Lily Sullivan and Matt Vesely Discuss “Specific Rule Book” Behind ‘Monolith’

If you love podcasts, mysteries, and tour de force performances, Monolith might be the movie for you. Lily Sullivan is an investigative journalist that tries to uncover the mysteries of a black brick. Though this podcast gets an immediate listenership, it may come at a price. Running at 95 minutes, Monolith is a slow burn and immersive narrative that proves that Sullilvan can carry her own film. Though voices are heard in the narrative, Monolith is essentually a one-hander. Sullivan and director Matt Vesely talked to Deepest Dream about their standout feature.

On this week’s CinemAddicts, we reviewed Monolith and recommend the feature. It’s now playing in theaters and is available on Digital and On Demand. Check out episode:

Okay, so first question is the obvious question is podcasting. What do you guys think of the forum? Do you listen to a lot of podcasts? If so, what is your respective genre that you like to listen to?

Matt Vesely: I think that podcasting and along with the way media has shifted in other forms like YouTubers, social media commentators, influencers, all that kind of stuff is a really interesting form. And it’s interesting how it’s been democratized, but that also means that you that you get a wide breadth of people with different motivations for why they might be creating that content.

I think that it leads to a lot of really interesting, amazing stuff and a lot of really kind of questionable stuff. And that’s the kind of territory we’re trying to explore in the film. We kind of tend to just believe this stuff. When you hear podcasts, you kind of just trust it now. And should you be trusting it? Where do we place authority and that kind of thing. I absolutely respect and admire and I’m intrigued by the form. But I think it’s worth interrogating. 

Lily Sullivan: For sure and also the intimacy of it. Like we were saying before, it’s like even just finding the voice, how to talk into a microphone. There’s this performative element. It’s a form of narrative and storytelling – also journalism is in there as well.

You’re telling stories and it’s intimate and you’re in people’s ears and you’re stimulating their imagination without visuals. So it’s great when you’re on long drives and you just actually want to learn something great.

This is a one person performance, and in cinema there are very few of these around. How closely did you guys work together as far as shaping it and making it cinematic, but what were the main concerns and how great does it feel to just have a role that’s really just so seems to be so hard, but gratifying as well? 

Lily Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, it was scary. That definitely was like a fear element for me, for sure. There has to be a trust with whoever you’re making it with.

Once I met Matt and Matt’s wonderful specificity and also our cinematographer, Michael Tessari, it’s like all of these elements – you just have to do such a tight dance to feel safe and and relieve the fear of boring the audience. (You must) be able to pull off stimulating people and creating suspense as well. And like Matt was saying before, which you can totally talk about, it’s just like the rules of, like the camera and the rules of this, of this dance and ways like stages of the film, just different ways of exposing or showing and showcasing the same thing and using that house.

Matt Vesely: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of, a lot of the one person films that have been really successful, like something like The Guilty, especially the Danish version of The Guilty or Locke with Tom Hardy. They always have something like real time that’s happening there.

And our film is about Lily investigating stories from the past. She hears people regale her with things that have happened to them in their history. And so you don’t quite have that, like immediacy. So it was really important to us to find ways to give the film a visual language that was evolving over the film, that the film felt like changing and growing. And we would get spiraling down the rabbit hole with Lilly.

So, yeah, as Lily mentioned, we we had a really specific rule book. We had a film divided into like eight chapters, and each chapter had really clear rules. Like the first, the opening of the film has no picture. And then the second part of the film has, uh, vision, but we can’t see Lily’s face, and then we can see Lily’s face, but the camera doesn’t move, and they’re sort of really small, specific roles.

And I don’t think the audience is super aware of them, but they feel it. They feel the film kind of start to grow. They feel the kind of sense of an observer or like another voice in the film starting to kind of shift and change. And I think that ties into with Lily’s character as well (with her) kind of descent into madness. You can feel the film becoming madder as we go along as well. So yeah, it’s an absolutely a challenge, but it’s like the whole point of the film was to who we could.

