We recently caught up with Toby Whithouse to discuss his latest episode of Doctor Who for an interview that will appear in an upcoming issue of Starburst magazine. During our conversation, however, we wandered onto the topic of Being Human and Toby’s previous Doctor Who story The God Complex. As a teaser for the rest of the interview, those portions of the conversation are reproduced here…

Starburst: Congratulations, Being Human has gone to a fifth series.

Toby Whithouse: Yes, we heard a couple of months ago. We’re quite heavily into storylining now. Scripts are being written and yes, it’s very exciting. We’re really delighted.

A lot of people thought it was going to end after the fourth series.

We felt that if we could overcome the transition from Series Three and Series Four, we thought, if we can do that, then the series can run ‘forever’, so it was a real test for us, rebooting the show with a new cast. People ask me if it’s difficult creating the new characters, but the thing is, that’s my job. My job is to create characters and create stories, so that was fine. The problem was the pessimism, and the fatalism, of the fans. Although I must admit that after Series Four went out,  I saw on one forum that somebody had said, “Do you know what? I thought they were mad, I thought this series was going to absolutely bomb and I thought that nobody could ever replace the original cast. But I have to say I was completely wrong and I think the new guys are amazing, and I’m delighted and I hang my head in shame.” I actually got a sci-fi fan to admit they were wrong. That’s listed in the Book of Revelations as a sign of the approaching apocalypse.

You don’t avoid visiting the forums, then?

Occasionally I’ll dip in, and then run away weeping. It really amazes me that we’re all very passionate about a genre that is about leaps of imagination, and we will tell and listen to stories about creatures on other planets and strange monsters and so on, yet the notion of a show continuing with the same creative team, the same format but a different cast seems impossible. 

People just don’t seem to like change.

Interestingly, I was watching the interview with Joe Quesada at Kapow! and he was saying exactly the same thing, that particularly genre fans find change frightening, but actually, you have to always be moving forwards, you have to have a forward momentum, otherwise things stagnate.

But anyway, it’s been great. I’m really excited about the fifth series and delighted that the new cast have gone down so well, because I think they’re genuinely astonishing. I couldn’t be happier. The new guys are absolutely stunning.

On to Doctor Who. In The God Complex, the Doctor’s speech at the end to Amy/Amelia is actually for real, isn’t it? And that’s why Rita, specifically, is in that story?

Not just Rita, but all of the ‘fatalities’ within it. But I can see the resonance with Rita: almost, by looking at her, the Doctor was thinking, You know what? You’d be a brilliant person to travel with, so maybe, if it doesn’t work out with Amy, then maybe you’d like to come around with me. There’s that exchange where he says to Rita the thing about giving kids a suitcase full of sweets, and two lines later he finds himself offering her a bunk on the TARDIS as well, and she says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I have a feeling you’ve just done it again.” The scene where the Doctor leaves Amy and Rory, at the very end, was bizarrely the scene that went through the most redrafts, because Steven wanted it played absolutely for real. And I was saying, “But surely they’re going to come back at the end of the series?” And he was saying, “Yes, but even so, you have to play this as real, it has to look as though this is the end of the Ponds.” The sequence with Amy and Amelia, that is the moment where the Doctor realises that this story, his time with Amy and Rory, only really has one ending, and that’s with somebody dying.

Staying with The God Complex, was there any reason why you didn’t just say that the Minotaur was a Nimon?

I guess we never really thought about it. I wouldn’t like to swear to this, but, and I’m not saying this is the reason – it genuinely never occurred to us – I think there might be a couple of reasons. I think it’s fair to say that the Nimon were not necessarily the most successful monsters we’ve ever had on Doctor Who, so it might have been more of a liability, to be honest. Personally I’m always quite keen to be moving forward, and to create my own monsters. Admittedly, I could hardly lay claim to the Minotaur being an original monster but also, to be fair, from what I remember of the mythology I invented around it, I think it was a different culture. So my Minotaur, the planet that it came from, that was a different culture to the one that worshipped the Nimon. And I think that the Minotaur in my episode was something particular to that planet and that culture that it came from, that put it in that weird prison. So I think it’s more likely they would have had their own God rather than leeching off someone else’s.

The other reason, and I’m not sure this is a reason but it might’ve been something we would’ve come up against had we wanted to make it a Nimon, is that weirdly the rights to some monsters are not owned by the BBC. I won’t say which, but there is one very particular, very famous, iconic Doctor Who monster that is not owned by the BBC. Consequently every time it appears, money has to change hands. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have been the case with the Nimon, but it was a real surprise to me when I’d said, Ooh, can we chuck in a ‘blah’ into The God Complex, can we have a room full of this monster? And they said, No, we can’t afford that, because we’d have to pay such-and-such. I said, Oh that’s a shame – which I didn’t realise.

I believe there’s a similar situation with the Yeti…

But that’s weird because you would have thought that the Yeti is surely essentially in the public domain!

I suppose it’s to do with the specific explanation for its appearance in the Doctor Who universe. One more question about The God Complex, and one that you’ve been asked a million times but I have to ask it…

I know what you’re going to ask and the answer is, it’s entirely up to you.

But did you have an idea yourself ?

Yeah. Yeah, I did.

So there is a definitive answer to that question, then…

I would say that the person who gets to say what’s definitive, is the showrunner. I would say that deciding what the Doctor’s greatest fear is, is probably above my pay grade.

Talking of showrunners, did Russell T Davies give you more notes than Steven does?

To be honest, I would say that the difference between the two of them… They’re really difficult to compare, because I’ve written for Russell and for Steven at completely different points in my own career, so obviously there was more ‘intervention’ from Russell, but that’s because back then I needed it, to be honest.

Did Russell have a more particular idea of what he wanted?

I’m not sure that’s true. I think Steven has incredibly specific ideas about it, and about the shape of a series of Doctor Who. I’m very lucky and honoured that essentially Steven lets me get on with it. Obviously he has notes and thoughts, but I’ll go away and write the script and he’ll give his thoughts on that, but Steven’s told me that I’m very low maintenance, which is I think one of the reasons why they ask me back. As I said, I was in a very different point in my career when I worked with Russell but I learned an enormous amount from him, in terms of speed and momentum, and how to structure an episode, which are lessons that I’ve then translated into everything I’ve written since, including Being Human. 

My problem with Steven’s first series was the tentativeness, as if he was just finding his feet.

To be fair, that’s completely normal and that’s what we found on Being Human. The first series was very successful, but that was more accident than design. And I think we made mistakes in the second season, but then we rectified those in the third and fourth. There’s no formula to making a successful show, because if there was then everyone would be able to replicate it.

Mind you, with Being Human you hit upon an astonishingly good idea.

It’s always in retrospect that one is able to say these things. In a parallel universe, someone made a stupid show about a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost sharing a house and it died the death of a dog. You look at something like Jekyll. I thought that was absolutely stunning, I absolutely loved it and thought it was wonderful. But Steven would be the first to admit, the public didn’t respond to it as well as he would have wanted. Similarly a show like Ultraviolet, which I’ve gone on record many times saying was a huge influence on me. I thought that was incredible, but clearly there were more people who didn’t. So the people who make successful shows are as mystified about it as the people who make unsuccessful ones.

No Angels was also, in my opinion, a great series.

I think I’m very lucky, in that I came into the profession at the right time. As I’ve said before, I think the return of Doctor Who and the success of it, changed absolutely everything for genre writers. Before then if you had a sci-fi or fantasy idea, you wouldn’t have got it past the script stage. And then Doctor Who came back and changed everything. The success of Being Human and all of that, we’re all hanging on the coat-tails of Doctor Who. It changed the landscape for us. I think television had been a bit complacent before then, that there was a reluctance to try anything new and as I said, I think Doctor Who coming back, and being as successful as it was, opened the door for people like myself, who have always wanted to write genre stuff. Personally I’m absolutely thrilled it did, because I wouldn’t want to spend my whole career writing medical dramas.

