Actor J.K. Simmons has been in a number of films, television projects, and video games over the years, and is now playing a demon who lives behind a bathroom stall hole in the appropriately-named Glorious. While this could seem like an unusual choice, director Rebekah McKendry says it was not, and the Oscar-winner got picked for the position due to the disarming nature of his voice.
“Even in the early stages, the biggest thing for me was that the guy in the bathroom could not sound scary from the start. It needs to sound like a guy in a bathroom stall next to you. It needs to sound cordial and friendly and he can’t sound scary. There has to be a reason that Wes wants to keep talking to him. And so, J. K.’s voice is perfect because he’s just so multifaceted. The beautiful thing is he and Ryan got to work together a lot. We had several rehearsal sessions before we got into doing the recordings or onto set. So, they had already worked through the script, processed it, talked about it. We had big discussions about philosophy, motivations. So, by the time that we were actually recording, it just happened.”
McKendry makes the above comments about her decision in an interview with Variety published today. The report focuses on her work eventually coming to horror-focused streaming service Shudder, and McKendry says its beginnings came out of an off mix.
“My husband and I had just watched Repo Man for the billionth time; we love that movie. And we had been talking about the idea of having philosophy in the least likely places. Immediately after I finished reading the script I said, ‘what if I told you I’ve got Waiting for Godot in a bathroom?’ And he said, ‘that’s a hell of a pitch.’ I felt like we could really turn it into something that’s heavy philosophically, but still a sort of guttural combination between absurdity and straight-up gory horror.”
The film premieres for audiences to check out next month.