Feature Category: Interviews

Come convention season, Dark Horse Comics is ready to dazzle, usually boasting some great new projects and special guest appearances that are sure to have fans talking. At this year’s C2E2 (Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo), we had the privilege of chatting with Dark Horse Editor-in-Chief Scott Allie. As one of the most prominent editors in the comics industry, Allie has earned the respect of fellow creators and fans all over the world. During our brief but revealing interview, we learned more than we could have ever imagined about the inner workings of one of the biggest comic book publishers on the planet.

STARBURST: As Editor-in-Chief of Dark Horse, what do you find most challenging about being in charge? What does that entail for you?

Scott Allie: We’re really a team, but Mike is really in charge. I’m very involved in helping all the editors get their projects going and keep their projects on track, so the challenge is juggling a lot of conflicting responsibilities. I still edit a lot of books, about twice as many books as most of the staff, so keeping on top of that is bananas.

What do you find most rewarding about it? There’s got to be a reason for you to keep going, even in the midst of your hefty workload.

Overall, the most rewarding thing about my job is getting into new creative territory, like any time I get to do something creatively that I don’t feel like I’ve done before. That’s the most rewarding thing. Right now, this whole Aliens, Predator, Prometheus, AVP thing we’re doing is exciting. The thing to me that is most exciting about it is we hired all these local writers, five writers in the Portland area, and we’re all jammin’ out the story together. Each writer goes home and writes their own script, but the overall direction of the whole thing, the interconnectedness of it all, comes from these writers brainstorming together, coming up with ideas, and managing that process. My job isn’t so much coming up with the ideas as it is managing the process, keeping everybody motivated and collaborating. It’s really fun, and it’s similar to things I’ve done before, like the writer’s summits that we’ve done for Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Joss Whedon, but this is taking it to a different level and it’s an amazing challenge. Being Editor-in-Chief allows me to put these pieces in place to do it, so if I was just an editor or a senior editor I wouldn’t have the room to orchestrate this sort of thing.

What genre of comics did you find yourself reading most as a kid?

Horror comics have always been the main thing for me. I love scary stuff, I love monsters, and I love drawing that evokes a lot of mystery and atmosphere. That’s the stuff I’ve always loved the best. I read a lot of superhero comics as a teenager, but I don’t read them so much anymore unless there’s a creator I particularly love who I want to follow.

When did you decide you wanted to work in the comic book industry? When did it hit you as something you wanted to do for a living?

It happened gradually. I loved comics and I made comics all through high school and college. In sophomore year of college, when it was time to declare a major, I asked myself, “Do I do art? Do I do literature? Do I do writing? What am I going to do?” Not my advisor, but another faculty member said, “Why don’t you combine the two and create your own major in comics?” I was going to college in the late ’80s, and there weren’t really programs for comics at that time, but this one faculty member said, “Why don’t you do this? You should come up with your own thing.” That was a big step toward taking comics seriously and making it not just the thing that I was most interested in but the thing I was actually working toward. When I did my senior project, which was like this 70 page comic, and presented it, some woman sitting in the front row said, “When you leave here, are you going to work in comics?” I laughed at her, because I knew it was what I wanted to do but I wasn’t banking on it. But when she asked me that question, I realized maybe it is as simple as that. I just need to decide I’m doing this and really focus my energy not just on making comics for my own enjoyment but turning it into a career. The first step was knowing I wanted to get a job in publishing, which was my first conquest in 1991. Then, a few years later, I got into Dark Horse.

That’s awesome! Forgive the basic question, but who was your favorite comic creator growing up? It’s always interesting to know which creators like and influence a fellow creator’s work.

Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Harvey Kurtzman were the main three who convinced me to do this more than anyone. I was so blown away by what Alan, Frank, and Harvey did that I said to myself, “I have to figure this out. I have to figure out how these guys do it.”

You kind of touched on this a minute ago, but what about the industry, if anything, was surprising to you when you first broke into comics?

I remember I was at a store in San Francisco and Matt Wagner (who at the time was doing Batman and drawing Sandman with Neil Gaiman) was doing a signing there. I was about to graduate from college, and I asked him, “So, do you make a living doing comics?” He just laughed and said, “Yeah, I make a living doing this.” Still, at that point, I didn’t really understand that this was an industry, that it was more than a hobbyist kind of thing. So finding out that you could work hard and make a good living out of it was surprising. I really like the community of the comic industry and how people know and support each other. I don’t think it’s a backstabbing kind of industry. It’s competitive, but people are supportive, and I love that.

What do you feel sets Dark Horse apart from other indie comic publishers?

Every publisher has their own flavor, but I think one of the things about Dark Horse is that we specialize in a lot of different things. Some companies just do creator owned, some companies focus more on kids’ stuff or don’t do any kids’ stuff at all. We try to do a lot of different things because we believe readers, like ourselves, don’t just consume one thing. I know that for me, I love horror movies, but I also really love dramas, I really love comedies, and I watch a lot of different things. My favorite TV shows have been Breaking Bad, 30 Rock, and some really different things. That’s because I like different experiences, just like everybody else.

Are there any upcoming projects you’d like to tease that haven’t had a lot of press or a lot of attention yet? There has to be something!

I’m really excited about the whole Aliens/Prometheus thing. We’re doing something really unique with that, and we’re taking licensed comics into new territory. Hellboy just hit its 20th anniversary, so we’ve got some really crazy things going on with that and its related books (BPRD and Abe Sapien). We’ve got a new Mignola book that we’re launching at the end of the year that we haven’t announced yet. I’m very jazzed about that.

In closing, do you have any advice for aspiring comic creators?

You need to do tons of work. You don’t succeed in any creative field without being great at it and without working your ass off. Nobody’s going to notice you if you don’t work to the point where your work has actually gotten good. What it really comes down to is doing the work over and over again until you’re genuinely good at it. If you don’t manage to create something exciting, you might not break in. So keep challenging yourself to get better and do something awesome.

To describe Bobcat Goldthwait as having a dark sense of humour would be an understatement. Forever known to a generation as Zed in the Police Academy movies, Goldthwait has made quite the name for himself helming some mischievous gems like Shakes the Clown, Sleeping Dogs, World’s Greatest Dad and the fantastic God Bless America. A life-long believer in the idea of Bigfoot, the writer/director’s latest project, Willow Creek, is a found-footage movie which focuses on a couple who set out to unearth the truth about the Sasquatch legend…

STARBURST: So, why the topic of Bigfoot?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Just because I really liked Bigfoot ever since I was a boy. In fact, even more specifically, as a little boy I was really obsessed with the Patterson-Gimlin footage. So this is just an excuse for me to go out into the woods with a group of grown men and look for Bigfoot.

What led to you making Willow Creek as a faux documentary rather than a “regular” movie?

Initially I had the idea that I would do a completely different kind of movie set in the Bigfoot community; a kind of comedy along the lines of Spinal Tap. Even though found-footage movies are kind of annoying, this just binded itself to it. It didn’t seem to be that far. If this guy went up to Willow Creek looking for Bigfoot, there’s no way in hell that he wouldn’t film it in the day and age we live in. The challenge is trying to make the movie not seem like it was edited after the fact. I think in a lot of genre pictures, the protagonists aren’t very likeable. I don’t think that’s on purpose. I think it’s so that you’re rooting for the monster. But I hoped to make these characters, I shouldn’t say likeable, but I wanted to make these characters believable.

You touched on it there, but the last few years have seen a stigma often attached to found-footage films. Did that ever cause you any concern?

I think if I’d given it a lot of thought I probably wouldn’t have gone and made a found-footage movie. But it really was just the movie I wanted to make. I think there’s a real naivety to the way I make movies, almost like the character of Jim in this movie. I don’t really think about it, I just do it. If you’ve ever tried to write a song, you pick up a guitar and you put three chords together, then you go, “Goddammit, that sounds just like Proud Mary!” But that’s not how I approach making movies. There’s always something in them that I wonder if I can do and that’s what keeps me writing the scripts that I do and making movies. It’s a challenge.

