'It's A Wonderful Knife' Interview With Michael Kennedy And Tyler MacIntyre
It’s a Wonderful Knife puts a twist on beloved Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life by mixing in all the tongue-in-cheek charm and gore of a Scream film, while also poking fun at Hallmark Christmas movies. It follows Winnie Carruthers, who valiantly saves her brother and her town from a serial killer on Christmas Eve. That should be the start of a celebration, but she is plagued with survivor’s guilt, as well as the knowledge that she killed a man.
In a moment of weakness, she wishes on the Aurora Borealis, claiming that everyone would be better off if she had never been born. Obviously that isn’t true, we know the source material, but she could never have imagined just how much worse this alternate timeline would be. It’s a Wonderful Knife is a whip-smart holiday slasher that also happens to explore serious themes, like suicide, grief, isolation, and guilt.
Ahead of its theatrical release, I was able to speak with writer Michael Kennedy and director Tyler MacIntyre about the filming of some gnarly kill scenes, casting a famous DJ (who also made a song for the movie), how emotion drives everything, and what they think about one-star reviews. Read the It's a Wonderful Knife interview below, and check out my review of the film here. Note: there are spoilers below if you have not watched the film yet.
Kayla Caldwell: Pete's death was one of the scenes that when I was first watching it, I was just like, okay, this is why there needs to be more Christmas slashers. Could you talk about the making of that scene?
Tyler MacIntyre: Yeah. Well, that scene is a bit of a collaboration, too. Pete's death used to be something more, it was more specific. It was always a bit of a sequence, but it wasn't - he got burned to death or something originally.
Michael Kennedy: He ended up dying with, you know those big tall heat lamps? He ended up getting stabbed to death, and then you find him crisped up later.
Tyler MacIntyre: And then once we started getting into it a little bit, we had this idea of, you know those Christmas lights that are timed to songs, and we were like, something could be timed out to one of those. And then that sort of morphed into the sequence we were having. And then once we cast Dimitri Vegas, who is a pretty well-known DJ in Europe, and he actually wrote that "Carol of the Bells" song that plays when he gets killed.
Kayla Caldwell: That's awesome. Because it's so good.
Michael Kennedy: He wrote and produced that song. He's one of those, I weirdly know him, and the character was written for a teenager, and I had this thought, I was like, oh, Dmitri really wants to get killed in a slasher movie. He had been telling me that for a couple years. And I was like, what if we made Pete, like, 30 and the creepy neighbor? Dimitri... was so game to do it. And then on set, he casually dropped, "If you want me to do any music for the movie, let me know."
Tyler MacIntyre: Michael and I were like, yes, yes.
Michael Kennedy: Can you do "Carol of the Bells" for us, please?
Kayla Caldwell: Yeah, that scene was killer.
Michael Kennedy: Yeah, it's so great.
Kayla Caldwell: Another one of my favorite moments is when Winnie's parents say, "Sorry we didn't let you heal." It's been said that this generation of creatives are trying to heal generational trauma through movies and TV shows. And I definitely cried a little at the scene when Winnie says, "You matter."
Michael Kennedy: To Bernie.
Kayla Caldwell: Yeah, that's such a good scene. How do you approach emotional moments like that within a slasher?
Michael Kennedy: Making Freaky with Chris Landon, I learned about a million things, but one of the biggest things I learned from him is that emotion drives everything, even if it's a body-swapping horror comedy or Christmas horror comedy. But I also just pulled from my life, I, as a closeted queer kid who was bullied and didn't feel worthy, had my moments of thinking I didn't matter, and looking back on it, and wishing someone told me I did. And so it was really important to me, and it's baked into It's a Wonderful Life. It's a Wonderful Life is a really dark movie.
It's a suicidal main character, really, the whole movie. And people forget that, and I really wanted to honor that, but do it in kind of a modern way through queer characters, and through somebody learning just that they're worthy of love, they're worthy of attention, they're worthy of just being seen, even if it's for a second. And so for me, that was a big part of the movie. Their relationship drove the last 45 pages of my script.
And I always talk about how I secretly embed, for me anyway, I secretly tell this story that you think is Winnie's, but it's really ultimately Bernie's at the end of the day, which I think is super fun and different and just give it a different light. But I also think it's just oftentimes the emotion is ignored in these movies. It's like someone dies, and then the person forgets about it five minutes later, because trying to survive, but at the same time, it's like, let's acknowledge everything.
Tyler MacIntyre: Part of what I really liked about the first draft when I read it was the fact that the first 15 minutes of this movie are kind of the last 15 minutes of a lot of slashers. You know what I mean? She kills the killer, and then wins the day. But you don't just walk out of that and you're like, "Oh man, my best friends were killed, but hey, high five." They're not really happy endings. And so it was overcoming the trauma of that is the happy ending. You're going to be horribly rattled, and I like that this, we get to that point in 15 minutes, and then you have this time where they're just unable to deal with that.
And the arc of the movie is about trying to see and be supportive of other people working through trauma. And it's about survivor's guilt, and it's about these sort of things and being there for each other. That's the triumph, and even though it's in a slasher wrapper, I think Michael was able to do some really smart things structurally that allowed us to get into those areas that you don't normally see.
Michael Kennedy: It was also fun to play with the toxic positivity of Hallmark films. The toxic positivity goes so far as to ignore their pain.
Tyler MacIntyre: Somewhat conflict-free world -
Michael Kennedy: Creates all this conflict. It's crazy.
Tyler MacIntyre: Yeah. I just love that idea that the small town guy who has the huckster real estate, the Hallmark villain, just goes nuts and kills a bunch of people because he can't build his mall.
