Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties this one starts out in media res. Still a good conversation with the Italian composer and prog-rock icon.
Category Archives: Interviews
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…
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 Verhoeven. 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, Yoshihiro Nishimura, 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?
Yoshihiro 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: Noboru Iguchi, Tak Sakaguchi, and Yûdai Yamaguchi. Would you say these film-makers are part of your film “movement” all together?
YN: [Laughs] You forgot “Shion Sono“. 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: Dali 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.
366: 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 Jeffrey Combs, 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 H.P. Lovecraft 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)
HIGH ON THE FARM: A CHAT WITH KAREN SKLOSS (2017)
Meeting on the patio of the Irish Embassy ((Not the actual embassy, but a nearby pub where Fantasia-types gather most every night.)), I enjoyed an extended conversation with Karen Skloss, the director of The Honor Farm (2017, reviewed here).
All right, this is Giles Edwards from 366 Weird Movies here with the director of The Honor Farm, Karen Skloss. We’re going to discuss the first fictional feature she’s directed, having previously directed Sunshine, a 2009 documentary that played on PBS and elsewhere concerning the nature of pregnancy, your daughter…
Karen Skloss: And changing family values, I guess, and looking at motherhood and women’s place in the family and structures…Kind of like a personal essay film. A very personal story; the “personal is political” kind of thing.
366: I read, courtesy of IMDB, that you did a little of previous work in film editing. Is that how you started in the filmmaking business?
KS: I still do it, right now I’m editing Andrew Bujalski’s new movie, I’m really excited about it.
366: Now is what do you think will be your future career? Focusing on editing? Focusing on directing feature films?
KS: I guess it’s a slow transition to… [At this point, bar noise grew excessive] …I kind of wonder if we should be outside.
I guess we’ll take a field-trip with this recorder and keep our fingers crossed. [Traveling outside, far quieter.]
Now we’re talking! I had a vision, and no one separates a director from her vision.
366: Except for the producers and money-men, right?
KS: [Laughs] Right! Now, this is more like a cafe interview.
Yes, 2009 was my last feature, my directorial debut, with lots of editing in between, and now some more editing. But it’s cool, because I’m going to get another one off the ground soon. I would love to direct as my “bread and butter”, but I also love editing, so it’s totally fine.
366: Your preceding movie went back about a decade, with the family ponderings. You mentioned [at the screening] your daughter was a teenager now, so I presume she was born well before the movie that concerned her and you.
KS: Yeah. It’s funny, I started shooting while I was pregnant. It was one of those projects that happened slowly while I was working as an editor and doing other projects. I was slowly doing this personal essay over many years.
366: Obviously getting into film is a dream for a lot of people. Did Continue reading HIGH ON THE FARM: A CHAT WITH KAREN SKLOSS (2017)