Feature Category: Interviews

Kevin Van Hentenryck achieved instant cult status as Duane Bradley, the curly-haired wide-eyed innocent carrying a dark secret around Times Square in Frank Henenlotter’s low-budget sleazy splatter classic Basket Case. As the boyish, slightly ‘touched’ Duane, Van Hentenryck geeky charm ensured his return for two sequels, in which he battled against his deformed twin Belial, in a repeated bid to lead a life outside of his brother’s slimy grip. With Basket Case – The Trilogy due for release on October 22nd, Starburst’s Jon Towlson caught up with Kevin to talk about acting, music and sculpture!

Starburst: The Basket Case Trilogy breaks every taboo in the book. Was there ever a time during filming that, as an actor, you turned to the director, Frank Henenlotter, and said “No. You’re going too far, Frank. I don’t want to do this.”?

Kevin Van Hentenryck: No, no! Frank is one of these guys, you instantly get a sense from him that he has a very clear idea of what he’s doing and the more you talk to him – he’s like a walking encyclopaedia of the genre. A great example of that was in the first film, the idea for the running through the street scene. Originally it was meant to be Belial that was running through the streets, but when we saw the limitations of the Belial that we had, we realised that was never gonna happen. No way! So he kind of re-approached the concept as a dream and I run through the streets. It was February and even though I really didn’t want to do it, when he explained it I realised it was going to be a really powerful addition to the film, so we went for it.

You first worked with Frank on Slash of the Knife – tell us about it.

I play three parts in that, three small parts. I’m a spectator at a wedding, an inmate in an institution and something else I don’t remember. Frank still to this day says he’s never gonna release it! I don’t think I’ve even seen a full cut of it. You know the film Reefer Madness or some of the bizarre medical health films they did in the fifties? It’s supposed to be a spoof on that regarding circumcision! This guy who’s not circumcised, descends into madness because of it. I thought it was a very cool idea and what I remember of it, it seemed like it was going to be a good film. Robert Vogel, who played the manager in Basket Case, was in it.

From the title it sounds like a typical slasher movie, but now you’ve told us the plot it sounds much more like Frank Henenlotter!

Oh yeah!

You once gave a very interesting answer to the question ‘what’s in the basket?’, talking about archetypes and how the film is about the side of us that we hide from the world, the side of us we feel is socially unacceptable. Can you elaborate?

Well, as humans we live in a conscious world but we all have this subconscious which controls us to a surprising degree and yet of which we have no access to, understanding or control of. Frank has managed to tap into this concept. Belial is the id, the dark side within us all. Duane is the eternal misfit. We all identify with that. The whole idea of carrying his monster – his darkness – around in a basket and letting it out – I guess that’s something we all fantasise about but in the culture we’ve built for ourselves it’s really impossible.

Did you ever feel you were Frank’s alter-ego in the film?

(laughs) You know that’s something I’ve never talked about with him, the degree of autobiographic detail in his work. I’m sure it’s there but… that’s a question for Frank!

I’ve asked him that question!

Yeah? What did he say?

Well he denied that there was any direct autobiography, but the first time we see you in the film, you’re walking through Times Square holding this basket, carrying your dark side as it were, and Frank’s spoken a lot about how he would skip school as a teenager and go to watch the grindhouse movies on 42nd Street and how he would often be accosted by drug pushers on the street – which is exactly what happens to you at the beginning of Basket Case.

Well, you know art is always a combination of the subject, the medium and the artist in some formula, some combination. So it’s there, no doubt it’s there. Anyone who lived in Manhattan at that time in the mid ‘70s experienced the old Times Square which is gone now. I’m really thankful we were able to capture just a little bit of it in our film.

And very successfully too! I’m sure it’s one of the reasons the film has grown in its cult status over the years.  Frank claims that the crew for Basket Case was very small – just him and the actors. Did you help him with the filming, with building the sets etc?

Oh yeah, we all helped out. We’d hang out on the weekends when we were filming and I did focus and lights and whatever needed to be done; riding around with Edgar (the producer) in his van looking for one of the key elements for one of the sets, or whatever. We all did. It was shot in 16mm though they had a special eyepiece for the camera which had marks on it which would show when it was blown up to 35mm where the edge of the frame would be. And it was lit for a blow up.

How did you film the scene where Belial lifts you up by the balls in the hotel room?

They had constructed this thing with a pipe, like a teeter-totter or fulcrum, a long lever. There was kind like a seat that I was on, under my clothes. At the right moment they just pushed on the other end of the pip and up I went! Frank wanted me to have my arms outstretched like they are so that people would see that I’m not holding on to anything but I always thought that if somebody grabbed you by the balls you’d be like hunched over and grabbing your balls, you know? See that’s what I mean about Frank. That’s the director’s job. The actor often can’t see the whole picture and the director has to and has to understand how it will cut with the last scene and the next scene.

I understand in Basket Case 2 you worked the Belial puppet during Belial’s sex scene with Eve and provided the voices. That looked like fun…

It was interesting. I got to wear the Belial hat in the one scene in the garage and, for me personally, that’s the element I’ve always missed in the films, Belial being a real character.  I like playing Belial. Seeing as we were Siamese twins it seems a no-brainer to me, and if I ever get the chance to do a fourth one I’d like to play more of Belial.

It’s an interesting aspect of the film that Belial is your twin and your face is often apparent in his. Is that an aspect that is being developed in the fourth script?

Yeah, if I get to do it, Belial will become an actual character and not just a thing.

In the second film he becomes almost the more sympathetic of the two, whereas you become the degenerate brother towards the end. Were you involved in the scriptwriting process with Frank?

No. In the first film there are moments that I had influence over. A key one for example is when I’m in the bar with the legendary Beverly Bonner and I’m drunk and I say “Duane and I” in referencing Belial. After the take, Frank said “You know you said ‘Duane and I’? People are gonna think it’s a mistake!” No they’re not! People are going to think that they believe themselves to be one. The distinction is kind of irrelevant and it makes sense that when he’s drunk that line will get blurred.

What was it like working with Annie Ross in the second two films?

She’s great to work with. She’s a real trooper, a professional. She’s a very cool lady and she’s fun to hang out with, you know? I remember one night we went to this place in Atlanta called Blind Willy’s – it’s like a blues club. She’s a very fun lady.

She’s a great singer, isn’t she? You’re a musician too. Did you play together?

No we didn’t. There wasn’t really time during the shoot and her genre is very different from mine. I do a kind of like early Patti Smith with a little AC/DC thrown in rock and roll, she’s into the old time blues. She still performs, you know, down in Manhattan.

As well as being an actor and a musician you’re a sculptor, and have been for many years. I wondered if you’d ever directed a film or wanted to?

When I was very young I made films in Super 8 and I liked the idea of it. I think I’m probably a better actor than I would be a director but if I do a fourth Basket Case I’d like to have more of a hand in it than I have in the past. I’ve lived with Duane and Belial for so long now I feel I know them pretty well. You never know how things will play out in the future, eh?

Check out our interview with BASKET CASE helmer Frank Henenlotter in issue 381 of Starburst – Available here.

Basket Case – The Trilogy is released on DVD and Blu Ray on 22nd October. Visit Kevin’s website at KevinVanHentenryck.com

With Red Dwarf X premiering on Dave this October, we caught up with the show’s co-creator to chat about its origins, its continued popularity, the aborted remake, the long-awaited movie version, and much more…

Starburst: What’s prompted a return to the Red Dwarf universe now?

Doug Naylor: Well, a few years ago it was Red Dwarf’s 20th anniversary, and Dave (the TV channel) wanted to commemorate this in some way. The original idea was to get the cast back in costume and have them introduce some old clips. It evolved from there into making a new show, which turned into two shows and when we were in pre-production, it turned into three shows.

At that point we obviously didn’t have any of the old sets and the budget was really tight and as a consequence of that the first thing to go was the audience which was a huge disappointment but it was either that or not make the show at all. We wound up with two and a half sets and a lot of green screen and having to tell a story that didn’t involve a lot of sets that needed to be built, which is why we wound up using on contemporary Earth. So it was sort of bizarre… having to do a lot of things to make a story out of what we could use that wouldn’t cost very much. Coronation Street, of course was a wonderful set and we got it for mate’s rates. And then we got Mike Seymour as VFX Super and he, and his team, did the most amazing job making everything look like we had a massive budget and as a consequence we got featured in American Cinematographer which is unheard of for a UK comedy show. Thankfully Back to Earth was a massive hit. 

It was the most successful non-terrestrial show ever and broke all records at that point and then Dave wanted to do a series – which was always my plan – but I said if they wanted a series, then I wanted it to be 30 minutes with an audience, with six self contained stories.

