Oakland, 1987, and a strange green glow hangs over the whole city. Punk kids, aspiring rappers, a rising basketball star, neo-Nazis, a video store owner and a bruiser trying to start over all live under it. That is the world of Freaky Tales, written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.
The film premiered at Sundance in 2024. It was the fourth time the pair had brought a feature to the festival, and a return to independent filmmaking after they directed Captain Marvel in 2019. Their breakout, Half Nelson, played Sundance in 2006.
Four stories, one mixtape
Freaky Tales is an anthology with four chapters: “Strength in Numbers: The Gilman Strikes Back,” “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” “Born to Mack” and “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd.” The cast includes Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Dominique Thorne, Jack Champion, the late Angus Cloud and Tom Hanks.
Boden described the approach as “a cinematic mix tape.” She said the directors were “unabashedly referencing a lot of other films,” and each chapter has its own influences. Fleck said the film grew out of his Bay Area childhood. “It’s both a love letter to my hometown, but also to the movies we grew up loving,” he said.
The look changes as the film goes. Chapter one borrows from the punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, shot on 16mm in a 4:3 frame to give the story about kids at the 924 Gilman club fighting neo-Nazis a scrappy, DIY feel. “As soon as we get into that punk fight… we start exploding out into a more comic book bag,” Boden said. The frame widens with each chapter, and by the final story it is a 2.39:1 widescreen, in the style of a classic kung fu movie.
That last chapter belongs to Sleepy Floyd, the real NBA player who scored 29 points in a single playoff quarter for the Golden State Warriors. Jay Ellis plays him, and the film treats him as a kind of superhero.
A video store and a festival
Hanks has a cameo as Hank, an overbearing and passionate cinephile who runs a small video store and hands out movie advice. Fleck drew on his own past. His first job was at a mom and pop video store in a mall, and when Blockbuster swallowed the small shops he went to work there too. He remembers customers coming back upset after renting Bad Lieutenant, expecting the NC-17 cut and getting one that was “completely chopped up.”
Boden and Fleck met in a summer filmmaking course at New York University. Since their short Gowanus, Brooklyn in 2004, they have had five films premiere at Sundance, four of them feature length. “Sundance has completely changed our lives,” Boden said. She added that they went there as kids with a short film and no industry connections. As for another trip to Park City, she was not optimistic: “I don’t expect to have a film there next year.”
