Pixie is a unique film by any stretch of the imagination, combining road trips and heists with the telltale tropes of gangster films and Western classics. While much of its charm is due to lead actress Olivia Cooke's (from the upcoming House of the Dragon) captivating performance, it's also made possible thanks to strong writing and directing.
Father-son duo Barnaby and Preston Thompson found inspiration in the Irish countryside, and from there wove a fascinating and absurdist tale of love, friendship and violence. When Pixie (Cooke) seek vengeance for her mother's death, she ropes two unwitting best friends named Harland and Frank (Daryl McCormack and Ben Hardy respectively) into the ride of their lives.
Director Barnaby Thompson spoke to Screen Rant about collaborating with his son, telling stories centered on strong women, and casting actors who embodied the quirky elements of the film.
You have produced many films I loved, starting with Spice World all the way to St. Trinian's. It seems you are drawn to stories about quirky, offbeat women revolutionizing a man's world. Can you talk about how you approach female characters?
Barnaby Thompson: Sure. It's one of those things that, when you make films, you don't think about it much as you go from film to film. But then you look back and you realize, "I've made lots of films about strong women." I think it's a couple of things.
First of all, there aren't that many films made about strong women. So, you already have an advantage, because it's already original. There have been tons of male stories, and maybe because I have a strong mother and wife and daughter, I just think that they're great stories to be told. There's something about the female journey that is so different from the male journey, and I'm curious about investigating it.
Pixie is a family affair. What is the collaboration process like with your son?
Barnaby Thompson: One of the great gifts is to be working with your child, in a way. I produced a film that he wrote and actually acted in called Kids In Love a few years ago; a low-budget movie that he'd written with a friend of his, Will Porter.
What happened was, I spent my early career making documentaries, and I made several in the west of Ireland. The two of us had 10 days to kill, so we went on a road trip down the west coast of Ireland. We didn't talk about specific movie ideas or anything like that, but I think he was looking for a backdrop to write a gangster movie. That trip gave him the inspiration, and so he went away and wrote the script.
I'd been looking for something to direct after St. Trinian's, but I hadn't really found anything. I wanted something that was funny but was also a thriller, where you could really do something that was stylish. I read his script and found myself going, "Oh, wait a minute, I want to direct this."
We had great, great fun doing it. Sometimes there are moments where the line between filial and professional relationships gets blurred, but we both know that we've got each other's backs. And I think we were able to be franker with each other quicker and easier than a normal writer-director relationship.
There's such a fine line in the film itself between the hilarious and the traumatizing. How do you balance that tone as the director, and is there advice you had for the actors when playing certain scenes?
Barnaby Thompson: I think on the whole, what we tried to do was play everything straight and hope that the comedy comes out of the real situation. What's great about Ireland, I think, is that it has this kind of mythic, larger than life quality and a lot of the characters you meet there are larger than life.
In a way, the film is this road trip between these three normal people, for lack of a better word, being thrown into these encounters with these very unusual people whose characters are big, so they behave in big ways. Hopefully, what happens is that you can enjoy the comedy but still feel tense and worry for their lives. It's a very delicate balance, and I think it's one that we hopefully pull off.
Sometimes there are moments where you go, "Oh, we could go really big here and it could get really goofy," but you have to pull back. I think Olivia and Daryl and Ben, who are obviously our main three, were very keen and eager. Olivia and Ben worked very hard on their accents, and the three of them really worked hard on being those characters, and I think that gave it the central grounding. And Olivia - it's her movie. I mean, she's so fantastic. She took to that character and that world. That part fits her like a glove, so I think a lot of it stems from her.
I was going to ask about Olivia’s spectacular performance. How did you cast her, and what quality did you first see in her that made her right for the part?
Barnaby Thompson: I was very familiar with her work from things like Thoroughbreds, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Bates Motel. To be honest, I thought she was an American actress. I was amazed when I heard that she was from Manchester, and she has a proper Manchester accent when you meet her.
She has that charisma. But the thing that she had that really makes her special is that she's able to behave quite badly, but you maintain your empathy for her. That was the key challenge with the character of Pixie: there's nothing cute about her; she is quite determined to get her way from beginning to end, and she will do whatever she needs to in order to get to the next place. She's up against some pretty vicious, nasty people, but Olivia just seems to make that easy somehow.
I really love seeing Pixie with her stepdad Dermot. Could you talk a little bit about that back-and-forth they have and how he influences her to step up and overcome the obstacles?
Barnaby Thompson: The heart of this film is really a family drama, which is that Pixie and her mother were taken under the wing of Colm Meaney's character, and this really pissed off her elder stepbrother. There's a whole family drama there, but the movie's very fast-moving so in a very short space of time, we had to make this strong connection between Pixie and her stepdad.
Colm and Olivia didn't have any time together before we were on set, just because of scheduling and all that sort of stuff. It just incredible when you watch actors, and they've got this radar for what they have to do and what they need from each other, even if they've literally just met. The two of them found it, and to me, that's the heart of the film. Because you really believe that she loves her dad and he loves her, and he understands that he's got to support her on her journey.
Colm carries the menace. He's been in all those movies where he's a gangster, and he carries menace so lightly that you don't have to spend any time establishing him as that guy. You can take that as read, and that was what made it all possible.
Frank and Harland also have a very special relationship, not only to each other, but also to Pixie. How do you explore all facets of that dynamic, because they seem like they're literally ride or die for each other and yet highly competitive at the same time?
Barnaby Thompson: I think that these two guys have obviously grown up together in this small town in Ireland, and the landscape behind them may be large but the landscape of their life is tiny. Pixie has always clearly represented this kind of freedom; she's the one in the town who's always been "other." They think they might get lucky, and the sweet thing about their story is they stumble into this thing together.
Frank, who is the ultimate small town guy who's talking big and making out like he's the man talks his friend Harland into going on this mad ride, but the mad ride really is how all the time they're vying with each other to get Pixie's attention.
Preston has a very good friend; they grew up together, not in a small town in Ireland, but in London. But it's very much, I think, based on their relationship. It's incredibly close, but also incredibly competitive, which I think a lot of those relationships are.
In the present day, Pixie seems very cynical, but she gives a romantic backstory about her ex. How do you think she romance in general, and can she still be optimistic about the future?
Barnaby Thompson: Yeah, I think she was in love with her boyfriend, and he let her down by being weak. I think that, in a way, what she craves a more normal life. She's come to the realization that she has to get out of town in order to create that life for herself. She's really fighting for her own life against all these men who are telling her what to do and telling her how to behave, and I think that's hopefully a journey that any or all of us can identify with, particularly young women.
Pixie's desire to find out what happened to her mother is very central to her motivations, but it's a very winding road to get to it. How did you and Preston connect the dots of the who, what, when, where, why?
Barnaby Thompson: She has a plan, and the plan goes wrong quite early on. Then after that, she's making it up she goes along, you know. In a way, it becomes kind of a shaggy dog story, and hopefully there are lots of twists along the way. And so just as you think you know what's going to happen, something else happens.
The joy for us was really coming up with the twists and turns of the journey. I mean, Preston came up with them in the script. But that was one of the things that I loved, how right up until the last moment, you're surprised by what happens.
What project are you tackling next?
Barnaby Thompson: I'm working with Preston, on a thriller, which is a Hitchcockian thriller set in the south of France. Again, with a female lead. So hopefully, we're gonna make that later on this year.
Pixie is now playing in select theaters, on digital and on demand.