The Compelling Message Behind 'Bugonia': An In-Depth Discussion with the Creators

Writing a movie for Lanthimos to direct might feel impossible, but Oscar-nominated screenwriter Will Tracy accomplished this masterfully in their first collaboration (and with a script intended for a different director). Tracy's partnership with Lanthimos was shepherded by the filmmaker's producing partners Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, who skillfully crafted the believably relatable (while still extraterrestrial) world that is Bugonia.

It's the kind of storytelling achievement that reaches rarified air and certainly cements this team of artists among the top of their craft — Tracy's increasingly prescient examination into out-of-touch elitism guided by Lanthimos' deft direction, made possible by Guiney and Lowe and the production team's wizardry. There's a reason Bugonia is being recognized at the Academy Awards, including Tracy's script, Emma Stone's acting, and the film's nomination for Best Picture.

There's a lot to unpack when it comes to Bugonia, which might be surprising considering the film is as straightforward as a bullet to the chest. Before the movie even came out, everyone wanted to know if she was really an alien? The real question is, does that even matter when we are so alien to each other's experiences? We had the chance to speak with Tracy, Lowe, and Guiney ahead of the Oscars to find out just why the film's message was so compelling on a human level.

Will Tracy's 'Bugonia' Journey, From Ari Aster to Yorgos Lanthimos

COLLIDER: I made my dad watch [Bugonia], and he said, "What the hell was that? It was wonderful."

WILL TRACY: That's how we like it. [laughs] That's what we like to hear. My parents, I think, were similarly — they phrased it a little more kindly, but I can tell that it wasn't necessarily... It's a strong-

ED GUINEY: A bit of head scratching, was there? [laughs]

TRACY: I could tell it was a little bit destabilizing, yeah.

Yorgos makes a very peculiar kind of film and, Will, this is your first time writing a script for him. What separates this one from the type of film that Yorgos is known for?

GUINEY: It was originally developed — Will can speak to this, obviously — with Ari Aster and Lars [Knudsen, producer] and CJ Entertainment. At a certain point, they sent the script to Yorgos, and it was a really terrific script and very evolved, really. Will, you could fill in some of the blanks there before it came to Yorgos.

And he, for the first and only time, read it, loved it, decided he wanted to do it. I can't exactly remember the timeline, there were other things going on, but I'd never known him to come across a script like that and just see the possibilities in it immediately. Although it's different from Yorgos' films in some ways, it's also actually consistent with what he's done in lots of other ways, too. Probably even more so in the making of it.

It became for him about finding the right moment in his schedule to make the film, that was after we put Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness to bed and then turned to this. But it was a very complete prospect from the beginning and one that he was really compelled by.

TRACY: I had written this film about a year, year and a half before– I can't remember the timing, but ... it was not developed for him. I think what I discovered in talking to him — because he was very busy, he was working on Poor Things. And then he had told me right off the bat that he was going to make another film, Kinds of Kindness, right after that. So I knew that he had a pretty full dance card.

But even given that, there wasn't a tremendous amount of development, because I think he sensed that — and I sense that — I had written unintentionally a sort of Yorgos-ian script in a way. Also we seemed really simpatico when we spoke with each other. We had a similar sensibility, not only in terms of storytelling, but a similar sense of humor, which I think was really important.

I think it's the kind of film that is possible because it has comedic elements to it, but it's also written in a way where it's trying to seriously grapple with some issues. My intention was that it would be played straight by the actors and made properly tragic where it needs to be. Yorgos has a really, really good sense of how that's done. I would have been worried with a different director because I would worry that, comedically, they would over egg the custard and go too big with the humor, or go too glib, and he just has a really fine sense of that. I felt very much in safe hands as soon as I started speaking with him.

I want to ask you about the balance of the tension and the comedy on the page and how difficult it is to thread that needle. What is your personal philosophy when it comes to combining those two things and when to let one breathe, when to let one take the driver's seat.

