Feature Category: Interviews

Peter Muyzers is the man responsible for some of the most awe inspiring visual effects of the past decade from the early Harry Potter films through to Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 and Elysium. Inspired by the designs of futurist Syd Mead, Muyzer’s work on creating space station Elysium is a marvel of visual effects artistry. We had a chat with Peter about the unique challenges that building Elysium brought, as well as his continuing collaboration with Blomkamp on Chappie…

Starburst: How difficult is it to work with a director who has a background in VFX?

Peter Muyzers: I believe it can either be seen as a blessing or as a curse at the same time. It can be a blessing in that he knows exactly what he wants given his experience of being a visual effects artist. You also don’t have to explain to him in detail what technological terms mean. He would get those and understand what it is you’re talking about. So you kind of have this short hand conversation with him. He gets what a grey shaded spaceship looks like and he is not making any presumptions as to how that is going to look in the film. He knows it’s at a certain stage in its production. So in that sense it saves a lot of explaining to him and we get very honest feedback based on that because he knows what he should look for and what he should ignore.

It’s a curse because you can’t get away with anything (laughs). You can’t quite bamboozle the guy. Which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing. He will call you out on every single thing that he sees and it is what it is. He understands that process.

How was working on Elysium compared to your work on the biggest of blockbusters like Harry Potter?

It was a different challenge for myself. When I was working on the Harry Potter films, I was one of the artists working in Soho amongst many other studios working on these monstrous Harry Potter films. They had a lot of visual effects and were very complicated. And the way the work was spilt up was by Warner Brothers looking at all of the studios in London and saying ok maybe the Moving Picture Company could do this, Framestore could do that, Double Negative could this and so they split up the work according to perhaps the strength of each company but then each individual company would be chewing off a smaller portion of the entire film.

Whereas with Elysium, it was basically all put on Image Engine, basically the entire show. In effect, Elysium was for myself far more complicated and a much more heavier lift than anything I’ve done on the Potter films or any of the work I’d done before, including District 9. Some of those key differences were that District 9 was primarily done at Image Engine but we had some help from other studios like WETA Digital did some of the spaceship crashes and some of the other work. I would say that 70% was Image Engine and 30% was split up between Embassy, WETA Digital and some other studios in town here. With Elysium it was also very similar in that Image Engine was taking on about 70% of the work but it was incidentally the most difficult and challenging work in the film. Having said that, the visual effects were also three times as big as District 9.

District 9 was around 311 shots for Image Engine and now we’re close to 900 shots. So just the volume was bigger but also the complexity of the work. If you think back on what the effects were on District 9, for the most part it was aliens in shots. Whether that be the hero aliens or the crowds of aliens and then there was the mother ship and the special effects like weapon effects but for the most part it was all about the aliens.

In Elysium, the variety of work was much greater than anything we’d done before. We had to do space shots, we had to do a lot of the visual effects on Earth, we had space vehicles, the Elysium ring was very complicated, the droids on Earth were very complicated as well as on Elysium and a huge amount of set extensions and environments that we had to build for Elysium.

How did you find the challenge of creating this entire environment in Elysium and how did you go about it?

In hindsight you are always thinking of those challenges ahead of time and you’re thinking, ‘well what do we need to create for the movie?’ You try to break it down with the director Neill and for some reason we were all kind of underestimating the work it would take to do this ring, this world of Elysium. We originally started off thinking we could use live action photography of places like Malibu and the Hollywood Hills and then we would go in and map the terrain and remove cars and just keep the mansions and vegetation and start adding in some science fiction or sci-fi looking buildings and other elements. But there were a number of concepts that were just not working out.

One key one was that the planet Earth which is obviously a giant sphere has a certain horizon line over this terrain whereas Elysium is somewhat inverted. It was almost like you were on the inside of a bicycle tyre so if you looked up, you could see the top of, or the opposite side of Elysium. You could see mansions above you. And so the horizon and therefore the atmosphere would be very different on Elysium. It would take so much effort to distort live action photography and somehow wrestle that into what it would look like on Elysium so that we decided you’d have to go all CG. There’s no way we can use live action in any shape or form to approach this vision.

And once we went all CG, then it kind of opens up another can of worms, both in a good way and a bad way. Then we can do whatever we want. It’s a good thing but also a bad thing. Well when do you stop? What is the limit of what you can do? How close can you get to the terrain? Because otherwise if it was filmed, you could use it as an excuse and say well I’m sorry. This is what was shot, this is what was filmed and there’s nothing we can do. Whereas if it’s digital, the sky’s the limit. So the design of Elysium took a lot longer than everyone had expected including myself and we really had to think differently about how we would get a good end result.

We decided that at Image Engine we would build an art department and we would take over from production’s art department through post production, continue on the design and work further on the designs that they started with Syd Mead. Syd Mead came on board with this film and his influence in the ring design and the concept was critical. We took all our cues from Syd Mead and Phil Ivey who was the production designer and then we just built our own art department at Image Engine. We then spent another six months designing all of these aspects of the terrain, all of the seams, the glass, the walls, the terrain itself. We even employed another company in San Rafael called Whisky Tree who helped us with this massive, massive process of building all of these mansions, all of this vegetation that had to be very precise to fit what Neill wanted on Elysium. Like he would imagine a variety of flora and fauna that would appear on the habitat as well as the design of all of those mansions. Were they all going to be modern designs? Were some going to be traditional? Every aspect had to be figured out before we actually embarked on building them in CGI.

Neill wants to keep everything as real as possible. Are VFX guys on set constantly? How involved are you in the production stage?

I think that it’s often something that has been overseen and it just comes down in my opinion to education. Hopefully you have a team of people on board including line producers and so on who understand the necessity of getting visual effects done to that level that Neill is expecting. It’s therefore mandatory to be on set to be sure that what is being shot is actually going to work three, four, five months down the road when the artists at Image Engine are working with that footage. You don’t want to end up in a situation where Neill goes ahead and shoots something all by himself with no VFX on set and all those months later, you figure out that what he actually did in Mexico City isn’t going to work. Or alternatively it is going to cost a lot more money than anticipated so from the risk perspective, you have to have representation on set so I spend a good part of three months on location of this film with a team of people with me including Andrew Chapman who was doing the second unit that was also happening at the same time as well as a team of data collectors that would go out and measure physical objects, take photographs and other data that we could use in post production that would help us really fit in all of that data that we would create for the film.

Also my biggest role was to advise Neill. If he would just have to ask the camera operator to take a step to the left, it would be perhaps more cost effective than if he was to stay where he would be at that point. It’s little things like pointing out like hey there’s a dump truck driving through the background in the far distance that no one is paying attention to and it would cost another few thousand dollars to get rid of that thing in post. At that point you can just then decide ok I didn’t spot that so let’s just wait until the truck clears frame and then we’ll do another take.

Does it take some convincing of the guys with the money to have helicopters stand in for spaceships when the VFX team will be digitally replacing the helicopter?

It is really a challenge to educate an entire crew about why you would need a helicopter when visual effects are going to get rid of it and replace it with a space ship. Really when you break it down if you have a real object right there that’s a stand in for Neill as a director as well as the camera team, they won’t have to figure out, let’s say if there was a shot, imagine this spaceship is flying at high speed towards us and then it banks to the right and slows down and sets down on the ground. If you have to explain that to a camera operator, I’m pretty sure that it won’t be the same interpretation with any two different camera operators. So somebody might be panning a bit too fast as he’s imagining this spaceship at 100km an hour. So they’re making it up as they go and again then you’re locked in to what this camera operator decided to do. If you had a real vehicle that can make that motion or at least approximate the behaviour of that spaceship, which in our minds was like the behaviour of a helicopter, because spaceships for the most part are based on the technology that means they can take off and land vertically and so that’s kind of similar to a helicopter and so we used these helicopters to really help framing and speed and to get all the camera movements right.

And another important aspect was the action. In a very dusty environment, this space vehicle would lift off with these thrusters that would create a big wash, a big cloud of dust when it touches down. Dust is very dynamic and has very dynamic properties that are very difficult to simulate with visual effects all by themselves. So at least we had a good foundation of well here’s this helicopter that’s been filmed and dust is being kicked up and whirling around and then we can use that dust to our advantage and we insert the spaceship print but for the most part we still had to add additional dust because the thrusters of the spaceship would be in different positions to what the blades of a helicopter would do. So we would add on top of the live action dust quite a lot more CGI dust and they could be well integrated. But without that in place it would be very difficult to actually get that level of realism and that’s really what Neill’s after.

What about having actors in grey suits on set instead of droids?

So the grey suit actors are basically stand-ins for these droids. Neill is basically saying well I want this actor who plays this droid and I want to direct him in the way that I want on set, so that later on in post, we’re simply copying that behaviour exactly, not interpreting what this droid should be doing or how fast. It’s very important for Neill to see all of that action and interaction on set and he’ll take multiple takes and then he’ll say this is the one I want to edit. Then when he gives it to us in VFX, we can then just literally place on top of that basic actor our digital droid because for the most part Neil was happy with that performance.

