The Serpent’s Skin

It’s been a whirlwind year for Alice Maio Mackay. Her latest film, The Serpent’s Skin, has been a darling at festivals from London to Montreal, and her next one—her seventh before the age of twenty-two—is already in the can. This one’s a supernatural romance about two queer women, Anna (Alexandra McVicker), innocent and extremely new-in-town, and Jen (filmmaker Avalon Fast), a mysterious goth tattoo artist, who discover they share magical powers and have to fight a demon that’s possessing Danny (Jordan Dulieu), the dreamy alt-boy-next-door who Anna’s recently friend-zoned. 
With this sweet, sharply witty romp, the twenty-one-year-old Australian filmmaker, both prolific on her own terms and a frequent, enthusiastic collaborator with other creative giants of the current queer indie genre scene, from Fast (a Canadian lo-fi maverick), to filmmaker and editor Vera Drew (who cut The Serpent’s Skin), to Castration Movie director Louise Weard (Alice acts in those durational films as well), to Fucktoys auteur Annapurna Sriram (who herself acts in Mackay’s next project), is bringing her distinctive DIY vision to a wider audience than ever.
A few days after the film’s American premiere at the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn, Maio Mackay sat down at a tiki bar with Filmmaker to talk about her inspirations and obsessions. 
Filmmaker: How’s New York treating you? Are you having fun taking The Serpent’s Skin around? 
Maio Mackay: It’s exciting! This has been the biggest festival run of my career, and it’s playing to the biggest number of cinemas I’ve had, which is really surreal. I’ve been in New York for two days now—we opened Friday. I love New York, especially Broadway… I’ve already seen two shows. I saw Dog Day Afternoon in previews, and then I saw [CATS: The Jellicle Ball] today. 
Filmmaker: How was Cats? 
Maio Mackay: It was good! I usually hate Cats. I love Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I hate Cats.

Filmmaker: Okay, why do you love Andrew Lloyd Webber but hate Cats? 
Maio Mackay: I think, like, the plot—
Filmmaker: [Laughing] the plot of Cats?
Maio Mackay: [Also laughing] Fair enough, there is no plot of Cats.  
Filmmaker: I mean, it’s about an anthropomorphic death cult, I guess? 
Maio Mackay: In the new one, though, they’re not even actually cats. They’re just people in ballroom houses. There’s maybe, like, one tail, but it’s a joke. Sorry to disappoint you.
Filmmaker: Can you talk to me about your relationship to theater in general? 

Maio Mackay: In  a way, I’d rather like to do theater. I always liked it more than film. Sorry…
Filmmaker: Why is that? 
Maio Mackay: Well, I was a theater kid, and I went to music school. It’s always been a passion of mine.
Filmmaker: Music School for theater? 
Maio Mackay: For the bassoon. 
Filmmaker: You went to school for the bassoon?
Maio Mackay: It was, like, my specialized area. 

Filmmaker: That’s amazing. Do you still play it?
Maio Mackay: Unfortunately, no. I play other instruments now: Piano, guitar. I also danced competitively from ages eight to fourteen. Ballet, tap, contemporary. 
Filmmaker: With all of your movies, but with The Serpent’s Skin, in particular, you really get a sense of your strong relationship with music. How do you build that passion into your stories? 
Maio Mackay: I’m really big into incorporating music in the way I write. I love Madonna, I have, like, a giant Madonna tattoo…I’m trying to think of  what I listen to…like Kylie Minogue? I don’t know, just classic gay music. But I listen to music a lot when I’m coming up with an idea. It’s a big thing: Character playlists, specific temp music when I’m editing. It’s always at the forefront of my mind. 
Filmmaker: When you were writing The Serpent’s Skin, were you inspired by a particular song or a genre? 
Maio Mackay: I was really inspired by Meatloaf for this one! Just the vibe of all three volumes of “Bat Out of Hell.” That I listened to a lot.  
Filmmaker: In terms of inspiration, how do we get from Meatloaf to Charmed?

