Category Archives: Interviews

We talk with your favorite genre stars and filmmakers!

Interview: “Deadgirl” film composer Joseph Bauer

Posted on by
Reply

In 2008, independent screenwriter and former Tromateer Trent Haaga, alongside director-producer duo Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, released their first genre feature, one that would turn heads and experience huge success within its inaugural run of the indie film festival circuit. Deadgirl was—and continues to be—a fresh addition to new-age horror, however, veering far from the conventions of the genre. A diamond in the rough of genre stereotypes, cardboard characters and stale plot devices, Deadgirl is part coming-of-age tale and part love story, saturated in a deeply depraved tone of titillating terror.

While offering viewers profound insight regarding friendship, alienation and the hormonal pressures of being a teenager, Deadgirl has also redefined the term, “Living Dead Girl”. But much of the beauty and success of Deadgirl lies within its exquisitely composed score. Immense credit goes to film composer Joseph Bauer for truly bringing this picture to life and giving it an identity. Bauer did an outstanding job of reflecting the vast array of emotions that are presented onscreen in the music, making pictures and sound flow together flawlessly.

——————–

Lacey Paige: How did you get on board as the composure for Trent Haaga’s genre-defying Deadgirl?

Joseph Bauer: I got on board through the editor and sound designer, Phillip Blackford.  He told me there was this weird little movie about a chained up zombie girl, but that it was going to be a lot more interesting than your standard horror film. So I was of course excited to jump in.

Lacey: Did you get to read the script before composing the music?

Bauer: I didn’t read the script, but that was on purpose because I didn’t want to be influenced by what I thought the movie might be, rather than what it ended up being. I wanted to react to what was only on the screen.

Lacey: What sorts of things were going through your head while composing for Deadgirl?

Bauer: Coming up with the music for Deadgirl was a fairly long process. I had it in my head that it should be scored incredibly melodically at one point, more like a strange fable, so there was a whole version of the score that sounded like that. Our main goal was always to stay away from anything too traditional as far as usual horror scoring and really support the heart of the film, which was mainly Rickie’s love of Joann, his odd relationship to the Deadgirl and his friendship with JT. But then to address the more horrific elements in an unusual way; with odd sounds, dark textures… anything that didn’t sound too normal.

Lacey: It’s quite the movie in terms of the subject matter that Haaga throws at you, were you at all put off by the content and did you find it hard to stomach?

Bauer: No, I wasn’t put off by anything, but that’s not a surprise considering how many crazy films I’d seen by that point in my life. When you’re watching Jordorowsky at 15, you tend to have a pretty high tolerance!

Lacey: Some of the music bits in Deadgirl bear a close resemblance to Michael Andrews’ work in Donnie Darko. Both are coming-of-age tales in a really twisted way, exploring the darker sides of being a teenager in particularly obscure situations. Were you at all influenced by Andrews’ music for DD?

Bauer: Michael Andrews’ score to Donnie Darko is really great and a lot of the people working on the film thought it matched certain parts of the film’s tone perfectly. So my challenge was to use that tone and take it further into a more specific direction that would fit this film only. I wanted the score to be even weirder and more emotional. I gave a fairly traditional theme for the friendship between Rickie and JT, a melodic theme for Joann… even a twisted waltz. At one point we were considering going with a small string section for the whole score! But I think in the end it was best to go with something otherworldly in the tunnels. I thought of the score to Alien a lot in those scenes. All those weird windy drones make you feel like you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be.

Lacey: The music in Deadgirl does a bang-on job of reflecting the movie itself in a sense that it has horrific elements, comedic elements, romantic elements, etc… Did the array of emotions that are portrayed in the movie make it more difficult to compose for than any genre movie that stays true to its conventions?

Bauer: It was definitely more challenging than your usual genre picture, but that’s what makes it fun. We spent a lot of time trying to find the exact tone of this thing. It could have been scored ten different ways, each shaping the film into something very different.  At one point I thought the music should be completely counter to what we were seeing… almost weirdly pleasant music, just to make it that much stranger, but we went away from that. The cue as they’re walking up to they asylum for the first time and the waltz when the Deadgirl attacks the dog still has that tone.