You’re working with Neill Blomkamp again on Chappie. It’s started shooting in Johannesburg recently. Have you been on set? Is Sharlto Copley doing mo-cap? What can you tell us about it?

I believe it is another film that obviously will have Neil’s stamp on it. It’s going to be either similar to Elysium or District 9. He’s shooting in a similar location to where District 9 was shot so it’s kind of like that’s where he comes from and the nitty-grittiness of Africa I can imagine is going to contribute to the visual impact that Chappie is going to have. I haven’t seen anything of the footage of what they’re shooting. One of my colleagues is on the ground there this time around so I have managed to weasel out of the harsh conditions that Neill tends to put me in. Sharlto gets to play this crazy droid I guess, this robot adopted by this criminal family. Even just that sentence right there is a recipe for some crazy stuff. I’m quite curious to see how this is all going to play out.

ELYSIUM is out now on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download.

  

Writer/director Paul Hough is a gifted filmmaker that comes from a talented lineage. Starburst was on hand at the American Film Market to talk to him about his hit film, The Human Race…

Starburst: How did you come up with the story of The Human Race?

Paul Hough: I was inspired partly by one of my actors – Eddie McGee – who is unique because he has one leg and is one of the most amazing actors I’ve ever met. I was also greatly inspired by both Battle Royale and Run Lola Run.

Your father is a gifted director as well, having helmed such films as Hammer’s Twins of Evil. Obviously, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree in your directing and writing skills. Did you ever get to visit any of the sets or work on your father’s films when you were young?

Yes, I got to go on the set of Biggles when I was younger which was fantastic. Then I got to see him work on Something To Believe In. I made a making-of documentary of that film – which was both a remarkable record and also essentially a live-action film school – as he talked about the hows and whys for every artistic decision.

What were your influences growing up wanting to be a writer/director?

When I was about 8, I’d go with my dad every week as he played football. I was bored out of my mind. So he gave me an 8mm camera – and I started to make my own films. One by one my friends would get killed off in various ghastly ways – which I’d film during the 90 minute matches and then go back and edit. We screened one at my primary school but I remember being super upset that the Headmistress said no one under 8 would be allowed to see it because it would be too scary for them…

Where was The Human Race filmed and what was the process of making this film?

We shot most of the film in an abandoned youth correctional facility near Los Angeles. Essentially we had enough money for 7 days of filming. Then stopped for a few months. Shot a few more days. Then stopped for 6 months to raise more money. Then filmed more – and so on. Overall the process was a marathon in itself – taking approx 3 years to film.

That was the Fred C. Nelles School for Boys in Whittier, California. My father and I would drive by there when I was a boy when it was still a prison and would always tell me that if I didn’t behave that’d he’d drop me off there installing the fear of God in me. Pop was a real winner. Is it as disturbing and creepy looking when you filmed there as it was in the ’60s?

That’s funny. Growing up, my dad would actually take me and my brother to a spooky and overgrown cemetery in North London at midnight and we’d have a competition to see who could walk in the furthest without being too scared and running back. A great memory! But, yeah, the place is pretty overrun and empty. There wasn’t running water in there, so for the first day no one could actually go to the toilet without leaving the facility. We had a bucket but no one dared use it. As the shoot progressed and people got more comfortable with each other the bucket did gradually get filled.

You had to learn your own visual FX as you had a limited budget.

Yeah, I learned After Effects from scratch. My friend Brian Harty taught me masking first – and as soon as I understood that then it seemed a whole new brilliant visual world opened up to me.

Tell us about the makeup in the film.

Well, there is a lot of blood. We used 3 different grades of blood. The cheap blood for the big gushing scenes. Medium cost blood for wider shots – and the expensive theatrical blood for close-ups.

The cinematography, music and sound are all excellent…

The music is by Marinho Nobre, an excellent composer based in Brazil. Sound was created and designed by Richard Gale – who also plays one of the most evil villains in the movie. He is the director of The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Inefficient Weapon and also contributed his expertise to the special FX in the movie. The movie was shot on 2 cameras by the excellent Matt Fore who used a variety of different tricks to achieve different effects.

What were some of the toughest days of filming and the easiest? Any funny moments?

There was a lot of running and I’m not the fittest guy in the world so, when I had to keep up with people, that was hard. We did a large double head gush explosion in the prison but forgot to roll the camera before the effects guy pressed the switch, so that was frustrating. Otherwise, the hardest thing was really shooting everything over such a long period of time and maintaining decent continuity with the actors. And also shooting some of the deaf-sign-language scenes was difficult since it was hard keeping track of the dialogue.

The cast is amazing. What was casting the actors for the right roles like?

It actually was quite easy as I had a lot of actors/people I knew in mind for the roles I was writing. I really wanted Paul McCarthy Boyington as the lead since he was so fantastic in Altered and his management company turned me down. So I went to him directly and got him involved. There were a few people who had never acted before, but were naturals. One of the main bad guys, a guy in a yellow shirt who is a serious runne,r is a rock star in his own right (part of Cinderella) and while he had never acted I knew I could channel his charisma and stage confidence into the character and he delivers a stellar performance. The deaf characters are not actually deaf and so for them they had to learn sign language from scratch. But, again, they were both actors I knew. Only a few actors came from blind auditions, such as the Priest and War Veteran. However, as the shoot started, I actually had to fire a few people, so some actors who started out having huge roles no longer did, and others had their roles significantly expanded.

As a director, you have this style like John Ford had. You could say that Paul McCarthy-Boyington and Eddie are your Henry Fonda and John Wayne characters while Trista Robinson and T. Arthur Cottam are your Maureen O’Hara and Ward Bond in this film.

Apart from my dad’s influence – I do directly rip off one of his shots in the movie from American Gothic – I’m a huge Hitchcock fan. Since he did something with such immense style. I try to bring that also in my work.

The movie’s ending is impressive. Any plans for a sequel?

No plans yet, but you never know!

THE HUMAN RACE hits DVD March 3rd.

There have been various Doctor Who games in the past, none of which have been particularly well received – at least to the level of Legacy. Did playing or researching any of them give you any indication on how a Doctor Who game shouldn’t be done?

Lee Cummings: When Susan and I decide we want to work on a specific game, or type of game, we have this general rule that we try really hard not to play other games in the genre, or related to the content of the game we’re making. During the development of Doctor Who Legacy the BBC asked us to look at Worlds in Time, so we played that for about an hour to get a grasp on how they handled certain things like narrative and companions, and when the Google Doctor Who doodle came out we played that, however that’s the entirety of our experience with Doctor Who games in recent memory. When we decide to work in a world we really want to create an experience very much grounded in not just the gameplay we want to create but our own personal interpretation of the world and characters, and not have that influenced by someone else’s vision of what they wanted to create.

Doctor Who is now arguably one of the biggest brands in the world. How did working with such an iconic show inform your approach to the project? Did it make things easier or more difficult?

Lee: The difficulty really came from the pressure we ended up putting on ourselves. As a lifelong fan of the show I found it really easy to get out of bed and get to work in the mornings, but it was equally as hard to walk away at night. We were keenly aware that this would likely be our one and only chance to work with something we loved so dearly, so we pushed ourselves incredibly hard during the year. During the last couple of months we were working something like 17 hours a day (including the weekends) because every little detail had to be perfect. We would fixate on finding just the perfect name for an ability for a character (for hours and hours), or we would tweak a piece of art over and over. We re-balanced and tweaked the first few hours of gameplay dozens of times to make sure it was as accessible as possible to as many fans of the show as possible.

Both Susan and Lee have a background in producing AAA games. How does the experience of working on free-to-play games differ?

Lee: As well as working in the Doctor Who universe for the first time we also had the daunting task of designing and producing our first free to play game. Free to play is a completely different ballgame from traditional boxed games.

Susan Cummings: In the console/retail world, it’s a massive effort over a long period of time (years) to get a game to market and then a huge sigh of relief that it’s in the hands of sales, retailers, marketing. In the world of mobile free to play, getting to market is just the beginning. You launch and then the focus is on constantly improving the experience. Adding new content, listening to your fans. It’s a service you are ultimately providing, not a one off sale.

Beyond the branding, how would you define the differences between Legacy and other free-to-play games? Are there any aspects of free-to-play you saw as pitfalls that you wanted to avoid?

Lee: We had a few rules from day one on the game – one of which was that we wanted to create an experience which didn’t include any of the things we dislike about lots of free to play games available right now. We didn’t want an energy system because, well, we  hate them and wanted nothing else than for fellow Whovians to play as much as they wanted whenever they wanted, and an energy system seemed to be absolutely at odds with that. We wanted to create a real game, a real gaming experience, which wasn’t balanced against people having to spend money – the game launched with 25 – 30 hours of gameplay and every minute can be played completely for free.

Susan: We’re quite proud of the fact that one of our first reviews called us ‘the most moral free to play game’ to date. That means that we really accomplished one of our major goals in making our fans feel that this was an experience that truly could be enjoyed for free. It’s not that we don’t want people to spend money – of course, we do – but we don’t want them to feel like they are getting a bad, incomplete or unsatisfying experience if they choose not to. It’s a balancing act, a very fine line that we have to walk.

