08/05/2024 - The Estonian director talks about his feature debut, awarded at the recent Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival

Recently awarded at the Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival (HŌFF), Chainsaws Were Singing [+see also:
interview: Sander Maran
film profile] took many years to complete. But it’s finally here, ready to amuse and shock, with its songs and a bukkake fridge. We talked to its director, Sander Maran.

Cineuropa: Whenever I hear that making a film took such a long time, I get nervous. Why didn’t you just give up?
Sander Maran: Where do I even begin? I have to mention two names: Robert Rodriguez and Peter Jackson. When Rodriguez made El Mariachi – as detailed in his book, Rebel Without a Crew – he shot it in a couple of weeks. Then there was Jackson’s Bad Taste, which took five or six years. As the years went by, I would often think about both of them. 

We would shoot guerilla style and had over 8000 video files, which would take months to organise and years to edit. We had to redo most of the dialogue, which required a year. Another was dedicated to VFX, two to sound design and learning musical orchestration from scratch, not to mention the harrowing 3000 cuts to manually colour correct over the last two years… That gets us to 2024 and the premiere. If you ask what’s up with the persistence, I would compare it to going to a prison and saying to someone behind bars: “I love how dedicated you are to being here.” That’s how it felt. 

When you were going through all this, did you think about applying for funding? 
I am not against public funding at all – it’s a miracle we have this system in Europe. But in this case, we were in a hurry. I wrote the script in 2013 and we didn’t want to waste any time on listening to people telling us why it wouldn’t work. 

Earlier, I made a short, Curiosity Kills, in film school. It was about a cute killer mouse who gets radioactive and starts chewing on a happy nuclear family. It was a success, but before that, people would say: “What if you don’t show all the violence?” That’s not how things are done! We didn’t want to go through it again. There are scenes in this film that wouldn’t happen if we had let "the jury" decide.

The violence didn’t surprise me – but the musical sequences did. Where did they come from? Were you inspired by Sweeney Todd?
Not at all – I am not a fan of Sondheim. But I am a fan of Cannibal! The Musical written by South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, about a bunch of goldminers, getting trapped and resorting to cannibalism. Then there was The Book of Mormon, or this tiny movie called Nudist Colony of the Dead. It doesn’t have that much nudity, but it happens to be a musical, and Little Shop of Horrors is a favourite of mine. There are not that many horror-musicals and making one feels like an impossible and maybe even stupid task. But I love those that do exist. If you can do it right, it feels like a miracle. 

It also allows you to effectively cover all the backstories. 
Oh, yes! As a directing tool, it’s brilliant. It’s basically someone’s inner monologue. When you think about it, nobody really likes musicals – including me. Most of them are obnoxious, which is why it was important for the songs to be integral to the plot. For the killing scenes, I wanted this balance between naughty and nice. Even when things get dark, you get a happy musical number. There is something serious going in and someone starts to sing. Now, those who hate musicals can’t walk out and those who don’t like violence can’t walk out either. 

You also welcome many different subplots, and references to various films, even Rambo. 
We – and by “we” I mean producers Kaur Maran, Karl-Joosep Ilves, Jan Andresson and myself – have always been massive fans of Monty Python, so the sketch structure was built into the film. We wanted to include some cool scenes, like when they are throwing the baby over the chainsaws, so we had to introduce the baby earlier to make it happen. Again, we were freed from the “film police.” There was nothing holding us back. In a way, it was intimidating and it was also why the first cut was over three hours. We could have weird, violent scenes and nobody was stopping us. Apart from us – we tried to discipline each other a little. 

A little, but not too much! You do have moments here that are absolutely insane. 
I have to quote Ice Cube, of all people: “Whatever you do, you have to respect the game.” I felt the same way. People wanted to see something unexpected or shocking, and I needed to deliver. We couldn’t go soft on them. 

This kind of artistic freedom came with a lot of tears and hard work. But even if I don’t get to make another film ever again, I feel this one already has a place in the Estonian genre history because of the way it was made, of the way it combines genres and because some of these kills haven’t been shown before. Also, when you are starting out as a filmmaker, horror is a great genre to begin with. If it’s good, it’s good. If it’s bad, it’s even better. We were always on that edge and we really wanted to cover a wide range of emotions.