conducted
by Oliver Röll
What inspired
you to start writing yourself and how have you developed
as a writer?
I always wanted
to be a writer, except for when I was five and aspired
to paleontology. How have I developed? Aren't you supposed to be the judge of that?
What's
the fascinating thing for you about the horror genre,
especially splatterpunk?
Basically
every story ever told, assuming a competent storyteller,
can swerve into the territory of the unknown, and thus
become unsettling, or scary, or full of dread, or unnerving,
and I like to take that offramp. As for splatterpunk, you'd
have to ask an academician. I was recently cornered at
a booksigning by a person who wanted to know the whole
holistic history and timeline of splatterpunk. I was asked, "when
did you write your first splatterpunk story?" and I can't
answer that for the same reason Monet probably could not
pinpoint exactly when he "did" his first Impressionist
painting. I'm not comparing myself to Monet, but I would
like to remind everyone that the reason the Impressionists
are so called is the result of a bad review of their first
show, written by a now-forgotten art critic who attempted
to spin a derisive joke on the title of Monet's painting, "Impression:
Sunrise." When the Pre-Raphaelities came along and named
themselves, they did so to outfox, with humor, those critics
who might label them. Splatterpunk, similarly, is more
an era than a school of thought or writing. I am perversely
proud of the fact that as a word it has been listed in
the Random House / Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of the
English Language since 1996.
Some years
ago, you used the renowned TWILIGHT ZONE MAGAZINE as
a platform for your stories. What were your experiences
during this period?
I didn't "use" TZ;
that's the wrong way to put it. I wanted them to use me, and I was overjoyed the magazine lasted as long
as it did, and bought so many pieces of mine, both fiction
and nonfiction. They bought so much stuff that the spillover
went into their sister magazine, NIGHT CRY. As a nationally-distributed
and regularly-produced showcase for horror fiction, TZ
has never been equaled. I was pleased to get something
into TZ every year from 1982 until its demise in 1989 --
invaluable experience, insofar as dealing with a market
that would purchase new material regularly, because most
venues are one-shot, or irregular.
You received
the rather rare Dimension Award from TWILIGHT ZONE MAGAZINE
for your short story "Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You." What
kind of award was that and how highly do you regard it?
Quite highly,
for several reasons. The award was by popular vote of the
readership of the magazine, unlike most other awards in
the fantasy/horror genre, which are juried. It's one of
the field's rarest awards since it was only voted once.
And it's prettier than most other genre trophies, which
all tend to look like dildoes or saggy hippie sculpture.
What was
the reason for you to use the pseudonym "Oliver Lowenbruck" for
some of your works?
TZ began buying
stories while my series of articles on THE OUTER LIMITS
was already in play, and Ted Klein did not wish to repeat
the same names too many times on the contents page. Solution:
Oliver Lowenbruck became the "author" of "Coming Soon to
a Theatre Near You" and "Lonesome Coyote Blues." When you
submit a story to any market, you tend to want to see it
in print as soon as possible. It helps make the story "real" in
your memory of your own work; it's a validation of the
work that it sold, was published, and total strangers can
pick it up and read it. I had so many stories to present
that when I sold one, I didn't want it to be delayed until
the end of the OUTER LIMITS run, which was an eight-part
series when TZ was bimonthly ... which would have meant
a delay of a year and a half. So Oliver stepped in, allowing
Ted to note that Oliver's "debut" story was actually his
second appearance in the magazine, teasingly omitting the
fact that Ollie's first appearance was as a character
in the story "Pulpmeister."
Marvel
comics "borrowed" if not plagiarized or plainly stole
part of your "Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You" story
for their own THE SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK comic book series.
Have your ever taken legal action against them?
The similarity
was pointed out to me by a friend who runs a chain of comic
book stores. The notion of insect-filled and motivated
corpses was nothing original, and the parallelism of the
SHE-HULK comic boiled down to only one or two panels. My
plot and characters were not stolen, just part of the general
situation. You could just as easily say that I stole it
from CREEPSHOW, or that old CREEPY or EERIE comic written
by Bill Warren -- I forget the title -- in which a guy
turns out to be filled with spiders.