Seeing as Legacy was released so close to the 50th Anniversary of the show, pressure and expectations must have been high. Was Legacy always intended to be part of the Anniversary, or was that just a happy coincidence?

Lee: It was actually a happy coincidence – when we started talking to the BBC about the possibility of doing a Doctor Who game we didn’t have any idea about how long development would take, or how big the 50th Anniversary would be. As development started it became clear that the stars would possibly align quite nicely, and everything just fell into place.

Once you’d secured the licence, how did you and the BBC begin putting together the game? How much input did the BBC have in the process?

Lee: From the very start we worked hand in hand with the BBC. When I received a build our producer at BBC Worldwide was sent one. Every fundamental of the project was put together with huge input from the BBC – from the art style, the story, game design, balancing, choice of characters, music, sound effects – pretty much everything was discussed with the BBC.

Susan: They have been very supportive, very additive. We’ve had the opposite experience with licensing partners, where feedback felt inappropriate to the medium or too heavy handed… not here, the BBC has been very respectful of our vision for the game and has kept their feedback in line with the spirit of the game we set out to create.

How big a part did research on the show play into the development of the game?

Lee: Before we even approached the BBC, Susan and I had seen every episode of the post relaunch seasons (twice), so we were in a pretty good position to sketch in most of the game really quickly. And of course we grew up with Doctor Who and had a solid grasp on Doctor Who’s history and canon. As we dug into the details we went back and watched all the episodes again (multiple times) and did a pretty significant amount of research online to make sure every single detail was as close as we could get it.

Susan: It’s been a real pleasure to see how observant of the small details our fans have been. We get emails frequently pointing out the little touches they’ve noticed… names of abilities, costumes, locations, etc. It’s lovely to see that it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Obviously, a Who game can’t have the Doctor running around blowing everything up, or using a gun. Did you always know it was going to be a puzzle game, or were there other approaches you considered?

Lee: Susan and I made a puzzle game together years ago (Puzzle Kingdoms), and we had been itching to make another one (it’s one of our favourite genres). From the start we wanted to make a game which wouldn’t feel like another episode of the show, but rather let us go through the entirety of the show’s history and convert the amazing episodes, Doctors, allies and enemies into gameplay. The only realistic way to do that is through a puzzle game of some sort.

Susan: Thanks for noticing this – it’s true, we feel like the gem matching, puzzle mechanic is keenly suited to Doctor Who. There are some who I feel unfairly assume this was a quickly made game that is cloning prior gem matching mechanics. Rather we felt that this was the perfect mechanic to adopt and evolve for our purposes, allowing us to extrapolate ‘combat’ into gem matching. The Doctor doesn’t use a ‘gun’, he uses his brain.

One of the most striking things about Legacy is its artwork, and Seed Studios have a very distinct blend of Eastern and Western design. Was there anything in particular that made you take the look of the game in this direction?

Lee: From the very start we wanted to make a game which was accessible to Whovians all over the world, of all ages. The first real consequence of that was that we wanted an art style which would be appealing wherever you are in the world, and I think the first art discussion call between us, Seed and the BBC specifically started with the line “We need something which is a mix of East and West”.

Susan: Our Art Director, Pest Jiang at Seed Studio, has done a tremendous job creating a unique art aesthetic for the game which BBC has embraced and supported since the beginning. I can’t tell you how many times I opened up a new art file from Pest and couldn’t stop smiling. Some of my personal favourites are the Peg Dolls, the Skeletal Dalek, the Spoonhead Doctor.

Were the team working on the game big fans of the show? Are there any particular episodes from the show’s past you’d particularly like to see included in the game?

Lee: Favourite episodes – Girl in the Fireplace, 42, Family of Blood, Caves of Androzani, City of Death.

Susan: Silence in the Library, The Shakespeare Code, The Pandorica Opens, and of course the Master episodes at the end of Series 3.

We noticed when playing there’s a small ‘TV’ icon next to the name of some of the episodes – is Tiny Rebel considering looking at more than just TV episodes in the future, such as tie-in novels or Big Finish audio?

Lee: Right now we’re focussed on continuing backwards through the seasons from the TV show, however I’d love to look at the Big Finish series somewhere down the line.

How far back would you like to go when adding additional content from the show’s past? Could fans really be facing Zarbi and Krotons at some point in the future?

Lee: Our original pitch to the BBC ended with the line “we won’t be happy until we get back to An Unearthly child”, and every system in the game was built with that goal in mind. If the community likes the game and gets behind it, we’re in it for the long term.

Many fans of the show and the game are doubtless looking forward to additional series being added, but do you think there are any other ways the game could be expanded, not only in terms of content but in gameplay and platforms too?

Lee: When we started the original design we made sure that it was as extendable as possible – one part of that was to make the puzzle board as fully data driven and designer led as possible. There are lots of really cool things we’re planning to do which were designed from the start, are part of the code, but not yet part of the gameplay. In terms of platforms we built the game using Unity specially because it’s so wonderfully multi-platform, and we hope to release more information on our platform plans pretty soon.

Susan: Coming in the near future we’ll be adding other modes of play to the game, leaderboards and achievements. Also, we’ll be adding, at the very least, other mobile platforms and browsers, and quite possibly console support.

What can we expect to see from Legacy in the next few months?

Susan: Quite a bit actually. We’ve been very focused this month on the Advent Calendar giveaways but we’re also working forward on content from Season 5, new modes of gameplay, and new features like cloud saving, achievements and leaderboards.

Lee: The game was built from the ground up as something where it would be easy to create and deliver new content quickly. We’re really listening to feedback from our fans right now as we create new levels – in fact, we’re expecting to launch a fan inspired episode for Christmas, based on a great idea that was suggested to us.

Starburst caught up with author and entrepreneur Ian Livingstone to chat about his Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, the founding of Games Workshop, and more…

Starburst: Games Workshop was founded in 1975, and was the strong precursor to Fighting Fantasy. Can you give us some insight into how that came about?

Ian Livingstone: Steve Jackson and I were sharing a flat in London in 1974 with another old school friend, John Peake. We had low-paid, boring jobs and played a lot of board games in the evenings. We always talked about turning our board games hobby into a business. So we decided to do just that, and founded Games Workshop in February 1975. We started by publishing a fanzine Owl & Weasel to reach out to people who shared our passion for games. We sold games by mail order from our flat before the big breakthrough came in June when we managed to secure the European distribution rights for Dungeons & Dragons. But D&D did not appeal to John and he decided to leave Games Workshop 

Was it difficult to set up such a company in the ’70s?

It wasn’t hard to set up a new company back then, but it was virtually impossible to get a bank loan, especially for a small games company that sold obscure fantasy role-playing games. After being kicked out of our flat where we were running our mail order business, Steve and I had no choice but to live in a van for three months as we only had enough money to rent a small office. But we didn’t really care because we were following a dream and made it up as we went along. 

How exactly did you and Steve Jackson come up with the idea for Fighting Fantasy books?

We’d been playing and selling Dungeons & Dragons since 1975, and started thinking about a single-player role-playing game system that might appeal to a wider audience. We used to run a games convention called Games Day and invited other companies to take trade stands at it. Penguin Books took a stand in 1980, and their editor was amazed by the enthusiasm of 5,000 people crammed into a hall playing RPGs. She asked Steve and I to write a book about the role-playing games hobby, but we convinced her that a role-playing gamebook which you could actually play would be much better. We worked hard on the narrative structure, gameplay and combat before Steve drafted the final concept and sent it to her. It had a working title of The Magic Quest. She liked it. However, it took another year to convince Penguin Books executives to commit to publishing The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. But they didn’t regret the decision; Fighting Fantasy gamebooks went on to sell over 17 million copies and are still in print today in many countries.

Was it an idea that came about for people who enjoyed RPGs that couldn’t get themselves involved in group get-togethers?

Steve and I were obsessed with D&D; designing dungeons, playing it, writing about it, selling it, and in 1981 we even created a book of AD&D monsters, The Fiend Folio, for TSR. D&D had a huge, dedicated fan base, but at the end of the day it was still a niche hobby. We believed that so many more people would enjoy role-playing if only it was more accessible. That thought ultimately led us to coming up with the Fighting Fantasy concept.

Who came up with the name ‘Fighting Fantasy’?

I believe it was me.

Who came up with which aspects of the game mechanics?

We discussed mechanics and rules a lot to make sure the combat was at a level so as not to interrupt the flow of the adventure. Adding Luck was a later decision. We agreed to use Steve’s terminology of Skill, Stamina and Luck in preference to my Combat, Strength and Luck.

How did you find the process of writing a gamebook yourself? What were the challenges? Was it harder than you expected or was it a liberating experience? What approach did you take?

Writing gamebooks is a lot harder than people might imagine. It is assumed that we use some digital template and fill in the boxes. It is anything but that. I always constructed the flowcharts manually as I wrote each paragraph, allocating the 400 references one-by-one as I went along. The manuscript, which I used to write in pen and ink, had to be typed up, collated, and checked for accuracy, difficulty, balance, numbers and consistency. Whilst I now use a laptop to write the adventure, it is still very challenging to create a gamebook. And it is very rewarding too.

