ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you decide you wanted to make an album inspired by movies?
ANGELO DE AUGUSTINE:It was kind of an accident, to be honest.
We were initially just trying to focus on the collaboration.
Credit: Daniel Anum Jasper
It can take you to somewhere you might not have gone before.
SUFJAN STEVENS:A little bit.
[Laughs] You had recorded it, and I was like, “Oh!
This is aboutHellraiser III!”
But then once we saw what was happening, we embraced it.
We’re just using the films as catalysts.
So did you pack a bunch of DVDs, or were you scrolling through Netflix?
STEVENS:Yeah, it’s all streaming.
Or John at [record label] Asthmatic Kitty would give us pirated [versions].
We would ask him, “Can you find this movie?”
and he would send us a link.
I don’t even know if it had internet connection at that point.
DE AUGUSTINE:I don’t think so.
STEVENS:If it did, it was old.
I love the mix of stuff you watched.
Like, I had never seenBring It On Again.
STEVENS:It was kind of all over the place.
I’m like, “Oh no, what if they don’t like it!
This movie means so much to me!”
Did you have that experience?
STEVENS:[Laughs] Yeah, there’s always that chance.
I was introducing a lot of horror films just because I’m a huge fan.
Horror is kind of a love or hate genre.
I think a lot of people don’t have the stomach for it.
And Angelo, I don’t know if you had watched a lot of horror films.
DE AUGUSTINE:No, not really.
I grew an appreciation for it.
STEVENS:I was definitely risking my reputation by suggesting all these outlandish horror films.
I think it allowed for us to think more imaginatively in terms of lyric writing.
[Laughs] They create their own extremes, and those fantasy elements really inspired us.
I do love how much horror and sci-fi and fantasy is on your list of films.
What was it about those genres that you found particularly inspirational?
STEVENS:Probably on a basic level, escapism.
Working all day, trying to create material and write songs, is arduous and tedious.
It’s kind of mundane.
I don’t know.
Maybe I’m reading [too much] into it.
What do you think, Angelo?
DE AUGUSTINE:No, that makes sense to me.
For me, I think it reveals a lot about human nature in conflict.
I’m always curious about how these traumatic events create change in the characters.
STEVENS:Angelo, you mostly wrote that one.
[Laughs]
STEVENS:[Laughs] That’s right, you just read the Wikipedia synopsis!
STEVENS:Did you even watch that film?
DE AUGUSTINE:I watched it with you!
And then we finished [the song].
STEVENS:Oh, that’s right.
I mean, that song was our personal pep rally to help us get through that project.
That’s kind of how it served us.
There’s not much you might really say about that film that’s that deep.
For each of you, was there something you feel like you learned from working with the other person?
DE AUGUSTINE:I learned a lot of things.
So just being able to be open when you’re in a collaborative setting is really helpful.
I think when you write songs, you need an element of vulnerability.
Without that, it’s difficult to make anything that feels real or true.
STEVENS:Yeah, and I think just seeing how someone else works is affirming in some ways.
Also, we were writing all this stuff and recording it together, without anybody else.
We engineered and recorded the whole thing.
So, we had to cultivate a real trust and respect because writing music is actually really boring.
DE AUGUSTINE:I don’t think we put a lot of pressure on it, so that helped.
STEVENS:Yeah, like, what if we didn’t like each other?
That would’ve sucked.
[Laughs]
DE AUGUSTINE:Exactly!
You never know with these kinds of things!
STEVENS:We didn’t really know each other that well before this.
We had a few interactions, but we weren’t really close friends before working on this project.
But now we are!
Were there any other movies you watched and considered writing about but didn’t make the final cut?
STEVENS:We watchedThe Evil Dead.That didn’t make it.
But we realized we had too many horror films.
But we kind of just decided to embrace the more popular Hollywood films.
Most of them are from the ’80s or ’90s.
It sounds like you both gravitated toward things you loved growing up.
I think that’s probably not an accident.
In some ways, this project is looking back and almost reevaluating this material.
I like that idea of breaking down those themes and thinking about them more holistically.
STEVENS:That was our intention.
It’s almost a stretch to say that these songs are about these films at all.
In fact, we considered at one point not even mentioning that.
What was your most memorable day while recording?
STEVENS:Oh Angelo, you have to tell her about the fax machine.
DE AUGUSTINE:That’s a good story.
STEVENS:We started working on this project in New York City.
So, we started working on this project there.
It was like remnants of broken glass on the floor.
[Laughs] We were like, “We have to get out of here.”
STEVENS:So we packed everything up and went upstate to my friend’s house in the woods.
[Laughs]
DE AUGUSTINE:There was also the time that we ran out of gas.
That’s another good story.
So we had to go walk.
[Laughs] But oh god, the pigeon.
DE AUGUSTINE:The worst.
STEVENS:We used to call midtown “the Hellhole.”
Like, oh no, we have to get up and commute to the Hellhole.
I think that’s kind of why we started watchingHellraiserandEvil Dead.
[Laughs]
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