One of the main elements that helped make the entire score cohesive was this weird sampled piano thing we recorded at composer Robert Rich’s house. He had an old baby grand piano and we sampled a bunch of plucked strings from within the body. I used that instrument for every emotion Rickie felt. It was great because it sounded like a real piano, but not so clean and pristine like most pianos sound. This sounded like something was just off and not quite right. Perfect for this movie.

Lacey: Was it a lengthy process? Can you describe how you tackled it?

Bauer: Well, I had a month to play around with some ideas while working on a few other things, but when it came time to proper scoring, we were rushed to get the film done before the Toronto Film Festival where it made it’s premiere. We were composing, editing, sound editing, sound designing all in the same house at the same time! Phillip Blackford (Editor and Sound Designer) and I worked together to come up with an interesting mix of music and sound design in most of the asylum scenes. I think we were both influenced by the type of lo-fi, simple synths Andrews used in the Darko score, but rather than use traditional synths like he had, we were more into sample manipulation and got a lot of interesting stuff that way. We also spent two days with composer Robert Rich getting a bunch of weird, ethereal sounds together to flesh out the palette. We decided the music in the tunnels should not be musical at all—completely lacking of life, except for the few moments where Rickie feels sympathy for the Deadgirl, whereas the music for Rickie’s “above ground” life would be more melodic and emotional.

Lacey: You’ve scored several films that fall under different genres, what did you find particularly striking about composing for a horror movie, one that sort of defies the boundaries of a conventional horror picture and explores other genre realms and such dark subject matter?

Bauer: Horror films are fun because they tend to not have any boundaries musically. I find that most of the other genres have very specific types of music you’re forced to write. With horror, you can get away with a lullaby or a crazy atonal wall of sound—all in the same cue! Your palette is just that much wider. Every composer wants a project where they can really put a mark on the film, as far as shifting that tone to just the right place. It’s easy to write scary music, but it’s hard to write intense music. I think those are two very different things.

Lacey: How do you feel about Deadgirl overall?

Bauer: Deadgirl was an insane experience for a lot of reasons. Going from staying up night after night to finish up, working on music, sound editing, mixing the film the day before it needed to be on the plane for Toronto, rushing around with no sleep like crazy people—then suddenly at the premiere in front of hundreds of people who have no idea this film wasn’t even done a few days before. It was a wild ride.

Lacey: Did you attend any of the festival screenings upon its initial release in 2008? How did the audience react?

Bauer: Yeah, the audience went pretty crazy for it, which I have to admit, I wasn’t sure was going to happen. They were cheering and laughing in all the right spots. We had been working on this weird little movie in this house for so long it was hard to imagine it suddenly getting such a reaction.

Lacey: Would you say that the film has led you along in your career as a composer?

Bauer: I think Deadgirl forced me to get out of my comfort zone. It really pushed me into writing ambient music and I now have a better grasp on how to affect sounds into something interesting, intense, weird, or whatever the scene might call for.

——————–

Joseph Bauer’s OFFICIAL WEBSITE including sample from Deadgirl

Read our review of Deadgirl HERE

Interview: Robin Bougie, author of Cinema Sewer Vol.3

Posted on by
Reply

A few years ago I made the trek to the best exploitation movie convention on Earth, Cinema Wasteland in Strongsville, Ohio. While there a buddy of mine picked up a book called Cinema Sewer Vol.1 by Robin Bougie and we sat around the hotel room marveling at the sleazy content, hilarious illustrations and surprising knowledge of adult, horror and exploitation films. A while later, I reached out to Robin in hope of scoring a copy to review (READ IT HERE) for Cinesploitation and he came through with a slightly water damaged copy but drew a wonderfully offensive cartoon inside the cover to “explain” the damage. From there I was completely hooked on the books and liked Robin instantly. From “knowing” him on various forums and Facebook, he is a genuinely funny, driven and talented guy, if not a little obsessive (just look at the tiny hand-lettered issues of Cinema Sewer!).