How difficult was it to get FF off the ground and into the shops?

It wasn’t difficult to get Fighting Fantasy into the shops. That was the publisher’s job. Penguin Books is a major book publisher and well able to get retailers to stock new titles. However, Penguin as an organisation did not really understand Fighting Fantasy. Books with branching narrative with a games system attached was all a bit too weird for them in 1982. There was little marketing, and the sales reps struggled to educate the retailers on what FF was all about. Ultimately it came down to the power of the playground that led to Fighting Fantasy’s rapid growth. You can’t beat word-of-mouth for marketing!

The initial run of books had 59 titles. Why was it that you and Steve were involved in so few?

We were actually involved in all of the titles in one way or other. From personally writing them, to commissioning them or storyboarding them. The demand for new books was so great in the 1980s that we couldn’t write them fast enough to satisfy the market. It’s funny, really, that when Warlock of Firetop Mountain was first published, Penguin were not very enthusiastic about it. When they finally figured out they had a bestseller on their hands, they suddenly wanted to publish a new book every two months! That’s why we added the ‘Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone Presents’ books to the series.

Which, of the 59, is your favourite – and why?

That’s a bit like asking me which is my favourite child! I don’t have an absolute favourite gamebook, but Warlock of Firetop Mountain is right up there because it was the first one that Steve and I wrote. It was an incredibly proud moment when we first saw it for sale in the bookshops. Of the ones I’ve written myself, my favourite is a split decision between Deathtrap Dungeon and City of Thieves. The Forest of Doom and Blood of the Zombies battle it out for third place.

Considering most titles had about 400 choices – and quite a few grisly deaths – was there ever a temptation to create a bigger sized adventure that could rival Lord of the Rings?

No book can rival Lord of the Rings, but Steve’s Sorcery! series is certainly epic.

Talking of those grisly deaths, did you ever receive any negative feedback from parents or overeager pressure groups?

Yes, quite a bit. The Evangelical Society published an 8-page warning guide about the potential danger of reading Fighting Fantasy leading to devil worship! And a worried housewife in deepest suburbia reportedly said on radio that after having read one of my books, her son levitated! Kids thought ‘great – for £1.25 I can fly!’ This was all wonderful PR for Fighting Fantasy.

Was there any positive feedback?

It took a long time for FF to be finally accepted by the establishment. After years of misunderstanding and criticism, the media started writing nice things about FF. Teachers said that our books encouraged reluctant readers, inspired creative writing and art, helped with problem-solving, decision-making. These were books in which the reader was the hero. They made all the choices and that was seen as being very powerful and motivational for children.

Why do you think that sales of the series declined before it ended?

Nothing lasts forever. Video games were becoming very popular in the 1990s and digital interactive entertainment was taking over from analogue. But interactive entertainment was here to stay.

New versions are now being released on smartphones and handheld devices. How excited are you about this?

It’s brilliant to see the books being re-imagined in digital format, taking the series to a new generation of digital consumers. Blood of the Zombies, House of Hell, The Forest of Doom and Sorcery! are all available as Apps on iOS and Android. And we made sure you could cheat too!

Is it planned for all the old titles to be revisited this way?

Some of the classic titles will be released over the next twelve months, including Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Deathtrap Dungeon. Steve and I are also talking to a number of developers about action games based on FF.

Do you think that computer console titles like Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim are the natural successors to the series, just in a new medium?

Clearly there are some similarities in concept, but we were influenced by D&D when we created FF.  We’re told that Fighting Fantasy influenced many video game titles. If people were inspired by our work, that is very satisfying. We are very proud of Fighting Fantasy.

As Life President of Eidos, are there any plans for the company to delve into the possibility of bringing Fighting Fantasy titles to the console generation?

Deathtrap Dungeon was a PlayStation 1 title in 1998. It wasn’t the best game ever developed to put it mildly, yet it sold well because of the brand. Since Eidos was acquired by Square Enix there have been no plans for further Fighting Fantasy games. It is a strange coincidence that Square Enix publishes Final Fantasy! Fighting Fantasy came first though!

Are you saddened by the fact that consoles have grasped hold of the children of today and they are less likely to read a book or use their imagination?

Children of today are fascinated by all screens; consoles, smart phones, televisions and other digital devices. But they still love reading physical books – Harry Potter proved that – and e-books too. Games are competing for their attention of course, but I don’t think that is bad. For me, games are a good thing. Problem solving, puzzle solving, intuitive learning, choice and consequence, simulations, game-based learning – these are all positive attributes of playing games. Parents and guardians just have to ensure their children balance their leisure time and don’t let them do anything too extreme.

What was it like to be writing a new gamebook again for the 30th anniversary?

Back in the day it would take me two months to write a gamebook. It took me two years to write Blood of the Zombies. But I had forgotten just how much satisfaction I got from writing a gamebook. Creating monsters, designing the plot, structuring the adventure, building tricks and traps, luring readers to their doom. Brilliant fun!

Do you think you will ever write another gamebook?

I was humbled by the positive reaction on websites and Twitter about Blood of the Zombies when it was published last year. It is very gratifying to know that there is still a lot of love out there for FF. So I’ve suggested to Steve that we co-write a new Firetop Mountain book for the 40th anniversary. At our age it will probably take us 10 years to write it…

Today sees the release of the Israeli revenge thriller, Big Bad Wolves. Hot on the heels of their fantastic Rabies, writer/director duo Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado are hoping for big things from their metaphorical wolf tale. Starburst managed to get the best part of an hour with co-writer/director Papushado, as we set the world to rights on remakes, thrillers, and just who is the dominant force in the Keshales/Papushado dynamic. Whilst this is a taster, be sure to check out even more of our interview in Starburst #396, on sale shortly.

Starburst: So how did you and Aharon meet?

Navot Papushado: He was a professor for film theory, and encouraged me to do my own stuff. The other professors at the university kind of wanted to do more strong films, stuff that is more related to the Palestinian situation, dysfunctional families, something that would resonate well with big festivals. It’s like, “Ok, this is proper for Caen, for Berlin.” Stuff like that. I only wanted to do horror films and sci-fi films and action films, and Aharon is the only one that encouraged me to do that. Eventually he became, like, a manager. Ironically enough, a short film I did – a horror film – went in to Caen Film Festival. So we began working more together, and eventually he produced my graduation film. By then he was one of Israel’s most acclaimed film critic, so I told him, “Why not do a film together?” And I lured him… he’s a little bit like Marty McFly in the future… I told him, “Come on, are you afraid?” “I’m not afraid of anything, I’ll do it.”

See, I thought he would be more like your Master Yoda, in the way that he would be taking you under his wing, but no, you were trying to corrupt him…

I was trying to corrupt him, and I told him to just try this. He agreed to write, but he didn’t want to have credit. After the script was done, everyone was talking about that. I then decided to put his name on the script, and asked for him to do the casting with me. So he did the casting, and he loved the process. So, OK, now you’ve done the casting, come and direct with me now. And I kind of lured him, y’know? I left him, like, a trail of little candies. Eventually he became my co-director, and the rest is history.

With Big Bad Wolves, what actually inspired that story? What triggered it in your head?

I think after Rabies we had a couple of ideas. We wanted to explore some different genres. We didn’t want to be the guys that do purely just horror because we were influenced by so much other stuff. We had this idea to do something more drama orientated. We wanted to portray the life of a suspect paedophile whose life has been shattered because of the rumours. He’s a teacher who the kids are, like, spreading these rumours. His wife leaves him, doesn’t want to see him, and basically his life has been ruined. But it was too drama orientated. I remember being in a small festival in Portugal called Fantasporto, and we saw for the first time this Korean film called I Saw The Devil and our mind just… it just blew our mind. So we said, “OK, we have a couple of more ideas and now we know how to do it.” We took that drama about a suspect paedophile and we had this other idea about a lunatic father and then we had the vigilante cop. So we said, “OK, let’s put them all together; let’s do a film about all three characters.” Actually that’s how we pitched it. We wanted to do a Dirty Harry cop, with a Korean revenge thriller, written by the Brothers Grimm. They said, “Great! Can you make it PG-13?” We said, “No, no we can’t.”

There’s almost a black humour to the film at times. Was that intentional to relieve some of the tension at times or was it just natural to you?

For us, over the last 10 years or so, most horror films, even most thrillers, became very one tone. If it’s a thriller, it’s a thriller. If it’s an action film, it’s an action film. If it’s a horror film, it’s a horror film. If you put things into a thriller, and you’re dealing with a subject matter like this, you kind of expect a certain thing, but when the comedy gets in and brings some air to the film and you feel much more relaxed and much more comfortable… “OK, this is funny, I’m having fun… Oh no! Oh shit! What just happened?” So it’s another way to lower your guard, as the audience.

With the recent buzz around Big Bad Wolves, how does it feel to be drawing such attention to Israeli cinema?