TRACY: It depends on the piece of material ... Look, I've only written two films. The other film I wrote, The Menu, there are different things going on in that movie. But I think some of the comedy is slightly more straightforward in it's joke-centric preoccupations. This film is probably more of a sense that the situations are inherently extreme and, therefore, funny and absurd and seem to be speaking to something in our world.

Within that, though, I'm not necessarily interested in the characters attempting to be funny in a conscious way. They're not telling jokes, right? You can laugh at what they're saying, but the laughter comes from the tension and the extremity of the situation and also how convinced they both are of their positions. And their positions, again, are quite extreme. If you give them a really good argument and put them at opposite sides, there's going to be laughter that comes from the tension, conviction of the characters.

There's going to be an inherently funny flavor to somebody waking up, not knowing where they are, their head is shaved, and covered in white makeup. And the person opposite them is saying, "It's so you don't contact your mothership." Just her face there and her growing realization of what she's in for, because we've seen her being quite tough in a funny way earlier in the film, and just her gathering herself and knowing, "Oh, fuck, I know what this is." And you see her wheels start to turn.

For me, there's something just inherently delicious about that. The laugh is going to come from there, but ... she's scared and she's aware of how serious the situation is. So, yes, I would hope that that would be played very straight by the actors. And luckily, because it's Yorgos and especially because it's Emma and Jesse [Plemons], they know that it's actually going to be funnier if you play it with the serious main, I suppose.

Why 'Bugonia' Is So Much More Than a Remake

When did you want to tackle a remake of Save the Green Planet! and put your own spin on it? And for the audience in the United States, updated for your sensibilities?

TRACY: I didn't, really. To be honest, I had never heard of the film or seen the film, so I met with, a while before I met Andrew [Lowe] and Yorgos came on, as Ed mentioned, I met with Ari Aster, who's another producer on the film and a friend of mine and I, essentially, took the meeting with Ari, and I heard him out on the Save the Green Planet idea, mainly because I wanted to be friends with Ari Aster, and I thought that maybe if we talked about this movie, then, you know, I might go down the road with him for a bit and do an outline or two, and then he'd maybe realize it's not a great idea, but we'd find something else to work on. So that's kind of what I thought would happen.

Because I also wasn't really interested in writing a remake of anything, but he sent me a copy of the original film. As a writer, sometimes you can see immediately if there's a premise that feels writeable to you and just that premise, which announces itself at the beginning of the original film — immediately I felt, "Oh, I know what this movie is. I get what this movie's about. This does feel very relatable to me."

Especially because the original film — it's a bit bifurcated, where you're in the house with the male CEO and this man and his girlfriend who kidnap him, and then you're cutting between that and the police investigation, this detective who's on the hunt for the kidnapper and the captive. I did away with that torture story in the house and then the police investigation, and really just focused on making it almost like a chamber piece, a very chatty movie about an argument — a debate in a basement — and escalating that debate from, "You're an alien." "No, I'm not," to other issues, more general political and cultural issues. That felt very writeable to me.

That's what I thought I could bring to it and make it different. But sometimes, if something feels very writeable to you, it becomes difficult not to try and give it a go because it's not always that you find an idea that you feel, "Not only is that a good idea, but I can already feel the scenes developing in my head."

For a movie like this that you mentioned is a chamber piece, where so much of it takes place in the basement of the house, in the house itself — which, to me is a character on its own — Ed and Andrew, what is the biggest challenge of a production like this? What were your biggest challenges on set in making this movie?

ANDREW LOWE: Well, when we first started talking to Yorgos about the making of this film, we had wrapped Kinds of Kindness in New Orleans, and Yorgos was quite keen to shoot his next film closer to home. And he had lived in London for a long time. He's now back in Athens. But we took the decision to try and shoot as much of the film as possible in the UK.

