Problemista’s Julio Torres wants us all to be curious like kids

polygon.com:

Julio Torres is one of the great millennial oddballs. The Saturday Night Live writer and Los Espookys co-creator, writer, and star is a soulful weirdo who pours his singular comedic voice into shows about queer horror nerds scaring people for fun and profit and comedy specials where he talks at length about his favorite shapes. His latest work is Problemista, a movie best described as his attempt at a fairy tale.

Torres wrote and directed Problemista, and he stars as Alejandro, a young immigrant who’s facing deportation back to El Salvador after he loses his (strange) job at a clinic where rich people go to freeze themselves for the future. His one lifeline is Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), a difficult art dealer he needs to convince to sponsor his work visa so he can pursue his (also strange) dream of making odd toys for Hasbro.

Recently, Torres spoke with Polygon over Zoom to talk about Problemista’s autobiographical aspects, his interest in inanimate objects, and why people who use voice notes are just the worst.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Polygon: Alejandro’s interest in making unusual toys is similar to your stand-up work in My Favorite Shapes . What attracts you to telling stories about inanimate objects?

Julio Torres: As a child, my first stabs as a storyteller were like, casting toys and objects as my actors and then coming up with little stories for them. That’s a practice I’ve continued. It becomes a really fun, creative exercise of sorts. I think that’s something most people did when they were kids, but most people grow out of it. And I just didn’t.

Do you think that’s important to your comedy or your work? Reminding people of things they might have grown out of?

Maybe, yeah. Or like, ways of thinking. Children are very curious. Children ask a lot of questions. And then as we age, there’s a shift — as a kid, you ask a lot of questions. And then somewhere along the line, we’re told that asking a lot of questions is bad, or