Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Jacqueline Castel & Jae Matthews tell us all about exploring being an outsider via a werewolf story with MyAnimal:
We’ve got yet another interview for a huge winner on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival Midnight line-up, Jacqueline Castel’s directorial debut, My Animal.
Making a first feature is a huge feat. What would you say is the biggest misconception about what it takes to get your first feature a green light? But then also, what's a common piece of advice you heard that actually did help you get My Animal made? JAE MATTHEWS: So I am a musician and I went through a very hard time a couple of years ago and I wrote a script and I sent it to a very good friend of mine, Ali Reza, and I was like, ‘Hey, does this suck?’ And he sent it to Michael Solomon because they work together a lot.
CASTEL: The Wolf Conservation Center! Which there’s a crazy story behind, too. Early on, before we went out [Bobbi], I started getting really interested in this Wolf Conservation Center and I was like, okay, I'm gonna go visit it and just study wolves and stuff. And you can adopt wolves there. Symbolically you donate money so that they take care of their food and care. And so on Jae's birthday I was like, I’m gonna adopt a wolf under Jae's name and under the project for My Animal.
The thing that was really exciting to discover on set was learning about Heather through her relationships. It was such a gift that the order of things — the first week we shot all of the one-on-one scenes with Amandla, the Johnny character, and that was just such a nice baseline to build this new part of Heather, this part of Heather that she's discovering about herself through the movie.
Back to the werewolf thing. I'm a big nerd for lore. I love knowing every little detail so I am curious, have you two mapped out exactly how this curse works? Is it only hereditary, is it transmissible, how can one control it, etc.? And we actually shot with real wolves. That's why I went to go to the WCC and stuff, because I thought that was a lot more interesting in a way to explore that and explore this surreal connection of, is it happening? Is it not? Is it just a metaphor for trauma? Is it something beyond that? I thought there was something more interesting about that way of exploring the werewolf myth without being too aggressive about it on the genre side.
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