How the Female Gaze, David Lynch and ‘Natural Born Killers’ Play Into Sky’s Nick Cave Novel Adaptation ‘Bunny Munro’ With Matt Smith

Sky’s six-episode adaptation of the Nick Cave novel The Death of Bunny Munro, starring Doctor Who and House of the Dragon star Matt Smith, was in the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) spotlight on Monday.

Director Isabella Eklöf (Kalak, Holiday, Industry seasons 2 and 3), BAFTA-winning writer Pete Jackson (Somewhere Boy) and producer Ed Macdonald from Clerkenwell Films (Baby Reindeer, The End of the F***ing World) discussed the show during a panel entitled “From Book to Screen: The Death of Bunny Munro,” programmed in collaboration with the Edinburgh TV Festival and hosted by its creative director Rowan Woods.

Rafael Mathé plays the nine-year-old son, Bunny Junior. “Following his wife Libby’s death by suicide, sex addicted, door-to-door beauty product salesman and self-professed lothario Bunny Munro finds himself saddled with a young son and only a loose concept of parenting,” a synopsis for the series reads. “Together with Bunny Junior he embarks on an epic and increasingly out-of-control road trip across southern England as the two struggle to contain their grief in very different ways.”

Monday’s panel covered the optioning of the novel, its adaptation, the choice of director, casting and the visual approach to the story and the creative choices to bring the father-and-son relationship to the screen. 

Eklöf was asked about the stylistic influences, sharing: “Ultimately, everything is instinct; everything is finding that angle where you are seeing the magic. But we did have some overarching principles.”

Some of them may be more obvious than others. “We talked about ‘70s cinema — [John] Cassavetes, [David] Lynch is an obvious reference,” she said. “There was a little bit of Natural Born Killers that you talked about for quite more specific reasons,” added Macdonald. “And then we talked about quite a load of different references. I remember Red Rocket came up. We talked about Apocalypse Now.” And he shared with a laugh that he may have even brought up Bad Santa.

Jackson told panel that he knew right away that adapting Cave’s novel would be a challenge. “My first thought was: ‘I’ve no idea how you do it.’ Great trepidation! I mean, there were floating vaginas on the first page. I love the book to bits.”

The writer continued: “I think what Nick does brilliantly and fearlessly is explore his darker impulses and his secret shames and his mad kind of desires. And in the creative team it was incumbent on us for the end result to be the same thing — to shock and to challenge and confront and also connect.”

Macdonald recalled that Cave has said his inspirations for the novel were a biblical text and the feminist SCUM (for: Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto.

How did the creative team avoid objectifying women the way Bunny does? Eklöf‘s answer was to objectify him instead. “Yeah, I really, very actively in my career went for the female gaze, because it’s a visual medium, so you cannot avoid to sexualize your characters,” she explained. “It’s intrinsic. Everyone’s gaze has sex in [it], but the way you make it equal is to objectify the men just as much.”

First published in 2009, Bunny Munro is Cave’s second novel after And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989). The singer is best known as the lead vocalist of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Bunny Munro will premiere on Sky on Nov. 20. Its first two episodes world premiere at LFF on Monday evening.