Sundance Film Festival 2023 – Emotional, Grounded Outlook in the Midst of Absurdity – An Interview with ‘Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls’ Director, Editor, Screenwriter and Actor Andrew Bowser

Amateur occultist Marcus J. Trillbury, aka Onyx the Fortuitous, is struggling. He’s misunderstood at home and work, but his dreams for a new life seem to be answered when he lands a coveted invitation to the mansion of his idol Bartok the Great for a ritual to raise the spirit of an ancient demon. He excitedly joins Bartok and his fellow eclectic group of devotees as they prepare for the ceremony, but pretty quickly it becomes apparent everything is not as it seems. As Onyx and his new friends fight to keep their souls, he must decide what he’s willing to truly sacrifice in order to meet his destiny.

Based on his viral internet character of the same name, writer, director, and star Andrew Bowser takes us on a wild ride of magic and fun with just the right mix of Satanic worship and friendship. Featuring terrifying monsters and dark and silly laughs, Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls is a creative and joyful celebration of weirdos of all kinds.

For those not familiar with Andrew Bowser's online sensation that is Onyx, no need to fret, this is a perfect movie to kick you off into the world of Onyx the Fortuitous. However, once you're hooked on his off-the-wall, honest, childlike character, treat yourself and redirect to Andrew's videos for more here. 

Within the first scene and first glimpse of Onyx, you're immediately taken into a very specific heightened world of both comedy and horror, and the fun and oddities up the ante as the film progresses. A hint of Jim Henson's and Tim Burton's storytelling and framing is recognizable, but Andrew, the writer, director, editor, and last and certainly not least, star of this film, makes it all his own. His voice and vision are effervescent, leaving the viewer wanting more - and hopefully, we'll get that soon.  

Andrew Bowser recently spoke with Script about building Onyx's story into a narrative feature, pragmatically juggling various creative hats, working with puppets, and more. It's no wonder that Adobe Premiere was the perfect tool for his creative vision once the film hit post-production - the tool is any filmmaker's creative playground. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Did you always have a thought in the back of your mind to put Onyx’s story into a feature narrative?

Andrew Bowser: Videos of his would still go viral whenever I chose to do one. But it wasn't until the pandemic when I thought maybe I should merge those two interests, the filmmaker side of me with the performer side as far as Onyx is concerned. And it was really because I hadn't been able to get another feature off the ground. The most recent one I had written, took place at a horror convention, and it would have required 500 background actors. And that wasn't going to happen, you know, with the pandemic. So, I thought, well, Onyx does well on the internet, maybe I should see if I can leverage his internet recognizability with a Kickstarter and get a feature going with them. It was a long way to say, I might not have imagined it from the beginning, but those interests have always been running parallel. And then it was just about two years ago when I decided to try to intersect them.

Sadie: As you’re acting and directing yourself, and then editing, what was that like making sure you're keeping story the priority while juggling all those hats during production and into post-production?

Andrew: Yeah, well, I'm lucky in that I have a few key collaborators that are my second and third sets of eyes on set. One being my DP, Dan [Adlerstein], we've worked together a number of times. And then the other being my producer, Olivia [Taylor Dudley], we've also collaborated many, many times. And they would be who I talked to after every take. And they know, between the two of them, they know what I'm looking for. They know what my intentions were with that moment, or that beat in the script in the scene, and they can tell me if we got it.

I knew that we wouldn't have time in our budget for me to play back every take, but what's interesting is it really did require kind of all three of us, because Dan might have an opinion, technically, and say, 'Oh, we got it technically,' but Olivia might be able to say, 'Well, I know you didn't get what you want as far as performance.' And so that would be the little conversation after every take.

I think just as far as writing, directing, or editing and acting in it, at this point, it's now just what I've done with most of my projects, so, it all comes very naturally. And they aren't separate parts of my brain. I can set up a shot with my DP and then immediately step in front of the camera and say, [in the voice of Onyx] 'Oh, no, I'm scared shitless.' [laughs] And then go into a bit. And there's not really any beat skipped there, because that's just what I've been doing since I was probably, you know, 13, I guess. And I always thought, ‘Well, one day, I'll just be a director,’ or ‘Well, one day, I'll just be the actor.’ I guess not. [laughs]

Sadie: Yeah, or just all five things at once.

