Feature Category: Article

We caught up with ADRIYAN RAE to talk about her role as the titular VAGRANT QUEEN in SyFy’s latest sci-fi action comedy show…

STARBURST: How would you describe Vagrant Queen to your grandma?

Adriyan Rae: It’s fun, it’s campy, it’s about journey and friendship. She’d be like, “Oh Okay, I think I’d love that!”.

How did you get cast in the show?

My manager received a call from their team for someone else and my manager thought that I would fit the role well and he pitched me for it. I auditioned – I just went all out because I instantly loved Elida. We sent the tape in and five or six days later I got a call from my manager asking if could speak to Elida. I just freaked out!

It’s a very physical show, how do you prepare?

I did a lot of dynamic training. As actors we’ve got to make sure we look aesthetically pleasing. I had to switch my work-out to be more athletic. More kick-boxing, MMA, weight-lifting of course. Working out and not really realising.  I did a lot of ropes, stairs, resistance bands and like actual learning fighting techniques. It was really cool to switch my workouts.

The show has some pretty ‘out there’ sets and costumes; how does that shape your performance?

It helps that it’s so practical. It helps that when I’m talking about space I can look back behind us and ‘see’ space. It helps that I am in a cockpit and I can touch the buttons and they actually move and they do things. It helps that when I’m talking to an alien they actually look like an alien and I can see how their mouths move in a way different than a humans. It’s a really fun place where you just get to use your skills and practicalities and imagination meet. It was super fun. 

There’s some great chemistry between the cast, how much of that is the script?

There’s definitely room for improv. Sometimes we just riff. Sometimes we just add a little spice into there as long as we get to the point of the line and we get across what the scene needs. Our showrunner and our directors were pretty open to us improvising and adding a little bit of the Elida, Issac, and Amae flair to it.

Where did your love of stranger stories come from?

For me it started when I worked on Light as a Feather, because that’s like a fantasy, horror thriller. It’s not that I had no idea, it’s just when I started I was not as much into the sci-fi world as I am now. When I got the script for Vagrant Queen it was cool, and then I’m on the set and it’s very cool. I was like ‘Oh, I get it’. With Light as a Feather it was the incorporation of magic into the script. I always loved magic and different things that aren’t of this universe. Then, luckily, I was cast in Vagrant Queen and it all came together for me!

Did you get spend any time with the the creator of the comics?

I did. Magdalene Visaggio visited South Africa for a while and so did [artist] Jason Smith. I was very grateful to meet with them and just see the smiles on their faces. It was very nice to chat with them and learn where it all came from. 

How have the sci-fi fans responded to the show?

It’s a whole family that I suddenly have and I’ve been getting to know them by popping onto Instagram and Zoom and Twitter! They are absolutely amazing. They’re so supportive. It’s astonishing.

Seen any Elida cosplay yet?

I haven’t seen it yet, Comic-Con has been pushed back but I know that they’re doing an online one now and I can’t wait. A lot of people are telling me they’re going to do that though and I honestly think I might cry!

What are your favourite memories of filming Season 1? 

There’s like a top three: one would be the time that Tim [Rozon] almost cut his finger open in the middle of a scene. He was such a professional that no one even knew, and then at the end of the scene blood was dripping from his hand and he says “we might need a medic”. Another was when somebody tased herself trying to show us how to use a Taser safely [laughs]! And lastly, was my birthday. I was in South Africa and all the cast and crew there knew it was my first time being out of the country on my birthday. I was going to be working all through that day. Everyone was nice and I was just covered in love the whole day! I remember crying so much. I’m a real crybaby [laughs]!

What do you know about the future of the show?

I always believe that everything is working out for my greater good and our greater good.  I’m sure something is coming whether that’s Season 2 or another project. People can follow me for updates on my Instagram and Twitter. I love to talk to fans.

VAGRANT QUEEN – SEASON 1 is available on NowTV until July 17th, and on DVD/Blu-ray from July 13th. To read our review, head HERE.

We talk with THE MANDALORIAN actor CHRIS BARTLETT to learn more of his STAR WARS journey in front of the camera, from professionally performing as C-3PO to his roles as The Ferryman, Zero, and a Death Star droid (which he made himself!), and what it’s like to work with the likes of show creator JON FAVREAU, Lucasfilm legend DAVE FILONI, and Mando body double BRENDAN WAYNE….

STARBURST: How did you first get involved with the Star Wars franchise?

Chris Bartlett: I had built the suit that we use on TV. I had worked on it just as a passion project for myself. When Lucasfilm found out about it, they invited me to Lucasfilm to finish building it there, which I did. Then we went on our first event, which was in Australia. There was a voice track provided, and I performed as C-3PO in the suit. A few years later and after I’d been doing TV appearances, Disney World contracted me through Lucasfilm to come out and do an appearance with Anthony Daniels, where he would be doing a show, talking about his career as C-3PO. He would be appearing on stage for the first time in public ‘with’ C-3PO, because Anthony Daniels ‘is’ C-3PO. He is the one who really created the character that we all love, so he wouldn’t appear with C-3PO because that’s him. However, Disney wrote a story, this show, then he decided that he liked the show, and that he would do it with C-3PO. He talks about his career for about 25 minutes, then in the last 5 minutes he goes behind the curtain, you see his silhouette, the light goes down, then the light comes back up. It’s the silhouette of C-3PO. C-3PO comes out, and then Anthony comes out, and they both see each for the first time. It’s a really emotional and cool moment for the audience. You can feel the audience have that nostalgic, really special feeling. In preparation for that, we had some rehearsals, where it was just him and I. He recorded lines for it, and I did the performance in the suit, but we worked out some timings.

Was that the first time you met Anthony Daniels?

No, years before that, the very first time I had finished building the suit, just as a fan I appeared at The Boston Museum of Science, where they have the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit. On the opening day, Anthony Daniels was there. I heard he was going to be there. There were stormtroopers etc, and I thought it would be fun to appear in the costume, with the other costume characters. Anyway, he was backstage with us, when we were suiting up. This was the first time I met him, and he gave me some tips, like when you move you isolate your motion. The torso sever from your legs, sever from your head, arms. That really gave me the biggest tip on moving/performing as C-3PO. That was really useful. It’s not big sweeping motions, it’s individual parts that are moving. So that was cool. He was just giving me advice as a fan. Neither of us knew that later on I’d be performing as the media C-3PO for Lucasfilm.    

How did C-3P0 lead to The Mandalorian?