I wanted to return the show to being about the four guys on Red Dwarf, doing Red Dwarfy things and recreate a mid-season vibe. Dave said “fine,” though they didn’t care too much about the audience one way or the other but then it got complicated because BBC Worldwide were part of the commission and they were co-owned by Woolworths at the time, who then went bust, and it all took way longer than we expected to get the deal signed off. We finally got the greenlight and then we had to get Craig out of Coronation Street which was pretty complicated. And that’s how it all came about.

The gang are back in Red Dwarf X

What excited you most about revisiting the show?

I’ve always really enjoyed making it, I never made a decision to walk away from it. When we did series eight, that got the highest viewing figures for any Red Dwarf series ever and then I wanted to do the movie, and then perhaps a series of movies, because I was promised that the money for a movie could be raised. Years went by and the people who were supposed to be raising the money didn’t raise it. We went into pre-production three times and I spent six months on two separate occasions in Australia doing rewrites and putting together a production team because I was directing the movie, but on each occasion the money disappeared at the last minute. By this time, of course, we’d got off the TV merry-go-round and the BBC were no longer so keen on Red Dwarf and felt that our time had passed.

The whole thing was reborn because of Red Dwarf repeats on Dave doing so well which led to Back to Earth being commissioned. Even then, Dave weren’t sure how successful BTE was going to be. They were hoping to get a million, and when the figures came through, they were 2.7 million.

Are you at all surprised at how well the show is still loved and revered?

I’m not surprised because I’ve been hearing it for a long time. Having said that, it’s absolutely wonderful. Surprising in the sense that it’s amazing that a show that was first conceived in 1984, and first broadcast in 1988 can still be sustaining today, but I am aware of it because of all the Tweetage, fan mail and people you meet.

It seems to be reaching its third generation now. I remember going on holiday with some friends who have an eight year old son who spent the entire holiday just watching Red Dwarf. Nothing to do with me at all, he was just watching it on his Dad’s iPhone because that was the show he was into. It was completely bizarre on my holiday to just hear the Red Dwarf theme tune all day long and him doubling up.

Red Dwarf series 1, episode 2 ‘Future Echoes’ (1988)

Where did the idea originally come from?

Rob and I were working at Spitting Image and we wanted to do a sitcom. We’d written some radio sitcoms and we wanted to do something that would stand out and be unique. We’d done a radio show called Son of Cliché on Radio 4 where we’d had recurring sketches with the same characters and one of them was called Dave Hollins: Space Cadet which was a bit of a parody of Alien about a single, lonely guy on a spaceship talking to his computer after the crew were wiped out and he was going slowly space crazy.

It was well received but not nearly the most successful item on the show, but we thought there might be some life in that as a format and years earlier of course, we’d seen Dark Star. I remember remarking to Rob at the time that I couldn’t believe no-one had done a sitcom like that because it seemed like such a good thing to do. So it was the old memory of Dark Star and the Dave Hollins sketch and we decided to try and write it.

Before we wrote it, we went to see Paul Jackson, who we’d worked with on the Jasper Carrott Show, and we told him about it, really excited, and he said we’d never sell it. We said it was nothing like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it’s not VFX heavy with people with two heads, it’s more like Steptoe & Son in space, it’s going to be really ordinary but harnessing science fiction conventions to explore character.

He advised us to put in the first stage direction just how ordinary it was, which we did. We sent it to him and John Lloyd and they both liked it and we thought we were quids in because these guys were the two most successful producers of their generation and there was even talk of them doing it as a co-production.

To cut a long story short, Paul took it to the BBC three times and it got rejected three times, they just didn’t ‘get it’. They didn’t understand where we were coming from and they didn’t think that anyone would be able to relate to people on a spaceship because most people haven’t been on a spaceship. They couldn’t understand that these were relationships that viewers could relate to. The idea that someone could be evolved from a cat just finished them as far as identifiability was concerned. Film on Four wanted to make it into a movie, but we wanted to make it into a sitcom so we said, ‘No.’ We were show-runners on Spitting Image at this point and a few years went past and then Paul heard that Ben Elton didn’t want to make a second series of his show Happy Families and so BBC Manchester had this slot of six half hours available and they wanted something a bit weird to fill it. So if it failed, at least they had the excuse that they were trying something a bit different and Paul had three scripts in his bag and he dropped them all on the table and said, have a read. They decided they liked Red Dwarf.

So BBC London rejected it three times, but we snuck in the back door at BBC Manchester.

We went into production but then there was an electrician’s strike so we rehearsed each show expecting to film it but each week the strike killed the show. That turned out to be a great thing for us because it meant the production had more preparation time. We waited for six months before we were told we could go again.

How did the theme tune get chosen?

Howard Goodall came in and we told him what the show was about and he’d read the first script and he played it to us on the piano and I think the lyrics were sort of half written, maybe fully written. We had no input at all and we had such an amazing track record of writing music together because we’d written The Chicken Song so we were seriously affronted because we weren’t involved in writing the lyrics (laughs). When we heard it arranged, it was absolutely brilliant.

What happened between you and Rob Grant to cause your professional split?

Basically Rob wanted to go off and do his own thing and write on his own. So that’s what he did. He went off and did The Strangerers and Dark Ages and wrote some novels. That’s what he wanted to do. In the end, there’s no answer to that. We were best friends since we were nine years old, he was my best friend first and my writing partner second but I confess that I thought it was an absolutely nuts idea us splitting up and I told him more than million times.

It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to go off and write his own things. The first time he wanted to go off was just after the electrician’s strike. We’d rehearsed the first six shows but none had been made and he wanted to go off that summer. I said we should be rewriting the scripts for the re-launch but we spent most of that summer with him wanting to go off on his own. He came back a few weeks before we went into production again and there was a second occasion he wanted to go off and I got offered the chance to produce Spitting Image on my own and I said that if he wanted to get together again I’d refuse the offer but if not I’d produce Spitting Image. He wanted to get back together so I turned down their offer.

After the third time, it became obvious, there was no going back really and that’s what happened.

That’s a shame. Did you have any input into the US version and what went wrong?

All too late really.

We went over with a week to go, the script had been written based on the pilot script of the UK version and it wasn’t fantastically funny. During a table reading it didn’t go down that well and we asked if we could rewrite it. They weren’t that keen but we asked for one chance to do a pass on it. We started at six in the evening and we had the new version by ten the following morning, working through the night.

We didn’t realise at the time that you get so much money from having written or co-written the pilot, we were just trying to help them make the best show we could. I think there was a subtext, an agenda to it. We handed it in and expected him to say that it was so much better but the guy read it and said he didn’t like it. So we said we were going home because there was no point being there, but we went back to the hotel and someone had given us a bottle of champagne for something and Rob said – because we’d been working the whole night, it was the equivalent of our evening, as it were – “Bollocks, let’s have the champagne.” We downed the first bottle and we were halfway through the second and I think I said it was ridiculous and that we should go back and at least get the thing read.

So we went back and secretly gave our script to the American cast and they all thought it was much better and they all called their agents and said they wanted to do our version. In end it was agreed they could do our version, but certain finesses were made and it didn’t happen.

The cast of the US Red Dwarf pilot

That guy left and we were told to come back and make a new pilot but there was no budget and we had to shoot some stuff in something like a large garage. It was so bizarre, working for Universal and we were in this garage without proper facilities and then the whole thing went to pieces and died. It was a shame but most times UK shows are adapted for the US, they don’t become successful because they try and duplicate the original with a different cast, which you can’t do. You have to go with the cast you’ve got and write for them. They probably did the world a service by not making it.

Have you thought about rebooting the show?

It’s so much easier to do that with a drama than a comedy. It’s easier to recast James Bond, Spiderman or Batman than Lister and Rimmer and have that character chemistry. Then the fans… they’ll never allow it. It might be different in twenty years, when I’m not involved and they reboot it. While you’ve still got the four remaining guys around and they’re really funny, it would be kind of criminal.

Will we ever see a Red Dwarf movie?

Craig’s feeling, and I tend to agree with him, is that it should be done with a continuing Red Dwarf TV series running alongside it.

The reason the movie didn’t get made was probably because we didn’t have the right people on our team trying to raise the money, and there was no-one there telling us we wouldn’t be able to raise the kind of money we were asking for unless we recast it with movie stars which I wasn’t prepared to do. I was told at one point to make the script more expensive, put in more VFX, make it cost £19 million. The theory was that the bank involved wouldn’t raise just a little bit of money – it had to be a ton of money to make it worthwhile for them – which turned out to be absolute nonsense.

