 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
Jay Woelfel
inteoMy standard opening question, and please take it however you want: "Why film?"
I was interested in all the arts. I'd done some painting - water colors -the first one was good, and I still have it, the rest were bad, some clay sculpting, music-I played baritone horn in bands since the 5th grade and was initially a self-taught piano and organ player-I'd seen Kabuki plays in Japan as a child -started writing Star Trek Stories when I was 13 and made my first movie (8mm Star Trek stop motion animation) around that time too. Later on I took two years of acting and improvisation classes. I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. As a filmmaker that's exactly what you need, or what I needed, to end up there.
Film is a combination of all those other art elements. It needs music, design, and performance, all functioning at once to work. My interests and talents combined with other peoples greater and more specific talents made my films better than my writing on its own, or music, etc, etc.
That's why it is potentially such a great art form and why it attracts one of the largest audiences of all the arts currently. I enjoyed the interaction with that audience, as opposed to those who seek its "attention", and talking about either one of my films or just films in general.
Tell us a little about your history and how you were able to break into the business.
I would say you're always trying to break deeper into the business than you are. I was lucky to meet many talented and collaboration-minded people in Film school and among my friends, and made many short films, some of which had won awards. I was going to move to LA with my girlfriend and producer at the time and an opportunity to do a feature length film came about. I shot that film and though it was a decent experience it made me hungry to "do it right" and direct a feature on my own. I did one final short film that won awards and got distributed; The Birthmark, and that made it seem even more possible to do my own feature. An investor came along to fund my first feature, Beyond Dream's Door, but at the last minute he disappeared and I was faced with not making it or doing it on a smaller scale than we made it-we being the same people I'd worked with more and more through film school. That film came out got good reviews and did well and then I moved to LA.
The good reviews from the feature were what made it easier to meet and make friends, and friends are how you make it into the business. The one feature made me a real filmmaker to people; all the shorts just made me a student filmmaker. I'm not saying that's right. I'm saying that to a degree is the way it is. The feature would not have been as good had I not made all the shorts.
Over the years you've worked often with the same people, such as Dyrk Ashton and Scott Spears. How important is it for you as a filmmaker to maintain that closeness to your roots?
It's tough to start each new movie with a group of strangers. It takes lots of work to get them on the same page with you and, as Sidney Lumet says, get them to be "making the same movie" with you. You develop a short hand with people who you know and who have worked with you before. You get support from them and that should help you discover new ground with the new film rather than have to retread old ground. If you have to spend time showing the new DP what you mean by a close up and how fast you think a fast pan is, (or) that kind of thing, you'll run out of time to work with the actors or try new things.
Roots are what makes trees live and grow, the same is true for people. There are cases where you may have to overcome bad roots, but I'm lucky enough not to be in that category.
I've certainly worked with new people who join or replace previous people and that can be exciting too, moving to LA was pretty much starting over again for me, but if you trust someone keep them around when you can to help you move from strength to strength.
How would you describe a Jay Woelfel picture?
I don't think I ever have before so let's see. I may have in some ways a one-track mind, but not one train. Films can be about many different things, in different time periods, be funny or sad and on and on. So with something like the Titanic project, I'd say it reflects my interests in history, fate, and some of my own experiences on ships and I'd talk about it being mine in those ways.
So each reflects my personality and all the things good and bad that are in that in whatever way the material supports. But it's hard to describe your personality to someone else or maybe even to yourself.
In a movie I direct I try to show beauty and horror and humor almost never hurts. I like, and try, to make movies that are smart and those that reach out to, rather than hide or attack, an audience.
What do you look for in a project before you take it on?
I suppose I just answered that in part with the previous question. Something I like and respond to and/or that challenges me. I don't try to turn every project into the same movie over and over again with either story or visual ideas from previous projects I've done. So I guess I'm looking for something new and fresh.
The Horror genre is an exciting one for me and one that I continue to enjoy doing different things with and have a predisposition to.
On a less high-minded level you have to look at the limitations of the production in terms of budget and time allowed to make the film, sometimes it just isn't worth your time when those factors will keep it from being any good.
What is your creative process like when nurturing a picture from conception to completion? Are their constants you find necessary each time around?
The production situation dictates certain, sometimes all, elements of the process. There are true industry clichés answers to this like the following questions: How much time does it take to make a movie? As much time as they give you. How much involvement do you have with casting? As much as they give you.
I think the process on a personal level is connected in some mysterious but direct way to biorhythms or whatever you care to call the balance and motivations for your creativity. Whatever you want to call it don’t call it your Muse. I hate that. You need to be disciplined but you can’t force yourself to be creative, though you should try to work out those muscles to keep them in shape as often as you can.
In my early Ohio State classes, the video scriptwriting and production classes they gave you 6 weeks from script to final 30 minute finished edit. Those classes still guide me in how I look at writing something that I’ll produce or will be produced if you know the budget range your writing for.
Those classes and much production large and small revolve around a location or locations your story will take place in. I was taught that a sense of place was important. It’s also necessary since you’ll actually have to shoot it somewhere real and that will decide certain camera angles etc.
For example, with Iron Thunder the concept for the script was based on it being set in a tank and the tank was in the desert. I really had two tanks but both would be the same interior redressed to be both tanks. I had my basic pitch meeting, which got the project approved, and this pitch was based on prior meeting with the production designer, Hunter Cresall who told me what could and couldn’t be done. I started writing and as I wrote I thought of where the story was going and then would stop writing and scout locations to go with what I was hoping to write about. The locations then gave me more ideas and inspired the further writing.
When we got on set Hunter said these locations are perfect. That’s because I went looking for what I hoped to find, found something either the same or better than what I wanted then kept writing guided by what we found and could get.
I think that script turned out especially well and was conceived and finished in maybe 8 weeks. This is longer than you’d get on a movie like that one, but we were actually able to be in some pre production at the same time which allowed me to work longer and have a better script. Usually scripts when they are to be produced go through a production rewrite phase that takes into account differences in location realities as opposed to what you’d thought up in your head. That process had happened along the way on that film.
