PopHorror Let's Get Scared
I was first introduced to filmmaker Johannes Grenzfurthner (read our other interview with him HERE) through his film, 2021’s Masking Threshold, and it was apparent to me at that time that Johannes has a very unique and creative vision when it comes to his films. When I learned that he had a new Nazi project coming out called Solvent, I had to see it.
While searching for Nazi documents in an Austrian farmhouse, a team of experts uncovers a hidden secret buried in its bowels. American expatriate Gunner S. Holbrook becomes obsessed with solving the mystery, and as his sanity wanes, he must confront an insatiable evil. Can he find redemption before it drains the life out of him?
To celebrate the premiere of the film, I chatted with Johannes about just how personal this film is to him and the inspiration behind it, working with John Gries, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I really enjoyed Solvent.
Johannes Grenzfurthner: Oh, thank you so much!
PopHorror: It was… The only word I can think of to describe it is chaotic and I love that. I love POV shooting. I didn’t realize it was John Gries from Napoleon Dynamite playing the main character. His voice was so familiar, but I couldn’t place it right away
Johannes Grenzfurthner: We have the premiere tomorrow here in Vienna, the world premiere and I only showed the film to probably 20 people or so but I would say like two thirds of them were like, “I know that voice! Who is that?” “It’s John Gries!” “Who’s John Gries?” I was like, “C’mon, Google it and you will immediately know who John Gries is.” He’s one of the classic character actors. You know him from Lost and he was on White Lotus and all that stuff. He was on The X-Files. He has a career of 50 years! Everyone knows him, especially of course because of Napoleon Dynamite.
PopHorror: I was shocked it was him. I was in awe of his work in this film.
Johannes Grenzfurthner: He’s such a guy and he’s also such a mensch.
PopHorror: What sparked the idea for Solvent?
Johannes Grenzfurthner: There are many reasons. The prime reason is being an Austrian, growing up in Austria, having family and knowing other people. I was born in ‘75 so I’m 49 now so I’m classic Generation X. I’m not a Boomer so the direct confrontation was between my grandparent’s generation and my parent’s generation that grew up immediately after the war ended. I always had this feeling there is something weird going on. There are certain things that people don’t talk about. There’s almost this feeling I guess that’s also what evoked the whole idea of the subterranean and all that stuff. It’s something deeply embedded into the foundation of the nation and the foundation of everyone because there’s this missing gap, there’s this big gap. People are not talking about certain things or in some families people talked about it more than other families. I always felt there was something missing. Of course it’s the whole history of what did Grandpa do in the war? In my case, there is a weird switch going on because the guy, my real grandfather who plays the guy, who is the photographs – the historical photographs in the film – that’s my real grandfather. We shot it also on the real farm of my grandfather, which is now completely derelict. You’ve seen it in the film. So my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, who is the guy in the film, was actually pretty outspoken about all of that stuff. It was quite clear that he probably didn’t do any really bad things in the war because he spoke about it and was kind of up front about it. My father’s father never talked shit. Nothing, nothing. He was also like a very stoic character so I always had the feeling that guy was the guy that did the weird shit and the awful shit in the war, and not the other guy. But I always had a great connection to my mother’s father, and he also supported me all the time. There’s a super nice anecdote that a couple of years before he died, I even put it in the film in the end credits, that I asked him, “Would it be cool for you, if in the future after you’re dead, I used your footage and used your material and used your farm for art projects or something like that, or movies.” And he said, “Ah, sure, whatever, I don’t care. When I’m dead I don’t care. But there’s one request. If you use me in the film at one time, make me the bad guy. I want to be the really, really bad guy.” And I hope he will be proud of what I did with him.
PopHorror: I’m really glad that you brought that up because the ending, where you had the note about your grandfather, that really stood out to me. I also like that you brought up the farm because while watching it, I was like, how do you get the set to look this authentic.