I got a call to go down for a fitting, as a droid. By this time I’d been performing as C-3PO for twelve years. On TV, in commercials, etc. Not just for fun! This was performing work. They knew about that, and they called me to go down for a fitting for a droid at Legacy Effects here in Los Angeles. They only had the costume from the waist up. They gave me some spandex to put on, then I put on the suit from the waist up. When I put it on, it was way more comfortable than C-3PO. It wasn’t so restrictive. They knew that I had a lot of experience as a suit performer, as a creature performer, and in small confined helmets. So once we put it on, I got to see the concept art, that you see of the crew at the end of Chapter 6. I saw Zero in that piece of art, how he was standing. Kind of standing like Boba Fett. So, I put on the costume, and we did a screen test on a grey background. I just moved around, initially like Boba Fett mixed with C-3PO. Where you have these droid motions, but a cold calculating motion also. They gave me a pistol, it wasn’t the one I used in the show, but I did some poses, and looked around, and they said “OK.” We did that for about 20 minutes, then they took that footage and sent it to Jon Favreau. I didn’t hear anything for a while until I got this call to come down for another fitting. For what they called The Ferryman. I said, “Oh, so I guess I didn’t get the droid that I auditioned for?” and they said “No! You’re going to be doing that too!” I said “OK great, that’s awesome news, because I really like that one!” I had no idea what The Ferryman was going to be. I said, “What is that character?” as I was picturing a shirtless, half goat creature, with ears. In my mind I was like “This doesn’t sound like Star Wars!” So I asked if they could tell me some more, in which they replied by saying “You’ll be playing the flute!” So, I guess that’s what it is! Anyway I got the email confirming my appointment to go down for that fitting, and it was spelled “Ferryman”, and I was like “Oh, Ferryman!” A guy who guides someone across a river maybe? I still had no idea what that one would look like. When I got down to suit up it was a character that looked a lot like the Garindan character from A New Hope who lets the sandtroopers know where our heroes are going to go. I just thought that was so cool. Again, it’s a confined mask, but that has its whole story as well. Back to Zero, they said I’d be flying The Mandalorian’s ship! All of a sudden my whole life rewound to when I was a seven year old in 1977, pretending in cardboard boxes to fly ships! So I really couldn’t wait for that day on set. I didn’t know that that would be until four months later, I thought that every time I had a scene as Zero I was going to be flying the ship. So that day was unforgettable. 

Droid mercenary Q9-0, aka ‘Zero’, pilots the Razor Crest

You act as The Ferryman in Chapter 1, alongside Brendan Wayne and Horatio Sanz, what was that particular scene like to film, and what do you remember the most from putting it together?

That was my very first day on set. Yeah, it was with Brendan Wayne who is the double for The Mandalorian. So most of my work was with Brendan, the grandson of John Wayne. It was just so cool to be able to work with him. All I’m seeing on set is his helmet. His manner – where he has to radiate through a faceless mask – was so cool! I’m a huge fan of Boba Fett, so I was in awe when I looked at this mask for the first time. Going to the moment, imagine you get the call to be in Star Wars, and you’re a huge fan of Star Wars, going all the back to your childhood. Inside you feel like there’s this massive dynamite that’s about to blow up with excitement! You can just imagine how that would feel, but you have to maintain your cool, because you need to be professional. You have a character to play, and a story to tell. You don’t have time to bubble around the set, being all excited. On the very first day they don’t give you your lines until you arrive at the set, so you only have a short amount of time to prepare. I was sitting in my room, going over my lines, which ended up being alien language anyway! They were English lines on paper. So, I was memorising them, doing them all correctly, saying them in the suit. They said “OK Chris, Dave Filoni is going to come in and go over your lines with you.” So Brendan and Dave came in, and Horatio Sanz who is the character from Chapter 1 in the first scene. They don’t give you any direction/background on this character, what his motivation is, what he sounds like, what he’s doing there. It’s just like we’re going to do the scene, and these are your lines. As an actor you have to bring something so that there’s not nothing there! I came up with the voice. I thought about how he’d be lonely, sitting out there on the ice, frozen ocean, he doesn’t get a lot of visitors, so he’s probably depressed, frustrated. I sat down with Dave – who I’d met before as C-3PO through Lucasfilm – and he was talking about what it was like to make Star Wars with George, and then Jon Favreau walks in. Now, this was the first time I knew Jon was even going to be there or that I’d ever met him. He walks in, just like a regular guy, your neighbour and says “Hey guys!”. I stand up and I’m like “Oh, hi – I’m Chris!”, I held my hand out, and Jon’s hands were full, with books, and a water bottle. He’s trying to shuffle his stuff to shake my hand, and I was thinking “Abort!” I felt like I was making a fool of myself. So I just stood there, and he did shake my hand, and we did the scene. Anyway, I thought that I’d ruined all of my chances by inconveniencing him. Then we did the reading, and again I just brought my voice. I imagined this frozen wasteland, like Siberia, maybe this guy has like a Russian/alien voice. In the scene, The Mandalorian asks for a speeder, and The Ferryman doesn’t like it, because Mando says no droids. My guy says “Well I assure you, this speeder is brand new”, and Jon goes, “That’s good, but let’s cartoon it down a little?”, and then Dave says “Would we even do an English for this?” and I was like “I don’t think so!” I talked about how fans would like it to be an alien language, then Jon was also saying the same thing, how this should be an alien language. It was cool to be able to see them make creative decisions that really affected the character you see on screen right then. It was neat. Then when it was time to go out on set, I had been anticipating this moment since I was seven. When they said “OK, it’s time to go out on the set, take your place up on the pier” literally as I was stepping up on to the pier, the whole thing flowed way down, my boot touching the pier, there was snow and wind blowing, there’s water on the pier that’s frozen. My whole life was rewound to when I was little. It was emotional. I was so excited to be there, but also scared, as I didn’t want to mess up this opportunity. We got up there, and the wind’s blowing, then The Mandalorian is walking towards me. I was like, “This is SO awesome!” I just couldn’t believe it. So I did my scene, my English lines over and over. Then we got the shot. The set was like this cylinder, from floor to ceiling, of monitors, that projects the environment all around you. It looks so realistic. There’s no green screens. The light & colour, bouncing off the characters, makes it look like they are really in that environment. It makes it so easy for the actor to feel like they are part of that real environment. It was an amazing experience. Something that I could never imagine. 

Star Wars is obviously known for its huge costume, and puppeteering workshops. So, can you tell us about what it’s like to see their epic workshops in real life, and how they’ve been applied to constructing the world of The Mandalorian? 

Legacy Effects were the ones that did the vast majority on the episodes that I worked on. The Child/Baby Yoda was there of course, everyone knows this one! I saw him on the first day, and I didn’t know that he was going to be such a central part of the story. It was more adorable than I thought any Ewok could be. Shortly after that, someone said that that was the bounty, that’s what The Mandalorian is searching for, and that’s what he is protecting through the whole season. It was a major thing that we had to keep quiet. I had seen all of the different variations of the armour for The Mandalorian, and I didn’t understand why there were so many different types until I had seen some scenes, where he was upgrading his armour. Stepping onto the set and seeing IG-11 lying on the table, which is from the last episode, where Kuiil was restoring him. That was the first time that I had seen him, laying on the table. I was going “Oh wow, that’s IG-88, he’s in this too!? That’s amazing!” Then as I was performing more on the set I realised that there were a lot of things on The Mandalorian that we recognise, that we are meant to possibly relate to because we’ve seen this character before. However, almost none of them are the real thing that we are thinking. For example, IG-11 looks almost exactly like IG-88 but he is just another one. IG-88 isn’t the only robot in the galaxy that looks like that, just like R2-D2 isn’t. I really like that about the show. There are a lot of characters, and creatures, droids, that we can relate to or remember. Like an R5 droid that appeared in The Gunslinger chapter. It could be R4 etc or just another one. It was just really neat to see it in real life. Jon and Dave have made a lot of effort. In the show they’ve dropped a lot of things that we remember from our childhood. It’s really cool, and Dave and Jon are the best people to be on this. They are just like us, lifelong Star Wars fans that just want to make more of it. You can see their love through the work. 

