Will Wood

Director of

Slouching Towards Branson

A complete interview with Will

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the director Will for taking the time to answer our questions.

Whole team of Liverpool Indie Awards is wishing you the very best in all your future projects. We hope to see more of your exceptional work in the years to come. Thank you once again!

I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. I’ve always kind of performed this way. It feels natural and normal to me. I’ve always felt like I needed to do something more than either tell jokes or sing songs. My songs aren’t all that funny, and I always liked comedians who tried to create a narrative or emotional arc to their material, so I guess a sort of one-man-show musical-theater style was inevitable.
 
 Because of the way the internet works a lot of newer fans of my music didn’t even know I’m a comedian. They just see clips of occasions when I’ve played with my band, and naturally assume that’s what it’ll be when they come to see me perform. My first attempt at touring and putting together a project after going viral during the pandemic fell apart cause I was put in rock venues to perform for kids expecting a rock concert. Nowadays it seems like we almost can’t tell something even exists if it’s not online, and whatever does get seen online seems to exist more than anything real. So a big part of my creative vision was just to create something that allowed me to exist in the eyes of an audience that I felt misunderstood by. It shouldn’t have come together at all, we had a one-man camera crew filming the whole tour, and when we realized how much more creative freedom we had and what sorts of things we could do by combining shows, the vision changed into something that involved the medium in the story a bit more, and I feel like it elevated things a bit. Filmed theater so often is missing something that’s hard to define, so we tried to find something to take its place.
 

That’s a good question. I think there was a lot of luck, to be honest. I knew I couldn’t have so few songs that people who wanted a concert would feel cheated when they came to the show, but if I had too many it would kill the story. Too much of either one would kill the flow, and too much of both would get exhausting. I also knew I had to make sure the show overall wasn’t bogged down by songs that weren’t totally relevant, so I was really careful to try and find songs that seemed to fit the moments and make sure they were the best songs for the sake of both the text and the stage.

Well it’s the truth, you know? There are obviously some embellishments and I switched around some stuff for ethical and entertainment reasons, but the truth behind it is the important thing. I took true stories and used them in a less-then-true way to say something that was true in a bigger sense than just telling true stories would be. I think maybe it works to the extent that it does because every choice I made was about getting to that truth and everything else was left on the cutting room floor so to speak. I don’t know, I tried really hard to make it fun, but only for the people who I felt that truth would resonate with.  

Every night was different, because every audience was different. There were some shows where the audience’s energy made it entirely impossible to perform, and some shows where it would’ve been impossible without their energy. If an audience doesn’t even let you try, you’ll bomb for sure. If an audience is open-hearted, the rest is up to you and showing them that love back. This ended up being a big part of how the project ended up coming together; because while every special is filmed across multiple nights and stitched together, I don’t know how many do so while including different venues across the country. When we realized we didn’t have to try and create the illusion of it being one show, that allowed us to take our favorite moments of that interplay between the audience and myself.

A lot of the parts filmed at Aladdin Theater (the one big theater in the movie) that seem intentional were very much good luck and the talent of a lighting director who understood what I was going for moment-to-moment without any real coaching. The colors and everything were just one person catching on quick, we didn’t have someone on our team running lighting. The feedback moment at the end was pure luck. That bit where the uke cuts out in the climactic song is easy to mistake for a theater gag but was just an error that kind of magically corrected itself at the perfect moment. One of my favorite shows I’ve ever performed. It’s funny, the most successful moments of the show were all surprises on some level to me. I guess to a certain extent I’m surprised it even worked at all.

I think they confuse people mostly haha. I just make things. The identity element of it I think is mostly just the result of my stuff being consumed and reflexively interpreted as being me and not what I make. Sometimes I do serious and sad things, sometimes I’m goofing off, sometimes I’m doing a little of both. Just like anyone, you know? I think it’s just that we’re so used to consuming art through something akin to a brand. We hear “Thom Yorke” and go “right, brooding spaceman, got it.” When he could just as easily put out a bunch of polka music with songs about ducks if he wanted to and still be Thom Yorke. It wouldn’t be what we expected, but it wouldn’t be a new identity, just new art. I’m trying to avoid being “Will Wood” and instead just be me. Sometimes that’s going to be dancing skeletons and costumes, sometimes it’s going to be animated stories about grief, sometimes it’s going to be fart jokes.

Netflix’s voicemail was full.

 I wasn’t looking to find songs I’ve written that precisely fit the exact subject, of course, ‘cause I applied songs I wrote ten years ago to situations that happened two year before the show. There’s one song that’s pretty much exactly about the real world version of the song, and I make a joke about it in the show, but the rest are about all kinds of things and used to either create an energy or move an idea forward.
 

A little weird. The comedy festivals and quirkier ones have been particularly inviting, and I’ve been surprised by how some of the more conventional film festivals have responded, but I think most festivals are like “this is a live performance, not a movie” so they balk at it. Totally fair, honestly. I didn’t think it would get as far with festivals as it has.

 I’m working on my first album of original songs since my 2022 release. Pre-production’s underway!