The collective RKSS is actually three writer/directors from Canada. Yann-Karl Whissell, Anouk Whissell, Francois Simard entered the first ABCs of Death contest with the short film “T is for Turbo.” It was not included in the movie, but they went on to make the feature Turbo Kid which premiered at Sundance and went on to play SXSW.
The loving homage to ‘80s sci-fi movies is set in the distant future of 1997, long after the apocalypse. The Kid (Munro Chambers) finds a Turbo Rider costume and dons it to save the world from Zeus (Michael Ironside). Along the way he picks up a friendly, lonely survivor named Apple (Laurence Lebeouf).
We met RKSS in Austin after a five hour flight delay. They hadn’t even picked up their badges but they still insisted on hugs; that’s one for each of them.
Check Out: SXSW 2015 Review: ‘Turbo Kid’ is Playing with Power
CraveOnline: Is ABCs of Death going to be the new Grindhouse where we see a lot of features comign out of the shorts?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Hopefully. I hope so. I think it’s a good way to discover talent at least. And there’s a ton of people, the first year when the letter T was free, we actually took the time to watch all of the shorts and we voted for the other short that we loved.
The one that won?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: I voted for the one that won as well. I really like “T is for Toilet.”
Francois Simard: It was great to see the community of filmmakers.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Everybody was chatting and talking about their films. We should always see making films as a community, to help each other. It is a community and making films is hard. It is. It’s really hard. People don’t know so might as well make friends and help each other.
How did you three hook up and decide to become filmmakers together?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Well, I met Anouk when my mother gave birth to her and then we became brother and sister.
Right, but that doesn’t mean you’ll work together.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: No, no, I’m joking. Exactly, I’m joking. We started making shorts in high school. Even younger than that, our dad used to have a camera, you know the old VHS camera that you actually had to walk around with the VHS itself?
Yes, I had one of those.
Anouk Whissell: We played with that a lot.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: We made tons of films. We made horror films where our house was built on an ancient burial ground of plushies. The plushies would come back to life and kill people and stuff like that, silly stories.
Francois Simard: I did the same thing on my own and I met Anouk at animation school. We didn’t go to film school at all but we have a background in animation and we learned to do storyboards. We just kept making movies as friends and kept that spirit while we’re making movies together. We did a movie called The Bagman which is like Jason Voorhees on steroids.
Another feature?
Francois Simard: A short.
Anouk Whissell: It’s our first short. It’s been 10 years.
Francois Simard: At that time, we didn’t know direction of photography or color correction.
Anouk Whissell: We learned filmmaking by making shorts, by making films. That’s how we learned. We have a great friend, Jean Philippe, JP we call him, Jean-Philippe Bernier which is the DOP on Turbo Kid. He brought the technical side and we’ve been making shorts with him forever now.
Francois Simard: The Bagman, the short film, got a huge buzz around it and went around the world. That’s when we were like, “Okay, that’s it. That’s what we want to do in life.”
Which animation school did you go to?
Francois Simard: Cegep du Vieux.
Anouk Whissell: It’s a college in Montreal.
Post-apocalyptic movies are my favorite genre and my favorite part is when the survivors go looking for supplies in the wasteland. Did you enjoy that part of the genre also and have things you wanted The Kid to find in the wasteland?
Anouk Whissell: Totally, totally. Yes. It is important. This is how people will survive in five years.
In 1997.
JW: In 1997, yeah. We’re huge fans of all the Italian rip-offs of Mad Max. They always have scavenging scenes.
Now just Italians. Waterworld has it because he goes underwater to find stuff. I Am Legend is my favorite when he’s checking all the apartments.
JW: Yeah, yeah. It was important for us.
Anouk Whissell: It’s important. It served us to set the world also and set how the world survived and how it works.
JW: And you can see from what he’s finding, you can set up the date where the apocalypse went off.
Francois Simard: That’s why he’s finding ‘80s stuff all over the place.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Because things started going bad in the ‘80s and the apocalypse happened in 1997 so time stopped there.
The apocalypse happened before, right?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Before, yeah.
On the set, did you ever regret any of your creative kills because they were so difficult?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: The setup sometimes would take time and it was complicated.
Francois Simard: The funny thing is we cut at least half of the death scenes that we wanted to do. So we had to make sacrifices. So we hope there’s still enough blood.
There’s plenty. Have you submitted to the MPAA yet?
Francois Simard: Not yet.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: No, no, not yet. We don’t know what the rating is going to be but I think it’s cute enough. Yes, it’s bloody, but our blood is really over the top. It’s more like Bugs Bunny.
Anouk Whissell: Slapstick.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: It’s Bugs Bunny for adults so we’re not there to shock. It’s just to have fun.
Francois Simard: But it’s not for children. It’s for crazy adults with a child’s heart.
