Curry Barker’s film Obsession was bought by Focus Features for US$15-million and has earned US$512-million at the worldwide box office.Andy Kropa/The Associated Press
There are a handful of drinking games that you can play during the Toronto International Film Festival if you want to get blackout drunk in record time. But nothing will get you more quickly blitzed than throwing back a shot every time someone on TIFF’s programming team mentions how the festival is responsible for the worldwide phenomenon that is Curry Barker’s Obsession.
After making its world premiere in TIFF’s Midnight Madness program last year to a raucous response, Barker’s US$750,000 rom-com from hell was snapped up by Focus Features for US$15-million. Since then, Obsession has lived up to its title and then some, becoming a true cultural craze, earning US$512-million at the worldwide box office.
Now, one year later, Barker and the Obsession team are making a TIFF victory lap this weekend, with the festival hosting a special encore screening and on-stage panel discussion with the director and star Inde Navarrette.
Over a pizza lunch (simple cheese for him, pepperoni for this reporter), The Globe caught up with Barker to discuss his journey from a budding filmmaker who was posting YouTube shorts to Hollywood’s most in-demand filmmaker.
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How does it feel to be back at TIFF following a life-changing year?
This festival will be forever cemented as a special place. I’ve changed a lot in the year. I’m a different person. For example, when I first came out here, that was my first time, in my life, leaving America. Now, I’ve been all over the world. I’ve learned to think more broadly.
Industry folks are now using Obsession as their north star. Everybody is hoping to make the next Obsession, to buy the next Obsession. What’s it like to feel to have made something so instantly iconic?
It’s an interesting feeling of responsibility, but when we made it, I didn’t set out to ruffle the feathers of the industry or anything like that. It’s shocking it’s happening this way. It’s strange and exciting to be the face of a movement, which I had no idea was going to even be a movement. My pathway is very accessible, though. It shouldn’t feel like this thing that couldn’t happen to anybody else. I came from a small town in Alabama, and I moved out to L.A. when I was 18. I had to work to get my foot in the door. But if I can do it, anybody can.
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You must have had an inkling when you were at the TIFF screening last year that Obsession would be something.
I was trying to think if I had ever even seen Obsession with a crowd before that TIFF premiere. We only had one test screening, and it was a very early version of it. So I had no idea how it was going to play. Everybody told me that the TIFF audiences are the best in the world, everything is going to get a reaction. But I’m like, well, this crowd will laugh and scream at anything then, right? It played really well, but I didn’t know what that meant.
Walk me through the immediate aftermath of that screening.
It was like an episode of Entourage. My life was a blur for that day. I was fast-walking through the city, meeting with A24, Neon, Focus, getting calls of how the numbers were going higher. It didn’t feel real. And then if it was real, it wouldn’t open theatrically, right? Like maybe it’d get a week in theatres. I didn’t sleep.
When you were making your films for an online audience, did you view theatrical movie-making as the end goal – that YouTube was the stepping stone to the big screen?
We had this channel where we posted funny short videos, posting three times a week, and I would’ve told you then, we’ll do this forever, and I’ll make these thought-provoking horror movies on the side. But now I’m so happy to be in a position where I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m doing elevated horror more, and the platforms online are less of a priority for me.
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How differently did you approach making your next film, Anything But Ghosts, after what you learned on Obsession?
Obsession hadn’t come out yet when I was making this, which was a huge blessing. We were writing Anything But Ghosts while shooting the additional photography for Obsession, so there was none of that pressure. Fingers crossed, it won’t affect my work. I still have my strong-headed opinions about things, those were my sensibilities back then.
What can you say about your forthcoming reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
There’s so much to be explored with that idea, despite what people tell you. Going back to the roots of the original is a good place to start, and then honing in on the raw, realness of it, and begging the question, which I loved to do in Obsession, is if you and your group of friends were in that situation, how would you respond? To push those tropes.
This interview has been condensed and edited.