Alex Fischman Cárdenas and Trout Cohen found out pretty quickly they have the same sensibilities on one of their first days studying together at NYU, though it was not in the classroom where they first made a connection, but rather the bathroom where they had both retreated to when the air conditioning was so overwhelming that nature was calling more often than usual. As Cohen recalls, he had all kinds of thoughts swimming around in his head when he saw Cárdenas eyeing him at a urinal with some curiosity, but rather than being bent out of shape, it was just the reverse.
“Later that day, he looked at me and went, ‘You know, you have terrible posture.” And I [thought] you just met me and you’re saying that, I was like, “Okay, I think we’re going to be friends,” laughs Cohen, who was the one to first strike up the conversation by noting how chilly it was. Since then, it’s just been a real co-evolution experience of finding our feet, making things together, and talking and watching things, and knowing exactly what it is that we want to do when we get the opportunity to do it.”
Their distinctive sensibilities, including their wonderfully warped sense of humor comes through on “¡PIKA!” a midnight run through the streets of Lima, Peru for a topical ointment as Lucas (Jose Medina) can’t get rid of a nasty itch. Although it seems like a visit to a pharmacist would lead to a simple resolution, it is anything but when Lucas can’t afford the cream and a deal is offered to make up the difference with a favor that plunges the man deeper into the local criminal underworld and the illegal organ trade. His skin may be extremely sensitive, but Cárdenas puts a strong one on the tale of desperation when it takes on a greater and greater scope as it wears on and the director wields a wide frame that can fit all the action and make its protagonist feel as if the weight of the world on him when diminished by everything bearing down on him, only able to find some comfort when his mother (Teresa Ralli) tries to come to the rescue in unexpected fashion.
After turning heads last fall at the Sitges Film Festival where the short first premiered, “¡PIKA!” kept audiences wide awake in the Midnight shorts program at Sundance where only the energy was infectious rather than any kind of rash and Fischman Cárdenas and Cohen generously took the time to talk about the bold dark comedy, getting the local flavor of Peru on screen and their cross-cultural partnership.
How did this come about?
Alex Fischman Cárdenas: It started a long time ago when we were both in film school. Trout had written this short story that I thought was the most interesting and unique thing I had seen about a guy with an itch. It was such a specific problem that would annoy and that project never developed because it was just too expensive to make at the time. But it stayed in the back of our minds for many years. Two years ago, we [thought], “We have to make this, right? It’s just the craziest story” and in that moment, I was battling depression and this metaphor of the man with this feeling of “I want to give up” [made me] rethink the ending of the movie and with Trout, we worked together on bringing this new focus on what the movie could really be about.
Trout Cohen: Yeah, the interesting part about this process was how it started much the movie now [is close to what I originally wrote], but started as one movie and through the years of talking about it and also Alex coming up with things that were completely unrelated — the way in which he would use his therapy or things he was thinking about and visualize them to me, not even thinking of the movie — it would recontextualize that story that we had before with these new themes and the events you are now seeing were recontextualizing the stuff you saw before. That was big for us.
Was it difficult to find the right scale for this? It looks epic now, but as you allude to, it might’ve been too big to produce earlier.
Alex Fischman Cárdenas: It was a bit bigger in the writing, but I think we managed to keep the epic scope of the journey that we always thought was so important. It was so important for us to really understand that moment of “I want to give up,” and we needed to give him enough of a reason to want to give up and be a journey that’s so taxing and grueling where like, we as an audience and him as a character would be like, “This is it, I can’t anymore.” So we needed it to feel big and crazy and wild. That’s in part why we decided to shoot this in Peru. It was originally set in New York, but I had such an amazing crew here and I knew I had these locations available, so made a lot of sense to do it in [Peru] because we had so much of that ability to make it bigger and bolder.
How did you find your lead?
Alex Fischman Cárdenas: It was really hard to cast [in general]. I even went to Mexico for a bit to cast my therapist. We were just chasing as many tails as we could find. [For Jose], we always knew we wanted someone was skinny and had a bit of a presence that life had worn him down. When Jose walked into the room, I just sensed, “This is our dude.” He has that energy of this squishing down on his shoulders. He’s also really handsome and good looking, but has been through so much life and you feel that on his face and his eyes. So much of him is in the role naturally.
Trout Cohen: There was a really interesting thing that our [director of photography] said to us when we were in the process of casting. We were stuck between these two people, and [the other actor] was just a more normal person that we could see descend into this moment, but then a person like Jose, you say it all just by seeing his face and our DP, maybe just thinking of himself and thinking “I want to shoot an interesting face,” said to us, “Just look at him. I want to be pointing the camera at him.” And it was something as simple as that. He instantly tells you who he is and in a short, when we have to do so much, it was perfect that you instantly get who this guy is, what he’s going through, and why he’s desperate for this [cream]. And when you look back on the movie once you finish it, and you look at him and you get why he feels the way he did to you when the movie started.
