The Big Picture

Evan Dickson co-wrote the V/H/S/85 wraparound segment, “Total Copy,” with director David Bruckner. You can watch it right now on Shudder. The piece follows a group of scientists trying to teach an alien humankind’s ways by showing it VHS tapes. In this spoiler-heavy interview, Dickson revisits his experience developing Rory and reveals more about its origin and intentions.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for V/H/S/85.]

Itching to know everything about Rory from V/H/S/85’s “Total Copy” segment? You’ve come to the right place because so was I, and I got the chance to ask a bunch of burning questions to Evan Dickson who co-wrote the script with director David Bruckner.

“Total Copy” is the V/H/S/85 wraparound component, the short we cut to between Gigi Saul Guerrero’s “God of Death,” Natasha Kermani’s “TKNOGD,” Scott Derrickson’s “Dreamkill,” and Mike P. Nelson’s “No Wake/Ambrosia.”

It’s formatted like a taped-over documentary show. This particular episode focuses on Rory, a being of unknown origins found alone and afraid on a butte who’s brought to a local university where Dr. Spratling (Jordan Belfi) and his team conduct experiments on it. In an effort to establish communication, Spratling and co. show Rory as much of humankind’s culture as possible via VHS tapes. The experiment is uneventful at first, but then Rory does something that sparks concern — Rory transforms into one of the scientists, a scientist it never had any contact with. This sends Dr. Sarah Greyson (Kelli Garner) running, but none of the others.

When Rory enters an unresponsive state, Spratling insists on administering an adrenaline shot. Just before they can do so, Rory retaliates, revealing its tentacles, or “feelers,” and killing each scientist one by one in a bloody massacre.

Image via Shudder

What exactly is Rory, what does it want, and what does this event mean for the rest of the world? Dickson and Bruckner didn’t hash out all the details, but Dickson was willing to share what they do know, beginning with where Rory came from. “Definitely not of this world.” There was a point in time when the script revealed that Rory came from a comet called Cascadia, which itself broke off from Halley’s Comet. There was even talk of incorporating the idea that Rory could become too powerful when Halley’s Comet returned the next year, in 1986. Is that material canon now that it isn’t included in the final film? Dickson said, “I don’t know if that is still canon. To me it is, I suppose.”

As for what exactly Rory is, Bruckner and Dickson didn’t settle on a particular species name, but they did zero in on locusts while developing it. “There was a lot of talk of locusts and what things Rory could sort of be related to just anthropologically, like species and genus-wise.”

While one of Rory’s most defining physical features is its feelers, there was a point when Dickson and Bruckner gave it a different look. “For a long time Rory wasn’t tentacle-y at all. He was much more of a more realistic shapeshifter.” Why veer towards tentacles instead? They did so to make Rory feel more cosmic and, therefore, better align with the material the other V/H/S/85 shorts are exploring. Dickson added, “All of V/H/S/85 sort of seems to be asking questions about creators and gods and stuff, so we figured we would push in that direction.”

Image via Shudder

While pushing in that particular direction, certain details from earlier script drafts fell by the wayside. “The original draft has quite a lot of actual, like the tests that they’re doing, what they’re doing to him, all that stuff. His biology is more present, I’d say.” Dickson also noted that the choice to create Rory practically on set demanded a few changes as well:

“I think there were some design things that we wound up having out of necessity because Rory is all practical. One of the reasons he won’t get off that couch is he’s not super physically able to, right? I think there’s something stuffed between the couch cushion. There’s a base to Rory that the scientists are kind of hiding from you that is always sort of more alien, I guess. I’m excited to see the fan art for Rory if there is any because maybe it will tell me more about his biology than I already know. [Laughs]”

While we don’t know Rory’s origins in the galaxy, we do know that before it made its way to Dr. Spratling, it was found “by a local boy alone and afraid” on top of a butte. How might have that encounter played out? “I would have loved to have written that scene.” Dickson went on to note that the moment likely would have captured the wonder towards extraterrestrials that was especially strong in the ’80. But, while Rory may have been “pretty cute” at first glance, there’s no forgetting what it’s capable of. Dickson continued, “Rory’s pretty manipulative, so I picture him sort of shivering and beckoning with his little boy eyes, and, you know, just, ‘Please help me.’”

Image via Shudder

While Dickson doesn’t know precisely where Rory came from, he does have great clarity on what Rory represents. “If you just think about the idea of something that you keep feeding information about yourself and your society to as a training thing, and then it ends up controlling you, it’s a one-to-one for AI, which was definitely on our mind the whole time. Rory is AI.” Just like Dr. Spratling does with Rory, Dickson sees many in the real world heedlessly forging forward with AI in the name of progress.

“You can be labeled a Luddite for wanting to question AI, but the reality is, at least as far as I’m concerned and I think David is concerned, is that you have all these people that are very, very cavalier with the ultimate impact of this. Elon Musk is starting his own AI thing, [Sam Altman] who’s in charge of ChatGPT, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, it’s fine. We’re gonna be responsible.’ But it’s like five dudes who are really in charge of it and they’re all appropriating everybody’s information. But just the idea that it’s barreling ahead because it’s progress and we’ve all shrugged our shoulders, and I think we’re coming up short on regulation because no one wants to be Lars Ulrich in 2000, the anti-Napster guy, but I feel like this is different. I don’t wanna be 80 and a slave to a robot one day.”

When considering Rory’s goals and motivations, Dickson even referenced the “Paperclip Maximiser,” which purports that if you tell a machine to achieve a goal, it will do so at all costs, even at humankind’s expense. Dickson further explained:

“One of the things we kept talking about is the Paperclip Maximiser, which is this AI theory that essentially suggests that no matter how benevolent you are or innocuous or mild, your interference with these things will always end poorly. I mean, there’s the line in there about how we always treat other intelligent life horribly, and we should expect to be treated horribly at the hands of other intelligent life just because that seems the default when you’re confronted with things you don’t know, I suppose.”

Image via Shudder

That’s certainly the case for Rory and Dr. Spratling’s team. At the end of the film, Rory is doing exactly what they wanted — responding to the material the scientists showed it. The only problem? Rory opts to recreate the aerobics video with their dead bodies.

It’s a spot-on ending for the piece, but Dickson did take a moment to reveal the two other endings they considered:

“One of them was a Pledge of Allegiance to Ronald Reagan, which is obviously very ‘85 and very dark, but I think that’s harder to make read, probably, and the movie itself is so dark. Scott’s is so dark, everything is so dark, that I kind of felt like, “Okay, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of a joke.” I feel like “Total Copy” owes as much to Succession as it does to anything else in a weird way. Obviously it’s much shorter, but after the strike, I got to see all the outtakes and all the stuff, and there’s just so much stuff that reminds me of an ‘80s version of that show or a hybrid between that and Christopher Guest. So tonally I don’t think the Reagan thing would have landed as well. Oh! You know? It was jumping jacks, so it was another aerobics move, the other ending. But I think there’s just something about the suggestiveness of the pelvic thrust that made it work.”

What about what happens to Rory after its aerobics session? Does it break out of the lab and wreak havoc on the world? Here’s Dickson’s take:

“Yeah, I think that Rory got out. In the original draft, you would kind of know what happened because everyone in that lab dies. Rory has his aerobics moment, but someone gets in there. That tape got out. So I think that one of the things that got taped over in that episode of ‘Total Copy’ is the idea that this is probably something we’re dealing with right now.”

Looking for even more Rory talk? Check out my chat with David Bruckner from Fantastic Fest 2023 in the video interview below: