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<\/p>\nThe title character in Tyler Cornack\u2019s Mermaid isn\u2019t beautiful, and she doesn\u2019t long to turn into a human, through song or otherwise. She doesn\u2019t even speak. Forget all that movie mermaid stuff.<\/p>\n
Destiny, as the film\u2019s protagonist dubs her, is more fish than person, more mer than maid. She has gills in her neck and pointy, carnivore teeth. She makes guttural sounds, and she tends to spew gooey black projectile vomit when she feels threatened.<\/p>\n
Mermaid, which is screening Wednesday and Thursday (May 6 and 7) at the Beach Theatre, is Tampa-bred writer\/director Cornack\u2019s third film. It veers between comedy, drama, drug-soaked freakout and gory horror show.<\/p>\n
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Tyler Cornack was raised in Tampa.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a Florida movie to me, first,\u201d Cornack tells the Catalyst. \u201cIt\u2019s a hybrid of genres that jumps in and out. I would also call it a dark comedy before anything else. And then I would throw in the rest as \u2018insert genre here.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are elements of horror and thriller sprinkled throughout; it\u2019s kind of all my favorite genres rolled into one crazy adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mermaid was shot on St. Pete Beach in September and October 2023.<\/p>\n
Johnny Pemberton (Fallout; Superstore) stars as Doug, a stoner who lives, aimlessly, in a beach house inherited from his late father. He talks to the fish in his aquarium, otherwise stumbling about in a haze of pills, cocaine and alcohol.<\/p>\n
The story kicks into gear when he discovers a wounded mermaid (the damage was inflicted by a boater played, in a preamble, by Tom Arnold). He carries her home, lays her awkwardly in his bathtub, and feeds her small fish and Spaghetti-O\u2019s. Always laced with drugs to keep her calm.<\/p>\n
Doug has a young daughter with a woman he slept with exactly one time. He has, understandably, difficulty connecting with the girl. His preoccupation with the thing in his bathtub (which nobody else knows about) makes him even more distracted than usual.<\/p>\n
Keaven Nealon (Saturday Night Live; Weeds) plays her well-meaning stepfather.<\/p>\n
Doug\u2019s discovery of Destiny also coincides with a confrontation with his drug dealer (Robert Patrick, from Terminator 2: Judgement Day), and things go from bad to worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a big difference between films and movies,\u201d offers Cornack, who also composed the music. \u201cThis definitely leans more on the side of a film, to me. In a sense that there\u2019s some personal stuff there, being I grew up in Florida, and really it\u2019s like a character study.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as it being scary, it\u2019s very intentional. It\u2019s going to be weird for people, and I think some people have to process it more than others. And there\u2019s people who really, really get it and understand it, and there\u2019s people who don\u2019t understand it whatsoever.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd those are my favorite kind of films.\u201d<\/p>\n
Executive producer (and cinematographer) on Mermaid was Billy Morean, whose Aunt Beth (of Morean Art Center fame) allowed her St. Pete Beach house to be used for Doug\u2019s domicile.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met Bill in California years ago, in film school. He grew up there on the beach, and we went to his aunt\u2019s house for his 30th birthday, 10 years ago. I saw that house and I was like \u2018Man, we should do a movie here one day.\u2019 I\u2019ve always wanted to make a beach movie on the beach I grew up with.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very personal story for him as well. He has so many memories in that house, and on that beach. And it\u2019s very much our sensibilities humor-wise, too. We both have a very dry, f\u2013ked-up sense of humor. So we jelled on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Another of the movie\u2019s central locations is the 33,500-gallon aquarium at RumFish Grill, at the TradeWinds Resort. The tank, 13 feet deep, and the RumFish dining room stand in for the strip club where Doug works, and where at least one violent action scene takes place.<\/p>\n
According to Cornack, the tank scenes were originally written to be lensed at Weeki Wachee, home of Florida\u2019s \u201coriginal\u201d mermaids. \u201cWe tried,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd they were not into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, \u201cThere were a lot of changes that had to happen on the fly with a script like that. It\u2019s always alive is what I like to say. It doesn\u2019t stop changing.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the look of Destiny \u2013 who is \u201cplayed\u201d by actress Avery Potemri \u2013 morphed at the very last minute. \u201cI was working with a team for a number of months, working on the creature design I wanted to do,\u201d Cornack explains. \u201cI was about to fly to go start filming the movie when the company I had been working with dropped out. So we had to find somebody the day before I left, a brand-new team to start from scratch.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this four-month thing became 10 days. We had to shift the whole shooting schedule around to build this new mermaid, which none of us knew was going to look like until the day we started shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The production generated a local spend of $750,000, according to Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, with cast and crew accounting for 900 hotel room nights during the filming.<\/p>\n
Mermaid premiered in March at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Pemberton was in attendance when the Beach Theatre advance-screened the film April 18.<\/p>\n
Cornack\u2019s film opens with the words \u201cA love letter to Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think there\u2019s so much more comedy, even if it\u2019s dry, strange weird comedy, if this awkward guy is talking to an animal,\u201d he says. \u201cA feral animal. I think it speaks more to Florida. To me, it speaks more to the roadside attraction Florida thing. I just think it creates more comedy than if she was an attractive siren, sitting in a tub.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doug, the filmmaker stressed, is as desperately lonely as he is messed up. He, too, is a fish out of water.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like this guy has been locked away in his house for a number of years, and he\u2019s really had nobody to speak to, and nobody to come check on him. Nobody\u2019s been doing a wellness check on him, and he\u2019s been locked in this house with his dad\u2019s things.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he can\u2019t really communicate the outside world, so lo and behold, this is why she\u2019s called Destiny. He creates this version of Destiny in his head, because he finds something incredible. And the only things he cares about, and can relate to, are fish.\u201d<\/p>\n