So, and even though personally I’m hoping it’s a long time before it becomes available, would the showrunner’s job be something you’d like to do, or would it be too daunting?

I think both of those answers are correct.

***

Being Human returns to BBC three early next year.

Eighteen years after Nick Abadzis completed his critically-acclaimed strip Hugo Tate in the pages of Deadline the comic’s six-year run is finally being collected by Blank Slate Books. Across the course of Hugo Tate the eponymous protagonist evolves from a stick-figure into a fully-realized character surrounded by a complex cast that captures the very essence of growing up in that period. Like the very best work of the Beats, Abadzis somehow collates everyday social experiences and downfalls into a body of work that transcends genre and culminates in a mind-bending road trip that perfectly depicts the aimless growing-pains of a generation. Hugo Tate contains a vital reading experience for anybody with even a passing interest in comics and it was our privilege at Starburst to have the opportunity to speak to the creator about his career.

Starburst: Enough time has probably passed now since you created Hugo Tate, can you tell me how much was autobiography and how much was fiction?

Nick Abadzis: The old adage that all stories are autobiographical comes to mind, but I won’t hide behind that one. Very few of the actual details in Hugo Tate are truly personal in that I lifted them directly from my own life, but an awful lot of the emotion, incidental stuff and circumstances behind them came from mine and my friends’ experiences. I knew people who had those details in their lives, so it all entered into the mix, the process of creating a believable world peopled by believable, recognizable characters.

I’ve received the impression over the years, that people would love it if I said, “Yes, everything that happened to Hugo happened to me – it’s all drawn directly from life.” I’ll say that, if you like but it isn’t true. Then again, is he a part of me? For sure, yes. And so are all the other characters, too. Is it about me? I’m as boring as the next bloke, so no. Hugo is as unreliable a narrator as any; he was a stick-man all right but he was simultaneously an everyman. His story was a rites-of-passage one, not by any means universal in how he experienced it, but hopefully universally understandable and explicable.

SB: At what point after you started work on Hugo Tate did it become apparent to you that this was a project you’d be able to really invest yourself in?

NA: The first strip in the book dates from 1985, although it didn’t see print until 1988 in Deadline. There were more prior to that one, and after, but until Steve Dillon and Brett Ewins commissioned me, they were all abandoned. That was the only early one I ever finished for some reason, so by default it became the first ever Hugo Tate strip. I had enough creativity and personal momentum to begin the things but not always the desire to finish them; I was experimenting. Being thrust into the spotlight meant that I had to give them endings, make them work in their own right.

I was fascinated by the potential of comics, and I wanted to tell a story that was as appealing to the reader as it was entertaining and educational for me to write and draw, something that seemed “real,” that was immersive. Hugo Tate was the first time I really tried to get to grips with the language of comics, to make it speak for me. To my surprise, I was reasonably fluent and I got better as I went along and quickly. I loved doing it, I was really hungry for it. Still am.

SB: How confident were you about the growth of your art as time progressed? Was it difficult allowing Hugo to mature the way that he did?

NA: It’s difficult to precisely trace your creative path back through a work you did long ago but I can remember that when I started out, I was not a confident artist. I do remember working very hard on the writing. Artwise, you knew you were going to be published alongside the likes of Steve Dillon and Brett Ewins, who were already heroes of mine from the pages of 2000 AD. You were published in the same pages as some hugely inventive cartoonists and it was pretty daunting company to be in.

Steve Dillon began calling Hugo Tate “the quiet heart of Deadline” whenever I’d bring a new strip in and giving me the fan mail that had started arriving. That was mind-blowing. At that point I cottoned on that it might actually be popular. Brett introduced me to Brendan McCarthy, who was very kind and tutored me in the true artist’s deity, the god of tea. “Drink the right tea, you’ll draw good pictures.” He was right. Those early days of Deadline were a fantastic, anarchic, fertile university of comics.

SB: How much of a setback was it for your career when the promising reception to O, America was undermined by problems with the publisher? Did that have a big impact on your direction?

NA: It did have an impact on my direction in that I began pursuing more traditional work as a comics writer. In my heart of hearts, I don’t think it was what I really wanted to do; I wanted to write and draw and attempt to do non-genre stories on a wider canvas. I should’ve probably continued doing Hugo Tate, but at the time I just couldn’t find a way to make it work. I’d developed serious RSI from doing lettering work for 2000 AD and Marvel UK to help support myself while doing Hugo and was told I had to give my hand time to heal. Writing seemed a way to stay in the game. My friend Garth Ennis was doing well as a writer for DC so it seemed feasible at the time, but looking back I think I was wrong – I was never happy if I wasn’t drawing as well as writing. I always did both at the same time; to concentrate on one seems like deliberately facing the world with one eye and one ear closed, half your sensory and perceptory equipment deliberately shut off.

SB: Can you give me a potted history of your work since Hugo Tate? Given how much we loved it where should we go for my next fix?

NA: Much of my work is out of print. LAIKA isn’t and soon, Hugo Tate won’t be either. LAIKA is probably the book that I’m best known for, at least in the USA and Europe. It’s a bestseller for its publisher First Second and won various storytelling awards around the world. But I have a fairly extensive back catalogue that’s never seen the light of reprint or collection. Between series of Hugo Tate, I drew a newspaper strip called Untitled Comics for the long-defunct Sunday Correspondent.

After Hugo Tate I wrote a horror mini-series for Marvel UK called Children of the Voyager which was drawn by Paul Johnson. My first foray into the US market proper was Millennium Fever drawn by Duncan Fegredo, now Mr Hellboy. I was also working for 2000 AD, then edited by Alan Mackenzie and John Tomlinson. I wrote various Vector 13s and another horror series called Darkness Visible illustrated by John Ridgway. All along the way, I contributed work to other mages – Revolver, Crisis and the like, and I still freelanced for Marvel UK.

In the mid-nineties when the bottom fell out of the UK market, I was offered the chance to write and draw some graphic novels for children. These became the Plebes Planet books. I illustrated a lot of children’s books, did a lot of work for the BBC and eventually found my way back into editing when I joined Eaglemoss Publications as a development editor.

SB: Is there anybody in particular that you think didn’t find the audience that they deserved?

NA: In the UK? All of them. Everyone from Deadline, but I don’t think British Comics as a whole, the industry and the art form, are appreciated enough by their own country. The apathy of Britain and the supposed movers and shakers of culture in appreciating its talented artists, in comics and other fields, is staggering.

I think there’s a lost generation of alt-Brit cartoonists who really didn’t get the opportunities and acclaim they deserved. Top of the list, Rachael Ball and Ed “Ilya” Hillyer, superb, world-class cartoonists, both massively underrated. Ed never made things easy for himself but is criminally underexposed and undercelebrated. Glenn Dakin should be up there with George Herriman and maybe would be if he’d had the opportunity to continue with Temptation. There are so many others, too many to mention here. All the artists in Deadline should be bigger names than they are, and are not through no fault of their own. There are people like Paul Peart-Smith, Simon Gane, Si Fraser, Adrian Salmon, Warren Pleece, Gary Northfield, Kate Brown and many more, all the cartoonists featured in Nelson and more besides, who should be superstars. And there should be the infrastructure to support them, beginning at home, and there isn’t, at least not yet.

SB: If this collection of Hugo Tate is as successful as it deserves to be, should we finally expect more stories about Hugo’s extended cast?

NA: The carefully-considered answer to that one is that I don’t know. While I’d be doubtful that Hugo himself would put in a major reappearance, I often have ideas for stories that tell Spoonhead’s continuing story, or Stan, Dorinda and Jason’s. What happened to them? I do have ideas and I’ve learned that you should never say never. I have various other projects I’m working on, one of which is another book for First Second, the publisher of LAIKA. But there are two other projects that will be put out by British publishers, one a collaboration with French writer David Camus, the other the continuation of Cora’s Breakfast for David Fickling’s  Phoenix comic for kids. Beyond that, the way is open.

