An Interview With Adrian Țofei - Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2015) (Spoilers)

Disturbing Cinema: Was there a particular event or point in time that sparked your desire to pursue a career as an actor & filmmaker? 

Adrian Țofei: It was when I caught a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey on TV as a teenager. I remember instantly having shivers down my spine, it was for the first time I understood filmmaking as a powerful art form. 

Disturbing Cinema: What inspired you of the idea of Be My Cat: A Film For Anne? 

Adrian Țofei: At the end of my acting masters studies I did a one-man-show called The Monster which went to numerous festivals in Romania, about a psycho obsessed with an actress and having some issues with his sister's cat. The character I was playing there had this paradoxical combination of vulnerability and being dangerous, I remember audiences being super impressed at the end of one of the performances, so I thought of bringing this to a much wider global audience, not just a couple of people in an art pub or indie theatre. The story in that one-man-show didn't influence Be My Cat, but the character did. 

Disturbing Cinema: What made you choose Anne Hathaway as your characters obsession?

Adrian Țofei: Multiple reasons: 

1. She had to be a worldwide-known celebrity so that everyone will connect with the story.

2. She had to have something to do with cats, since my character in Be My Cat was inspired by my character in the one-man-show I mentioned before.

3. She had to be an actress I genuinely appreciate, so that it will be easier to transform that appreciation into obsession for my character. And right around the time I saw Les Miserables and her performance there impressed me so much, then The Dark Knight Rises the same year and her cat-woman brought the cat connection into equation, and it was decided. 

Disturbing Cinema: How did you prepare for your role? 

Adrian Țofei: There's so much to say about this, since it evolved over the years with every performance I had in that one-man-show (and even before that with a monologue I had in a theatre production which inspired the one-man-show). But more specifically related to Be My Cat, I tried to experience some of the circumstances that my character in the film experiences. Like not socialising, moving back with my mom in my hometown and not leaving the house for a couple of months before shooting, stuff like that, a kind of partial living in character. 

Disturbing Cinema: How was your experience working with your co-stars, Sonia Teodoriu, Florentina Hariton, and Alexandra Stroe? 

Adrian Țofei: It was a great experience, lots of working with them happened actually in advance in email conversations for months, when I would be giving them lots of tasks to work on their characters, so that when we met we would directly start shooting. 

Disturbing Cinema: What was challenging about bringing Be My Cat: A Film For Anne to life? 

Adrian Țofei: I would say financing, production and post-production. The creative inspiration and enthusiasm was fully there, I never struggled with that, but I had to learn and adapt a lot of the aspects of film production on the go, while making it. 

Disturbing Cinema: Be My Cat: A Film For Anne does a great job at completely blurring out the lines between fiction & reality, which convinces the viewer that what they are seeing is real. How did you capture that illusion of authenticity? 

Adrian Țofei: That was my main goal. How did I do it? Well, that's a long story, I wrote a lot about it on my website. On short: I created and orchestrated months in advance before shooting all the circumstances that during shooting and improvising would lead to authentic life-like moments. I practically created an alternate fictional reality that works just like ours, which only has to be recorder on camera. Then I looked at all the footage like a documentary filmmaker would and created the film in post-production while editing. 

Disturbing Cinema: What makes found footage films great & why is it an important sub-genre? 

Adrian Țofei: Again, I would have to write so much to answer to this, I actually wrote a Found Footage Manifesto before making Be My Cat, it's still on my website. On short: by including the camera in the story, it removes the last element reminding audiences that what they see is not real. Therefore they can fully empathise. Also, it allows and even demands for improvisation and hyper-realistic acting which again helps the audiences to empathise more with what they see and hear. And from a filmmaking perspective, it gives a lot of creative freedom to indie filmmakers, who otherwise would need huge budgets and expensive gear and lights to make the audiences forget that they see everything through camera lenses. Why spend millions of dollars to make the camera invisible when you can keep it visible and just include it in the story? 

Disturbing Cinema: Finally I would like to conclude this interview by asking you one of my signature questions which is what is the most disturbing film you have ever seen and why?

Adrian Țofei: Nothing is more disturbing than reality... I don't think fiction will ever be able to compete with that. 

Disturbing Cinema: Congratulations on the film, and thank you once again for taking your time answering my questions, Adrian Țofei. It was a great pleasure interviewing you.

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2015) Plot Summary: An aspiring Romanian filmmaker and actor obsessed with Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway tries to convince her to come to Romania and star alongside him in his upcoming film. He goes to shocking extremes using three local actresses to shoot demo scenes to send to Anne as proof of his filmmaking and acting skills.

You can buy or rent Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2015) here:

Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Be-My-Cat-A-Film-For-Anne/0GZ2JS0ZPNTNVWMOP8JZNVPP3F 

Google: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Be_My_Cat_A_Film_For_Anne?id=kO-uiahETeI.P&hl=en&pli=1

Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/be-my-cat-a-film-for-anne/8d6kgwxp5mnn

TetroVideo: https://tetrovideo.com/shop/be-my-cat-a-film-for-anne-dvd-mediabook/