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Interview with Rob Jabbaz: Everyone Gave Me Awesome Performances

We speak with Rob Jabbaz about the blood-drenched plotline of "The Sadness" and its mad tempo, the original interpretation of zombie-like creatures, impressive special effects done with intelligence rather than budget, and interesting casting choices

' shocker debut feature “” shot in Taipei in Mandarin Chinese and Hokkien language, had its international premiere a couple of days ago in Locarno, where it screened out of competition, causing the exact type of reaction the Canadian-born director was after. It is a film you can't unsee, the kind of you will not easily forget for all the right and wrong reasons. Bursting with explosive violence and marked by a unique interpretation of a virus outbreak, it is both contemporary and scary as hell, offering some of the most petrifying scenes of molestation, murder and torture offered in a horror movie in recent times.

Although present at , we were unable to meet Jabbaz in person due to different times of attendance, but we managed to finally speak about “The Sadness” over Skype to discuss its blood-drenched plotline and its mad tempo, the original interpretation of zombie-like creatures, impressive special effects done with intelligence rather than budget, and interesting casting choices.

How come you ended up shooting your feature debut in Taiwan, and not in Canada?

I just happened to be there. I wrote the film because I was commissioned – I was asked to write a script. The idea was to make a sort of pandemic-related movie during the time while Hollywood was shut down. There wasn't any competition in the theaters and my financier Jeff Huang couldn't find the director to do it at such a low cost, so when he asked me if I wanted to do it, I said ok. But it came with the condition that I'd do it only if he let me do it exactly as I wanted, and trust me with the final cut. He agreed, and I was spoiled because, luckily for me, the precedent had been set and I could work as I thought best.

Where did you find inspiration for the super bizarre creatures which are a crossover between psycho-maniacs and zombies?

We kind of walked into this kind of agreement that the film will be about a mind-altering pandemic that turns people into a form of zombies. One of the two things to consider is that I know that I cannot really put my heart and soul into a project that I don't find interesting. I need to come up with something that takes the story into the next level and makes it interesting for me. So, I need to come up with something different. I looked into the old David Cronenberg movies, the short story “The Screwfly Solution” by Raccoona Sheldon (1977) and Garth Ennis' comic book “Crossed”. I took the inspiration from the venn diagramm of those three sources and the way they converge, and then another thing that I had to consider was working with a tight budget. I thought that cruelty, malice and vulgarity is free, so instead of trying to stand out with like special effects or high production value, I would just lean onto them as main things that make movie really stand out from the rest.

Despite of everything you describe, the carnage looks quite credulous. Who was in charge of the special effects?

There is a company in Taiwan called IF SFX Art Maker run by two relatively young artists called Esther and Victor Chang. In my opinion, they are the best in the country. They are mostly working with silicone and makeup. They don't really have a lot of experience in working with the mechanical effects, like puppetry or creatures. It's all makeup. Esther and Victor are doing a lot of cop shows in Taiwan, like with lots of wounds, bruising, trauma from beatings and the like. I really had to kind of push them to do this project. I wanted to give them a lot of control but they didn't respond very well, and it was a lot better for me to micro-manage them a bit. So, since we were working very regularly close together, there was an accent on every detail. Every single gag was planned by me in terms of how it was shot. For example, something would be easier done from a certain angle because we could hide the lack of proper setting. It was all about shooting the easiest way. We were very practical in the true sense of the term without jeopardizing the quality. The film looks pretty much as I wanted it to look. There are few digital effects. There are some cars on the street that were added digitally, there was some city destruction that was done digitally, also people falling off the buildings. Those were done by myself and the guy named Logan Sprangers who works in LA. I contacted him over Instagram to ask him if he would be interested to do 4-5 shots for the film, and he said ok. But I did lots of work because I have the background in animation.

How was it working with the all-Taiwanese crew considering the language barriers?

To be frank, my Mandarin speaking ability is really terrible, and I think that even if it were better, I would still go for a bilingual team. That was absolutely essential because I had extremely specific ideas about how to deal with everything. I had unique visions which were important. I actually found that the communication that I had with my DoP who speaks- and understands English just fine, but he is not super fluent, but more to the point – I am not fluent in Mandarin Chinese either – was exceptional. I loved working with Jie-Li Bai, and I will probably bring him with me on my future projects because once you find someone who you can put your trust in, you should stick to them. The same goes for the composer: Tzechar is actually from Singapoore, and I found them accidentally on the soundcloud. I messaged them and asked if they were interested in creating the soundtrack for me. Sure enough, they really nailed it.