The Hugo Tate trade paperback is out now from Blank Slate Books.

Star of Heroes, The Vampire Diaries and upcoming horror comedy The Revenant, David Anders took time to talk to us about his new film and all things genre, including his feelings about Twilight!

Starburst: Considering your past acting roles, The Revenant is almost a first for you considering the majority of your genre roles have been sci-fi related. What made you look at, and accept, the role of Bart?

David Anders: I looked at it and although it was fun, I wasn’t initially going to go in on it. I had another audition on the same side of town and thought I’d give it a try. It ended up being one of the more fun auditions because Kerry (Prior – director) let me go wherever I wanted to go with it. Chris (Wylde) won’t want me to tell you this but Kerry offered me the choice of the parts of Bart or Joey in the movie – and of course, I’m going to choose the lead. Although the first day in make-up with the contacts I was like, “Damn it!” But thank god I chose Bart because I couldn’t have played Joey the way he did. Chris is one of the funniest people in the world, one of the funniest people I’ll ever meet and a dear friend to this day. It ended up being a really enjoyable film.

It looks like you and Chris Wylde had a really good on-set chemistry. How much fun was it to shoot?

It was a lot of fun. I couldn’t see a lot, that was my one qualm going in. I have sensitive eyes and they wanted me to wear the contacts, but Kerry said they could fix it in post. I ended up wearing them, which was hell, but they kept freaking me out as an actor in make-up. We had a guy called Gus who guided me to set. I had to put my hands on his shoulders to find my way, they were that thick. Chris kept telling me I was fine and to stop being such a pussy, but when he had to wear the contacts, he said “Dude, you were absolutely right.” It was like Brent Spiner’s eyes in Star Trek: The Next Generation but you couldn’t see.

The chemistry was easy, working with Chris because he was constantly doing new things every take, surprising you. I can’t say enough about Chris because his performance was one of the driving forces behind the film.

There appears to be a real mash-up of genres in the film. How well did that come across in the script and then the transfer to screen?

It was completely different once we were on set doing it because there were pages added. I think Kerry had a really clear vision but once he had me and Chris doing it, the vision kind of changes as it should because it’s a collaboration. We described it as a buddy-vampire-gunslinger-comedy during the shoot. That’s when it works best, when it’s focused on us.

Would it be fair to call it a rom-zom-com, like Shaun of the Dead?

I like that, but it’s a buddy romance – a bromance!

There is that love story between Louise’s (Griffiths) and my character which is nice. She loves me even in spite of my smell.

Will we ever know what was written in the letter that Bart finds in his pocket from Janet?

There really was something that Kerry wrote on that letter that got me going but I can’t remember because it was so long ago we did this. Whatever was on that letter helped me in that scene. Of course you also use your memories to make you cry. Having only one arm makes you cry!

What do you think happens to Bart next after the credit start to roll?

I guess he’s just going to kill isn’t he? I guess it opens it up for a sequel, maybe he finds his way back into humanity, not as this bloodthirsty soldier. I don’t really know what happens next, I guess that’s the cool thing, kind of open ended with him running off into the distance.

Would you welcome a sequel?

If you’d have asked me that after shooting it, I would have said absolutely not. But now with what I’ve seen, what Kerry did with it and our performances in it, yes I would… if Kerry would have me.

What was it like filming the scene with the vibrator?

The thing is, I didn’t even do that! When you see me talking to the head, and he’s gurgling back at me, that was all shot separately. Those aren’t my hands on the vibrator. Maybe I mimed, but this was four years ago. I remember Kerry going back and forth between doing the gag and not doing the gag, but people really seem to like it. It’s original isn’t it? I’m glad it’s in there.

Do you think it’s strange that Bart finds himself coming full circle by the end of the film, albeit a completely changed character?

It’s kind of a beautiful, creepy, bad bookend really. He’s a mindless killer by the end.

With a Revenant being a kind of cross between a vampire and a zombie, which do you prefer?

I think vampire is the choice there isn’t it? Being in The Vampire Diaries, those are sexy vampires.

If I could play Ian Somerhalder’s character, sure! Working on The Revenant and The Vampire Diaries may have skewed my idea of what a vampire is. My vampires are The Lost Boys and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

So you’re not a Twilight fan then?

No! My girlfriend and her mother dragged me into the most recent Twilight film, and I had to walk out a quarter of the way through. I went and watched Adam Sandler’s Jack & Jill instead. That’s how bad Twilight is! I walked out and into Jack & Jill – I really punished myself, although that was far less punishment than what Twilight was inflicting.

Why do you think Revenant has taken so long to come out?

I think Kerry’s a perfectionist and wanted to get it as best as he could. I’ve done so much since then it’s kind of crazy talking about it now. I’m happy to talk to anyone about it because I think it’s a really cool, original film that needs to be seen. I think there were false promises from distribution companies.

One of the roles you are most recognised for was as Adam Monroe – where do you think Heroes went wrong?

Killing me off! Honestly, I thought it was a great character and I was doing a great job of it. I don’t often toot my own horn, I really liked the Kensei stuff better than the Adam Monroe stuff.

I think they jumped the shark by introducing all these characters. The twenty million people who were watching in the first place for the original cast kind of strayed. There were so many scabs that were never going to heal, it just became a kind of a mess. I stopped watching after I was on.

Do you prefer acting in films or TV?

It’s a different beast. I do love television because of the constant work. I don’t love doing the same thing every week, like on the The Vampire Diaries I starting doing that. On Alias and Heroes I wasn’t doing that, it was a surprise every week.

24 was interesting because you’re trying to create an arc for that character with an hour for each episode.

I like the camaraderie on both film and television, eventually I want to concentrate on movies but I’ll always love television too.

See what we thought of The Revenant in our review HERE.

The Revenant is released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 2nd April.

Kill Keith, due out on DVD March 26th, is a hilarious blend of satire, romance and fantasy, with a smattering of bizarre and gory murders starring everyone’s favourite TV celebrities – Joe Pasquale, Russell Grant, Tony Blackburn, and of course, Keith Chegwin. Starburst caught up with the film’s director, Andy Thompson to find out more…

Starburst: So, tell us about the initial response you had when you attempted to get such a prestigious cast.

Andy Thompson: Well, the film is very much tongue in cheek, which is one of the hurdles we came across initially. People thought it was a film that revelled in celebrity, whereas we’re actually poking fun at celebrity. Some celebrities wouldn’t do it because once they read the script it was obvious we were having a bit of a laugh at their expense, but those like Keith, Joe and Tony really got it. They seem to be the kind of people who don’t take themselves too seriously and go with the flow and it benefits from that. Quite a few people turned us down. I mean, It would be different if we were Ricky Gervais asking them to appear in Extras, they understand where Ricky’s coming from and his popularity makes it credible to take the mickey out of themselves, whereas nobody knew us, and they didn’t know where we coming from. I think people had to take more of a leap and a gamble. Some said they would do it, then after reading the script, decided against it – some turned us down flat. In the end, we got enough people on board to be able to make the film work.

Andy Thompson on the set of Kill Keith

SB: Did you have anybody come up to you afterwards and say “Why didn’t you ask me?”

AT: We definitely got a few people like that – like Les Dennis – who said exactly that after the première, and he would have been perfect (there is a great gag in the film with Keith attempting to gain entry to the studio without a pass, despite their being a life size standee of him in the foyer. “Look – It’s me!” To which the security guard replies “You could be Les Dennis, Bruno Brookes or Bobby Davro”)

SB: How did you come up with the Tony Blackburn gag? (In the film, he is played by Joe Pasquale’s son, Joe Tracini).

