Category Archives: Interviews

Kickboxer Gary Daniels goes toe-to-toe with Peter Weller in “Forced to Fight”

After an accomplished kickboxing and karate career, Gary Daniels made the transition into acting in the late 80s. Since then, Daniels has been the lead in numerous B movies and performed alongside better-known action stars like Jackie Chan, Dolph Lundgren and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Daniels biggest mainstream exposure came in 2010 when he was part of the ensemble cast of Sylvester Stallone‘s The Expendables. But with the Dec. 18 release of Forced to Fight, Daniels gets the leading role again alongside the original RoboCop, Peter Weller (playing a crime lord villainously similar to the corrupt cop he played on Dexter). In the film, Daniels plays a retired fighter who has no choice but to get back into the underground fight scene in order to pay of his brother’s debt. With Forced to Fight now available in DVD, Blu-ray and digital download, Daniels talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about making this film and his career goals going forward.

You made the transition from kickboxing to acting many years ago…

I attempted to. I’m still working on that.

But with Forced to Fight you’re also the fight choreographer. Have you been a fight choreographer on many of your previous films?

I’ve actually choreographed a lot of fights in a lot of the films that I’ve done. It’s something I like to do, but unfortunately to really get your vision for a fight scene on film not only do you have to choreograph it, you have to direct it, choose the right lenses for the camera, get the right camera angles and get into the editing room to edit the fight. I choreograph the fights, but I don’t get a say on the direction or in the editing room. So very rarely do I ever get my vision.

How close would you say the fight scenes in Forced to Fight came to what you had envisioned them to be?

The problem with Forced to Fight was I wasn’t the original choreographer. Before I went to Romania to shoot the film, I asked if they already had a fight choreographer and they told me they had a local guy in Romania doing it. So when I went out there I hadn’t done any prep for any kind of fight scenes, I hadn’t done any prep on who I’d be fighting. That’s what you normally do is you prep the fights in advance before you actually get to the set. But once I got to Romania, about two or three days before the actual shooting, I looked at what the local choreographer had done and it was very substandard to what I was expecting, and what I expect of myself. So I had to re-choreograph, from scratch, all of the fights and I only had a couple of days. There’s, like, 15 fights in that film and each of them has to have a story in regards to where they fit in the film and where the characters are at emotionally in the film. Another problem was that the guys I had to fight were not film fighters. These guys were real kickboxers, real wrestlers, a couple of gangsters. One guy was 6’9″ – lovely fellow – and this guy had bullet wounds all up his arm because he had been in a shoot-out with the police when his brother was being killed. These are the kind of guys they brought me to fight. So not only was I trying to choreograph the fights, I was trying to teach these guys how to movie fight. It was a very difficult challenge.

So when you ask me how much of my vision did I actually get, if I had been working with real film fighters it would have been a lot better. When you do a film fight, it’s like doing a dance with a partner – you have to work in tandem with each other. One gives, one takes, one pushes, the other one pulls, you give each other the right distance. So when you work with proper movie fighters and stuntmen, they understand this. But when you’re working with real fighters, it’s a difficult concept for them because they’re used to winning and disrupting rhythm. In a real fight you’d disrupt your opponents rhythm, not work with it. I’m not going to say it’s the best fights I’ve done, but I think with the time we had and what we had to work with we did a pretty good job. If I had to give you a percentage, I’d say it would be maybe 40-50 percent of what I’d have like to have seen.

In many of your films, your character is based largely on your interaction with the bigger stars of each film like Jackie Chan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin or, in this case, Peter Weller. How would you say working with Weller compared to some of the other actors and action stars you’ve worked with?

When you’re working with someone that’s the caliber of actor that Peter Weller is, it only elevates your own performance. Peter is a fantastic actor and he brought so much to the character he played in Forced to Fight that it was an absolute pleasure working with him. I know it helped elevate my character and my performance in the film. I’ve done about 60 films and early in my career, in about two-thirds of my films, I was the lead actor. What they’d do is bring in bigger name actors to support me for the sales. Sometimes you find that some of these bigger actors come onto these smaller films and just do it for a paycheck. It looks like they’re sleepwalking through the roles. But I have to say that with Peter, he truly brought it. He did a perfect performance in the film and it was an absolute pleasure working with him. You’re always apprehensive when you have these bigger name guys coming off these huge productions, and sometimes they show some apprehension coming to the set. But after the very first scene I did with Peter, I stepped out of the car where we were shooting and went straight to the director and said, “Well, I think we’e got something here.” He had a great presence and brought so much to the character.

You’ve worked with numerous big names, especially in The Expendables. Are there any particular action stars or bigger names you have yet to work with that you’d like to?

To be honest with you, I’m not really looking to work with certain action stars. I’d really like to work with some of the actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and some of the other bigger actors. It’s not working with these actors that’s going to help promote my career. It’s really just trying to work with a higher level of production with better writers and better directors. I’d love to work with Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan and some of these bigger directors. That’s what’s really going to help take my career up another notch. Just working with these B movie action guys like myself is not going to elevate my career. Having done 60 of these films, I’m probably closer to that level. But I really want to work with good writers, good directors, better actors. Like every other actor, I want to step it up a notch and move up another level. So I’m going to be looking for that break and I’m not going to do it by doing another Steve Austin movie. Nothing against Steve, I love the guy to death.

Forced to Fight is out today, but it looks like you have a few other films coming out soon.

