I love it when someone just absolutely shoves the vision down your throat.
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Vulcanizadora, Joel Potrykus’ fifth feature film, hit the festival circuit last spring with a bang, earning him a Special Jury Prize at Tribeca for his performance as a deadbeat dad at loose ends. The Michigan native’s latest is an idiosyncratic tone poem, a cypher he may or may not want you to solve. It follows two men (Potrykus and frequent collaborator Joshua Burge), both burnouts in their own way, into the woods to fulfill a pact whose grim permutations – existential, legal, and emotional – unfurl like the sticky, smoky streaks a reckless driver’s burning wheels make after it’s too late. As its theatrical run approaches (opened in the US May 2, 2025), I spoke with the director about being a father, why he loves fireworks, and the many pleasures of Jackass.
I have so many questions, but I’m most curious about failure and passivity in this movie. There’s an almost superstitious sense of guilt with these characters that comes through right away, and it made me think about all the current discourse about the modern “crisis of masculinity.” How are you feeling about all of that? Did that idea impact your thinking?
Yeah, Josh Burge, who plays Marty, he was like, “I hope this doesn’t turn into some like, ‘male loneliness movie’ or the ‘masculine crisis’ thing that everybody’s talking about now.” And I get that, because in no way was I like, “I’m gonna set out to make a statement about societal problems.” I mean, that is what the movie is about, because that’s what everybody tells me it’s about. But that wasn’t the intention, really. I never ever think “I’m gonna make a movie about this.”
I was just writing from the place where I currently was to some degree, because I had had a kid. He was four, and fatherhood had was not the bowl of beauty I’d heard everybody tell me about. It was that, but it was also really frustrating and emotionally taxing, and I was tired and exhausted, and I was suddenly obsessing about somebody else’s mortality, and not just my kids, but mine. My two biggest fears in life after I became a father were accidentally dying or going to prison for something stupid, like, “Oh, I didn’t even know that was illegal, now I’m going to prison for ten years, that sucks!” That became like a real, legit fear. So I gave one of those fears to Marty and the other one Derek, and they wrote themselves.
It became a real cool opportunity for me to talk about all the shit that’s been in my head for a long time. I think that’s probably why people think it feels like a very natural and realistic statement on masculinity in crisis, because it fuckin’ is, but I wasn’t trying. It’s just what’s happening in my life and just what I’m dealing with, and I didn’t care if anybody else connected with it or understood. I did not give one thought to the audience on this thing. I was like, I’m just gonna put it out there and I will feel better because I told everybody how I am feeling – which men need to do more of, so I’m told, so there we go.
When you’re making your films, do you think about your audience generally and this was a change, or are you always just doing your thing?
I should be thinking about the audience. I never do. I just assume that there’s probably four or five people in the crowd that like the same kind of movies and grew up with similar thoughts or feelings that I did, and it’s just for them. That’s the cool part about making little, tiny indie movies. You don’t have to worry about profits, and there’s nobody telling you, “You need to put a romance B-story in here,” or “Where’s the shootout?” or whatever it is. So no, I never really think about the audience. I’m an absolutely self-indulgent filmmaker, really, just making things for myself.
I love that. Now, in terms of influences: This movie reminded me a lot of Jackass. I’m personally obsessed with Jackass, and the “Faces of Death” thing really reminded me of that. Was that an inspiration? What kinds of media were you drawing on for this?
It’s so cool that you say Jackass. Not a lot of people bring that up. I kind of think that Johnny Knoxville is legit, like, the Buster Keaton of the 21st century. He’s not just saying, “I’m gonna get hurt.” There’s always a sense of humor and playfulness about it, so I am a massive Johnny Knoxville fan. And when I was first making – I think it was Buzzard – I wanted critics to describe it as Michael Haneke meets Jackass. Those two were my big things, no one ever said that, but yeah, there’s something.
I said your character was like a Jackass extra in my review of this one, I think.
Perfect, you totally get it then. It’s just that weird cross-section of the things that I like. Big Michael Haneke fan, big Jackass fan, so those things just kind of bleed into it. It’s a lot of really juvenile, childish humor that people read into as like a statement on arrested development and sure, that’s cool, but when I go out in the woods, I do like to just smack sticks against a tree [like Derek and Marty do in the movie]! I teach, and what I’ve realized through working with twenty-year-olds at college is that I’m really immature. I can talk to the twenty-year-olds way easier than I can talk to my colleagues, no comparison. I think there’s just an immaturity that I assume most people have, and so when people describe the characters as being in a state of arrested development, I never even would have thought of that because they’re just doing the things that I would do in that situation.