With the script, the performances of the actors come across as very real. How strict was the script or was a lot of the work just improvised?

Yeah, there was only a 25-page outline. Bryce , who are the stars, we drove up together in my car. It’s almost a 12-hour drive from Los Angeles. So we’d talk about these people and even come up with their backstories. We would loosely rehearse the scene, or sometimes not even that – just discuss what would happen. Then I would give my tweaks there or sometimes I was in the foetal position in the trunk of a car lying down and I said, “That was good, say that again.” It was a really fun movie to make.

And was it quite a compact, quick shoot then?

Sure, we shot it in a week. We filmed for 5 days. A lot of it was getting to the location then finding the places to film at.

The movie has various Bigfoot-themed places throughout. Were these real places that you were aware of beforehand?

The places I was aware of, because I’d been there. Some of the people I’d met, and others I didn’t know at all and met them while we were making the movie.

A lot of the smaller roles, such as the guy who plays the guitar and harmonica whilst singing a Bigfoot song, are these just locals that you just happened across?

Yeah, the Bob Dylan of the Bigfoot community! Part of it I knew that if I interviewed enough people in town then they would do the work that I needed to be done, which was tell the story and at the same time would be giving warnings about not going out to the woods. So it was kind of fun.

Moving away from Willow Creek briefly, most people will likely associate you with the character of Zed from the Police Academy movies. As a director, was it ever difficult to move people’s perception of you away from that character and to take you seriously as a filmmaker?

You can’t change people’s perceptions, but there’s a large part of the population in the US who are unaware that I make movies, that I write and direct. Does that make me feel weird? Not really, because I’m just trying to make my own movies on my own terms. I’m not really interested in making hit movies. When I’m ego-surfing on the Internet and somebody has something snarky to say about me, like, “Oh, where’s Bobcat Goldthwait? What restaurant is he working at?” It’s like, “I dunno, dude. I’ve just been making movies and directing TV shows.” In America, it’s just really strange. Sometimes people are only aware of me as the guy who was in Police Academy. Does it hurt? No, because I know that those people are really unaware of a lot of things, so their opinion doesn’t really matter to me too much.

We absolutely adored God Bless America and its stance on the modern society that seems to be dictated by reality TV and social media, but then again we are possibly getting old ourselves…

It’s the ultimate ‘”Hey you kids, get off our lawn!” movie.

Going as far back as World’s Greatest Dad, Sleeping Dogs and even Shakes the Clown, you have a very unique, darkly-humourous style. Is that something that just comes natural to you?

Yeah, it’s not something that I’m thinking about. It’s really what I’m drawn to and who I am. Sometimes I write a joke or write a screenplay and I think that I’ve written A Night at the Museum 3 or something. I’ve just finished a screenplay that I thought was me writing a comedy for the first time, a comedy that people can go and watch and enjoy as a comedy. Then my agent was like, “It’s not a comedy! The guy’s on heroin for the entire movie!” I thought I’d written The Big Bang Theory movie. I think now is the time for a good junkie comedy.

Are there any particular shows or movies that you feel directly influenced your style and approach towards your films?

Well certainly there are filmmakers who have. People like Billy Wilder, people who kind of just had to go do their own different kind of movies. They were just telling stories.

Bringing things back to Willow Creek, what are your thoughts on the Bigfoot legend? We take it you’re a believer?

Yeah, definitely. Bigfoot represents, to me, this idea of what if. So I definitely believe in Bigfoot and want to believe in Bigfoot. People will go, “You’re are an atheist but you believe in Bigfoot?” I haven’t met anybody who has seen God. I think in a weird way it’s very hopeful. Also, if you’re looking for Bigfoot and you don’t find it, you just went camping.

Wrapping things up, the Bigfoot comedy that you mentioned earlier on, is that ever likely to see the light of day?

Yeah, I’m sure. I keep writing stuff and then I get the buzz or the cast or things together. But definitely, just to go back into this world again. I really enjoyed it.

WILLOW CREEK hits DVD on May 26th.

Edited by Kraken Press founder George C. Cotronis, Aghast: A Journal of the Darkly Fantastic, is an upcoming bi-annual, illustrated journal of dark fantasy and horror short fiction, featuring original prose by Jonathan Maberry, Tim Waggoner and Gemma Files. Lavishly illustrated with dark art, Aghast is shaping up to be one of the most exciting horror anthologies of 2014, which should come as no surprise coming from the publishers of Richard Thomas’s Staring Into The Abyss.

A Kickstarter campaign for Aghast closes on the 29th April 2014 and is currently 120% funded. Starburst spoke to George C. Cotronis about the inception of the magazine, why he feels so passionately about horror and how John Milton figures into the equation.

Starburst: Tell us a little about yourself.

George Cotronis: I grew up in Greece and moved to Sweden later. I travel a lot. I’ve been a freelance illustrator for the past ten years. I started up Kraken Press a while back and we have four books out. I also edited my first anthology for Kraken. I like horror.

Where did your love of horror come from and who are the creators that inspire you?

I read a lot as a kid and pretty early I started getting into horror. I was going through a couple of Goosebumps books a day and that was costing a lot of money, so I started reading Stephen King novels to get my horror fix. I was about nine years old and I haven’t stopped since.

I think watching horror movies at a young age warped me. I remember watching Nightmare on Elm Street when I was four or five years old and having nightmares about it for weeks. I liked it though. I stayed up late in hopes of catching them.

Stephen King is still probably my favourite author, just by virtue of reading all of his books and enjoying most of them. I know it’s cool to knock King these days, because he has a huge output and some of his books have been less than good, but there’s no one out there that has written the books he has. The Long Walk, The Shining, The Stand, many of his short stories blow other writers out of the water.

Other than that, I like Graham Joyce, Caitlin Kiernan, Tom Piccirilli, Laird Barron, Thomas Liggotti, Joe Lansdale, Gemma Files, etc.

I feel I should also mention Guillermo del Toro. Devil’s Backbone is probably my favourite ghost story.

Where did the idea for Aghast come from?

Just like most things I end up creating, Aghast came about because I wanted to make something cool without breaking the bank. Small press publishers often don’t have the budget to hire artists and layout designers. I can do both. All I needed was an editor and I can usually trade my services for theirs. I still had to pay the writers though. Doing everything in house sure helps keep costs down though.

Short stories remain one my favourite forms of literature, so I decided to put out a magazine that would allow me to showcase new talent along more experienced authors. I made it bi-annual because I still needed time to work for Kraken Press and do my own writing. I was wanting to use Kickstarter for something for years, and this was a pretty good opportunity.

I sent out a few emails to writers I thought would be a good fit and I managed to get enough of them to commit to fill a first issue, with a couple of slots left open for the slush pile. I made a few cover illustrations to showcase the kind of art Aghast would feature and I set up the Kickstarter campaign page.

It’s been cool watching people pledge to the project, you can spend all day checking the campaign page. Also stressful, but hey, it’s almost over now, less than eight days left.

What about the name particularly – why Aghast?

For the longest time I thought the quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost was “Aghast the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is” but of course it’s “Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is.” Anyway, the word stuck and I liked the way it looks and sounds, so it felt like a good choice. If you add an exclamation mark at the end it almost sounds like a 1930s-era pulp magazine.

Not a bad name for a horror mag.

Which authors do you have lined up for the first issue?

I’ve only accepted two other stories. They’ve both been made available to our backers, so you can read them right now if you pledge to our Kickstarter. The first one is a tale involving John Dees’ angel occultism by Esther Saxey. The second, I think gives a pretty good idea of what kind of venue Aghast is, so I’m looking forward to the response to that one. It’s called Sticks and Bone and it’s by Leo Norman. Kind of a folkloric story about loss.