One of the films I’m proud of is something I worked on last year in Thailand called Angels. The lead was Dustin Nguyen, who was the Vietnamese character on the original 21 Jump Street, and he’s a very good actor. We had a brilliant, fantastic script, but it was on a budget. We just had the world premiere screening in Vietnam and they took me over for the premiere. I was very, very happy with the way the film turned out. The director was a guy named Wych Kaos – he wrote it, directed it and produced it – and he’s a genuinely talented filmmaker. That should be coming out sometime next year and I think it could do some great things for me. It was a straight acting role for me without any fighting. I was happy with the performance in the film overall, so I’m looking forward to that coming out.

Any chance you might currently be working on something that might take you to that next level as an actor?

I do have a few projects in the works, but not the kind of projects I’m looking for right now. I have three or four projects in the works for next year, but I’m still looking for that one break-out role. It’s pretty difficult when you come from a fighting or sports background. When you do make the transition into the film industry, it’s very hard to get people to take you seriously as an actor. When you come from a fighting background, you’ve learned to not show any emotions. So if you’re tired or hurt, you can’t show it. But in the movie industry, as an actor, you have to wear your emotions on your sleeve so everyone in the audience can see it and feel what you’re feeling. One of my early acting coaches would say, “Look, Gary. I know you’re feeling it but we have to see that you’re feeling it.” I have been working very hard on my acting and the only way you’re going to move up is not by being a good martial artist, it’s going to be by being a good actor.

www.garydaniels.com

“Manborg” pays homage to low-budget ’80s sci-fi

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When the Buried Alive Film Festival opens tonight, horror fans will see absinthe-inspired apparitions (The Transmission), a Kafka-esque transformation from outer space (Decapoda Shock), the gothic horror of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven and other sinister celluloid creations. But one film in particular caught Wrestling with Pop Culture‘s attention for its intentionally schlocky special effects and a dystopian storyline that incorporates elements from ’80s sci-fi greats like Flash Gordon, The Running Man and RoboCop with kung fu films and the Dracula mythos to create a dystopian man vs. machine vs. demons battle known as Manborg. It’s not the first time writer/director Steven Kostanski, who does special effects for film and television by day, has created something that is an obvious nod to the low-budget kitsch he grew up on. With a Buried Alive opening-night screening of Manborg tonight, Kostanski discusses his B movie influences, his previous films and possible upcoming projects.

The first thing that jumps out at me about Manborg is the weirdly wonderful special effects. The film has a very low-budget ’80s feel to it. Was that done intentionally or because of budgetary restraints, or both?

All the movies I make are inspired by my love of ’80s sci-fi, action and horror movies, specifically the really low-budget knock-off ones that were inspired by stuff like The Terminator, Aliens and other bigger-budget spectacle movies. I like stuff from Empire Pictures, Full Moon Features, stuff like Arena, Robot Jox, The Guyver, I Come in Peace, the Pumpkin Master movies, Trancers, Abraxas, the Captain Power TV show – all that stuff inspired this movie, and it also fit in nicely with my budgetary restraints. The movie was made for about $1,000.

I can’t help but think that Flash Gordon was also an influence on Manborg, especially those arena fight scenes.

Flash Gordon, to me, is definitely a lost gem because it came right at that time where it was between the ’60s and early ’70s way of doing sci-fi and the post Star Wars system. So it doesn’t really know what it wants to be, and I think it has a lot of really fun, crazy stuff to it. But I’d say that was a pretty big influence on Manborg.

Manborg is part of the Buried Alive Film Fest’s opening night festivities tonight. Where else has the film screened previously?

It’s screened all over the world, pretty much. We had a nine-city tour of Canada and it premiered at Fantastic Fest in Texas in September 2011. Then it did Toronto After Dark, played the Brisbane International Film Festival in Australia and it’s been playing consistently for the past year. And it’s going to keep playing, apparently. It just finished its theatrical run here in Toronto last night, but we’re going to be booking follow-up screenings over the next few months. So it’s going to play once a month. I’m pretty sure tonight will be its premiere in Georgia.

Buried Alive is a horror film festival. Manborg definitely has that aesthetic, but it also incorporates weird sci-fi, kung fu and other elements. What do you expect horror film fans to take away from this movie?

I certainly wouldn’t call it a horror movie, though it has a lot of influences with the creatures and the overall setup of the movie. I’d call it more of an action comedy than anything. With these kind of genre movies, there’s so much crossover with stuff I feel like any audience that has a taste for anything from the ’80s will be all over it. There’s so much cross-pollination of genre tropes that I think it can reach a pretty wide audience.

After the Manborg credits, there’s what appears to be an extended trailer for another horror comedy called Bio-Cop. Is that something that’s actually in the works?

We’ve got some stuff that we’re writing, but a lot of people have told me I should do a Bio-Cop feature film. The short film is attached to Manborg after the credits, much line how trailers would be after the credits on VHS movies. We’re trying to do it properly and get some funding, which takes a long time. But we are writing stuff and pretty soon we should have a big announcement for people. It’s similar to an earlier film I made called Lazer Ghosts 2, which is also a faux trailer/short film that basically condenses the whole narrative into a short running time. That seems to entice people and get them wanting a feature, so we’ll see.

