In Ben Wheatley’s Normal, interim sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) is enjoying a rather straightforward and uneventful stint in Normal, Minnesota but soon realizes that this town is hiding a violent secret, leaving him with few allies aside from Alex (Jess McLeod), the child of his late predecessor, who’s also aware that there’s something off about this place.
Awards Buzz spoke with screenwriter Derek Kolstad and McLeod about their affinity for small towns. Kolstad reflected back on the film’s delicate genre balance:
“I remember the first time I pitched it to Bob or even to Sonja, my wife, it was, it’s Bad Day at Black Rock meets Final Destination, and they were both like, what? And what I like about it is, if you go into a movie just wanting to be a horror movie, just wanting to be an action movie, just wanting to be a comedy, but you’re not focusing on the character and that the world build is actually texture and an extension of the hero’s journey, you’re doing it wrong. And so I knew where I wanted to go but we spent a lot of time on building out Ulysses and Alex and Deputy Mike and the mayor and all of these ensemble pieces so that it actually felt three-dimensional.”
McLeod spoke to their connection to Alex:
“Oh god, I think there’s a lot of me in them. I feel like Derek was so generous with me, and Bob too, giving me a lot of agency with the character. They really asked me a lot of questions about what I thought of things and how I related to them and anything I wanted to infuse. But I think the thing that I was really excited to learn about was I did a lot of research into trans people in the US military. I watched this great documentary called TransMilitary that was so illuminating. I didn’t know that the American military, this was a few years ago mind you, but was the largest employer of trans people in the world. So I was like, whoa, this representation is actually, I think, really important, so that made me really excited.”
Watch the video above to hear about the process of pitching and getting this film made and what these two are excited to have seen recently.
Normal opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, April 17th.