It took a lot of writing and re-writing. 35 drafts, I think all together. More expensive, even more expensive, a bit cheaper, even cheaper, a lot cheaper, now a bit more expensive.  On and on and on. You look at the success of The Inbetweeners and if we’d done the Red Dwarf movie at the right time with the right budget, we’d have picked up an audience. No question.

Do you see the story continuing beyond this series?

You never know, all sorts of things can happen. I always try and finish them tidily, because you never know, it might be the last show you do. If this is the final ever show we do then it’s a good way to go out, but equally I think there’ll be more.

How different is it to direct yourself compared to allowing others to do it, as previously?

In some ways, I always sort of co-directed. The first shot you see in Red Dwarf, where we’re looking through the mesh grate, was my shot. The opening title shot where we pull out from Red Dwarf was something that Rob and I worked out with Ed and since season two, I’ve always been part of the furniture in the edit and giving acting notes through the shoots.

Of course, as a writer, you do have ideas about the best way to execute a scene because you’ve already seen ever shot in your head while you were writing it. On an audience night it can be much quicker to be the writer/director as you don’t have to explain things to the director who then has to explain them to a floor manager, who then explains them to the cast. In that sense, it’s easier and quicker but equally, you could be losing great input from a director.

It’s tricky, I’ve always enjoyed directing and I enjoyed directing Back to Reality and Quarantined with Rob – it’s way more fun than writing, that’s for sure. There’s nothing like having a script that you think is pretty decent and then directing it.

Will there be any further Red Dwarf novels?

There are none planned but I’ll be very surprised if there aren’t at some point.

If there was one thing you could go back and change in the show from the past, what would it be?

It’s a real shame that Norman left. I never quite understood the decision why he did. It’s a real shame, obviously, that Rob left too, but there’s nothing you can do when people leave for new things.

Mistakes? In terms of mistakes I’ve made, there are too many to list (laughs), we’d be here all night!

Sometimes there’s a really thin line between doing something that turns out to be innovative and good and something that falls flat on its face. You just can’t tell sometimes until you get there, and sometimes even when you get there you don’t recognise it.

Have you got a favourite memory of the show?

I think it’s just hanging with the guys and rehearsing. And laughing. And my time writing with Rob.

It doesn’t matter what you do if you’re creased up laughing, it could be the most stupid thing. Those are the things you remember.

One memory is when I was editing Polymorph, ‘the shrinking boxers’ scene with Ed and the editor was very disapproving of the whole thing and he thought the BBC would never allow it. The more disapproving he became, the more hysterical I became and Ed was giggling as well. I was sent to get some pizzas to get me out of the room because I was laughing so much and I basically laughed all the way to the pizza place, got the pizza and returned and was still laughing. It was probably lack of sleep as well, but all my best memories are memories of laughter.

Red Dwarf series III episode 3, ‘Polymorph’

What’s your favourite episode?

It’s really difficult. I know the fan’s favourite is Back to Reality but I don’t think it’s nearly the funniest show that we’ve done. I really like Polymorph and Marooned.

There’s so many shows that you like but then I can’t name one that’s head and shoulders above the others and I do genuinely think there are some contenders in Red Dwarf X.

UKTV are jumping up and down about episode three, but I think the fan’s favourite will be show six.

Will we see Kochanski making a return in this series?

That’s a real difficult one because if I told you that it wouldn’t really be fair!

There were two things really. One is that the whole idea of the series was to get the four guys back on Red Dwarf and have a vibe like those middle series. Also, I knew if this series wasn’t a hit in the way we all want it to be, there’d be no more series. I knew what the stakes were, so there were some battles I wasn’t going to lose. Having the audience back was one of them. Perhaps as a result of that decision we lost two weeks of filming – both our Exterior shoot weeks – to pay for the audience. This meant that two scripts I intended for the series died as we weren’t able to have exterior locations and in a bizarre way that forced us to make Red Dwarf X even more like the early series. We’ve got one exterior in the entire series which is in a forest which was in the back-lot over the wall of K stage in Shepperton. Everything else is studio.

Although there’s a show where we’re in India in 23AD, it’s a massive set, but it’s all interior. Even in series two, we had a quarry but we couldn’t afford a quarry this time – that’s sad isn’t it? So, there were plans to have Kochanski in this series in the last two shows, but those last two shows didn’t happen. That’s not to say that she won’t be in it, but equally it’s not answering your question either!

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Red Dwarf X starts on Thursday October 4th on Dave at 9pm.

Starburst caught up with writer/director Jennifer Lynch to discuss her latest psychological horror film, Chained. 

Starburst: Growing up being on the set of your father’s films must have been an inspiration for you to become a director. What was that like, and did you ever think of wanting to be something else?

Jennifer Lynch: I came from a very creative family. I always wanted to paint and write as a child. People looked at us as differently in that I had strange parents and had no money, yet we were a happy, loving family. I never considered directing until I was either on Dune or the Elephant Man. I would watch my father block his scenes then I would look at what he did studying them thinking how would I shoot the same scenes differently. What would I have rather been? If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would be a transcendental meditation therapist or auto mechanic.

The older cars are easier to work on.

I agree. Everything is so computerized now, I’m expecting to lift the hood like in the episode, A Feasibility Study from The Outer Limits when Joyce Van Patten sees the engine materializing.

Schrodinger’s Engine!

Very good! That’s funny!

With everything that is good in the world, there is a dark side to it also, yet your films represent that nothing is good or bad, that there is a grey area and nothing is really what it seems.

I couldn’t have said it better.

In Chained, Vincent D’Onofrio’s character Bob, is he an extension of Bob from Twin Peaks?

He’s his own fella. It didn’t occur to me that there was a connection and he’s never called by name in the film. I just needed a regular, common sounding name because we needed one for reference and Bob was pretty common. The terrifying thing about him is that he’s just this ordinary guy driving a taxi around on the surface, yet has this underlying subtlety of horror, serial killer dark side within him.

Where did you film the movie and how long was the shoot?

We shot in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada for fifteen days. They just lost their tax break, so the community got hit hard.  I used the same crew I did on Surveillance. They were an incredibly dedicated, hard working crew all the way down to the production assistants.

I’m a very blessed person for having such a great crew that worked for less pay then what they were worth. Film is a collaborative medium with everyone working towards the same goal. You get up in the morning, you go to work and you all work together to create a film with everyone having a common interest. They were a very brave and self-sacrificing crew.

What kind of cameras did you use?

The Red and Alexa. They’re an incredible gift to use on a film shoot. You can see what you immediately shot as opposed to the old 35mm film stock where you had to have it sent out and developed which took time.

What’s coming up next?

A Fall From Grace with Tim Roth, Vincent, Darryl Hannah and Willow Shields. It’s a detective film that takes place in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Chained is available in the US on Blu-ray and DVD from October 22nd. A UK release is currently TBC.

James Swallow has written stories for franchises as diverse as Doctor Who, Warhammer 40,000, Stargate and much more. He’s also written the story for games such as Fable and Deus Ex. Starburst intercepted this very busy writer to quiz him about his diverse career.

Starburst: What was it like to work on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, especially as it may eventually get made into a movie?

Jim Swallow: Obviously very thrilled, it’s very strong universe, we’ve got some very compelling characters. The original work was an extremely strong foundation to work from. I definitely think there’s enough narrative juice to get a movie out of it. Video game movies have not always been well received, and that’s the kind of shadow that hangs over it. I’m hoping that whoever takes on Deus Ex as a director and whoever they get to write can take it to where it needs to go. Certainly it’s my understanding that the production team have been working very, very closely with Eidos to make it so Deus Ex the movie feels like Deus Ex the video game.

How does it feel to have someone else work on something you’ve created?

It’s always kind of scary. I worked on Deus Ex for four year, and that’s a lot of energy to put into one project; longer than writing a book or feature film. Working with friends and colleagues, we sweated blood to make that story live and breathe. On the other hand, I’ve made my peace that it’s going to be what it is. A feature film has different needs from the way you to tell a story in a game, so obviously it’s going to be different, I just hope it’s a good movie. I’m quietly confident, I want it to be good and the people making it feel the same way. Bear in mind that just because they’ve taken on the rights, it could be a long time before the movie comes out, the original game was optioned for a film and that was never made.

Tell us about the key differences between writing for game, novel or audio play.

At the end of the day, it’s all writing, and the skills transfer from one medium to the other. The needs for a video game are very different than those for a novel. A novel is a more static way of telling a story, you create a narrative and deliver that story to the reader who interprets it on their own terms, whereas with video games you have to leave the story laying around for them to find it because a game is more about you interacting within the narrative, not just having someone talking to you, otherwise it’s not fun. You have to have a different mindset for each type of format.