Kayla Caldwell: Another thing I loved, because I am a huge Scream fan, was a lot of the references, the aunt's name being Gail Prescott. And one of the scenes that I thought was really fun was when they have to step over the Angel, assuming that was inspired by the police car scene in Scream 2, which is one of my favorite scenes from that.
Michael Kennedy: 100%. It's one of my favorite scenes in Scream 2. In fact, during a post when Tyler was putting together edits of the movie and stuff, I actually asked him at one point to put the music from that scene over the staircase sequence. We had temp music, and I was like, can you use this for the temp music? And it was fun to see.
Kayla Caldwell: Are there other Easter eggs or from Scream or any other inspirations?
Michael Kennedy: The biggest one for me that I want people to notice is the pink tracksuit is a play on the Easter Bunny.
Kayla Caldwell: He's a pink nightmare! Yes, I have it in my notes. I love that.
Michael Kennedy: So yeah, that for me is the biggest in your face Easter egg that, funnily enough, a lot of people haven't caught on to.
Tyler MacIntyre: There's a lot of little ones. There's a couple of nods to It's a Wonderful Life itself, or even things like The Bell's of St. Mary's is on the marquee at a certain point, and that's on the marquee in at the movie theater in It's a Wonderful Life. And even little things, Bernie works at the theater, and there's a number of Christmas classics listed there as movies that they're going to show, and our set deck put in a little joke called "I Know You Did Last Christmas." We're just shooting that and we're like, man, let's make that movie next. How has that not happened before?
Kayla Caldwell: There would definitely be an audience for it. I mean, I'm wearing a nineties slasher T-shirt right now.
Tyler MacIntyre: Yeah, totally. And even casting Katharine Isabelle was something that we talked about a lot, but obviously Ginger Snaps is a huge influence on me and a lot of movies I made.
Kayla Caldwell: Michael, you've been posting some of the kind of insults, and my favorite one that I saw was the one calling it anti-suicide propaganda. Like that's a bad thing to have?
Tyler MacIntyre: Yeah. Yeah. Like we were supposed to be pro suicide?
Michael Kennedy: I think I figured out what they're meaning though. They said gay anti-suicide propaganda. So I think they want gay people to kill themselves.
Kayla Caldwell: Oh, specifically
Tyler MacIntyre: That's cheery. That's a Christmas message.
Kayla Caldwell: Well, I mean then they definitely hate this movie because I loved how it's so queer.
Michael Kennedy: Well, it's like a sense of pride for me, these one-star gay-bashing reviews, because I know we did something right then.
Kayla Caldwell: Yes, exactly. If people are that mad about it.
Michael Kennedy: Also, f**k you, dude. The movie's not for you. Get the fuck off my lawn. That's kind of how I feel.
I don't think it's really a message-y movie, to be honest with you. I think it's a sweet, cute movie, but I think once you just do little things with emotion, they become bigger. They become bigger than the movie itself. I really think Jess McLeod especially really embodies Bernie in so many ways, and they brought so much to the role that this kind of goofy weirdo, what she's called in the movie, they played her with such emotional depth that you can't write.
Kayla Caldwell: They just really nailed it.
Michael Kennedy: Yeah, they get a lot of applause in the movie when we've seen it with crowds. When Bernie punches Mr. Waters, that gets applause. I mean, were you at Beyond Fest?
Kayla Caldwell: I was, yeah.
Michael Kennedy: The people clapped there. At Toronto after Dark, 600 people in a theater went f**king nuts when she punched him.
Kayla Caldwell: You think it's going to be Winnie, but it's like, this has been building up in Bernie.
Michael Kennedy: Yeah, it's a really cool off-camera into camera move, too. It's really, really smartly set up by Tyler.
Kayla Caldwell: I watched that scene a couple times. It happens so fast, but it's just so satisfying.
Michael Kennedy: So satisfying. And I love Justin's reaction too, I have to say...
Tyler MacIntyre: He's been punched in the face a lot.
Michael Kennedy: I'm really proud that I actually wrote the line, "Keep your hands off me. This is Cashmere."
Kayla Caldwell: I wrote that quote down!
Michael Kennedy: Yeah. It's so funny because, it's like, what a vain asshole.
Tyler MacIntyre: And it seems so spontaneous that it seems like it's a riff. It's so good that he was just like, no, no, I'm going to say this line.
Michael Kennedy: Yeah. And it was super funny too, because he didn't do it every take. So he would change the line, and he didn't do that line as scripted until the fourth or fifth take, so it felt very improv-ed. Really cool.
Kayla Caldwell: Michael, you've got twists on Freaky Friday and It's a Wonderful Life under your belt. Do you have another genre mashup in mind?
Michael Kennedy: Not a specific movie, but I am working with Chris Landon on a horror movie that kind of plays in the rom-com.
Kayla Caldwell: Tyler, Any plans to revisit Tragedy Girls?
Tyler MacIntyre: Oh yeah. I mean, I'd definitely be open to doing a sequel. I mean, it's not really up to me, but...
Michael Kennedy: I feel like that fan base just grows and grows and grows and grows and grows.
Tyler MacIntyre: Yeah. Yeah. They're pretty hardcore. But I'd love to, I love making scary, funny movies, and obviously I know I would love to work with Brianna [Hildebrand] and Alex [Shipp] again.
Kayla Caldwell: Oh, they're so great. Their chemistry was amazing, just like the two leads in this movie.
Tyler MacIntyre: Yeah. Really. I mean, once you figure out that core group, as long as their relationship works, you can mess up a lot of other things in it. It is fun to kind of, like, that's my favorite part is trying to find that duo.
It's a Wonderful Knife hits theaters November 10th, 2023, and Shudder at a later date.