We felt we were making the most Israeli films that we could think of. We were making something very local. We thought, “OK, it’s in Hebrew. I’m sure some parts of the world will like these exotic films that come out of Israel.” But when we saw how the international community reacted to it, we thought, “OK, maybe there is something here.” With Big Bad Wolves, it just exploded. We had no idea how much attention this would get. It’s not like this interactive pleasure film that we thought might be more mainstream. It’s heavy, the subject matter is much darker, the filmmaking aspects are much more mature. Maybe people were expecting Rabies 2 or a ‘slasher in the woods,’ so we were a bit shocked and excited to see how the world is embracing a film likes that, and a film that speaks Hebrew.

How has the film been received over in Israel?

The movie’s considered to be a blockbuster in terms of the mainstream films. It’s a huge success even in mainstream measures, and the film is rated R… so we couldn’t be happier. For 11 weeks we were number 1 in the critics table, which was great, until Gravity came and kicked us to second place. I now feel very comfortable with that. But I think it’s also a great achievement for such a violent and brutal film – we won 5 Israeli Oscars!

Moving forward, are there any genres or subgenres that you’d like to tackle in the future or are you going to stick with horrors or thrillers for a while?

We just feel very comfortable with genre films – we’re genre fans – and genre film festivals discovered us, and we owe everything to them. And I think we will keep doing genre films, but what genre we want to do… maybe taking place with a British colony in the ‘40s – we have that idea we want to do. We have a Nazi hunter film we are writing, which is more like an assassins film. We would love to make a sci-fi… but I think we’ll speak to the more familiar genre aspect of filmmaking.

That’s good, as if you stick with that then Starburst can keep covering those, so keep with those…

We will do. That’s a promise!

Are you looking to maybe branch over to Hollywood or are you happy to just keep making films in Hebrew? What’s you aspirations at present?

We don’t want to stop making films in Hebrew; we love the country, we love the actors, we love the freedom. We will keep pushing, keep promoting the industry in Israel and genre filmmaking in Israel, but yeah, we’ve been getting a lot of scripts from Hollywood and some fun stuff. We feel very comfortable doing films without losing our voice or our tone, so we would definitely like to explore that option, but we’ll never stop making films with Israeli actors and the Israeli industry and crew. It’s where we come from and we should never forget that. To do films in Hollywood? That’s just another aspect of our career. We’re waiting for the right project.

In terms of projects you’ve received, what was the worst one?

You get those, especially after Rabies, where they thought the only thing we want to do is horrors. We got all of these… not even B movies. We were shocked. There are a lot of bad movies being produced there, but we’re very patient. And right now we’ve been getting a lot of good scripts. Not all of them are up our alley… we won’t do a film just because it’s in Hollywood. We have great agents and managers, and I think patience… it’s worth waiting for.

For further chatter, be sure to pick up Starburst #396, on sale December 20th. Read our review of Big Bad Wolves here.

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At the time, Adams was known not only for being an accomplished singer and Broadway star, but an actress in such classic films as The Apartment and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. However, it was her marriage and long working relationship with the late comedic television visionary Ernie Kovacs that prepared her for the daunting challenge of producing and starring in her very own television series. In fact, it was Kovacs’s death in December, 1962 in a tragic car accident that was the initial impetus for the show itself.

Faced with Kovacs’s years of unpaid back taxes, Adams went back to work, and if the DVD set is any indication, in a very big way. If you’re still not convinced, look no further than the set’s roster of classic musical and comedy guests: Duke Ellington, Bob Hope, Bobby Darin, Peter Falk, Soupy Sales, Count Basie, Sammy Davis Jr., Spike Jones, and Johnny Mathis.

Josh Mills, Adams’s son and producer of the box set, recently spoke with Starburst to discuss the project and his mother’s work.

Starburst: Can you talk about the genesis of this project?

Josh Mills: Absolutely, you know it’s almost a situation where the time chose me more than I chose it. You know I’m very aware that, sadly, the DVD market is having a rough time and… I really felt we were sort of under the gun in a sense that who knows in five years if there would even be a DVD market. I really wanted a physical product that I could one day show my daughter… this is what Grandma Edie used to do.

Now these haven’t been seen since their first broadcast, correct?

Correct. In fact now we’ve just sent out some promos and people have some things. But, prior to that there was very little on YouTube. I mean there was almost no information on the show except for one website I found on the internet. So, it was almost a lost show to some degree, and because my mom and her production company “Ediad Productions”, which now I run, produced it and owned it, it was basically all in our vaults and nobody had anything. So it was great to finally be able to get it out.

How do you feel the program was unique? It does feel very much like a time capsule.

Absolutely, in the last episode they are making a parody of the “Beatles” which is called the “Roaches”. So, it’s clearly just right after the Ed Sullivan appearance. So, it’s very much pre-rock and roll in a lot of ways. It’s different in that sense. This has got a classic era that just doesn’t exist. She really kind of took the philosophy of ‘if I’m going to have this popular American television show in 1962 I’m going to try to make some high art’…She has some classical music on there, there’s some opera, there’s choral groups. Aside from wanting to have an entertaining show, she really wanted to show people that there was more out there than just popular music.

What do you feel are some of the set’s musical highlights?

You know it’s funny, when I was younger my mom would show me VHS tapes of some of these shows, and I was more into punk rock and rock and roll. I was sort of like Duke Ellington whatever, Count Basie whatever. But, now that I’m older it totally trips me out that my mom is singing with Duke Ellington. I just can’t even conceive of that. Who has that?

But, the Sammy Davis Jr. one is great because it’s like… let him do whatever he wants to do. He’ll do a dance number, he’ll do some impressions, he was up for anything! So it’s pretty cool.

For all the Ernie Kovacs fans out there, what can we expect from him in the set’s special features?

They are basically Ernie’s introductions from my mom doing some numbers on his show.  So you get to see Ernie actually introducing my mom, and my mom singing. So, Ernie’s on the set as much as we can get him on there!

Without your mother’s work in television preservation we wouldn’t have much footage of Ernie Kovacs to begin with. Could you speak a bit about your mom’s efforts in that area?

In putting together the Ernie DVD sets and now my mom’s set, I’m actually talking to a lot of people who are into film and television preservation, and they’re kind of talking about my mom as the patron saint of film preservation. Shortly after Ernie died, she got a call from one of his technical people that he used to work with who said that the networks were just basically taking the shows and taking the masters and using them for PSAs, or weather reports, or the news, or something like that. They didn’t want to pay the bills to actually store old tapes…

So, she went to her lawyer and essentially said “Go to all the networks, everyone that he was on… just buy it… anything that says Kovacs I’ll buy it.” People would ask her why did she did it, and she would say because “I just knew Ernie was doing something special, and I just didn’t want to see it go away forever.”

As the years went on, how did your mother look back at this time in her life?

I think in many ways it was definitely her crowning achievement. She got a chance to show people what she could do. I really feel like this was my mom’s moment to shine, and she was really proud of everything she was able to accomplish. So, I think it would be if not at the very top, 1A and 1B for sure.

Here’s Edie: The Edie Adams Television Collection is out now to purchase exclusively on the Edie Adams website.

With The World’s End finally hitting DVD and Blu-ray, we got the chance to sit down with stars Simon Pegg – who claims to have been reading Starburst (magazine) since the days when Starburst (sweets) were known simply as Opal Fruits – and Nick Frost about the final flavour in the Cornetto Trilogy. We talk friendship, MasterChef, knocking out Hungarians, and even cheeky mentions of Spaced and the Marvel Cinematic Universe…

When you first met, did you ever imagine you’d be doing films like this?

Simon Pegg: We didn’t have any plans. I was a stand-up comic…

Nick Frost: I worked in a restaurant for 8 years after we met, so it was never… I never wanted to act, I never wanted to do this, I never wanted to do anything. I was happy being where I was; we were mates and having a laugh, and that’s what it was all about. Then, I think part of our revolution as men and friends is, it just kinda happened. We didn’t think Spaced would happen. We did Spaced, then we had the chance to do Shaun of the Dead. We did it, and that was it.

SP: I think if you went back in time and told us then that a couple of layabouts in the ‘90s would be doing what we’re doing now, we’d be incredibly amazed.

NF: I’d probably say, “Do you want to see the dessert menu?”

SP: That was all he knew.

NF: Or, “Do you want chips and salsa?”

Bar the head explosions, aliens and blue stuff, how much does The World’s End resemble a night out from your youth?

SP: In our youth?

Or these days. I just presumed maybe you’d toned it down a little bit…

SP: Yeah, we’re dads now. I was in bed by half nine last night.

NF: I probably do the same thing every night. I spend a few hours cooking dinner for my wife and I, and I’ll bath my child, my wife will put him to bed, we’ll eat dinner and then I… If I can be in bed watching MasterChef: The Professionals… I don’t wanna go to sleep, but if I can tuck up in bed…

SP: We don’t have a TV in our room…

NF: Laptop!

SP: Same thing. Get little ‘un ready for bed, stories, downstairs… My missus is currently working her way through Breaking Bad, which is a pleasure for me to revisit the series with her. We watch that, then she might toddle off, I’ll watch an episode of Portlandia, join her, go to sleep, lights out. I think in terms of the old days, there wasn’t as much alien invasion.

