“I do, in my brain, marry visuals and music,” says Dave Stewart.
Formerly one half of Eurythmics, Stewart has had a lifelong fascination with sound and vision.
“It started with a tape recorder when I was a little boy,” he says, “about nine. My grandmother got me an old-fashioned tape recorder, a battery operated reel to reel, so you could go outside with it. When I first recorded something outside and went back in my bedroom and played it back, it was a mind-blowing experience. It was the first time I had replayed reality.”
It wasn’t until he bought an 8mm camera in an Australian pawn shop that he combined his dual loves.
“I walked out of the shop filming,” he says, “and I sent the films away, these 8mm three minute films. When I got them back and got a projector and played them onto the wall of my bedsit, it was a magical thing.”
“I have thousands of hours of stuff from the time I walked out of that shop.”
Among those thousands of hours is a new film, a collaboration with a music legend. Stevie Nicks brought Stewart on to produce her first studio album in a decade, and in the process they also created a song-by-song documentary, Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams.
“We didn’t start out making a movie,” he says. “It started off with a cell phone or two documenting the songwriting so we could remember what we were doing then it slowly became, ‘Oh we’re making a documentary.’”
Shooting on-and-off over the nine months it took to make the record—Stewart jokingly called it “a never-ending documentary in Stevie’s World”—left them with eighty hours of footage to cut down. The result showcases their partnership and the input of other musicians, including Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood.
“In these kinds of films you never know when something is going to be interesting or not,” he says. “You have lots of footage of the wall because everyone has walked out the room. Then, unexpectedly you might have a whole flurry of activity.”
With In Your Dreams done and ready to open in theatres I asked him about his favorite movie music moment.
“I am fascinated with the use of music in films,” he says. “I thought Midnight Cowboy was fantastic,” says. “When Ratso dies at the end and Jon Voight has his arm around him and the music starts, ‘Everybody’s talking at me…’”
“Country and western music,” says Chris O’Dowd, “is a very easy thing to deride.”
In The Sapphires O’Dowd plays an Irish musician playing piano in Australia’s outback bars in exchange for beer money. His life is spiraling downward until he discovers a group made up of four of talented Indigenous Australian sisters. Trouble is, he doesn’t like the music they sing.
“When I met you,” he says in the film, “you were doing all country and western things and that’s fine, we all make mistakes.”
For O’Dowd that speech was art imitating life. “My dad played guitar in pubs playing country and western music,” he says. “So I feel like the whole speech I do about country and western music is something that has been pent up in me since I was 14. Carrying his guitar case to listen to bad Merle Haggard tracks.”
“Country and western music is huge in Ireland. I don’t know why. It’s all Kris Kristofferson and a bit of Willie Nelson and Clint Black. Dad was really into it. Maybe it’s that country and western has some origins in bluegrass and bluegrass has origins in Irish music. There’s something going on there. And Irish people love a good whine. We’re great at it.”
In the film he convinces the girls to trade country for soul music and shapes them into a version of The Supremes.
“I wrote this speech about how country music is about loss, but soul music is also about loss — you’ve lost but you haven’t given up — and that has a nice payoff in the film.
“Country music is kind of whiny,” he says. “He left me, now what am I going to do with my life? Whereas soul music is like, ‘I’m going to get that bugger back.’ It’s nice. It’s a nice turning point in the film where we’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves. That’s an important element for the entire story. About moving on.”
Thinking back on his teenage years, he speculates if his attitude might have been different if dear old dad had sung a different kind of music.
“I wonder if he had been an amazing Al Green-esque songster if I would have still said, ‘This is so lame.’ I wonder sometimes with people whose parents are cool. I’ve been working with Rashida Jones recently and I’m like, ‘How can you not think your dad is cool?’”
Unlike most pop culture superstars, author Stephenie Meyer is not on Twitter. Well, she is, but she’s only tweeted twice, both times on April 16, 2009. Still, she has almost 100,000 followers eager to hear any pronouncement from the woman who gave us eternal lovers Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and the Twilight universe.
