This Friday sees the UK release of Swan Song, officially one of our favourite LGBT films of all time. Udo Kier plays retired hairdresser, Mr Pat., who is living out his final days in a care home with only his obsessive compulsive order of folding tissues for company. That is until he gets one request to style a deceased client’s hair one final time…
A film about an elderly queer individual who breaks out from his personal prison to get out there and live again is exactly what the world needs right now.
Director Todd Stephens tells us about the difficulties getting the film funded and the importance of having queer actors play queer parts.
Hi Todd, it’s been so great to see Swan Song grow and grow in popularity over the last twelve months. Deservedly so!
It is wild, it just has this life, you know? Like a child that you make that goes off into the world and then it’s a thing that becomes much bigger than you imagined.
What were your expectations for it when making it?
Pretty low in a way. I live in a neighbourhood called Inwood in the northern tip of Manhattan. My main goal was to get it into the Inwood Film Festival. But on the other hand you have this dream that it will be seen. I also knew while I was filming it that something magical was happening. It was just one of those movies where everything fell into place. The cast turned out perfectly. The gods were on our side.
Yes, the cast are incredible. I read that Jennifer Coolidge improvised a lot of her lines. I wondered if Udo did too?
He did improvise some things. The whole conversation he has with the old lady that comes to pick him up – I discovered that footage right at the end of the editing process. I didn’t even know that it happened. It wasn’t what was originally written. It was actually way better than what was written.
There’s also a whole story that he tells about one of his old friends when he’s talking to the bartender at the queer bar. He talks about this truck driver that used to come and see him every Saturday night. So there were things that he would improv but part of the issue was that we shot the film in such a fast amount of time, we didn’t even have a tonne of time to do it! I wish we’d had a couple extra takes available to improv each scene but we shot the movie in eighteen days.
I wanted to touch on age representation as well. It’s so good to see elder queers onscreen. There’s an important scene where Mr Pat talks to a young bartender. Was it hard to write that scene and not make the bartender young and bratty?
Yeah, that was a really hard scene to get right and to cast. The guy that played the part, Tom Hilton, was really amazing. I had known him for a while. I didn’t want it to be too ‘Oh God, here’s the Gen Z kid, always on his phone…’ It took us a while to make it all feel real. I feel like that character did end up seeing Pat. I teach Film in New York City and I have a lot of Queer students there so I consulted with them as well.
After the last two years, I got a real kick from Swan Song of ‘Get the fuck out there and start living again.’ I’m sure I can’t be the only one who has said that…
No, I have heard this before. That scene when Pat goes to the club and starts to dance, people told me that they cried during that because they missed that and being with their people.
What was your own first moment of release post-Covid?
I think when we screened the film at this amazing film festival named Oak Cliff in Dallas, Texas. The theatre was packed and everyone just went crazy. The film opened at SXSW but it was online so it just seemed like it wasn’t real. That was our first real screening with an audience. That made me feel like life was back.
You’ve spoken about how it was difficult to get backing for Swan Song. I wondered if it was harder than with Another Gay Movie?
Swan Song was way more difficult. Another Gay Movie was co-funded by this distributor called TLA who had done a lot of queer stuff over the years. I couldn’t get anything close to co-funding for Swan Song. It’s different when you are making a film about horny teenagers wanting to have sex, compared to someone taking their last journey in life. I literally had to set up a Kickstarter and beg everyone I knew for money. That was how it started out. I almost gave up because it was so difficult. But then once the Kickstarter began, that led us to one of our producers, Rhet Topham but yeah I was close to giving up there.
That’s crazy. You opened so many doors with Another Gay Movie of seeing the gay community onscreen. I wondered how you felt seeing how things have progressed to Billy Eichner’s new movie Bros, an all-LGBT cast, gay rom com, funded by a major studio.
Well, Swan Song is the same if you subtract the mainstream backing, haha, but it is all queer actors playing all queer parts. That was important to me and I’m glad to also see it in something more mainstream like Bros. I’m excited to see it. We’ve come a long way, baby!
Lastly we are named after the biggest-selling single of 2001 so always ask, what is your favourite Mariah song?
I thought you were going to say you were named after the 80s band and I was going to say ‘Turn Me Loose’ or something like that. But oh shit, what do I say? I’m not the biggest fan. I’m more about Annie Lennox, Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush. But my favourite Mariah Carey song? I don’t even think I could name one. I feel like an idiot, I hope she doesn’t come after me!
Swan Song – in UK cinemas 10th June
