Bugonia has been getting a lot of attention this week for its viral screening held only for bald people, and the movie’s team weighed in on the event at its New York premiere on Tuesday.
The Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film follows conspiracy theory-obsessed beekeeper Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin (Aidan Delbis), who kidnap high-powered CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) after they become convinced she’s an alien intent on destroying Earth. One plot point in the film revolves around the conspiracy theorists shaving Michelle’s head (which Stone did in real life for the role); adhering to that theme, DoLA took to Instagram to reveal fans could attend a free, early screening in Culver City on Oct. 20 if they were already bald or shaved their heads for entry.
While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, writer Will Tracy said he thought the idea was “great.” He continued, “I’m not going to try it myself. But some people are kind of borderline [bald] already. I think it’s great. My hope is that they like the movie because if they go and they shaved their head for movie they don’t like. … My hope is that if they’re into the idea, they probably would like it.”
Stone also weighed in on the screening idea, quipping, “I just assume that it’s people who already wanted to shave their heads and were like, ‘OK, I could just do that at home or I could just see a movie right after,’ you know what I mean. It’s a good time. It’s just a good time if you’re already wanting to shave your head.”
Lanthimos admitted he didn’t think the idea would be so “popular,” and he was surprised to see how many people showed up to the event. “It was fun to see,” he said.
“I love it,” co-star Stavros Halkias added about the screening. “Sometimes you need a little push. Look, I’ve had my own hair journey. I went buzzed when I was younger; I tried to get ahead of it and now I’m growing it out. But listen, sometimes when you’re losing it, buzz it off … Someone can play it off as, ‘Oh, I didn’t even realize I look like that.’ They can just kind of soft launch going bald like, ‘I did it as a goof, but I really like it.’”
At the premiere, Lanthimos opened up about Bugonia‘s larger message, saying it’s “much more” than a movie about conspiracy theories and is a story about “humanity and human nature.” He explained, “Any time is right to tell the story. With the state of the world right now, it just feels more relevant. And depending on how, you know, the situations evolve, it might become even more relevant.”
He went on to say that “hopefully we’ve created something that feels unique” and goes beyond the “idea that the story is about conspiracy theories.” Lanthimos said, “It’s about much more when you watch it.”
Meanwhile, Stone said she wanted the audience to leave the movie pondering. “I like that it asks questions. It makes you think about the tension between these two characters who are very archetypal on the other side of each other and their intention the whole time,” she said of her and Plemons’ characters. “I think it’s kind of whatever they gleam from it and the conversations it opens, hopefully, amongst people after they see it. That’s what I’m kind of more interested in than like a total, ‘This is what it’s saying.’”
The Bugonia team also discussed the inspiration behind Stone’s CEO character and Plemons’ conspiracy theorist character on the carpet — while Stone admitted she was inspired by “a little amalgamation” of different CEOs she wouldn’t name who she crafted Michelle around. Meanwhile, Tracy told THR that he originally wrote Stone’s character as “being a CEO who’s maybe in her mid-50s, early 60s. Like a Mary Barra, the car industry CEO.”
“Once Emma signed on, I started to think about quite a bit of tech CEOs and biomedical CEOs that nowadays tend to be a little bit younger,” he said. “These sort of startup type entrepreneurs, these young dynamos in the Valley and so forth.”
As for the character of Teddy, Tracy said he “wanted to be quite cautious with him not coming across as these people that they write endless think pieces about.”
“He’s not necessarily explicitly or specifically political in any way, left or right wing,” Tracy said of Plemons’ character. “I just wanted to make him his own guy who’s quite confused and whose been quite abused by the system and try to approach him with some empathy.”
When it came to preparing to play Teddy, Plemons told THR that he looked at a “wide range of people that I found in my searching around online.”
“There’s this independent journalist, Andrew Callaghan, that has this YouTube news channel called Channel 5 and he visits just a lot of really interesting functions and goes to almost every protest and the Flat Earth Convention and goes to AlienCon, so I’m sure a mix of a lot of those folks who he interviews worked their way in,” he said.
Plemons added that what’s interesting about Teddy is that he says in the movie that “he himself has sort of been there and done that in terms of conspiracy theories, rabbit holes, extremist groups, organizations.”
“He’s kind of seen it all and sort of landed on what he believes to be the absolute truth. But it’s truly, aside from his cousin Don, it’s kind of a one man operation. He believes that the fate of humanity is resting on his shoulders,” Plemons said of his character’s mindset. “So he’s a very particular type of conspiracy theorist. It’s fascinating to go down those rabbit holes.”
Bugonia hits select theaters on Friday and expands wider on Oct. 31.