The Horus Heresy novel Fear to Tread come out recently, and features the iconic Blood Angels. What was it like working with those characters?

The thing about the Blood Angels that attracted me to them is two-fold. On the one hand I love the inherent nobility these guys have; their warrior ethic is very compelling. Their greatest gift, which is their martial strength, is also their greatest curse because of the berserker fury that overcomes them in the worst stages of battle, and this instantly creates conflict and character. There is less of that in Fear to Tread as it’s set in the Horus Heresy era, and I’ve gotten to lay the pipe as to how the curse comes about. One of the things about the series is getting to set up the dominos for the things we know are coming. One of the fun things about the Horus Heresy is that the fans already know how it is going to end and the interesting thing is telling the story as to how we get there. The Blood Angels are great group of guys to write because they have such passion and are so dynamic, and I had an absolute blast writing it. It’s the longest book I’ve written for the Black Library and I feel like I bled for every page of it, but I am immensely proud of it.

Is there a particular 40K project you’d love to do?

All the stuff that I’ve wanted to do I’ve gotten to do, and I have some projects lined up. I will definitely be writing some more Blood Angels stuff and I’d like to write some more stories about the Sisters of Battle. I’ve got two audios coming out soon, called Sword of Truth and Burden of Duty as well.

You’ve written for the Star Trek franchise is the past. Is there any Star Trek script that you wish you had written?

It’s a hard one to answer because if I’d written it wouldn’t be the thing that I liked. I wouldn’t look at a script and say “I wish I wrote that”, I look at a script and go “Wow, that’s a fantastic piece of work, hats off to whoever did that”. There are so many great episodes of Trek, I’m a dyed in the wool fan of that series, and it’s very hard to narrow it down. I loved Mirror Mirror, Balance of Terror, The Enterprise Incident, those are some of my favourite stories. Turnabout Intruder has some brilliant ham acting from Shatner. The Next Generation has some brilliant episodes; Measure of a Man by Melinda Snodgrass is a excellent episode, really speaks to the heart of what Star Trek is about. One of my very favourite is Brannon Braga’s Frame of Mind where Riker wakes up in a mental institution. So many great episodes of DS9; Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night is fantastic and as for Voyager there are shows like Real Life and Scorpion. I could go on and on.

Is there a particular tie-in franchise that you haven’t written that you’d love to write for?

One of the great thing about being somebody who’s a fan who’s gone on to be a professional writer is that it feel like I’m giving back for all the the enjoyment that universe has given me. I would absolutely love to do a Star Wars novel and I’ve been knocking on that door for a couple of years now. I’d love to do a James Bond novel, that would be very, very cool though I don’t I’ll ever get picked to do that. If I had to pick, I’d say Star Wars, James Bond or maybe the Indiana Jones franchises, I’d love to do a story in anyone of those.

What is the difference between writing for Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis?

Tone wise, they’re both action adventure science fiction shows. What makes it interesting and different is the characters; the chemistry is different and that’s what makes them fun to write in different way. For Atlantis, Rodney McKay is such fun to write, I like writing for Rodney. For SG1, Jack ONeil is a lot of fun, especially as he and Daniel Jackson have such a nice rapport. Daniel and Valla is also a joy to write for.

Who would win; The Doctor or The Emperor?

I don’t know if those two guys would even fight, though I don’t think the Doctor would think much of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. If you’re talking about the Horus Heresy, I think they’d be a lot more evenly matched as The Emperor is the most powerful psychic that ever lived whereas The Doctor is just a guy from Gallifrey.

Truth or Beauty

Truth. That’s the writers job, find truth in everything.

Simpsons or Futurama?

Futurama.

Tom Baker or Matt Smith?

Slyvester McCoy.

Video Games or Traditional Games?

I like both of those equally. I’m a hardcore old school gamer from way back. I was watching Will Wheaton on Geek and Sundry and it got me back into it. I love video games and play a lot of them, though there’s a different kind of energy in the room when you’re playing a tabletop game.

Fear To Tread was recently released in paperback by The Black Library. Read our review of HERE.

With a background in stand up comedy and the late, great Bob Hope as his idol and inspiration, it’s no wonder writer/director Paul Bunnell knows how to weave a fun tale of flying saucers, musical numbers, a love story and rock-and-roll all into one wonderfully entertaining film, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X. Starburst caught up with Mr. Bunnell to talk about his new movie… 

Starburst: What inspired you to make the Ghastly Love of Johnny X?

Paul Bunnell: Growing up in Los Angeles, we had all these great horror hosts like Jeepers Creepers and Seymour that introduced me to films like Teenagers From Outer Space, The Creeping Unknown (The Quatermass Xperiment), Invisible Invaders, Caltiki-the Immortal Monster… the list is endless! I decided that that was the kind of film I wanted to make for audiences one day.

The film has had quite the journey to screen, when did you begin production?

Production originally started in 2004 and we finished the film in late 2011. The dedicated cast and crew stuck by the project and I am deeply grateful to them. There’s one scene where Bliss and Chip arrive at the drive-in movie theater that we shot in 2004. They get out and perform the dance number in 2011 and you can’t tell there’s a six-year difference between the shots!

We loved the cinematography, very striking. Can you tell us how you achieved that look?

We shot it on the last of the Kodak Plus-X 5321; a stock which will never be made again. Kodak scoured the country for us and we received Plus-X film ranging from short ends to full reels. The Artist was going to use the stock we had, but decided to shoot in 35mm colour and desaturate the look to black and white, so historically, we are the last ever film to be shot on Kodak Plus-X 5231 as there is no more.

Mickey O’Flyyn is an integral character in the film, how did The Office’s Creed Bratton get the part?

Originally, I wanted George Chakiris (West Side Story) for the role, but he didn’t think he was right for the part. I went to a revival screening of Phantom of the Paradise and Paul Williams was there where I told him about the project. He was interested, I went through his agent and he read the script. He loved the role of Mickey O’Flynn, but by the time I got the money together to shoot the scene, he had other commitments. He’s now the head of ASCAP which deals with music rights. He still liked the project, so I wrote the Cousin Quilty part for him which he’s teriffic in. 

I then hired a casting director and this agent kept sending me Creed Bratton’s headshot. So, at the 11th Hour, we needed somebody and I thought, why not give him a chance and he turned out to be a great choice for the role.

So, persistence does pay off!

It does!

Where will we be able to see the film?

It will be available soon on DVD & Video On Demand from Strand Releasing, and the UK festival circuit is next.

Read our review of The Ghastly Love of Johnny X by going HERE.

In amongst the Daleks, dinosaurs, cowboys and Weeping Angels, this Saturday sees the current “Pond Farewell” mini-series of Doctor Who take its foot off the pedal just for an episode, as the Doctor arrives at Amy and Rory’s in time for the Year of the Slow Invasion. It’s a very different episode for the series, and one that perhaps harkens back more to previous stories like, dare I say it, Love & Monsters and The Lodger, rather than conforming to Steven Moffat’s current liking for mini-movies on the television screen.

Behind The Power of Three is Douglas Mackinnon, only the second director to have been invited back to work under Moffat’s stewardship of the show, having previously directed Doctor Who for Russell T Davies. With the only other thing to connect the two stories Mackinnon has worked on being the inclusion of UNIT (his previous story was Series Four’s Sontaran two-parter), Starburst was curious to know more about this most mysterious of forthcoming episodes.

Starburst: It’s still shrouded in mystery, but what can you tell us about The Power of Three?

Douglas Mackinnon: Don’t want to spoil things, but it’s a bit of a love letter to the last few years. And, as Chris Chibnall says, “It’s full of stuff.”

Were you aware that you’re only the second director to have worked on Doctor Who under both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat? Have you noticed much change in the way the show is made?

It’s obviously an honour to have worked in both ‘eras’. The thing you notice is that the passion to get things right hasn’t changed. I’d worked with both Russell and Steven before Doctor Who (on The Grand and Jekyll) so that wasn’t much of a surprise. The thing that has changed is the technology, which is always developing. But the thing you realise when you watch episodes from the ’60s and ’70s or whenever is that writers, directors and producers were just doing the same as us – pushing the technology available to its limits within a budget! The other thing that’s the same is David Tennant and Matt Smith share the ability to pull incredible creative energy and generosity on to the set, which makes life a lot better for the poor directors…

How did working with Matt Smith compare to David Tennant’s approach?

They’re both magnificent.