“The Black Earth” parodies zombies, wrestlers and beer drinkers

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Zombies are mindless idiots that roam aimlessly looking for their next meal. Sometimes, the people fighting them are just as dumb and narrowly focused as the zombies themselves. In the case of The Black Earth, the heroes are a couple of bumbling rednecks more concerned with getting another six pack than stopping the zombie outbreak in their small Southern town. Based on the comical antics of Kurt Angle and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin in the WWE of the early 2000s, Hank (Jefferson Traywick) and Johnny (Jon Dannelley) use their pest control skills to ward off the undead pests that are taking over the town of Black Earth. Along the way, they encounter more bumbling idiots and a hot babe or two, and take plenty of beer breaks. Before the film’s world premiere tomorrow night at the Plaza Theatre (tickets available here), writer/director James T. Warbington talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the film’s wrestling influences, the bands on the soundtrack and which wrestling personalities are likely to be appearing at the premiere.

Where did the name The Black Earth originate?

There’s actually a town called Black Earth, Wisconsin. They were OK with us filming there, so we just named the movie The Black Earth. The short film was an official selection at the Driftless Film Festival in Madison, the Iris Film Festival out of Pennsylvania, the Horror Emporium Insane Asylum out of Illinois and the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival. It was also listed as on of the top 50 shorts of 2011 on the Internet Movie Database. It piqued a lot of people’s interest, which helped us raise the money for the feature. The budget was about $2,000, which is really small. I drove to Alabama, the other director flew in from Pittsburgh and another guy flew in from San Jose, California to film it.

The short was filmed in Wisconsin, but the full-length was filmed in Alabama. Why was that?

The short film was just the first scene, where they’re all in the house together. There are few different actors in the feature film because the others were either really bad or just couldn’t make it to Alabama. But it’s the same two main characters. Quinn [Levandoski], who plays Jake, flew down from Wisconsin and will be at the premiere.

There are a lot of bands featured in this movie. How did you get so many bands to let you use their music?

I was in the Tone Deaf Pig-Dogs. I started the band in ’88 and they reunited about five years ago. I was like, “Dude, give me some music.” They were like, “Here you go.” I also played with Round Ear Spock for a while, then played with Andy Samford for a while, so they were glad to be on the soundtrack. I contacted The Real McKenzies and they said, “We’ve got a new album coming out, so don’t use any of the old stuff. We’ll send you a copy of our new album and you pick what you want.” Mojo Nixon actually contacted me and said, “Use what you want. But if you get famous, you gotta buy me a beer.”

How did you come up with the idea to make a zombie movie with characters based on wrestlers?

Remember when Austin would sing “Kumbaya” to Vince and all that? That was some of the funniest stuff I can remember so I said, “I wish I had two characters like that who just drink beer.” I’m a goofy punk rocker, so it made sense for that to be in the story. I like zombie comedies, especially if you don’t have a good budget. If you’ve got no budget, you’ve got to make fun of yourself. We were talking about writing these two crazy redneck brothers and I told co-writer C.L. Robbins, “They should be a lot like Kurt Angle and Steve Austin. They’ve got to think that they’re shit don’t stink, like when Austin kept playing guitar and couldn’t sing and was out of tune, but he thought it was great.” That’s what these two guys have got to be. The one brother never really fights, he just drinks. But no matter what, they think they’re invincible and awesome. Of course, they’re actually just lame rednecks who get drunk, So that’s where that idea came from.

They used to say that wrestling imitated life, but I’m starting to think that life imitates wrestling. Even when somebody’s making an entrance in the movie, we’d talk about theme music. So we had Sherri [Eakin] comes out with her big rocking ’80s song where you see her legs and she’s all sexy and she pours beer all over herself. That was all based around wrestling. Whenever something’s cool, Chris [Robbins] says, “That’s Diesel.” On the set that’s all you’d hear and there are all these outtakes of us going, “Dude, that was so fucking Diesel.” We’re talking about Kevin Nash, of course, because we’re cheesy wrestling goofy-asses.

The world premiere is tomorrow night at the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta. Where else will this movie be screening?

We’re going to play it in Atlanta, then it goes to Pittsburgh, San Jose, Chicago and Madison. We’ll have DVDs at all these screenings, and the DVD will be for sale online by December. It will also be available Amazon Instant Video and we’re trying to get it on Netflix or Redbox.

What can we expect from tomorrow’s premiere, aside from the movie screening?

The cast of "The Black Earth" from left to right: Jenny Nicole Helms, Jefferson Traywick, Sherri Eakin, Jon Dannelly and Quinn Levandoski

Chris is going to introduce it, then I’ll come out and we’re going to do a question and answer session afterwards. A majority of the cast will be there. So we’ll have Quinn coming down from Wisconsin. We’ll have Hank and Johnny (one’s coming from California, the other’s coming from Birmingham). Jenny Nicole Helms, who plays Sara, the bitchy girl, will be there. A lot of the crew will be there and the other director, Alex Traywick, will be there, along with co-directors C.L. Robbins and Corey Campbell. We all used to work on movies together and as years passed we all became friends and started hating the directors. So we created Family Curse Productions, which is a group of directors, editors and writers that has absolutely nothing to do with the people who we worked for before. We all love wrestling and horror movies, so it works out well.

Then we’re having an after party somewhere. Marc Laurinaitis will be there and his brother, Animal from the Road Warriors, should be there. My wife grew up with the Laurinaitis family, so they like to come out and support me. They actually bought their own tickets, so I saw their names on the ticket list. Johnny‘s not going to be there, which may or may not be a good thing. I don’t know.

