The Psychology of What It Takes to Be the Greatest: A Conversation with HIM Director and Co-Writer Justin Tipping

HIM centers on a promising young football player (Tyriq Withers), invited to train at the isolated compound of a dynasty team's aging QB1. The legendary quarterback (Marlon Wayans) takes his protégé on a blood-chilling journey into the inner sanctum of fame, power and pursuit of excellence at any cost.

HIM isn’t your typical generic horror flick. It’s a multi-layered story dealing with a complicated (and perhaps too complicit) sports industry and troubled characters yearning for more. It asks hard hitting questions of what does it take to be the greatest of all time, like a punch to the face (or… a football shooting out of a football launcher striking you right in the kisser). It’s barbaric, cringey, and bloody – which include some of the necessary ingredients for a satisfying horror film.

Justin Tipping (Kicks), whose career has been skyrocketing between the TV space and feature films, discusses with Script coming on board the film as a writer-director from the Black List script originally penned by Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie, his personal connection to the material, blending horror and sports drama, being influenced by Brutalism to create a claustrophobic yet expansive atmosphere, and working side-by-side with the GOAT that is Jordan Peele.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: What spoke to you initially about this world and these characters, for you to want to team up on this project?

Justin Tipping: They were looking for a writer-director, specifically to step in and make it their own. I saw The Black List script, but even when I entered the conversation to pitch on it, it had already gone through one or two metamorphoses with the Monkeypaw and studio notes. What I felt connected to was, aside from I grew up an athlete, played sports – I understood both the feel of it, the sports and the world of athletics and locker rooms and the absurdity of toxic masculinity.

But on a more fundamentally emotional level, I saw the parallels between this and filmmaking, [laughs] this idea and concept. I had just been burnt out. After I made Kicks, I went straight into television and didn't stop working until I was actually physically burnt out. I'd never felt that before. I had to actually take time off. And the other reason I think I worked so hard nonstop too, was also the first paid gig I got on an episode of television to direct, halfway through that day, I got a call that my father died unexpectedly. It was traumatic, but I remember I was back on set two weeks later, and a big part was just avoiding, I can say that now, but avoiding dealing with this grief. All that happens, and I work and work until, my body, physically, mentally, gets out. Probably made the most money I've had, but the most depressed I'd ever been. Very cliche but obvious thing that kind of happened.

So, when I saw this script, and it was about the psychology of what it takes to be the greatest of all time, and how far are you willing to go to push yourself? I saw the universality in that, because it also felt like post pandemic, the world was kind of reckoning with this idea, whether you were a writer or a musician or a reporter or you were just a day laborer, fundamentally, I think everyone was asking that question of, 'How am I spending my time and why am I working so hard and for who?'  That's what really got me in terms of what I really wanted to tackle thematically.

When I pitched Monkeypaw, the umbrella that everything sat under was more so the commodification of the athletes themselves. And your bodies are only capital and that means injury and age, you're just a warm body… That's where I was coming from, was, if that's the horror, let's start from there, and then things kind of fell into place.

Sadie: The story and character development plays out like a Greek tragedy, aligned with the brutality of this sport, between these two Gladiators, essentially. What was that process like breaking down these two different characters?

Justin: It was definitely challenging, because even within their characterization, we were trying to serve both the sports drama and the horror genre… It was difficult to find it, [laughs] but it felt like their relationship is really complicated. That's why Marlon [Wayans] was such an important piece of the puzzle, because he had such a wealth of experience and this emotional intelligence that just comes with being a GOAT himself in entertainment and comedy and with his family. Whether good or bad, he has just been exposed to the excess and celebrity and what that all means. He had already kind of just embodied the essence, but it was also he's so charismatic, it would allow for us to do more crazy shit… and get away with it.

But fundamentally, it was trying to set up them as the core relationship, where you have a young character like Cameron Cade, played by Tyriq Withers, who's taught in his formative core memory years, the symbiotic relationship between love and violence and sacrifice - I call it the prologue - and then finding him at a place where he has lost his father. I knew that again, because it's such a crazy universe and world that we're dealing with that it would fit nicely to have someone who's looking for a fraternal father figure… I think in some way it did become fraternal, and can become a mentorship, and in that came some self-regret, self-loathing, self-hatred, because he already made the deal, and he's trapped in it, so there is no escape. It's inevitable. 

That relationship, I felt like also emulated the bigger relationship that we as society have with some of these institutions, where they're like, 'No, it's fine. You should be so happy that I didn't do this. I can do something much worse.' That was also kind of ascribed to Marlon's character in terms of the seduction and entrapment. Kind of always keeping this young quarterback on edge and not really understanding what's real or how far something can be pushed.

