In director James Kondelik’s survival horror film Pitfall, starring Richard Harmon, Alexandra Essoe, and Randy Couture, a young man gets separated from his friends in the woods and falls into a 10-foot-deep pit of spikes, impaling him through the leg and leaving him trapped. He quickly learns that his fall was not an accident. The backwoods slasher is more than just blood and guts, featuring a deeply moving storyline that explores the characters’ emotional core and the events that led them to be deep in these woods.
It’s an affecting film on every level, and goes above and beyond the usual stalk-and-kill vibes.
We spoke with director James Kondelik via Zoom all about Pitfall before it hits theatres in the US on Friday, May 29th.
The “chaotic, revenge-fantasy horror-comedy” Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage Fueled Karma, from writer/director Shane Brady, follows a traditional path for its first few minutes, telling the true story of how Brady and producer Emily Zercher were hacked and had their life savings stolen. From there, furious and desperate, they plot a revenge-fueled take down of the hacker, determined to make him pay for every life he’s destroyed, and that’s when the movie goes absolutely berserk. Magic swords, Santa Claus, and more are employed over the course of Hacked’s “fast-paced, darkly comedic adventure.”
Ahead of the release of Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage Fueled Karma on VOD and digital June 2nd, we hopped on Zoom with writer/director Shane Brady and actors Owen Atlas and Collin Thompson to discuss just what makes this movie such a joyride
Widow’s Bay, the new horror comedy series from Apple TV+, tells the story of a quaint island town 40 miles off the coast of New England, where something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community. There’s no Wi-Fi, spotty cellular reception, and he must contend with superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed. The show is a delight and a half, with stellar performances from the entire cast, stories that will make you laugh with humour and fear, and a fantastic score from composer David Fleming. We hopped on Zoom with the composer to discuss his approach to the series, what attracted him to it, and why the show’s fourth episode, “Beach Reads,” might be his favourite.
Widow’s Bay is now streaming on Apple TV+, with new episodes every Wednesday.
Widow’s Bay (Apple Original Series Soundtrack) is out now from Milan Records. You can follow David Fleming’s work at his website – www.davidflemingmusic.com
Genevieve O’Reilly is best known to STARBURST readers for for her role as Mon Mothma, beginning from REVENGE OF THE SITH and more recently in the second and final season of ANDOR, the Star Wars™ series on Disney+. Andor serves as a prequel to ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS™ STORY, where Genevieve was last seen as the political leader of the Rebel Alliance. She also recently helped promote the STAR WARS™: UNLIMITED TRADING CARD GAME.
Genevieve will next star in Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of MY BRILLIANT CAREER, based on Miles Franklin’s landmark 1901 Australian novel. We caught up with her to find out more about working in the Galaxy’s greatest franchise, as well as the wonderful world of card games.
You’re probably best known to Star Wars™ fans for Star Wars™: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Andor, and Rogue One: A Star Wars™ Story, but you’ve also appeared in a wide range of sci-fi and fantasy projects. Can you tell us about your first role in the genre and how that came about?
I was just starting out as an actor when I auditioned for a young Mon Mothma in George Lucas’ Revenge of the Sith. I didn’t think much about genre. It was the character, the woman I was interested in. I loved the idea of quietly confident female leaders in high level secret meetings. Senators, politicians, leaders risking the unknown to gather together to voice dissent about a brutal leader. I had grown up with stories of Irish people, who for hundreds of years were meeting secretly to give voice in opposition to their oppression under a cruel empire. So although there were lavish costumes and swathes of blue screens, the story felt very human to me.
What is it that continues to draw you back to these worlds?
I really value genre pieces. That under the guise of wildly creative worlds, extra terrestrial creatures, customs and cultures we can examine our own humanity.
How does it feel to be part of the Star Wars™ universe?
I feel terribly honoured to be a tiny part of a huge story, an immensely valuable cultural tale that is Star Wars™.
Mon Mothma has become such an iconic figure within Star Wars. At what point did you realise that you would always be the Mon Mothma for fans? I am so grateful for the beautiful accident it was that somehow it was me who got to step into Caroline’s shoes. I had always wanted to do her and George Lucas (because he was the one that cast me as Mon) and the fans proud. I was hopeful that in Andor we could really elevate not just her presence but her emotional and intellectual weight and value to the idea of that iconic Star Wars™ rebellion. Tony Gilroy provided the space and story for Mon to shine. I just took the flag and waved it.
Was there a particular moment where you really felt how deeply audiences had connected with your portrayal?
Last year I went to my first convention in Liverpool. I met fans from all over the world. They shared with me just how much Mon and particularly her journey in Andor meant to them. They told me of personal struggles of their own and how much her voice meant to them -particularly Mon’s speech from Season 2. I was deeply moved and touched that people shared their stories with me and I think I understood that day for the first time how much she meant to them.