She had time to tap out the two tweets because at the time her world “had not been affected by the movies as it is now.”
Currently the five Twilight films have grossed over $2 billion and a new film sits poised to create another Meyer franchise. It’s unlikely she’ll have time to tweet anytime soon.
The Host, starring Saoirse Ronan, is a science fiction romance based on Meyer’s 2008 novel.
“When I came up with the idea I was driving between Phoenix and Salt Lake City,” she says.
“Through the desert there really is nothing for hours and hours and I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so I was entertaining myself and in the middle of that came the idea of two people, in one body, in love with the same person, and that conflict. I thought, ‘That’s not a bad idea’ and I started working on it, just in my head, until I could get to where I could start typing.”
Her love of science fiction dates back to early childhood when her father would read the stories of Frank Herbert, Orson Scott Card and others aloud to the family.“I remember he read us Dune. The first one gave me nightmares.”
The home readings, she says, were “great for a growing imagination. I also had a real affinity for that kind of reading so I don’t think it was an accident that the second world I created was a science fiction world.”
She’s quick to point out, however, that The Host is suitable for people who don’t necessarily like sci fi.
“It’s in our world and it looks the same and people are in our bodies, so it feels the same.
“You don’t have to try and immerse yourself in something that is completely alien to you.
“I think that takes away one of the hurdles for people who aren’t sure about science fiction.”
As a fan, however, she sees the tantalizing possibilities in the genre.
“Science fiction lets us experience something that we haven’t yet,” she says, “but we might.”
Years ago I asked one of the original Wizard of Oz munchkins to explain the movie’s enduring appeal.
“Everybody can enjoy it,” said Karl Slover who was just two feet tall when he played the first trumpeter. “There’s no filthy language in it. I don’t see no bikinis! No nudist colonies! Kids can watch it and parents don’t have to worry because there’s nothing bad in there.”
I recently asked Zach Braff the same question in an interview to promote Oz the Great and Powerful, a prequel to the most beloved movie of all time.
“It reminds us of our childhood,” says the former Scrubs star, “and it reminds us of this magical place where crazy things happen. It is innocent and it is pure and it is amazing that it holds up. It was made in 1939, most kids don’t see other movies made in 1939.”
The new flick, co-staring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Wiliams, is a state-of-the-art film, but it’s something that has been gestating for some time.
“I heard that Walt Disney always wanted to make an Oz movie,” he says. “There’s 13 books, so why not go back to that world and tell it from a 2013 perspective.”
The new film echoes the original, starting with black and white scenes shot in Kansas before moving to the eye-popping fantasy world of Oz. The movie’s modern twist is the addition of high tech tricks to make your eyes and ears dance. Braff calls the film’s visual and audio tweaks — increasing the depth of the 3D and adding in surround sound for the Oz scenes, for example — “Sam Raimi at his finest.”
Raimi, the director behind the Evil Dead movies and a little franchise called Spider-Man, was the big reason Braff signed on to the project.
“I heard Sam wanted to meet me in his office. That’s a good call to get.”
Braff, who made his directorial debut on the 2004 indie film Garden State, calls Raimi a “wonderful mentor who let me watch this whole process.” Even on his days off the actor would go to the set to learn about big budget filmmaking from watching the old pro work on Oz’s enormous sets.
“Sam’s the biggest mensch on earth. The guy’s a saint. He’s too good to be true.”
Once again, we’re hugely honoured to have Canadian film critic, television and radio personality and author Richard Crouse join us, this time as part of our Tainted Love February. Richard, whose great new book Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils is available from our good friends at ECW Press, chose to highlight the legendary Roger Corman’s film Bloody Mama. Take it away, Richard!
Despite the disclaimer “Any similarity to Kate Barker and her sons is intentional,” the screenplay of Roger Corman’s twisted crime epic Bloody Mama is steeped in violent underworld fantasy that was more inspired by the success of Bonnie and Clyde than any connection to Barker’s reality. Corman, hoping to cash in on the wave of popularity generated by the Warren Beatty / Faye Dunaway outing quickly slapped together an exploitation film to take advantage of the public’s newfound interest in depression era hoodlums.