So does it make you feel weird when people describe your characters that way?
Yes! It is so weird. Like, oh, “narrow focus,” “arrested development,” “stuck in a child-like” – and I’m like, “oh my gosh.” I am, for the most part, pretty Derek when I’m out there in the real world. I have little video games everywhere, action figures all over my office, and I go to somebody else’s office and they don’t have that stuff, and so I go, “Huh, I’m not one of these grown-up types that I thought I was, yet.” I don’t take it personally, I’m never offended, but I’m always just like, “You guys are talking about me and you don’t even know it! You’re describing me.” Which is cool, that’s just part of art or whatever, I guess. But, yeah, it does make you feel incredibly weird.
Let’s talk about Josh [Burge]. You’ve had this relationship with him throughout your career. When you’re writing a script do you two talk about it? What is it that you think brings you two together?
I think the thing that brings us two together is that we don’t have to talk about it. When I write something, I give it to him, and we don’t have these long talks about what the characters are feeling, where they’re coming from, or what they’re trying to do. He just gets it right away. Usually the first day we’re shooting, I’m looking through the lens and I think, “Yep, this is our movie. That’s our character and that’s how he’s supposed to behave.” I can’t remember if we’ve always been like that. I’m sure we’ve talked a lot more when we were first starting out, but he and I just love the same movies, and grew up in the same area, and we both play music. When musicians play, they’re not up there speaking to each other about why this song is important, or what they’re supposed to be saying in the song. You just write a song, and you play it, and then people tell you how they feel about it. I think that’s kind of how it is with us. We just do it and then think about it later.
You mentioned Buster Keaton a minute ago, which I love because I was talking about this film yesterday with a friend who was describing Josh as Buster Keaton in terms of the physical comedy of this movie. And I think that element builds into how I’m thinking about the stuckness of Josh’s character. His passivity comes out in images like him digging those holes in the sand and not finding what he’s looking for. So, I was wondering, in terms of that sense of stuckness – and not to be deep or anything, right? – But do you think we have control over our lives? Because this movie feels like Crime and Punishment if the main character wasn’t a narcissist but was a sucker for punishment. He’s like if Job sucked. What do you think?
Well [laughs] . . . I’d like to think that we have control over our lives. I wish I didn’t have control, meaning, I wish someone just said, “Here is all of your money and this movie is making itself upon you.” But if I really had control, I would not be making movies. It’s the weirdest thing, because I find making movies the most taxing, stressful, horrific, anxiety-inducing thing that I can personally go through, and I’m so jealous when other directors are like, “I love being on set. It’s the best place to be.” I just don’t know how people do it. I wish I could stop making movies, but then you get a cool idea, and Josh is around, and it’s like, “I know we could do this in a few days,” and it’s never a few days, and it’s never for a few dollars, it’s always bigger.
So yeah, I think – Oh! But then maybe we don’t have control. Maybe I just contradicted myself, because if I had control, I wouldn’t make movies, and I could just relax and play video games all day. Big question, deep question. Josh is definitely Buster Keaton reincarnate, though. For Relaxer, the last movie we made together, I just told the hair and makeup person, “Please cut and style him exactly like Buster Keaton so that the right person will see this movie and cast him in the biopic, because he is Buster Keaton.” That one’s uncannily accurate. My dream is to make a Buster Keaton biopic starring Joshua Burge, but I really wouldn’t do a Buster Keaton biopic any justice. That’s out of my pay grade, I think, to make that movie.
There are stunts in this movie, right? With the sick, gnarly firecracker head brace, which is both Saw and Jackass. And the head explosion! What was that like to film?
The weird thing was, shooting that scene was the most stressful, but not because of some emotional place we had to get to. We were shooting on a beach without a permit and somebody came and tried to stop us in their four-wheeler when those things were in our mouths, and we were in the moment, and we couldn’t talk. Josh and I were just drooling, and I was like, “[garbled yelling] ––stop them!” The whole crew was trying to stop it, and it was really chaotic. I don’t know if it added to it or took away from the scene, but there was definitely a bigger sense of urgency when we were shooting that was outside of our control.
That seems like something that would happen to these guys.
[Laughing] Yeah! Yeah, man, we should have just written that into the story. Guy pulls up on a four-wheeler right then, “What are you guys doing?” “Uh, nothing. . . .” Had we thought on our toes a little bit more, that is a perfect Marty and Derek interruption.Yeah. It reminds me of the whole legal loophole thing with Marty. There’s something very high-absurdist tragedy to this character who wants so desperately to be in prison just so somebody can tell him what to do.