NF: There was some.

Just the blue goo?

SP: Just the blue goo…

NF: There was some black foam. Now I have a thing on my phone that’s called UK Tide Tables, ‘cos I live in Twickenham, which is where the Thames flows through and it’s very tidal. There’s a pub called The White Swan, and, if there’s a tide over 4 1/2 metres, you’re essentially trapped inside it… only for an hour… but it’s enough. So I’ll have a look at the tide table and I’ll see how big the tide is and what time it’s at, then I’ll make sure I’m in there 30 minutes before high tide so I can then phone my wife and say, “Love, I’m stuck in the bloody pub again.” I’m very excited when there’s a tide over 5 metres. It even moves the bottle bank.

How hands on were you with the fight scenes in The World’s End?

SP: We did it all.

Were you involved with the actual choreography and the planning of it all?

SP: We worked with a fight choreographer called Brad Allan, who’s one of Jackie Chan’s team. He worked with a great team of stunt guys here… Damien Walters, who has a phenomenal show reel on YouTube – look it up – and his team, and we did a lot of training and choreography and learnt the fights like one would a dance, so we came to the set fully equipped to do virtually anything. Anything that didn’t involve what the insurance thought might hurt us, we did. Also, the way we shot the fight scenes was in long takes on wide angles so that… a lot of fight scenes you see will be very choppy and you edit so that you can fit the stunt performers in… but with this, because we were doing the fights, you could be a little more lengthy. They were also shot as if they were one continuous take.

It does have that look to it, like one smooth, fluid movement…

SP: If you imagine each fight was choreographed like a 3D event. So any time Nick was doing one part of his fight in the background, we knew that we’d be at a certain point in the fight, so you can see us fighting in the background of Nick’s shot. So, in The Beehive where he does an incredible…

NF: It takes time, you know? The Beehive took 8 or 10 days to shoot, so you’re on that set for a long time, and it’s very laborious, and you have to be fit physically and you have to be careful to not… It would be an absolute disaster if you broke an ankle or a finger. It would be terrible. Plus, you have to be careful, especially me with those bar stools. I mean, you’re hitting these men! The first couple of times I did it, you could tell I wasn’t… because if you’re fighting with your hands, you can do things with the camera where it looks like I’ve hit him. With bar stools, you can’t. So you have to hit these men, so you have to be careful. And I knocked out two gnarly old Hungarian stuntmen.

With the change in your characters’ relationships throughout the Cornetto Trilogy, is that mirrored in how your relationship has changed over the last 10 years?

SP: Not really, because, in Shaun and Hot Fuzz, Nick’s like the child and I’m like the grown-up. In The World’s End, I’m like the child and Nick’s like the grown-up. In real life, we’re both both. We’re both childish and grown-up. Our relationship is a lot more even than it is in the films. It’s not like one is looking up to the other. We’re just a couple of guys…

NF: Just a couple of powerful guys…

Powerful, dashing, witty…

NF: Hairy!

Who would be your favourite characters from the Cornetto Trilogy?

SP: Gary King, for me, just because he was a lot of fun to play, and I got close to the guy.

NF: I think, probably Danny Butterman. I enjoyed playing Danny; I enjoyed his naivety and his honesty.

SP: I liked Jim Broadbent as your dad…

Any thoughts on seeing Spaced again?

SP: No, we’re not going back to that. It would just be… we couldn’t get Edgar back to do it. Well never say never. As an actor, TV these days is…

Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead – it does big business…

SP: It does.

With Edgar Wright directing Marvel’s Ant-Man, and you regularly teasing fans on Twitter, would you be interested in joining the Marvel world?

SP: Yeah, I guess so. I feel like I’m already part of big franchises. The trouble is, when you join that world, they can pull the trigger on you any time that they like. So whatever you wanna do, they own you, and I’m already owned by Paramount.

THE WORLD’S END and THE THREE FLAVOURS CORNETTO TRILOGY are available on DVD/Blu-ray from today.

 

 

Kimberley Peirce shot to fame with her first feature film Boys Don’t Cry in 1999, in which Hilary Swank won an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon Teena, a transgender person who was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered in 1993. Not shy of dealing with tough subject matter Peirce has chosen to focus on the bullying aspect and the mother daughter relationship in her film version of Carrie.  We had a chat with Kimberly about her vision for Carrie, the actresses she cast and her love for Spider-Man…

Starburst: It was interesting that you chose to adapt Carrie into almost a superhero origin story. Can you tell us about your decision to go in that direction?

Kimberly Peirce: I’m glad you noticed that! Well there are a couple of reasons; I fell deeply in love with Carrie being a social outcast who desperately wants love and affection, is bullied at school and has such a hard time at home. I make some changes in Margaret’s character to show how difficult it is for Carrie to get this love. But to me, if you ask me about the superhero origin story specifically, I saw the power in a unique way. I thought that they were a good thing for her. I thought they would be something she would be excited about. I have her exploring them. I have her seeing them in many ways as a salvation, for a chance at succeeding in the world, and that is certainly in the same vein as a Marvel comic such as Spider-Man, so that’s a very typical superhero origin story.  You have a nerd and their powers help them. She doesn’t think they make her powerful, she thinks they make her normal. But she doesn’t master them, that was really important to me. In the books she goes haywire. So it’s an opportunity but it’s not mastering.

Speaking of Marvel, did you look at any superhero films or was it based on your prior knowledge of the comics?

I’ve seen most of them and I’m a huge fan. I used to collect comics. When I was eleven years old I would buy them and would sell them at school. I used to make Super 8 movies, draw cartoons and film them too.  I’m really excited that comic book movies are so good now. For me it was exciting that I could work within that genre.

What comic books in particular were you a fan of?

I used to get up at 6am to watch Spider-Man. That was a big thing in the US when I was a kid. From the opening scene I was obsessed with it.  Once I got a hold of some money I was collecting Mad Magazine, DC and Marvel stuff.

Do you still have them as prized possessions?

I still have them! I haven’t looked backed at them. I still have a lot of the Mad books. There’s a beautiful comic book store on the street where I live and I go there at least two or three times a week.

The casting choices were superb. Why did you choose Chloe Moretz, Julianne Moore and Judy Greer?

Let’s start with Julianne Moore. In many ways I think Julianne was the only one who could play the part. If you think about the way Margaret treats her daughter she’s a woman who really loves her daughter and that was really important to me. She beats her up, she inflicts harm on herself, she cuts herself, she bangs her head. You needed somebody who could do all these things but you could also believe that they loved their daughter.  You needed someone who has an inherent level of warmth. Julianne is a very warm person. You needed somebody who was beautiful to offset the more non-beautiful elements of the part.  You needed warmth to wash down the brutality. I think you need authenticity to believe any of it. She’s a very extreme character. I also think you needed somebody with movie star charisma quality. She’s a very committed actress. She’s lively, she’s fun. She was a wonderful person to work with.  She was the first person I went to and I hoped she would do the role. She was already telling me how she was going to play it. America’s a very religious country so particularly when you’re going to represent religion in the media you want to show respect to it but you want to show its specificity. In Carrie it’s really extreme so we had to make it clear that Margaret makes her own religion. Julianne was fantastic at that.

In terms of Chloe I wanted someone who was about the right age. This is a story about a fifteen year old who is bullied and who is given a hard time but she is also a child to her mother. It was so important to me that you believed the mother/daughter relationship. It had to be real. I believe Chloe captures that. You needed her to be engaging. I think Chloe is very engaging, very charismatic and is a very good actress. Interestingly I had to do a lot of work with her because she was overly confident when I met her. She has the strongest handshake, she was working with Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton and that gave her a level of confidence which is great for an actress but it wasn’t what I wanted for my Carrie. I wanted her to be a victim, a social outcast, beaten down, scared of her own shadow. She had all these elements but we spent months breaking down her confidence and I think we achieved quite a lot.

And of course Judy Greer who I just adore.  She’s very beautiful, very funny and very grounded. When I met her for lunch she was already telling me about the character before I hired her. She adopts this girl and starts taking care of her but she’s kind of grossed out by her, finds her kind of odd and is frustrated with her.

The idea of motherhood and female bonding was dealt with really interestingly. And also the way you’ve dealt with the teen element – perhaps this wasn’t intentional, but it has a Pretty in Pink vibe to it with Carrie making her own dress for the prom…

At its core I saw the book as a story about a mother and a daughter and the scene in the beginning is a whole new scene which I was really excited about. I think the bond between mothers and daughters is huge and dramatic and there’s not enough about it in movies. I particularly love Carrie and Margaret’s bond. Margaret is afraid of the world, she’s afraid of herself and her sexuality. We know she had sex but she tries to block that out. She even blocks out the knowledge of being pregnant so when this thing is coming out of her she thinks it’s a cancer. When it comes out of her, her reaction is to grab a knife… but then she falls in love with it. She embraces it and that is the conflict in the relationship. It’s one of huge ambivalence. And the thing about a mother/daughter relationship is we do expose our mothers and we hold the truth of our mothers, and we can’t change that. And that may be frustrating and that may be terrifying but it’s true. As women we know everything about our mothers and that may be something that a mother who is a narcissist, who doesn’t want the truth out there, will be at odds with her daughter. You’ll notice Margaret will beat herself and then she will beat Carrie. Carrie will be beaten and feel terrible but she will forgive her mother because that’s her only bond in life and she loves her mother. And her mother will reach out to love her. Even though her mother is beating her she is doing it out of love, to protect her, that to me is wildly complicated and very interesting.