Any memorable fan encounters which may have consolidated this?
Hilariously, I’ve had a number of people come up to me on the tube in London to ask me about the dance sequence at Leida’s wedding. It’s such a fun thing to chat about. People love that she got to go wild on the dance floor!
You’ve recently stepped into the world of tabletop gaming through Star Wars™: Unlimited Trading Card Game. Tell us a bit about your first experience of the game? Look there’s no sugar coating this. I was rubbish!! I grew up loving playing games with my family and now with my kids we play games almost every week. So when I was contacted and told that Mon was in a Star Wars™Card Game and would I like to come and play I quite literally jumped with joy. But this, my friends, is a game on another level! It is so wonderfully multifaceted! I was sent the game and I sat down on a Sunday eve to play it with my kids. We had no idea what was going on. It was so funny. My little boy suggested we go on YouTube to find a tutorial. Genius idea! But I was still rubbish at it, so I needed some serious tutors.
How did you build on your knowledge of the game?
Krishiv and Hannah who I met at the Disney event were super fun and so so patient with me. They talked me through the world of the game the strategies, the play. They were brilliant. And because it is Star Wars™, they were obviously the Jedis and I was a mere Padawan.
What have you discovered about the game, or even about yourself, through playing? That in the gaming world I’m probably only good for comedy value, and that I definitely need to hook up with Krishiv and Hannah before playing again!
A big part of Star Wars™: Unlimited Trading Card Game is how it brings fans together to share stories and experiences. Tell us about your recent experience meeting players and fans.
My lasting memory of my day at Disney with the Star Wars™: Unlimited players is the sense of camaraderie and community that I witnessed and got to share in. People from all over the country, from different walks of life, each at very different levels of the game gathering to sit and chat and play. It was a wonderful, generous spirited atmosphere.
What was it like to hear directly from players about what Star Wars™: Unlimited Trading Card Game means to them?
Some of the people I met had been playing the game for a long time and collected many different cards over the years and had sophisticated game strategies. Some were professional players. There was a really cool team of 4 friends who were off to Europe to compete in an international competition together. Others were newer to the game and were building confidence. It was a really positive, encouraging and inclusive environment – I found the day and the people I met genuinely inspiring.
Any stand out conversations or fan stories that stayed with you? It was super cool that there were people I could fan out over the art work of the cards with. I am a sucker for beautiful character art and illustrations. And that is a huge part of Star Wars™ culture and history. So a couple of people showed me some older cards that I hadn’t seen before with stunning illustrations. So cool.
How did it feel to connect with fans in a more intimate, face-to-face setting through the game?
I could be wrong here, but my experience of that day was that the game allowed for a more intimate expression of Star Wars™ fandom and game playing than say, a convention. There was an intimacy to the conversations between people and expression which felt different.
You have a real gift for playing composed, authoritative characters. How much fun is it to step into those roles? That’s kind of you to say. I have had the good fortune of playing women with very different lives, but Mon is definitely the most authoritative and composed. And she is extraordinary to play because she has to hold so much within her. She is so different to me. I come from a very simple background and a quiet history. I loved exploring all the tradition and the political world she has to navigate. There were so many layers to her. I don’t think we got to them all.
What do you enjoy most about embodying those kinds of characters?
I love having a character that has secrets. I’ll often invent a secret for characters I play. But Mon is a warren of secrets held. She felt like a time bomb at times.
Finally, looking beyond Star Wars™, is there a genre project (TV, film, or even stage) that you’d love to take on next?
My daughter loves reading fantasy novels. She’s been obsessed with the Throne of Glass and Fourth Wing books. So if they ever get made, I’ll have to pitch hard to be a part of them.
Any genres or formats you haven’t explored yet but would like to?
I mean, a musical would be fun!
What kind of character would feel like a new challenge or departure for you?
I’d love to play a villain. That would be so much fun!
With the recent 4K release of the 1987 sci-fi comedy INNERSPACE, we spoke with the film’s legendary director JOE DANTE to discuss the movie…
STARBURST: Was the script already in place when you came on the project?
Joe Dante: I was offered a script by the producers that was a serious treatment of the same story. I said, “People are going to laugh at this. This is really ridiculous”. And so I went away and did other stuff. In the interim, Steven Spielberg got hold of it, and he hired a writer, Jeff Boam, who went on to write Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Jeff had the idea to turn it into a comedy. His premise was ‘what would happen if Dean Martin was shrunk down and ejected into Jerry Lewis’. I was a big Martin and Lewis fan when I was a kid, so I obviously related to that. So I said, “Yeah, OK, I can do this”. I was coming off a movie called Explorers, which was a career ender. I thought I should just try to make a mainstream movie. You know, not full of weird stuff like I always do. And by the time I was done with it, it turned out to be just another weird Joe Dante thing. I couldn’t help myself.