AT: Well, that’s a real Marmite moment! We showed the film to some test audiences, so before we did the edit we wanted to get peoples opinion on where we were going wrong, where it was slow. It was a really useful process, we found there were whole chunks of the film that just weren’t working so we re-cut those bits, and even took some out. The Tony/Joe gag was a real divider. Some loved it, and some were just confused. We liked that – it became a bit of a talking point. The truth is that was born out of only being able to get Tony for two days – which was great because all the celebrities gave their time for free – but when we were writing it, we really needed him for about 6 days. So we thought how do we get around this? So we came up with the idea of casting it differently, and getting someone in who looked nothing like Tony. He never quite understood it himself, and when he turned up onset he had learnt all of Tony’s lines, which makes perfect sense – why wouldn’t he? We had to explain that he wasn’t playing Tony – you’re playing Tiny Burnblack. We were like “Don’t worry about it”.

Tony Blackburn as Tiny Burnblack

SB: Do you have a favourite set piece in the film?

AT: The bits we had the most fun with were the dream sequences – in particular the superhero one – that was great fun to shoot. With those sequences we could really have lots of fun with because they are so out of the box. They’re a bit crazy and enabled us to have a bit of fun. One of the funniest sequences to shoot was in the basement – another dream sequence – when Danny (Marc Pickering) is locked in the cage and Keith is doing the pole dance. It was so off the wall, and I think that was our second day shooting. We’re at Pinewood, and I’m thinking this is absolutely absurd! There were times when we were just crying with laughter. We had a lot of work to do in the short time and with little money, so it was a real stretch. We shot for about 4 or 5 weeks, but we did have so much fun.

SB: How was your experience directing solo for the first time (Andy’s first film was co-directing the 2009 film The Scar Crow)?

AT: Co-directing was harder! It’s tough because it’s like running a business, ultimately someone has to say no, and if two people have different visions, then you end up compromising and you’re going to end up with a slightly diluted and confused film. Film making is very much a team medium, but ultimately it’s one person’s vision. If there are conflicts and differences of opinion, you need one person to be able to say look let’s go with this, let’s go left instead of right, I enjoyed the process of co-directing, and that was the first film I had directed so I didn’t have a comparison, but now having done the film on my own its so much easier. What we ended up doing when I co-directed with Pete (Benson, who is also Kill Keith’s co-writer) was we divided up scenes so in the end it was just easier – you direct these scenes, I’ll do these, so we didn’t really end up co-directing, it ended up 2 peoples films stuck together.

The Scar Crow (2009)

SB: What’s your favourite horror film?

AT: You know what; I’m a not huge die hard horror buff. I went to see The Woman In Black last week, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed that sort of fun, ghost story. Horror seems to sort of moved into the sort of blood and gore led, and that’s fine but that whole idea of just playing with your mind and spooking you – more traditional story telling – to see that again with The Woman In Black was really good, and it was nice to see that has a 12A certificate, because although it was really scary it was for young people. They are protected a little too much from that emotion and it’s really part of growing up. But I’m more into the comedy than the horror. Although Kill Keith is sold as a kind of horror film, it’s much more than that. It’s more of a romantic comedy horror. I think we got a good balance. My next film will be more comedy than horror so still sits in that genre.

SB: Is this ‘Frank In Staines Monster’ film I have read about?

AT: We’re in the process of trying to raise some funds for now – we hope to be shooting that film at the end of the year. It’s a modern day version of the Frankenstein story – but set in a chip shop in Staines. It’s very much in the same comic lines as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Kill Keith – I love that kind of sense of humour

SB: How do you see the current state of the UK film industry?

AT: I think it’s pretty strong at the moment, there’s a lot of films being made – maybe not as many as five years ago – but what we’re finding is producers are being more inventive and they are making really good films on much tighter budgets. The advent of digital has really made it that much easier to realise their films. The Canon 5D is an amazing camera, and costs a lot less to buy than renting tons of equipment, which is what would normally happen. There’s a strong audience out there, the box office numbers are going up. I know DVD is struggling a little, but VOD is increasing enormously – there’s still a healthy market, just slightly less money around to make those films

SB: Kill Keith had a very limited release at UK cinemas last November, how did that go?

AT: That was very tough. It was a learning curve for us as producers and film makers. We thought we had it in a certain amount of screens, then at the last minute numbers changed. The competition for those screens is so high because there is so few of them. The studios have huge budgets to spend on marketing and ultimately the cinemas only survive if they put bums on seats. The marketing for that falls to you, not the cinema. As a very low budget film, we just can’t compete with the million pound spend of the blockbusters. We had to rely on good PR. Going to limited screens was more about creating a marketing profile for the film. If you’re in the cinemas, the media takes the film more seriously. So it was important to get a really good profile for the film, building up towards the DVD release.

SB: Thank you for talking with us, Andy.

Kill Keith hits all good stores (and probably some bad ones too) on March 26th

Un-convention-al Murder

An interview with Nev Fountain by Kris Griffin

Amongst his vast body of writing work, which includes Doctor Who, author Nev Fountain has created a new brand of comic murder-mystery set in an all too familiar world. Nev tells Starburst how this came about…

How apt that we sit in the main hall of a science fiction convention sandwiched between Doctor Who author Rob Shearman and legendary actor David Warner. We eye our surroundings nervously. We are clearly safe but is this where Nev got the inspiration for his Mervyn Stone books from?

“I don’t know if there was a moment where I said ‘Hey I know I’ll write a series of murder-mysteries featuring a lapsed Script Editor of an old cheesy sci-fi TV show, with a regular cast of insane characters!’”

It is hard to synopsise more succinctly. Nev does command a mastery of words used exquisitely in sketch show Dead Ringers and satire publication Private Eye.

“I started reading Terrance Dicks who has a very concise, unpretentious but not patronising way of writing. He was writing for children but he wasn’t curbing his vocabulary. I then moved to Douglas Adams who has a very brutal, concise prose style because he is going straight for the joke. Nowadays I read lots of thrillers, such as Jeffery Deaver, Jonathan Kellerman, P.J. Tracy, Peter James and Robert Harris all of which work on the principle of ‘story first’. When I went on to writing comedy I learnt there is a world of difference between writing a thirty word joke and a twenty word joke. You have to keep the punchline as close to the feed-line as you possibly can.”

From twenty word jokes to full length novels.

“Around about 2005 I’d been doing Dead Ringers solid for six years, and I was desperate to write something which was more than two pages long.”

His science fiction journey began in 2001 script-editing Death Comes To Time for his beloved Doctor Who.

“I was catapulted into the world of sci-fi conventions sharing hot-tubs with Frazer Hines and hotel bars with Nick Courtney.”

Being a fan this must have felt like an unbelievable experience?

“It’s a surreal existence, travelling across the country like vagrants, hopping from hotel room to hotel room, conventions, signings and whatnot. It’s a world where no secrets stay buried, and rivalries are allowed to grow and fester – I instantly smelled potential when it came to a murder mystery setting.”

Given the relationship Nev had with Big Finish after writing the two Fifth Doctor adventures Omega and The Kingmaker would this be the natural home for Mervyn Stone?

“I’d been touting the books around for a while. Jason Haigh-Ellery, the MD of Big Finish Productions, got wind that I was writing novels just at the same time he was getting interested in publishing. I didn’t approach Big Finish before because I didn’t think they were serious about publishing. It just came together like that.”

And the difference between writing sketches and writing a novel?

“It’s the difference between drawing in chalks and painting in oils. The former is a much quicker exercise but less controllable; the latter is a slower, more painstaking process, but ultimately more satisfying as you can control the picture you are creating.”

Having great control enables you to develop characters from fandom, perhaps the type of people here today?

“I did have ‘starting points’; observations based in reality, the process came much quicker; I had tiny seeds of ‘truth’ I could water and grow into some mad carnivorous plants.”

What were these starting points?

“Fleeting observations, and very quickly I’d discovered I’d created this monstrous character, and I have no idea what this character came from. All I remember is that he/she started with an off-the-cuff remark Nick Courtney once said to me in a bar, or the way Colin Baker played with his pen at an autograph signing.”

But could the show created in the books, Vixens From The Void, be expanded into a fully fledged audio adventure or book of its own?

