A twisted study of male ego and celebrity culture, Tummy Monster is the debut feature from Glasgow-based writer-director Ciaran Lyons. It’s a disturbingly brilliant psychological thriller that follows a tattoo artist who is refused a selfie by a megastar singer, locking both in a toxic battle of power and control. Ciaran directed over 50 music videos before self-funding his folk-horror short The Motorist, which won the Jury Award at the Berlin British Shorts Film Festival in 2021 and was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA. We caught up with Ciaran to find out more about Tummy Monster.
Tummy Monster is a great title. Some people love it, some people really don’t. To be honest, I’ve made a lot of shorts and music videos, and I was really hungry for something original.
Where did the concept come from?
I heard this rumour, which I’m not sure is even true, about a tattoo artist who got a phone call from Justin Bieber’s minder. [Bieber] wanted a tattoo in the middle of the night, and when the artist asked for an autograph, [the singer] said no. The whole point of that story was to highlight: isn’t Justin Bieber a total arsehole?
No comment!
Well, I wanted to ask, why would he say no? There’s a weird sadness about a guy who’s been isolated through fame. It’s an experience most of us aren’t going to understand. The story of Tummy Monster is trying to bring a very non-empathetic character on a journey where he can potentially understand someone else’s pain.
Did self-funding the project speed up the process?
It happened so fast. I started writing in October and was shooting by the following April. Part of the speed was knowing I was going to do this. We only had five days to shoot, so it was intense, but fun. Now I think I have a strange relationship between fun and work.
And when I was doing short films, I storyboarded very meticulously. I thought that was the best way to work, but what I tried to do [on this film] was be very, very present and find the best way to create moments of performance and then film them. You see that style of filmmaking with the Safdie brothers – you’re essentially trying to facilitate a real event happening and document it. That’s how you work fast.
The story is very stripped back. Was that down to a limited budget?
I think that necessity and imagination are a good partnership, right? Because if you just lay in your bed fantasising about a movie, that’s just a fantasy. You need to harness your imagination with what you can actually achieve. That’s a huge part of why it’s set in a tattoo parlour and not someone’s beige living room.
The actors Lorn Macdonald (Bridgerton) and Orlando Norman (Silo) are screenwriters on the film. That’s kind of a big deal. It’s slightly cheeky, but the offer was: if you take on one of these roles, you’ll become a co-writer. That helped me get good actors. What was so great about this film was the number of really big collaborators. With that, there’s a whole new world of thought. There’s one key scene which was very improvised. I wasn’t going in blind – the idea is you don’t go in, like, totally empty-headed – so we prepared it in rehearsal, and felt there was a lot of juice there.
Right. Which scene was that?
I call it ‘the therapy scene’. Lorn is laying on a couch, baring his soul, and we let him off the rails. He gets to essentially splurge all this character stuff, freestyling, and the crew were laughing. We could’ve easily stayed on that. I think when the story beats are very, very clear, it makes improv much easier.
You use vapes a lot. It’s interesting, because I don’t think people have agreed upon what vapes signify on screen yet. They are very contemporary and at a certain point in time they’ll become dated. Ari Aster uses them to signify that somebody’s an idiot. A millennial vaping this huge electronic grenade means something very different to someone in their early twenties with a disposable vape.
Image credit: Stills by Kev
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
I saw someone on Letterboxd describe it as ‘a tale of spiritual midwifery’ and I liked that. There is a shocking moment, which I think everyone is going to have at some point in their life, when you get a true perspective on yourself. That’s ultimately what the film is about.
Final thoughts?
If you’re going to motivate yourself to make a film, you want a moment that feels powerful. Sometimes, with blockbusters, it’s snuck in there. But when the director tries to communicate something that’s a big life experience, it’s not necessarily visible unless you’re at a certain point where it will resonate with you.