The slated authors I think make up a great line-up. I don’t know what kind of stories they’ll end up writing, but I’m not worried. I love their work.

Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel Comics writer. He’s the author of many novels including Assassin’s Code, Flesh & Bone, Dead of Night, Patient Zero and Rot & Ruin. I think it’ll be cool to see what he comes up with for a market like Aghast.

Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections in the horror and urban fantasy genres. The Nekropolis novels are my favourite of his, I think he does dark fantasy really well.

Award-winning horror author Gemma Files is best-known for her Weird Western Hexslinger series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications). Gemma is probably the author that most embodies the kind of stories I’m looking to publish.

Jeff Strand is the four-time Bram Stoker-Award nominated author of such novels as Pressure, Dweller, Wolf Hunt, A Bad Day for Voodoo. I really liked Fangboy and I think Aghast could use some humour.

What have you learned running the Kickstarter campaign? Would you ever do it again?

Kickstarter campaigns are hard work. You should do 99% of the prep beforehand. Even though I had a ton of stuff ready (previews, content, mock ups), I could have prepared better. A lot of blogs will be happy to plug your campaign if you can give them a short essay or opinion piece, but writing twenty of those in a month can kill you. You should also have set up those guest posts beforehand so that you can space them out over the course of the campaign.

I’d probably do one again, if I had a project that I thought would benefit from it. I probably wouldn’t do it for a run of the mill anthology or something like that. Now I’m wondering how a first novel would do on Kickstarter. Terribly, most likely, but might be a good experiment.

The Aghast Kickstarter campaign ends on April 29th and can be found here.

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Debbie Johnson is a freelance journalist and author whose debut novel, the Celtic myth-infused urban fantasy Dark Vision, was recently published. After deciding what a great read it was, Starburst found out more about the book and the woman behind it.

Starburst: For those who have not read Dark Vision, how would you sum it up and convince them to rectify this?

Debbie Johnson: Well, if people don’t buy it, my three children will be promptly sent out equipped with sooty cheeks and patched jackets, ready to scurry up rich people’s chimneys for coppers. But if “doing it for the children” isn’t enough, people should read it because it’s bloody good fun – an urban fantasy set in modern day Liverpool, with day trips to Tír na nÓg, vampires, witches, rock bands in seedy Scouse nightclubs, a lot of alcohol, swearing, and saving the world one sarcastic sentence at a time. It tells the tale of Lily McCain, a socially isolated music journalist who can see a person’s future when she touches them – which doesn’t exactly make her life Party Central. But, you guessed it, there’s more to Lily than meets the eye – and she ends up entangled in a fantastical world of legend and lunacy.

Celtic mythology accounts for much of Dark Vision’s fantasy aspects. How well-versed in the background of the legends were you before beginning the book and what was it about them that appealed to you?

I was not especially well-versed, and in all honesty I still wouldn’t claim I am. I specialised in Anglo-Saxon history at university, and did some archaeology (archaeologists – those are people who know how to drink!), and have always been fascinated with tales of the far-off past and the way it is linked to the power of storytelling, whether that’s in illuminated manuscripts or told in great halls or scratched onto stone. Liverpool is a very Irish place, and I have lots of Irish relatives, and I was interested in the whole culture – once you start reading up on myths and legends from around the world, you start to see the similarities, not the differences. Most cultures hold certain things sacred: fertility, death, the sun, water – in particular rivers and the sea; you can find different variations on these themes throughout ancient cultures. The Celtic myths feature some spectacularly virile men, mighty warriors who need a thousand women to sate them and the like – but also some truly awe-inspiring female characters, like the Morrigan, and a multitude of horrific ways to kill someone. If you like fantasy novels, it’s almost impossible not to respond to these stories. Once the idea started to take shape, I did quite a lot of research – but then had to reach that stage where I took inspiration from them, but then went off and told Lily’s story instead. I still live in fear of having to pronounce some of those words in public though!

Dark Vision was originally titled The Pool of Life, referring both to Celtic symbolism and one of Liverpool’s myriad nicknames. How did the change in title come about?

Pool of Life was only ever a working title – it seemed to match the story, its Celtic roots, and the urban setting. But when you are thinking about selling a book to a potentially international market, there comes a point where you have to think outside the Liverpool-shaped box! It’s surprisingly hard to come up with a fantasy title that both suits the story, sounds good, and hasn’t been used a million times before. Dark Vision was, I think, about the third we considered – myself, my agent and my publisher, Del Rey UK. It also opens itself nicely to sequel titles. My six-year-old daughter wanted to call it The Mighty Unicorn of Death, which I thought was awesome – despite the lack of unicorns.

You share a career background with Dark Vision’s protagonist Lily in also having worked as a music journalist. How much more of you is there in your heroine?

I share certain things with Lily – mainly the job you mention. I spent ten years as a music writer – ten years that are largely a blur, as you can imagine. Free gigs, music, and all the trappings – what’s not to like? So as did Lily, I led a rather strange lifestyle for a while – it’s a transient world, you meet loads of people, enjoy lots of company, but don’t make that many real friends. It’s one of those jobs where it’s easy to hide in plain sight – appear very sociable, even if you’re not. Though that is more her than me – I am pretty sociable! But I suppose anybody who has grown up slightly geeky can understand that: feeling like a misfit, a bit of a square peg in a round hole? Having a public side and a private side that’s a bit deeper, a bit darker, perhaps? I grew up as an only child, and we’re always a bit weird (often in a good way) – Lily’s situation is an extreme version of that. I also, like Lily, can be extremely cutting and sarcastic, and have been since birth. I suspect my first words were “What are you looking at?” There is also a section of the book where Lily suffers a loss – a bereavement – which was very emotional for me. I lost my mum while I was writing the book, and my dad had died a few years earlier, so a lot of those scenes, where she comes to terms with the sense of finality and guilt and gut-wrenching sadness, were deeply personal. Other than that, she’s all her – or possibly my wish-fulfilment version of me! Oh – and we both wear Doc Martens!

On the subject of Lily’s job, music plays an important role in Dark Vision, not just from Liverpool’s history as a wellspring for talented musicians, but also as an encapsulation of human emotion that at one point directly affects the course of the plot. How important was it to you to include this theme?

I am generally pretty bad at advance plotting, but the scene you are talking about – I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say it’s the world’s best gig, with music legends from across the decades appearing magically all in one night at the Cavern – was one I had in mind all the way through. I could picture it all happening, it was simply a matter of finding the right place for it. I was lucky enough to have been at some of them – Paul McCartney’s solo stuff and Bo Diddley among them –and also to have just had numerous superlatively good nights out there, watching bands, dancing, getting drunk with friends. It was about trying to capture that feeling you occasionally get, that complete natural high of seeing a great gig, with great company. Those moments most of us have where we remember a festival, or a night out, that somehow becomes more than the sum of its parts – it’s a moment in time that you will always remember as magical. If you’ve had those experiences, you’ll understand what I mean – it can stay with you forever, that moment of perfection, and still make you smile decades later. Doing my job, I was lucky to have a lot of them – seeing the Sugarhill Gang at Leeds; seeing a double-bill of Supergrass and the Bluetones at a little club in Liverpool before they hit big; seeing Nina Simone; almost drowning in my own sweat in the front row of a Charlatans gig; watching Pulp pretty much anywhere… There is something very magical about music and its effect on the human condition. It can reflect pain, share the burden, lift the spirits – inspire joy. All of which Lily very much needs.

After forging a career as a journalist, what made you decide to take up novel writing and how did your previous experience aid you?