“Vixens serves the world of Mervyn. I don’t have a burning desire to write a ‘real’ episode of Vixens from the Void because it’s very much a museum piece from the 80s. Big Finish once suggested doing clips from the series for a podcast, but I thought faithfully replicating something intended to come across as dated crap wasn’t a good use of my time.”

I nod in agreement, were we both admitting that some of our favourite childhood shows were indeed remembered through rose-tinted spectacles?

“I could write a 20 minute script of Vixens for the radio but it wouldn’t come with that mixture of ineptness BUT passion that comes from Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who of that time. Doctor Who was 80% really good and there was something in every story to love. Even in the worst ones someone is trying: a costume designer, a writer, one of the actors is really doing a good job. Even if everything else around them is rubbish. It is difficult to get that thing across without just looking crap. No one starts off to write crap.”

So the world of Vixens is a closed door?

“I do think it might be fun to do a Vixens script book, with several SF writing luminaries doing their own episodes – all hiding under the aliases of Vixens writers of course…”

Who would play Mervyn in a speculative TV show?

“John Duttine perhaps? I’m a huge fan of Simon Russell Beale who would be great. It has to be that world-weariness but with an acerbic tone. Someone who looks like they could handle themselves, it’s Martin Clunes meets Arthur Dent.”

Suddenly there is a piercing scream in the hall where we are ending our interview.

“There’s been a murder.” says a man in a thick Glaswegian accent.

I glance at Nev who is already holding a phone to his ear, “Yes, I’d like to speak with Meryvn Stone please….yes it’s an emergency.”

The first Mervyn Stone Mystery: A Geek Tragedy is reviewed HERE.

Starburst: If we could start with the idea behind Pretty Little Dead Things. How did it come about? Where did this idea first take seed?

Gary McMahon: Initially, I wrote a bunch of short ghost stories featuring the character of Thomas Usher. After a while, it became clear that he wanted his own novel, so I started sketching out a few scenes which then grew into the book. At that point I didn’t have a publishing deal, so when I approached Angry Robot I had about half the novel written. By the time they got back to me that they liked the synopsis and chapters, the book was finished. 

Thomas Usher is a complex character. The victim of so much tragedy and horror, yet he still desperately tries to do the right thing. What was it like to create such a compelling character?

Oh, it was great fun. I love flawed characters. I can’t write – or read about – any other kind. Flaws make us real, they highlight who we are, what we are. I’m more interested in people’s flaws than any other part of their personality. I find it easy to create complex characters, because aren’t we all complex? 

The mature adult themes this book explores are of the darkest nature. You have a talent for forcing a reader to look at parts of the human condition we would rather hide from and pretend wasn’t there. To write about so much corruption of the human spirit must have been a difficult thing to do. How do you cope?

Thank you. I believe that horror fiction can be a great way of facing what’s unpleasant about the human condition. I’m not really one for cheap scares. I like to get right under the skin of my characters and find out what makes them tick, then dismantle them piece by piece and see what happens. I like works of art that leave me scarred, and so I tend to lean this way when I write. To be honest, writing about dark subject matter is what helps me cope with the terrible stuff that happens in real life.

Of course, every hero – if that’s what we can call Thomas – needs his villain, and the Pilgrim soon makes his presence known. How much fun was it to write about an entity such as the Pilgrim? 

I loved writing about the Pilgrim. He took on a life of his own, growing bigger and bolder on the page as I wrote about him. He’s an evil bugger, of course, but he’s also fascinating. He has his own agenda, and he doesn’t necessarily see what he does as bad. He’s indifferent to human suffering most of the time; the rest of the time it simply amuses him. Most evil people don’t realise they’re evil. They don’t look in the mirror and think “Wow, I look really evil today.” They do whatever it is they do for their own reasons, and I made sure that the Pilgrim was the same. He isn’t just evil for evil’s sake.

There’s real horror to be found in Pretty Little Dead Things. Not the least of which is Thomas’s sense of grief from his lost family. Was that difficult for you to write about?

I usually write about my own personal fears and hope that they’re universal enough that other people will share them. Losing your family is one of the big ones: you never recover from something like that. In my experience, loss changes everything – you, the world around you, even the landscape inside you. Nothing can be the same again. This kind of thing can be extremely difficult to write about, but eventually we all need to face these massive fears, if only in fictional form. 

Will Thomas Usher ever be reunited with his family?

That’s a good question, and one that I’m not going to answer. I don’t even know the answer myself…if the story dictates that he never sees them again, that’s how it’ll be. But I’m hoping that he does reconnect with them at some point, and I’ll be interested to find out what happens when he does.

You’ve written a sequel to Pretty Little Dead Things. What might a new reader expect to see, surely, it can’t be any darker?

The sequel, Dead Bad Things, is probably slightly darker, yes. It’s also a lot different. For starters, it tells the story of a character who only briefly appeared in the first book, along with more of Usher’s story. The book flicks between these two people, and when finally they meet things get really dark. The sequel is much more tightly plotted – almost like a traditional crime novel in that respect– and a lot of the supernatural stuff is even weirder than before. Read together, these two books form Usher’s “origin story”, and by the end of Dead Bad Things the set-up is in place for what I hope will be further books in the series. 

We understand you have a new book due for release, could you tell us a little something about it?

Silent Voices is out from Solaris in March 2011. It’s the second book in the Concrete Grove trilogy (the first one was titled The Concrete Grove). These books can be read as stand-alone novels, but they also form part of a much larger story about a possessed council housing estate in Northumberland, a place that acts as a gateway to another world. We have the criminals who run the estate and the monsters creeping in between the gaps, and there’s a strange power that’s slowly growing stronger and breaking down the barriers between these two separate worlds. Part crime, part horror, part fantasy, these books are the most ambitious thing I’ve attempted so far. 

And finally, you have a great affinity with conjuring a sense of horror in a reader. What is horror, and why do we like to be scared?

Sometimes I think that when we read horror stories, or watch horror movies, we’re simply rehearsing our own deaths. Or at least trying to fit something unimaginable into a place where we can deal with it. If we think about our own demise in terms of fantasy – ghosts, vampires, demons, and monsters – then the horror genre can act as a kind of code. We don’t need to stare at it head on; we can look sideways instead. Human beings have a complex relationship with horror. It’s always there, in the darkness – the darkness that’s inside us all, the darkness that awaits us when this crazy ride is over.

Silent Voices is out from Solaris in April 2012.

Read our review of Dead Bad Things HERE.

Director James McTeigue got his start as a second unit and assistant director on some high profile releases in the early ’90s like Street Fighter and No Escape. He then moved on to work on films such as Dark City, Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones and The Matrix trilogy. He has worked as a second unit director on most of The Waschowski Brothers’ films and they helped him out by producing his directorial debut; the critically acclaimed adaptation of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. McTeigue followed this up with the ill-fated Ninja Assassin in 2009.

McTeigue’s latest film is The Raven and stars John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe. The film theorises what happened in Poe’s final days and links to actual documented events surrounding his death using a serial killer plot where the killer mimics events in Poe’s most famous and gruesome stories. I got to meet with this laid back Australian director when he was in London recently to promote the film.

*** Warning – Minor Spoilers for The Raven follow ***

Starburst: What drew you to The Raven?

James McTeigue: The script (laughs) which is always a good starting point. Finding a good script is like panning for gold a little bit, you don’t come across them that often. Aaron Ryder who is the producer brought it to me and I immediately responded to it. I thought it was a great blending of Poe’s life and Poe’s stories and ultimately how Poe became a character in his own story in the movie. Aaron had made a lot of good movies like Donnie Darko, The Prestige, and Memento and is a really great creative partner so I was happy to get the good creative producer and the good script; and Poe works obviously, that was a big part of it.

SB: You have assembled quite an eclectic cast. You have John Cusack and Brendan Gleeson who are the seasoned pros and then you have relative newcomers like Luke Evans and Alice Eve. Was the intention to vary it up like this?