“Girls Gone Dead” slays with cheesy ’80s gore and T&A

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When I was in Miami for WrestleMania XXVIII earlier this year, I walked by an old Art Deco movie theater one night called the Colony Theatre. The theater’s retro stylings and bright white lights were enough to catch my eye, but when I looked closer I realized had I arrived in Miami the previous night I could have attended the world premiere of Girls Gone Dead, a Girls Gone Wild spoof that incorporates cheesy ’80s slasher horror with the cheesy ’80s T&A comedies from USA Up All Night. It looked great on its own, but then I realized the WrestleMania weekend tie-in was that it starred Jerry “The King” Lawler as a sheriff, a perfect fit for such a campy boob-fest since he has a reputation to uphold (he would often express his excitement for “puppies” when doing wrestling commentary during WWE‘s Attitude Era).

Even when he's doing his sheriff duty, Jerry Lawler can't help but be distracted by some puppies.

Aside from Lawler, Girls Gone Dead stars Beetlejuice and Sal “The Stockbrocker” Governale from The Howard Stern Show, Penthouse Pets Ryan Keely and Janessa Brazil, and the relative unknown Katie Peterson, with cameos by Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain, veteran character actor Asbestos Felt, adult film stars such as Jennifer Worthington and Ron Jeremy, and scream queen Linnea Quigley. Following the exploits of a group of spring break-bound girls who end up facing a masked killer out for gore, Girls Gone Dead has all the makings of a cult classic. Thankfully, an Unrated and Exposed edition with lots of extras was recently released on DVD, with plans to release an R-rated version as WrestleMania XXIX approaches next spring. A full-time film editor for Bongiovi Entertainment by day, Michael A. Hoffman co-directed, produced and edited Girls Gone Dead, living out a teenage fantasy of combining schlocky gore with gratuitous nudity. Hoffman talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the filmmaking process and having Lawler involved in the film.

The title Girls Gone Dead, and the DVD cover art featuring a sexy girl removing her bikini top with blood on her hip, confuses my libido. What was your intention when making this movie?

It’s a throwback to those T&A flicks I grew up with in the ’80s and it’s got a lot of references to those movies, including a lot of the cast members from those movies. If you don’t know about that stuff or like it, you’re not going to like this. I’m surprised how well it’s done. Supposedly the horror/comedy/slasher thing is dead, but we’ve sold out at Best Buy twice and we’ve been a top rental. I think the title helps. The idea was someone could go, “I could watch Girls Gone Wild or rent this, that has something of a story, and still see the boobs and gore.”

You mentioned that this film features appearances by some of the cast members of the films that inspired it, but it also features a lot of other odd cameos. Why did you choose to cast such a variety of cameos?

Linnea Quigley was the biggest scream queen of that era. She starred in all the David DeCoteau and Fred Olen Ray movies, and she’s the bartender at Wyld Wylee’s. The guy who does the “Hammer Smash” rap at the bar is Asbestos Felt. He raps in a classic cheesefest movie called Killing Spree directed by Tim Ritter, who was one of the first people I worked for and made one of my favorite movies when I was a kid called Truth or Dare. It was a really huge hit and one of the first movies ever made directly for video back in 1985. Joel Wynkoop, who plays the TV evangelist, has been in God-knows-how-many of those movies, and he was just the star of H.G. Lewis‘ The Uh-Oh! Show. Jennifer Worthington, who gets sacrificed at the church, was in a lot of adult movies and did some modeling when she was younger.

Our casting director was Brad Davis and he cast half of those movies in that vein like Porky’s 2, Porky’s 3, Police Academy 5 and stuff like that, and a bunch of Corey Feldman T&A comedies like South Beach Academy and late-night USA movies. I wanted to put a lot of references and homages in there, so I did some subtle things like the Quigley Down Under joke where Linnea Quigley has a fake Australian accent. And at the beginning of her scene, the first thing she’s doing, before she turns around and walks up, is using the same lipstick and compact she had in Night of the Demons. There are some scenes that are direct references to things like Slumber Party Massacre, when the killer enters the house during that dubstep fight scene in the living room. I didn’t want to make a straight spoof, so what I wanted to do was actually write a film that knew it was bad, then deliver it pretty straight. If you choose to laugh at it, that’s awesome. If not, no problem.

Jerry "The King" Lawler as Jackson "The Sheriff" Cole.

I worked with Maurice Smith a couple of years ago on a film called Forget Me Not. He produced a ton of those low-budget Roger Corman flicks between half a million and five million bucks in the ’80s and ’90s. Then I got the biggest compliment when Maurice was actually in Florida and came by my house and watched Girls Gone Dead. He was like, “Oh, shit. For what you guys spent, you got a lot of content.” He was impressed with it, which is good because he gets it.

It’s kind of like Rob Zombie‘s movies, where he makes subtle references to all the stuff he grew up watching.

Yeah. He does these more hardcore grindhouse things, but he’s got Bill Moseley, Michael J. Pollard and the strangest cameos. But House of 1000 Corpses was a low-budget film, but it’s really polished for what it was. With Girls Gone Dead, my take on it is it’s something people can laugh at if they want to, or laugh with, which is what I hope will happen. If you rent this movie, you should expect cheesy gore and nudity.

How did Jerry Lawler get involved with the movie?

Jerry Lawler doesn't mind investigating crime scenes when they're at "Crazy Girls Unlimited" filming locations.