Andrew: All five things, all the time. And that's fine.

Sadie: Yeah, why not?

Andrew: [laughs] Why not.

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Sadie: As a writer, when you're approaching the script from day one did you already have in mind how it would be shot and edited? Or do you keep the director/editor's mind separate from the writing aspect?

Andrew: I can't separate the editor from my writer self or the director from my writer self. I wish in a sense, I wish I could just because I hear a lot of writers talk about “just dream when as you write” you know, pie in the sky, but I knew if we were to make this movie, it was going to be kind of seed money from Kickstarter and then a few other investors to complete our budget and it was hard for me to write “Onyx grows wings and flies around the world.” [laughs] I know that practicality of that, and I know how tight days are. And ultimately, I wrote for what I knew we could attain. I think there were some sequences that I might have written bigger or had more stunts and maybe more set pieces, actions set pieces that I then trimmed down. But for the most part, I would rewrite with the future shoot day in mind.

And then yes, I write with very much my edit in mind. I wouldn't write anything too complex that would require too many setups and too much coverage. Just because when I see this, “many people walk into a room and line up and then this person comes in” and as I'm writing it, I'm like, ‘Oh, boy,’ just thinking about all the, ‘Well, that’s a turnaround. And that's a relight.’ And so it influences the script, for better or for worse.

I think we got to a shooting draft a lot quicker, because maybe I didn't dream so big. But that isn't to say, I didn't dream and have fun. I had a blast writing it, especially because it was Onyx. But yeah, there was a ceiling, like a very pragmatic ceiling as I went through the script.

Sadie: Right, it has to be pragmatic, especially when you're thinking about your coverage and what you're able to get on the day, because more often than not you’re not going to get everything you want.

Andrew: You don't and as I was writing, I would even have jokes or shots in mind where I was like, ‘those are going to be the first to go if the day gets tight, that bits gonna go, that runner is going to go,’ you kind of have your little like failsafe things that you could pull out that wouldn't make everything crumble, they would just make the day go a little quicker.

Sadie: And having a really solid AD helps a lot.

Andrew: Oh, yeah, without a doubt in my mind. And my DP and I would talk at the top of scenes, and I would tell him, ‘Hey, I want to get this, this, this, and that.’ But if the AD is telling us, ‘Hey, man…’ then these are the two that I'm willing to lose. And still know that the comedy can work and that the jokes would land, hopefully. [laughs]

Sadie: And they do! Going into the deeper part of the story, which is Onyx's back story, without giving away any spoilers, but his go-to line “I don’t know” it’s so clever how you frame that in there. Was that always the intention to give us his backstory in this narrative feature?

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Andrew: I don't know if that was on my original notes list. For this script, I kind of just got scenes in pieces while I would be hiking or exercising. And I would write down, ‘Oh, a scene like this has to happen,’ just kind of given the sub-genre, ‘there's got to be a book, there's got to be a map, etc.’ I don't think in my notes I ever wrote that we would have this flashback, or have this peek into why Onyx, maybe is so anxious and twisted up.

It was actually an element from a sketch that I improvised years ago, that I never even cut together, I had improvised a scene with a comedy partner, where she pushed me and said, 'Why do you say that all the time?' And I improvised this story. And so, it's always been in my head - is that canon? Is it not canon? It was an improvised moment in an unreleased sketch. But I do know that Onyx is really about kind of traveling back to his childhood. And that's why he's still into all the things that he liked as a kid and Onyx for me as a character is my fifth-grade self kind of frozen in time. So, it made sense when I started writing that the middle of the story got me there.

And I think when I had a character early on in the script say to him, “Why do you say that? ‘I don't know. I don't know.’ Why do you say that?” I remembered, ‘oh, that's what that actress said to me in that improv.’ And so that maybe triggered the idea that later in the script, we would find out why, just like I did in that unreleased sketch, but it wasn't a note on my board to get there. It happened as I was writing.

Sadie: What a great discovery for such an important emotional beat for this movie. Now, let’s cross over to the puppetry on this and interweave the fantastical into this not-so-grounded reality. What was the creative process like creating these characters and then working with the puppeteers to design the creatures?