The Ferryman prepares safe passage for the Mandalorian

Which costume took the longest to get ready in?

Zero was pretty quick, because it was only the top half. The bottom half was CGI legs, so I’d be wearing spandex. I could sit down which was something that I could never do with C-3PO. The death star droid that was in the cantina in The Reckoning, I built that one. That was originally supposed to be a black protocol droid, very C-3PO looking. They knew that I built protocol droids, and wanted me to build one for this scene. I said that I do do that, but just on my own, I had just finished building my own Death Star droid. We had sculpted the head and the body, and had just finished the mould. I hadn’t painted it, or had it chromed just yet. So I said “Yes I could make you a C-3PO but I’m also making this, what do you think?” I got a note back from Colin Wilson, the Executive Producer, saying that they were really excited about the Death Star droid, and would like to use that one for the cantina. They said that they’d put me on a call tomorrow with Doug Chiang! I was like “Wow, Doug Chiang!” I had been following his work since 1999 with his concept artwork for the prequels. So I talked with Doug specifically about that one. Going back to your question, the Death Star droid took the longest. Normally my wife goes with me, she’s an actor herself, but also a character performer. She’s an expert at costuming. She worked for Disney for 13 years as a character performer. She is the one who usually travels with me, and dresses me up. She wasn’t with me on this one, but I did have Don from Legacy Effects. She helped me dress up as Zero and the Death Star droid. She did a great job putting it on, and taking it off. I was in great hands with Don as well. The Death Star droid was just more involved, as it fits together like a puzzle. All together it took about half an hour to put on, just because it was a new person. 

Bartlett’s home-built Death Star droid tends bar

You played Zero in Chapter 6, what was this robot like to play, and what did you enjoy the most about working on this episode in particular?

After the first sitting I went home. I was talking with my friend, Dee Tails, who is a character/actor and suit performer in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Solo, Rogue One. He plays droids, and other characters. So he and I just connected on Facebook a while ago. I was talking with him, and we started talking about bugs. I was asking him for advice, on how he approaches characters, because he has done a lot of films. He was so helpful, and he was really my mentor on doing a new character. He even came out to LA, we got together, went out in the mountains and talked about acting as droids/creatures. How to approach each role. He’s an amazing individual and performer. We started talking about treating the character like a bug, because he kind of looks like a praying mantis. So I researched the praying mantis, how they moved, and how they keep their head still. They can twitch their head real fast, and look. So I looked at a bunch of praying mantis videos. You can see this when Zero walks down the ramp for the first time. When he is being introduced by the crew to The Mandalorian. When I first walked down the ramp, my eyes as a regular human are looking where I’m walking, so I don’t fall down the ramp, and ruin the scene. As I was doing that, I was thinking about how a droid wouldn’t watch where it was walking, its sensors would know where it was walking. So I made the decision to keep my head facing the crew, until I got to the bottom of the ramp, but the problem was that I couldn’t tell when I was going to get to the bottom. I was just hoping that I wouldn’t stumble. I did it once, I stumbled a little bit, and then we got it. Staring at them while my body is walking down the ramp. It made it look more robotic. You can also see when I’m looking for The Child, how I would snap my head when I look around. That came from a bug kind of approach. The eyes were really cloudy, and I could only see through these two tiny slits right in the middle of the face, that you can’t see. It made it a real challenge. Another thing that I did for the character was that I tried to come up with a voice for it. He had a lot of lines, and I learned all of the lines, performed all of the lines while I was in the suit. I also brought my own microphone and amplifier so that people could hear my voice. I mounted those. I wouldn’t drink water before I was going to go out onto the set. My idea for this character was that he was a more sinister C-3PO, maybe he’d be British – sorry! –  and have more of a gravelly voice.That’s how I did it the whole day. Then later when they got Richard Ayoade to do the voice, he did a gravelly British accent! I was so happy with his performance, he sounded great. It felt like we were on the same wavelength in regards to how this character might sound. When I was going around on set, talking to people, I tried to stay in character a little bit, not to be annoying, but just because I wanted them to feel that this was a robot. I did get a lot of comments, like “How am I doing this voice?” because people weren’t expecting a voice to come out of it. Another thing that I would do when I was walking is that I’d turn my head and stare at people, it had this real sinister feeling. I had no idea how cool this character looked until I saw it on the show, because I was inside it right, there were no mirrors on set. I was just trying to do my best.

Mando interrogates Zero

You may have noticed that this costume appears in Chapter 3, it’s in a couple of fleeting shots. It’s in the scene where all of the bounty hunters are descending upon The Mandalorian. When he’s got The Child in the street. I appeared in the costume in that as well, and they gave me a different weapon. It was like a Boba Fett EE-3 carbon rifle. It was foam, really light weight. So when we filmed, during the shoot out, it was easy to carry it around, and pretend to shoot. Then, in this different episode they gave me a weapon that felt like it weighed 20 pounds. I don’t know what it was made made out of. You can see the weight of it when I’m carrying it, but it was so heavy. When I was carrying it around in the ship, we had to do some tricks. For example when I crawled down the ladder to the cargo hold to look for The Child, there’s a guy at the top of the ladder holding the rifle, so I could just pretend like I was holding it the whole time. I could just reach up and come down. There was no way I could bring it down, because I would just fall to my death. Which, eventually I did, when The Mandalorian shot me. Actually, while filming this show I died twice in one week, two different characters. You’re in shoot outs, it’s all the stuff we pretended to be when we were kids, running through the streets/neighbourhood with cardboard weapons. It was all that, but real explosions, amazing costumes, super realistic environments. It was just a dream come true. 

How would you describe The Mandalorian to someone that’s never heard of Star Wars?

It is a lot like the old Clint Eastwood-style westerns, but in Star Wars. Just like George always called Star Wars a space western or space opera. This really feels literally like how George was describing it back then. If you go and watch the High Plains Drifter or Pale Rider, these films where a loner walks into a town, where it’s been terrorised by robbers or whatever. He has a special set of skills, they realise that, and they ask for his help, and he helps them. He is so helpful that they ask him to stay. Maybe there’s a widow that likes him a bit more than everyone else, maybe he’ll stay for her, but no he just can’t because this place isn’t for him. It’s like taking a familiar story, and then putting it into Star Wars to make it totally new. This is what I was talking about before, everything is familiar but everything is new. It just makes it something that you really connect to. It’s something you feel like you’ve seen before, but it’s something that you’ve never seen before. Plus, it’s Star Wars. If you don’t know anything about Star Wars, George always described it as a morality tale for the rising generation. Star Wars was always made for 7-12 year olds, a rising generation learning the difference between right and wrong, how to make a choice, seeing good triumph over evil. Those hopeful lessons. That’s who it is for. If you are ever watching a piece of Star Wars and it feels a little too childish, just remember that that’s who it’s meant for, for young people. However, Jon and Dave have taken something that although it’s meant for young people, there’s also an adult generation that love this world as well. They have put everything in it that they can, to make it a hug to that generation as well, and say that this was made for them also. That’s what really makes it special. The other thing is that there’s droids, creatures, ships, space, explosions, shoot-outs! It’s so fun, and the cool thing about it is that you don’t have to have seen Star Wars to enjoy The Mandalorian, because it’s action as well as a message and story that people can relate to.

All episodes of THE MANDALORIAN are available exclusively on Disney+

STARBURST catches up with writer/director/composer John Harrison to look back at the miniseries Children of Dune…

STARBURST: We’re always curious about whether a miniseries is more akin to making a film than making television or is it still TV, in the idea that you’re filming for beats where there are commercial breaks and episode breaks and things like that, or if it is it some sort of odd hybrid of the two?

John Harrison: With miniseries, the reason that I’ve loved doing any series is because, to me, they’re novelistic television. They are extended stories. They’re like long films – in the case of Dune, in particular, but also Supernova or Children of Dune – the story may be broken up into one two three nights or however many, but it is a complete story. It’s not episodic like a lot of television. Having said that, though, there are elements of the medium that have to be accommodated. First of all, there’s the money, which is always less than a feature film, so that constraint has to be factored in. Then there is the screen on which you’re delivering it. I think that has changed over the years, as we’ve gone to bigger and bigger screens, and the technology of what we can do with that as a field, All the sound production and everything else have changed and improved so that you can be much more cinematic with television than we used to be. So, you can think of production as film as opposed to just feel I’m just doing a television episode, so I think it is a kind of a hybrid.

The thing is, Dune has the people who love the book, and then there are people who love the book and the original film adaptation, and then there are people who love the miniseries. Is there something difficult when you’re tackling something that has already had a film adaptation?

Well, I was very lucky to have a different medium to play in. As much as I admire David Lynch as a filmmaker and as much as I admire a great deal of the Dune movie visually, I did not think it captured the essence of the book. We could go into hours of discussion about why that was: the difficulties that he had making it, about the choices the producers made – all of that is relevant.

I was approached and given the opportunity to take the book and have six hours to tell the story. David Lynch had two and a half hours – or four, depending on which cut you see – so I was able to think about it in a completely different way than had I been looking at it as a film adaptation. Denis Villeneuve is already breaking the book up into two parts, but if you know the book, you know how complicated that story is and how rich a tapestry it is – of characters and plots and environments – so it’s not something that can really be watered down if you really want to honour the story. I really didn’t reference the previous film at all.

When I was adapting Children of Dune, what I struggled with was how to turn this massive book into a visual experience. Luckily, as I say, I had six hours to do it. If you recall, the original book Dune is actually broken up into three sorts of sub-chapters: there’s Arrakis, there’s Muad’dib, and there’s The Prophet. There are three different sections to it and I was able to say to the producers, “This is how one can design the miniseries, with three different nights,” and so once I had that template, I was able to go back to the book and really start organising the drama along those lines. I really approached it as a completely unique, independent production.

Anybody who has any sort of issues with a new version of something based on something has to realise that like so many of the movies that we enjoy are, themselves, new incarnations of things that have come before, and if you want to get really into it, we can talk about the hero’s journey…

What you’re looking for is a filmmaker’s vision of his approach to that film, to that material. I mean, Kubrick took Steve’s book and he had a story in mind that came out of what Steve’s book was, and then there was a miniseries of Steve’s book, which may have been closer to the book. What I tried to do with Dune and then, subsequently, with Children of Dune – although that was a tougher adaptation – was to really find a way to honour the source material, because I happen to love the book. I saw no reason to veer from that.

What I had to struggle with was how to turn it into a different medium. For example, in the book, there’s a lot of internal monologue. Characters are thinking to themselves out loud and, in particular, Paul Atreides. Although David tried to do this, you really can’t be successful with having a character on screen staring at the camera and then hearing his voice, hearing his thoughts, his voice-over. The movie kind of comes to a dead stop at that point, so I had to figure out a way to externalise those interior monologues, either into dialogue or into some kind of visual representation of what the person was thinking.

Princess Irulan was another serious adaptation that I made. In the book, she is referred to, and each chapter has a lot of quotes from her memoirs later on but, to me, there was a very difficult way of translating those into a visual medium. I had to figure out, “Well, how am I going to get this information out?” There’s some really germane information going on here that, when you’re reading, is very important. How am I going to get it so that the audience watching this gets it?

I decided that I would just create the character on screen, so that she could say what she’s saying in the book. I didn’t invent this out of whole cloth. This was all in Frank’s book – I just had to figure out a way to make it to realise it on film. Those were the adaptations I had to do. Obviously, with any adaptations, there are things like shrinking time and conflating scenes together because you have to get the information out. You can’t have 20 scenes, when you can do it in two and so forth, but those are the normal adaptations that you do anytime you’re turning a book into a movie.

FRANK HERBERT’S CHILDREN OF DUNE will be available on Amazon Prime Video from June 26th.

Actor Jason O’Mara has been the animated Batman for the better part of a decade, but in Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, his take on the Caped Crusader has never felt fresher. From having Batman cry (see our interview with screenwriter Ernie Altbacker for context) to expressing other emotional aspects of the character that we haven’t seen before, O’Mara stays true to Batman’s essence while playing with some fun ‘stretching’ that adds new dimension to an already complex icon.

We were lucky enough to get some time with O’Mara, who brought us up to speed on what’s shakin’ in the DCAU (DC Animated Universe).

STARBURST: Could you give a brief synopsis of the film so that readers who haven’t checked it out can tune in? What’s going down in the DC Universe?

Jason O’Mara: Suffice to say that Darkseid has become so powerful now that it’s going to take the combined strength of the Justice League, Justice League Dark, Teen Titans, and Suicide Squad to go up against him. He will be corrupting various characters from the inside. So some members of these groups and organizations will be turned against each other. For me, it is the climax of 13 films I’ve been in. You can binge watch the entire thing, almost 30 hours’ worth of story, and there is a sequential order. Of particular interest to me is Batman’s relationship with Damian Wayne. That also comes to a head. There were times when they have been working together and getting along and times when they haven’t, and Damian has kind of gone off and done his own thing.

This is the final leg of the journey, the culmination of the story. We wanted to circle back to what you said about how your Batman has interacted primarily with Damian. Mixing influence with innovation is a necessary part of creating new art or giving new voice to old art. When you first started playing this character, how difficult was it to honour and retain the essence of Batman while still putting your own stamp on the character?

It was a real challenge at first just because Batman has been played by so many great actors, so many different media over the years. I believe that Batman is a character that’s larger than any of the actors who play him. We all have our favorite Batman actors but t’s about serving the character. So I had to try to put aside any Batman I had been influenced by and find my own voice. One that spoke to me.

That sounds really challenging…

As the father of a boy myself, I was able to bring out my own experience as a father, which I think helped. As it’s gone on, I feel like the voice has become more natural to me. It has come a little closer to my own. It’s a tall order for any actor to come into that kind of role but you have to put aside everything you know about a character like that.

What makes Apokolips War so compelling? What will fans love most?

I think that the story twists will be the most engaging cinematically. The story twists, and then it twists again… and then it twists again. I think that’s what fans will find most engaging and pretty shocking.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK: APOKOLIPS WAR is available now on digital download and on DVD and Blu-ray.

Actor, writer, director, podcaster, and producer Brea Grant has been involved with some of our favorite genre fare of the last few years, taking roles alongside other favorites like Barbara Crampton, A.J. Bowen, and more in Beyond the Gates, All the Creatures Were Stirring, and more. She’s the ultimate multi-hyphenate, and anything with which Grant is involved is worth tracking down. She recently starred in Jeremy Gardner and Christian Stella’s emotional drama meets horror film, After Midnight – out June 8th from Arrow Video), as Abby, the girlfriend of Gardner’s Hank, whose disappearance hangs over the majority of the film. We spoke with Grant about After Midnight and her vast repertoire…

STARBURST: You’re in After Midnight at the beginning, but you don’t have a lot of dialogue. Then you disappear for a large portion of it, but when you come back you’ve got something to say in the form of this massive monologue. What it’s like to be an actor in a movie where you have these intense things to do and then you have a full day of press about the thing you did a year ago?

Brea Grant: Well, on a positive note, the full day of press is something that you’re not having to memorise!

What is it: an eight-minute monologue or something like that?

Jeremy [Gardner] would correct me right now if he was here but it’s like 12 or 14. It’s quite long, although to be fair with you, I would much rather be memorising an eight page monologue than doing interviews. No offense to you, by the way – I’m very bad in interviews. I can’t ever think on my feet quickly enough, but memorising? That’s something I’m great at.

It’s not only a monologue, but it’s also that the entire scene is the emotional heart of the film. The interaction between your character, Abby, and Jeremy Gardner’s Hank: have you ever had to deliver a speech like that before? It seemed like it was coming from a place of truth.

[laughs] I don’t think people aside from Jeremy Gardner write those kind of speeches. Particularly, horror movies don’t have page after page of monologue. Although, I am very talkative, so I’ve probably done an eight-minute monologue by accident.

This film continues something we’ve noticed about your work, which is that you get to work with the best people.

I’ve been very lucky and in the last few years, I’ve been able to be a little bit more picky, which is nice –  to get to choose who I’m working with. I was a fan of Jeremy and Christian before I did After Midnight, and I had no idea I would ever get to work with them. I was hoping I would, but I didn’t know if that opportunity would ever come so, of course, when it came, I definitely jumped on it. They had seen a movie I was in that never came out [Night Sky]. Jeremy saw it and then we met at Fantastic Fest very briefly. Then, Dave Lawson – the producer – reached out and was like, “Would you read the script for Jeremy Garner’s new movie?” and I was like, “Fuck, yeah!”

Working with somebody like Jeremy Gardner – who is also an actor, writer, and director – do you find that actors who are also writers and directors and vice versa have an ease of communication when it comes to like filmmaking, since you speak the same language?

In some aspects. I think in other ways – because I also do all three things – I think we’re more respectful of the roles and the time that those jobs take. If I’m on a movie just as an actor, I feel like I’m very respectful of the director and the director’s vision, and what he or she is trying to do because I want to make sure that vision is right.

Because I have been there, and I know how frustrating it is and how difficult of a job it is to direct a movie. I think with someone like Jeremy, he’s going to let me bring a lot more myself into the character, because he respects the role of an actor and knows, once he hires someone, that they’re gonna come in and take the role that he’s written and make it their own. That’s what I hope when I hire someone: I love hiring people who do multiple things.

On the movie I just directed, 12 Hour Shift, almost every actor was also a writer or director, because it was so much easier. They know what’s happening on the set. They understand all of the inner workings, and they’re just so polite. You end up with people cleaning up crafty who are the main actors in the movie.

You work with a lot of other very strong women; you’re in the feature version of Jill Sixx’s The Stylist, you’ve done several things with Barbara Crampton, your podcast with Mallory O’Meara. It seems like the women in the genre community – everyone from writers and directors, to even the people who are covering it in the journalism sphere – have each other’s backs. Is that the case?

First of all, I would hope people would say the same as me, but I do feel like a lot of people have had my back. I think, when you are somewhat of a minority in any sort of group, you’re going to find the other people like you. What you’re talking about, obviously, is women. I think, in general, the industry pits us against each other, which is terribly unfortunate and there’s obviously room for all of us. I think what’s interesting about horror is that, in horror, there is room for all of us.

I don’t feel like one woman getting to direct a genre movie means that I won’t be able to direct a genre movie. I feel like there is enough space for all of us, and we’ve kind of all come together and try to recognise that. For me, I want to try to support other female directors and female writers in any way I can, and I try to be really open about reading things for people and giving notes or acting in things when I’m available, because I would want them to do the same for me.

I know how hard it is to get started as a writer and director. I still feel like I’m really getting started in in that sphere, and a lot of female directors have been really, really kind to me over the course of the past few years. Just giving me advice and allowing me to buy them a coffee. I even talked to a huge female showrunner about directing TV on her drive. On the way to work, she took the time to talk to me. This is crazy, because I think we all know how hard it is to break into that side of things, and we want to make sure that other people have the same opportunities that we have had.

A lot of men have supported me, as well, in the genre community. I think the genre community can be quite supportive, as many problems as I know we’ve been having. That breaks my heart, because I want everyone to feel very welcomed in this sort of group. I think we all sort of identify as outsiders and weirdos, and you shouldn’t have to feel like an outsider in your own community.

Personally, I have always found it rather curious that people are just like, “Well, I’m a guy – how would I understand a woman in a movie? How could I understand a script written by a woman?” They seem to understand scripts written about aliens without any trouble, but think a female protagonist is just bonkers. I am a 40 year old white guy, and I’ve seen enough movies with me in it.

After Midnight was written by Jeremy Gardner. I think I’m bringing it full circle right now: I think Abby is a really well-written female character. All the people women who have interviewed me for After Midnight relate to her in some way and see themselves in her. I’ve had women reach out to me to be like, “Abby’s me.” I understand her frustration. I understand where she’s at in life, and I think Jeremy did an amazing job of writing a really complicated female character. There is definitely still room for men to be writing complicated women and interesting male roles. I just think now, we’re expecting a lot more of them.

After Midnight is released on Blu-ray from Arrow Video on June 8th. The limited edition version also includes Jeremy Gardner’s film The Battery.

Composer Timothy Williams’ latest score is for the ’80s-set heavy metal horror of Marc Meyers’ We Summon the Darkness and in it, he leans heavily into the retro sounds of the era. Williams, whose previous composition work includes the superhero horror film Brightburn, has also worked as an orchestrator and composer for many other genre films, including both chapters of IT, Deadpool 2, and the Guardian of the Galaxy movies, among many others. We spoke with him about how he came to the sounds of We Summon the Darkness, as well as his vast back catalog.

STARBURST: We Summon the Darkness is the second horror film in quick succession that you’ve done as the primary composer and you’ve worked on a lot of genre entertainment here and there, as well. Was there something really appealing about being able to work in a retro mode for We Summon the Darkness?

