Niclas Larsson was a child actor who got interested in directing short films around age twelve. “I watched cheap American movies from the 90s,” says the Swedish writer/ director, “And I loved them. I didn’t get into serious cinema until maybe fifteen or sixteen, but I didn’t like them until I was probably twenty.” 

Comedies like Freaky Friday and 13 Going on 30 shaped his thinking on cinema. “I deal with magical realism and surrealism and heightened reality.” In some ways, Larsson hopes to model Quentin Tarantino, who also appreciates “cheap movies” and turns them into more complex narratives. 

In his latest film, Mother Couch, three adult children (Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, and Lara Flynn Boyle) are brought together when their mother (Ellen Burstyn) refuses to move from a couch in a nearly abandoned furniture store. 

“I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They didn’t care about [R-ratings] and loved horror, so I remember watching The Shining around age ten and realizing it was something else. I felt immersed in an experience of cinema. It wasn’t feel good. I felt worse, but I was immersed in it.”

Niclas Larsson

Films like Requiem for a Dream, There Will Be Blood, The Dark Knight, and No Country for Old Men made him think, “How can I do that? How can I do what we call cinema?” 

“I’ve been going around with Mother Couch for about a year. I have a lot of walk-outs. It’s a provocative movie and it’s not for everybody. I didn’t intend for it to be for everybody, but with each screening, a bunch of kids stayed, and it did something for them.”

The Making of Mother Couch

“In this industry, if you’re good about putting people around you who believe in you or recognize your talent, and it doesn’t have to be a lot, just two or three people, if they can vouch for you, that’s how you get to make a movie with Ewan McGregor.”

These handful of people “vouched” for Larsson because he had been making shorts and commercials professionally for several years prior to this in Sweden. “They allowed me to just experiment. It was a bunch of fun, bad commercials that I tried to make look like films.”

He tried to make a few Swedish features, but they’re really accepted into the zeitgeist, but he did make a Swedish version of Mother Couch that he could translate. “That’s basically what I did. You have to write a character that these people want to do. I certainly didn’t have the money he might get at Comic Con.”

The original idea came from a short story that Larsson acquired the rights to after it spoke to him as a reader. “I wrote the entire screenplay in a month or two, added a few more details from the book, then I called him. He’s not a famous writer, but he’s a conceptual writer. I think I bought the rights for $1,000 bucks.”

The writer/ director says this approach, “finding love in the character and story,” then writing the script, and then asking for the rights worked best for him. “I don’t like the pressure of asking for permission to write. I’d rather write it, then get a ‘No.’ I don’t want to show something to the writer and have a time limit (or due date) for the first draft. Look for short, undiscovered novels.”

Writing Screenplays

“Writing a screenplay and writing a novel are vastly different things. Writing a novel is like writing a synopsis. Writing a screenplay is essentially notes to financiers, producers, and actors. It’s not the same thing.”

From the trailer alone, one could assume that most of the film takes place in an abandoned furniture store, aside from some larger set pieces, and a few other scenes which may have even been shot guerrilla style. “I very much had the production in mind while writing,” he says. 

“What is not a ‘No’ from Hollywood? What’s an easy setup where I can attach a few actors and go and it will make sense for someone to put the money into it. The setting of Mother Couch, in a furniture store, felt very doable.” In the actual process, they realized “walls needed to move around,” so they actually ended up building the store. 

David (Ewan McGregor)

In some ways, he wrote the cheapest possible screenplay to film, then started to add more resources as they became available. “When the script feels ready to go out to actors, you need just as strong of a script to go to financiers.”

Larrson feels like when you get the actors attached, the financiers are less likely to criticize a character, but a name is already attached to the role. “If they say that, don’t go with that financier,” he jokes. “The thing about playing with good actors is that they scare financiers off from their opinions. They’re not going to question Ellen Burstyn’s decision.”

“We’re dealing with a business here. It’s not all art and fun and happy. The script is a creative contract of the movie you’re about to make. That contract needs to be the best contract ever.”

Surrealism on the Silver Screen

When the film opens, the following text appears on the screen in green all caps in front of a cloudy background, “It was all very simple, they were looking for a dresser.” Then we see, “Blood wouldn’t spill until later.” This set up brings up a lot of curiosities as the film opens. 

“That’s something we figured out during tests. It seemed to us that people needed a hint that this was going to be a strange vibe, some sort of forbidding.” There was a version in the script, but it wasn’t finalized until after the test screenings. “It’s funny. When people miss that quote, which they do, they miss the foreboding of what’s going to come. But I also want to give a promise to the audience. If you stick around, you will know the riddle of this quest.”

Likewise, to showcase the surrealism to come, Larsson the director chose to use CGI for this same opening to “distance ourselves from reality as far as we can.” Some critics think the surrealism happens later, but it actually happens in the very start. 

The way this looks on the page looks like this: “Title sequence. You know those bombastic title sequences from back in the day when mystery, big drama, love and all that, are promised over a bunch of graphically designed names. Well, this is one of those title sequences. Insert title sequence.”

“I hear now you have to have ten projects going at the same time to make your second film. Mother Couch has been heavily criticized which I’m actually really proud of, but I think the next one, I will struggle with.”

“Right now I’m just looking at everything I’m interested in, talking to everyone, and you just never know when a bad thing can turn good. You have to pursue crazy things. Doing something too normal is likely to get a ‘no,’ but doing something crazy is more likely to get it made.”

This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.