I received the new Cinema Sewer Vol. 3 with an amazing cover by artist Vince Raurus from FAB Press a little while ago and zipped through it in a matter of days. I can’t tell you how excited I get reading this offensive smut. Robin’s trashy tastes hit me right in my bikini area. This edition collects issues 17-20 of the self-published fanzine as well as 80 pages of “never-before-seen interviews, rants, comics, hard-to-find classic movie advertising, and graphic illustrations by Bougie and a host of his talented friends” in a high quality, graphic novel-like book. That’s 186 pages of content plus a very handy five-page index. While reading through this edition, I thought to myself how redundant a review of this book would be if I just rambled on and on about the different articles and how much I fucking loved it. So I decided to take a chance and see if Mr. Bougie cared to answer a few questions via email to promote the book and I’ll be damned if he didn’t.

I thought I may have to do some follow-up questions to drag some details out of him, but as you can see, Robin isn’t shy about himself or the sensational product he puts out. So kick back, relax and enjoy the show!

——————–

Greg B.: How did you first learn of your love for exploitation and adult films?

Robin Bougie : There were two key moments that diverted me towards exploitation movies, and those were the witnessing of an episode of Miami Vice where a teen prostitute has sex on a burning stage and murders guys by tying them down and cutting them up. It was presented in a really gritty trashy way, and the young woman who played the whore was a teen music star in the 80s named Fiona. I tracked her down for an interview, and did a 3 page comic book about the whole experience, and it is one of the very first things in my brand new book — Cinema Sewer vol. 3. The other moment of truth was seeing THE TERMINATOR for the first time. It’s since been ruined in many people’s minds by the lacklustre sequels, but the original movie is low-budget, gritty, violent, high concept, sci-fi-trash. Instantly I wanted more of THAT. Whatever “that” was, I didn’t know — I just knew it was very exciting. The mid eighties were such an awesome time to start getting interested in that, and there were so many movies to choose from.

It’s the same for the porn. When you’re a kid, you don’t know exactly what you’re responding to when you, for the first time, see a woman in a photo getting fucked. At first you’re totally confused about what you’re looking at, but there are these primal stirrings in your gut and I remember that it even made me a little dizzy to look at smut at first! I’ve asked different porn stars about that — how does it feel to be so many young people’s first look at sexuality? For the most part they just shrug, and it’s really the best answer when you think of it. Some of them, like Vanessa Del Rio, are totally honoured by it. I mean, shit, kids always find a way to see this stuff, no matter how impossible the odds are. XXX is all over the net now, but I don’t know if a lot of my younger post-internet friends really get what we had to go through to see some titty or ass crack back in the day. My first porn was an old water-damaged magazine that I and a couple of little girls found while we were playing in the woods back in grade 2. After that, there was another memorable incident in grade 5 in Calgary when my friend Chris and I spent one glorious evening pouring over issues of Cheri, Gallery, Hustler, and Penthouse with the full blessing of an entire house of adults. They were all in the next room getting high and drunk, and were absolutely thrilled that we had found something that got us out of their hair, even if it was splayed hair pie and ass cheeks. Haha! Smut is a fantastic baby-sitter, I guess. I reminded my mom about that incident years ago, and she had no memory of it at all. Gotta love that reefer! Haha!

GB: What made you decide to start your very own fanzine, Cinema Sewer?

RB : Well, I’d been self publishing my own comics since 1991 when I was 17, and it was a natural fit to start self publishing a movie zine that utilised my drawing skills and my passion for getting the word out about movies I loved. I started C.S. in 1997 with printing 200 photocopied issues, and it has been growing ever since. It’s now offset printed with glossy color covers, has a print run of 2000 copies, and there are book collections from FAB press available in book stores all over the world. Cinema Sewer just turned 14 years old on Oct. 15th, by the way. Haha, it’s a teenager now.

Robin diligently working on the new issue of Cinema Sewer

GB: Do you have any training or degrees in journalism or art?

RB : No training whatsoever. Instead of a student loan or an art grant, I went on welfare, and instead of looking for a job I spent the time — 8 hours a day, 5 days a week — getting better at my craft. Learned what I needed to know from the library, from other comic artists who were older, wiser, and had worked professionally, and put my nose to the grindstone. In comics, there is a saying: You have to create 1000 pages of shit before you’ll ever do anything of value, and took that to heart. I knew I had to get my 1000 pages out of the way, learn what I needed to learn via experience, and do it that way, rather than going deep into debt at school. My wife and I opened a comic store/hand painted t-shirt shop in a mall with virtually NO start-up capital (kinda just talked our way in), and spent a couple of years doing art for the public that way as well. Also great training. As far as journalism goes, getting to work for SCREW magazine in New York (I wasn’t in New York, I just sent my shit in through the mail) was pretty much all I needed for learning the ropes. Again, learning as you go and powering ahead seems to yield the best results for honing a craft or learning a skill, at least in my line of work anyway. 

