It couldn’t be betterfrom Kirksville-based filmmakers Nick Toti and Rachel Kempf, is an effective, spooky found-footage story about a husband-and-wife filmmaking duo (Kempf and Toti play versions of themselves). The couple buy a run-down duplex in Kirksville in hopes of filming a horror movie they’ve written there, and do a little ghost hunting with a longtime friend, Christian.
As Rachel and Nick approach the house, strange things start to happen. There are creepy artifacts everywhere – abandoned mattresses, old photos, pentagrams drawn on the walls. But even creepier are the people who stop outside the house and… stare at something. Who are these people? Why are they there and what are they looking at?
All Rachel and Nick know is that their numbers keep growing, and that’s starting to freak them out.
We first It couldn’t be better last October, shortly after Toti and Kempf began showing the film at film festivals. A lot has happened in the months since then.
They toured the country, winning awards at one festival after another and receiving rave reviews from major horror film websites. Most recently It couldn’t be better was announced as part of the Midnight Madness program at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival.
Before heading up north, Toti and Kempf are bringing their film to Screenland Armour for a special screening on August 16. It was the perfect opportunity to chat with them about everything that’s been happening lately and what they have their eye on next.
The pitch: Last time We spoke to you both, you just finished It couldn’t be better. A lot has happened since then, including planning this next screening! Stay tuned.
Nick Toti: We’ve been wanting to screen in Kansas City for a while! When we first applied, we were rejected by Panic Fest. Later, Adam (Roberts, owner of Screenland Armour and co-founder of Panic Fest) contacted us about doing a screening there. It ended up working out even better than we had hoped because you don’t usually get paid for festival screenings, but we’re actually making money with this screening.
Rachel Kempf: Our film has received a lot of grassroots support and word of mouth through its festival appearances. Our reviews on Letterboxd have been great. It has some passionate fans. We have received good reviews in Terror Center, Damn disgusting And Rue Morguewhich was also great, and then people at the festivals told their friends about the film. After we showed it at the Salem Film Festival, we got several emails from people who were sad they missed it.
Speaking of the festival scene, the big news is that you are now part of this year’s Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival. Congratulations! How did you do that?
Rachel: We are more shocked than anyone! We went through the whole festival thing that started like a lot of indie films. You know, first you get rejected by 20 festivals, then finally one gives you a chance and you get that momentum. In the beginning we got a lot of rejections, then we got into Queer Fear Fest where we got an audience award. Then we got into a bigger festival called Abertoir, which got even more attention. Since then we made it to every festival, got some awards and it just got bigger and bigger.
Nick: When we won Best Feature Film at the Salem Film Festival, someone tweeted about it at the screening. The next day, I had 20 emails in my inbox asking for screenings. I did a little research and found out that this guy, a pretty popular horror illustrator, had shared the tweet and had half a million followers. I wrote to him to thank him and he was like, “I hope the film comes to my city,” so I asked him where he lived and he said, “I live in Toronto.”
I originally wanted to set up a screening somewhere in Toronto, not necessarily at TIFF, so I just asked, “Who do you know?” His contact list was Peter Kuplowsky (programmer of TIFF Midnight Madness), and I thought, “Let’s just start there, cross that off the list and move on to the next one.” It turned out that Peter loved the film, and we ended up officially on the program. It was a mixture of pure luck and either good or perhaps nasty habits on my part.
It must be exciting to see something you’ve worked so hard on being supported by other people. What have you noticed that triggers this recognition from the audience? What kind of feedback have you received?
Rachel: The most common thing that is brought up is the level of authenticity. I have seen it compared to The Blair Witch Projectt by playing a game with the audience. Nick has become so good at making documentaries and knows so well how we would shoot it if we were actually making a documentary. Plus we have all this footage from 20 years ago from our friendship that is real footage. I think people like to play a guessing game about what’s real and what’s fake. We’re playing ourselves in the film and so the line between real and fake becomes weird for us too. That’s something found footage films strive for but don’t always succeed in.
Nick: I think there is something appealing about the fact that our film looks like it was made by a few people. Like some idiot could have made something that looks like that. Nobody has asked us about it, and we don’t want to boast, because our work is a piece of craftsmanship, but it flirts with that idea. Anytime you can do something that makes people ask, “Why don’t I make films with My Friends?” I think it’s a contagious feeling. That’s what the punk movement was like, right? Like, “I have idiot friends, none of us can play instruments, why don’t we start a band?”
In that sense, this is a lo-fi, ultra-low budget film, but one of the reasons it works, I think, is because the format chosen makes everything seem deliberate. I recently had a similar conversation with the filmmakers who They call her death to 16 mm, the lower quality format gives the impression that any errors or production limitations were intentional.
Rachel: (laughs) That’s our thing. We shoot with crappy equipment. Our last film, which we just finished principal photography on, was shot on mini DV. We don’t try to look fancy.
Nick: The imperfections weren’t imperfections. So if you decide to do that, it’s not a mistake. It’s like what people say about jazz: if you make one mistake, you make it twice, and then it’s not a mistake anymore. Especially when you’re working on a low budget, it’s a big trap to make the movie look like it cost more than it actually did. To me, that’s really obvious. It’s like a guy trying to dress cool and it just doesn’t work. You’re really trying to show that you could have made a Hollywood movie. We know we don’t have the resources, we don’t want to make slick movies, we accept the limitations. Whatever those quirks are, they make up the personality of the project. For the people it works for, that’s part of the charm of the movie. If they don’t like it…
Rachel: Then it’s not for you.
As part of the launch of your film, you’ve decided to only release it theatrically, not on streaming or home video, but the film is listed at TIFF as a sales title. What are you hoping to get out of this experience? If the right offer comes along, would you take it?
Nick: If the right distributor would say we like the theatrical-only model, we want to see it as an experiment, and we don’t want to say we’re not interested at all. We only want to do it if it means we can reach more people on our terms. If someone wants to do a roadshow and they have the finances, we would be interested.
Rachel: Right now, 100 people have requested to see the film. I want to get the film to those people, but it might be difficult for us to get a cinema or a festival to do it, there are only two of us. It would be great if someone could take care of it and put us in touch with the right people and find the right cinemas. But there is also a part of us that just wants to keep this special thing to ourselves.
Nick: That’s the other thing with our film, which is technically for sale, even though we’re not sure if we want to do any deals, we’ve already shot our next film, Couch potatoIf that’s all that comes out of it, our sales agent has spoken Couch potato There are a number of buyers, maybe it won’t sell because they haven’t seen it, but maybe it will sell. That’s one of the things we hope to achieve at TIFF.
Another film we want to make is Spooky New Yearwhich Rachel originally wrote in 2009 and then rewrote a few years ago. I’ve always wanted to make this film, but it would require a bigger budget. We’re hoping that TIFF will give us the opportunity to connect with people who could help us with this.
