Eugene Kotlyarenko
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The Hyper-Contemporary, Anti-Influencer Satire of Eugene Kotylarenko’s Spree
Eugene Kotylarenko has carved out a niche of vomiting up hyper-contemporary satires, up-to-the-minute and on-the-nose in their damning send-ups. His latest is Spree, a gory thriller told through livestream feed about Kurt, a rideshare driver and wannabe influencer who broadcasts a twisted murder rampage. (The film is available for rental now on digital platforms.) After producing content in obscurity for so many years, he kills his passengers in a desperate attempt to achieve viral fame. For good reasons, Spree has garnered comparisons to Taxi Driver and To Die For, but the LA backdrop made me think first and foremost of […]
by Whitney Mallett on Aug 17, 2020 -
“Sitting in Front of That Whiteboard for Two Days, Joe Came Up With Some Hilarious and Strange Drawings”: Eugene Kotlyarenko | Spree
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? There’s a prop at the heart of Spree that wasn’t actually meant to be in the movie at all. Joe Keery and I met up a lot before production trying to get to the bottom of his character. If we were going to convey the reality of a failed influencer taking […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 24, 2020 -
A MAGA Nightmare Scene, Marketing to Incels and Reacting Against “Performative Wokeness”: Eugene Kotlyarenko and Dasha Nekrasova on Their Reverse Romantic Comedy, Wobble Palace
Wobble Palace is a reverse romantic comedy set in relationship hell tinged by the toxicity of Tinder hookups and Trump’s political rise. “One of the early ideas was to make a movie about a happy break up,” explains director Eugene Kotlyarenko. “The formula for a rom com is whatever happens for the first 90 minutes, by the end, the couple gets together.” Flipping this arc, the film climaxes (spoiler alert!) in the couple splitting up instead. “In a relationship that’s really toxic, staying together is really horrible and breaking up is really liberating,” Kotlyarenko continues. The film follows a millennial […]
by Whitney Mallett on Oct 23, 2018 -
The Tyranny of Interconnection: Two SXSW Films Tackle the Social Technology Present/Future
In a half empty hotel ballroom in Austin last week, Brian Schuster — a porn entrepreneur giving a lecture on the future of the adult industry — introduced the concept of “the social singularity,” the idea that the difference between our networked relationships and our IRL ones will eventually become indistinguishable. With texts, tweets, Skype, and FaceTime, we’re already getting pretty close to that futuristic premise, something a lot of films still struggle to incorporate into their storytelling. But two of the best films this year at SXSW, Ben Dickinson’s Creative Control and Eugene Kotlyarenko’s A Wonderful Cloud, updated familiar […]
by Whitney Mallett on Mar 26, 2015 -
“We Live in an Attention Economy”: Eugene Kotlyarenko on A Wonderful Cloud
Within two minutes of talking to Eugene Kotlyarenko, separated in physical distance by about a mile, yet connected by phone via his marketing company’s office thousands of miles away in New York, we are discussing near-fatal car crashes and how a life-threatening experience can make a few seconds can feel like an eternity. Kotlyarenko was shooting an Interpol music video recently (he starred as the “sleazy guy” in a behind-the-scenes of a porn shoot). On the way home, his car spun out on a cloverleaf freeway entrance. “I literally felt like I was stuck in a time vortex,” he says. […]
by Tina Poppy on Mar 13, 2015