Timothy Williams: Yeah. The interesting thing with horror is that it’s one of those great genres to score because you’re having to set up – ‘life normal’ is what I call it – you want to create music for people, so that you get to know and enjoy the characters. Then there’s ‘fucked up’, which is where things go horribly wrong. Trying to build that empathy into a character is really good because then, when things go wrong, the horror is much more intense because you really want the person to try and survive.

With Brightburn, what was what was really cool was it was a twist on the horror story. You had the typical elements of horror, but you also had the superhero side of things that need to be covered. Doing Brightburn was a lot of fun of trying to find a language to create horror, but also superhero, so When We Summon the Darkness came along, what was really exciting for me was, ‘how do I take those same elements of creating ‘life normal,’ but you’re in the ’80s? Then, when things go sideways, how do you create a horror language?’

The other thing that really appealed to me about We Summon the Darkness is that it’s actually a very funny film. It’s one of those films that is horror, but it’s primarily a dark comedy. When I watched it, it was that aspect that really appealed to me: that the music needed to not only be horror, not only be retro, but also needed to have some ability to very subtly support the comedy of the absurdity of the scenario.

As far as doing a retro score, what was really cool was I have a bunch of amazing synths from the ’80s. I have the the Korg Mono/Poly – one of the first early synths that came out. It’s so old, it doesn’t even have MIDI. MIDI is how you can connect computer to a synth and send the notes. This doesn’t have that. It has nothing that recalls anything, so you’re creating a sound by turning knobs and once that sound is what you want it, you have to record it right away.

That was very exciting: to do a score where, the moment you turn the knob, the sound has gone forever. It’s a very organic process and very experimental process, and this was the first opportunity I’d really had to score a film using vintage synths. The other synth I have is a Juno 106, and both these synths have those sort of classic ’80s sounds, so for me, being able to score something with a bit of a nod to John Carpenter and maybe even sort of Peter Gabriel – that kind of really interesting, dark ’80s feel – was exciting and something that you kind of dream of as a composer, you have that opportunity to just use different colours and different tones.

When we spoke with Junkie-XL for the release of the original Deadpool, he was very excited about getting to go back and like delve into sounds that he wouldn’t have any other reason to use sort. The specific one I’m thinking of is the Synclavier sound. He said, ‘once I’ve used it for this, I can’t use it in anything else because it’ll just seems so throwback and nodding to this specific sound’.

There’s something very wonderful about having a chance to use something you’d have no other reason to use. I think what’s also exciting about these synths is, that as you’re turning the knobs, it manipulates the sound. You can filter the sound and it’s so specific to that period of time. There are just so many sounds that you hear, where that kind of filter coming in and coming off impulses, and all that kind of stuff – that immediately evokes that period of time.

With the percussion: again, there’s nothing in this film that I can use again, because you’re dealing with the Synclavier. You’re dealing with the LinnDrum. These very, very specific percussion sounds. It was really fun, because I just don’t get to use these percussive sounds in current scoring, so it’s nice to be able to kind of go back. I grew up with these synths and this, for me, was such a great way to go back to what made me fall in love with writing music, which was the ability to manipulate sound and find really interesting, cool sounds. It was kind of a bit of a full circle, because I started on the Juno 106. That was the first thing I ever bought, so to go back and kind of relive that was a lot of fun.

We Summon the Darkness, at the outset, has this very heavy metal tone. They use some very specific metal songs as part of it, such as Mercyful Fate’s Black Funeral. I know you’ve worked on some other films, such as Deadpool 2 and both of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, which are films that are very much built around pop song needle drops. What was the experience of working on We Summon the Darkness like – where there is this heavy metal tone, but there’s not a lot of heavy metal music, per se, once you get past the first like 10-15 minutes?

I think the premise of them going to the heavy metal concert is really to kick off the film. That was one of the things that Marc Meyers and I discussed, in terms of the tone of the score. You’ll notice, at the beginning of the movie, there’s this sound. I describe it as almost like a shark or some kind of predator stalking and I want to use ominous sounds. You hear it right at the beginning, and it’s a sort of rolling sound. It was one of the first sounds that I created and again, it’s sort of a throwback to this ’80s feel.

I said, “I just want the synth constantly, because you never know who the predator is and you want that sense of the predator right from the get-go.” There’s something stalking and, as you get more into the film, you start to realise there twists and turns, and you start to realise that the predator is closer than you think. Then, it starts to move more into – not to give away too much of the plot, but basically they’re not very good. The killers are not very good, so you get into this rather funny scenario.

Imagine if you had Jason being someone who really wasn’t a great serial killer. That, for me, was really the essence of the dark comedy – “What happens when you have a bad killer and it goes wrong and devolves from there?” We wanted some kind of a language that would hearken back to that kind of ’80s film score, but still be able to maintain some of the comedy in the later parts. If you think of Beverly Hills Cop and some of these other great ’80s films, there’s something inherently comedic sometimes about the pulsing, plucking sounds that you can create and so that, for me, was just making sure that we could keep that shift: going from keeping that kind of dark, predatorial feel but then, starting to inject comedy.

There’s a scene where two of the characters who are badly injured are basically trying to escape and they’re grabbing things from the kitchen, like cookie trays and whacking the attackers with those and it’s a really, really funny scene. I wanted a sense of this with bizarre little synth motifs that are almost like popcorn – just very straggling atonal sounds – to create the comedy of them just trying to escape, but not in a not in a very effective way. They’re just kind of grabbing whatever they can to get out of the situation.

That is what I loved about the film: it’s a really fun film. It’s not it is not the film you expect and what drew me to it was, I just I had a big smile on my face once I realised what was going on it. Also, thank you for phrasing it that way. I think that is a very perfect way of acknowledging a question I wasn’t quite sure how I’d be able to ask, because phrasing it wrong gives away the plot of the film. However, the fact is that, for the better part of the first 15-20 minutes, the viewer is not quite sure who the bad guys are or who are the villains in this piece. I was really kind of curious as to how you walk that line: how do you foreshadow, but you not tip your hat musically?

I said, “How much how much are we tipping the hat?” and Meyers said, “Not at all.” We’re setting the movie up as really not knowing what’s going on until there’s a great twist and I’m sure most people can probably guess what it’s going to be, but the twist is great and it just sets the movie up as something completely different.

One of the things that I loved about the film – and I just have to say it right up front – is the acting is out of this world. Alexandra Daddario, Keean Johnson, Maddie Hasson, Amy Forsythe, Logan Miller, and Austin Swift. It’s like a little ensemble piece and it’s really just the six people, plus obviously Johnny Knoxville and some great walk-ons.

Amy Forsythe is great in everything we’ve seen her in, but Maddie Hasson steals this movie so much.

Without giving stuff away, but just the hair product scenes and the fire and everything? Over the top. My favourite, of course, is the whole weedwacker scene. I watched the film and my mouth was on the floor. I was just howling hysterically for the back half of the film, just going, “This is brilliant! She’s so much fun,” but I thought the acting was so good. It’s just amazing, with really amazing turns.