Executive producer Paul Tarnopol is friends with Jerry’s agent and we were looking for people for that role. We had actually looked at two bigger-name celebrity actors for the role, but when Paul mentioned he was friends with Jerry’s agent, I turned to my wife, who was writing it, and was like, “We’ve got to change the ending and put Jerry in there.” The way the movie is so random, with people like the drummer from Iron Maiden singing country, we were like, “This has to work.” When we first wrote this, we didn’t have any celebrities. For the Crazy Girls Unlimited emcee, I wanted somebody who had always emceed those parties, like a washed-up celebrity. I always wanted Ron Jeremy or Vanilla Ice. Vanilla Ice lives in Florida, so I was like, “It’s got to be one of those two. It’s got to be somebody you would see at that shit.” Vanilla Ice has done two Girls Gone Wild parties and Ron has done six. A friend of mine who is a makeup artist had just had Ron in his movie Bloody Bloody Bible Camp, so he called Ron and Ron was like, “Yeah, I’ll come down and do it.”

There are weird cameos that are just bizarre. [Al Spaienza], who plays Missy’s father on the split-screen phone call, the guy at the strip club, that’s Mikey from The Sopranos. He was on a Prison Break and he’s a pretty big TV actor and had a supporting role in Saw V. The girl who played the dumb one, Kelly, she was in Sex Drive. That’s the only other movie she’s been in and I was a big fan of Sex Drive because it’s a T&A comedy. Her casting agent had gotten her for Sex Drive, but she hadn’t gotten her SAG card yet, so her agent was like, “I think I can get her to do your movie.” And I was like, “That would be great if we could be her last non-SAG feature.” We wanted one Penthouse Pet and we ended up with two, and this has got to be the only movie with Beetlejuice, Jerry Lawler and a gorilla waiter ever made. That was my goal. I’ve worked on several films, but this one is so crazy compared to everything else I’ve worked on that I wasn’t sure how it was going to be digested. With all the horror movies coming out lately, we had to do something different and fun.

Is there any chance of it being released in theaters or was that only for the world premiere in Miami?

The King is determined to get to the bottom of this killing spree.

We never intended to go anywhere but straight to video and TV. We did a theatrical screening in New York sponsored by Fangoria the day before it came out in July. But the only thing I’d like to do is enter the film into some festivals and horror conventions because we never had a chance to play any. I’ve never worked on a film with any budget that had distribution before it was done being shot. We had foreign distribution locked the week after we finished shooting, then we had our domestic distribution confirmed either weeks into final post.

Do you think the film lends itself to a sequel or do you have any other plans to continue this story in any way?

I would love to flesh it out more. The initial idea for the movie was to be a Crazy Girls Unlimited type of thing about the company. But we ended up taking that concept and working it into a script we were already in production on, which was a throwback to Slumber Party Massacre. I need to see how it ends up performing, but I would love to do something bigger with this film. But producing and directing is something I would never do again. Even if I developed the project, once it turned over to production I would either not direct the sequel to this, if we do it, or I would drop off producing once we started to get into severe pre-production. I know guys do that all the time, but they must be doing it with studio resources. We don’t have that structure, so it’s a nightmare when you’re directing a film and not sleeping for 30 days.

As you know, Jerry Lawler suffered a heart attack on Raw recently. Are you still in touch with him at all since the film has come out?

Jerry Lawler saves the day (and provides some comfort).

Paul, our executive producer, has been talking to his agent. I’ve been trying to promote the movie, but the last thing I’d want to do is exploit that situation at all. The day he had the heart attack, he had randomly contacted our executive producer and said, “Hey. A ton of people have walked up to me and said they really liked the movie. Would you send me a copy of it? I don’t have one.” Then he had the heart attack that night. I know WWE has moved more family friendly, so as much as Jerry wants to support this, I don’t know how much he can. I was really excited about the fact that he was excited about it because at first I think he was a little concerned. I know Jerry likes the puppies, but I certainly didn’t want to get him into any trouble. He was so awesome to us and it was such a relief that day to get that phone call that he wanted a copy of the movie. Then that happened later that night and I couldn’t believe it.

And it happened on live TV.

Now he’s going to have two notorious TV moments between Letterman and the Raw broadcast. But it’s so good that it happened on TV because if it had happened to Lawler in his hotel room and he couldn’t get to a phone, he’d probably be dead. It was a blessing in disguise. But Jerry’s a super tough guy. When we’d go out for beers, he was like, “I don’t drink alcohol, I’ve never smoked.” We were originally going to have him smoking cigars, but he wouldn’t even do it.

www.girlsgonedead.com

Cargill and Derrickson give Mr. Boogie a chilling new take in “Sinister”

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Everybody knows it’s a bad idea to go to sleep right after watching a horror movie. And if anyone should know that, it should be a movie critic like C. Robert Cargill. But that didn’t stop him from watching The Ring, then going to sleep and having a bad dream that inspired Sinister, the new horror film he co-srote with The Exorcism of Emily Rose director Scott Derrickson. Having previously become fans of each others’ work, the two met when, by coincidence, they realized (thanks to Twitter) that they were both in Las Vegas at the same time. Derrickson was working on a different project altogether, but when he heard Cargill’s idea he decided to turn it into a movie. And Sinister was committed to film.

