David Dastmalchian has had an impressive and diverse career, allowing him to show off his range. From Oscar darlings like Dune and Oppenheimer to memorable roles in both the Marvel and DC universes, he’s tackled everything from superheroes to the supernatural. Lately, this name has become synonymous with horror, starring in everything from films like Late Night with the Devil and The Boogeyman to making appearances on shows like Dexter: Resurrection, The Creep Tapes, and Twin Peaks.
For the first time, Dastmalchian is stepping behind the camera and directing the short film “Yeti or Not” as part of the Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors anthology. The story follows a group of young women who head out on a perilous journey into the wilderness to search for their missing friend. What they find there is nothing short of truly wild. Terrifying with a wicked sense of humor, it’s a strong debut.
Fanversation got the chance to speak to Dastmalchian about his first foray into directing. During the conversation, he reveals the auteurs he tried to emulate on set, the biggest lessons he learned from the experience, fulfilling his dreams of being a creature performer, whether this film could be expanded into a full feature, and much more.
FANVERSATION: I did a double feature of this and Krampus, which I highly recommend — it was such a great pairing. What are some of your favorite holiday horror films?
DAVID DASTMALCHIAN: Black Christmas, the original, is a masterpiece. It’s unquestionably one of the best slasher, “hider in the house” films ever made. I love it so much. I love Scrooged. I think it’s just brilliant. Bill Murray is so incredible, and the effects and the practical makeup in it are so awesome. I’m a horror nerd, so it’s like Silent Night, Deadly Night and all the old-school stuff. I like the spooky old vintage stop-motion things like “Suzy Snowflake” and “Hard Rock, Coco and Joe,” which they always used to play on WGN News when I was a kid. They still do, I think — every year they do a broadcast where they’ll play those old awesome things. There’s something really haunting about the holidays.
I had it in my head for some reason that you had already directed multiple things, and after watching your segment, I was even more certain of that because it was so strong, but no, this is your directorial debut.
First of all, may I please say that this is the first conversation I’ve had with anyone as far as publicity goes about the special and about my directorial debut, so thank you for saying that. It is utterly terrifying. I’ve been on pins and needles, super duper questioning myself, and wondering if I could do it. Leah Kilpatrick — who’s my writing partner, and longtime creative partner, and friend — and our friend Jennifer Polania wrote this short number of years ago. It was originally a Bigfoot creature that was captured, and I thought it was so funny, and so clever, and so cool, so when I was working with the Boulets and putting together the ideas for this, I was like, “I’ve got a really good short — we just need to change it from being a sasquatch to a yeti, and now it feels more holiday themed, like Bumble in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” And they’re like, “Well, who’s going to direct it?” And I just got this wild hair to go, “I’m gonna try. I want to try.”
I’ve got some really amazing photos I’m gonna post here eventually, but it was really funny being in that full suit and sitting at a video monitor, trying to help direct actors and look at shots. Luckily, Drac and Swan were there on set with me, as was all the Good Fiend team and the Boulet team, so everybody was helping because I was dropping all kinds of creative balls because I was so immersed in not only directing it but acting in it, and I helped to do revisions on it. Last night, we watched it — we did a friends and family screening. The biggest critics of my work are my kids, and they really loved it, and that was awesome. That made me feel really good.
You should be super proud of it. I really hope this is not the last time we see you behind the camera. Is that something you’re itching to do more of after this experience?
I don’t know if the word is itching. I’m terrified of it, but a number of really cool people with a number of really cool projects have asked what my interest level may be in directing, and it scares me. I think, creatively, I tend to really grow as a storyteller every time I take on a challenge that does scare me, and although there are many things I could go back and second-guess and want to fix about this short film, I’m still really proud and stand by what we did.
I’m definitely not banging the door down because I’m scared. It’s a lot of responsibility, and I take it very seriously. To be a director is the ultimate leadership creative challenge, and I’ve seen the amazing side of incredible directors who you can really trust and put your faith in who really hold the process sacred, and I’ve also not had that experience and it’s gut-wrenching, so if I do it, I want to do it right, and I want to push myself, so we’ll see.
Are there any directors that you’ve worked with that you’re like, “That’s who I want to emulate when I step on my set — that’s like the vibe I really want to create”?
