Black Eyed Susan was a stand-out hit at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest this year. In the film, the down-on-his-luck Derek (Damian Maffei) is coerced into product testing Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker), a life-like sex doll meant to be able to take a beating and bleed and bruise like a real person. Susan’s complex AI leads to conflicted feelings from Derek. The audience at the fest was open to the challenge of Black Eyed Susan’s taboo and transgressive subject matter. To gain a little more insight into the film, I talked with writer and director Scooter McCrae and lead actor Yvonne Emilie Thälker.

[Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

An Interview with Scooter McCrae and Yvonne Emilie Thälker

Horror Press: Where did the inspiration for the film come from?

Scooter McCrae: It came from the deepest darkest recesses of my usually very sunny, open, and fun mind. There was no inciting incident that led to the screenplay being written. I was very much thinking about being a guy, and getting older, and thinking “Everything’s been really good” but even with that there’s certain things that we think about that tend to just go dark. I find that a great place to play. It helps give the lighter moments their weight.

HP: Chuck Palahniuk’s short story Exodus has similar themes and mentions “turning people into objects and objects into people. How does that idea apply to Black Eyed Susan?

Yvonne Emilie Thälker: We’re asking ourselves the question of “what is a person?”, and that goes back to Frankenstein. That’s one of the wonderful things I love about sci-fi movies and, to an extent, horror movies. Black Eyed Susan is a mash up. It is kind of asking a lot of those same questions: Is how you treat objects a reflection of how you treat people? How do we treat an AI that mimics a human, and how does it reflect on us? We write sci-fi and horror to examine our fears around humanity.

SM: To Yvonne’s point, really good science fiction is about sociology. It’s not about the technology itself. You know, that’s a bit of, as I like to say it’s the cheese and the mouse trap.

We live in a world where corporations are people, and real people don’t even get the same respect or tax breaks that fucking corporations get. There’s just so much inequality between objects and people. And sometimes I think objects get the better deal and people get the raw deal, and sometimes it works the other way around as well. But in science fiction especially, there’s going to be a point at which people and technology are just simply going to meet, and there’s going to be some kind of sociological showdown trying to figure out who gets what rights and who gets to say what, and which one has more validity.

HP: Yvonne, What was it like to play a role that is highly gendered and objectified as a nonbinary person?

YET: It’s probably impossible to put all of my ideas about my own gender and the role into a succinct couple of words, because I think aspects of my gender can be very fluid. They can also be kind of agnostic- I’ve got other things to worry about. Every nonbinary person is different. As a model too, there are times where being in a very feminine dress or role for the camera feels like drag. It feels like a thing I’m putting on, but it’s not a full reflection of who I am. But that’s what acting is.

I really like the ability to shape shift. That’s one thing that people would sometimes tell me as a model throughout the years. To me, that’s a big compliment. I like the ability to be chameleon-like and look one way in one shot and then very different in another.

So I really relish the opportunity to play roles that are very much not me, even if there probably is a twinge of feeling slightly uncomfortable being in this kind of very specific, objectified feminine space. I’d love the opportunity to play other types of characters and other types of genders that I’m not.

HP: It’s also empowering to see another nonbinary person in a lead role!

YET: That’s so wonderful to hear! That is the main reason why I decided to be assertive about my pronouns and my identity early on. I think it is important to be myself and an example for others. Seeing yourself represented is so important and can help people not just to come into their own, but also let them know that they belong in this world.

SM: I like what you’re saying too because the representation isn’t the point of the character or the story.

HP: I think a lot of times, people who might not know a trans person only think of us as our identity and don’t realize that we have full lives outside of that.

HP: What does it mean to have a sexual relationship with someone or something who can’t consent? Especially when they might not be a person, but look like one.

SM: That goes to like vibrators or dildos or fake pussies to an extent. Are they willing participants? You just don’t think of it that way. The fact that the doll in the movie has an AI, that’s what is causing confusion; the fact that it has the ability to give off the impression of having sentience. And with sentience comes the question of consent.

I’d like to think that the movie does talk about it. And the great thing about being a writer or a filmmaker is that I get to ask all the questions I want, and I reserve the opportunity to not have to ever answer them. That’s art. You don’t have to answer these questions, but raising them is what’s important.

YET: I would say for me, I actually feel like Susan consents. She’s designed to not only physically be able to take a beating, but to kind of want it. So there’s that issue of: she’s designed to consent. Is that really consent? It is possible to be in BDSM culture and to want to take a certain level of violence. You are consenting to it and you want it because it is cathartic for you in some way. But you know, the story of Susan, I think goes beyond that. For me, the sticky issue is more: how are you okay doing this to something so human like and not doing that to a real human?

HP: I’m wondering what that does to our conditioning. Also in terms of what we see about heterosexual relationships in the media and pornography.

YET: It does influence us when all the women are represented as young and small and beautiful and mostly white and able-bodied and it’s like, there’s no stretch marks, there’s no chipped nail polish. But then when some men encounter real women they’re like, “Oh my God, when this woman that I went on a date with took her makeup off, she’s got acne and under eye bags”. I think that’s a very specific kind of misogyny working there.

It leads to this type of paranoia with people thinking, “Is my body good enough? Is my skin clear enough? Am I fit enough? Am I strong enough?” I think a doll like Susan could be very harmful in terms of if men were routinely using these dolls and abusing them, and then, they try to have a relationship with a real person, and the real person is like, “Yes, I’m into BDSM, but we need to use these safe words and safe practices. I need to feel like I trust you.” Then it shatters the illusion. We’re seeing the beginning of that in the world of Black Eyed Susan, where it’s going to lead to these unhealthy expectations, and, in my opinion, lead to actual abuse of actual humans.

SM: Yeah, addressing the illusion is important. Understanding why something is an illusion is part of the fun of it. It doesn’t take away from the pleasure factor. If you’re doing it right, it adds a level of confidence. When you go to see a movie, you’re not going to say, “It’s all fake. Well, what a waste of my time.”

As someone who does like pornography, and quite a bit, I’ll bring up Sturgeon’s Law, which is that 95% of everything is shit. And this applies to pornography, probably more than anything else. You watch whatever you want, as long as you know that it is, of course, fake and that the people making it are professionals.

In fact, I used to shoot and edit porn, and what’s interesting here is that the people who were making them were basically friends. They all work locally in the industry, but when they would get together, it was a lot of fun. People got paid. They were shot quickly and low-budget, but people were actually having a great time. People were cumming. We’d shoot them in a day or two at most, and it was just the best possible representation of how good pornography can get made by people having a good time and wanting to make stuff that gets out there and promotes just having fun. The worst shoot I ever did, some people came in from LA for me to shoot in a hotel: absolutely the worst porn shoot I ever had to do in my entire life. They were just literally snorting coke, and just, it was just awful. It was the worst cliche. And I couldn’t even believe I was there. It was just like watching zombies engage in calisthenics.

Many thanks to Scooter McCree and Yvonne Emilie Thälker for talking the time to talk with us at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

You can preorder Black Eyed Susan via Vinegar Syndrome here!