Maio Mackay: I think just the operatic nature of both. Meatloaf’s love is, like, greater than anything…The world of Greg Araki was obviously super big too. 
Filmmaker: I’d love to hear more about what your process was like developing this story. 
Maio Mackay: I write stuff in narrative format first, then take it to a screenplay with my usual co-writer [Benjamin Pahl Robinson]. 
Filmmaker: So there’s essentially a novel version that exists of all of your films? That’s so cool. Do you write fiction as well? 
Maio Mackay: Oh yeah. Before film was my thing. I just wanted to be a good writer. A novelist. 
Filmmaker: Do you think you’d ever write a novel? 
Maio Mackay: Yes! 

Filmmaker: In terms of other formats, this story is heavily inspired by 1990s teen witch media, mostly TV, right? What was your relationship to this kind of narrative growing up? 
Maio Mackay: I was really young when I discovered Buffy. I think I saw the movie first, and then I rented the show from the library. Same with Charmed. I just discovered that because the library had a really good TV section. It was those and 90210, and Dynasty, a bunch of random TV shows. They were a lot of my escapism as a child. And then the supernatural was important too—Twilight was really big, I think I remember reading it in grade four or something, and same with Beautiful Creatures and The Mortal Instruments—it was the boom for that genre. So, it feels full circle to write something in that vibe. 
Filmmaker: When you watch a show like Buffy now, are there things that you were actively trying to improve upon? What was your thought process updating this kind of story? 
Maio Mackay: I think it was vibes based. I mean, obviously Joss Whedon did Buffy, so…There are things that don’t feel right despite having really cool characters. I’m just taking the queerness of it but making it more text than subtext. I mean obviously, there’s Willow and stuff, but it’s not really that much of a thing in that show.  
Filmmaker: In terms of the film’s queerness, talk to me about the love triangle here. How did this dynamic come to be? What character came first?
Maio Mackay: I think Anna came first, then Jen, and Danny was the last piece. But I wanted to do something different in terms of the villain of this film, because a lot of my films are super political. Not like this film isn’t political, but the kinds of male villains in my other films are very bigoted, which is something I wanted to explore before, but I felt done with that chapter in my writing. So here I wanted to bring back the 2000s white boy who’s super progressive but also kind of embodies toxic masculinity. 
Filmmaker: There’s such a resurgence of interest in the Y2K, early aughts era right now—particularly its relationship to television––that’s coming up a lot in the queer film world. Do you feel that this film is in conversation with things like, for example, I Saw the TV Glow on those terms? Why do you think that particular medium is appealing to people so specifically right now? 

Maio Mackay:  I don’t think it’s necessarily in conversation, but it’s nice having both being inspired by the same things, while still being two completely different films tonally. I think there’s just something really nostalgic about those shows, and it was important to a lot of queer people and people who didn’t really fit into the norm…
Filmmaker: What’s your relationship to nostalgia? What do you think its function is?
Maio Mackay: Oooh, I feel like…I don’t know, it can be both good and bad. I guess there are a lot of things that throw back to other things at the moment which isn’t always ideal. But for me, I really wanted to take the feelings I had of watching those shows and make something through that lens rather than just being nostalgic.
Filmmaker: What scenes did you enjoy filming the most?
Maio Mackay: I loved the conversations between the two main characters, especially the last scene on the rooftop. I like those scenes best because they feel very theatrical to me. I liked the way we rehearsed them like a play and then shot. They feel very dramatic, like a call back to my theater era.
Filmmaker: During press for this movie, are there elements that you feel you haven’t had the chance to talk about as much?
Maio Mackay: Meatloaf! We even show Bat Out of Hell briefly in the film. My mom was a big fan, and I listened to him a lot as a kid. I’ve just stayed obsessed! I’m more so a fan than she is now…