SXSW 2024 Interview- Dead Mail’s Joe DeBoer And Kyle McConghy Talk Scary Music, Dead Mail Offices, And Bathroom Sacrifices

Ahead of SXSW 2024, I chatted with Dead Mail’s co-writers and directors, Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy. This up-and-coming filmmaking team has the creativity, unique style, and evident excitement to be the next indie voice in horror. It’s no longer good enough to pump out derivative stories that copy more than pay homage to those who came before them. Refreshingly, these two refuse to follow the crowd and have created a kooky film sure to surprise audiences. They provided all the details on Dead Mail, their collaborative process, finding the right locations and actors, and painting bathroom floors green. If you are headed to SXSW this year, be sure to put Dead Mail on your radar. It premiers March 9th, 2024.

Tracy Palmer– Hi guys, I appreciate you taking the chance to talk with me today. I really enjoyed your movie. It has kind of a Berberian Sound Station vibe. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that movie. But it’s another one that plays off the idea of insanity and sound and that kind of thing. Tell me like, where did this idea come from? How did this movie come about? I want to know the whole thing.

Kyle McConaghy– I think probably a bigger basis of this film is Joe and I have been preoccupied a little bit with just our bland Midwest upbringings. Like we always talk about it. We look at photos of our family from 1978 or 1991. And everyone looks exactly the same. So you know, Uncle Doug, Uncle Rick, you know, you can’t tell them apart. So capturing this may be more what’s realistic to us. The 1980s period has always appealed to us. And Joe discovered this Dead Letter Office. So we kind of, you know, used that idea and kind of went from there.

Joe DeBoer– Once we found out the concept, we loved the idea of just kind of making up what happens in this Dead Letter Office. And that’s what really led to, I think, the origin of the story is this savant investigator who can solve anything, and oh, let’s give him a European counterpart that he has, you know, secret info access to. And obviously, I don’t think there are probably that many dead letters, but let’s just assume there are a ton, and it’s got to go through this whole process. So we really enjoyed building that. And the quote the real post office gave Kyle was something like; this doesn’t represent anything remotely accurate. You can’t use our name.

TP– Did you ever actually meet anybody who does this to know if there is anything even close to reality in there?

KM- We’re normally kind of because we have done some period projects and films before and, you know, genuinely want to do a lot of research. And we did for this film in other capacities. But in terms of the Dead Letter Office, as Joe said, we made a conscious decision. Let’s not Google this; let’s create our own interpretation of it. And yeah, we tried to film at a post office in Inglewood here. It was super cool, and beautiful, and outdated-looking. But yeah, they said, our postal workers would never conduct themselves in such a way. You cannot film here.

TP– You guys look significantly younger than someone who remembers the 1980s really well, so why set it in the 1980s?

JD -I think we’re really averse to anything that involves cell phones and the internet in our writing for whatever reason. So I feel like we can’t really go past 1995. So we kind of use that inspiration. Did it matter if it was 92 or 78? You know, when you look at old photos of our family, not really. And then, once we threw in the synthesizer, we wanted to be authentic to kind of the shift from analog to digital. We both grew up playing different synthesizers and really liked a couple of analog ones we had when we were collaborating on music. So that just kind of solidifiedit. Alright, this is the early 80s.

TP– The music does have such a cool ad synth vibe to it. Did you guys do all the music on there as well?

KM– We did a good portion. Yeah, we kind of, you know, as we were just hitting the edit and kind of using temp music, you know, we kind of realized like, alright, luckily we have a lot of diegetic music to play with. Trent is a music aficionado and Josh is obviously playing the synthesizer. And then we’re thinking, alright, well maybe the music could just kind of mimic Josh’s tinkering and kind of the atonal little melodies he’d probably be playing as he’s designing these synthesizer patches. It gave us the chance to discover some of the unheralded synthesizer composers from the 50s, 60s, 70s, or 60s and 70s, Janet Beat being one of them whose music is featured. And then we wrote some music ourselves from there. Joe’s, the more prolific musician. So, anything that sounds complicated is Joe. Anything that sounds dark and simple is me.

TP– Did you draw from the obvious musical talents here? Or did you draw from the idea that there’s a thin line between being an artistic genius and being a lunatic?

KM– I wonder, I mean, in general, for all of us, music is magic, and it really doesn’t make sense. Why does something resonating in our eardrums make us feel so much? We all have such powerful memories related to music, and the first time we heard certain bands or music, for us, like Joy Division, the Beatles, or David Bowie, the first time hearing some of those songs, you remember it. It means so much to you, and maybe with Trent being someone who had a troubled childhood and, you know, tortured existence, music was an escape, and music was something that brought him to different places viscerally. So maybe we weren’t conscious writing it. I think it would make sense for all of us, but especially to him while music can mean so much to him.

