Kabluey! The word itself is a an explosion, used in old timey cartoons to denote a beating is being given and received. Perhaps it is also the sound that is made when someones life implodes, or so it seems, in Scott Prendergast's hilarious and melancholy debut feature of the same name.

In the wake of her better half being deployed to Iraq, Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) is left teetering on the cliffs of insanity, hoping to hold it together enough to avoid plunging over the edge whilst attempting to care for her two young, mischievous sons. Desperate for any helping hand, she finds her listless, awkward brother-in-law, Salman (Prendergast), on her front porch, complete with open hands and an empty wallet. After a couple of days of mayhem, it is glaringly obvious that Salman is not gifted in the domestic arts, so Leslie goes about finding him a job within her company so that they can afford to put the boys in the care of professionals. Salman goes in for his interview expecting to push a broom, but comes out wearing a big, blue mascot suit.

Shot in Austin, Kabluey is one of those films that you may not have heard a lot about, which gives it the unique capability to sneak up on you and snatch your heart away. Granted, it does exist in a seemingly alternate universe with a penchant for absurdity, but it has heart. After winning the 2007 Audience Award at the Austin Film Festival, Kabluey has gone on to acclaim in New York and LA, and thankfully opens to the Austin audience tonight at the Landmark Dobie Theater, with Predergast in attendance! We recently had the chance to chat with Prendergast about creating isolation, winning the lottery and trying not to die inside a big, blue mascot suit in the heat of a Texas July.

Is this going to be a nice homecoming since you shot the movie here?

It definitely is. There are so many people in Austin who worked on the movie, the actors and the crew, but specifically the two little boys. We pushed very hard to open this in Austin because it is a hometown film, and after the reception that we have received in NY and LA we just know that it is going to do well in Austin.

I am excited to come back to Austin just to see the boys again. I mean, the New York Times singled them out and Time Out! New York talked about them and they are getting a lot of press for giving great performances. It’s just really neat because they are local Austin boys and they are getting a lot of national attention for acting in this independent film. Plus, they are going to be twice the size they were when we shot the movie! Both of them will be at the Friday night screening and some other actors and crew will be there as well.

We missed the film at AFF, and kept hearing good things about it so we're super excited to have it here in Austin again. Let’s just start off with where the premise of the film came from, because you have an extremely socially awkward, uncomfortable-in-his-skin character who is living in two very different worlds: the world where he works inside a big blue mascot costume all day, and then his other life where he is trying to help take care of his extended family while they are suffering through the turmoil and despair of having their patriarch in Iraq.

A lot of it is a true story. My brother was in Iraq for a year and a half and while he was there I went and stayed with his wife to help take care of the kids. The experience is all real; my brother’s family was in terrible despair and falling apart. My sister in law had a really hard time while he was away, she was very distraught and worried that he would be hurt (She didn't have an affair, however. That part is fictional.) That was all real, and my nephews hated me at the time. They were horribly behaved and we didn’t get along; all I wanted to do was take care of them and they just wouldn’t let me.

Was it difficult for your family to see themselves that way in your film and is your brother back in the states?

He has actually been back for four full years now. He was over there right at the beginning of the war and he is back and fine and they have actually had another baby, so now they have three boys, and they are all great little kids now. I think that they were just acting out while he was away. I am very close with my nephews now, and it is weird for them to see the movie, but it was more awkward for my sister-in-law because things that she said and things that she did and things that she went through are now onscreen and being portrayed by Lisa Kudrow. Now it has been fictionalized in order to give the story a plot, so there are a lot of things that didn’t actually happen, so I think in a way she is able to separate herself from the movie because it is not her.

Well, they say "write what you know" so it makes sense that you would want to tell that side of the story, but the big blue mascot suit is baffling to me. Where did that come from?

I don’t really know. It just popped into my head one day. It was actually during the time that I was still living with the family and I was on a vacation with the boy and my sister-in-law. I don’t know where it came from or what it means, but the more I wrote about it the more I thought I should combine it with the story of what was happening to me at that point, the story of taking care of this family.

Scott Prendergast inside the big, blue suit in Kabluey

I think in a way it is like a superhero. He finds this suit and slowly discovers that it grants him all of these powers. If he stays in the suit no one knows who he is and he can sort of pull off these magic tricks. I had a job as a mascot in high school, and people forget that there is a person in there. You, the person inside the suit, are completely ignored and you will hear things that you wouldn’t normally hear and you start to learn more about the world. The idea of that turn came organically, I guess.

What mascot were you in real life?

I was Super Explainer at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I would dress up as a superhero and explain science to little kids. It was pretty annoying.

So you didn’t like the job?

No, it was a terrible job. It wasn’t the same kind of mascot as the suit in the film because I didn’t have a mask, I wasn’t hidden inside a head, but I wish that I had been because the job was so humiliating and if I had been inside a full suit then nobody would have known who I was. No one would have bothered me. But the thing about being inside that suit it is a relief, socially, because if you are having a bad day and don’t want to deal with people, then you don’t have to.