Working with screenwriter Robert Thom, Corman crafted a story that took the basic facts — Barker was the matriarch of a family of criminal sons — and injected hot button topics like drug addiction, homosexuality, incest and sadism to add spice. The result won’t win any awards for accuracy but it makes for one crazy cinematic ride.
The story is fairly simple, mostly made up of a series of vicious vignettes. Corman sets the tone right off the top with a prologue that sees Kate Barker as a child being raped by her brothers. “Blood’s thicker than water,” says her hillbilly father.
Then things really take a depraved turn.
The story jumps ahead to the depression years. Barker (Shelley Winters) has dumped her spineless husband and set off on a brutal crime rampage with her kids — the sadistic Herman (Don Stroud), ex-con Fred (Robert Walden), hophead Lloyd (Robert De Niro) and wallflower Arthur (Clint Kimbrough). They terrorize the countryside, robbing banks, kidnapping millionaires, machine-gunning an alligator named Old Joe to death and even stealing a pig!
The machine gun–toting Ma’s thirst for villainy is eclipsed only by her taste for kinky sex. She beds her own sons and even seduces Fred’s gay jailhouse lover (Bruce Dern). Ma’s sexual and criminal spree continues until the bullet-ridden final showdown when the gang faces off with police in a bloody gun battle.
The folks on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo look downright erudite compared to this bunch. Corman shines a light on the deviant and desperate behavior of these people, foreshadowing the kind of raw filmmaking favored by a future wave of directors like Quentin Tarantino whose powerful depictions of the criminal underbelly delight in pushing the boundaries of good taste. Corman’s portrayal of incest and drug addiction was unflinching and for the time, extreme. “Ma Barker made The Wild Angels and The Trip look about as menacing as fairy tales,” he wrote in his book How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.
Corman shows a strong hand with his actors. Shelley Winters, the feisty method actor who once pulled out her two Best Supporting Actress Oscars from a bag during an audition and asked, “Do you still want me to read for this part?” brings her usual moxie to Ma, appearing to be on overdrive for the entire film. Her opening line at one of the bank robberies is a show stopper. “We’re going to play Simon Says, and this,” she says, holding up her Tommy gun, “is Simon.”
It’s entertaining stuff; she’s so over-the-top you fear that once she’s done chewing the scenery she might burst through the screen into the theater. Later in the film her manic reaction to the death of one of her sons — a churning vortex of jiggling flesh and shrieking — has to be seen to be believed. In his book Corman said that Winters was “certainly unlike any actor I had worked with before.”
The rest of the cast are mostly b-movie regulars — Dern, Stroud, Kimbrough and Scatman Crothers — who all hand in journeyman work, but two other actors — one on the way down, the other on the ascent — really shine. Fifties ingénue Diane Varsi (best known for her Oscar nominated role in Peyton Place) as Mona Gibson, the hardened hooker “who can do it better than Ma” takes a role that requires little more than taking her shirt off and gives it some real personality. Any actor who can survive the line, “You should try my pie crust, little boy. It would melt in your mouth,” with any sort of dignity deserves recognition.
Robert De Niro, then an unknown actor with just four credits on his resume, throws himself into the role of Lloyd, a miserable junkie who resorts to sniffing glue when he can’t score any heroin. “When you’re working on those model airplanes you get to acting awfully silly,” says Ma.
“He stopped eating and lost weight as his addiction progressed,” said Winters, who recommended the young actor for the part. “We roughly shot in sequence. He consumed vitamins, water, fruit juices and a little bit of nourishment. He lost close to thirty pounds and took on the haggard, sickly look of a junkie.”
The extreme weight loss is a bit of a trick, but there’s more to his work here than starvation. De Niro spent time with the Arkansas locals, studying the way they spoke and moved to create a well-rounded character and move Lloyd beyond the hillbilly cliché favored by the other actors. On top of the accent he created a sing songy voice, punctuated with a giggle that gives vocal cadence to Lloyd’s naïve innocence.
