The Art of Self Defense’s Director on Making the Year’s Weirdest, Funniest Action Movie

One of the best films of the year, Riley Stearns’s The Art of Self Defense is a hilarious, black-as-night martial arts film in which Jesse Eisenberg slowly transforms himself into the ideal “man” before discovering the system he’s devoted his life to might be hiding some super dark secrets.

Jumped by a gang of anonymous motorcyclists and nearly killed, Casey Davies (Eisenberg) joins a nearby karate dojo, overseen by the mercurial, hyper-masculine Sensei (Alessandro Nivola), who’s as magnetic as he is vaguely threatening. He speaks mostly in nonsensical zen koans and teaches a mysterious “night class” not open to most of his students. At his side is Anna (Imogen Poots), who teaches the children’s class and delivers the film’s first, most shocking act of violence in an escalating series of them as the secrets of the dojo start to resemble more those of a cult than a place to nurture a hobby. As the gatekeeper of the secrets, Nivola is a revelation; Stearns’s understated dialogue is tailor-made for the soft-spoken Sensei who, despite a stridently violent, misogynistic dogma, still delivers some of the funniest punchlines of the year.

This is Stearns’s second film after 2014’s brilliant Faults, which also dealt with the fragility of the male ego and cults, among other things (it’s streaming on Amazon Prime right now so drop what you’re doing and go watch it.) Even for a second movie, it’s a minor miracle of confident, entirely unique world-building, with an early ‘80s aesthetic and characters who all speak in a stilted, monotone manner that would probably make Yorgos Lanthimos feel quite flattered. GQ spoke to Stearns about his views on masculinity, writing purposefully uncharismatic dialogue for brilliant actors, and—spoiler alert—the intentions behind the film’s bigger late reveals.

GQ: Why did you decide on karate as the entry point for this cult system that you then slowly reveal?

Riley Stearns: I've been doing martial arts for six years. This is almost a traditional sports movie, and then halfway through I pull the rug out from under you, and introduce more of a dark tone and embracing the cult-like aspect of the karate dojo.

And it is like a cult! You pay to be there, you've got one instructor who is telling you what to do and how to think and how to act. And then you have the structure or system of belts, and you're trying to always reach this next level; you all wear a uniform, all of that could very easily be described as a cult, only most academies are using it for good. And I thought about, "Well what about if one uses it for evil?"

The movie has an extremely unique aesthetic. Nobody has cell phones. Everybody's using CRT monitors. Is it set in the past or is this just an alternate universe?

It was more of an alternative universe that I was after. I love the idea I was building my own world. With a stylized movie like this, it doesn't make sense for me to set it in out world. I was more interested in creating a space for these characters to live in, and talk to each other the way that they do. The not having cell phones comes down to the fact that they're not involved in the script at all, so why even have them? They're only going to be a nuisance to the storytelling.

There's just something more sinister about when Sensei is filming Casey with that huge VCR camera.

I analog tech just looks more interesting but also, as you said, it has a darker aspect. In the real world you could just pull out your phone and press a red button. But Sensei had to actually plan that, had to pack that up, and charge up the battery for it. It's an ordeal.

And then the fact that he's actually mailing these tapes to people instead of just putting it on the Internet. It’s more sinister in a weird way: The effort that it takes to spread this hate and this ideology.

I remember watching Faults for the first time a few years back, which is one of my favorite indie thrillers of all time. It's a very grounded film; and people speak in a very realistic way. In this film though there’s a very affected style of speech, and it's a very dry humor. Why did you write the characters that way this time?

I knew though that there was no way I was going to get The Art of Self Defense made if it was my first feature. It was too out there. So I wanted to do something that was more grounded but also still had some of those stylistic choices that I hoped to utilize in the future. Faults, in a lot of ways, is still is a heightened film, but the end of the day, it's the real world. It's in '86, is the arbitrary date that I've set. And so I went about it in a more realistic way.

This movie I felt like, because I already had one feature under my belt, I could really push it in the direction that I wanted to go. I know that some people would say, "Oh, you didn't even push it far enough.", Or, "You pushed it too far." More often than not, I felt like I got the pushed it too far sort of thing. I wanted it to be whatever it was going to be.

We kind of realized that no one ever lies in the film. Even if something isn't true, they believe it as fact, so they're not telling you something that they don't believe. I never wanted the characters to not feel like real people. Even though, to some people, they're going to feel robotic or they're going to feel like emotionless, they still earnestly believed what they were saying and that earnestness, especially with Casey, was crucial.

Alessandro Nivola as Sensei is really something. I can't think of another actor who could have done what he did with that role.

It's so crazy that we almost didn't have him, too. There was a point where we were really cutting it close on casting that character, and Alessandro came to us. He had this confidence that I don't think I had heard from other actors that we had talked to. That or when I talked to their agents, they just didn't feel comfortable with their client doing it. [Laughs.]