You’re right. I always try to put a little drop of Luis Buñuel into all the movies, just a little bit so you can believe it, but it feels removed from reality. The second half of the movie is about oppressive guilt, and I was like, “How could I really amplify that?” That feeling of “I want to suffer for my sins” and “Take me to prison, please.” I thought nobody believing him was a really cool irony, but also, there’s that scene in American Werewolf in London where he wants to get locked up, and he’s saying the queen is gay and shouting at police officers, and nobody believes him that he’s gonna do something wrong. I just took a little bit of that but tried to stretch it out for many scenes.
I’m thinking of the scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman’s like, “I killed forty people,” and they’re like, “You’re so funny. That’s hilarious.”
Yeah. People have brought that up. I love that idea of somebody who’s done something really horrific, and nobody believes them.
I also wanted to ask about fire. The tire fire is so hypnotic in this. What is it about fire that appeals to you?
Those things in the fire are little fireworks called Black Snakes. And people are all like you, nobody knows what it is, it looks like burning rubber. But that’s another thing – I just assumed everybody was a little bit of a pyromaniac? That’s just me, man. I was the guy that nobody wanted to be around at Fourth of July because I would shoot a bottle rocket at you. Going back to Jackass, we would shoot bottle rockets at each other all the time, and it was hilarious, and we weren’t fifteen, we were twenty-five.
Fire, I don’t know, man. . . . I write what I’m into. Vulcanizadora really does feel like the greatest hits of all the films I’ve made. I’m stealing from everything I’ve done. I mean, all the films I do, I’m building on what I did before. But this one really felt like getting out all the things that have been eating away at me. I don’t know. Fire. I don’t think about it too much, but that shot is awesome. I was like, when one of those curls it’s cool and hypnotic. When I was a kid, I wanted to just do like, fifty packs of those together. Why didn’t we ever do that? I was like, we’re gonna do it. We’ll just see what it looks like. The crew all sat around going, “Ooooh, cool.” Looking at the monitor, I was like, that’s the coolest shot in the movie, right there. And nobody’s gonna let us keep that if it’s a studio film! And then, of course, smart critics and people like yourself read into it like, “This is the two men, they are burning,” and “decay” and all that stuff. So it works in ways that I never predicted, which is the best outcome I could ever hope for in anything that I do.
Oh, yeah, no, it’s so gnarly. Something that you said earlier caught my attention, too. You were talking about how he wants to be punished for his sins, which reminded me that there’s a lot of religious symbolism in this movie? Marty talking about seeing God in a hole, Derek saying that “Hell is being sad and nervous,” even the fact that the Jaeger Grail is called a “grail.” Are you religious? Do you believe in Hell?
So, I was raised strict Baptist. Hardcore fire and brimstone. “Fear God, and if you don’t, you’re going to Hell.” The older I get, I’m always trying to figure out where my guilt comes from. I don’t know if it’s totally the church, it’s probably a combination of a lot of things, but making a statement about religion isn’t anything I was setting out to do. It worked its way in there, I guess, because it’s stuff I think about, and stuff that still fucking freaks me out. But my literal hell would be an eternity of feeling anxious. Like I said, making movies is the most anxiety-inducing thing to me, if that was an eternity, that would be absolute hell. I cannot imagine anything worse. So that was a really important line for me to make sure got in there. I didn’t know if anybody would connect to it, but I just knew that that was important for me to get out there.
Do you enjoy the editing process more than the filming process?
Oh yeah. Editing is the best part. You don’t have to worry about the weather. There’s no time crunch. You can just sit with it. I love putting it together, and just not feeling rushed at all. If I couldn’t edit, there would be no reason for me to direct.
So you mentioned Haneke and you mentioned Buñuel. Are there any other indie filmmakers who you think are capturing a similar thing or tone, or who you admire that you’d want to highlight here?
Oh, man, these questions make me nervous, because I’m going to forget friends or something like that. I haven’t listened to a new album in maybe twenty years, but I’m always seeing new movies and I’m excited by new movies, but I’m also one of those guys who’s disappointed after I see a movie. I get my hopes up. Sean Baker has always been my career role model. Like every indie filmmaker I love – Jeez, like, Yorgos Lanthimos, Werner Herzog, early Jim Jarmusch, early Harmony Korine films, stuff like that. I love getting pummeled at the movie theater. I love it when directors go for it, take chances, don’t try to play it safe ever, and don’t care about how much money their movie makes or who likes it. I love it when someone just absolutely shoves the vision down your throat.
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All images appear with the kind permission of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