Did you have in your head that you were going to make your version of the Fantastic Voyage?
No. In fact, I was trying to differentiate it from Fantastic Voyage because I was very disappointed when I saw it, even though I was a big Richard Fleischer fan. It just didn’t it didn’t work for me. It seemed overproduced, and I knew immediately who the villain was. The casting was so obvious. I appreciated it for what it was, but it just didn’t do much for me, so I didn’t think of this as an offshoot of that.
What was the biggest challenge with the miniature effects?
Well, the team at ILM won an Academy Award for this, and they had to create an entire human body interior, all without CGI or anything like that. It was pretty impressive. I’m told that there’s a lot of material on the 4K disc about how this stuff is done. And some of which might surprise me because I wasn’t there while they were working. One great example was at the end of the picture, there’s a big car chase where the lead characters are in the car and behind them are the two villains, but they’ve been shrunk to half size. And to do that, Dennis Muren, who picked up the award, suggested we use a technique called the Schüfftan process, which involves placing the camera at a particular spot and building larger sets farther away, so they appear smaller because of the way you’re shooting it. And you can’t move the camera off the nodal point, or it destroys the illusion. Your eye is fooled into thinking that what you’re watching is actually on the same plane as opposed to being far away. So our actors in the back of the car had to correlate with the people in front of the car. And they had to be choreographed in a way so that it looked like they were actually near them, because in fact, they were actually far away. It was very challenging but a lot of fun.
Martin Short is perfect as Jack. Did you allow him much improvisation?
You don’t allow Martin Short to improvise. You enjoy his improvisation. Take one is going to be different from take five. And take five is going to be different from take ten. So the more takes you do, the more the character will embellish itself. He would beg for more takes in the voice of Katherine Hepburn. [Imitating Hepburn] “Joe, one more. Just one more take, please!” And it would always get better and better. The problem with working with an actor like that is that sometimes people who are in the scene with him have already given their best performance at take three. They’re running on fumes for the rest of it. But since they’re not the lead characters of the movie, you really have to go with the main character. And very often we would use the first take, even though he did a whole lot of great stuff. But he was constantly improvising, making the scenes better. Luckily, because of the way we shot the movie, even though he and Dennis Quaid are never in the same scene, they were always on the set together. So they could talk to each other and they could improvise and they could overlap each other and not have to be doing it to a pre-recorded track. A lot of their camaraderie comes from the fact that they were actually able to interact in real time.
We guess that made it easier for you as a director as well?
Oh, absolutely. If you cast the picture correctly and these people know their parts, then they can improvise within the character. And a lot of stuff that they say wasn’t in the script. They just come up with it.
Charles Ardai is probably best known for creating Hard Case Crime, a retro-styled line of crime novels that revives the look of the pulp fiction of the 1940s and 50s, and GUN HONEY and HEAT SEEKER, a pair of sexy action thriller comics inspired by James Bond and Modesty Blaise. We caught up with them to find out more about their new book, Heat Seeker : Exposed.
How would you pitch Heat Seeker to someone who thinks a hardboiled detective is a kind of candy?
HEAT SEEKER is the story of a very beautiful female criminal who, for a price, will help you disappear if you’ve been marked for death. She uses elaborate techniques of deception to get you out of danger, taking all the heat onto herself. She’s reckless, a thrill-seeker, and her high-octane adventures find her constantly on the edge of disaster – like a cross between the Now You See Me heist movies and Mission Impossible.
And how would you pitch it to a fan of the Maltese Falcon?
Dahlia Racers, a gorgeous femme fatale who lies for a living, threads her way through a web of fellow criminals, persistent cops, dirty reporters, and shadowy European conspirators, trying to turn a dishonest buck while risking her life at every turn.
What’s your personal favourite thing about the hardboiled genre?
I love the atmosphere, the cynical voices, the way there are no good guys, only varying shades of gray; I love the twists and betrayals, and the velocity at which the stories race forward, leaving you breathless. A good hardboiled novel really is like a movie, just one that plays in your head.
If you could have coffee with any one character from your novels, who would it be and why?
From my novels? Probably Susan Feuer, the former stripper turned private eye in the books LITTLE GIRL LOST and SONGS OF INNOCENCE that I wrote under the pen name “Richard Aleas.” She’s whip smart and can see through all your bullshit, but she’s fiercely loyal and cares about the people in her life. She’d be an awfully good friend to have in your corner in a crisis. Now, if I could have coffee with someone from one of my comics it would be pretty hard to turn down a date with Dahlia Racers from HEAT SEEKER.