JM: It was intentional. John is round about the age Poe was when he died. I think John is a smart empathetic actor which it was important to have with a guy like Poe who is very difficult and a lot of his traits were difficult and polarising as he was an alcoholic and drug abuser or shyster or serial lady killer I guess, and then getting on to Luke Evans’ Detective Fields, I wanted someone who was a little younger and whose physicality rubbed Poe the wrong way. I think it was important at the start of the movie that those two are antagonistic towards each other. Poe doesn’t really understand who Fields is at all and Fields doesn’t understand Poe and they need each other so they come together. With Alice who plays Emily I wanted someone who the audience would find fresh in the way that Poe felt fresh but she had to be sort of feisty as well and a match for Poe’s character. So I thought Alice did a great job with that and Brendan is just a great actor. I needed a guy who was meant to be ex-military who had great love for his daughter he didn’t understand or like Poe to start with but he ultimately also understood that he loved his daughter above everything and comes to that understanding. So even though the cast was eclectic it was for a reason rather than happenstance I guess.

SB: Edgar Allan Poe’s last days were shrouded in mystery and the film does a nice job of tying in to documented events. Did you feel any responsibility towards his legacy and how he was portrayed?

JM: Yeah you always do, I mean ultimately with any adaptation you are doing like a book adaptation into a film, you want to get the essence of the book and that’s what I wanted to try and achieve with Poe. It wasn’t going to be historically correct like a biopic of Poe but I thought if I could get the essence of Poe and the various parts of his life and if it made people more interested in Poe then that was a good thing because I know if I made the biopic of his life then it would be terribly boring and, y’know, depressing and everything that Poe’s life was. So there is a little bit of responsibility and people who just want to see the biography of Poe won’t like it and I’m totally prepared for that but I think you can also come to this movie and just enjoy Poe in this strange construct within Poe’s life and his stories.

SB: What led you to cast John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe?

JM: Well I thought that there was a chamber of darkness that existed in John Cusack that hadn’t really been exploited in any of his films. You get a little hint of it in The Grifters for example and because Poe was such a complicated character I thought you needed an actor who was very empathetic and I thought John was that guy. Whenever you see him in a movie you like the character he is playing and you always connect to him and John has the unique ability to be able to do that. He brought a lot of other things to the role, he changed his physicality to resemble Poe, lost a lot of weight, grew the beard. He knew a lot about Poe, he was very well researched and came to embody Poe and I thought he did a pretty good job actually.

SB: What directions did you give Cusack in terms of how to portray the character?

JM: We talked a lot about that and sometimes a lot of that is inherent in the script writing but then we also spoke about how he should modulate the character. Poe was very literate so we would try and tune that into it. We spoke a lot about the trajectory of the character and how he is this sort of cad cavalier person who has never had a commitment in his life until Emily gets taken and then he somewhat becomes more responsible for himself and his stories. He comes to realise the reason Emily has been taken is because of what he has written and so with John it was a constant adjustment of where he was in the story. But John has been making films for such a long time that he really brings a lot of that stuff to you. We got into a nice groove of just leaving the camera running and I would just go like “Do it again” and then he would do something different, or I would yell out one word for him to adjust it and I think towards the middle of the film we really hit our stride and we had this symbiotic thing going where I could just say something and he would go “ah got it” and then give you something.

SB: Poe is very much underappreciated in his own lifetime and makes sure everyone knows it. I’m just wondering if you felt any kind of kinship with him or if you could see parallels between this and maybe John Cusack who still, despite being in the business for 30 years nearly, feels underrated.

JM: I think John is smart as he flies under the radar a little bit. He will do press when he needs to do press, but he’s not about being out there and being photographed by the paparazzi. He isn’t always at some function where he becomes very high profile and I think that helps you believe the characters he plays as he isn’t always in front of you. He totally is underrated, he really is. He was in 2012 for example and that movie made 850 million dollars. I don’t care what you say about special effects, if you haven’t got someone to hang that movie on it doesn’t work and John was that guy. I think that he approaches his career in a different way and to me it makes it more interesting. It speaks to what he is like as a person. He’s very interested in literature, art and film and makes interesting choices, not always huge studio movie choices, so I was happy to have him. But yeah he is underrated, totally.

SB: Poe is a very dark and tragic character. My favourite line in the film is where he says “I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness as it stole over the horizon”. It’s a role that could easily go from character to caricature. How did you approach his great internal melancholy without letting the character become a depressing bore that the audience can’t identify with?

JM: That’s probably partially me and partially John, It’s about keeping those things in check. I think once I get into editorial and I start showing the film and testing it I look for patterns and what people like and what they don’t like and if enough people are not liking things and Poe is becoming too verbose in certain sections then I know to pull back on that. I think I did that a little bit in the film but the script was pretty tight I have to say, but it is about keeping it in check like you said; slipping into caricature could be very easily done or him becoming a bore could be done so yeah I made sure it was tight (clicks fingers) and keeps moving and spoke to its genre and spoke to the psychological thriller horror genre to keep things moving rather than getting bogged down in some sort of literary classic or something.

SB: Alice Eve’s character could have quite easily slipped into typical damsel in distress but never does and she has some really great moments that are not what you would expect from the woman in peril role. How much of this was in the script and did you have any input at all?

JM: It was partially in the script and partially me too. I wanted to make sure that she was a match for Poe and then when she got taken she was a match for the killer. If you ever read anything about someone who is held captive like Patty Hearst there is different stages people go through, like first there is anger, then self-pity and then you get into the Stockholm Syndrome aspect of it and you start having a weak connection with your kidnapper. I wanted to make sure that she fought back a little bit and the feistiness she showed with Poe carried over into the casket and I think Alice did a good job of relaying that and there is a bit of that in her personality anyway (laughs), so she brought that to the role.

SB: How did you and the cast prepare for the shoot?

JM: There is a really great book by an English writer called Peter Ackroyd called Poe: A Life Cut Short, so they all read that and enjoyed it. It’s very concise and it’s a good book and then to varying degrees, John did a lot of his own research and Alice and Luke I gave a compendium of Poe’s stories to with some letters in the back of it. So everyone knew a decent amount about Poe and it wasn’t like we sat around and spoke about him all the time but there was times when we were rehearsing and me, Alice and John would talk about stories we would like and what aspects bled into the script.

SB: You filmed in Serbia and Hungary, how did this compare with the locations you have shot in before and do you feel this added to the overall feel of the film?

JM: It was cold! (laughs). Budapest I used because it was the closest approximation I found and there was a decent tax reason to do it there as opposed to Baltimore. Through production design and digital enhancement I could make it feel like 1849 Baltimore. Belgrade we mainly used for the stage work but there was one exterior location there where Poe’s house is burning to the ground. That was in Belgrade as well as the exterior of the Hamilton house and the horse rider going to the ball that was all Belgrade. Hollywood is a bit like a virus it goes to the next cheap place and films there and exhausts it and moves on to somewhere else. At the moment Belgrade is a great place to shoot it’s outside the EU and is very cheap, they have limited crew but the crew they have is very good and they will get better and better. Budapest is the new Prague or Sydney in terms of currently having its moment due to a mixture of the exchange rate and tax breaks you can get shooting there and they have more experienced crew there as well as more studios.

SB: Were there any films that you looked at or that influenced the look and feel of the film? At times the atmosphere is very reminiscent of an old Hammer horror.

JM: Yeah I wouldn’t cite any of the hammer horror films but I really liked Gregg Toland who shot Citizen Kane and Mad Love which definitely has Hammer aspects to it. He also shot the Long Voyage Home. Shadows and Fog by Woody Allen I showed to the crew as well as Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter. Stuff with high contrast, good use of negative space and interesting framing. Then there was also a bunch of other things like City of Lost Children, Stalker, some Kubrick films like Eyes Wide Shut for the ballroom scene, Barry Lyndon for the burnish kind of lamplight look and some of Gordon Willis’ Coppola movies like The Godfather for the same kind of burnish tone and Dracula. What I usually try and do is put together a 10 or 12 minute piece so that everyone can see where my headspace is going with things.