Johannes Grenzfurthner: Yeah, it is authentic. Not with a million dollars you could build something like this. It would not look like that. There was a rift in our family drama and our family is pretty small anyway. I’m an only child and I only have one cousin. My parents and she are the only ones left; everyone else is gone. Even in that small family, up until two years ago, my mother’s sister was still alive, and she was, honestly, pretty crazy. She had a daughter, Diana, who is now the owner of the property because she inherited it from her mother, but they didn’t speak, at all, for like 20 years or something. So there was a big rift in the family. I was not talking to her. For the first time, after probably 10-15 years, after my grandfather died, I came to the farm two years ago as part of the whole inheritance process. Diana, my cousin, checking the farm out and everything, that was the first time I had opened the door, like in the movie. I opened the door and walked into the farm and I always had wonderful nostalgic memories about that place. Some of the best moments of my childhood took place on that farm. In a certain way, some of my real experiences are somewhat also put into the character of the grandson of Bartholdi. I was spending a lot of time there and I really enjoyed it. After 15 years of not having been in that place, we opened the door and went into it, and I couldn’t believe how desolate, mold-infested, smelly, and horrible it was. I had, in my mind, this image, these nostalgic childhood memories from like 30-40 years ago, and seeing the reality of this farm that was completely desolate because my aunt never took care of it and it just crumbled. I think that was one of the major elements of me saying I have to do something there. This is something that I can use. It triggered something in me that I also tried to probably process in writing the script and all that stuff.
PopHorror: This movie is pretty personal for you, then. Using your grandfather’s photos, using his farm.
Johannes Grenzfurthner: It’s not necessarily important to understand what’s going on in the film, but if you know a little bit about the backstory, of course it incorporates a lot of my personal history and my family history.
PopHorror: Solvent blends humor and drama with body horror. How did you convey your vision to your cast and crew?
Johannes Grenzfurthner: How did I do that? There are of course people that I don’t know well, like John Gries for example, but there was also a very specific working process with him because I have never seen him in real life. I will for the first time tonight, see him in real life when he arrives in Vienna for the premiere tomorrow. His recording was only audio because you never see him in the film, it’s only his voice. There is one little, like two second image of his photograph at the very beginning when Holbrook talks about himself. You see a little image of him so you kind of have a little reminder of how that character looks like. But other than that, it’s first person perspective, there’s never a mirror reflection or anything. It was possible for us to record with him the whole thing in one day. What happened was, he was overseas doing another project and we found a date where he would have the whole day so he went to an audio studio and I was sitting at home. We had a Zoom call like I have with you now and I was directing him in the audio studio through the Zoom call.
PopHorror: Wow!
Johannes Grenzfurthner: It was incredible because there’s so many actors who wouldn’t be able to pull that off because he didn’t see any footage, nothing. He actually didn’t want to see anything. He said, “The less I know, the better for my performance. So you give me nudges and hints and things, but we can do like five or six takes of every line, if you need it or not.” And sometimes it wasn’t even necessary. He just played a whole scene and it was a one take. It was like, that’s perfect, let’s go on. In probably eight or nine hours, he recorded his entire voice part. In that case, that was a very different way of working, of course, because I will actually learn to know him tonight, which is very interesting. For the other guys in the process, they all of course read the script to a certain degree because there was a strange timeframe because my cousin who inherited the building, she got pretty much a notification from the neighbors in that little town that the mold was so bad in that building that it was already creeping into the neighboring houses. So the neighbors said, “We give you 3-4 months and then everything in the building has to be thrown away. We’ll call the health department if that’s not happening.” I had a basic idea of the film in mind but I hadn’t written a single line yet. I knew we had to shoot at least the first third of the film, when they’re walking around in the farm, within the next 3-4 months. We didn’t have any financing for that yet. I was frantically calling guys and saying, “Do you have time on the 7th and 8th of March because we have to shoot that there because three weeks later, everything will be gone. There will be no second takes or anything because the sets that you were referring to will be destroyed at that point.” That was pretty stressful to pull that off and for the first third of the film, I wrote the script with my coauthor, Ben Roberts. We shot the first third of the film and I hadn’t written a single line of the last two thirds of the film because we were focusing on getting the first stuff done. Then it actually calmed down and we chilled out because then we had another nine or 10 months or so to record the rest. Of course, we knew from the beginning what the story arc would be and everything so that was clear, but we hadn’t nailed anything down yet. And in fact that was good because learning the building a little bit better in our shooting days for the first third of the film. We had so many more ideas that we would like to incorporate into the rest of the script that it was perfect that we did it that way because it made the whole thing a little bit more organic and not as stilted or something like that. If Ben and I had written the second and third acts without knowing what we learned while shooting the first part on location and hadn’t incorporated the ideas the place gave me by being there, the film wouldn’t be as precise as it turned out to be.