Again, that was a part of the emotional journey. There’s a scene where the stepmom comes home and she’s basically trying to get her coat and her money and her passport upstairs. This was one of the funniest scenes I got to score, because you had so many balls in the air: you had killers in the house, you had the two guys in the pantry with an arm bleeding out and all of that, and then you have this clueless stepmom, coming to the house and heading up to grab her passport and do her lines of coke. For that, I just had this sort of ostinato that just kept going through the whole thing. It was percussion, 808s sort of drumming percussion and this ostinato riff on the synth.

You went from things that made you laugh to the dire circumstances of two guys in the pantry to Amy Forsythe and her emotional journey of just trying to work out what she was going to do. Within the space four or five minutes, there was a lot of different intercuts of different emotions, and I just wanted to keep this ostinato going through all of this, and just color each scene differently as you come to it: making it lighter for the mom, making it darker and more emotional for the other characters, and still keeping and building suspense through to the very end because it has a fairly gruesome outcome so building that suspense through the whole thing. It’s a lot of fun to try and juggle all the different colours while still keeping that this ostinato going through the whole queue one of the things.

We Summon the Darkness is out now on DVD and VOD.

Fans of exploitation and cult movies might know some of the work of Al Adamson, his films Dracula vs Frankenstein, Blood of Ghastly Horror and many others have become midnight movie favourites for lovers of low budget independent cinema. A new documentary highlighting the work and sad fate of Adamson is released soon and we spoke to the director, David Gregory, who also directed Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau, and as one of the heads of Severin Films is also releasing the definitive box set of Adamson’s movies…

STARBURST: What was it about Al Adamson that drew you to his story?

David Gregory: I was interviewing David Konow, who wrote the book Schlock-O-Rama, for an extra for Al’s film Carnival Magic, which was going to be a standalone release originally. And about halfway through the interview, it became pretty obvious that this was the story that would be would be worthy of a feature – you know, it was a proper story with a beginning middle and end that I thought was worthy of making into its own standalone piece rather than featurette. That’s not just because it has a true-crime aspect, although that is unique to stories about being movie makers, but also just because of the very colourful cast of characters that came in and out of Al’s life journeys career.

There’s a lot of stuff in it the film that could resonate with the filmmakers of today.

Yeah, and I think that’s something also that made it very interesting. I mean, we don’t necessarily think of independent filmmakers so much when you go back in time. You think of low budget filmmakers at that time, but you don’t necessarily think of the concept of the indie filmmakers – that seems to be something that’s fairly contemporary. And so the idea that this was a person who was using his own money, or his own contacts to get the money, to make the film and then gathering the people together and by hook or by crook getting a film made was something that resonated with me. And I think anyone who’s done their best to make a low budget horror movie or whatever can relate to a lot of the stories of just getting a film to the finish line come what may.

What was the hardest part of getting the documentary together?

I guess the hardest part was trying to find the people to do with the crime. Because the rest of it was really similar to how I do all the other documentaries and features. You’re basically finding people who are film industry people, so there are ways to contact them. A lot of them were retired and a lot of them had left the industry a long time ago. So that means that there’s certain amount of legwork involved in tracking them down. But with police, it’s different. Once they’re retired, they don’t generally have a profile online or anything like that, where you could just find them – there’s not a database of retired police. We had to get a private investigator involved. It was the same with the housekeeper, actually tracking her down took some time. She doesn’t speak English, so we had to get somebody to tell her what we were doing and get her confidence that what we were doing was worthy of being a part of. But that also made it kind of interesting for me because I hadn’t done anything in in that realm before. And it was important to me that will we went deep into his life and work so that it wasn’t just a true-crime story. It wasn’t a sensationalist piece on this B-movie maker who was murdered spectacularly, or whatever the headlines were at the time that didn’t really give a shit about what he did, he achieved, or what he had done.

So I wanted to start our documentary with kind of a teaser of that stuff. But then it goes back into and spends a lot of time with his life and his work. So by the time it comes back and it’s about to get sad and grim, you actually know the person, so hopefully, it’s a little more resonant.

You certainly get to love the films, even though they’re hokey! You get a whole new respect for them.

That certainly happened with me! As I was making it, we hadn’t planned the box set or the collection. That grew as we were making the documentary. It evolved into us doing a bunch more of the films once we’ve got Sam Sherman [Al’s producer on many of his films] involved. We licenced the big two – Dracula vs Frankenstein and Satan’s Sadists. And then as we got deeper into it, it was like well, we may as well do a handful more of them. And then we needed to get clips for the documentary. So then it became about doing a lot of legwork and archaeology to actually find film elements for these films, which had been left in storage for decades at this point. So once we were doing that, it just got to a point where we thought we might as well actually scan the entire movie rather than scan just the clips and licensed more. So then when it got to that point, we needed to find the ones that aren’t Sam Sherman productions – so we may as well just try and do everything that he’s ever done into this massive set. It looks impressive!

Which of Al’s films is your favourite?

Dracula vs Frankenstein just because it was the first one that I saw and I still find it highly entertaining. It’s funny, because Carl [Daft, co-owner of Severin Films with David] and I actually saw it when we were very young. It was one of the first ones we ever picked out of the video shop when we were about 10, I think. We didn’t notice that the story didn’t make sense or anything like that. We just saw all those elements that were in there that made it like this really unique horror movie. And, of course, at that time you were you were reliant on things like Dennis Gifford’s book and the House of Hammer magazine and stuff like that. So you were really only going by images, which were usually the makeup on the monsters and things like that. This had it all as far as we were concerned, even though even at that age, we could tell that’s not what Dracula’s supposed to look like. That’s not what Frankenstein’s monster is supposed to look like. You could tell that and it was confusing, but it didn’t matter because the movie itself was going along with it, so we had to go along with it too. I’m still very fond of it. I have to say that because I’ve seen them all now a few times, I did really enjoy Horror of the Blood Monsters this time. It’s got such a terrible reputation because of what it is – a patchwork job – but it is just so fun to watch and know how they and just going with story behind it of how they actually tried to put together this feature which wasn’t meant to be together. It has such audacity that it’s hard not to admire it.

A lot of Al’s films are available in unauthorised versions on the Internet, and they don’t really get the respect they deserve…

That’s right. And our box set, while I am reluctant to say it makes the films better, but it certainly gives them a fighting chance. They look the way that they’re supposed to look, or at least not the way that they looked in previous incarnations. Particularly in the case of something like Five Bloody Graves, which was shot in Cinemascope by Vilmos Zsigmond and, as you know, scope used to be cropped to a square, so you’re getting such a small percentage of the actual frame as it was framed by this brilliant cinematographer. Go back and see that these bums did actually have an eye behind the lenses as a good starting point.

It’s good that exploitation and B-movies films like that are now been respected…

Yes, I absolutely agree. I mean, they are the movies that I grew up on a lot of our audience grew up on. And, for me, they absolutely deserve the treatment that Criterion will give to some European art-house film. There’s nothing wrong with that either, but we actually one step further, certainly more than other studios would with their catalogue. With their so-called B-movies, once we get hold of them, we have absolute admiration for the filmmaking process and the films themselves. So you want to put a historical context on the best.