How did the color palette for the film come about?
Alex Fischman Cárdenas: We always knew it had to be at night. We were really inspired by “Fight Club” and how that city looks at night where there’s that feeling where the night just makes everything more abstract. That felt right with the theme of anxiety and not being able to really grasp where we are. In terms of the look, we were just really inspired by things that felt worn and lived in and had this atmosphere of general decay. Some of the locations that we found really transmitted that organically and then with our art director, the locations that were a bit nicer, we just mucked it all up and made it feel really gross and lived in.
What was it like shooting at night, having your lead run through the streets?
Alex Fischman Cárdenas: It was fun, and some of it was during the day, but shooting with real people is the most awesome thing ever. They just react in such a fun way to seeing a crazy man with a liver on his hand.
Trout Cohen: Yeah, and certainly being in Peru, everyone around you just barely reacts to what is going on. They’re more interested in you with the camera than they are the guy with the liver running around through them in the crowds, which was a funny thing about being there. There’s a chaotic vibe in the city that comes through with the movie.
Trout, when you shifted the action from New York to Peru, was it much of an adjustment?
Trout Cohen: What’s so interesting is obviously it was in New York to start because we were there when I wrote it initially, but I was really into the idea of moving to Lima specifically because I had this inspiration from Spike Jonze’s “Her,” where they shot in China and they said it was Los Angeles and you’re just looking at this place [like], “Where am I?” Not that this couldn’t be in Peru [originally], but I wrote it and it has a sensibility maybe of a place that’s not Peruvian, and yet it is Peruvian and I wanted this to feel lost within a world that is not exactly our own. The way I think of it is like a rusted dream and I felt like from what I had seen of Lima, putting a New York movie in Lima felt really interesting and making this kind of world that I hadn’t seen. That’s what I wanted.
It was striking to me in a number of scenes that you enter a scene through the sound rather than the image. Was that an early idea?
Alex Fischman Cárdenas: Yeah, we always think of movies as being very sensorial [where] we really want you to be able to grab this movie and just feel like you’re in this world. Sound immerses you so much into it and as we were editing, I think it was just very natural in like creating this vibe that was otherworldly and hard to grasp. When you’re entering through this tunnel to the offices and you have this womb-like cave sound that’s the first thing that you hear and then you hear these knife [sounds] and it’s like what’s going on? Where am I? It just makes you feel very confused in the same way as our character should be.
Was there anything that happened that you might not have expected, but made it into the film and you can embrace?
Trout Cohen: The big one would be Teresa [Ralli], our actress who played the mother. In what Alex and I prepped for prior to the movie, Mama was more one note. We hadn’t made a three-dimensional thing out of her in the way that I feel like Teresa did [where] she was disappointed in [her son] and upset with him, but there was a real love and tenderness [in the] sympathy that she felt for him rather than being like, “You don’t belong here.” It was more “I understand the pain you’re going through.” We talked back and forth about whether to include that final line where she says “There you are,” because it could be malicious or a coming home, and just the way that she said it and the way that she contextualized that character was so interesting. I felt that was a big moment where it was like this is why I love doing this. The artist brought something that is just completely different to all the things that we had planned.
What’s it been like getting the film out there so far?
Alex Fischman Cárdenas: I can’t wait to hear more reactions. We made this movie to hear what people thought about this because it’s a movie that requires you to put in some of the work yourself at some level to really get the fullness of this movie. It doesn’t tell you all its secrets and you have to talk it through. I’m just so excited to have more of those conversations with people and hear more interpretations of what they think this movie really means.
Trout Cohen: Yeah, very similar to Alex, I’m really excited to hear more interpretations. I’m also just excited about the fact that the way that we came together and relate is we love these movies where not only is the movie not going to tell you all its secrets, but you have to talk to it the same way it’s talking to you to make your interpretation of it. It’s really just the best when you hear someone’s, even someone who doesn’t necessarily get it, interpretation of the dream. Or seeing people who completely just take it for what it is and feel it and let it flow through them or who want to make sense of it and wonder what happens next. It’s a beautiful thing to look at the way that all of these people watch movies and the way that they interpret them, especially with something that’s so literal on screen, but also so figurative in the way that it transpires.
“Pika” will screen at the Sundance Film Festival as part of the Midnight Shorts program on January 25th at 11:55 pm at the Ray Theatre, January 26th at 8:50 pm at the Megaplex Redstone, January 27th at 3:30 pm at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City, January 30th at 12:30 pm at the Holiday Village Cinemas and February 1st at 8:50 pm at the Megaplex Redstone. It will also be available to stream from January 29th through February 1st on the Sundance virtual platform.