Andrew: Yeah, well, I've been a fan of Adam Dougherty, also known as KreatureKid, for some time. I think I saw his work at a horror convention in Burbank in like 2016 or 2015, maybe even earlier - and I bought toys from him. And so, he is someone I've been a fan of for many, many years. And when we finished the Kickstarter, he was one of the first people I reached out to to do some character design for the creatures, but I thought a lot of them would be makeups. And I thought maybe only one would be a puppet, and it would be this little beefy, bad boy mascot from the fast food joint that Onyx works at.

When I sent Adam the script, he said, 'What if they were all puppets?' [laughs] And I thought, well, you know what, again, pragmatically speaking, if I have actors that are well, slight spoiler, but it's also on the poster, if I have actors that are turning into ghouls, am I stopping down and having them get into FX makeup for four hours while we figure out something else to shoot? Or are they just bowing out and then a puppet is coming in in their place? And ultimately, I also realized not only was it pragmatic for scheduling, but it does fit the tone better. And I don't know why I didn't think of it in the first place, because all the touchstones for a movie like this do involve puppets. And yet I wrote this, thinking they would be makeups. So, it was really Adam’s vision that turned the world into what it became.

And then working with them. I just loved it. I mean, it's part of you, as you're shooting, you realize why other teams don't do it because it is time-consuming, but it's not time-consuming in any way that you shouldn't expect, and couldn't expect. And when everything does work, and when everybody hits their mark, and when everybody has the fortitude to keep their arm up for that long, it's really magical. And then you get that feeling that you got when you were a kid watching the Jim Henson movies, there's no doubt that its artifice, we know they're not real, but yet, we're willing to engage and we're willing to believe, and that's kind of more exciting to me than something hyper-realistic and even computer generated. And I think there were many moments where the puppets got to that magical place, especially then in post, getting the voice actors to perform the roles. That was like the extra little polish, that for me, it all needed to kind of come together. But I absolutely loved working with the puppets and as I've been working on the sequel, if there's a world where people want one, and there's more puppets.

Sadie: Yeah, crossing fingers. It's all puppets.

Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, it's all puppets. Onyx turns into a puppet. Everything is a puppet.

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Sadie: I will give me my money right now for that. I don't have much but here it is. [laughs] Tell us a little bit about the casting process for this one. You have some comedy greats in here, how much did they influence the voice and further development of the characters they embodied?

Andrew: Our casting director Dylan [Jury] found a number of these performers, and he really got the tone and got the voice and he knew that these performers would complement the Onyx of it all and, and be able to have that emotional, grounded outlook in the midst of all this absurdity, and still be funny, and he was spot on. Arden [Myrin], who plays Shelley, TC [Terrence Carson] was somebody that I actually was a fan of that I asked Dylan to reach out to, but Melanie [Chandra] and Rivkah [Reyes], they all understood the tonal space. And that was the main thing that I explained to them we're never undercutting the stakes and winking. Everyone should be scared, we are in a situation where people are possibly getting killed or turned into monsters. And the joke of this horror comedy is not to simply undercut stakes which I think a lot of times is the joke in horror comedy.

They got it and the first thing we shot was the dinner conversation with all of us introducing ourselves. And I just really felt like that night, which was kind of planned to start with that introductory sequence, they all kind of settled into being exactly those characters. And I think, everybody, I mean, TC, I think of TC and Arden specifically as being characters that did more with it than was on the page and surprised me and some of TC's reactions to Onyx weren't necessarily what I pictured. And then in the moment, I realized, ‘Well, that is how Mr. Duke would respond to him.’ I didn't want too many people rolling their eyes at Onyx, because I think that could communicate to the audience, 'This guy, I get bored of him or get sick of him,’ you know? [laughs] And they all just responded to him the right way. And now in writing the sequel, I have their voices in my head. I have Melanie, as Jesminder, and Rivkah as Mack doing more in the sequel, because I loved what they did on this film. I think they all really put a personal twist on it that made me feel like we had the right people for that alchemy that we needed.

Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls premiered at Sundance on January 22, 2023, as part of Sundance's Midnight screening lineup.

Find additional in-person and online screenings here.