Anyway, that’s a unique situation. In general I feel that you get to a final script in about three drafts, after that if you keep rewriting you’re probably trying to turn your original movie into something else or you have a script that doesn’t really work and probably never will. Talking with the actors and answering their questions may motivate additional dialogue and whatever you shoot will kind of be your final fourth draft of the script.
Getting the script right is probably the most time consuming part, or should be of starting a film to be. Once that is set then you are just looking for actors and locations based on what the script calls for. If you have to have a star in the movie then that can take a long time.
I suppose it’s easier to look at this concept to shooting phase as the least amount of time you need to do the job right let’s say in the under a million dollars range of movies.
So let’s say 4 to 6 weeks is the least amount of time you ought to spend on pre production. When shooting, it’d be nice to shoot an average of 4 pages a day, though I’ve been forced to shoot as many as 10 or 12 in some situations. On Trancers 6 we did on average 100 takes a day, that’s not setups but separate takes and probably an average of 45 setups a day.
In post production it’s rare you’ll get more than month after the shoot is done. CGI, can take a long time, we had I think 4 months for Unseen Evil and we could and should have had 6 months and that was for about 90 finished shots in the picture. John Ellis who worked on Trancers 6 can turn out a finished shot a day when demanded to, but had to deliver maybe twice that many on our too short post schedule.
Post sound work and music scoring should take at least a month for each, but usually you’re lucky to have three weeks for each and they usually overlap so you have 6 weeks total for your completed sound mix.
I don’t know all this may or may not answer your question but hopefully gives you some real world answers. The short answer again is, it depends…
As a director, are their specific themes and ideas you're concerned with exploring?
I prefer, or try, to find meaning and real people in material I do. You can still make a fun movie and have it mean something. I think dealing with communication between people and how we support or destroy each other as people is worth exploring. I hate liars and that shows in several films I've made. People's obsessions both positive and negative (is something) I'm also interested in.
It's almost a black and white view of what it means to be a "good" person.
I suppose I’d say it’s better as a human being to have interests and passions than obsessions; the word itself is negative to me. The Hawthorne story The Birthmark, which I made into a short film, is about a doctor obsessed with making his wife perfect physically because she is so perfect to him in all other ways. Prior to marriage, in my take on the story, the man had been obsessed with science and how it would cure all mankind’s illnesses. Failing at that, he gave it up to be married, found a flaw in her and they tried to bring back his obsession with science by combining it with his love obsession. The results are horrible because he kills his wife in removing the birthmark, but it’s scientifically a success because, as they say, the operation was a success but the patient died.
When you apply this to your characters how you define them through their honesty in regards to personal interaction?
I hadn’t considered it that deeply before. As to liars yes, but I don’t think I’ve taken it so far as to paint the entire character as good or bad just because of that. Maybe.
In Beyond Dream’s Door the one character lies and later overcomes the lie to be a successful character. So I guess that can be the test of character or a definition of a good or bad person real or created. When faced with a tough truth do you settle for the easy lie? Or do you lie to get what you want or make yourself seem better than someone else to pump up your own ego? I’ve been lied to memorably several times probably others that I still don’t know about. I’ve ended relationships over lies, it just gets too complicated to keep track of the lies or try to guess which lies are the truth.
It certainly isn’t everything that goes into making a good of bad character in fiction though. I always think of what Christopher Lee said about the secret to playing a villain, it’s that the villain thinks he’s the hero. Everyone is the hero of their own stories and their story, or version of reality, must be judged taking that into consideration.
When working with actors, how do you help the actor create the desired character?
If you write the script well, then much of your work has been done right there... That gives you a picture of each character and how they'd sound or look in each scene and that is what you're trying to create in the film.
You sit down with the actor and the script and talk about each scene and what you think it means to the character and how it fits into the story and answer their questions about this or that. On set then it should hopefully then be largely a matter of how fast or slow or how much or how little acting you want from each moment.
How you relate to the actors is as a friend even if you never met them before. You use that kind of intimacy and also that kind of trust and gentleness in working together.
I don't like to give live readings to people, though some actors will ask for it and I'll do it. Patrick Stewart, the best known and probably the best actor I've directed, would ask me to do this. Though his reason dealt with American pronunciation or with technical words that he hadn't heard before. He wanted to hear the words used in a sentence to make his own delivery flow better and sound real.
So it depends on the actor, but I don't believe in tricking the actors into performing as a principal, in practice though it all depends on the situation and personality of the actor.
The script is path you are guiding the actors along though.
How much leeway do you give an actor? Do you strictly adhere to what you've put in the script, sticking to a set vision on your part, or do you allow the actors free reign of their own organic processes?
They get as much leeway as you get as a director with the script, which is if you want to see it as a limitation, is a limitation, but there is so much you do to bring it to life without junking the script. In blocking I always try to let the actors move through the scene in the way that feels right to them or deal with props etc before I bring a camera to it, so I’m being organic in that way whenever possible. And yes, things that come up on set become, as I’ve said, another rewrite of the script as you make the script into a film. You should be careful though because you are far more balanced in how you look at a scene when you write it than when you film it. What seems like the greatest idea in the world after many twelve hour plus days in a row you’ve spent on a set isn’t always a great idea.
Trust the script if you trusted it to start with.
A few great movies have been made doing on set rewrites and having actors go off in wild directions, but many more terrible movies are made that way.
As to letting the actors have freedom this made me think of something in Trancers 6. It's one of the "rants" that Jennifer Capo's Ms. Shauna's character has, her night rally speech in particular.
First, on a script rewrite level, I asked that her back-story be added in so we know more about her. I didn't want her to be a one-dimensional villain, that's too easy and less real. In your review you make an interesting point about the way the wholes series has dealt with homeless people. That's true even when they are the poor serf villagers in parts 4 and 5. Well in Ms. Shauna's case she's a former outcast of society who's come back to power in a negative way and now exploits, though I think she really does believe her own speeches, the same type of people that she used to be. Like most corrupt cult leaders she's involved sexually with her followers-though this was downplayed, not really with my approval, in the final cut though those scenes are still in the deleted scene section of both the VHS and DVD.