A lot of decisions were made very fragrantly: I've just picked people and hoped that it would work out. It's wild how lucky the whole thing was. A lot of first timers, a lot of actors who never acted before. While writing the film, I made the dialogues very pragmatic. The lines sounded like “what are we going to do now?”, and then I thought – if the dialogues were going to be like that, I just really need to focus on the emotions that I see, and write dialogues in such a way that there are no logical problems in terms of – one person says “8th floor” and the other “4th floor”, and that the feelings were there.

Film still from ‘The Sadness' directed by Rob Jabbaz

How did you cast your two leads?

Berant Zhu was insisted upon to be our lead by the studio. They really wanted him only. He was just starting out, and he already had the star power. My financer thought that he is the guy. He saw him in Jung-chi Chang's “We Are Chanmpions”, and he was telling me “the look of this kid is just right for the part”, and I went with it. I actually cared a lot more about the girl, so I thought, if this is the choice for the guy, I can live with it. But, sure enough, he came through 100%. I think that he is one of the few actors in Taiwan who was fit for the part, and who could summon the emotions as opposed to copying someone, which is something that I saw a lot during the casting process. And Regina Lei who played Kat, I pretty much cast her because I liked how she looked when she was scared. It would be very stressful for audiences to see her completely distressed, and I thought – if she could pulled off being scared this well, than we should roll with it and move forward.

We had a lot more actors obviously: Tzu-Chiang Wang who plays the businessman, he is a veteran of the Taiwanese cinema. He's a character actor, a Taiwanese Harry Dean Stanton. He is someone who played in lots of films, and who, despite of not usually getting the lead, can play just any role. He really jumped all over the role, because he was waiting to do something this extreme for a long time, and he just let it all go. Everyone gave me awesome performances. I was happy as a creative to have such talented, enthusiastic people under my control.

How did the premiere in Locarno go?

This is a pretty stripped down Locarno I would say. I went to see the screening of “Innocent Blood” by John Landis during which he was even present, giving the introduction. I thought that it would be full because he is a very famous guy, but the theatre was only 1/3 full due to Covid-related stuff. My comment is just that the premiere of “The Sadness” had probably a similar crowd. I didn't take too much shot to my ego that it wasn't a packed screening.

Regarding the response: I did the Q&A afterwards and nobody asked me questions. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing. Some people asked me questions afterwards, and some told me that I made exactly the type of film what they wanted to see. There were some compairsons with Herman Yau and the Hong Kong exploitation movies, which is what I think an affiliate influence but not as much as people believe it is. I kind of wanted to be a category three Hong Kong movie, only so as far in how extreme it is, but not necessarily referring to tropes. There is almost no slapstick comedy element to it. I didn't want “The Sadness” to go any close to comedy, even though there is some stuff that could be considered as ironic. I aimed at something else than “Zombieland” horror comedy.

How was the film received back in Taiwan where it got its theatrical reelase at the beginning of the year?

It went really poorly, I'd say. I would attribute that mostly to the marketing. I know what the marketing budget was, which wasn't nearly the minimum required to get an island of 23 million people knowing about the film coming out. I could come up with reasons and excuses and theories why “The Sadness” didn't take off in Taiwan. I think that probably the content and the subject matter are not in fashion in the country. They really don't like that kind of work. I felt that there might be a sort of outspoken frustration that people maybe might respond well to a very angry film, but I guess I was wrong. Also, making “The Sadness” and just releasing it blindly in the theater was a bad move. If we did a festival circuit like now with Locarno, Fantasia and other fantastic film festivals first, and then went back to Taiwan, I feel that would have worked. But just to release it locally without fanfares, and with very little marketing, I can't help but ask myself – why the f*** did we do that. I made a really good film, and I know it because I usually hate the stuff I make. I just hope that we will do a re-release later on, maybe a re-appraisal of “The Sadness” in Taiwan after we do the festival thing, and maybe someone famous would tweet about it, or such.

Could you explain the title of the movie?

That's funny because originally, the indicator of the infection was that the people are profusely crying. When we got ten days into shooting I was going like “hey, they are not really crying, are they?”. I had the idea that they could maybe be seen in the hospital while they are scared and crying and then others start panicking that those were infected, but then I just forgot to do all that, which is when I decided to just keep on going and maybe change the title along the road. Only afterwards did I realize that the title can just stay, as the finale of the film with the explosion of despair, melancholy and disappointment in Kat is all about that. She is overwhelmed by sadness.

Considering the passion with which you talk about your film, I am sure that there was something I haven't asked you, but that you would like to address.

Nobody really asked me about the music. I think that the music is about 51% of the film. The composer Tzechar, well it's actually a duo, I think they are geniouses. Along my cinematographer, I think that I will be sticking to Tzechar in my future projects. We have an incredibly good line of communication.

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