COME TRUE writer-director Anthony Scott Burns: “I miss movies that are divisive”

Canadian filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns’ Come True is a stylish and unnerving descent into dream logic that often feels like wading through a waking nightmare. Mixing in elements of sci-fi, horror, and Jungian notions of the collective unconscious with a neon-drenched visual aesthetic and an ethereal electronic score, Come True is a dazzling calling card for Burns who handled nearly every aspect of the film’s production, acting as screenwriter, director, cinematographer, and editor (Burns also wrote elements of the score under his musician alias, Pilotpriest).

Come True features a remarkable lead performance from Julia Sarah Stone (The Killing) as Sarah, a teen runaway who has been experiencing intense dreams of a netherworld and a mysterious figure. Taken in by an ad for a paid sleep study, she takes the plunge, assuming it’ll be an easy payday (while also getting her off the street for the night). Led by Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington), the small team of researchers won’t reveal exactly what they’re looking for from the group of patients, but as they begin to monitor the visualizations of Sarah’s dreams, they notice the appearance of a spindly creature they have previously seen in the dreams of other patients.

As Sarah begins to push back at the grueling demands of the team, one of the young researchers (Landon Liboiron) breaks protocol and begins a mind-bending quest with Sarah to help her break free from the terrifying visions consuming her life.

We spoke with Burns about the very personal inspirations behind the story, why he longs for the days of divisive films, avoiding making films by committee, the film’s wild ending, and much more. Come True is out in select theatres and on video-on-demand now.

Bad Feeling Magazine: What was the initial inspiration for Come True? What was the process like to bring it to the screen?

Anthony Scott Burns: It was actually supposed to be my first feature film, it was developed a while back. And it came to me when I was watching a video online, I think it was on the Berkeley [education] site. And it was about them finding a way to translate brainwaves directly without any sort of imaging devices into video, or motion, using nothing more than translating brainwaves. So you can see what the ocular nerves were sending to the brain. And that was wild to me. Because, yeah, it’s science fiction.

And immediately, I started to think about, you know, whether or not this can be used to see dreams, because it’s just brainwaves, you know, there’s no lensing required. So, that combined with sort of the new knowledge that I had had sleep paralysis when I was a kid, I didn’t remember it until I saw the documentary, The Nightmare. And it all came flooding back to me that I had had bouts of the same thing. And the fact that everyone sort of shared a very similar icon in that state really, really intrigued me. And so, that combination of being able to watch people’s dreams mixed with this collective consciousness, [where]  we have the same villain in our sleep paralysis state made it something I wanted to explore in a horror film.

Did the Carl Jung and Philip K. Dick inspirations spread out from that initial idea?

Well, it all sort of points back to the collective consciousness. I’ve had a number of bizarre experiences in my life, and I could never explain what was sort of driving them. Whether it be that particular book [Philip K. Dick’s We Can Build You], and that actual copy of that book that’s in the movie. I sat and read it cover to cover one night for no reason. And I’ve never done that before or since. And so that struck me. [Laughs] Like, it’s just a bizarre event in my life. And that story, in particular, there was no rhyme or reason for why I needed to sit down and read that whole book cover to cover, and yet I did. And it has a lot of the themes that are inside this film. And so, I just wanted to be as open to my subconscious when I was creating this movie and make it as much like a dream as I could.

You did an incredible job on the visuals representing the dream state — how did you devise those sequences? Did you have any visual touchstones or anything else that inspired you along the way?

Well, much like the rest of the film, we wanted to have the familiar mixed with the alien, and that informed pretty much every production design element, and it really informed the dreams as well. There are things sprinkled in there from my dreams, but also, you know, through a lot of research into sort of dream icons and what people fear and what ends up in people’s nightmares.

The nightmares are populated and created to be uncanny, otherworldly, but very familiar at the same time. And one of the influences in terms of lighting was something that I thought they really got right was in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. The way that things are focused upon with lighting and everything else falls off in the distance feels a lot like the way that I experience dreams, I see things and they’re in focus for a moment, and then everything else behind those things just doesn’t really exist, even though it’s there. And so, the lighting for those nightmare sequences came from that and even in the film itself, the way that we’ve sort of used light to focus attention, because we didn’t want a lot of distance between the real stuff and the nightmares in terms of, you know, sometimes you can cut to a dream sequence and it’s wildly different. This was this delicate sort of dance between getting too out there. We didn’t want to get too out there in the dream so that it was just super bizarre. It still exists in the same realm.

But yeah, it was fun. [Laughs] It was fun to try and build something so uncanny and walk that tightrope of so scary but also trying to make art that’s beautiful.

Did that extend to the score as well? With a different score, this movie would read so differently. What was the process of collaborating with Electric Youth like?

The score is made up of collective consciousness, it’s made up of sounds and sonic qualities from the media we’ve been taking in. We wanted it to have a timelessness. And so, in developing the style, it really came from wanting to not emulate movies we grew up with, but use the sounds of those films and try and weave them in with something that was much more ancient. [Laughs] And so, we used different kinds of synthesis and sampling to build sounds out of the real world in new ways that sounded almost like synthesizers, but they’re not. Like, the repeated sound that you hear in the nightmares is built of vocal cords and granular synthesis, which was a lot of fun to develop.

The cast in Come True is really incredible as well. So much rests on Julia Sarah Stone’s performance, she really has to convey quite a lot in the film. What it was about her when you saw her that made you think she’d be right for the role?

I had seen her work in The Killing. And I really responded to her ability to do exactly what you’re saying, to say sentences with her face. And some actors can do that, and some can’t. And she really can do that, in a very empathetic and real way that draws people in, as opposed to you know, just watching something, it really draws you into that character. And so I thought she was perfect, and I didn’t even read anybody else for Sarah, she just had the part. And working with her was great.

