IN CONVERSATION WITH OZ PERKINS

Oz Perkins comes from a family of Hollywood royalty. His mother and father were formidable forces in both film and fashion while his great grandmother revolutionized French women’s couture with her surrealist designs and collaborations with Salvador Dalí. Oz has been on an incredible run of films like LONGLEGS and The Monkey with another on the way at the end of this year. While he was promoting LONGLEGS last year I couldn’t help but notice that he has a very keen eye for clothing and accessorizing. I was very thankful to be able to speak to him via a phone call about how David Byrne of the Talking Heads was his entry point to wearing Supreme, his familial connection to the haute couture house Schiaparelli, his obsession with LA sports teams, his on set essentials, where he likes to buy his band tees, and so much more…

Thank you once again to our friends at NEON for connecting us!

Hagop Kourounian: I'd love to start off by asking you about your own personal style and your relationship with clothing. How much time do you spend thinking about clothes? 

Oz Perkins: Well, I suppose to jump into my relationship with clothing, you may or may not know this, but my mother's grandmother was a passionate designer named Elsa Schiaparelli. Did you know about this? 

Hagop Kourounian: Yeah, it was on my list of questions to ask you. I'm so glad you brought it up. 

Oz Perkins: Yeah, so she was a huge force, right? She died before I was born. I never knew about her, but she's a giant in the world of fashion and the world of surrealism. Just as an artist who broke all the rules and all the barriers. She had these super impressive, very forward, very modern ideas around what women's clothes should look like. So I was always aware that that was part of my lineage and also my parents were well dressed people. My dad, funnily enough, was known in his early career in the ‘50s and the ‘60s as being sort of an icon of preppy men's fashion. The Ivy League preppy look was something that he did very well. Then in my lifetime, I knew him as someone who would take clothes off of the movies that he was in and bring his own clothes to wardrobe. I recently re-watched a movie he was in called Crimes of Passion, which he made in the ‘80s with Kathleen Turner. When I watched it, I was cognizant of him and his career when that movie was happening. I think it was like '84 or '86. I noticed he was wearing his own shoes, his own old Nike running shoes. He also wore Nike running shoes as Norman Bates in the third Psycho movie, which he directed. So my dad had sort of a playful attitude around clothes. My mom came from who she came from, Elsa Schiaparelli, and then sort of coming into her own as a young person working for Halston. Halston was my godfather. So I knew him a little bit. And my mom was just one of these sort of fabulous people who was always on the cutting edge of what fashion was and what you could do with it. So with acknowledgments as sort of coming from highly fashionable people, I've never taken it too seriously. Part of the thing about being a director is I just do what I like, right? Like the movies that I make, I just try to make things that I like and then sort of resemble my taste and look the way I want them to look and feel the way I want them to feel and sound the way I want them to sound and feature the music that I love. I mean, I assume that's what everybody does, but it's certainly how I approach what I do. I try to do it as some kind of an extension of my own taste. Weirdly, I've been ahead of a few things, which is funny for my kids now. I have some older kids. I have a 16 year old daughter who's very fashion centric and very fashion conscious. You have probably seen her pictures. She's in the last two movies. It's funny how in her teenage years now, she’s sort of recognized I was wearing things that people are wearing now long before people were wearing them now. I've always been sort of able to kind of tease her about that a little bit like, "Yeah, your old man was wearing Supreme hats, you know, 15 years ago.” or “Your old man was wearing Patagonia things 20 years ago, oh, it's nothing new." So it's sort of been in the same way that my folks were playful with fashion. I never really dressed up. Everything I wear is pretty casual. 

Hagop Kourounian: I'm so happy you mentioned Supreme and Patagonia because that was another thing I had on my list of questions. I've noticed you've been wearing both brands for so long. I'm curious to hear what you love so much about those brands. How have they become a mainstay in your closet? 

Oz Perkins: I'm not a skater. I don't know how to skate. I'm not a graffiti artist. I don't know how to do that. My exposure to hip-hop and that culture is strangely sort of sadly limited. I'm not very proficient in any of those fields. I think the Supreme thing is more from an artist's perspective. The elevated street design has always been kind of compelling to me. I remember having my first Stüssy garage zip up jacket. I remember thinking that was just the coolest thing in the world. Just living in LA, you kind of notice people wearing Supreme and gravitate towards the old store. I thought it was a pretty great place. One year I was watching a lot of Talking Heads concert videos and looking at David Byrne, I thought he was a really interesting dude. He has this great red cap in Stop Making Sense. There's something fun about this solid red cap. So I went to Supreme to see if they had something like that and they did, it didn’t even have the box logo on it. So that was my first Supreme thing and it was inspired by David Byrne from Talking Heads of all things. So that's how that happened. Once I bought one of those hats, then I just sort of loved that medium. I guess you'd say. Some people's t-shirts are really strong, some people’s jackets designs are really strong. I’ve always thought of the Supreme hat as a kind of canvas. The shape of it is really good. The way it wears is really fun. The juxtaposition of the kind of consumerist looking text of the box logo itself is sort of matter of fact. I like the combination of that with some of the colors and tonalities and textures that they do to caps. Every once in a while I get a sweater or something from Supreme also. But the hats are the best expression of what they do, the combination of the shape and the textures and the fabrics and the colors. 