Anouk Whissell: The one that was difficult was definitely the totem one. That was something to shoot with a whole rig and it was super heavy. But we had to have it.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Basically, if there’s Turbo Kid 2, and we’d love to do a sequel, if it happens, a lot of the kills are already ready to go. We already have the ideas so Turbo Kid 2 will write itself.
So is this a franchise?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: I’d love to. Definitely, we’d love to. At least a trilogy.
Francois Simard: That depends on the reaction but so far.
What other genres might you want to address in different films outside of Turbo Kid?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Right now we’re writing a revenge film, a woman’s revenge film. There’s other projects that are being pitched to us.
Francois Simard: Definitely horror.
Is the revenge film more serious?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: A little bit. It will still keep a little bit of who we are through the film but it’s definitely going to be more serious. The people that are going to watch that revenge film will still feel it’s one of our films.
Francois Simard: With crazy bits.
Was Apple written as innocent on the page, or did Laurence bring that?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: She was written as innocent on the page, but definitely Laurence brought a lot of herself to that character.
Anouk Whissell: She brought a whole level.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: She’s so fantastic. She’s an amazing actress.
Anouk Whissell: I think she became Apple.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: To us, nobody else could play that character. She is that character.
Did you find both Laurence and Munro through auditioning?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Laurence is a big star in Quebec. We dreamt of having her.
Francois Simard: I have some Photoshop skill, so I did a drawing of her as the character. I think that’s a good way to approach an actor so instead of, “Yeah, here, read this.” You go, “Here, look, you want to be in my movie? You will look like that.”
Yoann-Karl Whissell: She really liked the look of Apple and then she read the script and fell in love with the script so she wanted to be part of it.
Francois Simard: That’s how we got her. For Munro…
Anouk Whissell: It was auditioning. We went to Toronto and we had a bunch of kids lined up. He was the first one to enter the room and he just did an amazing job. We were all convinced that he was The Kid.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: He left the room and we all looked at each other.
Anouk Whissell: “We found him.”
Yoann-Karl Whissell: We felt a little bit bad for everyone else, but everybody that came were fantastic. They were.
Anouk Whissell: A lot of talent.
Francois Simard: But in the end, we had to go with Munro. And the chemistry, the first time we saw a scene with them together and we saw a bit of the chemistry of the character coming alive, that’s one of my favorite moments. “Yes, it works. That’s amazing!”
I assume with Michael Ironside you made him an offer?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Actually, Michael we met randomly. We were at cocktails in TIFF and he just walked in. We wrote the character thinking of him but didn’t expect to have him in the film. He just walked in and we said, “Oh my God, Zeus just walked in. He is the main bad guy.” We went to see our producer and went, “We have to meet him. We wrote the character for him.” So she took us by the end, brought us in front of him and said, “Okay, I’m producing a film with those guys and they want to pitch you a film?” Then she walked off.
We were in front of Michael. We pitched him the film and he said, “Oh, this sounds very interesting. Send me the script and I’ll see.” You never know. He might have been humoring us but we sent him the script and how Michael told it to us is that he sat down and read it through. He stood up, went to get a cup of tea, sat back down and actually read it again because he couldn’t believe how good it was. Maybe he’s just being too nice to us but that’s how he told us. He called us right away and said, “I want to be part of it. I want to play that guy.”
Did he get that it was like a lot of the villains he actually played in the ‘80s?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Yes, and at the same time, I think he brought something different a little bit.
Francois Simard: He didn’t want to do the same thing. He wanted to do something a little bit different and we were totally down with it. We like to create with the actors. We really see this as a big family and we’re doing the best movie possible.
What was different about making a feature after years of shorts?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: The crazy thing is that it’s all a bit the same, just everything’s bigger. Bigger crew, bigger responsibilities and everything. At the end of the day, directing a film is directing a film.
Anouk Whissell: Preserving the story.
Francois Simard: One thing that maybe is more difficult is a short film you can do it any time you want. If it rains, we’ll shot it next weekend. For a feature, you only have 22 days and that’s it, so you had to do everything on that schedule. It’s a big challenge.
Do you split up things on the set three ways, and divide up the editing?
Yoann-Karl Whissell: Yes, we split up everything but at the same time we work together. It’s a weird way how we work. We kind of share a brain so we all know where we’re going. We have the same style and a one track mind. So we do split up, but at the same time we’re all on the same wavelength.
Francois Simard: Yoann is more with the actors, I’m more behind the camera with the storyboards and Anouk directs us.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: She’s the director of directors.
Anouk Whissell: I’m overseeing.
I thought you were the quiet one.
Anouk Whissell: Mm.
Yoann-Karl Whissell: That’s the thing. Even on set, not everybody will hear Anouk, but me and Francois will hear her loud and clear.
Francois Simard: We can communicate with only the eyes.
Anouk Whissell: And when I need to be heard, I make sure people hear me.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