When I left the newspaper – the Liverpool Echo – I had very mixed feelings. I wanted to try something new, find a way of life that would fit in with my family and allow me more freedom, but I was also saying goodbye to an environment that is incredibly unique, and incredibly amusing. Working in a busy newsroom is like nothing else – adrenalin-fuelled, satisfying, and also packed with banter and hilarity. At first I did some freelance journalism, and also copywriting and PR, all of which I still do – see aforementioned comments about children/chimney sweeps. But once I was free from the obligation to think and write in article-sized chunks, it allowed me to be more creative. In some ways, it was pragmatic – I don’t have many skills, I’m not like Liam Neeson in Taken or anything – and I wanted to try for a career that would use those skills, and also be creatively fulfilling. In other ways, I just needed to do it – to set myself that challenge. My time as a journalist, though, was the bedrock – not of the writing style, but of the knowledge of Liverpool, the experience, the humour, and to some extent the discipline and being receptive to criticism. You don’t survive in a newsroom for long without developing a very thick skin, which you need to be an author.

Your first (currently unpublished) novel Fear No Evil is a supernatural crime thriller. Would you still like to see it in print?

That would be at the very top of my Christmas wish list, yes. I love crime fiction and I love horror and fantasy. I want to have my cake and stuff my face with it. When it was first submitted, it got very positive feedback, but was considered to be a bit too much of a mix of genres. Depending on who read it, it was either too supernatural, or too crime. That was a few years ago though and there have been some notable genre-twisting successes since then, so who knows? My Scouse PI/former priest crime-fighting duo may see the light of day at some point! Right now though, the focus is still very much on Lily, and urban fantasy.

Although most readers would be hard pressed to name another fantasy story set in Liverpool, it felt like the perfect place for such a book. What is it about the city that makes it such an effective setting for an urban fantasy tale?

Everything about Liverpool lends itself to fiction. It’s a very inspiring place – not always an easy place, but never, ever boring! Obviously there’s a good setting for crime, as there is with any big city, or for historical. But for me, given my slightly wonky turn of mind, it also fits the bill for fantasy. I spent a day this week with the kids visiting museums on the waterfront, and it was one of those perfect spring days – looking at the way this city became the springboard for millions of people to start new lives in the New World, the role it played in slavery and in trade, the way cultures from all over the globe ended up coming here and staying here. And you can then look out of the windows of those museums and see the reality: the amazing architecture, the river, the hustle and bustle of life. Liverpool has a certain unique energy – I’ve lived in a few places, and nowhere is quite like this. It’s something to do with its location, the way it’s been a boundary or a port or a hub of human emotion for so long – leading to this gorgeous, complicated mass of 21st Century existence. It’s also a place of intense contrasts: the natural beauty of the river and the coast, the grandeur of the tourist docks as opposed to the scrap piles of the working docks, the glamour next to the poverty. It’s a place that seems pretty magical – a place where mysterious things can happen. And, of course, there’s the music, the culture, the humour, and the very fine pubs!

To me, Dark Vision combined the love of a city of Kate Griffin’s Matthew Swift novels, the geeky humour of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, the mythological meddling of Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles and the fire-forged romance of Tanya Huff’s Blood Books. Which authors have been direct influences on your own writing style?

First of all, thank you kindly – I am awed and flattered by all of those references! For me, I wanted to blend the “serious” approach to urban fantasy that you find more in the British-set work with the irreverent wisecracking humour that’s more commonly found in the US-set work. The UK has some amazing locations, perfect for fantasy – but there is also a very British sense of humour and frame of reference to be explored, and that was important to me when I was writing Dark Vision. I absolutely, totally, 100% need humour in my books – the ones I read and the ones I write. I think there is a bit of a snobbish attitude to some American urban fantasy, especially that with a strong romantic element – but in reality, writers like Charlaine Harris and Darynda Jones and Patricia Briggs are creating witty characters and exploring creative fantasy concepts. More to the point, they are fun – so I’d be fibbing if I said that aspect hadn’t been an influence. Tanya Huff I also love, for the fact that she is just a bit different than anything else out there. And writers who aren’t even in this genre – like Sue Grafton and Harlan Coben and Robert B Parker: wisecrackers all. Because, you know, you can produce something that is ultimately thought-provoking and sometimes dark without sacrificing the humanity and the humour. Don’t we all use humour as a way of surviving difficult times?

There was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it implication that Egyptian deities might also exist in Dark Vision’s world. Will subsequent books in the series deal with the mythologies of other cultures, or are you going to stick with Celtic folklore for the time being?

Well spotted, and yes! The next book, Dark Touch, explores other mythologies – not in the same depth, but, well, it seems narrow minded to assume that the whole world is dominated by the choices of white Irish people, doesn’t it? So again I’ve been hitting the books, not only to see how I can link in the Egyptian element, but also other cultures, other stories.

Do you have a set plan for how the series will develop, or are you just writing it as it comes?

A bit of both – I have general story and character development arcs already in mind; I know what I want to do with Lily and her future. But I’m not like one of those people who have 15 books plotted out – sometimes I like to take myself by surprise, and allow the world I’m creating a little breathing space to develop organically. I find if I try and control it too tightly it feels false, and stifles its spontaneity – so while I might know that I need Lily to get from A to B in terms of storyline, I often don’t know whether she’ll be getting there by Concord, donkey, or Fiat Panda!

When can we expect to see book two on the shelves and what can we expect from it?

Book two is Dark Touch, and will be out next spring from Del Rey UK, which is doing a great job of bringing fresh British talent to the bookshelves. Much of it involves that mix of mythology I mentioned earlier – again with varying degrees of authenticity, depending on my ultimately fictional needs – and it is partly set in New York. I visited there last year, and my tiny mind was well and truly blown. It’s been a challenge trying to recreate the urban setting in a city I don’t know anywhere near as well, but also hugely enjoyable. Lily will be facing bigger, badder foes, and making even more choices – about her own life, the men in her life, and – of course – the fate of the world!

Dark Vision is available now from Del Ray UK.

Coming screaming out of last month’s Airwolf articles like an ignited turbo jet, Starburst speaks to musician and Airwolf fan par excellence Mark Cairns about the long road that led to, and leads from, his lovingly created soundtrack album to the series, Airwolf Themes.

Musician and uber-fan, Mark Cairns has had a long and productive relationship with Airwolf which has taken him all over the world and allowed him to meet cast and crew of the show, be filmed at key Airwolf locations (Red Rock Canyon – as a promo for Airwolf Themes) and even drink champagne with his musical hero and composer of the original Airwolf score, Sylvester Levay, at his ex-NATO airbase home. However it all started a long time ago, at a very early age, in not so innocent times.

“Airwolf arrived one Friday night out of the blue,” Cairns says. “Growing up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, my parents always commented that as a child I was always fascinated with anything rotary, as the British army’s helicopters flew overhead on their daily sorties ferrying troops around the Ulster countryside, safely out of harm’s way from IRA terrorists.”

But, as exciting as real life might have been, Airwolf was something else.

“I’d never seen, or heard anything like it in my life. I was hooked. As the series progressed, I just loved all the espionage and intrigue, engaging characters, and aerial ballets, all that lovely hardware on display, coupled with the fantastic music underscoring everything.”

And it was that music that really became Mark Cairns’ driving obsession.

“It was the music especially that blew me away every week. Not just Levay’s iconic Airwolf Main Theme, but the unique “tune of the week” approach that composers, Sylvester Levay and later Udi Harpaz, Ian Freebairn-Smith and Bernardo Segáll came up with for every episode. It was just so different to anything else on the air at the time, and all during the sunrise moment of synthesizers maturing with warmer, bigger, fatter sound; so much so that the Film Editors on the show admitted having trouble adjusting their editing styles and experience to the (then) new-style of music.”

Airwolf was cancelled in 1986, leaving a helicopter-shaped hole in the lives of many people Mark’s age. But he refused to leave that hole un-filled, no mean task in the days before torrent sites and social networking fan pages.