James Gunn for sure. He has done all of the prep work. He works harder than anybody else, but yet, at the same time, he’s got that excitement like a kid. Denis Villeneuve for sure has a mind for cinema that is so transporting and so otherworldly, and yet, when you’re in his space, when you’re on his playground, you feel completely safe to fall wherever he needs you to fall because you know he’s gonna catch you. Christopher Nolan has been massively inspiring for me. His confidence, and vision, and the way he’s able to orchestrate things on such a scale, I just am in awe of. I’ve been spoiled. I have been so spoiled.
I think about David Lynch and the experience I had getting to be in his presence, and the way the magic that he was able to conjure was so real. I think about Peyton Reed and his childlike fascination with creating new worlds and doing so in such a loving and special way. I think about Michel Franco and the dark, dark places we got to go working together. It’s humbling that so many people whose talent I admire so much have thought to include me in their work.
I recently got to do a film, and then, right on the heels of that, a TV series with Chris Weitz, and the TV series was a combo of Chris and Paul Weitz together — that was like being with my people. They’re such nerds for all things literature, sci-fi, horror. They’re so wonderful to be on set with that I would watch the way that they kind of tag-teamed, and I go, “I could do that.” Last one I’ll mention, when you get to work with a pair of people, it’s really interesting. I did Late Night with the Devil with Colin and Cameron Cairnes, and similar to Paul and Chris Weitz, they were yin and yang. One was much more in the performance and emotional side of things; one would be picking up more of the technical and visual side of things, and then they would kind of slide in and out together, and it was not confusing. It was really nice because they’re such good communicators.
I feel like you probably learned so much from being on these people’s sets, but I’m curious if there’s one thing that you feel like you had to learn from doing.
I would say my strength was that I was comfortable talking to actors about performance and about character and arc, everything from blocking to volume to intensity. The thing I was not — and I’m not educated well enough in — is the language of lens, light, and camera. Thankfully, Carissa [Dorson] is such an awesomely collaborative cinematographer, and she did such a great job. When I would see on the monitor, not knowing exactly how adjustments are going to work once it actually is processed or once it’s into its next phase of the edit, I had to learn, and I’m still learning, and I didn’t learn well enough yet, like, but I definitely was just jumping in the water of being like, “Oh, that’s not exactly the color that I want. That’s not the amount of lightness that I want.” But I felt like a third grader trying to communicate with college professors because I just didn’t have the language set for it.
I feel like you really pulled it off because this movie is really gorgeous. It’s obviously very dark, but it’s very beautiful at the same time, and very immersive. Can you talk about working with your cinematographer about scouting that location and trying to capture everything the way that you did?
We were so lucky. It was kind of a group push to make this happen, but the Boulets were super encouraging of it because the idea was like, last spring, “Let’s drive up to Big Bear before the snow melts and shoot the chase sequences before the sun sets. Let’s get all that — really create and get shots of the environment that we want to see for the big body of the short,” which is the campsite. And we recreated that campsite on the stage, next to where they were filming Dragula this summer, so they were in between filming Dragula Titans and Dragula Season 7, and their amazing production design team, with my vision, created an on-set snowy location. And then, for the cabin sequence, we actually used the garage of our producers, and again, our team did such a great job dressing it to make it look like it was a wintry cabin.
But if you’re talking about visuals, the centerpiece of the film — and I think deserves a lot of extra special attention and shoutouts — is the yeti itself. I don’t want to give away any spoilers because this story has a really wonderful, fun surprise, but when you tune in to see this, you will see a yeti. And Leah Kilpatrick — who, like I said, is my longtime friend and writing partner and creative inspiration — is also a special effects makeup student and passionate about it, and she always makes her own Halloween costumes, and always makes her own stuff, and is always willing to throw herself in when there’s an opportunity to help work on stuff. She’s informally trained, but she has learned by watching, and she built this suit with all the stuff that she could gather. She stitched things together, and glued things together, and made it, and then she brought in KC Mussman of Nocturnal Designz, and with our friend Kelton [Ching] and team, they applied what Leah built, and it looks so incredible. I’m so grateful for it.
I’ve always wanted to be a creature performer. I always wanted to be Lon Chaney or Doug Jones. That’d be so awesome. So when I got into the suit, I was much more excited about that than directing, I’ll be honest. I was so excited about putting on the creature suit, and she made it in a way that was easy to get on and off. I love the way it looks. I’m so proud of it.