Of course at the very end Carrie returns to the house ridden with guilt for what she’s done. She wants to cleanse herself. There’s a line I gave to Julianne from the book “you be the preacher, I’ll be the congregation” it’s one of my favourite lines. The mother really wants to restore herself to a point of power and she puts the daughter in a place of disempowerment. The fight to the death between these two is the heart and soul of this movie.

Let’s talk about her making her own dress. What I love is it’s also a story of class. Margaret and Carrie don’t have a lot of money. The other girls do have a lot of money, they go shopping and they buy the beautiful dresses. It’s a story of privilege and lack of privilege. Carrie has to sew her own dress because she doesn’t have the money to buy her own dress. She’s a seamstress’s daughter so she’s also now becoming her mother.

CARRIE opens in UK cinemas November 29th.

“Tobe gave me the rest of my life… The rest of my life happened after that film.”

It was over four decades ago that the ominous buzz of Leatherface’s chainsaw was first heard. What followed was a descent into a gruelling tale of terror beneath the baking Texas sun, which ended with a bloody Marilyn Burns cutting a dinner invitation short, in what became known quite simply as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

To mark ArrowVideo’s Blu-ray premiere of Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (out now), Starburst put a call into DJ Vanita Brock, more affectionately known to the genre crowd as “Stretch”, to take a trip down memory lane and remember Tobe’s buzz terror sequel… or rather insane and deliriously fun buzz horror-comedy.

When Woody Allen famously listed his reasons for living: “Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s recording of Potato Head Blues, Swedish movies, Sentimental Education by Flaubert, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s, and Tracy’s face” if he were living in the year 2013, he could add one more: ArrowVideo. Yes it’s true, what a difference thirty four years makes.

Chainsaws at the ready…

Starburst: Re-watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, you forget just how crazy and how much fun it is! It’s a unique kind of insanity!

Caroline Williams: It turns the first film so thoroughly on its head. It’s jarring, and the tone and the mood are in many ways so different from the original. It’s actually got so many action adventure elements to it compared to the first one.

It’s often said that to make a good sequel you have to advance the story as Francis Ford Coppola did with The Godfather Part 2, or at least have the courage to do something completely different, which is what Tobe did with Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2. He doesn’t try to replicate the success of the first, but rather offers us a new and distinct experience.

Absolutely, it’s such a different movie. It’s got so much more comedy to it. As a matter of fact the movie to me is much more of a comedy. It’s sort of a satire and a parody of the first film.

How did you come to be cast in Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2?

Within the horror genre it is sort of a famous audition story. I got the call to go read for it from my agent in Dallas, and drove to Austin, Texas to read. I was sitting in this long hallway outside the casting room, and the piece of script that I had been given to read was not exactly dialogue rich; it was action rich. It was all about running through the radio station, running into the ice house, piling the chairs by the door and shaking and being fearful. That’s what the script was; it was not dialogue.

As I sat there reading this script I thought that’s what they want to see, they want to know that they have got somebody with the physicality and the action instincts to pull off the role. Stretch is very much an action figure, and she’s in motion throughout virtually the entire film.

I’m watching these actresses come and go; the ebb and the flow, and the room is incredibly quiet. They are coming out very cool and unruffled. I thought at the very least that if I’m not going to be cast I’m going to go down fighting. So I simply took the instruction and followed the directions. I ran screaming down the hallway. I ran into the audition room, slammed the door, and pulled the chairs right out from under Tobe Hooper and Kit Carson. I piled them in front of the door, and I backed into a corner, and I played the scene. Tobe and Kit just walked up incredibly close to me. They stood directly in front of me and then they just looked at each other, and I thought, I’d done this okay. Before I even left that day, I’d been hired. Great story!

Tobe Hooper is often described as being quite an eccentric character, a recluse. What are your memories of working with this master of horror?

He’s an unusual character; he’s very eccentric. When he’s working on a film there’s a computerised side to Tobe that kicks in, because he’s assimilating all of those elements, and seeing it play out in his own mind. He’s always so many steps ahead. One of the things that were unusual about working on Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is that whilst we were shooting each day, Tobe was editing Invaders from Mars at Night. So he’s the kind of guy… He’s like the eight armed God, the Hindu God with the eight arms, because he can multitask in a way that very few can. But it also lends a very pre-occupied air about him, because he is always thinking about things. He’s a guy who is always deep in thought and always formulating. He’s always creating in the corners of his mind, and he doesn’t have ordinary social relationships the way a lot of people do. There are people who are very close to him, but they are generally family members and very close associates. He is not a terribly sociable guy. The occasions that I have had the opportunity to be sociable with him were fantastic. He tells wonderful stories; he has wonderful ideas. He really is a brilliant man. His mind is just shooting off in so many directions at once that I think he just likes being alone with his thoughts, to assimilate them.

Stretch is one of the iconic “Final Girls”. Women’s studies have attempted to contextualise the Final Girl as the product of a misogynistic genre. However, there is a strength to the Final Girl, an enduring spirit, independence, ingenuity, physicality that are sadly dismissed in favour of perceiving these characters as empty or shallow. All these years later how do you look back on the Final Girl?

I always disagreed with certain aspects of feminism, especially around the seventies where women were encouraged at the same time to be society’s victims and society’s heroines. I just didn’t trust that sort of cultural schizophrenia that was emblematic of feminism in the seventies. I could see that women were being sold a bit of a bill of goods. You are supposed to make yourself extremely promiscuous and sexually available, and then when you get dumped by the guy or something awful happens to you, then you get to say that you’re a victim.

Being a southerner where women were as good as any man, and where women had to be able to hold their own alongside of men, and were compatriots and companions of men, I just grew up with a distinctively different view of what women were like. You could be as sexy and as sexual as you wanted to be, but within certain perimeters drawn by yourself. Giving a fair exchange, having a give and take between men and women is what I grew up with. So I didn’t recognise a lot of that animosity towards men that seemed to be the foundational principle of feminism in the seventies.

One of the things that was great about Stretch was that her best friend was a guy, and the guy might have a crush on her and all that, Lou Perry’s character L.G, but they were basically equals and friends. They shared a very deep caring love that was completely exclusive of anything romantic or sexual. That was one of the things that I loved about that screenplay. I understood that angle on that character completely, and then you get into that crazy family who have no mother but have the crazy dad figure. I never bought into that stuff.

The saw between the legs, although it gave me pause at the time, I really understood the statement that Tobe was trying to make. He was tweaking and deliberately antagonising all those women’s studies majors who were so mad at Jamie Lee Curtis. I think that was Tobe giving the finger to the conventional wisdom.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 has been contextualised as Tobe’s shot at capitalism, especially the way the family become incorporated in the sequel. If it was relevant in 1986, then it seems just as relevant now.

A lot of that was largely lost on me. At the time that we made the film in the 1980s it was go, go, go. There was almost a gluttony and a greed principle at work. I think he was trying to offer some… It was a lifestyle in a way, but at the same time that is something that is never going to die. The fact that they were killing human beings and eating them as the creation of their food franchise was the irony for me. That people were literally eating it up was a wonderful, wonderful irony.

Is the memory you have of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 the Stretch character and specifically the way she shaped your future, or are there any other memories you hold dear?

It was just for me… It was so close to my own personality. There’s nothing about Stretch that isn’t already a part of me. That’s why the role suited me so very, very well, and I think that is why I was an obvious choice for Tobe. I was a perfect fit.

Those are the style of characters that I like to play most of all. I like being an action figure, whether I am an antagonist or a protagonist. I like that the plot pivots on the actions that I take, and that I’m not incidental but primary to the storyline. I think because I do have strength in that area, traditional male roles could possibly be a fit for me, and I think it’s why a lot of the actresses in horror who have played similar roles: Amy Steel, Adrienne King, Heather Langenkamp and Jamie Lee Curtis. Those characters provided that wonderful template going forward.

What are your personal favourite horror films?

I am always going to have affection for The Exorcist, The Omen; the late seventies and early eighties stuff, and of course the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I watch that on Christmas day every year, partly because I am still very close to and have a very lovely friendship with Marilyn Burns. It’s sort of an absurdist way to spend Christmas day, and it started everything for me. If it hadn’t been for that film, we wouldn’t be talking on the phone right now. That’s my annual Christmas ritual.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 is available now on Blu-ray.

