How Cody Lightning Captured Authenticity to Create the Indie Gem ‘Hey, Viktor!’
Cody Lightning has a wild and contagious sense of humor. Last year, he took his gift and made his directorial and writing debut with it. His film Hey, Viktor!, which he also acted in, captured the hearts and chuckles of indie film festivals last year.
The actor, known for Four Sheets to the Wind, Brick and his role as Young Victor Joseph in Smoke Signals, is also in the upcoming Marvel series Echo, which premieres on streaming January 9 on Disney+.
Buzzing with energy, the multi-hyphenate took time to discuss the challenges of Hey, Viktor!, how his team was able to snag Colin Mochrie for the film and what he’s working on at the moment.
From writing to acting to directing Hey, Viktor!, how challenging was it to take it from inception to reality?
The obstacle we had with our funding, because we made it up here in Canada, is 95% of our crew – not cast, crew – had to be Canadian. My buddy, Sam [Miller], he’s American, so that was our one American who you’re allowed to use.
I grew up in the States, so I have tons of filmmaker friends that I wanted to bring on board and I couldn’t. Then it wasn’t just that they had to be Canadian, but from Alberta. I was like, “Man, what if there’s people here that can’t do what I want them to do, if it’s not up to the level of quality that I want?”
Luckily, everything fell into place perfectly. Everyone was just very eager to be working, especially too, because of COVID stuff and it ended up working out. That was one obstacle.
Also, it wasn’t too hard for us [to film]. The house was my friend’s mom’s house, so she was cool with us filming there. The bar scenes, that’s a tiny little bar in this little small town just outside of where I live and they’re like, “Yeah, you can film here.” They probably pull in maybe two or 300 bucks a day, it’s like a tiny little dive bar, so we just rented it out for cheap and they said, “Can we use the name of the bar in here?” We’re like, “Sure.”
Same thing with the pawn shop. They’re like, “As long as we can use our name of the pawn shop in the movie.” It worked out. There weren’t too many crazy obstacles, to be honest. I had some awesome producers that dealt with stuff.
What was the writing process like?
Before I was ever a writer or classified myself as a writer, I’m a storyteller, so a lot of it was Sam and I just pumping out stories and jokes and, “What if this and what if that?”
Sam was formatting everything, structuring everything and making sure we were hitting the right points in the different acts. It was a lot of me just going off and then him writing everything down and us just going back and forth a few times.
When we got our script done, he came up here, we went up into the mountains in Banff, which was beautiful up here. Just stayed in a cabin with a few friends for a week, a week and a half. That was our first writing session. Then we had a couple more of those.
We never got to a point with the script where it was like, “This isn’t working,” or “I don’t know.” It was all for the jokes. Our next project that we’re working on is going to be a little bit different. It’s going to be very dark with humor sprinkled in. Not like Hey, Viktor!, where it’s just joke after joke after joke with a couple of serious bits in there. No, our next project is going to be a little bit different. Still very funny, but in a very dark, dark way.
Are you directing that one as well?
Yeah, I’m writing and directing that one. I’m going to act in it, but I’ll have a way smaller part. Acting-directing with, Hey, Viktor!, it was definitely a challenge. It was very hard.
Photo courtesy of Visit Films.How long had you been kicking that idea around in your head, to do Hey, Viktor!?
The original seed was planted about 15 years ago as a joke, just with some buddies. I was living in Idaho with about five or six other filmmakers in a big house, so we would help each other on our projects and stuff like that.
If we went out to the bar one evening or to a restaurant, let’s say the service was crappy or whatever, my buddy Black Horse, who’s my executive producer, is like, “Just go there and tell them you’re Little Victor.” Like they would know who the heck that is.
We’d do it as a joke. “Don’t you who I am? I’m Little Victor.” Yelling and just being obnoxious as a joke. Then Black Horse and I talked about it. He’s like, “Let’s make that.” I was like, “Okay, cool.” I had pitched this originally as a short film just to have fun with my friends for a week, film some funny stuff and send it to some film festivals.
We pitched it in Toronto and we didn’t win the pitch, but a lot of the people in that section came up to us after and said, “This is an amazing idea and concept, it’s just not what we’re looking to fund, but you guys need to continue on this path. You guys have to make this a film or a series” and we’re like, “Huh?”
We went to the drawing board and wrote the script, then pitched it around to a few people. It was a little bit tricky because I was a first-time director.
I’ve acted in several projects, but [I’m a] first-time director. My buddy, Sam, has published several novels and books, but never a feature script. My producer, Joshua, has produced several plays in theater productions.
Finally, Tele Film said, “You know what? You guys are pretty serious, we can tell. We’ll fund you guys.”
We were like, “Whoa, we got it.” The idea of it came and went and then, when we decided to take it seriously, about five years ago, is when we started to get to work on it.