GB: Who was the first actor or actress to be interviewed for CS? Who was your favorite and why?

RB : Wow, I can’t even remember now! Must have been Jack Hill. I found his email in the liner notes of the first SPIDER BABY dvd, of all places! Haha! So I just emailed him, and he was sweet as could be. Love Jack Hill. Love him, and his movies. My fave interview would probably be with Gary Sherman, which is on page 42 to 45 of the new book. That was fun, because I met him in his motel, and we lounged around on his bed like we were having a sleepover. I was so fucking tickled, because I’d just discovered VICE SQUAD a year earlier, and it had quickly become one of my 5 favourite films of the 80s — and then out of nowhere I’m chilling with the director, and he’s telling me all kinds of nutty shit about this sleazy movie I adore so much. I was like a pig in poop, and again — the sweetest guy. Very friendly and down to earth fellow. 

GB: What is the most fucked up thing you have come across since publishing Cinema Sewer?

RB: Oh, I don’t know. In movies you mean? The harrowing shit I randomly see online is way more “fucked up” than in most of the movies I see — even counting the mondos and death films. I get that question a lot, but I’m not really into trying to witness or one-up the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen. Maybe when I was a teen I was, but after a while that feels like a hollow goal. There is so much more to like about these movies.

That said, it’s so much fun to just happen upon a totally “whaaaaaat did I just see??” moment in a film. That keeps it so much more interesting, you know? It’s great to have those sprinkled in there. On top of that, I love really confusing porn — the kind of XXX that makes you not sure if you should even be aroused or not. I love porn that takes elements of exploitation cinema and works those in, further blurring the boundaries of genre. I mean, exploitation is a funny concept, in that it can be used for both good and bad. Case in point: Do I think that adult movies victimize anyone? Not at all. No more than a catchy song victimizes anyone by making them want to dance. Do I think that adult movies titillate and manipulate the viewer, tapping into primal parts of the brain the same way a baker makes you salivate and gets your belly rumbling simply by letting you smell that tasty tray of cinnamon buns? Hopefully! I’m a pornographer myself, in that I draw dirty comics, and it would be utterly fantastic if my work could do that. That is the fucking goal, my friend. 

GB: Are you circumcised or a helmet head?

RB : Circumcised. Also: my penis is very unremarkable and a totally average size. I quite like it, however. He’s been good to me.

GB : Thanks Robin!

——————–

In case you don’t yet own Cinema Sewer Vol.3, pick it up now from Robin himself (HERE!) and get a personalized drawing on the inside cover! While you’re there, pick up the first two volumes as well… you will glad you did!

Interview: John Charles Meyer of “The Millennium Bug”

Posted on by
Reply

Twelve years following the blood-curdling dread of Y2-Chaos, the guys of No CGI Films and Squire Film Shoppe are finally seeing their first full-length independent feature The Millennium Bug hit the festival circuit. With a select number of screenings happening worldwide, I was lucky enough to catch the second official international screening of The Millennium Bug here at Edmonton’s only annual horror film festival, DEDfest. I was even luckier to have had the opportunity to sit down with lead star and associate producer John Charles Meyer for an interview and shit-shooting session. Honestly one of the easiest-going and kindred spirits I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with. John has been, to date, one of my favourite interviewees. Here’s what he had to say.

——————–

Lacey Paige: What initially turned you on to acting?

John Charles Meyer: My father has done community theatre his entire life and my parents put me on a stage when I was six. I spent my entire childhood acting, that’s all I did. And then I went to college and decided you have to be fucking loonie tunes to try to pursue acting as a career, so I stopped doing it for 14 years and came back to it in my 30s.

LP: And what brought you back into it?

JCM: Basically my life falling apart. In the span of one year I lost my job, my marriage, my house, my dog and my band, and kind of decided I was done with what I was doing. I’d be living in Washington D.C. for about 15 years and I worked in politics for about a decade. I was just tired of it and I wanted to get out and do something different so I went back to acting.