Starring Ethan Hawke as Ellison, a writer who found fame after writing a hit non-fiction book about a murder, Sinister follows Ellison’s quest to reclaim that glory after his subsequent books haven’t fared as well (and have left a sour taste in the mouths of many cops, who he typically doesn’t portray in flattering fashion). After he moves into the house where an entire family was murdered (aside from one girl, who has been missing since the murders), he finds a box of Super 8 home videos that turn out to be gruesome snuff films, including one of the family that used to live in his new home being hung from a tree in the back yard. As he watches these films and conducts his investigation, he uncovers an eerie Pagan creature known as Bagul, or Mr. Boogie to the children he encounters. Refusing to acknowledge the increasingly odd occurrences happening to his family as his investigation continues, Ellison sees these developments as the perfect opportunity to regain his fame. Before Bagul comes to life on the big screen, Cargill and Derrickson talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about Sinister‘s themes of fear, their intentional misguiding of the viewer and breaking some traditional horror film formulas to create something frighteningly fresh.

When people die in horror movies, there’s often some moral reason for these deaths. We don’t know much about the previous victims in Sinister, but we learn a good bit about Ellison. Is there any indication in Sinister that the killer is out to set something right or teach his victims a lesson?

Ethan Hawke stars as crime writer Ellison in "Sinister" (photo by Phil Caruso)

Derrickson: There’s certainly a moral tale being told in that, like all horror films, it’s a movie about fear, it’s a movie about scaring the audience and the main character getting scared. But probably my favorite thing about the movie overall is the fact that Ethan’s watching these movies and they’re scaring him, then these weird things are starting to happen as a result of him moving into this house, then things are becoming inexplicable paranormal for him and he gets even more scared at that, yet why doesn’t he leave? Because he has an even deeper fear than all that and it’s his fear of losing his status and his fear of not regaining his fame and fortune. That’s a really relatable fear, especially in modern America where everybody’s obsessed with their status. His placing his own need to reclaim his high status above his family’s safety, and his fear of not having that, is the moral sin, for lack of a better word, that’s at the center of the movie. It causes him to make a faustian bargain very early on. He should have handed that stuff over to the police, but he realizes, as he says in the film, “This is my shot.” From that moment, he’s on a trajectory to the end of the movie.

Cargill: There’s even more to it than that in regards to the other families. The families are just collateral damage to what Bagul’s end goal really is. He’s a seducer, he’s getting someone to transgress and through that transgression, that’s where the evil really comes from. And there’s a lot of that running throughout Sinister.

Ellison’s fear of losing his fame is made apparent in one scene where he’s watching an old tape of his first television interview, which is presented in much the same way as when he’s watching these mysterious tapes of grizzly murders. Was that an intentional juxtaposition?

Derrickson: That was certainly deliberate. He’s caught inside himself in a way that he doesn’t realize and driven by a deep-seated fear that is so powerful he can’t escape it when he clearly should.

You also mentioned that he should have turned these tapes and his investigation over to the police. When he finally does decide to drop his investigation and get away from it all, why does he abandon it rather than turn it over to the police?

Ellison (Ethan Hawke) tries to destroy Bagul's tapes in "Sinister" (photo by Phil Caruso)

Derrickson: Just prior to that moment, he’s talking to the deputy and makes it clear that he doesn’t believe in any of that stuff, that he’s a skeptic, but things are getting too weird. Then he goes up in his attic and sees six ghost kids and Bagul, Mr. Boogie. At that point he knows he’s dealing with something far beyond this world.

Cargill: And to make it even simpler than that, he realizes the tapes are just evil.

Derrickson: That’s why he burns them. When he realizes that’s where it’s coming from, he asks the professor what would happen if you destroy [the source]? The professor says it would close the gateway, so he thinks he should be safe. But he’s wrong.

The only thing connecting the families is where they’ve lived. But unlike a lot of horror films, where one particular setting is cursed, this curse moves with the families. Why did you decide to do it that way?

Cargill: Quite simply, it was because who the hell would move into a house where five different families were murdered? By the second family that’s murdered, that house would be burned down or bulldozed.

Derrickson: And the connection of the killer is clear. The whole world would be investigating that.

Ellison's son (played by Michael Hall D'Addario) appears to be under Bagul's influence in "Sinister" (courtesy Summit Entertainment)

Cargill: Ultimately, at the same time I wanted to create a creature that could get you almost anywhere. You’re not safe and it’s not localized terror. It is a creature of the other world that can move freely about. At some point you’ve got to wonder just how long could Jason stay around Crystal Lake. As long as you don’t go to Crystal Lake, you’ll be fine. No, you want that horror to be out there in the world unleashed.

Derrickson: Bagul is an entity who resides within works of art. There’s a sophistication to the way he does things and I like the idea that he seduces children, he’s the eater of children, and when it comes time to wipe out their families and have these children practice this ritual killings, he drives them to another place. That keeps the trail cold and there’s something smart about that, which I really like.

Up until a certain point in the movie, the viewer still wonders if there’s actually anything supernatural going on and that maybe it’s just a guy who manipulates children into doing these horrible things.

Derrickson: Ethan definitely thinks that’s what it is, and so does the officer. The deputy is the one who puts it all together, but they both think this is a ritual killer and the deputy has cracked his code. He’s right, it’s just not a guy.

About a year ago a movie called Insidious (read my interview here) came out. A lot of things about Sinister remind me of Insidious, including the fact that it has a grim ending that bigger studios wanted to change. There have been a few other movies with a similar feel that have come out since then, but they’ve all been from smaller studios. What do you think it would take for Hollywood to realize these films are getting cult followings and could be making them a lot of money?

Derrickson: Summit has been giving this movie a big push, but with horror you save that campaign for the three weeks before. That’s just how horror releases work.