The Power of Three feels, in some ways, like it harkens back to the Russell T Davies era. Is this perhaps why you were chosen to direct it, do you think?

You’d have to ask the Doctor Who Power of Three (Steven Moffat, Caro Skinner, Marcus Wilson) why I was asked to direct it. If I could I’d be directing all episodes of Doctor Who, forever. I’d be really happy.

How much involvement did you having in casting actors like Jemma Redgrave and Steven Berkoff?

I had the usual input with Jemma – Andy Pryor suggested her and we all agreed quickly. Steven Berkoff was slightly different in that I’d worked with him before. The experience of working with him on Doctor Who was something that’ll never be repeated – you could ask anyone on the cast or crew and they’ll agree that his participation was extraordinary.

Is your approach to directing Doctor Who different than it would be on other programmes?

Only in the sense that there’s always lots more elements to deal with than any other show that I can think of. And more interest in the results…

What was the experience of working on Steven Moffat’s previous series, Jekyll, like?

Jekyll was a delight to do. I read the scripts – what there were of them – and knew immediately that I’d crawl over Mr Hyde to get to direct it. Luckily, the good folk at Hartswood agreed to let me.

With this being so close to the end for the current “team”, and indeed the last story to be shot involving Matt, Karen and Arthur, was there an end of era feel to the shoot?

The last shot we shot was on Matt, Karen and Arthur going in to the TARDIS. There were tears, speeches and presentations, but I thought it shouldn’t be about me. At one point I didn’t know if they’d ever come out of the TARDIS, but eventually they had to…

Were you a fan of Doctor Who growing up, and what was your ‘era’, and your specific childhood memories?

I’ve been a fan all my life. On my first day of shooting on the TARDIS, David Tennant said to me, “It’s like being grown up and being eight at the same time, isn’t it?” So my favourite era is now, when I’m getting to make it as well as watch it. Childhood memories – oh the Yeti, the plastic chairs that swallowed people, those Daleks and the Sontarans. Oh and I’m from the Highlands so I particularly liked the Zygons landing in Loch Ness. Haven’t heard the Zygons being mentioned for a while!

***

The Power of Three airs Saturday 22nd September on BBC ONE.

Halloween has come early this year, as the ghosts and ghouls of ParaNorman invade cinemas across the world. Starburst recently had the pleasure of sitting down with ParaNorman directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell to discuss the importance of zombies in society and the majesty of Scooby Doo.

Starburst: Let’s talk about the origin of ParaNorman. How did this story come to be?

Chris Butler: It began many years ago, once upon a time, probably about sixteen years ago, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do a stop-motion zombie movie for kids?’ And a proper zombie movie and by that I mean using zombies as social commentary, but for kids. In this case, it was bullying and fitting in and I thought wouldn’t it be great to do a high school or a middle school drama comedy but introduce zombies into it. We always talk about it as John Carpenter meets John Hughes so it was the mix of those two things. Like the characters of The Breakfast Club dropped into the plot of The Fog.

Starburst: I’m sold.

CB: That was the initial idea to do zombies as a metaphor, but from a kid’s perspective. When you’re eleven and you don’t fit in, the kid who lives down the road who bullies you every day is far more terrifying than zombies you’d watch in a movie so it’s that fictional horror versus the horror of being eleven. That’s kind of where it started and over the years I just kept going back to it and eventually I had the first act of a script which I showed to the guys at Laika – Travis Knight – and he liked it enough to give it a go and then I wrote the rest and then Sam got involved. 

Starburst: What was it like working together?

Sam Fell: It was cool, we weren’t forced together. I had actually just gone to the studio generally to look at a number of projects that were in development, just to help out because I’d done a few feature films and had been around animation for a while. I was just drawn to Chris’ project and I liked the script and we gradually talked over months about films we liked and the kinds of films that influenced this film and more and more we just found that we had a hell of lot in common and we agreed on a lot of stuff. Then we cooked up could be a director’s vision of the film and that went well . . . even through that process  we were just rhyming with a lot of the same references and we just naturally became a directing team. It was organic.

Starburst: Can you tell me about those references? It’s a family film but also a horror movie which can be a tricky balance but when it’s executed well, like in Coraline, it can be quite beautiful and terrifying.

CB: Coraline is slightly different in that I think that’s more of a dark fairy tale whereas we were specifically referencing horror movie conventions and that’s as simple as what a zombie is. A zombie wants to eat your brains, but then playing with that, turning it on its head. You might think that but it’s wrong. I don’t think we were setting out to make a horror movie for kids. We were making this kind of fun, Scooby Doo-esque adventure and we were playing with horror conventions but actually, it’s more about Norman. It’s got an emotional, central story to it that’s far more than just goofy zombies.

SF: Yeah, the horror of the movie is the wrapping paper. It unwraps and it reveals a story about tolerance.

CB: In terms of specific references, obviously we looked at a lot of zombie movies – John Carpenter was a big influence. But then also more family, ’80s movies, so like The Goonies, Ghostbusters, E.T., with that Amblin vibe, that kind of irreverent adventure that’s maybe more risky than the kinds of movies you get today for kids. 

Starburst: There’s no central villain in ParaNorman . . . can you talk a bit about abandoning that formula?

CB: We wanted to play with those conventions. You think a witch is going to be like this, or you think zombies are going to be evil and you think the cheerleader is bad, or whatever. I like the idea of making the audience complicit in that and then pulling the rug out from under them.

Starburst: There’s been quite a bit of talk about Mitch and the reveal at the end of the movie that he’s gay. He’s so open about it and there’s no shame and there’s no hiding. I read one review that said something like ‘It might force parents to have uncomfortable conversations with their children’ which seems odd considering they’d just walked out of a 90 minute movie on intolerance. What would you say to these people?

CB: You don’t have to say anything to them. One of my favorite reviews was like ‘it’s a good, important story about tolerance and trying to understand others, but then they go and ruin it by having a gay at the end!’

SF: It’s astonishing really. This is a contemporary movie and it’s the real world.

Starburst: And there are gay people in the real world.

SF: Exactly. It’s not something to be hidden from children.

CB: I think we’re all proud of it. We’re proud that this is a first, I think.

SF: I think most kids can deal with it, actually. It’s more the parents. Most kids are like “Yeah, whatever,” and they’ll deal with it.

Starburst: Because children learn to be intolerant.

CB: Right. They’re taught intolerance. And if we can change one person’s life, if we can have a parent have a productive, genuinely good conversation with their kids as a result of this, great. I’ve actually had a couple of things forwarded to me from parents. There was one parent who had a gay teenage kid and that kid had known they were gay for many years and that parent had come to terms with it and she was happy to be able to take her son to a movie that had a positive role model because there are none out there for kids.

Starburst: Do you think we’ll have another at some point in the near future?

CB: At some point.

SF: Well, is sort of positive. He’s not the sharpest knife in the box.

Starburst: Well, he’s not a villain and he’s not a one-dimensional character and it’s treated as normal.

SF: Right, it’s not the main thing about him.

CB: I think that’s the most important thing, that it’s normal. It’s funny how much fuss there’s been about this, really, because the movie overall . . . it’s tolerance. Tolerance for everything. I’d hate for people to get caught up in just one aspect of it.

SF: Well, this film was made in an unusual situation with Laika studio who are really, truly independent so they’re able to do things that other people don’t do and they want to do that. They’re outside of the mainstream. The reason that it doesn’t happen is that are afraid. They’re worried about the business side of it. So it’s an unusual studio.

CB: It has the strength of its convictions. But I think that’s absolutely right. There is a concern that you have to make a product that appeals to everybody.

SF: But everybody doesn’t mean everybody.

Starburst: There’s a sort of heteronormative default.

CB: Gradually, it will change. Gradually. I hope.

Starburst: What zombie stories – from movies, comics, literature, TV shows – served as inspiration for you?

CB: I have a good grounding in all zombie movies. I love them. Night of the Living Dead had a profound impact on me because I saw it when I was quite young and I thought I could handle it because it was black and white and it was old. And then it really kind of slapped me in the face. But even now, when you watch that movie through the end credits, it has an awful lot to say and I think that’s what’s cool about zombie movies. So all of them, really, at least the ones that change the world a little bit.

SF: The ones that have some kind of social commentary, which is not a lot of them lately.

CB: I think any conscientious zombie movie or director needs to do something different each time, because those are the ones that really stand out. I hope we did. 

SF: I think so. There’s not been a kids zombie movie before. 

Starburst: We think you might be pioneers in this field.

SF: There might have been a Scooby Doo episode like that though.

Starburst: Possibly, but Scooby Doo has done everything. Scooby Doo is the Shakespeare of our time.

