German filmmaker Tilman Singer entered the world stage with his film LUZ which is a unique take on trauma and demonic possession. It was made even weirder with its love story plot. His new offering, Cuckoo, is no less weird, but just as engaging as he continues to innovate the horror film genre.

Singer recently spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about his approach to storytelling. It all begins with a hidden feeling that he mulls over in his mind before it’s even a story. He massages that feeling that grows in his mind. That’s his opening secret.

The second secret is searching for clues that made these feelings materialize. This is the closing secret. In the case of Cuckoo, the clues were finding out that cuckoo birds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests until they hatch. Singer found this process to contain a curious mix of sadness, intrigue and fear. The creative won’t reveal exactly how these two secret interact because it will diminish their power. He’ll keep it a secret.

Tilman Singer

Arguably, this obtuse approach to storytelling is unusual, but it works for Tilman. Cuckoo tells the story of seventeen year old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) who goes to the German Alps with her half-mute sister Alma (Mila Lieu) to live with her father. There she meets Mr König (Dan Stevens), her father’s creepy boss.

Needless to say, this horror film bends the traditional genre tropes using atmosphere and bizarre visuals.

Is Cuckoo Based On Anything?

Cuckoo’s narrative is too obscure to be directly based on one pre-existing source. Tilman claims that it is based on real life events, “but not so concretely.” He won’t divulge any further details. He collects stories about himself and people close to him. “They do something to me, put me in a certain mood and create feelings.” He adds tangible events to these less tangible feelings until it becomes a human story. Tilman Singer doesn’t overthink his story process. He’s still exploring his process as he makes movies.

Are you still unsure how Cuckoo birds breeding feeds into Gretchen’s story? So are we. And that’s the joy of Cuckoo. Not knowing.

As Singer moves into the concrete phase of storytelling, scenes come. When he discovers characters, he asks if they speak to the feeling he has and the story he wants to tell.  “And then, by being blind, I can sense the direction I want to go.”

Is Cuckoo Even A Horror Film?

This expression of the horror genre is unusual, to say the least. “I like horror films. I like entertaining movies. I like fun movies,” he says. He’s not even sure that Cuckoo fits inside the horror genre box.

I like the vocabulary and grammar of it. It helps me put my emotions into image and sound.

Going back to how a Cuckoo bird breeds, Singer describes it as “a pretty horrific existential horror with some hopefulness in it, because the host parents never abandon the nest. They just keep on feeding the cuckoo chick.”

“And all of that anxiety, the hopefulness, and the longing for a loving connection in this horrific scenario, guided me through this story writing process.”

Herr König (Dan Stevens) Photo courtesy of NEON

Pitching The Film

Tilman Singer confessed that pitching Cuckoo was challenging. Eventually, he found Waypoint Entertainment (the company behind Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar-winning The Favourite) and producer Josh Rosenbaum who pitched Cuckoo to investors. They referred investors to LUZ as the progenitor of Cuckoo and the deal was sealed.

How do you put a pitch into words that cannot be put into words?

Then Neon appeared who agreed to finance and distribute.

Tilman Singer’s Writing Process

Tilman Singer cannot remember exactly how long it took him to write the screenplay because it happened in stages. “I wait quite a long time before I start writing scenes. I structure first. I want to know where everything ends up. And I do little sketches, little scribbles.”

He organizes these scenes into a loose story order to resemble a beginning, middle, and end. His outline and notes are in his head.

Singer notes that his scenes are way too long and looks at what should happen to the characters as he edits. When he ends up with too many scenes, he condenses and merges. When he finds repetition, he edits more so the pacing becomes tighter.

Writing is structuring, structuring, structuring

Unsurprisingly, Tilman’s writing days are not tightly structured. He’ll write notes on his phone during the course of the day wherever he is. He wrote a first draft of Cuckoo which he showed to Josh Rosenbaum who offered him feedback. Apart from tightening certain scenes, the core of the story remained intact.

Trixie (Greta Fernández) Photo by Felix Dickinson/ NEON

“I think I’m such a weirdo that it’s not even weird for me. I watch the movie and think this is a normal story. Sometimes I hear people say, ‘I didn’t get this at all. None of this makes sense.’ I’m like, ‘But everything makes sense,‘” he counters.

Singer ultimately writes for himself. “If you get it, you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. “I write something that means a lot to me. And I hope that the audience later finds a similar appreciation of it. I’ll go with what really excites me, especially with an abstract story like this.”

To conclude our insight into Tilman Singer’s creative process, we asked him what attracts him to a story.

“I think I tend to talk a lot about people not being what they say they are or how they present themselves. That really interests me and really scares me too. Nothing scares me more than when I find out I’ve been lied to. This deception could be dangerous.”

Advice To Screenwriters

“Take your time to think about the story that you want to tell. Let it write itself in your head. I truly believe that I know a story already from the beginning, unconsciously before writing. It’s already in me. It just has to be brought out. And that takes time.”