Now her big "you can have the power" speech to her would be followers was, of course, the scene we used to audition actresses for the part. I think the speech was written to be a Hitleresque screaming rant. Some of the actors played it this way, but I always try to look for ways to play against what the dialogue might at first imply to make it fresh and unexpected. I'm not interested in doing it the way it most obviously would be done, we've already seen that! After auditioning many many women I decided on a sort of hard and soft approach. None of the women who played it as straight rant ended up getting the role.
I'd worked with Jennifer Capo on Demonicus and knew that Charlie Band, who had ultimate approval power on casting this part, liked her as I had and might like her again. She came in and did a totally different, basically all soft, reading of the speech which was totally different that what any of the other actresses before her had done. Charlie immediately went wild for her, I sat back and listened and then said, I knew you'd like her because you and I liked her for Demonicus. Charlie didn't even recognize her as the same person. Anyway what matters is she got cast.
So when we get around to shooting the scene I intended to have her do it the way I'd coached those in the auditions to do it. Instead in the heat, or actually late night freezing cold, of the moment she did the first rehearsal in a totally different way than how she'd done it in the audition that got her the part, or in the way I intended to have her do it. Now remember the dialogue is exactly as scripted we weren't changing that.
With the crowd there for her to address she keyed into something, I think her father was a preacher or is still one, and suddenly did it with a sort of a revival preacher mixed with a late night infomercial type delivery. I did it in a very long moving take that let her get into it and interact with the crowd whose backs we see in the same take. I actually directed the crowd more than I directed her and we did all her angles first so once she was into it she could keep rolling. It's her best acting in the film and she had freedom but the script wasn't changed in terms of text at all.
When younger filmmakers ask you for advice on breaking into the industry, what do you usually tell them?
You almost never get hired, in LA at least, to do something you haven't already done. So make some films of your own. A feature if you can. If it sucks then at least you'll know where your strengths and weaknesses are and then you won't blow an opportunity if you get one. In order to get your first work you'll probably have to work for little or no money since the only reason you're getting the job is that they can't afford to hire last years Oscar winner, so save up some money to support yourself while you work your way up.
Get experience, you may need skill as well as talent. I started working out here and continue to from time to time as an editor.
It's less and less expensive all the time to make at least a video feature, do it, or do a short at least. If you can write don't write (just) one script, write three and make them different form each other.
You touch upon something I'm in the process of doing, preparing for my long-delayed move to California. I know people who have moved out with only the shirts on their back and no connections who have prospered, relaying reports of all the work that's out there. Likewise, I know people who have gone out with a comfortable cushion and plenty of contacts only to return months later disappointed. The bottom line is you never really know what the reality is going to be like until you're neck-deep, and you should be prepared for anything, especially the worst.
Hope for the best expect the worst. I tell people to look at the first year as a write off. You’re going to have to meet new people and just figure out where to buy gas and all of that. I was very busy my first year here editing at the American Film Institute, then the second year was the slow one. It may be true that it’s not what you know it’s who you know. But all that means is that you’ve got to get to know people and that takes time. And when you get your chance you better know what you’re doing. I’d also say that bad filmmakers who are nice people have far longer careers than people who get known as a difficult genius. And there are plenty of successful people and true artists who are genuinely nice individuals too. You see people in LA don’t like waves and explosions even though poor management in the film business creates many waves. When this happens your job is to go “no problem” in a quiet voice and clean up the mess. The thing people may not know about LA until you are here is what a company town it is. More people out here, on the balance, see film as work than as art.
Your first film was BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR, a production created with the aid of Ohio State University's old school of Photography and Cinema. What were your experiences with OSU like?
The school was closed down in 1992 I believe. One of the instructors I had there basically said it was part of a country wide conspiracy by the government to control the media and media makers and that many schools had had their film programs shut down right at a moment where new media was exploding and needed them.
So think about that for a while...
I got a very good basic film education at Ohio State though it was not geared toward Hollywood narrative films. I learned the most by actually making many films and by working on other peoples films and not my own. That was a matter of money and luck in meeting the right people.
I learned about being political and "playing the game" in school, which can be very much like LA or real world business where you have to kiss up to the right people and not make the wrong enemies. I don't think the whole film school experience gets the credit it deserves for teaching you the politics of film. Your professors have a lot in common with the studio heads you'll have to deal with later.
The strange, and kind of sad, thing about my experiences at Ohio State was that as I improved and advanced some of those teachers who had initially supported me lost interest and didn't support me when I needed it once I was no longer only their student. For the individual teachers to be stars they needed star students to help them run the film department as they thought it should be. When you became someone else's student…well, I understand this now. I didn't then.
After a certain point the fact that I was doing so much work hurt me in the department. So-called Hollywood narrative films are still not the major thrust of many film programs which want art films. When I was at The American Film Institute there was an opposite bias against visual or arty personal expression in films.
At Ohio State by the time we did the feature version of Beyond Dream's Door it was largely not a school project. It was done under a special group production class that had never been taught before and was largely the thanks of Rico Long an associate professor who was a continuing supporter of mine as well as being a supporter of fellow students Dyrk Ashton, Susan Resatka, and Scott Spears who were the principal team in making that film happen.
We had a student production crew and that was all. Everything else was done outside of the department because of previous problems I'd had there. The only locations we had problems with were those in the department itself. Then again most film programs wouldn't even allow a feature to be made for commercial purposes so there you go…
Do you think if you weren't subject to all this politicking that you would have had the drive to make the feature length BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR?
No, I would have made it sooner. There was nothing positive about the politicking. I was driven some when I first started by rivalry with some fellow students, but this too, though it worked for me for a while, isn’t the best motivation and won’t lead to the best art. It was cooperation and support that made the film possible. Negatives are negatives to me not positives. You need personal and pure reasons to keep going with good results.
What was the genesis of BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR?
Two things: the collapse of my first deep relationship with a woman and a bookstore.
I was cast adrift into college as many people are. Most all my high school friends many of whom I'd known since early grade school were gone. Then the relationship many people had told me, and which I believed and hoped, would last forever also and predictably collapsed. I was in college she was in high school…it just got worse from there. It turned into a long series of phone calls and lies and general missed communication, which the distance of a phone call made easier.
Also my girlfriend's father, who had by then become my chief nemesis, had said one time that he never had dreams only nightmares. That statement stuck with me and ironically he then was the inspiration for the hero character in Beyond Dream's Door.