Hagop Kourounian: I feel like I haven't heard so many people talk so eloquently about Supreme before. The box logo is such a great design. It's like a piece of pop art in and of itself with its origins from Barbara Kruger. 

Oz Perkins: When I first met my wife, I was wearing a lot of Supreme hats and she was the first to sort of get on me a little bit in a playful challenging way of being like, “that's Kruger's thing, so totally cool, whatever Supreme, sure fine, but just so you know, that's appropriation of the highest order.” And I get that's kind of the gag but I didn't know it was Kruger’s thing. But she's like, “yeah, no, that shits a rip off.”

Hagop Kourounian: Yeah I guess that's kind of the ethos of street wear in a way, just taking things that already exist and just recontextualizing them. I think Kruger has tried to sue Supreme multiple times for the use of that logo, but I think she was unsuccessful. But I also think Supreme themselves have been unable to trademark the logo. That's why there's so many bootlegs out and they can't really do much about it. Which I guess is fair, you steal something, someone should be able to steal it right back. 

Oz Perkins: Right on…

Hagop Kourounian: I've noticed that on your red carpet looks, you typically add these pins to kind of accessorize what you're wearing. I really wanted to learn a little bit about these additions. Particularly the Equus 1974 pin that you were wearing a lot during the LONGLEGS premiere as well as the arrow brooch and the Eraserhead pin. 

Oz Perkins: When my parents passed I collected a few things of theirs and when my mom died, a lot of her stuff was stolen. So I kind of have what I have and I try to do the best of what I ended up with. Those arrow pins come from my parents. The Equus pin is from when I was born. My father was on Broadway doing the Equus play and that's the logo for it. That logo was very indelible in my early years. My mom had a t-shirt, we had the bags, we had the pins. I remember the framed poster was hung up in all my houses when I was growing up. It's such a great look. That particular image is just such a fantastic piece of art. My brother and I, about 10 years ago now, reprinted some t-shirts with the logo and we wore it all the time. It's such a great look and it's a great nod to my family and what was going on in my dad's career when I was born. So that's the Equus pin. As far as little pins, like the Eraserhead pin, Batman pins, etc. I'm kind of a comic book fan, I grew up in comic book stores and record shops and there's always invariably a little pin section by the register. I've always thought it was like a really fun little way to catch someone's attention, kind of open up a conversation or hit someone with something that they don't know about. My life has taken to sort of a new tradition in finding great pins. I have a great Otis Redding pin and I was wearing a T-Rex pin for the LONGLEGS production. It's sort of like having a little exclamation point, a little detail on your clothes that says what you love. Someone would be like, "Oh, what is that thing?" or someone would recognize it and be like, "Oh, Eraserhead." It's just a way of sort of dialoguing with the world about something you love. 

Hagop Kourounian: I love the sentimentality of your parents' pins. It's like almost having a piece of them with you during these special moments… I'm curious if you've ever looked at the way other filmmakers dress and if you think any of them dress particularly well or have inspired your wardrobe, maybe even while directing or on the red carpet. 

Oz Perkins: I think it's sort of funny to think about how in the old days as a director you wore a suit. Whether it's Alfred Hitchcock or François Truffaut or John Ford you were wearing a fucking suit to work every day. And I know some guys still do that. I think Spike Jonze does that sometimes. Spike Jonze has great style of course, but he comes off sensically from the world of street fashion and skateboarding and all that. So he's always got a very certain genuinely sophisticated look. Big fan of Spike Lee, of course, he was an indelible artist in my teenage years as I was starting to understand movies. Do the Right Thing was really impactful to me, the style of that movie was so outrageous. I think his style is super cool. I guess maybe the two Spikes, Spike Jonze and Spike Lee.

Hagop Kourounian: Speaking of Spike Lee, he's the king of wearing sports merchandise on set and at premieres. I've noticed you do that a couple of times as well. Most recently with the LA Lakers satin jacket while on the carpet for The Monkey. And then I also spotted this great Vin Scully shirt you were wearing while making LONGLEGS. So I'm assuming you're a really big sports fan as well. 

