Jocelin Donahue | DEAD AWAKE

Any horror fan is certain to know actor Jocelin Donahue from her role as Samantha Hughes in Ti West’s 2009 film The House of the Devil or the ‘Father’s Day’ segment of the 2016 anthology film Holidays. She’s part of a growing contingent of genre actors who are rejuvenating horror, continuing with her new film Dead Awake, directed by Jeffrey Reddick, playing twin sisters Kate and Beth.

It’s a take on the ‘sleep is death’ theme, and ties in sleep paralysis, as well. A terrifying entity stalks Kate’s friends and loved ones after the death of her twin, Beth, she realises that she’s brought death to the people around her. Now, she and Beth’s boyfriend, Evan, ‘must fight to stay awake and get to the truth, in order to stop the nightmare she’s unleashed from claiming them all.’ The creepy film co-stars Lori Petty and Brea Grant alongside Donahue, and the performances in this film are just stellar. Dead Awake is available now on DVD and via Video on Demand, and we spoke with Donahue about her performance in the film, and what she has coming out.

STARBURST: Obviously, the foremost question is: what was it like doubling yourself?

Jocelin Donahue: It was a really interesting experience playing twins. I had the chance to play two characters, and to create a relationship between them. Kate and Beth are written as very distinct people, and I tried to accentuate differences in their demeanour and appearance. On the technical side, it was a matter of blocking out each character’s movements, then shooting both sides of the conversation, sometimes over my double’s shoulder, sometimes in a locked-off shot.

Was that part of the appeal to taking the role(s) you did?

Yes, the opportunity to play twins was a huge draw! And I thought the subject matter was fascinating. Sleep paralysis is a real-world phenomenon: a disorder that afflicts many people with symptoms that seem like they are ripped from a horror film. Plus, I loved that there is such a long history and mythology around night terrors.

How do you deal with the experience of both dying and surviving in the same film?

Our director, Phillip Guzman, was really focused on the family dynamics and the relationships that underpin the story. Kate feels extreme grief, guilt, and anger over Beth’s demise, and these emotions are what drives her battle against the Night Hag. That gave me a lot of emotional motivation to work with.

Did you do any research into the sleep paralysis phenomenon before you went into this role?

I studied up on the condition and read a lot of first-hand accounts. Coincidentally, when I first got the script for Dead Awake I was reading Oliver Sack’s book Hallucinations. The section on sleep paralysis describes the visceral hallucinations that accompany the condition. Before we understood the physiology behind the disorder, the folklore of various cultures provided other explanations – demons, hags, aliens, or visitations from a ‘previous life.’ It’s so interesting from an anthropological perspective!

Alternately, did you dig into any of the classic ‘can’t sleep!’ horror films like Bad Dreams or A Nightmare on Elm Street for inspiration?

Yes, I re-watched NOES because I knew how much has been inspired by that film and all of Wes Craven’s work. He has said that Dead Awake pays homage to that film, and like you say, we fit into the ‘don’t fall asleep!’ niche of horror.

The number of veteran character actors in Dead Awake amazed us. Did you know you’d be working with Lori Petty going in?

I learned that Lori was on board a few weeks before we began shooting and I was super excited to work with her.  I loved A League of Their Own and Tank Girl when I was younger. She brings so much life to all the characters she plays. Plus, we had Jesse Borrego and James Eckhouse, who were such pros.

Speaking of great co-stars, yourself and Brea Grant in the same film is a modern genre coup. How was that experience?

Brea is awesome! She knows how to make layered characters that the audience immediately relate to, which is a must in horror films. And behind the scenes, I can tell you she is smart as a whip and so sweet.

The horror films you appear in have a very familial element to them. Is that something which interests you, or just coincidental?

I think that’s just a function of storytelling in general. Whatever the genre is, you have to get the audience to identify with the hero, and usually you do this through their relationships. It’s important, especially in horror, to feel for the characters so the audience can hope and fear and take the whole crazy ride with them.

It’s pretty fantastic you self-identify as a ‘scream queen’ on Twitter. Is that a gag, or do you take some satisfaction in that identity?

Well, my Twitter bio says ‘final girl’. It describes some of the roles I’ve played and pays respect to the tough and resourceful women of horror. 

Do you have any projects coming up which you’d like to let fans know about?

In September, I have a film coming out called Boomtown. It’s a dramatic look at the fracking industry in the Bakken region of North Dakota that includes real world stories and locals. And I recently finished a horror/thriller called Browse. It stars Lukas Haas as a guy who becomes convinced that he’s been hacked and that his devices are controlling him. Should be creepy!

You can find more information about DEAD AWAKE via its website (http://areyoudeadawake.com/) and buy it now on DVD. Follow Jocelin Donahue on Twitter @jocelindonahue.