“In the 1987 classifieds of ‘Video Today’ magazine I found a tiny advert from a guy in Cornwall called Jason Waters who was running a very basic club and fanzine for the show.”

Following up that one lead Cairns found himself, within less than a year, taking the club’s reins from the retiring Waters. But just caretaking wasn’t for Cairns, he had ambitions.

“I built it up quickly during the late ’80s and early ’90s into an international organisation with members in 24 countries (the “Wolf Pack”, a phrase I coined) and we communicated with a fan magazine called ‘File A56-7W’.”

Alongside the level of work and commitment it took to keep an international fan club going, Cairns was also slowly germinating the musical obsession that would lead to Airwolf Themes.

“I searched long and hard from the late ’80s onwards to find an official release of the show’s soundtrack,” Mark recalls, “but it never came, only rubbish recreations of the main theme that were so far removed from the off-air recordings as to be laughable.”

But Cairns was committed to getting that soundtrack, even looking to try to get it released himself.

“Initial enquiries with Universal into the state of the original soundtrack quickly revealed that it would take a fortune (which I didn’t have) plus spending a long time in California with an engineering studio to get the original score released.”

So he did what any reasonable obsessive would do, and started working on the soundtrack himself.

“By the mid-’90s, my experience and interest in synth and orchestral music had grown exponentially due to the series, so having made up my mind that nobody would ever release a proper soundtrack by that stage, I decided to give up the International Airwolf Appreciation Association and start work on recreating the soundtrack myself. Having announced my editorial retirement, Wolf Pack member Gerry R. Forrester contacted me to say that he’d released the original Ken Freeman score for the BBC series, The Tripods and that he’d be interested in a joint venture with Airwolf.”

But taking over the project himself was no easy route, with digital audio still in its infancy, Cairns found that his vintage Yamaha synthesizers just couldn’t stand in for the orchestral work that needed to be done. But then in stepped the internet, as Cairns searched for anything he could find on Airwolf’s first composer, Sylvester Levay, and a little serendipity.

“I found an early internet fan forum celebrating Levay’s German Musical works, which he was doing full-time in Germany and Austria after leaving Hollywood behind. I asked the webmaster to put me in touch with Levay and she did. Two days later, I asked Gerry Forrester to do a deal with him to hire the Munich Philharmonic orchestra to recreate some of the well-known orchestral pieces from Airwolf.”

“Levay then took those recordings to legendary engineer, Bernie Grundman in Los Angeles who earlier had engineered the record-breaking ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad’ albums for Michael Jackson. It all came together after that.”

As much of a coup as that was, in marketing the project, Cairns had seriously underestimated what he had on his hands.

“In the film and music industries, a special limited edition 2CD such as Airwolf Themes is labelled a ‘vanity project’, so when we sent it to the manufacturer we seriously underestimated the show’s popularity. We were so naïve that we only thought we might sell 200 – 300 copies to the die-hards. In the end, we shipped it to 42 countries worldwide!”

“The new medium of eBay launched the soundtrack’s value into the stratosphere. Within a year of its release we started to see a phenomena of people buying a couple of copies, with original Airwolf Themes sets changing hands from a starting point of over $300 dollars, then $500 dollars, then over $700 dollars, finishing just shy of $1000, to give it a world record on eBay for a television soundtrack that has stuck to this day. Even in 2014, a second-hand set was sold for over $500 dollars, despite the fact that from 2007 – 2013 that our official, re-mastered Digital Download versions were readily available from online music stores.”

With the success of the album, doors began opening for Cairns at every turning.

“Airwolf has been a catalyst to create opportunities that have taken me all over the world: including helping to get fully-working Replica Airwolf Helmets into production (that became the catalyst to the creation of a full-size Airwolf replica helicopter for a museum, that we subsequently used in our official Airwolf Themes video promo at Red Rock Canyon), going to South Africa where another (this time flying) Airwolf Replica had been built to promote an “Arrive Alive” road safety campaign in the late 1980s (I’ve been producing a documentary on that for a few years now), meeting original cast and production crew from the USA to Israel, to ending up at Sylvester Levay’s ex-NATO airbase home and music studios in Germany with the Airwolf Documentary team last year… which was the ultimate highlight to this Airwolf “lark”, breaking open a few bottles of bubbly with my creative hero.

Several years have gone by, but that obsession with getting the soundtrack ‘just right’ still lingers. And on the new Airwolf Extended Themes Cairns has been able to do much more than he would have dreamed possible when working out the melodies on his vintage Yamaha, extending the range of this second flight out.

“I always felt we missed a lot of the great episodic tracks from the original series and especially the wide range of musical variations of Levay’s iconic main Airwolf theme.” Cairns says. “There has been a fifteen year gap from 1999 to 2014 since the original album was released, and in that time the technology has advanced dramatically. That has enabled me to tackle the themes that I couldn’t do the first time around. However, there are still some things you can’t cheat with, no matter how good the technology. Thus all the cello solos, plus acoustic and electric guitar work on the new Extended Themes album are played by real session players.”

“Also in that fifteen year gap, fans have been crying out to hear those additional missing themes, and there have been many people who have followed the sequel album’s evolution and progress over all that time, to the point that I felt like a vapourware peddler, holding the proverbial carrot tantalisingly close but never actually coming up with the goods until now.”

Not only does the album have a pre-existing fan-base salivating ready for its release but the independent-minded Cairns also has a partner in obsession this time round, a Bulgarian/Polish composer and associate producer, appropriately named Jan Michal.

“Jan Michal Szulew (pronounced Yann Meehow Shooleff) had contacted me around 1999 and shared his developing passion for the show’s theme music and synthesizers during those interim years until finally, after hearing a demo track and his acute attention to detail, I felt I was hearing a raw, untapped talent that could grow and develop into something brilliant if given a chance, so I gave him his break and brought him onboard the sequel project Airwolf Extended Themes to concentrate solely on the variations of the show’s main theme, leaving myself to get on with recreating more of the episodic ‘tune-of-the-week’ themes so indicative of the series.”

But as to whether the sequel will replicate the record-breaking resale success of Airwolf Themes, Cairns is ambivalent.

“I don’t know whether people are hoping that lightning will strike twice with the value of Airwolf Extended Themes and the second-hand market. However I’m more interested in having created something that Airwolf fans can physically hold in their hands. All we can do is our best and I think Jan, my small team and myself have hopefully achieved that after five years’ hard work in celebrating the wonderful music on Airwolf and the original creative talents of its composers Levay, Harpaz, Freebairn-Smith and Segáll.”

To learn more about the Airwolf Main Theme and Extended Themes, go here. To listen to a sample of the Extended Themes soundtrack, go here.

Carlos Gallardo first came to international prominence for his starring role in 1992’s El Mariachi. Having grown up as an avid lover of film, he and long-time friend Robert Rodriguez dreamt of making movies. An actor, director and producer, Gallardo is heading to UK shores to present several movie masterclasses at the end of this month. We got the chance to have a chat with this multi-talented Mexican about the legendary El Mariachi trilogy, his plans going forward and the aim of his upcoming UK visit.

Starburst: You’re going to be over in the UK towards the end of this month for some ‘movie masterclasses.’ What can you tell us about these?