Oz Perkins: Well, growing up in Los Angeles and being a Los Angeleno we do have some of the most iconic sports teams, obviously. The Vin Scully t-shirt is proudly bought in the parking lot, you know, parking lot t-shirts are the best. I was at the Laker game last night and I bought a Luka Dončić parking lot t-shirt. I don't want to spend a bunch of money at the team store in the Crypto.com Arena, it's dog shit. Like it's dog shit. Really bad stuff. Like, what is this garbage? So the jacket I wore to The Monkey premiere was in celebration of the Lakers getting the best player in the world Luka Dončić, which is stupid. I just had this beautiful jacket that I bought on Mitchell & Ness and it's been in the packaging in the trunk of my car for a year. I thought I'll probably just wear that to celebrate Luka. LA's been kind of wounded with the fires and I wanted to sort of represent Los Angeles a little bit. When I was a kid I loved sports. I always wore jerseys. Hockey sweaters, especially, I was really into hockey, I was really into the LA Kings back when they wore purple and yellow uniforms. My brother and I always used to wear football jerseys, hockey sweaters, lots of sports paraphernalia, lots of caps. A lot of that for me is just about the logo. A really great sports logo is such a satisfying thing. The Milwaukee Brewers logo is such a perfect thing. The Baltimore Orioles logo is such a perfect thing. There's some really great looks out there, especially the vintage. A lot of stuff now is shit because American style has kinda turned to shit. Sometimes when the Denver Broncos wear their throwback uniforms with this really gaudy blue and orange it’s so hot. Or the old Houston Oilers powder blue with the orange is also pretty great. So, you know, growing up in the ‘80s, I was lucky to have all of those early logos imprinted on me.

Hagop Kourounian: 100% agree on the parking lot bootlegs. I do the same at concerts too. I also agree with you about American style going to shit. You can tell it's shit because all these teams keep referencing the throwback stuff versus making really good new iconography. I wanted to kind of ask you about on-set life a little bit. Are there any items that you gravitate to while making a movie? Is there anything that makes you feel grounded, comfortable, or confident?

Oz Perkins: Usually a good cap is nice. It just gives you something to put on and take off a couple times. When you're shooting, if you want to focus a little bit more you can pull it lower over your eyes and have a little private moment. When you have three kids it's hard sometimes to take a shower or brush your hair or any of that stuff. So a cap is always a friendly thing to have around. I always wear a fleece Patagonia jacket, especially during the last two movies I've made in Canada where it's cold and shit. That stuff is good to have. I have a great pair of waterproof Gore-tex New Balance sneakers, which are cool on the set because there’s mud and water and rain. 

Hagop Kourounian: I wanted to ask you a little bit about your relationship to music. There's a great photo of you wearing a Lou Reed Transformer shirt from a few years ago and the titular character from LONGLEGS is a big music fan. He even has a Transformer album displayed in his basement. How much of your taste was written into the character of LONGLEGS. 

Oz Perkins: It's all my tastes and it's all what I like and it's all what I'm listening to when I'm doing it specifically. I tend to kind of perseperate and repeat a lot of what I'm hearing. So I'll put three songs on repeat and I’ll listen to those three songs all day long. Music is the thing that gives me my imagery. I appreciate things like Pinterest and all that stuff. That's obviously really inspiring but when I want to really kind of generate image and language when I'm writing the scripts, it's listening to music. Wearing something like a Transformer t-shirt is kind of the same thing as the pins but I think even more so, because it's more visible. If I know my picture is going to be taken, I might as well have my picture taken and also put out Lou Reed into the world. So I think it's great that younger people probably don't have an idea of what that is. We live in a world, especially in America, that features an erasure of history and a disinterest in what's come before. Youth culture nowadays is so soaked in what's passing by, what’s in the moment but now it's gone. You have an image on Instagram and now it's gone. Nothing sticks. There's nothing sticky anymore and so there are no albums to obsess over. You gotta listen to one song and you kind of swipe it and hit the next thing. So I try my best to kind of represent older artists that might be a little bit slightly more marginal. Anybody can wear a Beatles t-shirt and that's awesome. The Beatles are the best of course, obviously. But if you start to go one step deeper and maybe it'll make five kids be like “what is that thing?” and go listen to it. That's part of my job as someone who’s in the public. It seems like a missed opportunity to just wear a black t-shirt. 

Hagop Kourounian: I discovered Mr. Bungle from your Mr. Bungle shirt and I've been listening to Pink Cigarettes for the last three days. 

Oz Perkins: Right on… I got a lot of really good feedback for that shirt because that's a group that a lot of people know and love, but never gets in the front. I actually took that out of my 20 year old son's closet. That's his t-shirt. 

Hagop Kourounian: Hell yeah, you're teaching your kids well. Do you have the Lou Reed Supreme photo t-shirt?

Oz Perkins: I don’t. I should track that one down.

Hagop Kourounian: You've mentioned so many great brands in this conversation. I'm very curious, where do you shop? 

Oz Perkins: APC has great stuff. RRL has great stuff although it's so preposterous and appallingly expensive. I can't recommend it. It's like you're kidding with how much the shirt costs. So that's sort of a drag how expensive that place is. I usually buy a lot of music and comic book shirts on RedBubble. Right now I'm wearing a shirt from RedBubble with Robert Crumbs’ character Mr. Natural on the front. Supreme and Patagonia, of course. But also comic book stores and record shops and rock shops. Rock Town on Hollywood Blvd, in Los Angeles, they’ve been there since I was a kid. That’s where I got my Guns N’ Roses shirts when they were a new band and I still take my 20 year old son there to get all his death metal shirts. Oh and Mitchell & Ness for all the sports stuff. 

Hagop Kourounian: Thank you for taking the time, Oz!

Oz Perkins: You got it, bro.