The Director and Star of ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ on Their Bloody, Wildly Enjoyable Queer Fever Dream

Why set the movie within the Nineteen Eighties? Might it have taken place immediately?

Glass: One of many most important causes for placing it prior to now was wanting it to be pre-internet or pre–social media. What I favored about doing it earlier than everybody grew to become so related is that it heightens the truth that each Lou and Jackie are misfits and alone. They’re each from completely different small cities, very remoted, and haven’t discovered their individuals as a result of they’re not bodily round them. So when the 2 cross paths, there’s recognition there.

The 12 months 1989 was proper earlier than anabolic steroids grew to become unlawful, so within the movie there’s a naivete to how they’re being dealt with. And this extra of the ’80s and extra, greater simply earlier than the ’90s, when everybody turns into extra nihilistic—I believed Jackie’s the ’80s and Lou’s the ’90s, a love story between a romantic and a cynic.

Katy, you’re an achieved martial artist, and one of many leads of True Detective: Evening Nation, Kali Reis, is a former professional boxer. Is there one thing about this second that’s notably primed for depictions of advanced girls whose bodily energy can be foregrounded?

O’Brian: Hollywood has made an enormous push to be extra supportive of feminine writers and administrators. These aren’t issues which can be bizarre to us—numerous girls field, go to the fitness center, work out.

Glass: The way in which that each Katy and Kristen seem on this movie shouldn’t be radical. There are lots of girls who seem like each these characters. How persons are responding to seeing them as most important characters versus how unextraordinary it’s in actual life—the truth that’s such a stark distinction simply highlights the homogeneity that, as everybody’s nicely conscious, has been current in movies for a very long time.

The movie additionally has an actual playfulness and sexiness in its depiction of need, even amid all of the menace and violence.

Glass: There’s numerous queer movies specifically, and a sure kind of tasteful interval lesbian movie, the place all of the trying is completed very secretly and with longing in a way of forbiddenness. So I loved that right here they’re each extra sexy and blatant. When Lou sees Jackie throughout the fitness center, if I’m referencing something there, it’s the bit in The Masks the place Jim Carrey sees Cameron Diaz throughout the financial institution. It was enjoyable to lean into the silliness.