While all this was going on, my closest friend from high school, Dan White didn't go to college so we remained close. He'd "hired me" to write for the high school paper and encouraged my talent and we shared interests in horror fiction. He'd turned me on to the work of Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, and one day in a campus bookstore I saw a book that I picked up because Bloch had written the introduction to it. It was a collection of H. P Lovecraft stories.
Stories like THE OUTSIDER, and THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME are probably specific inspirations. So I took his alternate world and alternate reality monsters and brewed them with my personal problems and came up with Beyond Dream's Door.
I had to prove the concept to an instructor at Ohio State (Clay Lowe) who was promoting the use of news camera type video equipment to be used as a narrative medium. At the time this was considered "crazy talk" unlike today where it is the "new thing." It's not new to me; this was 1982, when I started doing it!
I did a short video from my friend Dan's idea first and that convinced Clay I could direct and that only I could direct my odd ideas for Beyond Dream's Door. In the summer of 1983 I did the first version of Beyond Dream's Door in a 6 week production class with a "real crew" so that was my first big production.
Later when I was looking into writing feature length material a new film school friend, Scott Spears encouraged me to make Beyond Dream's Door into a feature because he felt the short didn't really do the story justice.
In other words, I think Scott thought, the short had too many ideas in it to work as a short but (was) ripe to be a feature.
In 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street came along and suddenly my odd idea was made commercial by its success.
So 4 drafts and about 5 years later we made the feature length version, on film this time as the movie.
I like to think of BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR as "a thinking man's NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET."
Can I quote you on that? Nightmare on Elm Street, the first one anyway, isn't a dumb film either.
A woman who saw the short version came up to me and said the film really scared her and made her think and at that moment I thought, wow, I succeeded. Since then that's the way I tried to make of the feature version work.
I don't mean to imply that Elm Street is in any way a dumb movie. I find Wes Craven to be the most interesting, intelligent, and articulate of today's horror autuers. While both of you cover similar thematic ground with your pictures, you seem more concerned with the psychological implications of the events where Craven was more concerned with the psychological origins of his events. Would you say this is true?
Yes, though I’d like to hope that both are valid approaches. The one question the first Elm Street didn’t answer, if I remember correctly, is why the dreams were the way Freddy took for revenge. My scenerio grew out of a direct cause and effect reason within the characters that made the dreams the path for violence and revenge. I guess there was some Asian mythological explanation given in the first Elm Street film, though it seemed sort of convoluted, when had Freddy ever been to Asia?
Okay now I know I sound like I’m saying my idea is better than his. All I mean to say is I tried to be more straightforward and direct in mine. I specifically left out any religious connections of any kind to what is happening in my story. I thought that would just make it all too complicated. It was complex enough as it is.
I wrote my script well before Nightmare came out, the only influence it had in my finished movie, I feel, was with the janitor character who has hooks for hands. I’d had the armless man in mine originally but making him a hook handed character in the feature version was probably somewhat Freddy influenced. I was actually more worried than proud of any similarities.
The story is structured in such a way that the characters actions feels like they are dictated by the logic of the dreams. Was this intentional?
Yes, though I actually looked at it as the opposite waysround. I would say the dream actions and characters actions work both ways. But you're right, each works on the other. For example: Ben Dobbs forgets his dreams, which eventually gives them the power to become real. Once they are real they can alter and control reality, as you put it, with dream logic as long as there is no real world proof that they are just dreams and so have no power in the real world.
How do you find audiences react to the movie?
The two biggest reactions the film gets in terms of hearing or seeing them react during a screening are to the one characters deaths near the end of the film, (I don’t want to give too much away here) people screamed or jumped when that happened.
The other big reaction is to something else that I felt was so subtle no one would react at all. This is a scene where Eric, the TA who is trying to avoid being involved with Ben Dobbs and his problems, comes outside and realizes he left his car at his girlfriend’s house. He says “God Damnit. I left it at Julie’s.” At the first screening of the film right after that line there was this collective sort of “oh no don’t go there” groan from the crowd. They know what horrible things are waiting there at Julie’s house from the previous scene. For all they know her headless body is still walking around there or something. That is my favorite reaction from an audience to the movie.
A friend of mine said he jumped out of his chair at the first appearance of the D.F White character in the library. This to me always scared me when I read the script so if that works then I was able to share that moment with people watching it.
Now that I’ve said those specific and positive things you may actually be asking something a distributor felt about the film once. He thought that the film was over the heads of its potential audience. He was looking down at the horror audience and you should never do that, or look down on any audience. He’d cited a film done by a friend of mine that he considered to have been more commercial than mine. In fact my film had done as well or better than this other film.
Some people hate the poem in the film. If you like that part then you are really connecting with the film because that is the heart and voice of the film’s meaning. But I made this film mostly with my own money and wanted to put enough commercial elements in there to get it distributed while keeping more original and off beat elements to test and express myself as a filmmaker. So if all someone likes is the heads coming off and all that then they have to forgive the other stuff. I like both elements or I wouldn’t have put them in there. I wasn’t trying to be artsy or whorish by including both, I was trying to express both in the same film.
The film is structured around the dreams of Ben Dobbs, but it almost seems like the story belongs to Eric, the T.A. While Ben's dreams are the catalyst for the plot, Eric is the one who has a true character starting with Dr. Noxx's concept of "the buck stops here." If I remember correctly, he's presented with this scenario 4 different times and deals with each in a different manner.
Right. Or maybe Eric's change is better written. The final voice you hear in the film, which reveals the final problem that created the nightmare is Eric's not Ben's. This does, in a way, make it Eric's story. Only Eric's attitude change has stopped the dream and saved Dobbs who's come to realize, by then, that he can't make it without other people. That is one of the themes of the film. It's really supposed to be about both characters, both parts are, or almost, equal size, which is true much more of the feature than the short version.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be Hitchcockian color schemes that signify whether viewers are watching events in the dream world or everyday reality.