In what
ways did your career change after receiving the World
Fantasy Award in 1987 for "Red Light"? What are the possible
advantages of a winning a World Fantasy Award?
The brief
spotlight permitted me to quickly sell a second short story
collection to a second publisher when I was on the brink
of my first collection. Hence, SEEING RED (Tor) and LOST
ANGELS (NAL) came out within three months of each other
and both contained "Red Light." It's very easy to see that
both books are actually one huge collection, hinged between
short stories and novelettes, with "Red Light" as the hinge.
Why hasn't
your novel GORE MOVIE been published yet?
GORE MOVIE
is a novel I'll probably never finish. It was designed
as a large-canvas story with about 30 main characters that
could become a novel if it needed to -- kind of a hobby
story with potential for the future. I wrote 350 pages
and could not summon the interest to write the additional
3-400 pages it would have required for completion, so it
went into the dreaded drawer, never to be seen again.
You were
forced to shorten your very first version of THE OUTER
LIMITS COMPANION by about 75 000 words. Were you very
disappointed and what exactly ended up on the floor?
The shorter
version is structurally tighter and reads better. About
a third of the excised material consisted of episode synopses
which were three times longer than those published, containing
a lot more detail and dialogue, and generally designed
to re-evoke entire episodes for those who had not seen
them in years. Today, all the episodes are available on
videotape, so such detail is not so necessary.
The second
edition of THE OUTER LIMITS COMPANION contains more material
than the first one. Did you supplement it with all-new
entries only or did also some of your dropped material
from the first version reappear?
All of the
above. One good example of something that got cut from
the first edition and wholly reinstated in the second is
a little section subtitled "Consume or Die." Today, it's
illuminating and a joy to put back into the book. In 1985,
it was a chunk of 1000 words I could excise without interrupting
the flow of the rest of the text. The new edition has three
times the pictures of the first edition, and many more
extremely rare shots. Two long sections dealing with the
show's music are brand new. New interview material has
been salted into existing text. Virtually every page has
something new, and nothing was omitted that wasn't replaced
with something better. I've gotten calls and e-mails and
letters from reviewers and fans noting that they spent
days reading the book, and enjoyed not only the depth of
the material, but the layout, the asides, the density of
it all -- things you don't usually get compliments for,
because it takes really dedicated readers with time and
devotion to perceive them, and most people want to read
only casually.
How did
you get the job of writing the script for LEATHERFACE:
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 3?
Mike De Luca,
having read my fiction, called me in to New Line Cinema
to write the fifth NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie. They
were ready to go with a treatment I'd written called "Freddy
Rules" when we all realized I'd never written a screenplay
before. The job went to other writers while I did a teleplay
titled "Safe Sex" for the FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES series. Once
New Line saw "Safe Sex," they immediately signed me to
screenwrite their next theatrical horror project, which
was a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE sequel -- within 24 hours,
actually, on Friday the 13th, January 1989. Kevin Moreton
was actually the first producer to approach me directly
with the Leatherface project in hand, and it was one of
Mike's first producing credits as well.
When
writing it, did you have total creative freedom or
did you
have to stick to any kind of "script bible"?
No bible.
All the details were worked out in a series of conferences.
The first draft was pretty extreme, and salted with references
to the source movie. Subsequent drafts reeled it back.
Not far enough, apparently.
Why did
the US rough-cut version of TCM 3 appear on the market
in the first place?
Because some
enterprising tape-duplicator thought it would be a good
idea to mislead CHAINSAW fans by promising them some sort
of "director's cut," which didn't exist in the first place
... so now everybody's disappointed.
Why were
so many drastic, gory scenes shot for TCM 3 anyway? It
should have been quite clear for the producers from the
very start that many of those scenes could never be shown
in theaters. Or were there plans for two different versions
from the beginning?