We do a story like this with one actor, and thematically it’s related. That’s all related to that same idea. Like if it’s one actor, then then who is this character? Why do we trust them? Why are we hearing their version of the story? And so you’re just trying to read all those things together. And it means as a filmmaker, every choice is about supporting that idea, which is which gives you a clarity.

Well, the good thing is, you know, with Lilly, she was going to knock the roll out of the park. Were you ever nervous? Were you nervous as a filmmaker? No disrespect about all the audio nerds wanting to make sure this movie’s we know the performance and the story is the script is great that the sound design is on point. Were you ever nervous and about that whole element of your story? 

Matt Vesely: I wasn’t. I wouldn’t say nervous, but I take it super seriously. I get very detailed in sound. It’s always often the last part of the process, and I can kind of get lost in it, much like Lily’s character does. So I had a kind of idea that there’s an almost observational quality to the camera, it’s like kind of just it’s another character. So what this idea that something’s watching Lily would kind of present horror in a very plain and abject way that the sound would be really subjective would be like inside Lily’s head.

That’s what it’s supposed to feel like. We’re inside her headphones. When she starts to drift off, the sound drifts away. You can kind of hear a texture which is like this alien artifact kind of growing and appearing and and finding its way into Lily’s life. So, yeah, just working really closely with Leigh Kenyon, the sound designer, and Ben Speed, the composer, to build that stuff was super important. But I wouldn’t say nervous, just committed to it.

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Lily, what has it been like for you to receive all of the love from really just the strictest and most jaded horror fans, just to open arms or on Evil Dead Rise? And then also on top of that, having monolith, which is a very great, challenging experience. What’s the last year and a half or two years been like for you? 

Lily Sullivan: So wonderful. Yeah. To be a part of the world and also just from like a making it and collaborating with people who have a passion for it and desire to tell stories and scare people. There’s just this energy that’s just full of dopamine. And so it’sgreat. And yeah, it’s it’s so up my alley. I mean, I’ve been like a fan lover forever of horror and and sci fi. So making it so much fun, watching it with like, an audience is so much fun. It’s just for me. I’m like, I’m so hooked on being a part of a part of this world and and choosing that, that genre to to entertain them. Like, it’s just it’s a really good time. You get to go back to to the child. It’s great.

Matt. First off, can you name one of your all time favorite movies and what is it about this specific film that resonates with you even today? And then for you, Lily, from your resume, can you pick a TV show or movie that you feel is underrated and overlooked, and you’d want our listeners to check out and why? So thank you guys so much for your time. 

Matt Vesely: My favorite movie of all time is the original Alien. I think the first half of that film is is like flawless. I think the second half is like really, really is like 99% great. But that first half especially is just the most perfect, beautiful thing. I remember watching that film. I was so scared of it when I was a kid. I knew it existed and I really wanted to see it. So I rented it on VHS, and I watched it at 7:30 in the morning because I was convinced that, like, then I’d have a whole day to recover before going to bed at night and getting nightmares. And it was like VHS, you know, (in a) brightly lit room so you can’t see. It’s a very dark film. I couldn’t see shit. And I watched it and I just it’s still my favorite film. It’s just, I think it’s the greatest horror film ever made. 

And You Lily?

Lily Sullivan: I would say again, from pushing boundaries and at the time and making it so much fun and reimagining it would, would just be actually Picnic at Hanging Rock. But it was just Larysa Kondracki as a director (and how) just tackled it. And Natalie Dormer, Madeleine Madden and Samara Weaving . . . a female cast, female director, female producer. There was something about it that was, that was um. Yeah, that was magical and kind of like punk rock kind of, you know, period corset drama when there wasn’t much of that happening at the time. So for me, I’d say Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Thank you guys so much for your time. I really enjoyed Monolith. 

Lily and Matt: Thanks. Thank you for watching.

Monolith is now out in theaters and is available on Digital and On Demand via Well Go USA.