And which character really needs to calm down?
Dahlia. When she’s not leaping out of a crashing plane without a parachute or from the top of one racing New York City subway car to another, she’s getting into gunfights on nude beaches – all exciting stuff, to be sure, but damn, this lady needs a nice cup of tea and some Me Time on the sofa.
How long does it take you to get to a first draft?
Pulp writers don’t know from “first” drafts. There’s only one draft – the words go straight from your brain to your typewriter to the printer’s press and on to the spinner rack in your neighborhood drugstore. And you write that one draft in a white heat. I wrote my fastest book in just 27 days. My longest, FIFTY-TO-ONE, probably took three months.
What’s your favourite funny thing about the genre?
How so many people stubbornly refuse to take it seriously. Sure, crime novels are fun, they’re entertainment, no question – but the best of them ask tough questions and cast a bitter lens on the world we live in, and they’ll break your heart as well as any Pulitzer winner. Hell, THE GREAT GATSBY is a crime novel. OF MICE AND MEN is pure noir. But those books get taught in schools, and Raymond Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP and THE LONG GOODBYE don’t, and why not? It’s funny when you think about it. Not funny ha-ha, though.
What does the first day working on a book like this look like compared to the last day?
The first day? Desperation. The last day? Relief. “Can I do this…?” “I can’t possibly do this.” “Dear god, I did it.”
Doctor Who or Doctor No?
I grew up on science fiction (Tom Baker was my Doctor), but I also grew up watching James Bond movies and film noir on TV, and in the end it was Bond and Bogie that won my heart. So I have to give the edge to Dr. No.
Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile?
I’m more a train guy than a boat guy, plus that twist – that brilliant, brilliant twist! Orient Express all the way.
Truth or Beauty?
It’s a false dichotomy. Read your Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Or as Star Trek asked, “Is There in Truth no Beauty?” They’re a pair, friend, conjoined twins, and you get ’em both or you get neither. Beauty may be the bally that lures you behind the curtain, but truth is waiting there with a club to knock you cold and pick your pockets. All you can hope is that there’s a smile on your face when you go down.
How would you pitch this to someone who loves the Jeff Wayne version?
I grew up exposed to the Jeff Wayne version from being a young kid in 90s Lowestoft. I would listen to my late father’s L.P, and pour over the incredible artwork in the album sleeves by Geoff Taylor, Mike Trim, and Peter Goodfellow. The song was the standout piece for me on that album, so when coming to read the novel and finding out that the Thunder Child’s involvement in the story is very minimal always got me wondering – “What happened to the crew of that ship? What did they go through before the Martian’s melted their valiant hearts?”. So, my pitch would be, if you loved the musical version, we have a story here that compliments the one that Jeff Wayne, and all the artists involved when the album was originally released and those who came after, delivered, made with genuine love and care for the original text, but you don’t need to be familiar with that to enjoy it. Pop on the album, sit back and follow our crew through to their fateful end.
Why Thunderchild?
The answer to this should be “Why has there NOT been a Thunder Child comic?” The book sets it up as the last stand of humanity, the moment when all hope seems lost. Then that, coupled with Jeff Wayne’s incredible musical version, really hammers home that this ship, its crew, made the noble sacrifice to ensure others could survive. It’s pretty confusing to me that no one in comics has ever felt the need to explore this concept. So, we decided to tell our own story, set to the backdrop of
Wells’ novel, about the crew onboard that obsolete, vastly outgunned and outmatched vessel, and make you care about our cadre of characters as they barrelled towards their fateful showdown with the Martian invaders.
What’s your personal favourite about War of the Worlds?
The themes that Wells’ explored in the novel. This idea that there is something out there that is just exponentially more powerful than we are, that they view us with disdain and set out to destroy us without thinking about perhaps the natural consequences of their actions. It’s reflective in the imperialism of the time that the novel was written, this idea of superiority over the unknown and how those with bigger sticks and larger rocks always attempt to crush those they see as beneath them, and how at the darkest of times, those who seek to control and destroy are offset and thwarted by something which may seem inconsequential. That, and the GIANT MARTIAN HEAT-RAY FIRING DEATH MACHINES! The Tripods are iconic. I do love some solid sci-fi vehicles.
What’s your favourite thing about this book?
I assume “Everything” is a cop-out answer, yes? So, my honest answer would be just having had the opportunity to make it. Working with Matt is always amazing (We’ve known each other for years and have worked on multiple indie projects together in many capacities), having Kevin Castaniero onboard as artist and Simon Gough on colours really rounded out the concept and idea. Kevin’s art is beautiful, both intricate and emotional in all the right places, and simultaneously devastating and overwhelming in all the action set pieces. Coupled with Simon’s beautiful colour work, it really does hammer home the story we wished to tell. So being able to tell it through to the conclusion with this team is probably my absolute favourite thing about this book.
