Julio Torres is one of the great millennials. The Saturday evening live writer and Los Espookys co-creator, writer, and star is a soulful weirdo who lends his unique comedic voice to shows about queer horror nerds scaring people for fun and profit, and comedy specials where he talks at length about his favorite forms. His latest work is Problemistaa film that can best be described as his attempt at a fairy tale.
Torres wrote and directed Problemista, and he stars as Alejandro, a young immigrant who is sent back to El Salvador after losing his (strange) job at a clinic where rich people start freezing themselves for the future. His only lifeline is Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), a difficult art dealer whom he must convince to sponsor his work visa so he can pursue his (also strange) dream: making strange toys for Hasbro.
Torres recently sat down with Polygon via Zoom to talk about Problemista‘s autobiographical aspects, his interest in inanimate objects, and why people who use voice notes are just the worst.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Image: A24
Polygon: Alejandro’s interest in making unusual toys is similar to your stand-up work My favorite shapes. What attracts you to telling stories about inanimate objects?
Julio Torres: As a child, my first attempts as a storyteller involved casting toys and objects as my actors and making up little stories for them. That’s a practice I’ve continued. It will be a very fun, creative exercise. I think most people did that when they were kids, but most people grow out of it. And I just didn’t do that.
Do you think that’s important for your comedy or your work? Remind people of things they may have outgrown?
Maybe yes. Or like: ways of thinking. Children are very curious. Children ask a lot of questions. And as we get older, a shift takes place: as a child you ask a lot of questions. And then somewhere along the way we are told that asking a lot of questions is bad, or that being too curious is not good. It always pissed me off in middle school, when I went to high school, when the teacher said, “I’m going to explain it sometime, and you have to listen to it.”
Okay, some of us need to hear it more than once! (Laughs) For example, you don’t want to be that way wasting your breath explain something? I hated that. I was always, always, always encouraged by my parents to ask questions. My father is a very curious person. I think curiosity is the gateway to empathy. And that is a very important human quality.
Right, and in the context of Problemistathe antagonist is a kind of bureaucracy designed to stop all questions.
Right. You can’t ask questions about it.
Alejandro’s fight is not against any person or group. People or groups hostile to immigrants exist, but much of the terror is so mundane. You use this great image where every immigrant has an hourglass that he can’t see.
Image: A24
Yes, my path as I lived it: it faced systems that were faceless. You know, systems where people are hired to maintain those systems. When you talk from person to person, they don’t really connect or agree with the rules they enforce. So then it’s something like, What is this invisible thing we are fighting?
One of the film’s best jokes about this is the dream scenario in which a bank employee shouts, “I support Bank of America!” through tears, because she cannot help someone, she can only enforce the bureaucracy.
So that’s my friend River (L. Ramirez) playing that woman. River is an absolute genius. But what I like about River’s performance is that there is real humanity in it. You see someone who – you know, we gave her a name: Estefani. She’s wearing her little badge. And it’s like this woman has to pay her bills. This woman has a job at Bank of America. And this woman has a family that has failed, this woman is married, she wears a ring, and she has been put in a position where if empathy shows up, it could cost her her job. We are all trapped in one way or another.
Much of the film is about Alejandro’s relationship with his difficult boss, and one way to show that difficulty is that she uses voice notes.
The problem with voice note users is that if you have the voice note gene, once you discover it, you won’t want to go back. And if you don’t have the voice-note gene, receiving (recorded memos) does so irritating. Because it is OkK, now I have to stop what I’m doing to listen to this, and it’s like, Uggghh, why don’t you just write it?!
Do you have the voice-note gene?
Not me.
Problemista now playing in theaters.