His life seems to be out of control, and he is kind of a tragic character who has stumbled around in life and ends up at his sister’s house because he has no where else to go. Is that also autobiographical?

Kind of, yeah. I was in New York and I wanted to make a feature film. I had been making short films for awhile but was really focusing on writing and making a feature, and I did it at the expense of my entire life. I spent all my money, I didn’t have a job, I left New York and moved back to Oregon and was living with my family for awhile because I was so focused on getting into film making.

And also, I think when I was younger and trying to get into entertainment, I didn’t have a job or money and things weren’t working out, so I was kind of the weirdo in my family. I was the only one who wasn’t married, I was the only one without a steady job, I was the only one who didn’t have kids, so I was sort of this anomaly because I was trying to make it in this business, so I think they always looked at me as a little bizarre.

Do you have people come up to you after screenings who feel that they are the black sheep, or blue sheep, as it were?

A little bit. When you make a movie about weird, disenfranchised people you definitely get approached by weird, disenfranchised people. I had more of that experience with some of my short films because they were about these very odd characters, so people would come up to me and say, “Hey, I’m weird too! I totally get it, ‘cause I’m weird too.” It’s always great for people to have a connection with you movie and when your films actually mean something to someone.

Do you identify with Salmon in his social awkwardness?

I think that I was more like Salmon in high school, but I based his character on a lot of people I know. I don’t think I am as awkward as he is, but it was great to play a character like him because you can be in your own little world and just be a complete freak. But, I don’t think that I am that bizarre. You could ask people who know me, but I don’t think that I am as much of a loser as Salman is.

Salman (Scott Prendergast) is a bit of a fruit loop.

The producers were looking at several different cities that had good State film incentive programs, so we scouted a couple of locations, but in my mind, when we got to Austin there was just no question for me. It had the right look. I had been watching a lot of Terrence Malick movies and Austin looked like Badlands, just these wide open spaces, big blue skies and flat land and had that gorgeous wide open look. And then there is that building at the 360 Bridge, which is where we shot the scenes of the defunct company scenes, and that building was perfect. And I think that the producers wanted to shoot in Austin because they knew the nightlife was so great and they wanted to go out. It was a fun place to be and it had the look we were going for.

The State Film board was amazing to us. They gave us a lot of help. However, the entire time that we were planning the shoot, we were wondering whether it would be too hot to shoot inside that mascot costume. As with most movies, it took a little bit longer to get moving than we thought it would, so originally we were planning on shooting in April. Then it became May. And then it became June. The last day of the shoot ended up being in early July and we had to go back to the road where much of the mascot costume scene happen and it was incredibly hot. I just kept telling myself, “It’s only one day. You are not going to die. You are not going to die.”

This is your first feature film and you managed to get quite a few big names involved, most obviously Lisa Kudrow. How did that happen?

We sent her the script. She read it and called me at my home one day and said “Hi, I love your script. I’ll do it. Who are you and where is this happening?” I was so nervous that I sort of bumbled on the call and didn’t know what to say. The first day that I met her was the first day that we shot in Austin. The producers asked her if she wanted to meet me before we got started to make sure she wanted to do the project and she said, “No, I’ve read the script and watched his short films and I get him. He’s talented and I want to do it.” So it was kind of a dream and totally crazy.

We assume that the working relationship continued along those lines?

Yeah, she was really amazing. I was nervous because I had never worked with a celebrity before and she is a very famous professional actress who knew what she was doing. I had never been in a feature film or directed a feature film, and she put me at ease right away. I am still very close with her and I’m working with her now on other projects. It’s kind of one of the greatest things that has happened to me in my whole life.

There are a lot of other big names in the movie: Teri Garr and Christine Taylor and Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Chris Parnell. How did that come together, especially since this is your first feature film?

It was really bizarre. Basically it came together as a group effort. Once we got Lisa, everyone was, like, yeah, I’ll do that. Lisa was our seal of quality. One of the producers had worked with Christine Taylor on Dodgeball and one of the financiers knew Jeffrey Dean Morgan and etc, etc. It all clicked into place and we were stunned while it was happening. When we went into pitch the film, people didn’t understand how this was going to work with me in the lead role, since I was an unknown, but I convinced them that we would get all of these other big names as stars in the movie and that this was going to be a commercially viable product. Of course, I was just talking out of my ass, I didn’t know anything and I didn’t know how we would get any star, but then it just ended up working out that way. I was really lucky.

It’s like you won the lottery! Do you ever feel like you won the lottery?

Yes, I do. I often feel like I can’t believe it. There were several lottery winning moments: getting Lisa, getting the movie actually made and then we got Critic’s Choice in the New York Times. Seeing my movie and my face and reading about myself in the New York Times is unbelievable. It doesn’t feel real and I feel like I am going to wake up at any minute, because this can’t really be happening. I am incredibly lucky.