CB: It really is, isn’t it!

ParaNorman is in UK cinemas now; head HERE to read our review. 

In late 2010 a new small publishing house launched in the UK, specialising in high quality, signed and numbered, limited edition chapbooks by a number of established and new British horror authors. A year and a half later, Spectral Press have established a growing reputation as one of the best new horror imprints on the market. Their chapbooks and novellas have received critical acclaim and a series of glowing reviews, with every copy selling out, often before release.

Recently we sat down with Simon Marshall-Jones, the owner and driving force behind Spectral Press to discuss why he thinks they have been so successful, and what to expect from Spectral in the future.

Starburst: So, how did you get started with Spectral? Is being a publisher something that you have always wanted to do, or did you decide to do this fairly recently?

Simon Marshall-Jones: I actually started publishing way back in 1990, when I launched a music ‘zine called FRÄCTürëd – yes, that’s how it was spelt – devoted to the then burgeoning industrial music scene. It’s easy to forget that, in the days when the internet was still some way in the future, promoting and making people aware of what you were doing was that much harder but, despite that, the magazine achieved sales all over the world, from San Francisco to Moscow. It ran for three sold-out issues however, only stopping due to something called life getting in the way – I went back to university. Since then, I’ve always harboured a faint suspicion that I should have continued in the publishing business in one form or another…

As for Spectral Press, the seed was planted at FantasyCon 2010, when Nicholas Royle of Nightjar Press handed me a couple of his recently published chapbooks to review. After reading them, it occurred to me that it was the perfect format for a) showcasing an author’s work and b) a great way of starting a small-press imprint without a massive outlay. Admittedly, there was more than a modicum of trepidation at this point: I’d run a record label between January 2008 and December 2009 which had turned out disastrously. However, it has to be said that, in spite of the sour turn the label took, I learnt a great deal from running it, which has helped enormously when it comes to running Spectral. Consequently, the success of the imprint has come as something of a major surprise.

What made you decide to work in limited edition chapbooks only? Are there any plans to release the chapbooks as e-books or in a more general release anthology in the future? What about other formats, or even novels?

Initially, it was just a question of economics – after the record label debacle money was in very short supply, so I needed to start small-scale which wouldn’t require an enormous financial outlay but which wouldn’t compromise on quality, either. That last aspect, in particular, was most important. Limited edition chapbooks fitted those requirements perfectly. In addition, I wanted to start very slowly, avoiding any stretching in terms of finances or workload so I wouldn’t end up shooting myself in the foot.

Originally, I’d planned to launch the first issue at FantasyCon 2011, reckoning that’s how long it would take me to raise the finance! However, I came up with the idea of subscriptions so that interested parties could make sure of getting each volume, and within a month of launching that idea I had enough money to pay for the first two issues. As my wife said at the time “I guess you have to go ahead and do it now…”

There are also the novellas now, and there are plans to put the chapbook stories into a collected edition along with new material in a year or two. There will be anthologies and single-author collections, along with stuff not yet decided. As for novels, I am currently undecided – I will be looking into it at some point, but I think it will be way in the future. And there are also ideas that haven’t yet occurred to me!

Spectral had a very impressive set of launch titles. How, as a new publisher, did you manage to convince the likes of Gary McMahon to come on board?

A lot of the writers I initially enlisted I already knew through Facebook and from going to conventions. I did think it was going to be difficult to persuade people to join an unknown quantity but Gary McMahon offered me a story (What They Hear in the Dark) very soon after I began touting the idea of Spectral Press. I couldn’t really say no to such a heavy hitter, plus it was the ideal way to start off a new imprint, setting my stall out as I meant to go on. After that, I just contacted authors whose work I knew and liked, asking them if they would like to contribute something. Once the first few volumes came out then people could see that I was very serious about what I was doing – there are more than a few new imprints starting up each year, many of which will necessarily fall by the wayside, so I had to offer something ‘extra’ that would, by itself, attract both writers and readers. I think I’ve succeeded in that respect with Spectral.

The tone of the stories in Spectral’s releases to date has been very similar. Was it a deliberate decision to focus on more atmospheric stories, and do you see this expanding out into other kinds of horror in the future?

I grew up on ghost stories and horror films which relied more on suggestion and implication than describing or showing everything on page or screen. The modern predilection for depicting all in gory detail has left the part of imagination out of the equation – ‘imagining’ the nastiness is far more effective than actually seeing it. I remember watching black and white horror films as a child – when I shouldn’t have been – and having nightmares afterwards. Later, when I started watching the more ‘modern’ horrors as a teen, they never left me with as deep an impression. It’s the thought of what might have happened than what actually happened that did it for me.

Aside from needing to find a particular angle and aesthetic for Spectral, I also wanted to bring back that role for imagination to play when reading ghost stories. For instance, when walking down a darkened corridor in an old house, it’s what might be out there that’s the chilling thing – once it’s been revealed we can categorise it and deal with it, so leaving an element of ambiguity is a great deal more effective in my book.

With the introduction of the range of novellas, Spectral is expanding its remit, and is now venturing into other areas of horror – Lovecraftian, social horror and even glorious Hammer Films-style horror. The main principle here is to remind people that horror isn’t just about vampires and zombies – there are so many facets to the genre that, in an age where every second books appears to be one of those two subgenres, I think it’s good to emphasise the fact that there are alternatives out there, and that horror as a literary style is still very much living and breathing, and is in very robust health.

How would you describe the sort of stories that Spectral are producing? Do you go to the author with a brief as to the sort of thing you want, or do they come to you with an outline of what they want to do first?

 I would describe the stories as ghostly/supernatural tales, in the style of, or homage, to the late 19th/early 20th century masters – think MR James, Charles Dickens, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft. Generally speaking, I invite an author to contribute and then give them a very brief idea of what I want, along with some references to the names above and then go from there. None of the authors I’ve received stories from so far have failed to hit that nail squarely on the head, mostly because those were the kinds of tales they grew up on.

Which authors would you say have been the biggest influence on you, and why?

My primary influence genre-wise has to be Clive Barker. Prior to me reading his Books of Blood the kind of horror fiction I was reading was the usual haunted house/vampire/monster/serial killer type fare. Barker was both a breath of fresh air and a revelation, completely shattering my perceptions of what horror was capable of: in fact, here was horror like no other. Perhaps the one story of his that always sticks in my mind is ‘In the Hills, the Cities’ – I distinctly remember thinking, after finishing reading it, that this was as far away from ‘classic’ horror as one could get and yet it was horror nonetheless, albeit mixed with elements of the fantastic. After that, I just couldn’t get enough of Barker’s material, with Weaveworld and Imajica being my all-time favourite novels of his.

China Miéville did the same for me when it came to fantasy when I read his Perdido Street Station – he completely shattered the received wisdom of what fantasy should and could be, bringing with it a startling mix of horror and science fiction in combination with fantasy. Also, Umberto Eco helped me form a definition of what constitutes actual horror – his Name of the Rose is claustrophobic and horrific in a way that people wouldn’t necessarily associate with those terms. For me, the horror lay in the claustrophobia of the medieval monastic existence, plus the ever-ominous presence of the Inquisition and the very real feeling that medieval life was constantly surrounded by the supernatural and malign. It was so oppressively palpable that one could almost reach out and touch it, more so when the people of the time implicitly believed in its reality. Imagine living every day of your life bowed down by the idea that devils and demons inhabited every sphere of daily life and that you could never escape their presence? THAT is true horror, in my book.

So, what can we expect to see from Spectral Press in the future?

I have all kinds of plans for Spectral, but I still have to be careful of not going too fast, too soon. In the immediate future, however, expect more chapbooks from the likes of Mark West, David Tallerman, Paul Kane, and Simon Bestwick, in addition to the second novella in the Spectral Visions series of longer works in September, The Nine Deaths of Dr. Valentine by John Llewellyn Probert (an affectionately gruesome, blackly humorous and outrageous tribute to the films of Vincent Price). Sometime this year there will also be a series of audio-CDs of Lovecraft and Lovecraft-style stories set to music, Musicks & Mythos, to be released in collaboration with Temple ov Azathoth Records. That will be followed in December by Spectral’s first anthology, the first Christmas Ghost Story Annual, echoing the sort of annual that the Victorians and Edwardians loved at that time of year. Next year will see more novellas, including one from Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch, Afterlife and The Awakening), more chapbooks and the first single-author collection from World Fantasy Award-nominee Simon Kurt Unsworth.