And, on a personal note, it was the first comic project that my father was genuinely enthused about me doing. He was the first person to read the first issue/third of the book, and really loved it. Unfortunately he passed away suddenly before we completed the book, so my favourite thing about this book is the connection to my dad and his excitement at something I was working on.
If you could have coffee with any one character from Thunder Child who would it be and why?
For me, it would have to be Miriam Young. If she was a real person, she would have been one of the first suffragettes for sure. She’s well read, open to ideas, forward thinking and yet, capable of understanding two sides of an argument and attempting to find a compromise. I think she would be a fantastic person to sit and have a coffee with (and hopefully, Simon Young, her husband, would later join us as well). Miriam and Simon very much reflect Matt and my world views and principles, so it would be great to speak with them and learn from them.
And which character really needs to calm down?
Major Makepeace. I nearly said I would love a coffee with him, but he is very much the yang to Miriam and Simon’s ying. He is a product of the landed gentry and a lifetime spent in service to Her Majesty’s armed forces. He represents single minded thinking, the opinions of the old guard and parrots the superiority of the British Empire’s propaganda. The story really does throw him through the wringer, and makes him challenge his world views and his perception of those around him.
How long does it take you to get to a first draft?
I suppose that depends on how you view a first draft. One of the best things about working with Matt, and with Mike Sambrook on the other books I have co-written, is that when you find someone who you click with when writing and coming up with ideas, the story just flows nicely out of the pair of you.
My experience of getting to a finished first draft stage of Thunder Child was Matt and I coming up with specific sections of the story we wanted to tell and then between us, coming up with the connective tissue that would form those ideas and instances into a cohesive narrative. That is to say, in a simpler way, Matt and I really gel when we’re writing together, we get what one another wants to explore in the narrative and both of us check our egos at the door. Once we started plotting things out, the first draft came pretty quickly between us; the structure of the book, how we navigated our cast and crew towards their fateful showdown, the themes and clashes we wished to introduce and then the set pieces and action we wished to include. I don’t have a specific time frame, but I remember we did wrap it up pretty quickly.
What’s your favourite funny thing about the genre?
My favourite funny thing about Victorian/Edwardian sci-fi is just how relevant the themes and the ideas that were explored in those pioneering works are to us today. I suppose funny, in an ironic way, is a better way of summarising it.
It shows that, despite moving forward exponentially as a species in a technological way, the route problems and struggles that afflict and affect us all are still prevalent now, and that we are all still looking for that escapism, that potentially cataclysmic thing or incident that occurs and acts as the great leveller for society. Always make me chuckle nervously like Ralph Wiggum in danger whenever I sit and think about it for longer than a passing moment.
What does the first day working on a book like this look like compared to the last day?
So, every book you write and work on takes a little piece of you, in my experience. This existed as some half baked idea in my head for a good 25+ years, just the experience of following the crew through the opening days of the invasion up to their epic showdown with the Martians. So I went into this project with gusto and enthusiasm, and I don’t think that has ever waned.
I am just as childishly excited about it as I was in those first few days of Matt and I coming up with the story beats, or when Kevin’s art first started landing in our inboxes, or when Simon Gough first started colouring up those pages. Seeing it develop and flourish and come to fruition, despite many roadblocks, hardships and personal challenges, never dampened my spirit.
Wolfman or Frankenstein?
Wolfman. But only because I am also a hairy beast whose mere visage causes those to flee in terror. Seriously though, the wolfman being this character who is a slave to his darker whims and urges when the moon is full, unable to control them in that state, is a really dark, interesting theme to explore. The guilt that follows, the desperation to stop, or the desire to lean into these moments of fury and Id fueled rampages is such an interesting way to look at a character and explore that.
Martians or Humans?
Humans. I have this inherent, probably naive, belief that humans, in the darkest of times, have an ability to pull together, despite our differences, to overcome threats and pull together and learn from one another. Admittedly, in the times we are currently living in, that belief is being pushed to its absolute limits, but I love this idea of plucky people, working together, learning from one another and trying to overcome something which is a direct threat to our existence in a tangible, real way.
I am a big player and lover of the Warhammer 40k universe, and my main army is the Astar Militarum (Imperial Guard in old money), as I love those 1,000,000:1 shots where the plucky guardsman takes out the Daemonic monster or Alien overlord. So, that was a big influence on my decision here.
Truth or Beauty? I would say the truth. But the argument can be made that there is a certain beauty in truth, or vice versa. It is a belief of mine that deception and malcontent can affect a person physically, showing in their looks and the way they present themselves to the world.
