Mark Anthony Green's Journey from GQ's Style Guy to Horror Auteur

His debut film, Opus, has a heavy message but the first-time director has Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich to do the heavy lifting

Morehouse graduate Mark Anthony Green has a kismet connection to the King of Pop.

His first exposure to horror was Michael Jackson’s long-form masterpiece “Thriller” directed by John Landis.

Landis’ visuals gave a young Green the shakes as he watched Jackson transform into a rhythmic warewolf. Outside, says Green, was a full moon.

Jackson, to a degree, played a part in the creation of Alfred Moretti, an eccentric pop icon played by all-world thespian John Malkovich, 71, in Green’s horror-thriller, Opus. MJ’s Invincible album, an uneven entry in his canon, if we’re being kind, came at a time when he was seeking a return to chart dominance. Green’s quirky Moretti is on the same mission in this film.

“Michael Jackson is a contemporary of Moretti [in the film], and depending on who you’re asking, Moretti is their Michael Jackson,” says Green, 36. “And so I wanted to use that [Invinsible] album, Michael Jackson going into a studio and [replicate] that same challenge. Moretti made the best music of a certain era, and now he has to make something that feels like him, but it can’t sound like it’s from the ‘90s.”

Collaborating with music royals Nile Rogers and The Dream, Malkovich sang three songs for Opus. He came into the sound-proof booth as Moretti the nights they recorded and left with fitting material. Malkovich’s commitment to Green’s art is the heartbeat of Opus, a story that, at its core, interrogates society’s obsessive relationship with celebrity. Fame is a drug and Moretti is addicted but more interesting is what his cult is willing to do to serve their deity.

Malkovich’s co-star, Ayo Edebiri, plays a young journalist with chutzpah. She’s selected to attend Moretti’s exclusive listening session along with her boss who give her glorified assistant treatment rather than a journalist tasked with writing her own perspective piece on Moretti. Her character operates with a clear mind, above the glazing antics that surrounds her. 

Settling into what will be a long press day in Atlanta, Green, who spent several years solving GQ readers’ style conundrums as resident fashion columnist The Style Guy, sits with LEVEL to discuss the film that he hopes illicits discourse on the cult of celebrity. And if that doesn’t happen he hopes to at  least scare the sh*t out of you.

LEVEL: What was the first horror film you saw?

Mark Anthony Green: I remember watching Thriller [the video] as a kid. It's the first time I ever saw a celebrity, a well-known person who I liked scare me because I was so young. When “Thriller” came out — I was born in ‘88 — my great-grandfather took us to a baseball game that night. I was in St. Louis when I watched and there was a full moon. I was terrified the whole time.

I watched that premiere on CBS. Michael felt videomaking was lacking and wanted to uplevel what was on MTV. Visual excellence is what he was looking for.

Yeah, I mean, he did it.

When did you know filmmaking was your calling?

When I finished shooting the short I made eight years ago [Trapeze, U.S.A.]. I was ready to dedicate myself to getting as good as possible at this thing. When I was a kid and I first saw the Fifth Element, it made me want to make movies as a child, but a calling, something that I'm genuinely devoted to where I know it checks all the boxes for me and scratches every itch? It was the last day of shooting on my short.

Are there skills you’ve taken as an editor into directing?

The jobs are very different, but I'm so grateful. I had two big influences on me creatively. My five years at Morehouse, I feel like I learned what type of man I am, and then I feel like my 13 years at GQ, I learned what type of art I like and what type of artist I am, so I'm sure that I carry both of those things with me.

What kind of man are you?

I am somebody who thinks everything can be funny. I'm the type of man that I would rather have one perfect jacket than 10 good jackets. I'm somebody who values the word of my friends and keeps my word to them. I'm somebody who values the time and money of an audience, doesn't take it for granted, but also understands that I can only make the films that I love and it's got to start and end with the creator of the piece of art. My favorite artists that I look to and I'm inspired by, you can tell that they're making things for themselves. 

In your Coveteur feature you reference your mother. What’s your relationship with her like?

I'm close with both of my parents. There's a line in Opus where Ariel's character says, “it's weird that you kind of grow up and you just kind of become your parents.” That line, it is just something at 36 I've been thinking about a lot, the relationship that you have with your parents and the kind of metamorphosis that you both make as a human, but also your perception of your parents. The more you get to know them and understand them as young people…by the time my parents were my age, I was like, 10, 15 years old. That's crazy to me.

How so?

I couldn't imagine having a 10-year-old right now. I'm so grateful for my mother and father and all the people that raised me because it definitely took a village with me. It does with most of the troublemakers.

How and when did you come up with the story for Opus?

