A ‘Severance’ EP Channeled Michel Gondry and Brit Marling for Sci-Fi Romance Debut
“Severance” co-executive producer and writer Mohamad El Masri is channeling the Innie/Outie duality for his critically acclaimed directorial debut “Other Other.”
The 25-minute YouTube short film stars Sosie Bacon and Scoot McNairy as a couple who live parallel lives…literally. Myka (Bacon) and Spyro (McNairy) have been dating online for a year before they decide to meet in person for the first time — only to realize that they live in alternate worlds and can’t actually be together. More sci-fi than “The Lake House,” “Other Other” was recently named the Short of the Week, and writer/director El Masri credited his “indie film hustle” for getting the short off the ground.
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“I’d worked with Sosie Bacon on a TV series, ‘Here and Now’ on HBO, that lasted for one season. I met Sosie working there as a writer. I sort of kept track of her career as it grew,” El Masri told IndieWire. “I involved her in the casting process [for her co-star] because I just wanted her to be happy with whoever was going to be playing her partner. She’s partners with Scoot in real life, but I never broached it.”
But soon, McNairy read the script, and his real-life partnership with Bacon cemented that he was the one to co-star.
Prior to the strikes, “Other Other” was intended as a series inspired by how the pandemic has shifted human connection.
“I realized people weren’t sprinting back to reality. There was a comfort, a security blanket, of staying here and not having to go out into the world and be with one another in three dimensions,” he said. “I started to think that there’s something about technology and the way it connects with us in terms of how we do intimacy. This [Zoom] feels very intimate, like you’re in my house, but it’s not really intimacy. That’s the tension in my film, and it’s also the tension in ‘Severance.'”
El Masri teased that the original pilot was “very dark” and centered on the intersection of “technology and intimacy.” The one-hour episode was “like a mash-up between a ‘Basic Instinct’ thriller and a rom-com.” Instead of following only one couple, the series was going to be a four-hander and track “two versions of the same couple,” much like the two versions of characters in “Severance.”
The short instead proved to be a proof of concept, but El Masri shed that as well.
“A short film doesn’t really have three acts; typically, a good short film is more structured like a joke. It’s sort of like a setup and a punch line. It’s a two-act play, by and large,” he said. “I never really liked the three-act structure anyway. I think it’s a little unclear, to be honest, and constricting.”
El Masri also didn’t want to be constricted by typical short film time limits. After the first edit, “Other Other” clocked in at 16 minutes, to which El Masri said, “Fuck it,” and opted to expand the story.
“I mean, this story needs this space; it needs to breathe,” he explained. “I financed the film myself, so I had the freedom to be undisciplined. I made a call in post [production], and I was like, ‘This needs to be as long as it wants to be.’ I made the choice and stayed confident and trusted that the people who are going to watch it are going to see it all the way through.”
Despite the expanded running time, El Masri still wanted to maintain an elusiveness around the sci-fi specifics in the “Other Other” universe.
“There was definitely a debate amongst my collaborators, my director of photography Josh Knoller, my producer Elizabeth Valenti, and the cast about how much of the science fiction do we want to really explain, like what the rules are here? I made a choice really early on to be like, no this is more in the Jeff Nichols, Brit Marling, and Michel Gondry place of storytelling, where we’re in a fairy tale,” El Masri said. “We’re asking the audience to just buy into that this reality.”
He continued, “I decided that this is going to be about this couple and the emotional repercussions of the situation; we’re not going to have our characters figuring out the rules. We’re not going to get John Locke [like in ‘Lost’] finding a map on the wall and trying to figure out what the hatch is and what the different stations are. I stayed away from that. And it’s always a risk, because there’s always a member of the audience who is going to be like, ‘No dude, you have to fucking tell us what this is.’ And then there’s people who just come along for the ride and they buy into it. Let’s just trust the audience that they’re smart, and then all you have to do as your responsibility is to be confident and deliver on that promise.”
And while the themes within “Other Other” are admittedly “not new,” El Masri channeled the cinematic language of “Severance” to add a timely twist.
“It’s a language we’re familiar with, the language of multiverses, the language of alternate lives, the language of sliding doors. That’s not new. But how can I take that and give it a new semblance, a new way of a new way of seeing?” El Masri said. “I think ‘Severance’ does sort of a similar thing with doppelgangers: the doppelganger is inside and the way it’s presenting at the workplace is different than the way it’s presenting in the world. The motifs are definitely echoing, for sure, and that’s not an accident. I think that’s part of what I loved about writing on that show is exploring the duality within. And with ‘Other Other,’ it’s also about the self we project in this box [the screen] and the self that we have to confront when we’re outside with real people.”
He continued, “I mean, ‘Severance’ is really about [how] you go to your workplace and you have this really intense period of time every single day with these group of people. And that’s an intimate setting, even though you’re all professionally doing your thing. Over weeks and months and years, the workplace becomes a sort of second world and a second family, and gives you a second self. There’s a version of you that exists at work and sometimes that version is actually more desirable or more aspirational than the person who’s at home. You get to be a version of yourself that you can control and present to these relative strangers.”
Directing “Other Other” was thematically very similar to “Severance,” but allowed for more freedom, according to El Masri.
“‘Severance’ has a different sort of pressure,” El Masri said. “You really have to deliver the emotion and this ensemble of characters, but you also have to deliver on the science fiction. ‘Severance’ is one of those things where like we’re gonna have to tell the audience, what are these goats for? What is this man with the goats in this room? Where is that going? What are these numbers that they’re finding on the screens? What is that for? What does this company want? You have a responsibility to that mythology; not just for the audience’s sake, but because it’s feeding into what the characters are doing and what their dynamics are, and what their emotional stakes are with this.”
The highly anticipated second season of “Severance” drops January 17, 2025. El Masri also teased his other projects in addition to the Emmy-winning series, and even included an easter egg for his buzzy slated show “Helltown” in “Other Other.”
“Helltown” was announced in 2023, with Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey’s Team Downey producing. The series is set at Amazon Studios, based on Casey Sherman’s book of the same name. Oscar Isaac is attached to play Kurt Vonnegut in the true crime thriller limited series, on which El Masri is the showrunner, executive producer, and writer. “All Quiet On the Western Front” director Berger, who recently helmed “Conclave,” was announced to be directing.
“It’s about how Kurt Vonnegut gets wrapped up in the Tony Costa serial murders on Cape Cod in 1969. He gets sort of involved in the investigation and he writes an article on the killings,” El Masri said. “It’s a really great character piece that I’m hoping the world will get to see one day soon.”
As for the delays in its development, El Masri added, “That’s just sometimes how it is in Hollywood. But it’s still in development. Those people are still part of it.”
He also is working on a project with Smokehouse Pictures based on a short story about a man whose wife vanishes, only for him to later dig her up in the backyard and realize she’s alive and well.
As for “Other Other,” it may be not just a short anymore: El Masri said that producers have expressed interest to expand the project as a feature. “The journey of making the film, we sort of let the idea of it being a proof of concept go away,” El Masri said. “We wanted this to just stand on its own.”
And there will be more alternate universes afoot in El Masri’s upcoming work, no doubt. Take note, Innies.
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