Again, call this naivety, but truth – be it living your truth, being truthful to yourself and those around you, simply being able to show who you are to the world – is far more beautiful than any outward beauty.
How would you pitch Mars One to a fan of Star Trek?
I would pitch it the same way as I would to anyone: it’s an epic global thriller about a one-way colonisation mission to Mars and three unlikely heroes trying to save themselves, and the people they love, from disaster.
But I guess what might appeal to Star Trek fans in particular is that the novel centers around humanity’s inherent desire to “boldly go where no man has gone before”, as well as focusing on the ultimate costs of exploration, and the responsibilities we – as a species – have to not only the planet we choose to call home, but also to each other.
And how would you pitch it to someone who is more into fantasy than science fiction?
I’d say sadly there’s no dragons, but there is most definitely a hero’s quest at the very heart of it, along with intrigue, adventure, and an enigmatic cat.
Why should I read this book?
Because it might just make you think about your place in the world and realise that everyone can play a part in our planet’s future. And also, because it’s great fun and you’ll make a debut author incredibly happy!
Are we ever going to Mars?
Yes. I think it’s safe to say we will. Although how we will get there and who will ultimately be paying the price for it (both financially and ethically) is a very interesting and important question. A new space race is already upon us. And with private companies and wealthy individuals becoming more and more imbedded within national space programmes, as well pursuing their own missions and agendas, I think it will also happen sooner than we think; especially if there is power and profit to be gained from it.
(Note: the first steps to Mars are already very much underway, as NASA’s current Artemis programme is launching new lunar exploration missions as we speak, and that is being used as a road test for future Martian exploration!)
What is the most interesting sci-fi element in your books? Why?
I think the most interesting sci-fi element in the book is that everything within it is possible: it’s fiction based on science and technology that we have right now. If someone had the means and the guts, they could launch a ship to Mars tomorrow (although, whether it would get there in one piece, is another thing entirely!). But probably the most “sci-fi” of all elements in the novel is a device within the narrative that runs off of the body’s very own bioelectricity. Bio-energy harvesting is an area of science that is moving rapidly fast and some of my initial research into the magic of bioelectricity was sparked (pardon the pun) by working with Naomi Alderman on the television adaptation of her incredible novel THE POWER.
If anyone is interested in more information around electricity within the body and the new science of our body’s ‘electrome’, I’d highly recommend Sally Adee’s book WE ARE ELECTRIC, which shows how concepts that have previously only been the stuff of science fiction are now becoming a reality. All of which feels pleasingly circular when you realise that it was Galvani’s studies of bioelectricity that inspired Mary Shelley to write the very first work of science fiction: the incomparable FRANKENSTEIN. Science inspires fiction which, in turn, becomes science.
How long does it take you to get to a first draft?
This book was a long time in the making, as I originally pitched it as a television show when I was working as a script editor. So, it was several years before I attempted to write it as a novel. When I did finally start, it took me about three years to get a full first draft, as I was also holding down a day job, and then I worked on it for another year, rewriting and editing, before I was ready to send it out into the world.
What’s your favourite joke or pun in the book?
It’s not a joke, per se, but as a sci-fi fan and self-declared nerd I had fun dropping in some pop-culture references and nods to my favourite films, TV series, or books: MEN IN BLACK inspired a really key element to the plot; a character makes a dig at the THE MARTIAN (a book and film I hugely love and respect, by the way!); there’s Star Wars references; a Game of Thrones reference; Pixar references; also a few in-jokes from the TV industry about self-important producers (being very aware that I am a producer myself!). And, of course, a cat is key to the story, so I couldn’t avoid a pussy pun. And watch out for the bit where a character quite literally lets the cat out of the bag. I shamefully made myself chuckle with that one.
What is science fiction for?
I slightly touched upon this already, but I think it’s for three key things:
First and foremost: to entertain. That’s what stories of any kind are for. To tell stories, and to entertain other people with them, is the most basic of human instincts. It’s the way we connect as a species.
To make us question who we are, and where we’re headed. What science fiction is brilliant at doing is allowing us to slightly distance ourselves from reality, so that we can think more clearly and critically about the human condition and the world that we find ourselves in. And when we’re able to ask questions, we’re also then able to change things.
To inspire: so many innovations, technological breakthroughs, and even moments of political change, have been inspired by works of science fiction. If MARS ONE inspires someone to question things, to make a change (however big or small), or even to become an astronaut, a coder, or an environmental activist, I would be thrilled and honoured beyond words.
Mars Attacks or Mars Bars?
Mars Attacks! (I’m not a huge fan of caramel)
Dragons or Death Stars?
