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“Made by Five People Who Love Cats”: Mary Dauterman on Booger
Booger After the sudden death of her best friend and roommate Izzy (Sofia Dobrushin), Anna (Grace Glowicki) starts to act strange. At first, her odd behavior seems easily attributable to intense grief, but soon she begins to recognize physical abnormalities she can’t quite explain. Granted, she was bitten by her and Izzy’s fluffy, inky-black cat (the eponymous Booger) just before he fled via the fire escape. But Anna begins to suffer from far more than just cat-scratch fever and a gnarly hand wound: coarse, dark hairs begin to sprout, her movements become increasingly delicate yet uncanny, and could that actually be a hairball she’s hacking up? The guilt Anna feels from Booger’s recent escape could have triggered intense psychosomatic symptoms, but even her typically absent-minded boyfriend (Garrick Bernard) grows concerned. Izzy’s mother (Marcia DeBonis) is the only person Anna could possibly begin to relate to, but the 20-something’s newfound agoraphobia keeps her from nurturing this connection. The only real social interaction she benefits from is the rare run-in with another seemingly feral local woman (Heather Matarazzo).
As in several previous shorts, writer-director Mary Dauterman seamlessly incorporates social media and iPhone videos into Booger’s visual language. Anna obsessively looks at snippets from her and Izzy’s longtime friendship, burrowing into the bygone life that her phone allows her to cling to. While utilized with a less overt comedic tack, which has tended to be the filmmaker’s preferred territory in the past, it’s refreshing to watch digital screens on-screen that accurately reflect their digital texture and quotidian omnipresence.
I recently met Dauterman at a cat cafe on the Lower East Side to discuss her body horror feature debut. Our resultant conversation touches on the director’s fascination with inept male characters, how she assembled the film’s cast as well as her own self-appointed status as a “crazy cat lady.” Frequent pauses and coos, resulting from friendly cats vying for our attention, have been cut from the final transcription. A tie-in mixtape featuring several musicians covering “The Piña Colada Song,” a recurring musical motif in the film, dropped on September 20. Booger screens at 6:45 pm tomorrow at Dear Friends Books in Brooklyn, preceded by a cat adoption event at 4:30. The film is currently available to stream on VOD.
Filmmaker: Grace plays a much different character than you’ve previously explored. I know you reached out to her after seeing Tito, which she wrote and directed. As a fellow writer-director, how did her involvement shape the character of Anna?
Dauterman: Working with Grace was amazing. When she got involved she was like, “Let’s just start Zooming weekly.” We talked a lot about her character’s motivation and I was really open to continuing working on the script. Grace is really funny and physical. We mostly had conversations about, “How did my character get here?” We were also just talking about our own experiences and how to pull those into specific scenes. I think Grace would say the hardest scenes for her were the crying scenes, but I think she did an amazing job.
Filmmaker: On another casting note, I love Heather Mattarazzo and Marcia DeBonis in this. They were both in films that were very formative during my adolescence—Welcome to the Dollhouse and 13 Going on 30, respectively. What made you think of them for these roles and what was the eventual collaboration like?
Dauterman: I was so lucky that these people wanted to be involved. I originally thought of Marcia for Heather’s part. But the mom character really is [the film’s] emotional core, and Marcia is so good at being both incredibly funny and emotional. Weirdly, I also noticed that she kind of looks like Sophia, who I wanted to cast as Izzy. When I Zoomed with Marcia, we had a really great conversation and I immediately felt very connected to her. During that meeting, she cried and I was like, “You understand this.” She’s a sweet, wonderful lady. I see her around here and there, which is really nice. We did some ADR with her in her apartment, which was so fun because it’s like a museum of Marcia DeBonis. It’s butterfly- and bicycle-themed.
While casting this teeny-tiny indie film, we were trying to see if we could get someone recognizable in this role. I remember literally looking at my DVDs and thinking, “Heather?” She’s so iconic, so funny. Everything she’s been in is incredible. We reached out to her manager, then Heather wanted to Zoom. She was really cool, intense and wanted to talk about the script a lot. She’s a writer herself. What was kind of crazy is that she was like, “I lost a black cat ages ago; I have to do this movie.” She’s a big cat lady, too. I think she has four cats and three dogs, something iconic like that.
Filmmaker: How did you incorporate your own experience with cats into the film?
Dauterman: I’m a crazy cat lady [laughs]. I have two cats and I’m always fostering kittens. I grew up with cats and have a fondness for them. Cats are “challenging.” A lot of people don’t like them, hate them or just don’t get them. You have to earn their companionship. I did a lot of research about cat symbolism as well. They represent transformation, and that really clicked with the theme of the movie. What was really interesting in my research, and with my experience with cats in general, is how they act when they’re sick and dying. They hide and isolate themselves. They pass in a very solitary way, which is devastating.
Another thing that happened when I was writing [the script] is I was fostering a fully feral kitten. She was lashing out and very scary, so we kept her in a huge cage because she was actually dangerous. Over the course of a few days, though, she kept softening until she was sitting on my lap and running up to see me. I was thinking a lot about fear and violence. It’s simple with a feral cat, but also a really interesting layer on top of Anna’s character.
Filmmaker: I just have to ask because of what a good name it is: what made you settle on “Booger”?
Dauterman: It was a runner-up name for Bobby. He’s named after Bobby Hill, which really suits him. I’m glad I saved it for the movie because it’s a really fun name. It’s a great name for a cat! On Instagram, random people have been like, “My black cat is named Booger, too!” Our makeup artist, Kelly Harris, said her grandma had a black cat named Booger. It’s kind of crazy.
