It’s 1987 in Oakland, California, and a diverse community that includes punk rockers, aspiring rappers, a rising basketball legend, Neo-Nazis, a sage video store owner, and a bruiser trying to start a new life all move about their lives under the watchful gaze of a strange, iridescent green glow that seems to envelope the city, energize and feed off it. This is the world of writer-director team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’sgenre-bending film Freaky Tales.
Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) wraps up the film in a climactic kung-fu battle, reminiscent of blaxploitation films.
“It really kind of hit its peak in ’87, May of ’87,” Fleck says, referencing the cosmic energy that threads the film’s stories. Best known for their breakout Sundance Film Festival hit Half Nelson in 2006, Boden and Fleck had their fourth Sundance to worldpremiere in 2024 with Freaky Tales, a return to their independent roots after helming Captain Marvel in 2019. The anthology film is an interwoven tapestry of psychedelic and distinctly 80s energy. “The origin of the movie itself comes out of that era growing up in the Bay Area,” Fleck says. “And it’s both a love letter to my hometown, but also to the movies we grew up loving.” It’s in that spirit that Freaky Tales unfolds like a series of mythic tall tales—part memory, part comic book, part hometown scrapbook. Real-life NBA star Sleepy Floyd, portrayed by Jay Ellis (Top Gun: Maverick), who scored a legendary 29 points in one playoff quarter for the Golden State Warriors, becomes a kind of superhero within the film’s final chapter. Freaky Tales lovingly plays to a specific time and place, buzzing with unrest and transformation. Unfolding across four interconnected stories—“Strength in Numbers: The Gilman Strikes Back,” “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” “Born to Mack,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd”—the film features an ensemble cast that includes Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Dominique Thorne, Jack Champion, the late Angus Cloud and two time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks.
“We are unabashedly referencing a lot of other films in this movie. And each kind of chapter also has its own specific influences—culturally, as well as filmically.”
Boden and Fleck leaned heavily into the grimy, rough punk aesthetic.
Boden and Fleck didn’t want to make a singular, linear narrative. Instead, they leaned into structure as texture, treating the film like a compilation of visual and cultural sounds. “We kind of approached this a little bit as, like, a cinematic mix tape,” Boden says. “We are unabashedly referencing a lot of other films in this movie. And each kind of chapter also has its own specific influences—culturally, as well as filmically.” Chapter one, for instance, borrows from the punk documentary aesthetic of The Decline of Western Civilization, using 16mm film and a 4:3 aspect ratio to ground the viewer in a scrappy, DIY version of Oakland’s punk scene. It’s a story where young misfits at the 924 Gilman club rise up against neo-Nazis—filmed with the fury of rebellion and the rough edges of zine culture.“That punk aesthetic… that has that punk vibe to it. So we leaned into that 4:3,” Boden says. “As soon as we get into that punk fight… we start exploding out into a more comic book bag.”
The visual language of the film evolves with each chapter — widening the screen, adding polish, and leaning into hyper-stylized moments — culminating in the sleek 2.39:1 widescreen format of a classic kung fu movie by the time the final story begins.“It doesn’t necessarily feel singular throughout,” Boden says of the film’s style. “It’s not like a single album by one artist… but like a mixtape by multiple artists that hopefully feels complete and satisfying by the end.” The filmmaking duo met in a summer filmmaking course at New York University, and began a decades-long collaboration that gave them the confidence to embrace to a big swing and embrace the tonal shifts of Freaky Tales. “We wanted to allow each chapter to feel like its own genre,” Boden says. “But then stitch them together through music, color, and this ever-present sense of place.”
“Sundance has completely changed our lives, I can’t say that about many things but I can definitely say that about Sundance.”
The film pays homage to films across various genres.
One of the most entertaining sequences in Freaky Tales is boosted by Oakland native Tom Hanks’ delightful cameo as Hank, the quintessential overbearing yet endearingly passionate cinephile who presides over a small, one location video store, dispensing wisdom and an endless string of movie recommendations. The character, and the location, came straight out of Fleck’s life experience. “I worked in video stores,” Fleck says. “My first job was in a mall mom and pop video store similar to the one in Freaky Tales, and then unfortunately Blockbuster came around and ate up all the small video stores. And I ended up going over and working for Blockbuster too, because I just wanted to be around movies. A very different experience though. You know, Blockbuster didn’t have NC-17 movies so I remember people just coming back really upset that they rented Bad Lieutenant, thinking they were getting the NC-17 version, and it was completely chopped up. And I could sympathize with their frustration.”
In addition to Oakland and New York, Boden and Fleck’s lives and career have been indelibly shaped by another city-Park City, Utah. Starting with the short film, Gowanus, Brooklyn in 2004, going up to Freaky Tales in 2024, the filmmaking duo has had five films premiere in the Utah mountains at the Sundance Film Festival, four of them feature length.They credit the festival withestablishing their careers. “Sundance has completely changed our lives,” Boden says. “I can’t say that about many things but I can definitely say that about Sundance. We went there, literally, as kids with a short film, and no connections at all to the film industry, the film business, what it would mean to be a professional filmmaker, and came out of it going to that festival with, you know, a lot of friends, and connections and support towards learning how to take steps to do that, to become a professional filmmaker and have a life doing that… so it’ll definitely be strange…I don’t expect to have a film there next year, so I don’t know if we’ll ever be back at Sundance in Park City again.”
Wherever Boden and Fleck go, their knack for bringing stories and cities to life on the big screen with detail, and emotion that’s rooted in the truth of lived experience has truly captured the imagination of us all. And as the most powerful freaky green stuff of all transports Sundance to Boulder, Colorado, perhaps they’ll be leaving their mark and being influenced by that city next. Certainly, their talent and passion for storytelling is a force to be reckoned with anywhere.