We set out to find a house and we didn't find the perfect house. So then we took decision to actually build it. The house you see in the set, in the film, we built on a stage outside London, and we had to go through the process. Building regulations are very strict in the UK. We had to get planning permission and meet with all the neighbors and explain how we were going to approach the building and the taking down of the house. And it was really an evolution. That kind of conventional wisdom was, we might build the exterior of the house and then shoot all the interiors in the studio.

But Yorgos was quite keen that we try and build a composite set, if possible. So eventually, the decision was taken to dig out the basement of the house, drop in shipping containers that became the basement, then build a house on that. It was an amazing set. It was a composite set of over three stories.

It was a summer where we shot for five weeks, and for Yorgos and for the cast that was really important just to have that space so they could work and really feel the visceral story. Teddy's (Jesse Plemmons) whole life was in that house. I think that was conveyed very effectively. That was probably the biggest challenge, finding and building that house. Once we had that, then we built the rest of it around that location.

It feels like it's own character. Kudos to everyone on that team for putting all that together. That is pretty awesome.

TRACY: Yeah. I don't think it would feel like a character if we had done... half of it's in the studio, half out of it. Yeah, it was really amazing.

Just the level of intention and detail, everything is so spot on. By the time we get to the third act, we're in this series of escalations and it very much increases exponentially. Was anything cut because it was too crazy? Were there different evolutions of this, to where we finally get to the end?

TRACY: In the third act, in terms of stuff that we filmed, not a lot of the cuts that I'm remembering. Ed and Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong, a lot of the cuts that I'm remembering would probably be in the first two-thirds rather than the last third. And I think there was another flashback.

I remember there was more of an involved chase sequence around the kidnaping of Michelle (Emma Stone), but ... it's difficult to cut around that last third because there's a clock on it and it's quite contained. It's really on a pretty tight rope, that ending. That was probably my worry as a writer, it's a pretty big swing, the ending. And there were moments sometimes where I thought, "Maybe we should have filmed a couple of smaller swings so that when we get in the edit we have something that's–" [laughs]

But ultimately I don't think the movie would have the same impact. And I do feel that, yes, if it didn't have some of those big reveals and escalations at the end, it would feel like both a smaller movie in terms of its visual impact, and also, thematically, would feel like it's making smaller points about a more American, internet-y cultural moment, rather than a larger point about all of us in relation to each other and to our planet. But believe me, I was nervous.

Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons Had to Thread the Needle

I was going to ask that, is there one scene that you were very nervous about before people watched it? And the first time you're in an audience with people were you were like, "Ahhhhh." But it sounds like it might have been the ending?

TRACY: The thing that would probably make a lot of writers the most nervous was the reveal of [Michelle's] character, but in a way, I wasn't really focused on that. In fact, I was probably more focused on– I didn't want the movie to be just a toy that does a twist and a surprise, and once it does it, there's no reason to see the movie again and the rest of the movie's not very interesting.

I put a lot of work into everything around that, knowing that would take care of itself. Probably what worried me more was stuff like him going to his mom's hospital with the antifreeze. I thought that's the moment, for a lot of viewers — some of our parents, perhaps — it's the moment where you think, "Is this going to lose people?" It's pretty extreme. But I haven't seen a whole lot of comments on that being a moment that lost people. So you just never know.

GUINEY: Just as an observation around how Yorgos works — for someone who obviously has a reputation, and deservedly so, as an incredible auteur and very, very distinctive filmmaker, he's also an incredible collaborator. I think Will would probably agree, and I know a lot of the people he works with, both in front of and behind the camera, would agree that he loves the process of collaborating with very strong, creative voices.

Certainly, this was the case with Will's script, and with previous scripts that we filmed together. He really believes in it and buys into it. It really is the blueprint for the movie, maybe more so than many other filmmakers we've worked with, maybe any. And he really trusts us and he really trusts the different artists that he's working with and leans into that trust and relishes it.