Dragons
Truth or Beauty? Truth. Always. Even if it’s painful.
Back in 1998, Jake West made a British vampire film that gave the age-old monster a different slant. With model Eileen Daly playing the rubber-clad Lilith Silver and character actor Christopher Adamson as the sinister Sethane Blake, the movie followed the ageless Lilith as she carries out her chosen profession as an assassin-for-hire.
STARBURST: What inspired you to make the film?
Jake West: I grew up becoming a vampire fan, initially with the Universal Draculas, and then obviously the Hammer stuff. And from there, I was hooked. And being a kid in the ‘80s, I got treated to seeing like The Lost Boys at the cinema, Near Dark, Fright Night, and The Hunger on video. All these amazing vampire movies, which were cropping up at that point. Growing up as a sort of teenage goth, punk vampire fan, I thought that if I was going to do a low-budget film, a film about a vampire would be a great thing, because I was really into that scene. And there was a thriving cultural scene in the UK at that point. There were vampire societies and appreciation groups. And I started going along to the London Vampire Group and meeting the people there, many of them are extras in the film’s scenes at the Transylvania club. I thought ‘what can I do that would be different to other vampire films I’ve seen?’ My thinking was if I was a vampire and I was living in ‘90s Britain, I would still have to kill people to live. So what would be cool if I had a job where I got paid to kill people? So I thought, an assassin, a hit person. That would be really a great job for a vampire to do. As Lilith says, it would take all the angst out of deciding who she has to kill. She just has a hit list and she gets paid for doing it. It solves the problem. And then I thought, if she were an assassin, it’s quite likely she would then have a bunch of enemies. And the idea spiralled from there.
Can you talk about shooting on film?
This is this was shot in 1996, before digital video was even a thing. If you wanted to make a film and have any chance of getting it released, it really had to be shot on film to be technically good enough. Unless you did a Cliff Twemlow [laughs]. But then you would only get a video release at best. I didn’t want to shoot on video because it looked crap at that point. It was awful. Shooting on film gave it that aesthetic as well, and, having done the restoration, it looks better now than it did in the ‘90s. Being able to go back to the original camera negative is beautiful. Film has that beautiful image, and vampire films, particularly, work really nicely on film with all the grain and the analogue scratchiness of it, because they’re from another time.
What else did you do to stretch the resources?
An example of low-budget thinking was shooting in locations that I knew, and I’d grown up in, that I’d shot in before over the years, and I knew that they looked great on film. I wasn’t turning up to a place for the first time. I knew all these places, and they were all within striking distance of where we lived or where we were staying. That was a smart move. And stuff like props, for instance, Lilith Silver’s got two guns in the film, which are blank-firing guns, which I bought because back in the ‘90s, things were a bit more unregulated. You could buy replica weaponry, which actually fired, not through the front, but they literally eject the shells – they’re proper guns. Everyone else shooting a gun in the film uses the same two guns. They were being passed around. All the guys in the long shots are just holding plastic toy guns [laughs]. Lilith is effectively being shot at with the same gun that she’s holding. But that’s the fun thing about film, you figure out, I can basically service the entire production with these two blank firing guns. I think they cost about 120 -150 quid at the time, which was quite a big part of the budget, but it was completely necessary, and they were great.
What were the conditions of the film elements when you when you came to look at them?
Fortunately, I had all of the original elements because we’d done the theatrical release, which we’d blown up from 16mm up to full 35mm in 1998. Now, those elements have been stored in the lab after we did the telecine for the video release, back in ‘98. It was just an SD transfer because HD wasn’t a thing at that point. But in the early noughties, I got a phone call from Manga saying they don’t want to carry on paying for the storage of all these film cans. So I had an option. Either I can have them or they’re going to get binned.
What!? That’s crazy!