I like to reduce dialogue to the least amount necessary. And that’s just a personal preference. Not all people like films that way, they want, you know, people to say things, but for whatever reason, I’m enamored with storytelling through the face and through experiences. And she was able to do that, and in a way that that was super, she did her homework. She did so much of her homework, she had built journals and diaries for this character. And we talked endlessly about that stuff. And I think she’s going to be a star because she has that ability to really get inside of a character and live the character.

It also speaks to my heavy influence from Hitchcock, you know, in that if you can tell your story without words, it’s so much more fun. I think it’s just a nice way to invite people into something that ends up being so much more experimental. And you know, for some people that’ll work against the film, but I think for some people it will work for them. Like, we’re inviting you into an experimental movie with very traditional methods. And some people will expect a very traditional end or third act, whereas this film goes into dream logic at a certain point.

I wanted to ask you about that – can you talk a little bit about the ending of Come True and what the thought process was there?

Well, you know, there are a number of movies that really affected me when I was growing up. And there are certain through lines to those films. One of those through lines is films that don’t have bad guys or good guys. They just have people. And I’ve always been drawn to films like that like Blade Runner, where you realize the villain is actually not a villain. Or even films like Michael Mann’s Manhunter, you know, yes, you have a serial killer, but at the end of the day, he’s a human, and he’s treated as a human throughout the film. And so you don’t have an arch-nemesis.

And so that’s one thing that sort of made its way into the film. But the other thing that went through all the movies I enjoyed, was this ending that would leave you a little disoriented. David Mamet did it a lot. Even some horror films like Sleepaway Camp, Don’t Look Now. Movies where you think you’re somewhere and the movie just pivots towards the end in a way that feels very uncomfortable and like you’ve been wronged, you know? And so for me, I tried to think of how when you wake up from a dream, you’ve had this feeling, sometimes it’s, “Oh man, I wish that dream was longer,” or “I could still go back to it,” or “Oh my god, I’m so thankful that’s a dream.” And it’s very much the same sort of feeling when you get disoriented from waking up.

And so I thought of a film about dreams. And, more importantly, a film that is a dream. itself. Not only is the movie a dream, but it’s built upon the collective consciousness and nostalgia of us people who love movies. And so I wanted it to be a dream of a film. And something happened to me, when I was working on this film, I was walking down the street, and a fellow came up to me, he looked very normal, not crazy. You know, you can sometimes tell when someone’s a little off, this person looked completely normal, walked up to me and said, “Hey, man,” and I said, “Yeah,” and leaned in, you know, like, I thought maybe he was going to ask for directions. He goes, “You know, this is all a dream, right?” And then he just walked off. And that really struck me in that moment, because I was working on this. And there’s just all this sort of synchronicity to this stuff that…sometimes you allow yourself to be open to it. And I thought, “Well, what if this screenplay came out of me to help someone get out of where they need to be?”

And so for me, the interpretation of the film is that this is some sort of virus that might help somebody. I know that sounds crazy, but that was one of the interpretations I wanted to sort of put out there is that the film itself is a message for somebody. Maybe you. And that’s why the words stay on so long at the end.

I wish I could have seen that ending in a packed theater because I’d love to get the cross talk on the way out. I’d love to hear people’s theories on that.

We wanted to make a movie where some people loved it, and some people hated it, because I’m sort of done with movies that are just there, you know, when you write movies by committee, and you sort of go by what everybody likes… I miss movies that are divisive. And so the whole idea of doing that comes from movies that I love that people sometimes hated.

It helps when you occupy so many roles when putting a film like Come True together. Is that a budgetary decision, or is it the fact that like you said, it allows you to follow your vision all the way to the end? If there were more people involved this might be a very different film.

It’s both, it’s both, I would love to have more collaborators be a part of the film, but it’s also part of the market and where films are at now. You know, if you compare the sort of sellability of movies 20 years ago versus now, a lot of people don’t know this, but it is very hard to finance films now because they don’t have a lot of value, unfortunately. They just don’t. And so to try and make a movie as ambitious as even something like The Terminator, I don’t know that I could, even if I had that exact script today and it had never been made, I don’t know that I could finance it, or Highlander or anything, where it’s just not what was done before.

It’s really hard to put forth those new ideas and have it be a clear vision to the end because you want to make your money back and when you want to make your money back there are decisions that are made for the ease of viewing and those ease of viewing decisions take away the weirdness, the ineptitudes, all the stuff that makes a film original and connects with people. Sometimes those things just get removed until we have what I call a “perfect film,” and a “perfect film” is clean and crisp and it does what you need for A-B-C-D and all the plot points that you want, but then you’re left with something that doesn’t feel human, you know? And so part of the decision-making process for us is, at what budget range can we make a movie where someone won’t step in and say, “This needs to be this way so that we can sell it more”? And so that’s how we devise our budgets.

I assume that will even be more difficult with COVID restrictions and new filming rules that will come into effect.

Well, I won’t go back to making films until it’s safe. So I’m just gonna wait it out and see what happens. Because I don’t see any reason why people should risk their lives to make movies right now, we have so many great movies out there to watch. So I won’t go back until it’s fun and safe for everybody on set. We’re not worried about dying just to make a movie.

But I don’t want to exhaust myself on every movie. But for Come True, I wanted people to understand the kinds of movies I want to make, which are not hugely commercial. But at the same time, I’m very happy that we have been able to get a certified fresh score [on Rotten Tomatoes]. That’s huge for the kind of movie we are. We have no business being on as many screens as we’re going to be on. And it’s because people enjoyed the film and connected with it. And I’m very happy and thankful that the experiment worked, and we have a community of people who are really rallying around and supporting the movie.

Come True is out in select theatres and on video-on-demand now.