Carlos Gallardo: Well, first of all, I’m very excited to be back in the UK. I was there in 2012 and there’s a lot of similarities to Mexico City and the architecture. It felt like home. Not that Mexico City is my particular home, but my family is there. The masterclasses, basically they’re something I’ve done in the past, particularly in the ‘90s, where I went to a lot of universities. I think my biggest crowd in a big university was about 900 people, and they were talking about $100 for that. I’ve learned a lot. I want to make sure that I’m there to inspire people and try to show them what I did. I’m not going to tell them how we did it, I’m not going to tell them the way to do it. I’m there to tell them there’s one way, a different way. I’m making sure that everybody gets really comfortable. I’m not there to tell them what to do, but just enjoy your life and see the experience that I did. I hope to inspire them or help them, and there’s questions and answers. I really get down into the crowd and the audience to encourage them. I understand that a lot of people might be afraid of questions and answers, so I’ve prepared a couple of things to basically show the audience what was done in the past. But also, there’s a short film that I’m going to present, that I’m going to perfect, that was made 10 years ago. It was an $80 film that I shot, directed, and Robert wrote it. There was no crew. That’s only an example. But we still go back, we still play with that from then, from years ago. So I have that and I have plenty of other things I’m going to show from the past. Then we’ll be talking about distributing and producing. It’s to show them that if you really want to be a director, if you really want to make movies, sometimes you can’t wait 10 years to make your movie, to get financing. We know how hard it is to get that, even in our world. We have to go out there too, to try and sell our stuff. So it’s a process that never ends. And that’s one of the main things that people think, “I’ll get paid and this is going to be easy.” But it’s not, because there’s more competition.

So you’re not going into these events from just a directing perspective or a producing perspective or an acting perspective?

No, the whole filmmaking thing. From my perspective, I’m a producer, an actor, a director. I think directing is a big task and it’s got a lot of responsibility, and I don’t do it because I don’t want to do it. In all reality, I know how hard it is and I know that you have to be physically in shape because everyone’s asking questions. A lot of people that go and teach these type of classes, they’re probably not doing what they’re saying, which is in the realistic word, when I turn into channels at 3am, there’s some guy telling you how to make money. Guess what? I found out something. I found out that if you’re not in real estate, you can’t do that as a hobby. You can’t do that in any type of thing, even filmmaking, from my perspective. It’s 24/7, you have to really love this and really be passionate. A couple of days ago, I went to pick up something from a store and there was an actor there, I guess working or hadn’t had a break. I didn’t know him, but I discovered that if you get a job that you like then you’ll likely end up doing that. So get a job that you hate, that you wake up every morning hating, like I did in 1990 working for a hardware store. I hated that so much, but it had me thinking about my passion. I ended up making El Mariachi and Desperado right after that. But kids out there, they get a job, they stay there because they like it, and most likely they’re going to stay there forever. I’ve been to restaurants for the past 12 years and I see the same people there. Why don’t you quit? They say they can’t because they have too many bills now and they have to pay the rent. If they stay there, they become managers, they begin to have families. I have to tell the truth; I have to be cruel. I have to criticise myself as well, I have to tell them about those stories. I’m all prepared to criticise myself and put myself on the line. But I love to work, and Robert loves to work. Even since a kid, he’s been a workaholic. Like Quentin . Quentin likes filmmaking and Quentin likes writing. I have that but I also encourage people to understand that sometimes young people want things for the wrong reasons. Basically, what you really want, you don’t know. I said it a couple of days ago, I said a lot of people know what they want but they really, really don’t know what they really want. I want to be very clear that I’m there to inspire, I’m there to help people in any possible way by explanation and by example. The short film is very important, because the choice of that, even though we’ve done El Mariachi, Desperado, Bravo and One Upon a Time in Mexico, there is still that short film that we loved to do. A lot of people in my home town wondered why we were doing that, doing that with a little camera. I think that’s an inspiration.

What do you hope to get out of these sessions then? Is it just to inspire a new generation of filmmakers?

Possibly. The people that attend the classes don’t want to be doctors or lawyers; these classes are meant for people who are studying to be filmmakers. I just tell my story, but in this scenario it’s targeted for people that are already in filmmaking or people that are production assistants, maybe young people that are trying to get into the business. And also older people that haven’t directed or produced. That’s the main story. What we had before, 25 years ago when we started, like two recorders, two VCRS, we were trying to edit, we had one channel of sound. What do we have today? You can make a movie with an iPhone! The iPhone is much better, it looks much better than the movie that I’m going to show and that is 8 minutes long. But people will understand it’s not about the look, it’s always about the story. You have to have a good story and you have to have a good style. I like a stylistic film. If you have good actors then you don’t have to move the camera that much, but we’re talking about people who are beginners and who want to try and make a movie. So you have to have good actors and a good style to make it interesting. So I think that short film kind of explains that or gives across that idea. From my computer, I’m also trying to show movies that we did when we were 13 or so. At Sundance, it was recently the 20^th anniversary for El Mariachi. We showed the film, but before the film we showed a 10-minute short film that Robert and I did when we were 14 or 15. When you see that movie as somebody with an experience in the film industry, they talk about the shots and the camera movements.

Most people will be familiar with yourself for El Mariachi. As well as starring, you produced and co-wrote the movie. How did that first come about and when did you first meet Robert? How long ago was that seed planted?

I met Robert when I was a freshman in high school. We’d spend the full years of high school and college just making these type of films. I had already directed something at 12-years-old, but when I saw him I just said, “You take the camera.” I took him to Mexico and showed him all this stuff, the guns and police, and that’s just because my family had a lot of relations there. We took him to the ranch, and it was like we were in the jungle. It was like a whole world opened up. So we started making movies, all the way through high school and college. We’d made about 8 movies before El Mariachi, so it took practice to make the master. A lot of people think that movie was our first film. Truly now, I don’t consider it our first film. I consider it about our tenth film, to be honest with you.

El Mariachi was followed by Desperado. You were the star of El Mariachi then involved in a smaller role and behind the camera in Desperado. Was there any moment when you were going to take the lead role in Desperado or was it always the case to go a different direction?

No, no, no. The reality of the story is that a year after El Mariachi, prior to Desperado, everybody was set to go, but in the summer there was conflict at the studios, with the CEOs. So they changed management and we were stopped. Many movies were stopped then. We came back again a year later and things were changed, things were a little bit different. Antonio where we’re singing, and when we stop singing, Antonio looks at Mocco, the guy in the white suit, If you see that again, look at his hand. He is so nervous and shaking! That’s because they were not actors. For me, I have 20 years of experience on top of me, but it was an inter-studio decision and I didn’t fight for it. It’s not that I lost the part, I opted to make a movie. Remember, in El Mariachi we got a deal with Columbia Pictures, so the best thing to do was to try and cope with the whole system. What I know now I wish I knew, so we could’ve gone into an office at Sony and we could’ve done so much. But we didn’t know, we were too young to know. I wanted to keep working, to stay in the business. Then, after Desperado, Robert went off to Miramax and got a 5-year deal there, and I did Single Action, Bravo, Eastside, and Bandido. I went on to make movies that cost from $11,000, and that’s what I’m going to talk about to these students; that you can make a movie. El Mariachi cost $7,000, Single Action cost $11,000. These are examples. Again, you have to show them and be truthful. I’m saying that a lot of people talk about the past but they’re doing nothing today. I can talk about the Desperado experience, that we just wanted to make a movie. At the end of the day, we cannot put a price on art. And El Mariachi is like some art that we did, but it’s not the best movie we’ve ever done, artistic-wise. We just did it with all our hearts and our soul and our passion, and now we’re in the business to make movies.

Before any of the filmmaking started, what kind of films influenced yourself and your decisions?

I think the first film was A Fistful of Dollars. After that, I think the ‘70s were kinda weird for film. You had The Godfather, but a lot of other films were awful. Into the ‘80s, the first films that really got me were Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Escape from New York. They were perfect films. I think if we were 20 today, I think the films we’d love to make would be like that movie Drive. I spoke to Robert yesterday and I said that if that movie was done 20 years ago, we would be making that type of film. But those are the three main films that I can tell you. And I own them, I carry them with me in my phone.

