WGTC: It’s all your own doing, too. You guys are building this national genre from the ground up.
Navot Papushado: That’s why it’s so nice, and so exciting. I think humbled and overwhelming are the right words to describe what we’ve been through with this film.
WGTC: So which of your wolves is the scariest? You’ve got Gidi, the more brutish character, Dror who’s more quiet, and Micki who is more calculated. Who is the scariest among them?
Navot Papushado: Probably the grandfather, the one you didn’t mention!
Aharon Keshales: I think calculated violence is the scariest. Being very dry with your actions. When you see a Mel Gibson film, he’s emotional in The Patriot. They killed his son, so he gets to kill them and he yells, but then he does your job as a viewer, because he’s yelling for you. When you see Gidi holding a hammer, and he’s just talking…
Navot Papushado: When it’s not emotional…
Aharon Keshales: He lists the things he’s going to do to the pedophile, and then he does them. He’s just detached from the moment. You’re getting scared because you know this guy doesn’t give a shit about emotions. He’ll go all the way.
Navot Papushado: When you reflect on history, evil is not emotional. When you take the biggest villains, mass murderers – they were very calculated about everything they did. They built up machines so they could kill more people in a more calculated way – I think that’s much more frightening. That kind of evil. You can’t relate to someone that crazy, but when someone is normal, or seems normal, even methodical…
Aharon Keshales: He has this whole system as to why he’s doing it, these evil monstrosities, that’s really scary for us.
WGTC: Do you face any cultural challenges filming horror and building this genre in Israel? Do you feel like you’d have more freedom if you were filming these movies anywhere else?
Aharon Keshales: More people would get our script from the get go. In Israel, when we did Rabies, we didn’t even try to go through the government funds, the state supported funds, because we didn’t think anyone would put any money into a horror film. Now it’s easier for us, but it’s a private case because we did Rabies and Big Bad Wolves both globally and internationally so they can put more investments into our enterprises or crazy ventures. For other guys who are still striving to take their first steps in the genre, I don’t think it’s that easy, but something is starting to change, and it’s easier for us to make this revolution easier because they hear what happens in the world, they hear what happened with Magnolia acquiring the film, and Tarantino loving it, and they’re now thinking, “OK, the world is ready to have other things from Israel.” Up until then, we’d just given you political dramas and war films. Now they want to see comedies from Israel…
Navot Papushado: There’s all new websites and media that would have never been introduced to Israeli cinema. Websites like Twitch, JoBlo, Ain’t It Cool News, all of them – they’d never seen an Israeli film, and if they did, it wouldn’t fit their audience. Big Bad Wolves, Rabies, and films like that are the first connection of audiences around the world to Israeli cinema. We’ve met so many people that say Big Bad Wolves is the first Israeli film they’ve ever seen, and that encouraged them to go see other films. We feel that’s a big reward for us.
WGTC: You’re next project is ABCs of Death 2, so how excited are you to be participating in the horror anthology, and how does your approach differ between a short film segment and a feature film? Oh, and most importantly, do you know your letter yet?!
Aharon Keshales: Yup! We’re not allowed to talk about it.
Navot Papushado: First rule of ABCs of Death!
Aharon Keshales: They gave us a big manifesto over what we can and can’t do, so we can’t talk about it, but we’re very excited. We actually just finished editing the film before we got here.
Navot Papushado: Just to be alongside such great directors…
WGTC: Which director’s shorts are you most excited to see, barring your own of course.
Aharon Keshales: Vincenzo Natali, Bill Plympton…
Navot Papushado: Alex de la Iglesia!
Aharon Keshales: There are a lot of great directors this time.
WGTC: So Big Big Wolves is obviously playing off of a common fairy tale, so I’d love to hear what fairy tale you’d like to turn into a dark, twisted horror film next?
Navot Papushado: All of them! [Laughs]
Aharon Keshales: We would like to destroy the Bible next.
Navot Papushado: If you go back to Rabies, all the relationships there were built on stories from the Bible. We’ll try to, not destroy, but…
Aharon Keshales: Hansel and Gretel were already destroyed, so we’ll have to find something else now. We’ve got the three pigs and the wolves in our movie already, and we also did the trail of candies with Hansel and Gretel, but we’ll do the Bible…
I’d like to thank Aharon Keshales And Navot Papushado for participating in this interview. Be sure to catch Big Bad Wolves when it’s released on January 17th!