I made that film over ten years ago and you're the first person to mention it. But you're absolutely right. In one of my first short films I had the main character dress like Jimmie Stewart does in Vertigo. That got that kind of "DePalmaism" out of my system but I noticed that in Hitchcock films first. The color green, in lighting or wardrobe in Hitchcock is for unfulfilled desire. I used it to represent that or to represent sickness, look for the green smoke in Demonicus for example. Though Mario Bava's color schemes as to lighting were more of an influence by the time I made BDD.
The repeated dream sequences in the early part of BDD are never repeated exactly, I hate that kind of thing, when we see them again the lighting is totally different and exaggerated with red and blue now that we know they are a dream. Later in the film, the dream at one point pretends to be Ben Dobbs to fool his friend and this dream Ben Dobbs is dressed in blue and colored with red lights.
Spoiler Warning -- I know exactly the scene you're talking about. It was lost on me during the first viewing, but then I noticed the shirts and coloring during my second. While I have my doubts as to the "realness" of Ben at that point, he's wearing a black shirt when he leaves Eric in the school catacombs. I might be off base here, but I interrupted the black-shirted Eric as a product of the dream world who came across with the creature. It helps explain the confrontation between the two Ben's earlier on in the sewer and laid the groundwork for what I saw Blue/reality and Red/fantasy breakdown of the color schemes, at least when the story is told from Ben's point of view.
I suppose some sort of spoiler warning should be given for people who haven’t seen the film at this point. They may want to skip to the next question. There’s a whole section where we the audience don’t know, but probably think that Dobbs is dead. This is the whole “Eric’s story” section you are talking about. There’s an additional scene that will be on the DVD as a deleted scene that makes Dobb’s even more sinister in this section too. Like Eric we don’t know if Dobbs is friend or foe. There was also an alternate take we did in one scene where Ben seems almost to float out of a shot. I cut it, it was being unfair to the audience to take it that far.
In that earlier section you mention Ben is confronting himself as he will be in the future and how we last see him at the end of the film. I think we play fair with this concept. You have to watch the scar on his head closely to know when he’s real or not. I thought it was interesting to question if the hero was still the hero at times in the story.
Taking this farther, there seem to be color schemes that dictate the motivations of particular characters in each world. All these revolve around red, blue, green, white, and black.
Yes, those are the primary colors of the film as well as neutral colors of browns and yellows used to make those other colors stand out more.
Ben's primarily color is blue the dream colors are black and later red which is the color of the monster which was supposed to be like the color of raw flesh. Even the typewriter Ben writes down his dream with is white and blue.
And yes, there are character reasons for colors of lighting or even of the clothes they wear in different parts of the film. Dobbs and the T.A. character are both dressed alike when they first really confront each other and that should be a clue that there will ultimately be a connection there.
Usually in a movie if you see an old car drive by you know it's going to be wrecked. In my movies if someone is wearing white they are probably going to be covered in blood later and blood always shows up better on light colors. Though sometimes I dress the villains in red, which then denotes that they are killers, dressed in blood red, which is what I do in Trancers 6.
The main characters in almost all my films dress in the same colors, the only exception to this is Iron Thunder where they all are wearing military uniforms so that's why that is my worst film. Just kidding, I actually think that's one of my best films, but not for that reason either.
By telling you this I've just given away the ending of all my films for you. Or almost since I'm not saying what all the colors I use represent to me.
Control and use of color is a major element in filmmaking and a major advantage to working in color instead of B & W. On the surface this may sound obvious but look for example at Hitchcock's films where he worked with both and see what he did story wise with colors and without them.
These are just basic textual concepts that seem to be lost in today's factory-like moviemaking process. Ultimately, they make the viewing experience much more fulfilling for the audience, and it surprises me that no one has brought this up with you before regarding BBD. It just goes to show why it's important to study the masters and not just today's "next big thing."
You could probably watch two or three new mainstream movies made each year and pretty much know what’s going on currently with style and story etc. If you want a richer film experience look to older films and films you don’t find at Blockbuster Video. There are whole worlds to discover just as a film watcher that your owe it to yourself to seek out.
Form and structure seem to mean very little in mainstream films now. The whole idea of starting and stopping a scene set up and pay off just seems out of date. We’ll see where this all leads or if we are just going through another late 1960’s early 1970’s era filled with optical type effects, flash cutting, and speed changing. Some of these “new” techniques are going to date a film very badly in just a few years; others are here to stay. Trying to be too contemporary with music choices always makes films really silly all too quickly.
You've recently been involved with re-mastering BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR. Are their plans to release the film any time soon?
It'll hopefully be a loaded DVD. It will be a new directors cut with a new sound mix, the original distributor insisted on some changes that I don't agree with and it will include deleted scenes and the short films that directly lead to the feature as well as a short 35mm film that was actually part of the original release to meet certain running time requirement.
It will be released sometime next year, 2003.
Can you say yet who will be releasing it?
I don’t know yet. I’m still assembling all the elements and doing the re mastering myself to both save money and end up with the best DVD.
Along with the critical success of BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR, you've gone on to win two Emmy's for some short film work and an Academy Award for your interactive TITANIC cd-rom. Where do you keep the awards?
On top of my TV along with my Gamera and Godzilla action figures, (right) where they belong...
Beyond Dream's Door would have been nominated as best video release of the year (1989) by the Academy of Science Fiction and Horror, but unfortunately the category was created the year after it was released and so it was disqualified. Not to say it would have won, but if it had Godzilla and Gamera would have more company.
Some of your recent work has been Shot on Video, something many industry professionals would consider a step backwards for an Academy Award winning director. To me, this is actually incredibly inspiring. It adds validity to the growing number of SoV moviemakers launching productions in their backyard and shows that you aren't afraid to embrace the newer technologies to tell a story.
As I mentioned about Ohio State's film and video program I made four short video projects before I ever shot a sync sound film so, for me, video isn't new and something that in some ways I do sort of look at it as a backwards step, but nobodies convinced George Lucas of that!
Shooting on tape is the new buzz word, certainly for art-house product and lower budgeted "films" and now potentially for super huge fantasy films too.
When you start out some of these new areas aren't considered legitimate by established talent, which is what may give you, as someone new, or less well known, a shot at it. I got the Interactive Titanic project because of this. It's exciting because there aren't as many rules set with new media so you get to make them up yourself. By the time I was done with Titanic, bigger directors and studios were starting to do interactive projects. I stopped because I saw the crash coming for the CD-ROM based interactive stuff, just as I saw the Dot.Com bust coming later.