PopHorror: I’m impressed that he did audio in some other country and that it turned out this amazing. I actually thought he was there filming with a camera on his head.
Johannes Grenzfurthner: The hands are my camera guy! My camera guy is the body of the character and John Gries is only the voice.
PopHorror: Wow, that’s really cool. You also starred in the film as Bartholdi.
Johannes Grenzfurthner: I did.
PopHorror: You also co-wrote it, directed, and you own your own production company. What is it like wearing so many different hats?
Johannes Grenzfurthner: The cool thing about acting that character… I mean, there was no other way. There would have been other ways of course, I could have cast someone for that role but because of this enormous bulk of old photographs I had, it was strange. I was considering should I photoshop all the old photographs, and photoshop some other guy into that material together with my grandfather, or is it just easier to be myself? Then I realized, it’s probably better to do that not only because of the photographs and the kind of realism it brings into it when you see the old images of Bartholdi, but then I was also realizing I’m writing an evil version of myself and writing a character – without a spoiler – the guy turns out to be one of the two antagonists of the film and I thought, that’s actually perfect. I should do it myself. The moment I knew that, I was thinking, that’s perfect. I can write all the stuff into the character that I always want to do but I’m never allowed to do like being really nasty and cursing and being a really awful, grotesque version of myself. That’s what I ended up. The acting part was actually the least problematic thing. Of course, it is sometimes a problem that you’re in front of the camera and then you have to go back all the time. Shooting it in that way for that specific project, it was kind of easy because I knew that the whole big and important chunk of the main character’s voice is any way a different session. It’s on an audio recording so I can focus completely on John Gries and that of course gave me more space and head room, I guess, to also be able to act on set because I wouldn’t have to deal with myself and deal with the main character and all that stuff, so it made it a little bit easier. I guess that’s not probably not working for all productions. There is something specific for that production that made it possible. Honestly, I enjoy acting so I’ve been doing it a lot in theater. It was fun. The writing aspect of it, as soon as that’s done and I was working with Ben Roberts, so we’re not very anal about that kind of stuff so there is a lot of improvisation going on. But the moment we nailed down the script and said that’s what it is, that is pretty much the process when I can outsource it to the other actors and they can learn their text and all their stuff. For me, it was almost like choreographing a strange dance performance. You have my camera guy, who is almost like the stunt man, the corporeal entity for the main character and I could focus a lot, working with him on his body movements and how he does this and that. Of course, we shot a lot of coverage for that because we never really knew what would be the perfect corporeal expression. What would be the perfect way to grab a bottle of coke or something like that? Because we didn’t have the recording of John Gries yet. The recording of John Gries was the last thing that was recorded in the entire process. So we had a lot of different shots of him doing things in different ways and then we chose the perfect body movement and the perfect take that would fit with John Gries’ performance. There was a lot of puzzling going on.
PopHorror: If you enjoy acting and you’re a filmmaker, what better way to do than write what you want to do and write yourself in. That makes it perfect for you, right?
Johannes Grenzfurthner: Absolutely!
PopHorror: Just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?
Johannes Grenzfurthner: Oh, what is my favorite scary movie? That is… Oh, ah… That is an unfair question! From a historical perspective, it’s Poltergeist because it was probably the first scary movie I’d ever seen. I was nine years old. I saw it alone. I almost shat myself, I was so afraid. My parents were out there barbecuing and I was sitting alone, ten o’clock at night in our little living room and I was watching it because it was on TV and I didn’t know what it was. I could not stop watching it. I had a physical reaction of fright to it. I was so afraid of everything but I couldn’t stop watching it. It mesmerized me, like when he’s pulling his face off and the clown and everything so that is historically super important for me.
Thank you so much to Johannes for taking the time to speak with us. Solvent had its North American premiere this weekend at Nightmares Film Festival, where it won Film from Hell! Stay tuned for more release information as Solvent continues its festival run.