I feel like Colin Mochrie played into that a lot, too. From watching him on Whose Line for years, it just felt like this was in his wheelhouse. What was it like working with him?
He’s a really nice guy. When we were shuffling through potential Craig Broners, we reached out to some big actors and we got passes on a lot of them.
One of my producers was like, “Colin Mochrie’s Canadian, maybe we can try him.” We looked him up, got his email and he wrote us back within 20 minutes and said, “Sure, send me the script.” We sent him the script and he said, “This is funny. Yeah, sign me up.” Boom. Within a day, he was on board and we’re like, “We got Colin Mochrie.” He was a lot of fun to work with.
How did the rest of the cast come together?
I don’t keep in the best of touch with everyone from the movie Smoke Signals, but we still all know each other, and it was just literally… When Sam and I were writing it, he said, “Now, the tricky part, how are we going to get the rest of the cast involved?”
Within 20 minutes, I was like, “I’ll make phone calls. ‘Hey, Irene. Yeah, we’re doing a film. Do you want to check it out? Okay, sweet. All right.’ Irene’s in. ‘Hey, Gary. What’s up, Uncle? Yeah, we’re working on a film, do you want to be a part of it? Sweet.’ Yeah, got Gary.” It just kept happening like that.
As Hey, Viktor! is somewhat a spiritual successor to Smoke Signals, Indigenous representation is at the forefront. How important was that to you?
A big thing with content coming out that is [considered] “Indigenous content,” a lot of it’s not written or directed by First Nations or Indigenous people. I wanted to make sure that people know this is by us, for us.
The audience is very broad, but because we’re all First Nations actors except for Hannah [Cheesman]. That’s key. There’s a lot of shows coming out now… Dark Winds and Reservation Dogs… that’s written by us, for us.
It’s long overdue for that. It’s about damn time that we’re getting to make our projects without having, quote, unquote, “a white savior.” We’re able to write our stuff, direct our stuff and create it. That’s where you get the best of it, I believe.
Photo courtesy of Visit Films.It goes back to authenticity. How important is that and how were you able to get that out of everyone?
There were a couple of times my producers who are – a few of them who are non-Indigenous – are going through the script, they’re like, “No, that wouldn’t happen.” I’m like, “Yes, yes it would.”
The rez that I come from is known to be pretty rank. It’s not shown in the best of light, usually. I’m like, “You guys need to get a crash course on the rez. It’s not all glorified, it’s not just ceremonies and peacekeepers and stuff like that. No, there’s some rank stuff going on.” It’s dysfunctional humor. That’s how I was raised.
Wherever the film went, whether it be the various festivals or elsewhere, it received a ton of praise. What did it feel like receiving that recognition from the universe in your directorial debut?
It was truly amazing. With a project like ours, because of the content and the vulgar language and the drug and alcohol use and all that stuff, I thought there would be one or two people that stood up and said, “How dare you?” Or, “Really? This is how you want to portray our people?”
We didn’t get anything like that and I was not shocked, so to say, more just like, “Yeah, see? We do know what the hell we’re doing. We knew that this would hit well with people. Who’s making comedies right now, Indigenous comedy?”
It was a breath of fresh air, and that’s what a lot of [folks thought]. The First Nations and Indigenous communities especially said, “Thank you for this. Smoke Signals, the original, made a lot of people cry. It’s sad.”
One person [from] a Q and A said, “Smoke Signals made me cry all the time when I was a kid and this, I was laughing my ass off, so thank you for the laughter.” It was awesome to get all the feedback that we got with just people loving it. Some bigger actors had given some reviews and video clips, “Just watched Hey, Viktor! Freaking hilarious.”
What else is next for you?
Currently, the Marvel series Echo, that I acted in, is coming out in January. I’ve just seen the very first commercial on TV for it. I’ve seen the trailers on social media and stuff like that, but the other night, I was watching a hockey game at the local pub here, and it was like, “This January, Echo,” and my girlfriend and I looked at each other like, “AH!”
[I’m] also working on writing my next project with Sam. That’s our next big thing. We have a deadline to get that script to try to get our funding, so we could shoot next winter because it’s a hockey film, so we need [the] cold.
Our funders from Hey, Viktor! said, “You guys made it. It’s doing very well, we got theatrical release up here in Canada’s distribution,” so Hey, Viktor! will be in theaters up here in Canada for March and April and then we have two years of streaming on Crave. After the success that it’s having with the festivals and distribution and all that, they said, “Let us know what your next project is, so we can jump on board possibly beforehand.”
The project we’re working on, the hockey film, and then just going to ride the wave of Echo when that comes out because that’s going to be something else.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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Chris Butera is a voice actor specializing in commercial, eLearning and corporate narration reads. When he’s not helping clients achieve their goals, he's playing guitar and bass.