The medium shouldn't be the message. With video comes lower costs and with lower costs sometimes comes more opportunity to be creative and experiment on your own.
Video has many limitations, but it is a relatively cheap tool to make increasing professional looking and sounding movies. So if that's all you've got, use it! It will probably only become more and more accepted.
Do you plan to continue working with video?
We’d better all plan on working on video on every level of production. I hope to make more “films” too. Some companies, those that have actual experience with both formats, still prefer film. High end video is not cheap! There is a perception that video means cost savings. That’s not always true. You may be able to put together a better deal with 35mm film than with Hi Def video just because there is so much film around to bargain for and so little Hi Def. You’ll find though that you’ll shoot more footage on video and that will take more time to edit properly. Video is here to stay. Film will still stay around for a while too.
With UNSEEN EVIL you explored Native American folklore, and source of ideas I personally find vastly underused in today B-horror cinema. Was this something you always wanted to do?
Many, maybe even most, films that try to deal with Native American Mythology, both big and small budget, don't work, but I don't see why they couldn't. I had a project fall through at the last minute not long ago that I intended to be a sort of THE LAST WAVE film, only about Native Americans. It was a project I'd written a very long time ago. Lots of unexplored potential in that topic.
Unseen Evil allowed for some of that, the opening quote is true mythology that I found while researching the other failed project. America is considered to have no ancient past, unlike Europe, but we do and that mysterious region is Native American culture and religion.
Ancient Europe has certainly inspired lots of great genre fiction and films, why not American history?
It's easy to see how this movie ties back in to your thematic choices regarding honesty amongst your characters. I think the only character who doesn't lie at some point in the story is the Unseen Evil. Looking back, there's a moral ambiguity inherent in most of your characters, but none deceitful as the ones in this movie. Did that make it harder to examine those personal themes?
Now that you mention it, lying plays a big part in that movie (too). There’s one key lie near the end that a previously true character tells, though for a noble reason, that changes the ending entirely. The monster is the only honest character. Maybe that’s why it wins if you want to take the logic that far. I never want the monsters to be just dumb animals in a movie so I was interested in giving it an intelligent purpose in the film.
Though I had a lot of input on that script, I don’t take the credit. That properly belongs to Scott Spears, so his own ideas are mostly in there. We also were rushed into production on that movie with the script coming together at the last minute. It’s more straightforward but I don’t think that’s a fault. Some people say it’s my best movie and maybe for that reason.
Other themes and elements aren’t so cut and dried and interested me in that film. The raping of the past themes for instance, and the hints at what the real back story of the monster may be. Then there are interesting elements of Mike’s character. He tries but can’t really be a bad guy and ultimately sort of pays a price that another character owes.
Someone said that in the movie, at first, all the wrong characters get killed. Meaning that the good guys die first. Right, that’s part of what makes the monster more scary. It doesn’t kill those we want to see die. The most gruesome deaths are to the most likable characters. There’s kind of a disturbing trend in films where the violence and satisfaction at seeing the violence becomes the action of hero and the villians. How then do you tell the difference between them?
At any rate I’m interested in lots of things and expressing those with the films I make, not in making every film I do be about the same thing. So there was plenty to keep me interested in with Unseen Evil.
Your involvement with Richard Hatch on UNSEEN EVIL led to your work co-directing a Battlestar Galactica trailer a few years ago. By now most people have heard about Bryan Singer's own plans for an update of the show. Has anything progressed with Hatch and his efforts?
Singer had to pass on the Galactica project to direct X Men 2 and that, as of now and probably forever, killed his version of Galactica. Now Ronald Moore is writing and producing a remake for Sci Fi channel. Who knows if any of us trailer guys or any of the original cast of the show will be involved, probably none of us unless it goes to series. Hatch continues to be licensed to write new books about his version of Galactica.
I learned a lot doing the trailer and am proud of it, but everything else I might say on the subject would either go under the category of "no comment" or the, "I've already commented too much to hear myself comment further" category.
You mentioned another project where you've worked with Richard a third time, IRON THUNDER, about an army officer used in experiments to interface man with machine. Hatch's character is similar to Ben Dobbs in that his reality is in question. How did this particular movie come about?
I’d done a very low budget video feature with producer Dave Sterling and then passed on most everything else he’d done after that for a number of years. He sort of worked his way up and ended up taking over a deal with some investors that another producer/director had blown. So he told me about this and I fought to earn the right to do these two film projects, it was part of the same deal that made Unseen Evil, as director.
It was a very good deal in terms of all they asked was that we keep to a budget and give them some nudity to help foreign sales. We pitched the initial ideas and after that were left alone to do whatever we wanted.
My father was in the army as part of an armored division before I was born so maybe in a way this was my way of living that life. I also felt like there hadn’t been any military movies done recently. It seemed like the military was being portrayed in too much of a heroic fashion. This was at the time before Saving Private Ryan…
Since moving to Los Angeles I’d gotten to see and admire Sam Fuller’s films and continued my interest in Rod Serling. Those would be the two chief inspirations and influences in that film.
Hatch’s character is taken out of reality by technology in this film which makes it science fiction rather than horror like Beyond Dream’s Door. But I’d say he still chose to give his life to the military and is paying the price for that devotion. Nobody else had pointed this out, but you’re right that like Dobbs, he’s created his own reality problem.
On Iron Thunder (ed. see review) you mention how clear it is up front that Nelson, Hatches character, is a man about to crack from the beginning. I'd say yes it's clear to us in the audience, but neither the doctor examining him, or the head of the program pays any attention to what the character is saying. For most of the speech he's practically talking to the camera. They don't care and come right out and say so, they only care that he passes all of the stupid little "turn your head and cough" tests they give him. Their tests shows that he's fit, but they are the wrong tests, they aren't designed to treat and test him as an individual human being because that's not what the army sees him as or wants him to be.
