Category Archives: Interviews

INTERVIEWING JOEL POTRYKUS: THE MAN BEHIND THE COUCH

A lazy man with a movie-making mission, Joel Potrykus continues to tap the deep creative vein of Grand Rapids, MI with his fourth feature, Relaxer. We sat down together, perched high above the SGWU mezzanine.

366: I’m here with Joel Potrykus whose movie Relaxer debuted at Fantasia to much laughter and applause. I’ll admit from the get-go that I’m not well prepared, so if you’re feeling chatty about anything, feel free to continue talking at me.

JPI’m never prepared, so we’re on the same page.

366: Then I’ll start with an easy question: other than the promise of fame and riches, what was it that got you into filmmaking?

JP: Shoot, well, it was really all about the fame and riches… I was a “VHS kid,” and there was one summer, when I was ten, I broke my leg playing baseball, so I had to spend the whole summer in a cast up to my hip in the basement. It was so hot, and nothing to do, and we didn’t have cable in the basement, so my dad would bring me five movies every day from the video store, whatever he picked, so I just spent a whole summer watching, like, two-hundred movies. And in there was American Werewolf in London, and that kind of changed a lot of things for me. Seeing that kind of blend of horror and comedy, and [director John] Landis going whatever direction he wanted.

Then when I was fourteen, I was really into the Doors, and I was at a birthday party where they rented that movie and s at the beach saying, “Yeah, I’m going to film school right now!” When I was fourteen, I had never heard those two words connected to each-other: film school. And I was like, “That’s where I’m going to go.”

366: You’re from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Do you have much to recommend about that part of the world?

JP: Yeah, dude, if you want to make a feature film, and don’t want to spend a lot of money for permits, and are asking the police if it’s okay to close off the street, go to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We still make the movies there because it’s really the only place… I have a manager in LA, who’s like, “What are you doing? Come to LA and direct TV, and pitch your big ideas…”. So I guess maybe it’s not fame and fortune I was after, because then I’d be out in LA. But I prefer to just hide out, that’s the only place I know how to make films.

366: Well, maybe the fame and fortune will hunt you down. Your rep said you had big ideas to pitch. What are your big ideas?

JP: In my head they’re big ideas, but I was recently tracked down by Amazon and I pitched the ideas, and I don’t think they were very big. They’re weird and small. [Amazon had] a specific budget range they need to hit, and it was ten-million dollars. I had no idea how to Continue reading INTERVIEWING JOEL POTRYKUS: THE MAN BEHIND THE COUCH

KICKING BACK WITH A BUNCH OF LOWLIFES (2017)

Gathering in Fantasia’s secret basement lair, I had the opportunity to talk with the director, a few writers, and most of the stars of recently premiered crime drama, Lowlife. Because this was such a large group, I indicate the director, Ryan Prows, with an “RP”, and others as “->”. My apologies to the non-Ryans who participated in the interview: your involvement was just as valuable as his.

366: Hello everybody — thank you all for gathering here today! I wasn’t originally slated to come and interview you fine people, but I had a gap in my schedule after I chatted with the director of Kodoku Meatball Machine

Ryan Prows
“Lowlife” director Ryan Prows

RP: Aw, shit. Was it good?

366: …Well, it certainly does what it does. [Laughter]. Whether it’s good, I suppose that depends what you’re looking for. So if you’re looking for a funny variant of Tetsuo: The Iron Man, then maybe it’s your kind of thing. [Laughter]. So, in the interim I was able to whip these questions together kind of quickly, so hopefully this will work out all right. Now, you mentioned after the screening one of the things that influenced you was Wild at Heart.

RP: Bobby Peru! Actually, we were just talking about it. Teddy’s character is totally, like, his cousin or something.

366: Definitely one of the great scumbags of… uh…

RP: “Scumbag Cinema”?

366: I wanted to ask you—you’re probably asked a lot, “Do you feel you’re like ‘this director’ or ‘that director'”—but what filmmaker would you like to be compared to?

RP: Like I said yesterday, Cassavetes meets . So hopefully there’s some kind of sensitivity with the character work, so people care about the actors, like there’s an actors piece, but there’s also RoboCop shooting between the legs…

366: So there’s a little bit of splatter-gore-sci/fi-hardcore-Western.

RP: There we go. Nailed it!

->With heart.

RP: Now with Verhoeven, it’s like the same thing. He’s so smart and does his thing, perhaps the best satirist in cinema history. Cassavetes, same thing. He made these important movies, but they’re all wild as fuck. He left his own stamp on each thing. So those are the film-makers that excite me, and I think the goal of trying to make this movie was so—I remember talking about this, when we were flying out here—from the beginning of the process to now, it was… absurd. We were sitting here a few minutes ago being interviewed and Mil Mascaras walked in to be interviewed—and we thought, “What world are we fucking living in?” We’re talking about Lowlife and this luchador comes in being interviewed next to us.

366: Yes, it seems you’ve come a nice long way there, and speaking Continue reading KICKING BACK WITH A BUNCH OF LOWLIFES (2017)

A QUICK CHAT WITH GORE MAESTRO YOSHIHIRO NISHIMURA (2017)

Before leaving Montreal, I had the pleasure of a quick chat with the director of Kudoko Meatball Machine, , through his translator.