Our personal favourite out of those would be Escape from New York, with us being big John Carpenter fans…

Did you know that Kurt Russell, he was talking like Clint Eastwood? And there’s my connection with A Fistful of Dollars. The only reason I know this is because Quentin, he worked on Death Proof. When I was on the set he told me. The great thing is for people to find out but not find out. Like Drive, who’s that actor in Drive? Ryan Gosling! Who’s he doing? Again another great example, but he’s playing Mickey Rourke. Knowing Mickey and Kurt first hand, then watching these stories around me, it’s like I’m dreaming or something.

Obviously you were the star of El Mariachi, but how much did your role behind the camera vary between El Mariachi and Desperado?

With El Mariachi, I was wearing so many hats; I was doing the squibs, the effects, the location prepping, getting all the permits, talking to the army, getting the real guns from the police. Then when we got to the set, most of the actors were friends of mine. So I knew they could act. They had to act. I was in front of them feeding them the lines and Robert was at the side and looking at the camera. Everybody was looking at me when they were acting, but when I was acting I was looking at a wall. So every time the camera’s on me, I’m talking to nobody, and I think I did a good job. That was my main thing, and trying to secure the locations. When we got to the nitty-gritty it was to get the actors in the right positions and the right mental state, because the camera would only roll once because it would use too much money. I co-wrote it in Spanish and gave it that lingo. Translating it fully would not give it the full appeal, so my job was to give it that translation factor and watch it play out as a realistic story from that specific town and the way people talk.

You mentioned using guns on the El Mariachi set, what’s the most hairy moment you’ve had on a set?

Well a lot of people get hurt. In Desperado, stunt people got hurt. We had a camera and there was this big explosion, a guy was supposed to go over the wall, and when he jumped he went into the wall. So he got some burns. But for me, in El Mariachi, the bus scene, I told the guy to keep going and to just not stop. The bus was going to hit me at 5 miles per hour, but at 5 miles per hour it still hit me pretty bad. It hit my leg and it hurt me pretty bad; I didn’t break it, but it was pretty intense. And the next night I went to the doctor in Mexico and asked for something strong but he wouldn’t do it, he just wouldn’t do it. But it goes with the job.

Concluding the trilogy, you were involved in Once Upon a Time in Mexico in a producing capacity.

That movie was really, really shot in the way that Robert shoots his movies; it was very fast, it was just moving. That movie was shot in 7 weeks. But Robert’s shooting for TV now, for El Rey, and that’s also really fast. I haven’t been to the sets lately but Once Upon a Time in Mexico was completely insane. We were moving at a pace just like Desperado, just like El Mariachi. It was very much like home.

Did you feel it was a worthy end to the trilogy?

For myself, I still think that, again, it’s more clean; the shooting and the editing are cleaner. It was our first attempt at digital. It’s a more cleaner film but very different. I can say that the trilogy would be three movies that have to do with the same story but style-wise they’re all different. They change with the chorus of time. I think if you were a family and those were your three kids, I suppose the younger will always be the more spoilt. In this case the older one is the more spoilt.

You touched on the El Rey network. Are you going to be involved with Robert with that at all?

Yeah, definitely. We’re just developing it now. Do you remember MTV back in the ‘80s? It was just videos. So it’s going to take a while; it’s going to take 5 or 10 years to start up. But he’s working really hard. He wants to do this and he’s working so much. He’s working too much. He’s working insanely. He is shooting 10 episodes of a series but as a sole director. That’s insane! He’s doing all of them. That’s crazy! There’ll be a lot of opportunity, and I’m pretty sure in time the material will be there as well. Maybe I’ll do a Double Action or Triple Action scenario, after Single Action the first film.

And there’s a plan to get a Bandido series up and running?

Yeah, definitely. I’m still thinking that I’m going to wait to repeat that film before it goes into a series. And I don’t wanna be the lead guy. We have to rewrite it. I want a young guy to come in and do it. The whole premise of it is who is this guy that went into the bar. And the first scene is there’s some old men in the bar that say, “No, there was another kid that came before,” which they’re talking about  Bandido. And then they go looking for that guy. The whole thing, I have to protect the rights to that and we have to play it very clever. And that’s why we’re going to call it Bandido. But that’s a young kid that goes out looking for this other character, who’s very old and doesn’t remember anything. And he never does recoup his memory. But the whole idea is, from something they can look for, at the end he becomes Bandido as well. We’re going to have to be clever enough to bring in young actors so we have that audience that we need.

Do you have a rough target for when you’re looking to get that rebooted?

No, right now we’re developing, then it needs a rewrite, and I haven’t found the right scenario to do that yet. I’m just now concentrating on a lot of things I’m doing with the studio. I’m going to be doing that for the next year or 2 years, on the acting side. That also takes a lot of time.

And going forward, do you see yourself more comfortable behind the camera or in front of it?

My approach is that I want to get back into studio movies as an actor and see how different things are today. And once I do that, I have a feeling what’s going to happen is that I’m going to be directing in the future. I feel comfortable that I’ll be making a movie with no money at all or with a budget.

Carlos will be hosting the ‘How to Make a Micro Budget Film & Sell It’ masterclasses on the following dates:

Monday, 28^th April: Glasgow

Wednesday, 30^th April: Lancaster

Thursday, 1^st May: Newcastle

Saturday, 3^rd May: London

Monday, 5^th May: Manchester

For full event information and ticket details, visit www.eventbrite.co.uk. For further details on all of Carlos’ latest projects, you can keep track of him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.

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Doctor Who superfan Cameron K McEwan has been running the popular news/reviews/opinions website Blogtor Who since May 2008. Last year Cameron‘s first book, The Who’s Who of Doctor Who, was published and his charming and affectionate Doctor Who documentary, Who’s Changing, was recently released on DVD. STARBURST caught up with Cameron to find out more about the documentary and about his devotion to all things Time Lord…

STARBURST: How did the Who’s Changing project come about and was it always the plan that you would direct the film?

Cameron McEwan: It came about over lunch with a producer friend of mine last year, who’s also a massive Doctor Who fan. We’d just finished working on a web series together and started thinking about what to do next. Being the anniversary year we thought that a documentary would be a good idea. I’d wanted to explore the changing face of Who fandom, particularly the seismic shift in recent years. It’s fascinating to me. I grew up not really knowing any other Who fans at all. Compare that with now where everyone loves Doctor Who (well, almost). But it’s the rise of the female fan which is most interesting. In Who the female voice has often been overshadowed (and, to a certain extent, still is) and this was a way of exploring that dynamic.

How did you select your subjects/victims for interview, i.e. both the fans and the professionals?

Initially, we drew up a “hit” list, based on events and conventions that were coming up. I’m in the lucky position of knowing a few people involved in Who (past and present) so we already had an “in” with some of the talent. Some, however, were opportunities that presented themselves on the day. James Moran is the perfect example of this. Bumped into him at a comic convention. Great interview too, lovely guy! But most of the big names were planned.

The fans were just people we met on the day. We interviewed a lot of fans and there wasn’t enough room for everyone, sadly. So it was mainly down to availability and our ability to get to them. Once we broke our fundraising goal, we then went looking for some really big names though this proved to be fruitless.

The film looks at the development of Doctor Who as a series and the way it has been appreciated over the years and is split into distinct ‘sections’. Was this the plan for the film from the start or was it influenced by the material you gathered from your subjects? How much preparation was involved before you actually started filming?

Having studied documentaries during my degree, I wanted to take out any kind of voice guiding the film, or prejudice any arguments. We initially discussed having me present it but the wealth of material and our fantastic interviewees, I was not needed. Something I was very happy about! We had some ideas before we started filming but these changed as the interviews came in. We knew some things had to be covered from the get-go (the start of fandom, for example). Dealing with “crossplay” is something that wasn’t thought about until it became an issue with our guests. It was new to me. Being slightly experienced in film-making, we were prepared for change. Always have a backup plan and be ready to roll with the punches. Thankfully our punches were touches of genius gifted to us by our subjects that made us think about fandom in other ways.