I have some other ideas currently in the planning stages, including the possibility of Spectral Roadshows, a compilation album of ambient/industrial music inspired by Spectral’s output and also things like posters and what have you. I am also looking to expand into other media, including film perhaps. I’m especially looking forward to this year’s FantasyCon, where Spectral is up for two awards, in the PS Publishing Independent Press category and Short Fiction (for Paul Finch’s King Death). Based just on what has happened over the last year and a half, I think Spectral has a great future ahead of it.

For more information on Spectral Press and its forthcoming products, visit their official website HERE.

Due on DVD later this month is The Harsh Light of Day, the debut feature from British-born director Oliver S Milburn who, against all odds, has managed to craft a contemporary vampire movie with a difference which resuscitates a flagging, often overplayed horror genre. Starburst’s Paul Mount spoke to Oliver Milburn about his career, his first movie and his hopes and dreams… 

Starburst: So Mr. Milburn, tell Starburst all about yourself and how come you’re making movies?

Oliver S Milburn: I’ve always written stuff, since I was little. I’m the guy with 15 unfinished novels on his hard drive. I only really decided to go for filmmaking professionally about 5 years ago. I’ve always watched films obsessively, but it wasn’t until I was at university that I realised how accessible filmmaking had become. I felt that filmmaking was a game for the rich and connected, and until recently I think generally it was. That doesn’t make the previous generation of filmmakers any less talented by the way, just more fortunate, and luck still plays a huge part in it.  Then I went and did the usual process – I got a masters in Directing from Bournemouth University, made a bunch of shorts and won an award or two. During my time there I met Emma Biggins, the producer of Harsh Light of Day and we decided to make a feature together.

Who are your influences?

There’s so many! I’ve got a really eclectic taste – which I think you need if you want to make films – and I like directors of many different styles. In my own work, I like interesting visuals – so long as they complement the story; I like to use the camera as a character rather than just a narrator. Other directors who do this – much better than me – would include Danny Boyle, Darren Aronofsky, Sam Raimi, Edgar Wright, David Cronenberg… the list would be long. I think Harsh Light borrows heavily from Clive Barker’s early directing too. I’d love to be able to make a film like In Bruges or In The Loop – performance based comedy is such a difficult thing to pull off.

So how did you come to write Harsh Light of Day? Is the vampire sub-genre one you’re particularly attracted to?

The explosion of vampires is a frustration for us, not because of the competition, but because it’s given everyone who walks into the film certain preconceptions or even turns them off altogether. At the time I wrote HLOD, Twilight was just a vague rumble on the horizon in the UK, and the most recent vampire film to do any business was the incredible Let The Right One In. HLOD is definitely not a film in the Twilight group; it’s not about vampires and it’s certainly not a teen movie. It was simply that having a vampire in it worked so well with both the themes it was exploring and the actual mechanics of the story. I’m all about the story rather than its genre. I’d say I’ll never do another vampire film, but if a great story came along and vampires were a part of it, I’d sign up in a flash. Similarly I love horror, but I’d probably want to break out into another genre next. Again, it all depends on what scripts come along. We were under certain extenuating circumstances while making HLOD. That sounds dodgier than it is – but basically we had to write and shoot within about four months. So I was tweaking the script right up until shooting and I’m sure with more time I could have redrafted endlessly. As it was I think it was three main drafts over about six weeks, and then we were shooting it!

So what is HLOD? Is it a horror film? A romance? Home invasion? Revenge thriller? How would you categorise it?

I’d be a difficult p***k and say that I wouldn’t. Or if I had to it’d be a ‘horrific supernatural revenge-thriller’. That’s a film I’d like to see! That’s why I wrote it like that – as a genre mash-up, in homage to a lot of horror/thriller trends past and present. A B-movie yes, but one that audiences can enjoy. People who watch smaller films like ours tend to be aware of the genre conventions, which is why there’s so many post-modern indie movies these days. Categories are something for marketing, something which helps sell a film, helps audiences find it, and of course helps kind press like yourselves publicize it. I’ve always loved cross genre films – I seem to be the one person who thought it was awesome when Sunshine suddenly turned into a horror film, or loved the fact that The Signal is three totally different films in the same story. Stories are a reflection of life, life can change, therefore it suits some stories to change. I’m not saying all films should be cross-genre, I just think that with the bombardment of superhero movies, forgettable rom-coms, remakes and safe sequels, audiences are getting more restless for originality.

How involved were you in getting the film financed and off the ground?

I put my head in the sand. Well, not really, but I was pretty busy writing. I found a few of our investors, but Emma did the business plan that won them over. We’d give them that and a detailed plot outline to consider – so I guess the story was my biggest contribution there. Our investment was from normal people outside the industry, and if you’re going to get money from butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, you can’t pitch a David Lynch film – it has to be something which they can see working on paper and on a basic story level.

So how difficult was it to make a film as ambitious as this to a tight budget and schedule?

Very difficult! I think we’re all now very used to hearing low budget filmmakers talk about how hard it is… but dammit it’s hard! We shot in four weeks; and I think that’s more than some indies have, but the way I shot the film was quite demanding in terms of set-ups, especially with our equipment. It wasn’t that handheld, free-flowing style you see in a lot of indies, which really speeds the process up. We were dealing with some equipment which I don’t think people would even consider using now – the tech is moving so fast. The biggest factor was that we didn’t get our location till right before we shot, which had the knock on effect of making all my storyboards/planning irrelevant – we’d based them on a very different kind of house. So I had to work out a lot of it as we shot, which is not how I like to do things, but I think we got by. So yeah, I could moan all day about it but basically it was about as tough as it gets!

Starburst hears that a well-known UK TV face expressed an interest in working on the movie – a huge boost to your confidence – but had to drop out due to scheduling difficulties. Working without a casting director, how did you go about casting HLOD?

Yeah it was great to have the script validated in that way – it meant we were definitely on the right track. I’m very pleased with the final cast though. I think budget aside one of the biggest challenges for me was earning the trust of a cast as a 23 year old unknown director. It’s a factor which I didn’t really think about till we were on set, but they were great about it, and we collaborated really well. Getting a casting director is definitely something I would advise though, even if it takes from another department. We had to wade through so many CVs, sit through so many auditions. Occasionally we’d cast someone, then discover they couldn’t commit to it… it was a nightmare. It literally makes me shiver thinking about it.

Most of our cast came from casting websites. In the case of our lead – once we knew our ‘secret star’ wouldn’t work out – I just scoured headshots and invited people to audition who looked like they might make a good ‘Dan’. I didn’t look at resumes or statements for that role. I think with Infurnari Emma approached Giles Alderson directly and he agreed to chat with me about it. If you’re persistent and a little cunning you’ll find your people, but it takes a lot of work.

Anything you had to compromise on in making the movie?

Haha, LOADS. I mean there was probably something in every scene that had to be dropped or changed. One that really irritates me still is the death of the first bad guy. Definite ‘Spoiler Alert’, but he was supposed to be dropped through a skylight onto a poker table – hence the script’s emphasis on ‘top floor’. We couldn’t do it so we did the thing with the elevator – a Die Hard ‘reference’ I suppose, but not as much fun! There are loads more like that. An interesting one is that the gang were supposed to be much younger, kind of Kidulthood type figures, but the cast you see were the only people we auditioned who we thought could pull it off, so we were glad to have them age aside! All this stuff is part and parcel of making this kind of film though, and it’s important to be grateful you got anything shot.

There’s some pretty graphic violence and brutality in the movie; Starburst winced as Daniel is flung down the stairs during the attack on the house! What’s your view on the issue of censorship and violence in movies?

A really interesting question. On censorship I have no problem with having a system of certification. That’s sensible. On the other hand I think you’d have to be pretty messed up already to let a film tip you over into becoming a monster. There’s a lot to be said for the Gaspar Noe approach – i.e. that the only honest way to depict violence is to leave it utterly unstylised, to make the audience revolted by what is a revolting act. It depends on the story you are telling though I suppose, and in something like a vampire film it’d be a push not to stylise it in some way. I’d love to see Noe do a vampire movie! It comes down to context I think. Harsh Light has some stylised violence, but I think its brutality is honest rather than perverse. There is purposefully a big difference in the depiction of the human violence and the violence meted out by vampires, which chimes with the little philosophical debate Dan and the vampire have at the end. The human violence is onscreen, except where our FX budget wouldn’t allow, while the vampire violence is generally quite fleeting.