366: Hello, I’m with these people, [Present business card with Japanese translation on it] I hope I wrote that correctly.

Translator: Yes, yes. [Hands card to Nishimura]

366: First of all, thank you for sitting with me. Last night was the first of your movies I’ve ever seen, but my boss is very familiar with your work and he wanted me to ask, regarding the state of independent/low budget film-making in Japan, would you say it’s in healthy shape? Has it been evolving in any way?

Yoshihrio NikimuraYoshihiro Nishimura: It’s in a very bad shape.

366: Bad shape since the start—the get-go?

YN: Twenty years ago in Japan, Tsutomu Miyazaki killed four little girls, and when the police investigated his apartment, they found a lot of “splatter” movies, so the media accused those kinds of movies very openly, and since that time it has been very bad. At that time, splatter movies were having a boom, but since that time school boys have been told not to see splatter movies, so now in their 20s and 30s, they have a very bad opinion of those movies.

366: I was told some names: , , and . Would you say these film-makers are part of your film “movement” all together?

YN: [Laughs] You forgot ““. Actually, the people who categorize us together are the media, not us. So I cannot answer that.

366: Now, your working relationship with Sono, how did that develop?

YN: Sion Sono is a good friend, we met in film school, and we’ve made movies from then through now.

366: Are you surprised—and hopefully happy—at how much your work has infiltrated North America? Certainly there were a lot of people last night very happy to see Kodoku Meatball Machine. And are you at all concerned North Americans and foreigners might miss references that a native would pick up on?

YN: Rather surprised [at the popularity], yes. For example, in my last movie, in Japan it is an insult to say someone is “bold”, but here it is not an insult.

366: What started your interest in the human body and its malleability—morphing from the organic to the mechanic kind of thing?

YN: and Johannes Vermeer were two artists that inspired that interest.

366: Regarding this sub-genre of “body changing”, you’ve no doubt been asked a lot about Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Would that be the starting point of these films?

YN: Before I made Tokyo Gore Police, I made Anotomia Extinction, and Tetsuo was released before I was finished, so a lot of people said Anotomia Extinction was copying Tetsuo, but I feel it’s different, because I started it before Tetsuo came out.

366: Any quick word about upcoming projects?

YN: I’m going to be doing a story about embalming.

366: There’s a question from my brother-in-law, can you recommend any good restaurants in Tokyo —

Translator: The brother-in-law is…

366: …my sister’s husband.

Translator: Big sister or small sister?

366: Younger.

[Translates]

YN: [Laughs] I can only tell you about ramen. “Kanda Kikanbo.” [writes name in my note-book] This is the best ramen. It’s very good.

366: I think that finishes the questions I was given. Thank you for your time!

YN: Thank you!

BREAKING IT DOWN: AN INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM SKIPPER (2017)

After a long night out on the town, Graham Skipper is still able to meet with 366 in the Fantasia Film Festival media lounge for a chat about his directorial debut.

Graham Skipper366: It is the 20th of the July, Thursday and I’m here with Graham Skipper, director of Sequence Break [reviewed here] for an interview about the motion picture and whatever else comes up. Hello, Graham!

Graham Skipper: Hello!

366: This is your directorial debut?

GS: Yes it is.

366: So you’ve disowned Space Clown?

GS: [Laughs] No, I wouldn’t use that term… Space Clown was a good experiment that definitely helped me to learn more about film-making. But Sequence Break is definitely my first real directorial effort that’s indicative of what I’m trying to do.

366: I noticed you had a bunch of acting credits to your name, short films, TV shows, and things, and then on your website—congratulations on getting “GrahamSkipper.com” before the other guy, by the way…

GS: [Smiles] Thanks, thank you.

366 : …you’re listed as an “Actor/Writer/Director”; are you interested in shuffling those words around at any point?

GS: I love all three of those things. I love acting very much, I really loved being able to direct, and along with that, writing—the seed that grows in that sandbox. But they’re different skills and different adventures, so I want to continue doing all three.

366: You mentioned before the screening your role as Herbert West [in “Re-Animator, the Musical”]—you’re the first person in the role of Herbert West on stage. I take it you must be a fan of the original Re-Animator movies?

GS: Absolutely.

366: And , who obviously doesn’t show up on screen nearly often enough.

GS: Oh yeah. I wish that — I could watch Jeffrey Combs read the phone book. He’s amazing.

366: Have you read the original story? What did you think of it [compared to the movie]?

GS: I have. It’s very different. I like it, it’s very pulpy. I like that it leans so heavily to the Frankenstein archetypes. I like the war time elements, the Zombie war during [World War I].

366 : I recently finished reading all the Lovecraft works…

GS: Oh cool.

366: …and there’s a rich vein there that has barely been tapped, cinema-wise.

GS: I think Lovecraft is really hard to adapt, so much of Lovecraft is, Continue reading BREAKING IT DOWN: AN INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM SKIPPER (2017)