Over what period of time was the film made?

We started in February and finished September 2013 – I think. Though we chucked in some footage we’d shot from a convention in late 2012. Actually, there’s also some footage from the Official Celebration. So there’s stuff from November in there too. We’d almost finished the edit by that point though.

How involved have you been in the practical side of the production of the film, i.e. financing, distribution, retailing, publicity etc?

I was involved across the board, to some extent. My brilliant producer Elisar Cabrera did a great job in selling the film to online stores and actual physical stores (they still exist) and also setting up the website (whoschanging.co.uk). I was on the front line with him, as it were. I took DVDs around stores in London and helped ship them all off to our lovely fundraisers. Like Elisar, I was involved in the design of the DVD, working with the fab artist Grant Perkins on the cover, back cover, etc… All those things needed attention. So, I would say I was quite involved in every aspect.

Why should Doctor Who fans buy Who’s Changing?

It’s a genuinely interesting story, with a number of brilliant people, both fans and those directly involved in making Doctor Who, chatting about the show they love. There’s a whole world of fandom that many people probably don’t know anything about, and I hope that we go some way to demonstrating the remarkable guys and girls out there. Fans will also see just how actors and writers love and admire the fans. It’s heart-warming.

How long have you been a fan of Doctor Who and what are your earliest memories? Which are your favourite stories and, of course, who’s your favourite Doctor?

My earliest memory is the cliffhanger to City of Death part one, the reveal of Scaroth. Utterly emblazoned on my mind. That season was very vivid for me for years and I spent years, so many years, tracking down Nightmare of Eden. That story horrified me as a child. Eventually got it, taped off UK Gold in the mid-Nineties. Quite the revelation.

You’ve also written a book, The Who‘s Who of Doctor Who. How did that come about and was the writing a process you enjoyed?

I have a few friends who are trying to get books published and they all asked me how I did it – how I went about pitching to the publisher and exactly what the process was. I annoyed every single one of them by telling them I received an email from the publisher asking me to write The Who’s Who of Doctor Who. It was that simple. The hard bit, of course, was actually writing it.

Regarding the show generally; do you think the BBC did the show justice in its fiftieth anniversary?

I think BBC Worldwide did a super job in celebrating Doctor Who in 2013. From those beautiful stamps to those unforgettable three days in November at the Official Celebration, the team involved were impeccable and truly gave fans another avenue to celebrate fifty years outside the television adventures. I would certainly say that BBC Worldwide unquestionably did Doctor Who justice in its fiftieth anniversary.

The Blogtor Who site remains hugely popular and informative. What motivated you to start the site in the first place and how do you see it progressing/developing?

Well, thanks for saying. I was running another site, which was just a blog about TV and anything else I felt like chatting about, when it became apparent that I was writing about Doctor Who quite a lot. And I thought that maybe for the visitors not interested in Who, then my site was becoming a tad annoying. So it was really an offshoot of that (which I stopped updating years ago). As for the future, who knows? Like everything in my life, I don’t have a plan or development ideas. It is what it is.

Are you planning to direct any further projects?

At the moment we’re planning on getting the film out to various festivals and the like, trying to spread the word. I’m now writing another Doctor Who book so my time will be focused on that. I’d love to direct again though. I love meeting people with a story to tell.

How do you think the 21st century version of the series compares with the ‘classic’ series and what do you think of the show at the moment?

Good question. When Who came back in 2005 I couldn’t have been happier. I loved it so much, much more than I did when I was a boy. And I should say, I was known for years as being THE Doctor Who fan. Supporting it through the “wilderness” years when being a fan was looked upon in the most sniffiest of fashions. There was an emotional core to the show on its return which, for me, wasn’t present before. That was the gift of Russell T Davies to Doctor Who. Chris and Billie were so good together and, to be honest, I couldn’t have imagined just how good it was still going to get. Series Four is when I loved Doctor Who the most. Midnight, Turn Left then The Stolen Earth – my favourite run of episodes. My fondest memories of the show and my own excitement.

At the moment, Doctor Who is still a very popular television show. I’m constantly amazed at how adored it is around the world. Makes me feel very happy.

What are your own personal long-term ambitions?

Crikey. There’s a question. I’ve no professional goals when it comes to writing, acting or anything like that. Probably where I’m going wrong. I’d really like to be happy. Just happy. That’s all.

***

Cameron’s book THE WHO’S WHO OF DOCTOR WHO and the DVD WHO’S CHANGING are both available now. Check out www.blogtorwho.com for further details.

Royd Allan Reuel Tolkien is a film producer and movie maker. He is also the great-grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien and has also appeared in The Return of the King at the request of the director, Peter Jackson. We caught up with Royd at the recent SciFi Weekender to find out more about his current projects and his family.

STARBURST: What brings you to the convention scene?

Royd Tolkien: I love it. This is the first one that I’ve done since RingCon in Germany, which was ten years ago. I did it back then during LOTR. I wasn’t reluctant to do it at first. I thought just because I’m related to him, it’s not my merit that has created all this interest in me coming to an event like this. The way I justify it is this; I am a huge Elvis fan and if I could meet any one or any thing to do with Elvis, I’d freak out. It would be brilliant. If I could meet Lisa Marie Presley it’d be amazing.  So I understand it.

What is it like growing up with such a legacy?
It’s really cool. My life is super normal. I live in Wales. I like gardening and country walks.  I have a very normal life.  He’s always been there first and foremost as my great grandfather.  It wasn’t like he suddenly became massively famous when I was a teenager; that would have freaked me out. The fame has just always been there. I think as well that all my life the family has had an involvement with the Tolkien society . They meet yearly in Oxford and they get together and they’re really nice people. We’ve always been involved in that so when the films came out  and the fandom became huge it was an extension of that so I’m comfortable with it.

I was over in LA with a friend of mine and a few of the actors and stunt guys from LOTR where doing a thing for under-privileged kids in down-town LA and they asked me to come along. That started it for me. If I can inspire anyone then I’m absolutely fine with that.

What’s your next big project?
My younger brother has motor-neuron disease  which is an awful condition; there’s no cure, it’s terminal and it basically robs you of everything that you can do.  He can’t use his arms and legs and he’s very frail. He used to be a very active adrenaline junkie where as I’m the opposite; I prefer gardening and ambling around. So what he asked me to do was his bucket-list, because he can’t do it anymore, so he asked me to do it. We are going to Queenstown in New Zealand, the adventure capital of the world, and he’s going to make me do all that crazy stuff he can’t do any more. It’s called “There’s a hole in my bucket”. I’m going to experience part of his life and face my fears while he’s facing his.

What parts of that list are you looking forward to?
None, what so ever.  *laughs*

Which bit scares you the most?
All of it! *laughs* I don’t know a lot of the list, so that will also be a thing.  I’ll do literally do anything for him, just to make him smile, and he knows that.

It’s not just about us having a laugh and me doing crazy things, it’s also a  journey of discovery.  We hope to raise awareness about motor neuron disease which is massively underfunded  and there’s not a lot of support for someone in his condition.

If you could give the ten-year-old version of yourself any advice, what would it be?
Live life in the moment.  Because my brother has got what he’s got it’s absolutely changed my goals in life. Life is for living.  Don’t tie yourself down, it’s about appreciating what you’ve got and none of us know how long we’ve got.  We could be here for a minute; we could be here for forty years. Live life to the fullest.

Simpsons or Futurama?
Simpsons

Elves or Dwarves?
Elves

Star Wars or Star Trek?
Star Trek Next Generation.

Truth or Beauty?
Always Truth.

Royd’s production credits include PIMP, in which he also starred in as himself. He is currently working with his production company on THERE’S A HOLE IN MY BUCKET.

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