In Bloody Mama Corman shed the shackles of good taste and shamelessly plays to the baser elements of the story. It horrified American critics at the time (although was better received in Europe), most of whom still had deep-rooted connections to the safe studio movies and were hopelessly out of step with youth culture. Bloody Mama must have seemed like Corman was flipping the bird to them, but Corman didn’t make movies for critics, he made them for the people who actually pay to go to the theater. He knew audiences wanted him to push the envelope and once again he was spot-on. Bloody Mama is great trashy fun which will appeal to fans of genre and b-movies. “It’s still one of my favorite films,” says Corman.
West of Memphis, a new documentary from Oscar nominated director Amy Berg, details the efforts to find justice for Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and James Baldwin, collectively known as the West Memphis Three.
Convicted on dubious evidence in 1994 of the murder of three young boys, they became a cause celeb, with stars like Johnny Depp and Eddie Vedder working to exonerate them.
The outcome of the 17-year crusade to earn a new trial for the trio is well known — no spoilers here — and the movie ends on a high note, with the men granted their freedom after 18 years and 78 days in prison.
A year after his release Echols talked about adjusting to life on the outside.
“At the time I got out I had been in solitary confinement for almost a decade,” he told me in September, “so I literally went from being in solitary confinement one day to the next being thrown out into the world.
“Out here it is like having to choose constantly. You make no choices in prison. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of energy. I’m having to learn things all over again. Even like how to go to the bank or use an ATM. Or use a computer.”
Despite being in “a state of deep, deep, profound shock and trauma for at least two months when I first got out,” he says life on the inside was worse.
“The level of stress, anxiety and fear that you live in is beyond comprehension to most people. You never even go to sleep all the way. Just the slightest noise wakes you up. There were times in the prison when you hear a noise and you’re on your feet, ready to fight before your eyes even open up, before you’re even conscious of what’s going on.”
These days he lives in Massachusetts with his wife Lorris (they married while he was behind bars), has written a book titled Life After Death and wants to do Tarot readings at MOMA asm performance art, but the adjustment to life on the outside continues.
“Life since then has been about learning to put one foot in front of the other. I have so much fear and anxiety just about surviving in the world that most of what I’m doing and dealing with is about coping and how to get beyond that. That’s all I’m focused on.”
A glance at Jason Momoa’s IMDB page reveals that he is best known for playing roles described as a “vengeful barbarian warrior” or “powerful warlord.” The burly 6′ 4″ actor is famous for roles in Conan the Barbarian and Game of Thrones and often plays tough guys.
Next up he plays a muscle-bound mercenary in Bullet to the Head, an action flick the Hollywood Reporter called “beefy, brainless fun.”
It’s another case of typecasting, perhaps, but it did give him the chance to go mano-a-mano with one of the masters of the genre, Sylvester Stallone.
“You can’t say enough good things about Stallone,” says the Hawaiian-born hunk. “Truly, he is an icon. A legend, and so good at what he does.”
Mamoa even went through a special initiation rite courtesy of the superstar.
While shooting an epic fight scene on the film’s New Orleans set the older actor suggested he “tune me up” with a couple of real looking hits. Promising to pull his punches, Stallone instead landed a “monstrous” knock to the younger actor’s side. Second take, same thing—“He just crumbled me,” Mamoa says—and that’s the shot that made it into the film.
“He got me a couple of times,” Mamoa says. “He’s the old bull. It’s fun to get in there. I’m thirty years younger than him, so it’s cool. Rocky punching me in the ribs. It’s like a shout from the rock.”
But how does someone raise a family when their day job is pretending to decapitate people on screen? Mamoa, who has a young daughter and son with actress Lisa Bonet, says his family always comes to visit when he’s working.
“My daughter was actually on set when I ripped a guy’s throat out on Game of Thrones,” he says. “It’s hilarious. She was with the wardrobe lady, knitting. I said, ‘Are you OK sweetie?’ She said, ‘Yeah Papa,” and went on knitting.”