LP: You’re still doing theatre stuff also?

JCM: Theatre, film, TV, whatever I can get my hands on. Theatre is my favourite by far but it pays the least by far. You have to balance it out. If you can land all three, at least for your first few years doing it, you need to.

LP: How does acting on stage in theatre productions differ from acting in films and on TV?

JCM: In a hundred different ways. First and foremost, it’s the instant gratification that you get from the audience. You perform something, [the audience] cheers and it makes you feel great, it reminds you of why you started doing it when you were six. But also, film and television are so regimented and specific and for that part, smaller, meaning you don’t act big, you don’t act large. When I was a kid I was always taught to project and to carry your voice and make sure the back row hears you. Film and television are not that way at all, you need to underplay things considerably.

LP: How does acting in a feature-length independent film differ from that kind of stuff?

JCM: In a lot of ways there aren’t a hell of a lot of differences, at least when you’re comparing apples to apples as far as budget goes. I haven’t done a feature-film with a 50-million dollar budget. I have done television shows with multiple-million dollar budgets per episode, which is pretty phenomenal when you think about a single hour of television costing that bloody much. But feature films, I haven’t done any with giant budgets yet so the indie features don’t feel that different than the indie shorts except that you a little more of a sense of family, a little more of a sense of community cause you work with people that much longer. A short film you can literally shoot on for one day, so you meet your cast mates at 8 o’clock in the morning and at 7 o’clock in the evening you might never see them again.

LP: You’ve taken on some production responsibilities with the Millennium Bug and El Tio Sam. Tell me a bit about your experiences as a producer.

JCM: About a year ago, a buddy of mine who is the lead producer on El Tio Sam…he came to me with the script and said I think I’m going to produce this film. He’d produced several features already, he was fairly experienced in the business. He said, ‘I think there’s a role in here for you, I can get you a meeting with the director’, and ultimately I got the role, and suddenly their production schedule got crunched and they were shooting it in much less time than they wanted to, much sooner than they wanted to. So he asked if I’d be interested in basically learning the ropes, and I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ and he said, ‘I say jump, you say how high’, and I said, ‘I can do that’. That pretty much started it. That was less than a year ago.

LP: Is producing something you’re going to be involved in with future projects?

JCM: Definitely going to be involved in, I don’t know that I would say that I’m going to seek it out the same way that I seek out acting roles because ultimately acting is why I’m doing this and it’s what brought me to it in the first place. But I enjoy the production stuff a lot and I think that in the future I’m going to find myself playing dual roles in productions that I first land as an actor—just going into a production once I’ve been cast in a role and say I’m happy to help with X, Y and Z because I’ve done it before on a couple other films, and if they say yes, great, and if they say no, fine. I’m happy to be just an actor too.

LP: So you prefer being in a more hands on position with filmmaking as opposed to on the other side of the lens?

JCM: Unlike Millennium Bug, where I came on as a producer after the movie was finished shooting, I came on for Millennium Bug basically for festivals, press, social media, those are my responsibilities for this movie so I wasn’t a producer when I came on set. El Tio Sam, I was a producer and an actor at the same time and it can make you a little crazy because everything about being a producer is solving problems for other people on set—the caterer’s late, the prop guy can’t find something, or somebody needs to borrow a car, or we don’t have the right union contract, or whatever—and you do that day-after-day on a production and you suddenly get to the days when your character is shooting his scenes and you just kind of have to shut off half of your brain because you can’t be acting in a scene and be waiting for somebody to come to you and say I need that union contract. You’d go insane. It’s interesting juggling both at the same time.

LP: What about writing and directing? Are these things that you would consider pursuing in the future?

JCM: Directing, I really don’t think so, I just don’t know that I have the right temperament for it to be perfectly honest with you. I enjoy leading in things but I don’t enjoy—producing is putting out a hundred fires at once, directing is putting laser-focus on one single, specific thing. I’m not A.D.D. or anything but I think I prefer the hundred tasks at once to the one laser-focus one. As far as writing goes, I’ve written a handful of things and I’m shopping around right now, we’ll see where that goes. I have one full-length screenplay that I’m trying to get some interest in right now that’s just been completed. We’ll see where that goes. It’s not a priority but it’s a fun side project.