Tyriq's character is coming from a place of looking for this acceptance and love from a father figure, which is often the case across all sports and young men, is usually… sports are the one domain that you're allowed to have emotion and emote, and you can slap each other on the ass and scream and cry, and even crying is still shamed in some spaces. But that's the place to be vulnerable, if anywhere that we're taught.

But I think the tragedy also comes, that you were speaking to, the young quarterback’s choice, both their choices, ultimately, I felt like were an illusion. Every young kid presented with that scenario and guaranteeing intergenerational wealth, especially if you come from hard circumstances, there is no choice, you're going to say yes and take the risk.

It was kind of always a tragedy from my point of view, and that's what we were working towards. My favorite line is what I gave Marlon when he says, 'If you're starving to death in a prison and someone offers you food or freedom, is that really a choice?' For me, that's kind of the crux, and is almost a warning to him, but also, without saying it, trying to seed that little kernel for him to say no.

Sadie: The world development and the locations to serve that. The ability to make a space so big and open feel so incredibly claustrophobic.

Justin: From the beginning this was definitely still following that Nosferatu model of they're gonna arrive to a place and there's something in the house that's off, something's weird, and it's going to be feeling out who's on your side and who's not. But I also didn't want to go back to the well of any kind of thing from the canon of horror that was like the house on the hill, or the spooky mansion that's been there for 100 years that you don't know the history.

I had a lot of conversations, and a look book ready with architectural influences, and they're all leaning much more to brutalism, which is also kind of birthed around fascism, which also felt in line with some of the language, and that informed a lot of the banners and things that are waving, all part of the seduction and propaganda language.

We talked about making it feel monolithic, and I really wanted it to sit underground so that we could justify top light in the house, which would give it a chapel or cathedral like feel. All those conversations were in play. And sticking to curves, and how we can make that feel like madness, a never-ending infinity in curved spaces as well.

There was a brutalist high school football field that served like seven different high schools. I assume maybe because it didn't have an identity, they just made it bare concrete. It was bizarre with how on point it was. Some of the interior when he first meets Marlon Wayan's character, that's just the hallway of the high school football stadium that we dressed to look like some rich guy's compound.

Sadie: That is creepy. [laughs]

Justin: [laughs] The exterior of that location is a literal spaceport for millionaires or billionaires to take flights with Virgin Atlantic and land again, which also, honestly pretty fitting. There was a lot of that in the aesthetic to make it feel lux and seductive, but still stark and void of kind of humanity. That's what birthed the idea of we should just put Amazon packages outside his door. [laughs] The only thing that will sell it as a home. All the surfaces are hard. They're not inviting. You're there for one thing and one thing only. And there's a lot of religious undertones.

The claustrophobia came from knowing we wanted to be so immersive with him that those would be the times we go with extreme close ups and get extreme on the details of some of the body horror. Because the body horror is really just inherent in the game itself.

We also made a concerted effort to not show clocks, to not show dates. There's only Roman numerals in this movie, because people don't read them and go, 'Oh, 2003!' [laughs] And also try to make it feel like you were in a casino where we have no real indication, unless we show you the time lapse or where we are, when we are. So that was also part of the group effort to make it feel both expansive and claustrophobic.

Sadie: Did you receive any guidance or words of wisdom from Jordan Peele as you explored this new genre space in your work?

Justin: It was great, because I only get to do this original in the studio space because someone like Jordan Peele has my back. Otherwise, the first question is the obvious one, which is 'Yeah, but he's never done horror, so why give him this scale?' And Jordan's answer was always, 'Well, I had never done horror before Get out.' And it's pretty much a mic drop every time, because cut to defining an entire decade of genre in filmmaking and Academy Awards and all the things.

So, he and Monkeypaw I think we're excited that I hadn't, but believed that I had it in me. But that point of view, I think, is something that they actually saw as a positive. I think, because he has a filmmaker background too, it's not like, ‘I'm gonna hijack the thing’ it was definitely more like, 'OK, what are you trying to do? Here's some notes, go try it and just see what happens.'

And so, it would be like, I get through a draft, and I could sit down and do a page turn and be like, 'I'm having trouble here, because if I do this to address a studio note, it's undoing this and the threads that get pulled.' So that was invaluable, because he's already navigated the studio system, and this is his genre. It would be like a fun tennis match, where it's like, ‘But have you tried this crazy idea? And what if I did this?’

At the same time, those specific details were very surgical, whereas like, if you could get this Jim Jefferies character to say something more cryptic in this sense, that's the sweet spot for the fans. Or when he's going to hang up that phone when he's talking to mom, if you just landed on something like ‘praying for you,' that's the good stuff. But my brain doesn't necessarily just go to that detailed of a choice and what adjective or thing that would emote it, but his does… Pretty invaluable to have to have someone like that championing you, but also letting you do you.

HIM is now playing exclusively in Theaters.