That means the film is largely the script. Yes, it's cut, of course, and there's work done to it, etcetera, etcetera. But it doesn't go through a huge upheaval on the floor or in the filmmaking process, and it doesn't go through a massive upheaval in the editing process. It's more about improving, honing, toning, finding the right accent for it. But it's not a wholesale reinvention that you find possibly with other collaborations. Which is a testament to the script obviously, how beautiful and solid and brilliant a script that became the basis for a film we're all very proud of.

TRACY: And a testament to Yorgos that he treated it, I agree with that, very, very faithfully. And yet it still very much, to me, feels like this is a Yorgos film. It's very much him. That's what a great director can do.

GUINEY: Emma would say the same. In his hands, she's in a Yorgos movie, but she's doing amazing work at the same time. It's very interesting to be around that.

Who was the hardest character to crack in the script when you were getting all their voices?

TRACY: I really had my focus on Michelle's character. What she ends up being quite a bit different than who she appears to be at the outset. But, in some ways, there was a little bit of overlap tonally in terms of her background, the character, with some characters I've written before in Succession and The Menu and other projects. I had a little bit of reflex, muscle memory to write a character like that.

Teddy was the bigger challenge, especially because I was very keen on not making him a cliche, which is the internet-brained, toxic, incel male — the kind of guy that you read about in think pieces, this sort of boogeyman. I just didn't want him to be that. I didn't want him to even be crazy or stupid or politically right-wing or anything like that. There's a scene in the film where he says he went through a lot of those subcultures, and he eventually found his way. None of those stories spoke to him. He had to make his own story.

Even though I did some research, for instance, and went down quite a few rabbit holes on Reddit and YouTube and even 4chan and stuff, a lot of that stuff you just throw out. Because I didn't just want to do a copy and paste of a guy that's out there on the internet. I wanted him to be his own person with his own ideas — who, by the way, he ends up being right about quite a few things — and he's got a few good points about what's happened to his family and his community and our country and our culture. I wanted to do right by him, for a guy who does some bad things in the movie, that you would have an overall feeling of empathy for him.

What is your personal favorite scene in the movie?

LOWE: I love the scene when Teddy and Michelle return to the office. It really captures just how brilliant Emma is in physical comedy as she hobbles along in her high heels. As that scene evolves and the absurdity of it all, when she's there with the calculator and he goes along with that. And then the big reveal as he steps into the closet. That, for me, is just my favorite scene.

GUINEY: One of the things that's really fun about the film — which, maybe you don't have enough time to do it, but the three of us have seen the film multiple times at this stage, more than most movies — there are real pleasures to be had in rewatching it, primarily for the performances. For what the three of them, and specifically Jesse and Emma, are up to. Those face offs, those debates, and those interrogations. It's really fun to watch her, watch what she's doing, and watch the control she has over her alien-ness as she tries to keep a lid on it.

It's fucking brilliant to watch. That's a real pleasure in the rewatch as opposed to a specific scene. It's something fun to do. You kind of get, "Oh, she's a fucking alien! I knew it!" But it's on such a knife edge that she never gives the game away.

TRACY: Emma's talked a few times, that it was one of the only times as an actor where she's had to think about, before she would film a scene, she'd have to think about what the audience would be thinking on the second watch, which you don't often think about as an actor. You're just concerned about being present in that moment and what the initial viewing will be. I think that work of hers really pays off, I agree, in rewatches of the film.

For me, I like all those big — just to watch the performances — those big talky set pieces. In particular, the second one feels like, in some way, where the movie opens up into a broader discussion beyond just the focus on whether she is or is not an alien. She's had time to construct her counterargument, which is, "I think I know what was happening. You're in an echo chamber."

And, of course, he's very ready for that argument. Because they both seem to be, in some ways, consuming a similar media diet, or they're aware that. They've already had the pre-argument in their head with this person who's sitting across them. "I know what they are, and I know what they're going to say," and they're ready, locked and loaded for each other. There's just a lot of heat in that discussion. That particular one, I think, was probably the most fun to write. And it's the most fun to watch the actors at work.