How did you get the interview with Fred Fulford, the guy who killed Al?

That was difficult, we were actually well into post-production when we got that phone interview with the murderer, and we had actually debated throughout whether we should even approach him and involve him. I’ve read all the court transcripts and all the articles in the media at the time. There was a pretty cut and dried case. It wasn’t like I was going to go in and do this investigative documentary and find out that he was innocent.

But it became the most frequently asked question: did you get the murderer? So it became pretty obvious that we should at least make the effort, and that led to a whole different journey! We had to find out what the rules are with getting an incarcerated person into a documentary, and in California, you can’t take cameras into prisons and interview inmates on-camera. Technically, you shouldn’t be interviewing them at all. But there are ways to do it that aren’t really particularly policed. And in this case, it was they’re allowed phone calls. So basically all we had to do was record a phone call. We did have to gain Fred’s trust, so to speak. It was my co-producer, Heather Buckley, who managed to do that. She actually became his pen pal for a while, receiving these strange rambling letters from him about how he’s innocent, you should look into these other people. Not actually explaining how he had cement on his hands, and that he’d admitted being the guy who filled in the Jacuzzi. She was the one who called him she called him twice. The first time she said ‘do you mind that we’re recording this?’ and he said he did mind, and he wanted to talk to her again about his innocence. But the next time, he agreed and had a person sitting with him to make sure he was answering things correctly. He didn’t really again give much in terms of detail when she asked other than he was railroaded by the courts and the judge didn’t like him because he looked at his girlfriend funny and stuff like that. So anyway, across an hour of recording we got we had two minutes of usable stuff, which is in the film.

Can you talk about what you’re doing next? We know there’s a Cliff Twemlow feature in the works…

There are several documentaries that I’m a producer on, including the Twemlow one, which is growing – once a I saw the rough cut, I was like, ‘okay, we need to go back and get more because this is a fascinating story’. Which is often the way these things happen – that’s ultimately what happened with Lost Soul and Adamson, they started as something much smaller and grew into what they became. We’ve got one, Kier-La Janisse is doing one on folk horror and Josh Johnson, who works with me, is doing one on Andy Milligan for a box set we’re doing later this year. And then my next one is about Bruceploitation – about all the fake Bruce Lees that came out after he died in the ‘70s. I’m in post-production at the moment, but it was shot a couple of years ago now. I was making it concurrently with Al Adamson and the Dark Shadows one that I did for MPI.

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson is released on Blu-ray on June 1st. Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection, a limited edition, 14-disc Blu-ray set is available to order now.

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ERNIE ALTBACKER knows his way around the DC mythos. From spotlighting B-listers to giving Golden Age heroes a modern polish, Altbacker writes a DC Universe that’s as familiar to the faithful as it is fun for budding fans. And now, with JUSTICE LEAGUE: APOKOLIPS WAR, he has penned a story that’s chaotic, surprising, and emotionally resonant, all while reminding us why we hold these characters and their adventures so close to our hearts. We’re lucky Altbacker pulled out all the stops, not only for the sake of memorable storytelling but for the sobering fact that APOKOLIPS WAR marks the end of DC’s animated continuity. STARBURST recently caught up with Altbacker, who reflected on his time writing the movie, how the process challenged him, and why he emphasised certain characters and relegated others to tertiary roles. We were not ready for this shocker of a conclusion. You’re not, either.

STARBURST: How would you pitch Apokolips War to a new DC fan? 

Ernie Altbacker: If you’re talking about a new fan and they’ve been in a box and don’t know what a superhero is, it will be a little more difficult [to follow]. If they’re aware of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and the Justice League, I would say the Justice League’s mightiest foe, a New God called Darkseid, attacks and conquers Earth. And then the remnants of them and the magical community of Justice League Dark and other superhero groups join together to try to take back the earth and beat Darkseid. 

What were some challenges or narrative obstacles that were unique to crafting Apokolips War? 

Luckily, we had James Tucker’s “Tuckerverse.” He knew all the elements that had to be in there. “I want this, I want this, I want these characters, don’t forget to have that character say something from that movie.” Through that we kind of made this tapestry, this worldwide fight to the death to try and save the planet. The hard parts were wishing you had more screen time for everything. Now you’ve gotta share with everybody. So I kind of centered it around Constantine. It’s going to be Justice League Dark, and I was like, “What if Constantine was the lynchpin, the key member in all of this?” I’ve seen the Justice League go fight a monster or a horde of aliens or something. I’ve seen that story. This one I hadn’t seen before and I kinda approached it through that. When I pitched that part of it, people liked it. 

Piggybacking off that – how did you decide which characters to focus on? How did you decide that it needed to be a Justice League Dark movie? Was it through the relationships you wanted to highlight? Was it through a pure plot perspective? 

Usually, what happens is we get into a room and Jim Krieg is the guy who oversees the writers on all of these (taking over for Alan Burnett). And you’d sit down and start hashing out the story. And James, with that view of the entire continuity, is like, “I wanna get this person in and I think we can get him in through this.” And that’s a big mess. It’s a pile of stuff. And then Mairghread Scott writes a first draft and then I take over after that and make it more Justice League Dark-y. 

Something we were really intrigued by was its emphasis on consequences. You get almost 90 minutes of our heroes messing up in these pretty significant ways. You’ve got Damian Wayne doing something pretty horrible to Dick Grayson. You’ve got these characters messing up for most of it. How do you, as a writer and storyteller, balance this triumph with these tragedies in a way that makes the victories feel hard-won and the losses more devastating? 

That’s kinda the whole thing. How do you make people care? And you wanna do something different. Sometimes, there’s a little bit of magic involved. It becomes apparent after several drafts that the screenplay is leaning toward this. And then during the notes session we would talk and go, “You know, this thing might be a little bittersweet at the end so let’s amp up some of these last-call moments.” On this bittersweet, hopeful note, which was kinda hard to do. Luckily, most people think we stuck the landing on that part but we’ll see five, ten years from now. [laughs]

It’s fascinating how you do that, and the key seems to be the relationships between the characters. The Damian/Batman dynamic, for example, was a really strong aspect of the film. 

We got Batman crying! Where else are you gonna see that? 

What was the most rewarding part of seeing those relationships play out in such a profoundly stressful crisis? 

You figure out – and they approve – who the main characters are gonna be. Constantine from Justice League Dark, Superman’s gonna be our proxy for the Justice League, Raven’s gonna be our proxy from the Titans, and then Suicide Squad—everyone gets an ending that they go to. And writing those, doing the Constantine stuff… Constantine and Zatanna only talk twice in the movie but I sweated both of those conversations because I was setting up these little things that you’ll probably only notice if you watch it twice. Some of the inventive things, some of the people coming back, without getting too spoilery, a lot of it was, “Wouldn’t this be a cool twist?” rather than writing myself into a hole. Writing that stuff was really cool because you usually only get one per movie and in those ones, I’ve got like a half a dozen!

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK: APOKOLIPS WAR is available now on digital download and on DVD, Blu-Ray™, Blu-Ray™ Steelbook & Blu-Ray™ Minifig.