SB: The film is quite disturbing and graphic without ever going into meaty detail during the murders. Was there any consideration given as to how far to go and did you face any battles with the studio or ratings board?

JM: I thought it was important that if you have a movie about Edgar Allan Poe it has to feel like a movie about Poe. Some of his stories are very horrific and violent so I didn’t want it to be excessive and turn people off but I wasn’t afraid to show Poe’s stories as they really are. The Pit and the Pendulum is very gruesome if you ever read it and the orangutan loose with the scalpel in Murders in the Rue Morgue is pretty gruesome too. In The Tell Tale Heart a guy carves someone up and puts their pieces under the floor and you can hear their heart beating etc. Poe unto himself had all of those elements in his stories so I wanted to make sure they made it on to the screen but were not repulsive, as I’d like as many people to see it as possible.

SB: This is the first film you have directed without The Waschowski Brothers being involved in some way. How did it feel going it alone as it were?

JM: It didn’t feel that much different really. I had a great creative producer in Aaron Ryder and with Marc Evans & Trevor Macey the other producers. I kind of missed them because they are mates and we have fun whenever they are around, but they pretty much leave you alone as well to make the film you want to make. With this Aaron, Marc and Trevor were there if I needed them in the same way that Andy and Lana are there if I need them. I guess the only difference with the Waschowski’s is that sometimes they shoot some second unit for me and sometimes I shoot some second unit for them. Shaun O’Dell was my second unit guy this time and he was great but I missed Andy and Lana because we have this thing that has built up over ten or twelve years or however long it has been now.

SB: Revisionist history and literature mixed with horror seem very much in vogue right now with the likes of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies coming soon. Did you feel any pressure essentially being the first film of this type out of the gate?

JM: I think I’m a little bit different in that the key thing you said was Pride and Prejudice and ZOMBIES! And Abe Lincoln is a Vampire hunter. They are taking tried and true genre elements and putting them in there to exploit vampires or zombies. I think this is a little different. I don’t really feel any pressure because I don’t feel that I live in that universe but I totally get what you are saying, is there a period revival coming down the pipe? Yeah, I mean The Woman in Black is crazy popular here at the moment and I think it’s good. I think anything that isn’t a sequel at the moment that feels new and inventive is good. I think there is a definite amount of sequel fatigue at the moment and so it’s a pity because the summer is just about to kick off and that will be a bunch of sequels. So no I don’t feel the pressure I’m just glad there is new and inventive stuff coming out.

SB: The film deals with a man who makes real the fantasies of someone he admires and Poe then feels responsible. Recently the ‘V’ mask from V for Vendetta has been appearing at protests worldwide. I’m just wondering if you see any correlation between the story and the fact that you brought V into the public consciousness.

JM: (laughs) No, but I totally like that it has seeped into the cultural vernacular. You hope when you make something that it has some kind of cultural impact and to see it appropriated by Occupy Wall Street or the Scientology protestors is good I think. It speaks to the revolutionary spirit that was inherent in the movie and the questions that the movie asks like ultimately ‘What’s the morality of terrorism?’ and how one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Anytime people can get to protest and they feel like being anonymous behind a mask and feel unified like the film said. I think that’s pretty cool actually. I like that it has given people a voice to feel political again. We went through this really sort of fallow period when no one was political and it seems like almost a whole generation didn’t protest anymore. They have a good right to protest at the moment so yeah I think it’s cool, I’m happy about it actually.

The Raven opens in UK cinemas March 9th. To read our review, click HERE.

John Cusack will be doing a Q&A this Thursday (8th March) at 12pm – simply follow @JohnCusack on Twitter, send him your questions and tune in at 12pm on Thursday.

The Aquabats! Super Show! is an exciting, fun-filled Saturday morning live-action series reminiscent of the shows we grew up on as kids.

Starburst recently had the chance to talk to Christian Jacobs (MC Bat Commander) about the show and here’s what he had to say:

Starburst: As a kid growing up in California, what got you interested in music?

Christian Jacobs: I have fond memories of listening to the radio back in the ’80s while going to school in the mornings and also listening to my parents’ record collection. My dad had all these great records from the ’50s we used to listen to. We weeded out the ones that were more obscure like the “Purple People Eater” and the likes, playing them over and over. That’s what got us interested. He also had these ’70s and ’80s tunes we loved as well. It was a great variety. As kids, we got to pretend a lot as most kids do playing cowboys or astronauts. I discovered comic books in my tweens and teens starting at the age of 12, but mostly I was into TV cartoons, though my dad would let me stay up and watch World War II films, Burt Lancaster in the Flame and the Arrow and the Crimson Pirate along with Kirk Douglas in Sparticus. It was a great childhood and those moments influenced me a lot. 

SB: The creatures and bizarre villains are very creative, as are your very cool costumes. Let’s talk about your wardrobe people, make-up and special effects team.

CJ: I can’t highly praise enough our costumes, make-up people and special effects crew. They’re amazing how they can come up with these creative ideas on a next-to-nothing budget showing a lot of production value on the screen. They super over-deliver!

SB: Like working on a Roger Corman film.

CJ: Yes, Aquabats is like a Roger Corman kids show! We love all of Corman’s films! We grew up on them along with movies like Big Trouble In Little China, throwing in campy plots showing how ridiculous the situations are, but having fun at the same time while saving the day. It’s part of the charm of the show.

SB: Like the Corn Dog, a dog with an ice cream cone on his head and Manant, a talking, man-sized ant that wears a suit and tie. I even see a little of ol’ Jack Burton in your character, MC Bat Commander.

CJ: Yes! You get it!

SB: Where did you film the series? Bronson Cave? Griffith Park? The show has a great look to it. The colors really pop.

CJ: We filmed in Oak Canyon Ranch down in Orange County. It’s in the Irvine Lake area. We used local crews too. Our director of photography, Jeff, is really gifted. For inspiration, we watched a lot of David Lean and Sergio Leone films to give Aquabats that grand, spectacle feel. Granted, we couldn’t do it on the budget they had, but Jeff did a great job creating the look. We also watched a Kurosawa documentary learning how he used the sun a lot, reflecting it off his actors eyes in his films making them more dynamic. We applied that technique to our characters to give them that hero look as well.

SB: With a new TV series debuting, will you be performing again and is there another album in the works?

CJ: That’s the idea. Our songs in the series are very short, so you only have so much time when you’re dealing with corn dogs and Manants, but we do plan on releasing another album in the near future. The show’s episodes get better with each new one. The writing is very funny and people will get it. It’s silly, but it’s also smart too. There’s a lot of reference jokes in there that kids will laugh at and adults even more so because they’ll know what they mean.

SB: Thanks for taking time out and talking with us at Starburst. We wish you a lot of success with your show. It’s a lot of fun!

CJ: Thank you! It was great talking with you!

The Aquabats! Super Show! will consists of 13 episodes and debuts in the States on Saturday March 3rd, 2012 on HUB TV. A UK air date remains TBC.

Adam Christopher is a New Zealand author currently living in the North West of England. His debut novel, Empire State, was published by Angry Robot earlier this year, and has garnered much acclaim since, its popularity already spawning a WorldBuilder project based around it.

Starburst: What inspired Empire State?

Adam Christopher: It’s a combination of three different ideas, really. I discovered classic pulp and Raymond Chandler and I thought ‘wouldn’t it be great if Raymond Chandler wrote sci-fi?’ And I’ve always been into superhero comics. Superman first appeared in 1938 and Chandler’s The Big Sleep was written in 1939, so there was an overlap there. I was interested in Prohibition too, the gangs and that whole era. They all started off as separate ideas but I came to realise that they were all the same book.

I found out as well that back during Prohibition the gangs smuggled alcohol across the Canadian border hidden inside giant rolls of pulp paper. After Prohibition ended those trade routes still existed, and were used to provide the pulp paper that comics were printed on.

SB: How did the book come to be published?