When is way easier than the how. I started writing this five years ago. My approach to filmmaking is there’s a pot of things that I want to say about the world — “I believe this, there’s too much of this, there’s not enough of that” — and then there’s a pot of visual worlds that I want to see and play around with. If ever there’s two that pair well together, then I think there’s a film in it. With Opus, I felt there was this extremely pulpy, visceral, very fun ride to this point, and we pulled it off.

What was the message you were trying to extract from your brain to this film?

I think tribalism is a global pandemic that we need to start to discuss. Does this still serve us? Is the way that we choose leadership and who we choose to follow, is that still good? The great thing about being an artist is I don't posture or pretend to have the answers, but Opus, at its most successful, is a very fun ride where you also feel provoked to ask those questions and hopefully somebody smart like yourself has the answers. 

In GQ’s profile on John Malkovich the writer uses the term Malkovichian to describe things that are distinctly John. Tell me a story that is utterly Malkovichian.

I have so many. I’ll tell you two. There was a point in time I cared way too much about clothes [in the film], and I was sending ideas back and forth with my very talented costume designer, Shirley Carta, and there was an outfit. I'm doing two million things at once. I forgot to include the pants. The garment was kind of long, but you would've seen all of John’s genitals, everything below the waist.

He didn’t say “Hey, you forgot the pants,” or “hey, if you want me [to be naked], there needs to be a conversation about this, I don't feel comfortable.” We were going to do a fitting and he was going to go try everything on, and he made a comment about seeing the top of the boots. He knew that I hated that there was a bright red stripe at the top of the boots. He was like, “oh, yeah, I love it. It's great, and maybe we can paint the top of the boots.” And I was like, “what?” He said, “yeah, we can paint the top of the boots.” And I was like,” oh, no, you won't see it.” And then he realized that I wasn't asking him to just be completely half naked. But there was no resistance in that.

What’s the second story?

We had a snow storm — two feet of snow in New Mexico. And John, at 70 years old, shoveled his own snow and was early to set that day. It was a really important day for us because we had already missed a day. We only shot for 19 days. We worked up until Christmas break, so if we didn't get everything before Christmas, we would've had to all come back in mid-January. That didn't work with anyone's schedule. And so I couldn't afford to lose a day. Everyone felt good about coming to work, but there was just an attitude that he took as a real leader on set. He never complained. He's a legend, and he never acted like one. He understood that this was an ambitious small film and he acted like he was 22 doing his first role.

Did you have Ayo and John in mind as you were writing?

I started writing it before The Bear came out, but I knew Ayo. I had gotten some screeners of The Bear that they had send to GQs office, and I am good friends with Lionel Boyce. So I was going to pull for the show and I was watching it to support a good friend. This was maybe a couple of weeks before the episodes came out and I mailed the screener to Noah Sacco, our exec at A24. I was like, “Yo, I really think this is Ariel [the main character]. 

Being around Ayo you immediately find out how talented [she is]. And then John, I didn’t go to film school and one of the things you see a lot on sites and books is to have actors in mind when you’re writing. So I had a short list of actors and John was on it. John is probably on everybody’s list of actors to do everything.

The-Dream and Nile Rogers are listed as executive producers. What were their contributions to the film? 

There are three original songs in this movie that Nile and Dream wrote and produced that John Malkovich sings that are absolutely fucking incredible. There's a point in time where Dream and Nile were going back and forth. They were working on two projects. They were working with me in a studio making these songs and then they were working with a singer named Beyoncé. I don't know if you've heard of her [laughs]. And then they would come back and we'd do some weird shit and then they'd go back and make a hit for Beyoncé. I would tell John, “You are working with the best and you got to outdo Beyoncé today.” We would laugh but that is such an integral part of the ride of this film, and I'm really hoping that they resonate with people and therefore the message of the film resonates with folks. 

GQ’s Global Editorial Director Will Welch just released his first short doc, Feels Real Good: Jason Isbell at Electric Lady. Did you have any advice for him?

The relationship with your OGs and big brother-mentors is a permanent dynamic that I would never change. So if I know something, I'll tell Will. But when he goes out and makes something, I'm just still a fan. I'm a fan of his, I was a fan of his when I was a student and I read his writing and I'm more of a fan of his now after us being very close. So whenever I look at what he makes, I sit there as just a fan, not a critic, just receiving it like everybody else.

You’re also a pretty big fan of Speakerbox/The Love Below. What about that body of work moves you?

Man, there are a few times where I really had my mind blown artistically. I thought I knew what an OutKast album was then Andre, what he did with The Love Below, it was so unexpected. It was so much better than what I thought it could possibly be. And it just blew my brain. It made me want to go to college in Atlanta. Speaking of people I'm a fan of and idolize, I'm his biggest fan.