VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Cody Lightning On His Tribeca Film ‘Hey Viktor!,’ Struggle Of Indigenous Actors

Writer-director Cody Lightning discussed his new film Hey Viktor!, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week, in his new exclusive uInterview.

Lightning, who directed and starred in the film as himself, spoke about where the idea for the film originated with uInterview founder Erik Meers at our offices in Manhattan. 

“The idea for Viktor happened I’d say probably 10 to 12 years ago,” he said. “Just as a joke amongst our friends, just drinking and being dorks. And my partner Sam and I, we got together and I was like, yo let’s make this s—.”

His friend Simon Baker co-stars in the movie with him. The two met on the set for Smoke Signals in 1998 – and much of Viktor revolves around the idea of making a sequel to the movie.

“After Smoke Signals came out me and Simon were both recognized heavily and so like we would go to these different events and be recognized by people and that’s kind of where it started. And so as a joke, me being in my 30s, me and my friends and were joking around like well what if we get kicked out of casinos and private events and all this stuff and just act a fool and say, ‘Don’t you know who I am I was little Victor in Smoke Signals‘ and people clearly don’t know what the f— that is.”

Lightning spoke about the struggles of being an indigenous actor. “In indigenous cinema, there’s only one or two projects per year maybe that come out and a lot of people jump on those projects,” he said.

While he and Baker are both indigenous actors, Lightning struggled with it more than Baker because he doesn’t, “have that look, I’ve never had that look. I look what Armenian? Russian? Like you know I’m culturally ambiguous and so people like I don’t get those gigs.” 

He described the writing process as being pretty seamless for him.

“All this pretty much wrote itself like all the jokes, the gnarliness,” he said. “A lot of it is loosely based around my dad and my uncles doing drugs and drinking and pawning things and that type of stuff.” 

The film required Lightning to go for it – including several nude scenes. “I’m a nudist,” he said flatly. “Another friend that watched the film was like you know you really went there but you didn’t, it wasn’t like you were going over top to try to get the laughs.”

He also recalled working with iconic actor Colin Mochrie – especially the moment he first got to set. 

“I pull up and there’s this bug f—ing trailer with two bathrooms in it, and I’m like, oh we got a new trailer? And Kyle goes, ‘Yeah it’s for Colin Mochrie.’ What? And even Colin was like, ‘This is a little much, you guys, like this is all for me?’ And I’m like, ‘What the f—?’”

Ultimately, the film script ended up being “just a guideline,” he said. “Like let’s read it, let’s go over it, but let’s play with it. And there was so many times when filming where we were just riffing hard and there was some times where it was like, what the hell is real anymore like we’re going so deep into this that even some crew members were like dude you guys gotta pump the breaks you know.”