JD– Yeah. Like, I think music is that outlet, Trent’s main motivation. Whatever people glean is fantastic. But obviously, his main motivation is just the abandonment that he’s experienced. And now he has this, this new composer who’s also, you know, maybe something more. He’s willing to partner with him. And it’s been it’s been a long time since he’s had any sort of companionship, so he’s unwilling to let it go.

TP– Where did you find Trent and Josh, the actors that played them because they’re great.

JD– Yeah, they both were amazing. So I mean, Kyle and Sterling met when Kyle first moved to LA, they worked on a project together. And then Sterling was in our first film and he’s just this tremendous actor. He’s good at everything. On our first film on the first day we were at an air b&b in some remote area and he started just playing jazz piano. That’s probably where he accidentally booked himself for the role of Josh. We had a zoom call with John Fleck, who plays Trent, who was recommended to us by Susan Priver who plays Bess, one of the postal workers. And on the Zoom call, I don’t know how we got here. But we started talking about Dido’s Lament which was a track that we really loved that we use on our first film, and he just proceeded to sing it full volume over the Zoom call. And it’s like this guy. Yeah, this guy’s definitely weird enough to play Trent. We got off the call deliberated for three and a half minutes and called him back and it’s like yep, you’re in. No one else can even audition.

TP– So, the movie in addition to sounding very synth-80s it looks like a lot of the thriller/horror movies from the 80s. Was that intentional? Are you guys big fans?

KM– I think we wanted to I mean, we probably both worked on projects together and separately. We made some choices that felt riskier, but didn’t go far enough and that’s when we’re like, let’s really embrace it within our talent and our budget. Let’s go as extreme as we feel like we feasibly can in terms of achieving some kind of an older aesthetic. We didn’t want to draw from something specific in terms of a specific film or anything but just wanted to capture something that felt like it was appropriate for this wood-paneled green-carpeted world we wanted to capture.

TP– Where did you find that house?

KM– It’s a dirty little secret Trent’s house, I think we have an account, I think it’s like five or six different locations. The exterior is different. I think there’s three different locations we use for the interior.

JD– Yeah, it was a puzzle, we started looking for actual Midwestern houses that we could film in and nothing was there. For one, nobody in the Midwest wants you to film at their house. Two, just getting the props. Where are you going to find a vintage mailbox? So we started to encounter these challenges really quickly. And then Kyle really led the charge and just started going to locations all over LA and like this room will work for this right, take pictures, send them over and just pieced it together one frame at a time in a lot of cases.

TP– Everything looks seamless, I mean, did you guys do your own set design as well? Or did you have someone that helped you?

KM– Yeah, we worked with Payton Jane, our production designer. He was amazing and did incredible work. And yeah, we certainly had to fabricate some of it. Like the bathroom, Trent is locked in. It was right around the corner from me here. Let’s make the floor something weird. And we’re like, well, what about some weird green and I bought some spray paint and started painting it green. Like we’re just committing to this and see how we build that set? And a few others. But then also, yeah, luckily, there’s just some strange houses some places available to film at in LA. It’s like Joe said, we just kind of were like, Alright, I think we can feasibly make it. So he’s leaving this room and then going into this, but yeah, definitely not as seamless an edit in terms of locations.

TP– You’ve worked together in the past. So I’m assuming you enjoy working together and want to do so in the future.

JD– Absolutely, yes. We kind of said, we’re C pluses individually. But together, we just might push a b minus.

KM– But, we’ve been friends since sixth grade and have have gone on many artistic endeavors. Most of them failed throughout the year. So to be here and be going to South by Southwest together. It’s really, really cool. We feel very lucky.

TP– What is your writing process for the two of you? Because one of you have an idea, or is it something that’s just collaborative and comes out of nowhere?

KM– In terms of like, who comes up with things first the kind of alternates film the film almost. And it’s just, it is just so great, how fun it is to play off each other with the audience can decide how successful it is. But But yeah, we really love collaborating on the script writing process. And we kind of did make a rule at some point of like, alright, let’s never like actively write alone. We did that before would kind of go on different tangents. So anytime there’s any anything significantly written, or both at a computer or both talking over Google Chat or something. So very close collaboration.

JD– It’s actually gotten to the point where I don’t even know if I’d probably be too insecure to write alone. Like, how do I bounce this idea off someone? What if I take this too far? You know, it’s just become such a seamless thing. If it is a good idea, I want Kyle to affirm it. Vice versa.

TP– What is next for you guys?

JD– So we have in development, an animal sanctuary in the Midwest, again, where a couple is on the run, and has kind of found refuge there and they’re, you know, a quiet way of life. But things get disrupted when there’s a small string of animal murders in this small town where this animal sanctuary resides.