The wild and wacky Come to Daddy is as strange as it is biting, and it has finally moved from the film festival circuit to wider release. Elijah Wood stars as the privileged yet lost Norval Greenwood, who travels to a remote cabin to reconnect with the father (Stephen McHattie) he barely knows. Things quickly take a sinister turn or two from there, guided by Toby Harvard’s sharp writing and New Zealand filmmaker Art Timpson’s steady directorial hand.
Wood and Timpson chatted with Screen Rant about the real-life inspiration for the larger-than-life film, as well as the journey to finding the characters and the plot twists alike.
What triggered your inspiration for Come to Daddy?
Elijah, Norval is not a completely likable character. Can you talk to me about his flaws and strengths?
Ant Timpson: It was actually the death of my dad, which is a horrible way to have an inspiration. It was a very unusual week I spent, in the grieving process after he died, of spending time with his corpse. We came back to the house, and all of us siblings spent a week with him: grieving, talking, reminiscing and going through all of that. And then at night, I spent a lot of time alone in the house with with just him. Yeah, it was kind of a very surreal, sad, freaky experience.
And then been during the day, there was a lot of people from this past that came and paid respects to the body, and I started to have an inkling that there was a lot of stories about my dad that I didn’t fully know. Maybe there was an alternate history to his life.
There was all these kind of kernels of crazy ideas swirling around my head in just dealing with his death. The big thing that came out of it all was that I just started looking at mortality rushing towards me like a runaway train. So, I was thinking, “I need to get back to what I really want to do,” which was get back in there and make a film. It was like a wake up call.
I thought it’d be a great thing to make a film that was inspired by as his death, because he loved movies and was a big part of the type of cinema that I grew up loving. So, I thought let’s make something that he would be the audience for; the number one appreciative audience member. That was the sort of start of it. And then I approached a writer that I’d worked with on The Greasy Strangler, Toby Harvard, with a skeleton structure of the plot, and an idea of the kickoff. He took it and ran with it, and we fine tuned it over a period of time. Bingo bango, we ended up with a movie.
Can you talk to me about the influence of Skrillex on the character and the film?
Elijah Wood: Yeah. I mean, we have a very short amount of time in the beginning of the movie to establish who this person is. And he is very well-written in the context of the script, in terms of these moments that give you a little insight- the biggest one being the long conversation that he has with his dad, where he’s trying to impress him. You kind of get the sense that he’s a little bit of a douche bag.
But I think it was important for me to find the balance of this person who comes from a certain world, who probably isn’t as successful as he thinks he is or makes out to be. And underneath all of that, there’s just a desire to be loved. There’s sort of a broken person, who dealt with some substance abuse issues, who never had a father, basically. The only memory he has of his father was when he was four years old.
At that particular juncture, the movie takes some pretty wild left turns. Then it’s kind of along for that journey. He’s a very different person by the end of the film.
Ant Timpson: The doucheyness is really superficial. It has to be because -
Elijah Wood: You have to root for him.
Ant Timpson: Yeah. If he wasn’t a human being underneath this artifice, he would be a little bit lost.
The movie hinges on the chemistry between Elijah and Stephen McHattie. How did you maintain that intensity?
Elijah Wood: It was really just an initial idea of Ant’s, I think.
Ant Timpson: I was just joking around when we were writing the script, and thinking of what the character might look like. So, it’s just one of the very first ideas; an impression. And nothing against the character, he’s obviously quite a lovely dude. It was just the type of look that was quite striking.
And then we just started throwing more and more ideas. And I was just like looking at fashion trends from all over and kind of wanted to throw things just at Elijah to see how game he was. He was super game. It was a collaboration between all of us: the makeup department, and Elijah and myself. He just feels like a complete human, you know?
Elijah Wood: The important thing was, too, that when you first see him, that there is a really massive contrast against the landscape that he’s in. And then from there, you’re allowed to sort of strip those elements and that artifice away. But that initial first impression has to be strong.
The movie bends genres in wild ways. How do you know when to zig and zag to keep viewers off-balance?
Elijah Wood: It was actually a little intimidating. He’s a lovely man and super game, but he also is a man of few words and [one who] doesn’t really break eye contact. So, he’s a little intimidating. And then pushing that more, in regards to how he played the character, created a dynamic that was super natural and very easy to play against - because he was actually kind of scary. In the best way.
