AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It's not easy living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, especially if you were born to be a troubadour and destined to save what's left of an electric purple world with your music. And then your mythical guitar gets stolen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RAMBLIN' DOWN THE ROAD")
SADIE SINK: (As O'Dessa Galloway, singing) As I ramble like my father, just like his father's father. And I'll walk this world and wander. I ramble like my daddy down this road.
RASCOE: That's the setting for Geremy Jasper's new rock movie "O'Dessa." "O'Dessa" is a teenage farm girl who leaves behind her family's sickened land in search of her destiny and to reclaim her guitar. Think "Mad Max" meets a rock musical.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HERE COMES THE SEVENTH SON")
SINK: (Singing) Will set you free.
RASCOE: Geremy Jasper is the writer and director of "O'Dessa." Welcome to the program.
GEREMY JASPER: Thank you. It's good to be here, Ayesha.
RASCOE: Well, you know, can you share with our listeners a few more details about this dystopian world that O'Dessa finds herself in and about her journey?
JASPER: It's a musical odyssey. And I wanted to create a world that was turned upside down, something that felt connected to the Dust Bowl of the '30s but also feels like it could be on another planet. But it's a mythic quest. It's a mythic story. It's about a young woman, and her superpower is her song.
RASCOE: And it's not just one kind of music in this film. I mean, we heard country a little bit, but obviously, it's rock. It's punk. There's some love ballads.
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: You co-wrote all of this music?
JASPER: I'm a songwriter first, and so I always come to a project with a sack of old songs that I'm looking to find a cinematic staging for. But by doing that, I wanted to use all the different kinds of songs that I like to write, which are like you're talking about - folk and blues and kind of country stuff, which is where O'Dessa starts in the beginning. She's a farm girl. Like, it's from the roots. It's the kind of mountain tradition passed down from generation to generation. And as she goes on this journey, she enters, sort of a lawless, dangerous city, and the sounds and songs there are quite different. And so as she goes on this trail, she picks up all different influences and sounds.
RASCOE: Well, you know, the main character who plays O'Dessa - people will recognize her if they watched "Stranger Things."
JASPER: Sure.
RASCOE: Sadie Sink is the actress, and she sings her own songs in this movie, right?
JASPER: She sure does. That is her.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNDER THE STARS")
SINK: (As O'Dessa, singing) No one knows really why there's another side of the sky, like a million mirrors reflected in your eyes.
RASCOE: Did you know that she was such a talented singer?
JASPER: No, no. This was a great secret of hers. I guess the story that I know is that Sadie kind of broke into show business as an 11-year-old on Broadway, playing Annie. And so she had this secret talent because after that experience, I think she made some sort of oath to herself that she wouldn't sing again in public. But she comes from a very, very musical family. She's just a natural musician.
And so when we initially met, we didn't even talk music. We didn't even talk "O'Dessa." And then she got her hands on one of the demos and sent me a little clip of her playing guitar and singing, and it was a revelation because I had been living with this character in my head for a long time. And it was the first time that I saw O'Dessa, who was a bit of a phantom in my imagination, and hear this singing that was just angelic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNDER THE STARS")
SINK: (As O'Dessa, singing) Under the stars.
RASCOE: You know, one of my other favorites is in the movie, Regina Hall. And she seemed like she was having...
JASPER: (Laughter).
RASCOE: ...A lot of fun as the villain.
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: I hadn't seen her in a role like this. Was it hard to get her to be so evil?
JASPER: No.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
JASPER: It wasn't hard at all. No, she was pretty fearless with this one. And she was willing to completely transform herself, physically, which...
RASCOE: Yes.
JASPER: ...(Laughter) You know, there's a lot of people that see the movie, the - and don't even recognize her. And she told me when we first met that she wanted to transform so much that her own family could watch the movie and not know it was her. But yeah, she is a swaggering, cold-blooded badass in this movie.
RASCOE: O'Dessa is described as a seventh-generation rambler...
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: ...And she's a wandering songwriter with nothing but a guitar and a song in her heart.
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: Someone who, as she puts it, disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed.
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: Who were some of the generational ramblers that inspired her character?
JASPER: That quote, that - you know, comfort the disturbed - is a classic Woody Guthrie quote. And, you know, I'm kind of fascinated by the troubadours of the '30s, be it Woody Guthrie or Lead Belly or people like Mississippi John Hurt and Elizabeth Cotten and the Carter family. And there's just such a rich tradition of folk and blues in America that I wanted to be able to dig into that mythology but put it into more of a sci-fi universe. I think they're two flavors that actually are very compatible.
RASCOE: This is your second movie.
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: Your first was "Patti Cake$, " about a white rapper who's also a woman.
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: It seems like you like to go against type. Do you...
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: Do you have any plans for your next movie?
JASPER: Yeah, it's interesting. I was just reflecting on that. For the next film, I'm going to go in a different direction.
RASCOE: OK.
JASPER: I think I'm going to go more into the washed-up, middle-aged tortured artist in maybe a horror movie-mode so...
RASCOE: Oh, OK.
JASPER: ...Yeah. Yeah (laughter).
RASCOE: I love horror. Are you serious? Yeah, I love...
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: ...Horror.
JASPER: Yeah.
RASCOE: I love horror.
JASPER: Yeah, and I want to do it fast, the opposite of "O'Dessa." "O'Dessa" took seven years to make, and next one I want to do in seven weeks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SONG (LOVE IS ALL)")
SINK: (As O'Dessa, singing) And she sings on. Love, it is all...
RASCOE: That's Geremy Jasper. He's the writer and director of "O'Dessa." It's now available on Hulu. Thanks so much for joining us.
JASPER: It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "THE SONG (LOVE IS ALL)")
SINK: ...(Singing) Is love. Love, it is all. Oh, yeah. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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