FF2011: 'Kill Me Please'

Saul Rubinek and Bouli Lanners bicker in Kill Me Please, screening at Fantastic Fest

If you are a fan of SyFy's oddball charmer Warehouse 13, you will know Saul Rubinek as the irascible Artie Nielsen. But Belgian director Olias Barco snagged one of the world's greatest Yiddish actors for his dark comedy Kill Me Please.

Rubinek stars in the ensemble satire as monsieur Breiman, a Canadian industrialist who decides to take one last European vacation – to Dr. Krueger's medical assisted suicide clinic. "You recognize him quickly," Barco told the audience at yesterday's Fantastic Fest screening. "He's a writer, he's a director too, and we work together for a long time. When I asked him to come here, he came to Belgium in the winter."

Initially Barco said, investors balked at how short his script was: "45 pages? Go back to the school to shoot movies. I said no, trust me, I will work with the actors." That opened the door for a lot of improvisation, like Rubinek bouncing off veteran Belgian writer/director Bouli Lanners as a man who bet his wife in a poker game.

The short script was the least of Barco's worries about getting the film made: After all, investors are rarely lining up around the block to fund suicide comedies. He originally wanted to call the film Dignitas, after Switzerland's most famous assisted suicide clinic, but that was a non-starter, so it was back to Belgium. He said, "We had no money, we did the film in three weeks, it was freezing, but we had some beer." The superlow budget also encouraged some artistic decisions, not least going black and white. That is part of why Barco's film has been compared to the grand dame of Belgian black comedies, 1993's wonderfully mordant Man Bites Dogs (it helps that Belgian serial killer satire's co-writer Vincent Tavier came onboard as a producer.)

However, going black and white meant that Barco did not have to repaint non-matching set walls or spend money on post-production color correction. It also meant he could be be his own effects coordinator. He even revealed his secret recipe for blood in black-and-white. "Nesquik," he beamed.

Fantastic Fest presents Kill Me Please, Monday, Sept. 26, 6.15pm.