DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY

“Die, Nazi scum!”
(Lucid in Freaky Tales)

The first time I watched The Shining was on a VHS tape that was recorded on a timer from a TV — the The 8 O’Clock Movie on KBHK-TV 44, to be precise. It was the third movie on the 6-hour cassette, so the tape ran out right around the moment Jack Nicholson leaned into an axed-out bathroom door to announce, “Here’s Johnny!” I was eight or nine years old, so I couldn’t just go to the video store to rent another copy. And I didn’t bother asking my parents to get it for me since I was probably too young to be watching this movie in the first place!

I must have viewed that incomplete cut a dozen times, and I always played out various endings in my mind. So many times, in fact, that I actually believed I had seen them all. Literal years went by before I got around to seeing the actual ending to The Shining, and I was genuinely surprised not to see one of my versions depicted on screen. Obviously, Kubrick’s version was pretty iconic, and I’ve grown to love it; but in my head, at nine years old, my ending to The Shining — was hella rad.

Freaky Tales is basically that nine-year-old kid’s “what if…” kind of movie.

Several years ago, I pitched this very weird personal story about punks, battle rappers, a Nazi cop, and ’80s NBA icons with a blood-soaked revenge fantasy climax to my longtime filmmaking partner, creative collaborator, and occasional co-brain, Anna Boden. We geeked out over Scanners, Repo Man, Hollywood Shuffle, The Last Dragon, and The Decline of Western Civilization, to name just a few of our shared early references for what this movie could look like.

So welcome to Freaky Tales — a mashed-up VHS tape filled with partial versions of lo-fi music videos, historic basketball games, and unfinished movies taped off the TV with wacky local commercials awkwardly interrupting throughout. It’s a tribute to my hometown, Oakland — the people, the music, the underdog sports teams, the raised fists of defiance, the whole damn vibe — not necessarily the way it happened, but the way I choose to remember it.

— Ryan Fleck