Ellison's daughter (Clare Foley) sees some of Bagul's previous influences in "Sinister" (courtesy Summit Entertainment)

Cargill: It’s going to take one or two more successful really dark, heavy films. The thing is a lot of executives have short memories. They feel that the audience is fickle and that their tastes change. They can name the greatest horror films of all time, but they can’t tell you why they’re the greatest horror films of all time. So what it’s going to take is a few hit films like Insidious and, fingers crossed, Sinister and things of their ilk to show them that audiences do want dark, heavy, scary, macabre horror, that it doesn’t have to have a happy ending and it doesn’t have to be built for sequels or be formulaic. The big studios were afraid of a few elements in the film, so they looked at it and passed. The ending bothered them a bit, the death of children bothered them and they were like, “Audiences won’t buy into that. They don’t want that. It’s far too risky to put this out.” Then when audiences go and love it, the studios are like, “We don’t understand.” So it will take a few more successes for the studios to go, “Oh, wait. This is hot right now.” And that’s how they’ll put it. They won’t put two and two together that every great horror film has a really heavy ending. They think that Saw was successful simply because of how grizzly it was. They forget Saw had a really downer of an ending where the bad guy wins. They forget that so many of these horror films end very poorly for the protagonists and the characters you’re invested in. That’s where this horror comes from is the fact that they aren’t safe. They’ll tell you that The Omen was great or that Rosemary’s Baby was a big blockbuster and they kind of forget that at the end of The Omen, the little kid is the only one left alive and that he’s killed the family and that Rosemary does give birth to the devil’s child.

It’s funny that you mentioned Saw because the way this movie ends, you could definitely do sequels or prequels. But then you’d run the risk of subsequent movies following the Saw formula where the focus ends up being on making each death more shocking than the previous one.

Derrickson: We don’t know exactly what we’ll do if the movie is successful and there’s going to be a franchise, but we don’t want to do that. What we’ve talked about is not wanting to do the predictable sequel thing and just put the box in another house and have more extreme kills. That’s just not why we made this movie and that’s not why people are going to like it and, if it works, that’s not what the sequels will be.

The two of you kind of serendipitously came together to work on this film. Given the chemistry you clearly have working together, do you plan on working on other films together in the future?

Cargill: As often as possible.

Derrickson: We really like each other and have great respect for each other. We’ve got several things that we’re doing now, both paid projects and a spec script that we’ve already got a first draft of.

And you also have a book coming out, right Robert?

Cargill: Yeah, it’s called Dreams and Shadows.

Derrickson: I’ve read it. It’s awesome.

www.haveyouseenhim.com

Out on Film engages Southern audience in “Fourplay”

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There are many emotions and attitudes associated with sex. Passion and eroticism are obviously some of its more common bedfellows, but sex can also be comical, subversive, experimental and stressful. In Fourplay, directed by Kyle Henry and co-produced by Michael Stipe, we see four very different stories taking place in different cities where sex is an integral and transcendent part of the main characters’ lives. Were you to watch these four short films separately, you’d likely have difficulty determining a common theme.

Gail (Sara Sevigny, left) fantasizes about Marcy (Amy Jean Johnson) in "Skokie"

But when they are presented as a single feature film, the inadvertent (and whimsical) beastiality of “Skokie” fits right in alongside the extremes of a couple on the brink of collapsing in “Austin.” And the bathroom fantasies of “Tampa” erupt (very literally) into an orgy of luchadors, Hitler and other odd characters before an invalid’s encounter with a cross-dressing prostitute becomes oddly touching and tender in “San Francisco.” As the movie makes its Southeastern premiere tonight at the Out on Film festival, Henry talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about drag queens, dogs and other related topics.

The first thing that jumps out at me about these four stories is that they are very different. There’s a wide range of tones and themes in each one even though the primary subject matter of sex is the same. How did you go about directing four drastically different films that comprise one larger work?

That was what I was looking for. I really wanted to show sexual expression from a variety of perspectives, whether it be tragic, comedic, satyric, ironic or you name it. Myself and the writers, Carlos Triviño and Jessica Hedrick, were interested in seeing the act of sex being a major turning point in the lives of characters and stories. So we picked extreme stories for extreme effect. I think there’s something tying them all together in terms of our point of view of the world as people, in a sense of charity, maybe, and generosity.

Did you plan on having these four films presented as a single film or did things just sort of fall into place that way?

Luis (Jose Villarreal) gets a lot more than he expected in "Tampa"

All four of these shorts were written before I shot the first one. That was always the intention. But we tried to do something novel where as we completed the first two shorts – “Tampa” and “San Francisco” – we wanted to put them out into the world. So we released them as stand-alone shorts at festivals. The feature, with all four titles together, is like a payoff for the people who have been following the development of the film over the last few years.

The Out on Film screening is the Southeast debut for the film. Where else has the full feature played?

This will be the fifth festival the full feature has played at. It premiered at Frameline in San Francisco, then we played at Outfest in Los Angeles and the Guanajuato International Film Festival was our Mexican premiere. Throughout the fall we’re playing it at different film festivals in New Orleans, Copenhagen and elsewhere. So we’re continuing touring film festivals through early next year.

As a director, did you have a favorite amongst the four short films?

No, they’re all my babies. I love all my children. I think they were all challenging. Working with a dog is always challenging. Well, dogs and children. At least we didn’t have a child in any of them! Working with such a huge cast on “Tampa” was really challenging. The last short, “San Francisco,” was really enjoyable to work with just two actors in a room. It certainly was the most intimate and delicate performances to direct, so that was a lot of fun.

