PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Netflix’s new film, The Starling, will really hit you in the feels. Dealing with grief and loss is never an easy subject to tackle, and The Starling throws in a bit of humor to make those subjects a tad bit more palatable. With an all-star cast featuring Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, and Kevin Kline, The Starling never shies away from what makes us uncomfortable, but does a decent job reminding us that the world does not stop, even if we’re dealing with more than we can handle at times. To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with writer Matt Harris about his inspiration behind the film, why he got into the industry, and what’s up next.
PopHorror: I watched The Starling over the weekend, and while I loved it, you broke my heart.
Matt Harris: Thank you. That was my goal.
PopHorror: What inspired the film?
Matt Harris: You know, I was inspired by this general idea that sometimes, bad things happen to really good people. And that nature, while we live within this chaos in the natural world, can be very forgiving and unforgiving at the same time. I always imagined this couple as being a couple that wanted to have children early on, and were told they could not have children, and were okay with that, right? That they were a couple that found their way forward and were happy with their lives when, bam! Suddenly nature gives them something that they didn’t expect, and then, bam! Took it away. I just wanted to really look at how we get past those types of events that happen and even the loss of a loved one, maybe one who’s sick, and we have time to prepare. These things are, nevertheless, very difficult to get beyond. And sometimes, some people don’t ever get beyond them. I think it was just my awareness of that and my interest in finding a way to get past things. I wanted to do it through story, and this allowed me. That’s what I was trying to do.
PopHorror: I think that you hit the mark. Watching it now, I’m coming up on the year anniversary of my brother’s death that was very sudden, and the film, while fictional, really made me realize the process of grief and how people do it differently. It really made me reflect on last year, and I really appreciate it at this time. I like that you said that. That’s exactly what I got from it as well.
Matt Harris: Oh good. It’s important that it feels real. You’ve experienced loss, and I’ve experienced loss as well. Fortunately for me, I didn’t lose a child. I’m not writing from any personal experience there, but I have lost a sister. I’ve lost a mother. It’s something you don’t get over. I don’t know about you… you don’t get over it, you know? But like Lilly says, “You know the world just keeps on spinning and people just keep going about their lives, and I just want to scream, ‘Stop doing this!'” I just felt like this film wasn’t going to have any dramatic turns. Like she wasn’t gonna run into the hospital at the end of the film and grab him and say, “We need to be together!” Carry him out like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. That’s not this movie. This movie, the change that had to come, had to be slight but so, so important, that they could see a way past this. They could believe that there is a way forward, and what that forward has in store, we don’t know. But I think it’s really important to believe that you have that. Getting there is very difficult.
PopHorror: The cast is made up of some really amazing actors. Were they who you had in mind when you were writing the script?
Matt Harris: Boy, oh boy! I wish I could say I did. I never did, only because it’s such a great cast. I would have been kidding myself if I had going in. I remember we were trying at different times just to land one of the roles, just hoping to get somebody who could carry the weight, particularly the Lilly role, which I thought was vital… even before we did a gender swap, or swapped the roles. We always tried to cast her role first. Then when Ted [Melfi] came on board as the director, and he said he wanted to go to Melissa McCarthy with this, I was blown away. I couldn’t have asked for anybody better, because I just have a great deal of respect for her. Even before I saw Can You Forgive Me? Once I saw that I was like, “Okay, if anybody doesn’t realize how legit this woman is, they really need to watch her.” So then when she came on board. I think the fact that she is so legit, I think it drew the others.
PopHorror: That’s so cool! She is so great. I first saw her in Gilmore Girls, and just the progression that she has made from that comedic role to more dramatic ones like this is amazing. I thought that she really gave the character a lot of depth because she can do both comedy and drama.
Matt Harris: She can make you feel, can’t she?
PopHorror: Yes, totally. What made you want to get into the entertainment industry?
Matt Harris: A great question. I ask myself that every day. I think I was drawn to film, first and foremost. I ended up working mainly in television, but I moved here out of grad school because I knew I wanted to try and write screenplays. So I guess I just had that bug. I wish I could tell you that I had a definitive goal other than to hopefully do what just happened now, which is write a screenplay that gets made into a film, which is an exhilarating and terrifying process as well.
PopHorror: I bet. What is up next for you? Are you currently working on anything?
Matt Harris: Yeah. A screenplay I wrote called Moon of Popping Trees—it’s now called Dead for a Dollar—is being directed—it just wrapped, in fact—by Walter Hill. It has Christoph Waltz and Willem Defoe. Rachel Brosnahan is in it. So that’s going to be coming out in the spring. It’s a western, so it’s very different.
PopHorror: Oh wow. Very different. I just have one last question for you because we are a horror website. What is your favorite scary movie?
Matt Harris: My favorite horror film? The Haunting, by far. The first The Haunting.
Thank you so much, Matt, for taking the time to speak with us. Be sure to catch The Starling, exclusively on Netflix now.
