While working unpaid, low-level jobs on local productinos, they found inventive ways to subsidize their art - experimental-drug trials among them. At the end of that day, it was 1.5 million. Woke up the next day, it was at 500,000 views. They filmed fake “fail” videos, in which they stuck knives into a toaster and seemingly blew them up, for example, and caught the attention of American late-night talk shows, including Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Conan. Before they’d graduated from high school, the brothers had begun developing a knack for going viral. “We’d get together every weekend and just beat the shit out of each other.” As teens, the two taught themselves the rudiments of filmmaking via a series of shorts they called The Evil Flamingo (a “rip-off of Chucky,” Danny explains) and ten “seasons” of their never-aired Buffy the Vampire Slayer spoof, Tamuffy. “In the beginning, it was like Lord of the Flies,” Michael says. We wend our way around Hollywood Forever’s artificial lake, and the brothers explain how they came to their calling: through picking up a video camera at age 8 and convincing neighborhood kids in the Adelaide suburb of Pooraka (the name RackaRacka pays oblique homage to their hometown) to act out cartoonishly violent scenes of backyard wrestling and homemade horror. Together, we gaze at the cowboy-hatted bust of Burt Reynolds, rocker Johnny Ramone shredding on an electric guitar, and the bronze likeness of Toto from The Wizard of Oz. Danny follows, his hair currently a bright magenta. “Is it all filmmakers in the cemetery?” Michael asks, stepping out of a chauffeur-driven car with a pair of oversize earphones wrapped around his neck. But on a sunny summer afternoon at Los Angeles’s Hollywood Forever cemetery recently, the Philippous were momentarily less fixated on the birth of their new career iteration than on the dearly departed. January’s head-spinning series of events seemed to herald the arrival of a new filmmaking force in the form of two fast-talking film bros from the literal other end of the earth. I’m like, Dude, I’m so bored listening to this. We started getting these creative notes steering it into this stereotypical, boring direction. Deal-wise, the Philippous threw in their lot with art-house cool-kid studio A24, which will theatrically release Talk to Me on July 28. In perhaps the foremost indication they had crossed an invisible threshold in Hollywood, the town’s major talent agencies began hotly competing to sign them (with the powerhouse WME walking away with bragging rights). Suddenly, reps for Steven Spielberg and Stephen King were requesting screening links, and horrormeister James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster arranged a general meeting with the brothers. Then, upon its ecstatic Egyptian Theatre public debut (at which no less an eminence than fright-film phenom Ari Aster sat front-row center), the movie triggered an all-out bidding war - Neon, Universal, Searchlight, and Sony among those in the running. In the days leading up to Talk to Me’s premiere at Sundance’s ghouls-and-gore-leaning Midnight section, the first-time feature filmmakers were fêted widely by agents, producers, and production execs the brothers stayed up multiple nights fielding offers from studios and production companies, including Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and the low-budget juggernaut Blumhouse. The movie’s co-directors? Danny and Michael Philippou, excitable 30-year-old Adelaide-born twins who have amassed a body of award-winning, pop-culture skewering, comically violent videos (as well as a passionate, 6.74 million–strong YouTube following) under the nom de vlog RackaRacka. Talk to Me is an Australian supernatural horror–thriller in which bored suburban teens chronicle demonic possessions and the conjurings of spirits (achieved by shaking the embalmed hand of a “powerful medium”) on social media for shits and giggles. In January, one movie exploded out of the anonymous ranks of microbudget indie passion projects playing in competition at Sundance - with no name recognition, no bankable stars, no distribution deal - to become arguably the breakthrough discovery of the festival. Photo: Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb
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