What does trouble me is seeing a movie clearly made for young teen audiences, say 12A cert, where the body count is huge and the violence very stylised. It’s the wrong message, especially when sex is often so fleeting in the same films – which is the more natural? Basically as long as violence is never shown to be a good thing that’s fine. As long as a film never says ‘hey, be violent, its really cool’. It never is in HLOD; it causes serious pain and has serious consequences. If anything the film recognises the fact that sometimes it is a natural instinct to want violence. Whether we want it in the sense of revenge, or whether we want it in the sense of going to see a film we know will be violent. The important thing is to temper that with the knowledge that violence is wrong – something 99% of the world realise. Dan certainly does in the film, but his desire for it is overwhelming – that is the struggle which we see him face.

What’s your next project? Any long-term ambitions?

To make more films, basically. I love it, it’s what I want to do forever. The next project depends on what gets off the ground – it’s really tough to get anything moving at the moment but hopefully HLOD will help. I’ve written 3 scripts since Harsh Light. Emma and I will definitely work together again I think, we’ve optioned the rights to School’s Out – a novel by Scott Andrews about kids trying to survive in a boarding school after a virus kills most of the world. I’m on the third draft of that now, it’s fast, fun, and sharp-tongued – not at all what you’d expect from that brief synopsis. There’s also a near-future thriller and a comedy in various stages of drafting. I’m also working on a graphic novel with another writer based on an idea of mine, which I hope to make into a film too.

If the right script came along from another writer I’d do it in a flash, I’m not precious about writing myself. I’d love to find something I can do for the industry’s idea of low budget, like £500,000. That’s the next step I think – HLOD was way less than that, so I know I could do something with it.

Given the chance – and the budget – would you like to work on a big budget FX extravaganza a la Michael Bay or would you prefer something a bit more intimate and personal?

I’m not interested in FX really, unless they help me tell a story. Don’t get me wrong I’d love a decent budget, and I love stories of an epic scale, but you need intimacy, you need to care about characters, that’s what so many blockbusters now just miss. I think its because they try to make films for everybody, and film doesn’t work like that – it makes the characters bland. I work within genres, and I work with understood conventions, but I really like characters and stories to be interesting. Hopefully they are in HLOD. With a few exceptions (the Chris Nolan projects of this world), the bigger the budget the less complex those things seem to become. I’d love to do an action film for example, but I’d want to do it for a story which happens to have action in, rather than for the sake of action itself.

Are you especially drawn towards the SF/fantasy genre?

Yes! SF is actually my goal. To one day make an intelligent SF movie on an epic scale that people really connect with. Those unfinished novels I mentioned are all SF. To make another Star Wars, the originals, obviously, or The Matrix, the original, obviously, or Alien, the original two, obviously… I could go on, about originals, obviously. I already mentioned Sunshine; that’s a film I wish I’d made. To make something like that would be the dream.

Not so much fantasy, because often fantasy seems to make up its own rules and I don’t understand that. It can work of course, but films need rules in order to build tension and threat. You’ll have a character who’s dying, and suddenly the Elf of Chgul will produce the blade of Aggod which is the only blade with can bring the dead to life… its just so random!

Ha ha. So, what advice would give to aspiring young filmmakers keen to make a career in the UK?

It depends on what they want to do. If it’s technical, then go get the training, do the work experience, have a blast and hopefully make the contacts for a job. Sadly it is all about contacts, which is a shame. It’s something we’re still struggling with. Neither Emma nor I had any industry family or friends really, which makes it very difficult. We didn’t have an invite to the party – so HLOD is our way of kicking the door down and screaming to be noticed. If you want to actually make/write/direct films yourself, I guess it’s key to realise there isn’t really a golden ‘way to get into film’. You have to use what you have at your disposal and make films your way. It’s almost pointless looking for funding if you haven’t already done something too, so make a few shorts and see if you can get anywhere with them. Shorts are really good practice and an art form in themselves. Above all the script is everything. If you don’t have a good script it’s extremely difficult to make a good film, I’d say impossible if Monsters hadn’t been improv. Spend 10 years on the script if you need to, just make sure it’s good and the rest will follow to a lesser or greater extent. There are plenty of things about our experience, and those of other low budget films, which can help. So watch loads of ‘making of’ extras, like ours, on our DVD, which you should buy, go on. Live the dream. Starburst rules!

Stop it, you’re making us blush.

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The Harsh Light of Day is released on DVD October 1st and can be pre-ordered below…

On September 13th 2012, Hodder and Stoughton released Tad Williams’ latest book, The Dirty Streets of Heaven, which blends noir and urban fantasy in the first of a new trilogy about the ongoing war between heaven and hell. Tad Williams’ early fantasy series were famously an inspiration for George R R Martin when he was writing the Game of Thrones series. Starburst can confirm that The Dirty Streets of Heaven sees the author on top form, creating a believable world populated by compelling characters whose unique lives are all on a collision course.

We caught up with Tad Williams to talk about noir, religion and world-building. 

Starburst: Before you started work on The Dirty Streets of Heaven, was it your intention to write something inspired by classic noir?

Tad Williams: The first inspiration was more like espionage fiction, the cold war between heaven and hell, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to tell the story, and all Bobby Dollar stories, in that first-person, mordant, wisecracking style that’s so much what we think of as noir. Part of that is because, as my publisher said, “this is the most like your own voice I’ve ever seen you write.” So long before I started the book, at least a couple of years earlier, because it’s an old idea of mine, I’d decided I wanted it to be short, swift, a bit of a standalone and only one character viewpoint.

Are there any stories or authors that you’d credit as being particular inspirations for the Bobby Dollar books?

Well, obviously Chandler and Hammett, both of whom I’ve long read and admired, but also those who have taken these kinds of crime fiction and mystery tropes and done other things with them, so I’d have to throw Eco, Pynchon, Douglas Adams, Ian Rankin and Michael Chabon into the mix as well. Pynchon’s recent “detective” novel, Inherent Vice, is a hoot, and Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union is a great crime novel.

Are all of the religious elements to the plot drawn from research or does some of your personal spirituality leak into the narrative?

I’ve been very careful with this book not to commit myself too literally to any religious philosophy. As a matter of fact, you could make a case that this could be ordinary science fiction or fantasy and not about the “truth” of religion at all. But whatever it is, it gives me plenty of chances to play with theology, something I enjoy very much.

I’ve heard this new book described as an ‘urban fantasy’ and a ‘fantasy-fuelled thriller’. Do you take an active interest in the way that your novels are marketed or are you happy to leave the rest of us to decide for ourselves how to interpret your work and where to shelve it?

Labelling by genre is great if your audience are all genre-readers and that’s all you’re trying to reach, but my audiences, at least the audiences I want, are more diffuse. I always hope to draw people who just like good books regardless of the terminology of categorisation that gets used on them, but this is certainly closer to a couple of genres, crime and urban fantasy, than to any others.

My only complaint about The Dirty Streets of Heaven is that it’s going to be part of a series. Clearly the story doesn’t conclude and we’re left with a lot of questions, which isn’t a problem in itself, but my favourite kind of noir is one where the narrator seems completely doomed by fate, where everything that happens seems inescapable and inevitable. What prompted the decision to turn this story into a trilogy?

I don’t think of it as a trilogy in my normal sense. My fantasy and science fiction multi-volumes tend to be single stories that have to be divided into volumes because of length. I honestly think you could pick up any one of these books by themselves and read them. Although you might wonder “what happens next?”, you would also have a fairly satisfying ending for that book. Ultimately, if people like the character and the milieu, I’d like to keep it open to doing true single volumes, but I decided to do three to begin with, 1) to set the stage for future stories, 2) to not terrify my fantasy readers, who like to immerse themselves deeply, and 3) because I didn’t want to write one really big book to fit everything in. I like this length and this pace, but if I get to keep writing them I think they’ll be more like most crime/mystery novels, more single volumes than continued stories.

I want to talk more about your femme fatale, but fear that it would spoil the story to say more than that there is one. Did you have any difficulty coming up with believable backstories for these larger-than-life characters?

If that means you found the backstory for that character believable, then I’m pleased. One of the reasons I’ve never thought of myself as a pure example of a genre writer is that character is always the most important issue for me, just nosing out world-building/invention. So if I’m creating a character I hope to still be writing in ten or twenty years, as I have here both with Bobby and the femme fatale in question, then it’s even more important to me to try to make that character real. Part of that is research, part of it is being an observer of people. I try to do well with both.

Given how much I loved The Dirty Streets of Heaven, where would you suggest I start with your other books?

Well, the second one, Happy Hour in Hell will be out before too long, but you might enjoy a true (but long) standalone, War of the Flowers. If you’re ambitious, I think you’d enjoy the four Otherland volumes, which are also pretty ambitious in character and world-building. I actually invent more worlds and characters in the Otherland books that some writers do in an entire long career!

The Dirty Streets of Heaven is out now and can be purchased below…