Filmmaker: Something I’ve noticed about your films is that men often tend to be clueless or annoying, and that’s certainly true here of Anna’s boyfriend. I also love Wakey Wakey and Unfinished Business for their depiction of useless boyfriends or feckless strippers. What interests you about this representation of men and the women who often lash out at them for their ineptitude?
Dauterman: The first time I made my boyfriend read the Wakey Wakey script, he was like, “Are you mad at me?” [laughs] I mean, it’s frustrating to be a woman. Why do we live in a society where these are the kinds of people who are in charge and calling the shots?
Filmmaker: Meanwhile, they can’t pack their own suitcase.
Dauterman. Exactly. It’s probably a lot of internalized frustration about jobs I’ve had and people I’ve known. It’s 100% not my boyfriend, though, even though sometimes he can be annoying as well. Women gravitate to the stuff that I’m making more than men, and I’m fine with that.
Filmmaker: You didn’t get into horror films until your 20s, or so I read in an interview. What made you want to filter this story through a body horror lens, especially considering the effects involved and how that might affect your budget?
Dauterman: I actually wrote two movies at the same time, then I met [producer] Lexi [Tannenholtz]. We were talking about which one we could pull off sooner. The other movie takes place over the course of one day, and I was like, “That’s the cheaper one, right?” She was like, “No, the horror script is.” That made me nervous, because I had some crazy stuff in earlier drafts [of Booger]. I may be missing some of that in retrospect, but I thought this movie [worked best] as a story about interiority and isolation. Even in terms of femininity and womanhood, you have so many scary experiences alone in your bathroom. From age 13 onwards, you’re like, “What’s wrong? What is this?” I think I’m just drawn to gross monstrosity and ways to make people uncomfortable. Grace is, too. She always says that we both love fluids.
Filmmaker: What were some earlier ideas that you had for body horror elements that you weren’t able to execute?
Dauterman: I wanted to create this horrible bloodbath where she gives birth to a kitten, which would have been sick. But I would have wanted a newborn kitten and for the blood to be insane. That then made me question if this movie was about birth or just more about pain and discomfort.
Filmmaker: That scene where Anna is picking at her hand with the tweezers got under my skin for sure.
Dauterman: I was really proud of that moment because our focus puller had to take a break. He was too grossed out.
Filmmaker: I want to go back to the feline mannerisms that Grace adopts, which are obviously a highlight. I know she worked with a choreographer to nail some of these actions and expressions, but I’d love to know more about what felt most important to convey as cat-like. Also, were there any peculiarities you wanted to capture but couldn’t figure out how to transpose to a human?
Dauterman: I had this running note in my phone of every single thing cats do and trying to find a way to express that through a human. There’s definitely stuff in the film that you’ll notice more if you’re a cat person, like [Anna sleeping in] the ray of sun. It would have been really cool to do full-on stunts, but it was a small movie and really not safe [to do so]. But Grace was really working on her shoulder movements. It’s something that also feels human at the same time, where you can see that she’s looking more uncomfortable in her body and tensing up as the story progresses. Girl needs a massage [laughs].
I was sending her tons of videos of my cats, then when she came to New York we were prepping together and she would just follow them around my house. They were her acting coaches! Bobby’s very social, so he was around the crew the whole time we were prepping. I remember working on the schedule with the AD and he was laying on everyone’s laptops. If you weren’t down to work in a house with cats everywhere, this was not for you. But we had a lot of good cat people on the crew. It’s made by five people who love cats. Nell [Simon], the wardrobe designer, adopted a cat immediately after we wrapped. She has a cat named Paloma now.
Filmmaker: Phones and social media are an element of everyday life that you are really adept at incorporating into your work. What are some common ways to misuse phones on-screen that irk you or seem much too prevalent?
Dauterman: There’s this weird thing that you see in commercials and TV shows where everyone’s trying to figure out how to make texting a visual, but it doesn’t feel like you’re in it. It just feels slick and weird. It’s going to look dated. In my short Pumbucha, I [tried to emulate] what it feels like when I’m staring at my phone and going down a rabbit hole. It feels like the rest of the world disappears and you’re stuck in this weird space.
Filmmaker: Do you have any desire to ditch iPhones and do a period film?
Dauterman: I’m actually working on something that’s a 2005 period piece. There’s some texting in it, but it’s old school. I’m literally trying to finish a draft this weekend. It’s called 30 Grand and it’s a heist comedy in the vein of the Coen brothers. It’s about a teen girl and her 40-something co-worker at The Gap who discover a bag of cash in the dressing room on Black Friday. It’s a bit of a satire on consumerism. It’s very ridiculous and fun. I just did the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab with it in April, which was amazing. This is the more expensive of the two movies that I wrote [alongside Booger]. I want to burn a Gap down.
Filmmaker: If you weren’t able to secure “The Piña Colada Song,” what would you have chosen?
Dauterman: I have a whole Spotify playlist I can show you. One we were getting close to was “Teenage Dirtbag,” which became a TikTok trend, so I’m kind of glad that didn’t happen. Bizarrely, we could afford “Piña Colada” because it was almost like a donation. Rupert Holmes was really cool and let us use the song. We’re making a music video that goes along with Booger and releasing a mixtape with 20 different artists covering the song.
Filmmaker: Out of curiosity, what’s the most bizarre cat name you’ve encountered?
Dauterman: Oh, there are so many. People name their cats the weirdest things. I fostered through Heidi Wrangle’s cats, and she always names a grouping of cats to a theme. There’s a current grouping right now that are named after fingers, so Thumb is up for adoption right now. I’m currently fostering a kitten named Mold, and her family are named Spore and Algae. There was also this grouping going around on Twitter a few weeks ago named HeeHee and HahHah.