“They also saw me put the wolf on for the next one (the Canadian-made lycanthropic thriller Wolves).”
He admits it’s an unusual way to raise the kids and when they get older it might be more difficult.
“School’s pretty expensive,” he says. “I may as well get a teacher and bring them with us. I’d rather have my kids going to the Louvre than learning about it in a book.”
When I ask Guillermo Del Toro why his films often feature kids as main characters his answer is upfront, open and a little surprising.
“I had a horrible childhood, emotionally,” says the director of The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. “I was not a child who was beaten or locked in a closet, but I really have a very intense relationship with the horror of Catholic guilt and the dogma. My grandmother was like Piper Laurie in Carrie. I was like a chubby version of Carrie. It was very difficult for me to get over that.
“I jokingly say I spent 40 years trying to recuperate from the first eight, but to a degree it is true. I really suffered intensely in the first 10 years of my life. I would cry at the concept of burning in hell, or the concept of purgatory and original sin.
Mexican Catholicism is very, very brutal and very, very gory. That all affected me.”
Mama, his latest producorial effort, is a spooky tale of two abandoned girls raised by a supernatural nanny. Del Toro came to the story after seeing a three-minute short film by director Andrés Muschietti.
“The short is brilliant,” he says. “Atmospheric and creepy. You can see a storytelling will. You can see a voice. There is a filmmaker in that short.
“Very often you see shorts that are glossy but have very little to say. Or they’re really intense and interesting but they are badly done. But this short had the perfect balance of form, function and story.”
Muschietti is just the latest director to be discovered and mentored by Del Toro, who himself was given a helping hand by people like James Cameron.
“I’ve been very, very blessed by finding good people who believed in me at the right time. Obviously I try and pay it forward. Right now I’m 48-years-old and have been doing this for 30-something years, 20 directing. I’ve been able to produce close to 20 movies between Mexico and America and Spain and I would say in 99 per cent of the cases it has been really, really beautiful. A couple of cases it has been hard or the movie has been disappointing but Mama is one of the good ones I am really proud of.”
David Chase, the mastermind behind The Sopranos, says his new film is not strictly autobiographical.
Chase, who came of age in 1960s New Jersey, was the Rolling Stones obsessed drummer of a garage band, a career choice his father didn’t approve of.
In Not Fade Away John Magaro plays Doug, a New Jersey teen who earns the disdain of his father as he becomes caught up in the musical culture of the 1960s.
Still Chase says, “You don’t really see a lot of me. The stuff between Douglas and his father, that’s kind of me and my father.”
When I suggest that people will inevitably make a connection between Chase and the film’s New Jersey teen musician he says, “A lot of people were musicians then. Everybody was to a certain extent.”
His experience behind the drum kit may not have shaped Not Fade Away, but it have helped mold his professional life.
“We had this half-assed rock and roll band,” he says, “and somewhere around 1967 a band mate of mine, who was the lead guitar player, a great guitar player, and I were in a car in Greenwich Village. I was thinking about getting married and going to California. We were talking about the future. I said I was thinking about going to film school. He said, ‘Really? Go ahead man, but frankly I don’t think you’ll ever be anything but the drummer in my band.’ That filled me with determination.”
He tells the story, then pauses for a moment. “I don’t know why it’s not in the movie. But it’s not.”
Determination wasn’t the only thing he learned in those days.
“I think I first learned about show business in that garage band—people with agendas and ego. That was my first foray into all that. I think I realized early on that you had to really go for it. To take something so seriously that you would hurt someone’s feelings would be considered uncool. Still, I realized that you really have to do that in quote, unquote show business.”
Wrapping up, I ask Chase if there is more to Doug’s story after the final credits roll.
“It doesn’t stop,” he says. “It doesn’t stop there.”
I ask, jokingly, if Doug becomes the creator of a very popular television show, maybe a gangster series set in New Jersey.
“I’ve never thought about it that much,” he says, straight-faced.
“I do, in my brain, marry visuals and music,” says Dave Stewart.