He's a chameleon. I didn't want somebody coming in and you're like "Oh, they’re from [movie name]! You have to disassociate yourself from what you've seen them in before. Alessandro can come in and steal scenes out from under really incredible actors.

You need him to be inherently ridiculous and funny, but also vulnerable and also threatening all at once.

I always described it to him as: there's a misplaced confidence, this charisma, that shouldn't really exist. In terms of talking with Alessandro, Sensei outside of the dojo is probably not a really popular or cool guy. He gives hints of that in the way that he dresses inside the dojo, and I think that he's just used to this power that he's got inside of the karate studio. When he walks outside, he's probably just as lost and alone as Casey is.

He's also the main mouthpiece for one of the main themes in the film, which is not only our conditioning, but society's messaging around masculinity.

Definitely. I have no delusions that the film is subtle. This film is unabashedly unsubtle in the way that we talk about these things and that's for me where the humor comes from. I just wanted to go at it full force and beat people over the head with it, but in a way that never felt like it was preaching to you or never felt like it was a message film.

One of my favorite lines is when Sensei says about Anna, "I see now how her being a woman will prevent her from ever becoming a man."

As a writer, I thought that was more like, "Oh, that's funny", but not in a funny-haha way. It's the way he quietly delivers it with such conviction. It just killed us on set and then even more so in the edit room and I just realized how incredible that moment was. It's perfect, the best accident ever.

You said this isn't a message film; it's a dark, black comedy. But I'm interested if you could talk a bit more about your current views of masculinity? I'm interested in where that idea came from in the real world?

It just makes me laugh, when you talk to people who are “typical” men, masculine, they watch sports and they can armchair quarterback, but they don't do anything themselves and they judge your masculinity. That kind of stuff is just hilarious to me because I don't believe that there's one definition for a man or a woman anymore; I feel like there never was. We were always trying to compartmentalize.

I get asked often, what is your definition of masculinity? Has that changed since you made the film? If anything, it's more about—and this is so cheesy—being yourself. I would rather, now, just think about myself as an individual. I think it's so cool that the younger generation is so much more fluid in this regard..You don't have to be a certain type of person if you're a man, or just because you're a man, or vice versa for a woman. I’ll admit I'm still getting used to using preferred pronouns here and there. Actually changing the way that you address people can be a challenge. It's not from a place of not understanding, but conditioning. I think it's cool and necessary we’re heading away from compartmentalization.

Tell me about your writing of Anna and your conversations with Imogen Poots, because so often in films that highlight the failings of men or masculinity, female pain is used to represent that. And that's obviously a really thorny way to write it. I'm wondering how you tried to avoid that with the only female character in the film?

That was a really tricky character to write for because I'm making fun of the construct of the Patriarchy and going at it full force. To do that, I need it to be a predominantly male cast. So the one female character, [it was about] being able to write her as somebody who is in this world but also is her own person. It was a balancing act for sure, but also at the end of the day, it had to be Casey's story.

Look, it's a film written by a white man who grew up lower-middle class, and that's my perspective. And I don't want anybody to ever think that I'm trying to put words in somebody else's mouth. That's my experience and I'm not going to try to pretend to be somebody else. I knew that it wasn't something where I could just have Anna fix everything. It's still was Casey's story, but you don't want to gloss over her character, or be disrespectful to her character, or fix the problem for her.

I jokingly Tweeted that I'm disappointed to find out that this film didn't fix sexism. And it's because that was never the intent; this film was always just poking fun at some of these ideas, but always understanding that this is so much larger than just that movie. These things can't be fixed in a night or in a viewing of something. So I think it's more important to talk about things and be open about these conversations rather than say, "Well, I'm not going to fix this problem, so let's not talk about it at all."

It's interesting what you said about the male savior thing because no one in this movie is without flaws. Even at the end, when Anna takes over the Sensei position at the dojo, it's not really a happy ending.

Oh, of course. Casey makes a really horrible moral decision in deciding to cheat and take the dishonorable way out, the way that he defeats Sensei. He's not getting out unscathed, but he does it for the right reason. And like you said, I don't think Anna's character is going to have a smooth road ahead.

The reveal that the night class are the motorcyclists is not necessarily meant to be shocking to us, right?I was frustrated with a couple of the reviews saying the "twist" was predictable. I don't even think it was a twist.

Not at all. I'm just so glad you said that. I feel like I would be the laziest, dumbest filmmaker in the world if I thought that anybody was getting to that point in the movie and didn't see it. 90% of the people who get to that point in the movie should know what's coming.

I was talking to a friend and we said the easy and lazy way to end the movie would have been Casey and Anna walking away from the dojo as it burns down or something.

The other lazy way of making the movie would have been Casey fighting Sensei and winning somehow, or even if he didn't win, learning something in the process and then becoming a stronger person and starting a new dojo. There are so many bad ways to end this movie, and I felt like the only real, honest way to end it, especially in this stylized world, was the way that we went about it.

Originally Appeared on GQ