We didn't
propose anything that could not be shown in a theatre,
but every producer and participant has a different ceiling
for what's acceptable or not. Once you cut and cut and
cut, to try to please everyone, not much is going to be
left. The downside is I don't think New Line got the franchisable
horror product they wanted. The upside is that the first
screenplay I ever wrote got produced and released, and
I remain grateful to New Line for giving me that shot.
How did
it happen that TCM 3 could be duplicated so easily? Did
anyone have access to the raw material from the movie?
Videotapes
of rough cuts are fairly common in Los Angeles; one can,
with a little digging, get copies of new movies prior to
their theatrical release from whichever dubbing house is
doing the "dailies," or "rushes," which are, these days,
more often seen on tape than in a screening room. This
stuff is all pretty available if you know where to look.
I heard a rumor that someone actually duped Jeff Burr's
video copy of the rough cut, for that so-called "unedited" version,
but I don't know how true that is. It probably came from
a post-production house somewhere.
The end
of TCM 3 is varying. Were those ends chosen by purpose
or did the filmmakers had to turn those end sequences
afterwards?
The original
ending was that Michelle makes it to the highway, out of
danger, but it's pretty obvious she's going to die from
exposure to the toxic body pit. It's her attitude that
has changed; she's a proven survivor even though she's
doomed. That's a bit subtle for a CHAINSAW audience, and
a parade of alternate endings followed, some of which required
reshoots done several months after principle photography
had wrapped, and with, I believe, a different director.
In one version she sees Tex driving the police car. In
another, she sees the little girl has been rescued by the
police. In another, Benny (Ken Foree) somewhat miraculously
rises from the dead after having his skull sawn in half
in the body pit. The severe preliminary edit on the film
allowed the producers to try a whole bunch of alternate
conclusions, none of which I think ever fully satisfied
anyone. Proof of this is that LEATHERFACE never became
the franchise New Line wanted it to be.
Greg Nicotero's
name is misspelled on the German poster for the movie,
by the way.
John Shirley
had started work on the script for THE CROW. Why did
they give that one over to you later?
John Shirley
wrote a "draft and set" (draft + revision + polish) for
Ed Pressman, after which they decided to hire a new writer
to attack the material differently.
Weren't
there any script crediting problems regarding THE CROW?
No, the credits
were arbitrated by the Writer's Guild.
You were
subsequently offered to rewrite two more John Shirley
scripts, namely William Gibson's THE NEW ROSE HOTEL and
Robert McCammon's STINGER. Just what was so bad about
Shirley's own scripts that the producers turned to you
again?
It has nothing
to do with Shirley's scripts being good or bad; it has
everything to do with producers habitually bringing on
new writers whenever they feel stalled. I've been on both
sides of that fence myself. If you've read Gibson's short
story, you realize it's plotless, a tone poem, a cyber-postcard.
STINGER I turned down because I had no interest in the
material.
Your script
for THE CROW is said to have been much darker than the
finished film. What were the changes to your version?
One of my
scripts for THE CROW is commonly available on the internet,
and I don't think you'd say it's any "darker" than what
we shot.
(For readers who feel really
obsessive about this sort of thing, several drafts of
THE CROW are available for $15 each
from Hollywood Book & Poster Company / 6562 Hollywood
Blvd / Hollywood, CA 90028 (323) 465-8764, including
John Shirley's polish draft [not dated but noted as
a "3rd draft" from 1991] and a draft of mine dated
12/28/92 [fairly late in the process].)
You were
present on the set quite often. What was your job there?