The Iron Thunder program is a called a "black bag" program, meaning it is a small and in this case all volunteer and only borderline legal operation that is barely sanctioned by the army as a whole. Also remember that Hatches character isn't their first choice subject, he's the third as we learn shortly after this. Anyway those are my reasons, or intentions, for the way that's handled.
It’s certainly an anti-military film. None of the characters are ever called by their first names to show the dehumanization of it all. One character near the end, in an on set addition to the script, is about to throw away their dog tags ( symbol of their army identity) and be free, then doesn’t and dies. I like all of the soldier characters in the film I just think it’s too bad they chose the army as their life since all it will give them back is death.
There’s another thing at work here in this film that is as personal to me as the themes of Beyond Dream’s Door. I think it’s part of how life really works. Life tends to work on our weak points of character to try to destroy us. The challenge is to know that and over come or minimize those weaknesses and survive.
The themes of how technology impact people seemed to me to be a type of science fiction that is very valid and too little done anymore. Now that we actually have technology that science fiction used to warn us about nobody question its benevolence. Since we made that film the army has developed remote control ground and air vehicles like the ones we have in the film.
To genre fans, Richard is a pretty iconoclastic figure. What is your working relationship with him like?
I also workd with Patrick Stewart on Titanic and had Gary Coleman in a script I wrote and edited. These icons are people to and the one’s I’ve met have been really decent people so far.
Hatch got involved with Iron Thunder because he liked the script so much and I was impressed that he wanted to play the “bad guy” rather than the good guy part. I think he’s been handed parts, like many actors have, that are not as interesting as he’d like them to be. He was totally great to work with on that film. On Unseen Evil he had things he wanted changed about the script, all of which made it better, and there was one thing he came up with on set that also helped. On Galactica, the main actor directing I did was with his performance, since otherwise he’d have no director on an acting level, because his on set directing responsibilities were mostly with the actors while mine was with the crew and the visuals.
I was also initially involved with his new Magellan project though I had to move on as the shoot continued beyond when I could really remain in a way that I considered creative.
He’s got a very active mind, a smart man and actor who wants to do good work for you as a director. He does a funny impersonation of that kind of low energy machismo acting that some directors expect or demand in action movies.
In a recent e-mail you seemed reluctant to talk about DEMONICUS as it was a work for hire rather than something you were personally involved with from the get-go. How is work for hire different for you than directing a script you've written?
I'll talk about DEMONICUS. At this point it seems to have an equal number of defenders and detractors, but yes I was brought in at the last minute and though not the lowest budget I've had to work with it was the shortest schedule, both for the shoot and for the post, and that didn't help the movie.
Money and time are always your chief aids or adversaries on any production. Had we had the same money but more time on DEMONICUS, and this was possible within the limits of the money we had, it would have been better.
I did all I could with a rewrite of the script etc., but there were many pre set parameters that limited what I could do. I'd recommend the DVD which is more my edit of the film and had more time put into the sound mix, so that is more of my version of what the movie should be.
When you haven't written something you have to take the time to understand it as well as if you had written it. You could argue that something you didn't write might benefit from some objectivity on your part though too.
How did your involvement in DEMONICUS come about?
A long time and trusted associate of Charles Band very kindly recommended me and another director to Charlie. This person would rather not be mentioned by name because they don't like being associated with shot of video product. If this person had directed the film it would have been on film and for much more money than we were ultimately given, but even so this person couldn't make even the budget work out and had another bigger film coming up out of the country.
So that's how it happened. Charlie already knew me as I'd been supposed to direct at least five different films for him going as far back as 1993 so I think that helped. A script I wrote had also been produced by Full Moon the previous year. So I suppose, in a way, it was only a matter of time before my number came up to finally direct a film for him.
What was it like working for Full Moon and Charles Band?
Far different now than it used to be... We were mostly an autonomous production. Charlie did come up with extra money for cast and for locations, which proves he will put more money into something if you can convince him it's needed. Toughest thing is that they run so close to their own release dates that you, as we did on TRANCER 6 even more so, just run out of time finishing the movie. On DEMONICUS, I turned in a finished cut of the film 4 days after we finished shooting, which is almost impossible to do, let alone do well.
Full Moon's production schedules are notorious for being tight. Was the shoot for DEMONICUS like?
Winter in LA in the mountains... It snowed us out several times. We had to shoot in 9 days but really needed 12 though that was not Full Moon's limitation but Sterling Entertainments. Even so it wasn't the toughest shoot I've been on by any means and the locations were hard to get to but very enjoyable and exciting to shoot at. I don't understand some Full Moon's fans complaints that we saved money by shooting most of the film outdoors, do they prefer the "let's shoot inside my apartment and inside full Moon's office" locations that most of the video features done there have used? I guess some do. I'd rather be out on snowy edge of a cliff like we were for DEMONICUS.
How satisfied are you with the finished movie?
I think we, myself, the director of photography Jeff Leroy, and lighting man Paul Deng, gave the movie a certain style visually. I had way too little control over the script and casting but did the best I could with both. It remains as my version of someone else’s movie though it was fun to do a Mario Bava type slasher film. The monster and giant statue towards the end were all my idea and I wish we’d had more time to do things with them. Avoid the bad sounding cut up version on VHS and see the domestic DVD, the British DVD has a different and so so sound mix. Not a film which needs to have three versions available that’s for sure.
You've since gone onto work with for Charles Band again with TRANCERS 6, your most recent release. You've admitted to a fondness for the TRANCERS series, what was it like coming on board a project with such a long history?
One of the carrots that was dangled in front of us when we made DEMONICUS was that TRANCERS 6 was coming up and… Actually, (my) producer on Trancers 6, Johnnie Young, turned that into a carrot for us when he saw a script at the office during pre-production, so he created the carrot. It became one of the reasons to tough it out on DEMONICUS. Then it really happened, which isn't always or even frequently the case.
As to long history, I'd done the Titanic project, which has a large fan base more like a Sci Fi fan base than you might think, and then I'd done the Galactica Project, which of course has a very hard-core audience. It means you have an audience that is very hard to please. It also means you have an audience that, if pleased, will be very supportive. You have to be a fan or become one in order to understand it and do a good job; otherwise you'll just find the fans to be annoying.
Did you do anything to approach the series from a new perspective?