I’m so glad you talked about that because that was gonna be my next question. Speaking of the cast, you obviously star in this, but you have some really amazing co-stars that are legends in the horror space, too, I would say. How did the casting for this come about?
Because Leah and Jenny had written the original short, which we adapted into “Yeti or Not,” I wanted them to be in it because Raven is a character that is against type for Leah, and Jenny I just know as being a very funny person who I love as a friend, and I thought, “Well, this is going to be my first time directing, so it would be nice to have talented but also friendly people who I know that we can create with, and it’s not going to be scary meeting people for the first time.”
Now Lauren [Lavera], who is a fucking legend and is such an amazing actress, was someone I met through Drac Swan because she judged on Dragula, which is where I met her when I judged on Dragula one of the times in the past. We just hit it off, and we stayed in touch and became friendly. When this came about, I was like, “I want to take a big swing and see if we can get somebody on Lauren’s level to be interested.” And she read the script and was like, “I’m in. I want to do it.” She doesn’t live in LA, and luckily, she was going to be in town working on something else, and we got to steal her for one day. We had her for one day. When you see her character running through the snowy woods, that’s actually my assistant Natasha Preston as her. We put her in the same costume and had her from behind running. That’s the magic of movies, Taylor.
Speaking of the running sequence, I really loved the fluidity of the camera movement. I just want to give you a chance to celebrate your directing and brag a little bit. Do you have a shot or a moment that you’re proudest of?
The shot and moment in the running sequences that I was the proudest of is a sequence where you get the idea there’s a small group of women running in fear from something, leading to something. And the way we would shoot it was we would go in a spot, and we’d have one run really fast and be yelling, then the next run really fast and be yelling, and I could see it when we were in the snow with the way the shadows were working, and the branches were working, and the sun was setting. I was like, “This is going to cut together in a really cool, frenetic, frantic pace so that hopefully the audience starts from the very beginning of this thing kind of off-center and confused.” And when I saw it the first time it got cut together like that, I was very, very happy. It made me really happy.
And then there’s the shot of the first time you get the full, real look at the yeti. I’m really proud of that moment. I don’t wanna give anything away, but there’s a finale moment that is pretty cool.
I feel like this short could very well be adapted into a longer-form project. Is that something you’d be interested in doing?
I would. You know, I write so much with Leah as it is. We have a new comic book series that’s coming out next year called The Accessories, which I really think is the perfect world-building for a different form of storytelling, possibly film or television. We have another series that we haven’t announced yet. We’ve done Headless Horseman in years past and DC Horror Presents. I want to do more creature stuff. I especially want to do stuff where Leah gets to build more creatures.
If it’s a family of yetis, there’s one thing that we’re working on that actually would really involve yetis that could be very cool. I want to keep writing and creating opportunities where I get to put on full creature suits because it’s hard — don’t get me wrong, it’s not not hard — but it’s also so special. It’s such a cool feeling. It’s like Halloween.
This kind of project is so cool because you have four distinct voices and visions between everyone. If you could pick any director in the world to see what they would do with a Christmas horror short, who would you like to see?
Joe Dante. Bryan Fuller. Edgar Wright. Erica Scoggins. There are so many, but Joe Dante came to my mind first because I always think of Gremlins, and I know he’s done a lot of really cool chapters for different anthologies and stuff, but that would be a dream for me.
And how cool is it that we got Kate Siegel with her amazing short? I mean, spoiler alert, but we’re gonna get a lot of angry voicemails about that one. I am very excited but also nervous for that to go out in the public. I think I’m going to get a lot of letters, but I love it, and she’s one of my closest friends, and so to see how her directing career is starting to take off — because we all know what a great actor she is — is really awesome. Akela Cooper’s directorial debut. How lucky are we that we got her first directing experience? I’m friends with her whole cast, and they’re amazing. And then, obviously Drake and Swan — they crushed it. They crushed it with theirs, and I’ve known Aaron Abrams, who plays the stepdad, since college, and Briana [Venskus] is also a very close friend. And we got lucky with our lead in that one — she crushes it. God, speaking of creature actors, how about that one? Unreal.
The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors is now streaming on Shudder and AMC+.
— Taylor Gates