, we kind of want to do what we’ve been doing, but on a larger scale if that’s possible.
Even if that’s all you can say for now on it, let me just tell you: I’m already interested. I can’t wait to hear what else comes from that. That sounds great.
Scheinert: Great! One ticket sold.
I like what you’re saying about finding something beautiful and profound in something that’s crass. How did you do that? I’ve seen the movie several times and it still amazes me that there’s so much richness to mine out of it, and yet it’s a movie about a farting corpse. How?
Scheinert: Yeah, I mean – scatological stuff is the lowest common denominator as far as humor goes, but that’s kind of a compliment. It’s a common denominator. It’s something that every single human on the planet experiences. It crosses all walks of life, farts and poops and sex and whatnot, so yeah, it surprised us too. It started off as just a writing exercise, like, “What a crazy idea,” but then it very quickly became really meaty. There’s a lot to parse out and talk about. We did not want to make a niche film, and there’s something so fun about the fact that everybody farts.
Kwan: This is kind of a stupid little tag-on, but there’s this little passage that Joseph Campbell said that talks about how if you take anything in the universe, any object, any idea, and you draw a circle around it, you can basically lead your way to God, or the idea of a higher mystery. So in his example, he talks about taking a watch and circling it, and in that moment you sanctify the watch, and just by thinking and meditating on that watch, you will inevitably find yourself asking questions about existence if you’re willing to go that deep.
It’s kind of funny, because we essentially did that with farts, and we were rewarded by it. We found a lot of interesting things, and I’m glad that it came through for you in the film. Some people, I don’t think they were willing to go on that journey. The people who did do that, it’s been really rewarding for them, and the feedback from them has been encouraging. So I’ll just put that out there.
The movie is a hard sell. I tell people about it, and they just go, “It sounds bizarre!” But everybody’s seen romantic comedies or manic pixie dream girl movies, and I feel like if you’ve seen those movies, there’s something in “Swiss Army Man” for you to latch onto or respond to. That’s what I took away from it the most, that sense of parody.
Scheinert: That’s a great pitch!
For me specifically, I’m curious if that was intended as part of the movie’s underlying message. Were you trying to subvert that particular trope? It reads so strongly to me.
Scheinert: For sure, yeah — you mean the manic pixie dream girl trope?
Yeah.
Scheinert: Yeah, it was kind of accidental, but we definitely loved the idea of trying to teach a dead body about love, but not having anyone around to demonstrate it on. The more that we wrote in that world, we kept bumping up against these tropes in romantic comedies, and the tropes of this perfect dream girl who’s going to just love you for you are, and then it just felt so cheesy that we totally bought into it. It was so much more fun to subvert it and explore the dark side of watching too many of those movies, and what it can do to you as a lonely boy who’s embarrassed of your body. It’s a really unhealthy place to be. [laugh] That’s what the movie ended up being.