Part of my new perspective was to at least have a perspective on the films already made and try to do what they had done best and not what they had done worst. This meant at least trying to go back to some of the original rules of the concept that Danny Bilson and Paul DeMaeo had come up with.
So I made some stylistic choices that are homage based, especially relating to the first film in order to help it feel like a TRANCERS film. I also had to fight to have us use the TRANCERS theme music again-unlike in the previous two sequels--which we ultimately did.
I fought and lost trying to get cast members back from previous films, but that's probably another question all together.
As to new things I wanted and didn't think any of the previous films had really done was. ONE: I wanted the TRANCERS themselves to be scary and dangerous and hard to kill. TWO: Jack Deth should have to figure out what is going on to save himself, not be sent on a mission which is all spilled out in expository dialogue right when the film even starts.
Before we even came up with a new story I knew these things should be a part of it.
How involved were you in the story development?
When Johnnie Young, the producer, and I came on as a company to make the film there was no idea for a story. Charlie Band wanted the lead character to be a woman so it would be Laura Croft type thing. That was it. So we were there from the start.
I said the couple of main general rules I wanted for the film that I just stated above. We agreed with Charlie on the writer, sadly another person who prefers to not go under their own name while working for Full Moon, met with him amd talked about a bunch of things we hoped would be in the film. He said he’d always thought it be cool to do H. P. Lovecraft’s, The Colour Out of Space set in a Jim Jones type camp. I knew the story and liked that idea. He then disappeared for two weeks, 72 hours of which was actually spent writing the script according to him. Charlie and I read the draft and spoke, Charlie said he liked the script and then let me make further revisions with the writer and then I did the final shooting draft on my own, which amounted to tightening scenes and dialogue revisions plus the addition of the part of the one eyed Trancer kid. In keeping with our theme of my themes, I also added some choice lies, but I think those were all cut from the film as the final edit was not mine.
I did not want to kill off the Jack Deth character and all of us seemed to come up with the Jack in his daughter’s idea at the same time. It was suggested at the beginning that we make his daughter a stripper. That suggestion was met with silence.
In your review you talk about dealing, or wanting the film or future sequels to deal more with the confused sexuality of Jack in a woman's body. This was an element I wanted in there from the start and something I tried to play up some with her relationship with the young homeless man she meets, Mark in the film, who's definitely interested in her sexually. Mickey Kaiserman, the number two man at Full Moon, and I talked about playing up this element. One actress who almost got the part actually used a tampon in her audition scene and did a very funny double take as Jack Deth realizes this will be part of his new existence, it was funny, but I think it was taking things too far for Charlie's taste and helped cost her the role. The other story and series element that made dealing with this too much too soon was that Jack's in his daughter's body so if he had sex as his daughter, well you see the strangeness in taking this too far especially in the first film with Jack as Jo Deth.
Can a TRANCERS movie without Jack Deth really be called a TRANCERS movie? How are fans of the series reacting?
The series is called Trancers and Jack Deth isn’t a Trancer, so there you go. If history has taught us anything it’s that you can continue, remake, sequelize almost anything. Even more recent history has proved that studios don’t consider the original actors to be a key factor in continuing a series. None of the Battlestar Galatica remakes other than Hatch’s has, even for a moment, even considered doing so.
I don’t much like sequels or remakes, but in this case I hadn’t done any of the previous films, liked the series and hoped to work again with Tim Thomerson, so it was a worthwhile chance for me. Johnnie Young felt the same way. I don’t think I’d do another Trancer sequel. The interesting stuff with Jack in a woman’s body and all that’s been done now so you’d just proceed with more of the same. Unless of course we could get Tim Thomerson back and match the two up somehow which was my hope for this film.
Reaction has been better than I’d expected. Someone recently said it was better than parts four and five-which for the record Thomerson himself doesn’t care for. Those who really hate it do so mostly because Tim isn’t in it. Fair enough, but I hope they haven’t watched a James Bond film since Never Say Never Again if they want to attack me on that level.
It had been a good 15 years since I last saw the first TRANCERS movie. Up until 6, the original was the only TRANCERS movie I had seen and I didn't remember much about it. After viewing 6, I went back and watched the first movie again. 6 has a much more rewarding viewing experience, the story is more drawn out and satisfying.
Thanks. I think that the two films probably had about the same amount of shooting days and our script is much more ambitious. Both films are low budget films. Adjusted for inflation I’m not sure that the budgets were even that different. They shot on 35mm and finished on film so that would eat up much of the difference. The original concept is still good and the chemistry of Helen and Tim makes the first film still work despite how rough it is around the edges.
Some complaints about my film I agree with and could have easily been fixed if our whole post period hadn’t been reduced to two weeks. The Special effects and sound mix were never meant to be more than temporary. I told this to a friend of mine who said that any film released in America he considers to be finished. I’d say that’s easy for him to say.
What can we explain from Jay Woelfel in the future?
As to what the future will bring? In a way I would ask, why are you asking me? I certainly don't know! I hope to keep working for others to make films though I'm not against making them myself from time to time. I'd like to adapt some great books that have gone unfilmed and believe me there are plenty.
I'd hope my budgets continue to increase rather than decrease, because that would give me the chance to make films that are more ambitious and rewarding for me and for a hopeful audience to see. But the industry is very volatile now on every level. The huge amount of work going to Canada in the film business isn't being talked about enough but I think, or hope, it's going to be. It should be a wake up call to Los Angeles to be more film friendly because even though this was a record box office year many of the people profiting are not in the American film business.
I do hope to make whatever films I make more of whatever they are meant to, or can be, regardless of if that's scary or funny….
Robert Wise came to Ohio State and talked about films being entertaining to him, but by that he meant that if he went to a film and cried or was disturbed that was still entertainment to him. This has stuck with me and I agree with it. Entertainment should not be confused with amusement. Think of the meaning of the phrase "to entertain and idea" and you'll see my approach. You'll probably never hurt any kind of film by trying to make the characters deeper or make it more real.
As long as I work I will try to continue to build on the experience I've had but I am also looking to grow. I hope that at no point I sounded too serious or self-conscious because the only thing I ultimately always try to do as a director is a good job and much of that is instinct.