Well, you definitely had a little bit of luck, but you also created a great story that people can really connect with. There are little pieces of each character that we identify with, even the screaming devil children, who really deep down just want to be saved from this confusing life without their father.

And it is not even just that they don’t have a father. People ask me all the time if my sister-in-law was a horrible mother, and no, of course not. She is a great mother! I would want to raise my kids as well as she does, but she was completely undone by my brother’s absence. She didn’t expect it and didn’t know that this would happen. She just fell apart and was terrified. The scene where Lisa Kudrow sits and slowly eats her dinner while the names of dead soldiers scroll by on the TV screen, that actually happened. My sister-in-law would watch the news all day long, every day, because she wanted to know what was going on with the war, so in a way the kids lost both parents. Their dad was away at war and their mom was in a fog, so scared and afraid that she didn’t know what to do, which was really hard for those boys and they acted out. They fell into my lap and I proceeded to do a horrible job.

Well, they weren’t that bad. They didn’t try to kill me, but they were just horrible behaved on a daily basis. Mostly they would say things like, “I want to play with blocks!” So, I would say, “Alright, let’s play with blocks,” and then they would say, “NO! I don’t want you to play!” Or they would present situations that were constantly absurd. They would tell me to sit somewhere specific and the yell that they didn’t want me to sit in the place they just told me to sit. Three-year-olds are completely irrational and our world was ruled by them. It was very trying, but it is great now, they are all doing great.

You mentioned Terrence Malick earlier, but were there any other filmmakers or movies that you drew from to make this film?

I think the Opposite of Sex, specifically because Lisa was in it and played such a different character from who she played in Friends. But also her character in The Comeback. The look of the movie was very influenced by Terrence Malick movies, as well as the neighborhood shots in Edward Scissorhands.

I should tell you, I was interviewed by a local paper when the movie played at the Austin Film Festival and I was talking about the exterior shots of the house that the family lives in. I was saying that the home was a miserable place because the father was gone and they are just in the middle of a miserable time, but the paper misquoted me as talking about shooting in Austin locations, including a “miserable house” in South Austin. I feel terrible about that because the people who live in that house probably read the paper and all their neighbors read the paper, too, and now they are branded as living in a “miserable house!” It is a lovely house.

Anyway, the neighborhood where we shot felt very Edward Scissorhands. In terms of the big blue mascot suit itself, I watch a lot of movies involving space suits, like 2001 and Alien, and other movies where people are inside these large, weird objects. There is a movie called Time Bandits with this guy with a big weird head, so we pulled the focus of the costume from those.

In terms of the house, we feel like the house is more haunting than anything. It feels very isolated. And we totally see the Edward Scissorhands homage.

Yeah, we purposefully made it look that way. It is actually a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood and the people who live there were very nice.

We’ll be sure to make that point: The house it the movie is very nice in real life!

Yeah, so we took this nice house and got it really, really dirty. We washed the house with dirt to make it dirty and we ruined the lawn and we put all of these ugly dead bushes in the front, and then shot it with a wide angled lens to make it look all alone. In reality it is tucked in amongst all these other lovely homes, but we made it look really weird.

The way that you shot it actually makes sense because the house echoes each one of the character in their own isolation. Even Conchata Ferrell, who plays the HR lady who hires you to stand on the side of the road in a big, blue suit, seems isolated.

Yeah, she works alone in a giant, empty basement. I wanted everyone to be very alone, because the movie is about isolation and desolation. No one is really connecting with each other and no one is really listening to each other and everything is breaking down. In the movie, when Conchata’s character is hiring Salman, she is not really looking at him or listening to him and mistakes him for somebody else. She puts him in this ridiculous job that he was not supposed to be doing, but she doesn’t really care. The company is coming apart at the seams, but she just goes about her business. I worked for a woman like that once, which is where the character comes from.

Actually, I think that is what Lisa liked about the script and what convinced her to do the film in the first place, was that everyone was so separate from each other and broken, making the moments when people actually do connect that much more gratifying. Suddenly we see a connection.

Definitely, I think that is what people who have seen the film are responding to, that you may feel stranded, but there is still hope to make a real connection with other people.

What’s next for you? Are you going to do some more short films, or are you working exclusively on features?

I am working on a new feature, which I think is going to be called "Frank". It is about something bizarre that happened to my mom right before I made Kabluey, and I ended up helping her through it. I am also working on another feature with a real movie star, because my agent is always trying to get me to make movies that I am not in.

What do agents know about anything?!

Yeah, what do they know?!

Kabluey opens tonight at the Landmark Dobie Theater. Scott Prendergast will be in attendance at the 7:30 screenings on Friday, 7/25 and Saturday, 7/26.