AC: This is the third full book I’ve written but with Empire State I had the feeling that this was the one where something might happen for me. I met Lee Harris and Marc Gascoigne from Angry Robot on Twitter – not because I was trying to sell my book to them, but because we had shared interests. They knew I was writing though.

I’m a big fan of Angry Robot, I always said to them that I’d take a subscription out for all of their books if I could. Then one day I was coming down to Nottingham where they’re based and we went for lunch. I’d had a short story published in Hub that day and Marc demolished it. But then he asked me if I’d written anything longer. So I talked about Empire State for about an hour, I had nothing prepared, I was just rambling and getting it all screwed up, but they were interested and they asked me to send it in when it was ready. I sent it to them in October 2010 and it was on my birthday on 2nd February 2011 when I got the call saying they wanted to buy it. There’s become this big thing about me being a ‘writer discovered on Twitter’ but it was never intentional. You go on Twitter to talk to people, not to sell your work.

SB: Can you tell us about the WorldBuilder project around Empire State?

AC: Angry Robot approached me about it six months after the book was finished. They had wanted to create a shared world for a while, they were just waiting for the right novel. Empire State struck them as being right for it – there’s so much scope in the novel.  You could write a crime story, a superhero story, you can use characters from the book or create your own.

People can add anything to WorldBuilder; short stories, comics, photos, music. It’s a combination of commissioned work and free-to-submit work, and the best will all be put into an anthology for publication with everyone involved getting a share of the royalties.

James Patrick Kelly has written a short story for it featuring McCabe and JR Blackwell has staged photos as if they’re stills from a lost 1946 film adaptation of the book. It’s amazing.

SB: What made you fall in love with sci-fi?

AC: Doctor Who. I’m from New Zealand and when I was seven they started a repeat run of it. I became an obsessive Doctor Who fan and I still am. That’s why I started to write at primary school, I’d do Doctor Who fan fiction based on what episode was on that week. We read a lot of fantasy as a class at school too, things like Narnia and Tolkien, and I started reading my Dad’s Asimov.

SB: Who or what is your chief inspiration?

AC: A lot of my inspiration has come through comics. People like Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker are crime writers as well as comic writers. Brubaker’s run on Catwoman I think is the best thing DC has ever done. The fact that she’s Catwoman is the least important thing about her.

SB: What other mediums would you love to work in?

AC: Comics! I’d love to write for one of the mainstream American superhero comic publishers. I don’t really read independent comics, just the superhero ones. They are genuinely what moves and excites me.

SB: What’s your favourite genre show/book/comic right now?

AC: I’m a huge fan of Fringe (although I discovered it long after Empire State was done!) and I’m a big fan of Lauren Beukes, who has a new novel out this year that I can’t wait to read.

I’m really enjoying Scott Snyder’s Batman at the moment. Batwoman, Avenging Spider-Man, Demon Knights, Animal Man, Swamp Thing… I’m excited about Paul Cornell’s new book from Vertigo, Saucer County, and his forthcoming novel from Tor, Cops and Monsters. There are some people that as soon as they bring something out you know it’s going to be good. Cornell, Beukes and Snyder are like that.

SB: What excites you about working in sci-fi?

AC: Genre of any kind – science-fiction, crime – has something in it which attracts me. A hook, somewhere, which I think is missing outside of genre work.

Even the non-sci-fi stuff I watch is all something that has a strong hook in it. I don’t watch soaps. I don’t want to read and watch real life, I want to watch something other. There’s no limit to the imagination, there’s no point not using it.

SB: What’s next for you?

AC: My next novel, Seven Wonders, comes out in September from Angry Robot. It’s another stand-alone novel, about a team of superheroes in California who are reluctant to take out the world’s last supervillain as it will put them out of a job.

And then after that there’s more stuff which I hope I’ll be able to talk about soon. I have maybe four book projects on the go at the moment. But then a writer is never happy unless they’re buried under work, right?

Read our review of Empire State here.

Cherie Priest may be best known as the Queen of steampunk with her award winning Clockwork Century collection, including titles such as Boneshaker and Dreadnought, but this lady is a master of other genres too. Her first series of books that were published only in the USA, back in 2003 was the Eden Moore trilogy. These haunting southern gothic ghost stories are being re-covered and republished by Titan Books so at last, her UK fans can enjoy them too.

First up in this trilogy is Four and Twenty Blackbirds. We are introduced to the main character Eden as a young child struggling to fit in for a very unique reason. Eden see’s ghosts, she’s always seen ghosts, three sisters that always seem to want to get something across to her but she just doesn’t know what. Then at ten years old, everything changes. What appears to be a mad man approaches her as she plays in a park, the ghosts warn her to flee, the stranger pulls a gun, aims and fires.

Eden manages to out run her predator but when he is caught and it comes to light that the stranger is actually related to her, the tale really begins. Eden never knew much about her mother apart from the fact that she died during childbirth and she was taken good care of by her aunt Lulu. But as she investigates the reasons behind her attack, she realises that even her beloved Lulu is keeping secrets from her. So who is her father, are the three ghosts friends or foe, who can she really trust and why will her attacker stop at nothing to see her dead?

Cherie Priest really does have a knack for writing brilliantly strong female lead characters and here she makes no exception. Eden is a tough, stubborn young lady on a desperate hunt to uncover her family history and turns from scared little girl to full on action hero in these 300-ish pages. There are a ton of twists and turns in this book to keep you utterly gripped and characters that will have you wondering about their intentions right until the end. There were a few pages where I found the ins and outs of who was related to who a little bit overwhelming but it doesn’t last for long and it had me caught up again in no time. I cannot wait to see where Eden’s story goes next when the other pair of books from the trilogy are released later this year.

Not only was I lucky enough to review this excellent book but I was also given the opportunity to pose a few quick questions to the author herself.

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Starburst: Four and Twenty Blackbirds was your debut novel, first published back in 2003, what has brought about its republication?

Cherie Priest: Many people seemed to think that 2009’s Boneshaker was my first novel – and it has certainly been my most successful to date, but it was actually book #7. So there’s been a lot of renewed interest in my earlier projects, most notably the Eden books. And of course, I’m thrilled that they’re finally heading overseas.

Are there any particular authors or novels that inspired you to become a writer?

I’ve always been a big mystery reader – cutting my teeth on the Nancy Drew books, and then moving on to Poe and Doyle, and then Hammett and Agatha Christie. 

Your books often have incredibly strong female characters, where does the inspiration for these characters come from?

I get asked this question a lot, and I’m never quite sure how to answer it – except to say that I know a lot of strong women, and it’s only natural that they’d find their way into my fiction.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a southern gothic style horror but you are well known for writing in other genres such as steampunk. Do you have a favourite style?

Not really. I enjoy genre-hopping, and would prefer to not be pigeon-holed. I don’t know if that’s possible or not, but I suppose we’ll see.

The book also includes lots of creepings and scares but what scares you?

Sloths. I’m scared to death of them. Yes, I realize this is stupid. (I had a bad experience at a zoo as a child, and they’ve given me nightmares ever since.)

How do you feel about the current Hollywood trend of romanticising horror characters such as vampires and werewolves?

I don’t really have an opinion on it; there’s plenty of room in fiction for monsters of the romantic and non-romantic variety. Each to his/her own, that’s what I say.

Do you have any other novels or projects in the pipeline?

Two more steampunk novels over the next couple of years – Inexplicables and Fiddlehead, respectively.  I’m also working on a shorter contribution to the Wild Cards universe, and a few other stories here and there. 2012 is looking to be a busy year, so I’m trying to play it by ear as far as I can.

So does this sound like your kind of book? Or are you already a Cherie Priest fan? Either way we have the competition for you. We have two copies of Four and Twenty Blackbirds to give away to lucky readers and all you have to do to win one is answer the following question…

“Cherie Priest won a Hugo Award in 2010 for which of her novels?”

…and email it along with your address details to [email protected]. Winners will be notified on 9th March.