Rotting never felt this good! So says the publicity for Monster Pictures’ Thantomorphose, the feature debut of French-Canadian director Èric Falardeau. Reminiscent of New French Extremity films such as Inside (2007) and In My Skin (2002), Thanatomorphose is ‘body horror’ with an existential twist. The film takes its title from the French term for ‘the visible signs of an organism’s decomposition caused by death’: when an alienated young sculptress, Laura (Kayden Rose) moves into a Montreal apartment, her abusive relationship with boyfriend, Antoine, (Davyd Tousignant) and rejection by the artistic establishment bring about an extreme bodily reaction: she is quite literally dying inside; one morning she wakes up to find her body slowly and inexorably starting to decay.

Inspired by Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death, Falardeau structures Thanatomorphose as a psychodrama in three acts, each presenting a further stage in Laura’s physical decomposition. What begins as a few bruises gradually deteriorates into a severe case of necrotising fasciitis, and Laura locks herself in her apartment in an attempt to control and finally come to terms with what is happening to her. All this is presented in unflinching detail by Falardeau, who, together with special make up effects artist David Scherer and cinematographer Benoit Lemire, create a tight, claustrophobic and starkly realised horreur du corps on a tiny budget.

A powerful and disturbing vision of abjection, Thanatomorphose invites comparisons with early Cronenberg (Stereo, Crimes of the Future), Jorg Buttgereit (Nekromantik) and the Polanski of Repulsion, and marks Falardeau as a director to watch:

Starburst: You’ve cited Cronenberg and Buttgereit amongst your cinematic influences. Both these directors started off by making experimental movies. Did you conceive of Thanatomorphose as an ‘underground film’ in this way?

Èric Falardeau: Yes. It was meant to be an underground movie for two simple reasons. The first one is economical. We made the film with no money apart from mine so we didn’t have the means to be mainstream like using a professional postproduction house or having a large-scale distribution plan. We also couldn’t afford expensive equipment or famous actors. The other reason is more important. For me, real horror can’t be mainstream because it deals with subjects or situations that are unpleasant or taboo (thus uncommercial) in an unfamiliar way (extreme violence, experimental aesthetic, etc). The best horror films or authors always were underground before being mainstream. Horror is meant to disturb, question, trouble, and ultimately reveal something about ourselves while commercial cinema is there to entertain. Their goals are opposite so it kind of imposes modes of production, distribution, and reception that are generally qualified as underground.

How did the script develop? Did it come in stages or did the structure present itself quickly?

The script was finished in 2009 but I wasn’t able to shoot it until the summer of 2011. The film’s three act structure is quite conventional and it presented itself quickly and is inspired directly from the despair theory developed by Soren Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death, a book that has a huge impact on my work.  We always write about what we know or experience and Thanatomorphose has obviously a lot of myself in it. So the first draft came out quite fast. Afterwards, it was a matter of improving on what was there and also making research about decomposition. A major influence were the books by French sociologist, anthropologist, ethnologist, and scholar Louis-Vincent Thomas who was instrumental in founding thanatology as a science and field of studies. His books are great because they don’t only focus on the states of the decomposition process but also on the psychological and anthropological ones.

The abstract sequences of video textures that intersperse the narrative are intriguing. What was the idea behind these?

In the script, they were described as ‘dream sequences’. I wanted these scenes to counterbalance the slow and static aesthetic of the rest of the film while emphasising the psychological and physical states of the main character. So I decided to assume the experimental look I wanted and I asked a friend of mine, experimental film director Frédérick Maheux (Art/Crime, Théorie de la religion), to edit these scenes. Anyway, it was logical since the look of these shots were different from the rest of the movie. They are the only scenes that weren’t shot in the apartment and they were shot by myself instead of our cameraman/DOP Benoît Lemire. We decided with Frédérick to push the image texture and the sound design to create a kind of nightmarish vignettes.

Why the decision to set the film entirely in an apartment?

When I started writing the script I decided to lay down some rules for me to follow. It was my first full length feature script so I wanted to keep it simple and I knew that we would probably have to finance it by ourselves so if we had more locations and characters it would have cost a lot more money. I’d rather put money in casting, special effects, and sound than in locations.

Apart from those logistic and financial reasons, the most important aspect is that all my films are focused on a single character and that my style is very claustrophobic. I like to stay close to my main character and their inner struggles. To properly convey the state of mind and day-to-day life of the woman in Thanatomorphose I decided that the best way was to put the action in a single location, her apartment, and transform that location into a character in itself.

Was it difficult to film in an actual apartment as opposed to on a set? Did you get the shots you wanted in the confined spaces?

To use one space also was one of my main tools as a director to put the actors and the crew in the right mood. We had a lot of fun shooting the film but by the end we were all exhausted as much by the work as by the psychological state the film put us in. I think it shows in the film, the acting, the bleakness, etc.

I think that to properly write, direct, and edit a film you must be in the right emotional state; the one that corresponds to the feeling you’re trying to convey. It must come from the heart. If you don’t feel it as the creator, I highly doubt that you’ll make the right choices. As the great editor Walter Murch once said, emotion is the first rule to follow when editing a film and I think that goes for all the other aspects of production.

Shooting in an actual apartment instead of a set isn’t really worse, especially now with all these small cameras available that you can put almost anywhere. Another great thing about actual locations it that they already have a life of their own, a story. It is really hard to get that when you build a set from scratch. Finally, being stuck in a small space forces you to be more creative to find solutions to problems instead of just pulling down a wall. You can feel all that in the images.

How did you maintain the continuity of Kayden’s bodily deterioration? Did you film in script sequence? How long was the shoot?

We shot the film in chronological order over a 21 day period. We did that for two reasons: continuity and special effects. She had to be naked and/or covered with make up almost all of the shooting time. But I think it helped her in feeling the same way as the character, to be as exhausted as the character.

You’ve said that the film is about the body as ‘an object, a commodity’. What are your thoughts on the film’s sexual politics?

Sex and death are life. We’re only that: flesh and blood. Sex is how we came into the world. Then we die. Between the two, we try to cope with the meaningless of our existence by telling stories and doing what we believe are the best things. In the end, we’re only organic matter, coming from nothing and going back to nothing. The film focuses on the body to explore these aspects.

That might seem weird, but I’m not interested in gory or disturbing stuff only for the sake of it. It is boring and doing so is lazy. For me, great horror films always use the body as an excuse to talk about something else, be it our fears or our human condition. Thanatomorphose is about how a girl reacts to a physical state but that physical state means something.

While I was doing research for Thanatomorphose I found out that there are several states of mind in the mourning process, either when you have lost someone or know that you will die. One of the typical reactions a large amount of people tend to have is an increase of their libido to counterbalance the impending death, which is very interesting when you work in the horror genre. It is as if life was fighting death right until the end. And for me it made sense that the main character in my film, who is kind of death inside in a way similar to L’Étranger d’Albert Camus, slowly comes back to life while her body decays. Her own materiality makes her aware of her existence and that was one of the many aspects I wanted to explore in the film.

David Scherer’s make up effects are deeply disturbing. How did you meet David?

We met thanks to mutual friends, screenwriter Colin Vettier (Chimères, Ouvert 24/4) and filmmaker Thierry Paya (Ouvert 24/7). David Scherer (Theatre Bizarre, Chimères) was our lead practical effects artist. He’s from France so we flew him over to Montreal for the shoot. He did an amazing job on a shoestring budget. He is very creative and understands the impact of the other departments on the success of special effects like editing or cinematography. Like the film which is divided in three acts, we designed three styles of make-up ranging from simple make up to prosthetics and body suit. David Scherer is the new big name in the field. He is the next Savini or De Rossi. He has that energy and talent.

We also worked with Rémy Couture (Inner Depravity, Art/Crime) who took care of the liquids (blood, pus, etc.) and some prosthetics while David took care of all the decomposition effects and on-set work.

The distributer Monster Pictures has picked up Thanatomorphose for UK DVD release. How did you and Monster Pictures make contact?

They saw my film and the buzz around it on the internet. They simply contacted me and we were on the same page concerning the distribution of the film. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

The film was shot on a DSLR camera and looks incredible. What are your thoughts about this format?

The decision to go film or digital really depends on the project and the mood you want to create. The format you choose is dictated by the content of your film. It is as simple as that. It is like in any other form of art. Painting for example. There is a reason why you choose oil paint over black ink. Format is dictated by what you want to say and how you want to say it. It must serve that one and only purpose.

I’m more of a film guy and almost all my other films were shot on Super 8mm or blown up to 35mm. But the reality was that we needed to make choices of where to put our money and I decided to go for the special effects, the actress, and the locations. That said, I’m really happy and I like the final result. It is all a matter of knowing your equipment and its limitations. DSLR can’t do everything. You must take note and play along.

Thanatomophose is your first feature. What are your future plans?

The film is playing the festival circuit and we have unbelievable reviews. It will be out on DVD in several countries by the end of 2013 and we hope to secure remaining territories soon. I’m also working over a couple of scripts for both feature length and short films. Only time will tell which film I’ll be shooting next. I’d like to shoot at least one of the short films by the end of 2013/start of 2014. For the next feature length my goal is 2014 or start of 2015.

Thanatomorphose is released on DVD/Blu-ray December 9th and can be pre-ordered below.