When Sean Baker accepted the Best Director Oscar this month for Anora, he made an impassioned plea for the theatrical motion picture. “Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theater,” he affirmed, adding that it’s “a communal experience you don’t get at home.” The shared experience of being in an audience–being moved to tears, laughter, or stunned into silence–is like no other. And it is all the more invaluable in a world where we’ve become increasingly divided.
Writers-directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden know all too well the richness of the in-theater experience. Boden recalled last year’s Sundance Film Festival when Freaky Tales–a feature she and Fleck teamed on–was screened before a capacity crowd. Described by Boden as a “crazy, popcorn, fun film,” Freaky Tales elicited a loud, boisterous response from the audience. “The laughter was loud,” as was the applause “when crazy shit went down,” she noted.
Now Fleck and Boden, a long-time directing team dating back to their film school days, hope to see and hear that audience reception replicated in theaters across the country as Freaky Tales is slated for wide release by Lionsgate on April 4. Freaky Tales is a genre mashup set in Oakland, Calif., Fleck’s hometown, in the 1980s. Its ensemble cast includes Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis, Dominique Thorne and Normani. The directing team describes it as a personal fever dream fantasy incorporating Fleck’s youthful obsessions from sports, movies and music.
The film had been percolating within Fleck for some 30 years, springing from his childhood experience in the 1980s with influences ranging from basketball to hip-hop to punk rock. Fleck at one point called the film a mix of “real and hallucinated memories” shared over the course of a four-chapter movie.
The four interconnected tales span teen punks defending their turf against Nazi skinheads; a rap duo seeking hip-hop fame; a weary henchman getting a shot at redemption; and an NBA All-Star settling the score after an on-court triumph and an off-court tragedy.
The gestation period for Freaky Tales was lengthy because Fleck and Boden couldn’t quite figure out how to do justice to his memories as a youngster–until they broke up the narrative into chapters. Part of the process was getting Boden to feel the same passion for the story which Fleck had carried within him for a lifetime. That shared passion has been a prerequisite for every project the two have taken on over the years.
Other than Fleck being the driving inspiration for Freaky Tales based on his personal experiences, the film was approached by the directorial duo just like their other films–no division of labor, with both working together on varied aspects.
The end result, sort of a time capsule of a city, has been gratifying for both of them with Fleck noting that he has been making Freaky Tales in his mind for three decades. “To see it brew and finally play in front of an audience” has been a satisfying accomplishment. It’s “kind of a weird dream” which Fleck said he and Boden “conjured into the world.”
Boden’s gratification meanwhile has her hearkening back to another Sundance experience, which too underscores the value of the in-theater experience. In 2006 Fleck and Boden brought their feature filmmaking debut, Half Nelson, to the festival. Half Nelson featured then rising star Ryan Gosling in an Oscar-nominated performance as a high school history teacher with a drug problem who forges an unlikely friendship with one of his students. In sharp contrast to the rousing, boisterous reception for Freaky Tales, you “could hear a pin drop” during the screening of the tense, dramatic Half Nelson, recalled Boden. To have as bookends reactions of stunned, taut silence on one hand, and wild cheering on the other–some 18 years apart–has been a remarkable, fulfilling experience, related Boden.
Sundance has been pivotal in the careers of Fleck and Boden. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Sundance,” said Fleck who along with Boden brought a couple of short films to Sundance, the first in 2003. The next year, Fleck and Boden rolled out Gowanus, Brooklyn, a short which spawned Half Nelson, a feature film that was workshopped at the Sundance Institute. Sundance has been a nurturing place for the filmmakers’ careers. They also debuted the acclaimed indie film Sugar at Sundance in 2008.
Fleck and Boden’s work spans features and television. On the former score, they also directed It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Mississippi Grind before co-writing and directing Captain Marvel (2019) which grossed over $1 billion at the box office worldwide. On the TV front, Boden and Fleck directed and executive produced Mrs. America starring Cate Blanchett. The directors’ credits also include episodes of Billions, The Affair, The Big C, and Masters of the Air, which was exec produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman for Apple TV+.
Mrs. America had a hand in helping to shape Freaky Tales. It was on Mrs. America that Boden and Fleck first met and collaborated with editor Robert Komatsu. Earlier in the directors’ careers, Boden herself was the editor of choice. In fact, she cut the first four films she and Fleck directed. But over time, most notably in TV, Boden and Fleck started to work with other editors. And their positive experience working with Komatsu on Mrs. America led them to gravitate to him for Freaky Tales.
Boden said that teaming with Komatsu on Mrs. America was “a mind-blowing experience. He understood intuitively very often what we were thinking.” Boden described Komatsu as “so meticulous and thoughtful,” and “way faster” than she was as an editor. “He could do exactly what I wanted him to do and also bring his own creative vision to something–and explode my idea of how we wanted it to be.” Komatsu’s contributions, his cutting of alternative versions or possibilities, assessed Boden, were invaluable to Freaky Tales.
As for what’s next, perhaps there will be a new discipline to tackle. While their workload and schedule have precluded them from taking on any commercials or branded content assignments, Boden and Fleck continue to be represented by production company RSA Films for short-form storytelling in the advertising arena.