LP: How did you get the lead role in Millennium Bug?

JCM: I auditioned. I did a short film four years ago called In Twilight’s Shadow. It was a lesbian vampire short film and the director of that short film is a writing partner of the casting director for the Millennium Bug and she recommended me when they were doing the auditions. I had to do the audition like everybody else but that was my in for the audition.

LP: Are you directly involved with Squire Film Shoppe?

JCM: Now, yes. I mean am I technically in an office at the company? No. But yeah, it’s a pretty tight-knit family. There are a handful of guys that make up the company and I think that will continue to be the case even through what we plan to do next, which I hope will be a sequel to the Millennium Bug. I think it’s going to continue to be a pretty tight-knit family and I hope and expect to continue to be involved.

LP: How did Squire Film Shoppe come to fruition?

JCM: Squire Film Shoppe started quite a while ago, No CGI Films is essentially the same group of people but it is more focused on specifically avoiding CGI in all films. Squire Film Shoppe has done a handful of short films as well, they did one a couple years ago called The Night Caller and it was started basically by two brothers, James and Kenneth Cran, the producer and director of the film.

LP: Do you think that the budget and location restraints impeded the original vision of the film?

JCM: I only know what I’ve read and seen in interviews with Ken where he’s addressed that exact question, the original script went through a lot of changes but they weren’t all budgetary, some of them were actually stylistic. I know that in one case he felt as though his script was too similar to another movie, I can’t recall the title, but there was something that came out after he finished writing the script and he felt that it was way too similar so he scrapped what he had an he started over again. So the script went through a lot of revisions. I would imagine some of them were because of budget constraints but I think that they pulled off a lot of stuff despite the budget constraints.

LP: With it being the year 2011 now, do you think that some people might find the premise of the film outdated or obsolete?

JCM: You know, I’ve read exactly that from a number of people, even movie reviewers, and it strikes me as kind of an odd question because there are movies that are set 20 years in the future, there are movies that are set 20 years in the past, what’s the difference? I think maybe why it strikes people as outdated is that the Millennium Bug itself, the Y2K computer bug, strikes a lot of people now as sort of this quaint notion, it was this silly thing that everybody was panicked about for apparently no good reason, and because of that it makes it seem more dated as a concept. But movies come out about the 70s all the time. It doesn’t strike me as all that strange.

LP: How would you describe the Millennium Bug to someone who hasn’t seen it?

JCM: Somebody compared it to some horror movie meets Little Shop of Horrors, which I think is kind of fun. I’ve heard Hills Have Eyes meets Godzilla. I feel like no matter how you describe it you’ve got to make sure people understand that it’s about a giant Kaiju monster. It’s the old-school Godzilla-type rampage of an animal of some sort. I do think it’s different because of the no CGI and I do think it’s different because it’s not a bunch of naked teenagers running around in the woods, and I do think it’s different because it’s campy too.

LP: Are going to be attending any of the other festivals/screenings?

JCM: We are attempting to send one representative to every festival. I know I will be going to Washington D.C., I will be going to Atlanta, and I will be going to Nice, France. We have other people going for sure to Saskatoon, for sure to Buffalo, and for sure to Indianapolis and to England as well, but I won’t be at those myself. We’re kind of trading off. I get a little bit of deference over the other two guys who would be going, the producer and the director, because I’ve been setting up the festivals but more importantly cause I’m in the movie. They did way more work on this movie than I did but people see me on the screen and they can connect to that a little bit more.

Interview: Lucky McKee, Director of “The Woman”

Posted on by
Reply

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of hype about filmmaker Lucky McKee’s latest, based on a novel by popular horror author Jack Ketchum, The Woman. The third book in Ketchum’s Dead River series, The Woman follows it’s predecessors (Off Season and The Offspring, the latter of which was also adapted to the screen) with the only remaining member of a cannibalistic family that had been hunting humans across the Northeast coast for decades. The woman (played by Pollyanna McIntosh) is captured by white-collar lawyer Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) and taken into Cleek’s home in his attempt to domesticate her among his own family.