Yeah! I said, no, please make sure you get them sent to me! I was living in Camden at that point. I got a delivery of all the film cans, including all of the original camera negative cuts, all the A – B rolls and the C rolls for the VFX material. So I’ve got a load of film cans, which I’ve been carrying around with me for the last 27 years [laughs]. Fortunately, I’ve managed to keep them in fairly cool environments, but not stored professionally. I didn’t know what state the elements were going to be in as I hadn’t opened the cans, because there’s nothing you can do looking at rolls of film. I got in touch with Silver Salt Restoration, which is one of the best restoration companies in the UK. They’ve done a lot of stuff for Hammer, the BBC, Arrow, and loads of people. They use an ARRI XT film scanner, which is the best film scanner you can get. It’s like a quarter of a million pounds’ piece of kit. Marie at Silver Salt went hand by hand through all of the rolls just to check the elements. And they were in pretty good shape, considering. They then cleaned it and then they scanned it. I then had to rebuild the entire timeline in DaVinci Resolve. So it’s the third time I’ve fucking redone this because we originally did it on video, and then I had to re-transfer it to do the negative cut back in the ‘90s. So, the elements were in really good shape, but they did need a bit of manual de-spotting and painting out scratches, because at the beginning and end of the reels you get a bit more damage. I couldn’t afford to pay Silver Salt to do that, so I had to do it all myself. So that took about six months, going through frame by frame, because I wanted it to look as perfect as it could. That was really painstaking, but it was worth it. I saw details in there that I’ve never seen before. It was incredible. This is how I always kind of wanted it to look. I did a new grade on it as well. The grade was done in sympathy with the original grade. I didn’t want to change anything in the edit. I just wanted to make it look as good as it could. You’ve got so much more control with the grading tools now. I could really get into areas like isolating her eyes, blood, and things like that, which I wanted to do originally, but the technology didn’t exist at the time. Considering we shot on the smallest 16mm gauge you can get – this wasn’t Super 16 – it’s incredible the image detail that’s on it.
The film’s been very influential, as we see in the disc’s feature-length documentary…
Yes, and it was nice going back to the legacy and talking with others about it for Vampires Forever. What was really nice to learn was that the film’s legacy inspired many other people to do things. Obviously, there are people who didn’t like it, and they thought it was trashy and low budget, and that’s fine. But the people who did like it, the audience that embraced it, and there were a lot of filmmakers who were inspired to do their own movies because of it. That’s a really positive thing, and I get a lot of joy from it. As a filmmaker, you can’t ask much more than that. What’s nice is that when we took it to FrightFest, where we premiered the 4K restoration at the festival’s 25th anniversary, there were a whole bunch of people who had never seen it, and people were discovering it for the first time, and they really loved it.
For audiences who’ve only seen the video or DVD version, why should they check out the 4K version?
I hope they see that the film’s quality feels much more like a movie now. That original telecine was quite basic, and it was very bright. At the time, a lot of people didn’t even know it was shot on film, whereas if you watch it now, I think it’s pretty clear it was. You can get a sense of that texture because I didn’t remove the grain. It has that texture that was missing in the SD video. You forget how soft it was. The filmmaker Emma Dark said it feels more like a horror film now because it has a slightly more sinister tone. I’d really like people to appreciate the film, but also with this particular release and the sheer amount of extras on it, particularly the Vampires Forever documentary. There’s some incredible archive footage of all the stuff that was happening at that point in the ’90s, and I really think it takes you back to that period. It’s a standalone 96-minute documentary that took me nearly two years to do. And this is just an extra! If you liked my Cliff Twemlow documentary, Mancunian Man, then Vampires Forever is the goth equivalent
Mark Lawrence is a novelist best known for The Broken Empire trilogy. He also won the David Gemmell Award for For Fantasy. His latest novel, Daughter of Crows, is the first of his new series, The Academy of Kindness. We caught up with him to find out more.
How would you pitch Daughter of Crows to someone who loved The Book That Wouldn’t Burn?
I would say that it starts a trilogy that, like all my trilogies, is pretty different from my others. Give it a go if you enjoyed my writing – don’t go in expecting more of the same.
It shares a somewhat literary edge with TBTWB and has some thoughtful moments on the themes it has in focus – in this case a person’s whole life, and how the years change us and how they don’t. It also looks at how experience shapes us and how we resist shaping.
On the other hand, it’s a much darker and more violent book with far less charm and whimsy on display. And how would you pitch it to someone new to your work?
I am allergic to pitching. Yet here I am. There’s the surface level excitement of a badass old lady with a background that could be described as ultra-dark academia, getting pulled back into conflicts she thought she had escaped. And there’s the somewhat deeper examination of a life and how age changes us, not just physically, but at the core.
Which character would you want to avoid being trapped in a lift with, and why?
Being trapped in a lift sounds so unappealing that the question of “with whom?” becomes secondary. I guess I would want to avoid being trapped in a lift with someone skinny because if we were trapped for a long time someone with more meat on their bones would be more likely to sustain me until rescue arrived.
How long does it take you to get to a first draft?
I generally only do a first draft, and that typically takes between 6 and 9 months.
Sunshine or Lollipops?
Dragons or Death Stars?
Truth or Beauty?
I was a research scientist for 20 years, my first degree was in physics and my Ph.D in an area of statistical mathematics. Truth or Beauty makes me think of quarks. Sunshine or lollipops, here I’m too busy trying to work out the connection to answer the question. Dragons or Death Stars reminds me that I’m always being asked why a scientist chose fantasy over scifi. But it’s dragons every time. Though I don’t really like dragons in my fantasy books that much.
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