Paul Soileau plays the cross-dressing prostitute in that one. Is that a drag persona he does on a regular basis or was it just a character he portrayed for this film?

Aliya (Paul Soileau) has more than one surprise in "San Francisco"

It was a character, but he’s now internationally known for playing two alter egos. His most well-known one is a character called Christeene, who is this gutter-mouthed drag punk rock character. He has a bunch of music videos up on Funny or Die, he’s been touring clubs all over the world for the last few years. But they’re outrageous characters. I don’t think he’d ever played something that was very real, like this character required. And he did a great job of changing his normal performance mode for the film.

After these upcoming festivals, are you working on getting Fourplay released theatrically?

Yeah, we’re already booking theaters and the theatrical release will begin in February of 2013. We’re opening first in Austin, Texas at a theater called the Alamo Drafthouse and we’re looking for theaters to show at in other cities.

Michael Stipe was one of the producers of this film. What role did he play, exactly, as a producer?

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have Michael Stipe as one of the executive producers on the film. This film never would have been made without his support. He has a company called C-Hundred Film Corp. and over the last 15 years he and his producing partner Jim McKay have put money into about 15 low-budget independent features. It’s a small amount of money that’s basically a very big grant and he and his partner give it to work that they’re interested in. They give it to challenging work that they know is going to have a hard time finding funding elsewhere because people are going to be afraid of the content or the messages being put out by the films. So they really are giving back to the artistry of our environment by supporting what they like.

www.fourplayfilm.com

A “Gayby” is born in independent romantic comedy

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It is not uncommon for two longtime friends to simultaneously come to the early-midlife conclusion that their biological clocks may be winding down. For those who have reached their 30s without settling on a husband, wife or long-term partner, the idea of conceiving a child together despite the lack of physical attraction becomes more and more appealing as time goes on. Such an idea was the basis for Friends with Kids earlier this year (read Flash Gorem’s review here), but the concept gets thrown for another loop in Gayby. Making its Georgia premiere on the opening night of Atlanta’s Out on Film festival this Thursday, Gayby is based on Jonathan Lisecki’s four-year-old short film about Jenn (Jenn Harris), a single New York City yoga instructor ready for motherhood, and her gay friend Matt (Matthew Wilkas), who works in a comic book store and is still trying to get over his last boyfriend, and their decision to procreate. After premiering at South by Southwest earlier this year, Gayby has screened in numerous festivals and sees its theatrical release in New York on Oct. 12 and in Los Angeles on Oct. 26, followed by a Video on Demand and DVD release in December. As he prepares to show his Gayby off in Atlanta, writer/director Lisecki (who also plays Nelson in the film) talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about its conception.

When did you decide to expand your short film into a full-length feature?

Writer/director Jonathan Lisecki (right) plays Nelson in "Gayby"

It played around at all these festivals, so I got to see it with a bunch of different audiences all over the country and outside of the country. So I knew it had some universal appeal and people always really responded to it and loved Jenn and Matt. A little more than a year ago, I was at a festival and the two women who wound up producing the film [Secretary‘s Amy Hobby and Lipstick & Dynamite‘s Anne Hubbell] were there with me. They were like, “When are you going to make a feature of Gayby?” I was like, “I don’t know. Are you going to help me if I make it?” And they said, “Yeah, if you write one!” Once I knew that I would have people to help me, I wrote the script last May and we were shooting by August. It was kind of a quick decision.

Even though Matt is gay, he’s not stereotypically gay and it’s easy to relate with him regardless of your sexuality. He works at a comic book store and is just a regular guy who happens to be gay. Was it your intention to make him somewhat universally relatable like that?

I knew we were going to have multiple gay characters, so we should have different aspects of that life portrayed. And I know people like Matt. I just thought it would be interesting if we saw a gay character who wasn’t quick to hop in the sack with other people, who worked in a different kind of job than we usually see, who was a little bit more shy. It all just seemed right for what I wanted to say with the movie.

I didn’t want to get too much into this, “He doesn’t act gay, so he’s not a gay stereotype” thing. In the past ten years or so, it’s swung to the reverse. There are more campy characters on television, but there are also these guys who are so butch that you’d never know they were gay. Either way it can be a stereotype, it just depends on how human you write the characters. People are quick to say a certain type of person is a stereotype, but is that really true? There are people who are like every single person in my film in real life. I think you can write any type of person and as long as you treat them with honesty and intelligence, that’s how you avoid that beginning to feel like a stereotype.

At a certain point in the movie it becomes questionable if Matt is actually the father of Jenn’s baby, which creates some tension between him and Jenn. But it’s never actually revealed if he is or is not the father.

One of many awkward moments that arises between Jenn (second from left) and Matt (right) in "Gayby"

No, it’s not. That’s not really the point. The point is they’re creating this family that’s based on a bond that isn’t specifically genetic. I thought there was no real reason to answer that question. There’s also a personal aspect to that from my life where there’s a question I never had answered that I’m fine with not knowing the answer to. To wrap every single thing up in a bow sometimes feels not real, so I just wanted to leave that open ended.

Gayby was selected to screen at Out on Film on opening night, which is a pretty big deal, right?

To the festivals it is. I think they choose the movies they like to debut opening night and closing night. For a filmmaker, it’s always lovely to be at the opening night movie screenings. It just makes it feel a little more special and it’s nice. But there’s something special about sharing a movie with an audience no matter where it’s played. I guess there’s a little bit of a bonus to be played first. It just means the people who program the festival really like your movie and want to showcase it a little.

www.gaybyfilm.com