I’m a huge fan of Ketchum’s books, Off Season and The Offspring both being some of his most gruesomely imaginative stuff. And although I’ve yet to read the third book, the movie has been getting some very positive feedback. When I think of Lucky McKee, that adorable misfit face of Angela Bettis as May (arguably McKee’s greatest film to date) comes to mind. I absolutely love May. She is without a doubt one of the most iconic female lead characters to grace the past decade of horror. I did a bit of research on McKee’s other stuff and came to notice a pattern: the majority of his lead characters are females. With the launch of my ‘Women in Horror’ column on Cinema Head Cheese, I’ve taken a particular interest in the females who represent fright and the people who create these characters, whether they are writers, directors or the actresses themselves.

Lucky McKee recently took some time to answer a few questions for me.

——————–

Lacey Paige: You’ve focused on women as lead characters in several of your movies—All Cheerleaders Must Die!, May, Sick Girl, The Woman… What are your thoughts on how women are generally portrayed in horror films and how would you relate it to feminism?

Lucky McKee: I don’t think it’s just horror films where women are marginalized. It’s pretty much just movies in general. I don’t read about feminism or any social or political stuff. I just create characters that I want to study for a while. Most of them happen to be women and I just try to keep the interpretation honest.

LP: What inspired the character of May?

LM: Being a lonely and awkward person. Shocking, isn’t it?

LP: Arguably May is the epitome of the modern day misunderstood female villainess of independent horror. Would you agree? Did you intend for her to become as important as she has?

LM: Ah, hell. I don’t know. I’m just glad people still give her some love. She was and is important to me. Creating and realizing that character helped me a lot as a person and as a filmmaker.

LP: When did you write the script for it? Tell me a bit about the process of writing it.

LM: I created the character my sophomore year at USC film school in a short film I made called FRACTION. The next year I thought the concept and character were strong enough to turn into a full-length screenplay. It was the first script I ever wrote that felt like it was fully realized. When I had the chance to make the film years later, I put everything I had learned since into it, but at its core it’s still pretty much the same thing as the initial idea.

LP: Who are some female horror icons that you are particularly fond of?

LM: Oh, geez. I don’t know Carrie? Also, the girl in Repulsion and definitely Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus—not necessarily all horror films, but some freaky stuff!

LP: List some films that you feel were groundbreaking because of the actresses and/or female filmmakers that were involved, and the role(s) that they played?

LM: I’m a big fan of everything Gena Rowlands has done, as well as Barbara Stanwyck. I really like Ida Lupino too, as a director especially.

LP: How did you meet Angela Bettis? Tell me a bit about your relationship with her.

LM: I auditioned her for May. Once she was cast, we were just buds. Have been ever since.

LP: What was the inspiration behind the Masters of Horror episode, “Sick Girl”?

LM: I was brought on while they were in the middle of filming the show as a replacement for Roger Corman. They gave me a few scripts to choose from and I chose “Sick Girl” by Sean Hood. They let me rewrite the male lead for Angela and let me quirkify it in my own sort of way.

LP: Did you initially want Angela to star in it? How did she get the role?

LM: It was originally written for a man, but I wanted Angela. So the necessary changes were made in order to get her in there and I think it made the material that much more interesting.

LP: What was your experience like switching director-actor roles with Bettis for Roman?

LM: It was a great intimate process made with a handful of friends and very limited resources. I learned so much about the acting process. It’s had a profound impact on my directing.

LP: You’ve been involved with screen-adaptations of several of horror author Jack Ketchum’s novels. How did you meet Ketchum?

LM: My buddy Chris Sivertson (The Lost, I Know Who Killed Me, Brawler) turned me on to Ketchum’s stuff. It was pretty simple. We liked Ketchum, put the word out, Ketchum saw May and loved it, and then I optioned The Lost from him for Chris when I got my first big studio gig. We’ve Been friends ever since.

LP: How did you come to direct Ketchum’s Red and The Woman?

LM: Red happened by chance. Chris had been telling me to read Ketchum’s stuff and I just happened to go on a general meeting and met a guy that had just optioned it. Over the next couple years we put it together.

LP: How did Angela Bettis get the role of Bella Cleek in The Woman?

LM: We wrote it for her! Angie is my go-to gal!

——————–

Check out Lucky’s controversial new film The Woman (Official Website) from Modern Ciné (Website)!