Ant Timpson: I mean, it’s not Method for Stephen. It’s just Stephen; that’s his natural persona. When you first meet him, he doesn’t want to give off any fakery or phoniness or puffery. Instantly, he’s just a very quiet and stoic guy who’s been around, seen everything, and doesn’t need to hear any bullshit. And I kind of love that. I love that I felt a little bit scared of the dude.
Elijah, what influences did you use as references for Norval’s character?
Ant Timpson: This is something that Toby and I talked a lot about. We wanted the shifts to feel natural in the context of the ride itself and not be so crazy and so loopy that the whole thing could derail. It was really just making sure that, even though the tone does wobble a lot throughout, there’s some sort of underlying groundwork that keeps it all together. We felt really confident that, even though we keep switching gears, it was never going to sort of go completely off the tracks. If I can get anymore shitty metaphors into that answer.
It was basically what we would want as an audience. I think, at the end the day, you have to make something you want to see. Otherwise, what the hell are you doing it for?
At the core, this movie is about a man longing to connect with where he came from. Why is there inherent horror in this premise?
Elijah Wood: I don’t know that I really relied on anything, specifically. He was a really well-drawn character in the script. There was discussion certainly with Ant about the world that he came from, and you also understand that a lot of what he describes himself to be is probably not entirely true. It was just sort of a confluence of those things that came together to push me in the right direction. It was also just about humanizing him, as well.
Ant Timpson: Did we send you the backstory of Norval?
Elijah Wood: I don’t know if you did, no.
Ant Timpson: I met Toby, because it’s standard practice - you think that the actors want all this history of the characters in rich detail. So, we actually wrote - I told Toby to do it, basically, and he did a fantastic job - a history of all the characters. There’s like a prequel kind of, in terms of how much information there is that he came up, which is just great.
It was a really sort of detailed lifeline, because I wanted to chronicle all the characters and where things [happened], so things made sense. If you go back 30 years, where is everyone geographically in their life? That’s how into it we were; we wanted to see this world not just at the time and moment that the film takes place, but even the pre-history.
Norval actually has this whole chronicle of time, right from when he’s five years old.
Can you talk to me about the family secrets and shocking revelations lurking below?
Ant Timpson: I don’t know if it’s horror. It would be a natural desire and need for anyone put in the same position. I think it’s something that a lot of people can relate to, in a way. Anyone who’s had a parent leave early on wants to, deep down, have some sort of reconnection, I would think. You hear from a lot of people. Surprisingly, there’s a lot of people that are quite affected by this loopy, mad genre film. Which is the thing that I didn’t really see coming, out of a lot of screenings we’ve had.
We hear from sons who have had daddy issues, like we all do. It really resonates with them.
Switching gears for a quick second, there’s word going around that you’re producing another Turbo Kid movie. Is there any truth to that?
Ant Timpson: I mean, don’t you like skeletons in the closet and secret histories of things in films? I love when you start peeling back the curtain from behind and seeing what’s there. We all hide things. Everyone’s got a story that they’re never got to tell someone else, even on theie deathbed. I like when those things come out unexpectedly. I feel like that’s the general gist of this film - that someone is thrown into that through no fault of their own.
Elijah, this is my last question for you. You’ve voiced characters in Star Wars: Resistance for the past few seasons? Can you talk to me about if you would ever want to bring Jace Rucklin to live-action? Perhaps making a Disney+ cameo or something like that?
Ant Timpson: The word is going around… I think the word’s been going around for so long, because we haven’t made it.
Look, the interest is all there from all the parties involved with the first one. There is a script that’s been written. Obviously, the ambition of the project is like the comparison of how Mad Max went to the Road Warriors. That’s probably how I would describe the elevation of the idea.
If it all comes together, it will be phenomenal. But we’re just in the process of trying to find money to cover everything, really.
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Elijah Wood: I mean, yeah. To get a chance to continue to play in the Star Wars universe out of animation would be really fun. Yeah. I’m totally open to it. They’re going to continue extrapolating and creating more stories out of that universe for probably many, many decades.
Come to Daddy is now playing in theaters.