Not "quite
often;" try all the time -- 102 days for what began as
a 54-day shoot. I spent Christmas 1992 on the location
with Alex Proyas and Brandon Lee while the sets were being
built, three months before shooting began. I shot hours
of documentary tape and hundreds of photographs, one of
which appears in the Kitchen Sink photo-book of Robert
Zuckerman's work on the first film. I was available for
on the spot rewrites and dialogue. I stood-in or doubled
almost every male character in the film, from Brandon's
hand (for a knife-grab closeup) to Angel David's knees
(inside the T-Bird) to David Patrick Kelly's hands (setting
the bomb timer). I'm
the second thug to get killed in the Top Dollar shootout,
and I played assorted corpses on the floor during other
angles of that shootout. I designed Eric Draven's record
label and named all his band members for the publicity
8x10s (one of the band members is the bass player from
my novel, THE KILL RIFF). I titled all the songs seen on
the LP that Sarah plays. I named all the businesses on
the street, down to the signage in the windows. I had to
make up names and inscriptions for 40 tombstones in the
cemetery (Oliver Lowenbruck is one of them, sub-inscribed "He
Fought the Good Fight"). My video camera also doubled as
the playback machine for the second unit, directed by Andrew
Mason. I had to cue up every shot for him to review. I
ran lines (dialogue) and did hours of rehearsals with Michael
Berryman as the Skull Cowboy, who was later cut out. I
ran lines with Bai Ling so she could pronounce dialogue
more clearly, since she was just learning English at that
point. I had to make up, in 15 minutes, a whole page and
a half of dialogue for Sofia Shinas to recite cold into
a point-of-view camera, and then rehearse it with her.
Ernie Hudson and I spent several dinners discussing just
where Officer Albrecht's head was at. I dressed sets, including
Funboy's rathole (among other things, I hung the Barbie
doll on the lamp) and the first version of the Darla apartment,
which was built but never used. Right in the middle of
Christmas/New Year's, I took a side trip to New York with
Alex Proyas for the purposes of casting. With an air-rifle
I blew the shit out of the furnishings in Top Dollar's
HQ for cutaways during the shootout. I was there when Brandon
met the crows for the first time -- there were two principal
birds, Omen and Magic, and three backups, Baby, Jay, and
Dart. That's my baseball bat smashing the pinball machines
at Arcade Games. I'm also one of the clubbers running away
in the high shot after Brandon jumps through the window.
I shot another cameo that we never used, as a street guy
by a trashcan fire during the T-Bird chase, when Eric was
originally supposed to be on top of the car. There's more
but I'll stop now. Maybe I should just give up and write
this out as a CROW book.
Following
the success of THE CROW, weren't you rather "hot stuff" for
producers?
It was problematic.
Everyone wanted to imitate THE CROW's tone, and at the
same time they mostly considered it too dark. So they want
me to give them what I gave THE CROW, only ... lighter.
What are
your scripts for DEAD AT 21 and THE FURTHEST PLACE about?
D@21 (my shorthand)
is about a guy who discovers he has an implant in his head
that will kill him by the time he turns 21. The structure
is like D.O.A. -- he has to discover the truth about his
origins, and why he's in the spot he's in -- and the script
is based on the MTV series of the same name, which ran
several episodes and was never resolved. THE FURTHEST PLACE
was written for 20th Century-Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment.
The director is Rupert Wainwright, who just did STIGMATA,
and the basic story was conceived by him.
Any directorial
credits so far?
No, but I
recently shot, as cameraman, a 4-part mock serial in black
and white starring international fetish model Dita, so
who knows? It remains for someone with money to actually
ask, and I'll probably do it.
What are
your thoughts about the development of the horror film
in the nineties?
It developed?
I must've missed it. It certainly devolved. Film in general
still has to recover from the misuse of CGI, which has
become kind of like breast implants for movies, in that
most uses of it are terrible.
Which books
and/or films have had a particularly strong impression
on you or influenced your work?
Citing a laundry
list of favorites will only get me into trouble. I'll read
whatever Rod Whitaker and John Farris write next, pretty
much guaranteed. Ditto Joe Lansdale. I'll see whatever
Cronenberg films. I wish Cronenberg would write a novel.
What are
your future plans?
To keep going
the way I've always gone -- finding the most interesting
people I can, and making the weirdest projects conceivable
with them. |