Paul Flannery | KNIGHTMARE LIVE

For those of us inclined towards the fantastical, growing up in the 1980s and 1990s was a different world. With no internet to speak of, information was found instead in books and magazines, new discoveries made at a slower pace, browsing in video rental shops sometimes for hours – a pastime in its own right. Television – for this feature specifically children’s TV – was part of this too, and with significantly fewer channels than today, choices sometime came down to deciding between what was showing on BBC or ITV. A hugely popular show from that period was Knightmare, which broadcast on ITV.

A fantasy-themed adventure show, it used the same blue screen Chromakey technology as weather forecasts to create for viewers a world of dungeons, dangerous quests and strange characters. A team of four kids would try to complete those quests, one being placed in the dungeons with a helmet that left them sightless, guided by their three friends (hopefully) to victory or quite frequently to their doom. Overseeing the quest was the dungeon master Treguard and later on in the series’ run it introduced a villain in Lord Fear, making the quests a battle between good and evil. 

 

All of this of course just screams ‘stage adaptation’ doesn’t it? No, perhaps not. But that’s what a few plucky young improvisors decided to do some years back. For each show the talented cast have an outline but then riff on crowd interactions to make it different every time. Knightmare Live has played around the country and at the Edinburgh Festival to rave reviews and happy audiences. The show follows the basic template of the TV series but does so in a fun, charming (and not-entirely-serious), deliberately lo-fi way. And this year Knightmare Live returns with shows at London’s Underbelly Festival and more to follow later in the year. Starburst went along to the first show at Southbank and sat down for a few words with Treguard himself, Paul Flannery.

STARBURST: You had the initial idea to do a stage version of Knightmare in the pub, where many a great concept is born. How did it then go from idea into reality?

Paul Flannery: It went through several iterations, from a technical standpoint, of either having two rooms where you have an audience watching what’s going on in another room, but that for me sort of betrayed everything that’s good about theatre. It’s about tying into that, finding the things that are good about Knightmare, that work and something that’s good for theatre. So having that live element, with things happening in front of you is much better. That led to the decision of “no, let’s just have everything in one room”. We watch the dungeoneer, we can see the team, we’re there with them. There’s nothing separate and then that opens up everything else, so instead of having CGI monsters you have massive puppets and you start getting into that sort of thing, which I really enjoy. All the sort of Jim Henson school of filmmaking.

 

In a strange way it’s going more old-school than the TV show in the ‘80s?

Yeah, in an odd way. Ideally in my mind I would absolutely dearly love to have the machine in Labyrinth, the drilling machine? With the little goblins all peddling on the back. That’s exactly what I want to see. You can see all the workings happening. You can see the goblins running around, putting props out because you can forgive so many imperfections. If this was a huge show, on Broadway or something, there would be transitions, curtains coming open and closed, there’d be lighting and huge props, huge sets. But we don’t have that so we get around that by having the team of goblins that are also the stage hands.

 

Did that fit in with the improvisation background that the main performers have, so concentrating more on that than having an organised, scripted experience?

Well, it was a script at first. It was a friend of mine, Tom Bell who first said “oh, it’s an improv show”. Before that I was writing vast swathes of script with speech trees and options of what people might say and where we’d go, which door leads to which room and you map out a whole dungeon and it becomes very complicated very quickly. And then Tom just went “oh it’s an improv show” and you have a character and you just play the ‘yes’ game and allow people to play out whatever’s going on in the scene.

  

Is that the point at which the crowd interaction element came into it or was that already there?

I think that was always going to happen. I think there’s a certain catharsis with the show where you remember shouting at the TV ‘I could do much better than that!’. That would naturally come out and I would never want to deny an audience or shush them or go ‘come on, you’re watching theatre’, so please just get involved and do shout out. They all want to help and if the goblins come on they all go nuts as well so it has led us to do more and more interaction, like where we’re getting them to decide what quest we’re having, what monster we’re going to have at the end and all that kind of thing. The more we can get the audience involved the better. 

 

Knightmare is a cult show with a still strong, loyal following. How have they reacted? Have they got involved and supported you?

They’ve been incredible. Some of them run the Knightmare website and they’re incredibly supportive. They’ve been going since the internet was invented, basically. As soon as there were websites they made one and have kept that whole flame going. They’ve come down and played, they turn up to most of the shows, most of the iterations once a year they’ll come along. And I’m friends with a lot of them now, it’s really nice. So they’ve been really, really, really great. They helped us get in touch with some of the original actors and they’ve got such a bigger following than we have, again they really helped with getting the word out. It’s quite nice because for them they’ve been trying to keep alive the idea of this TV show that’s not been around for 25 years. Then all of a sudden there’s a new iteration of it and it’s happening and you can go and see Knightmare, it’s interesting.

 

Knightmare seems to fit in with the recent wave of ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia. What are your thoughts on how important that is to people today, of tapping into those times perceived perhaps as more innocent?

There’s a huge wave of nostalgia coming up in entertainment. People are looking back rather than looking forward but I think technology has changed, there’s been such significant changes since our generation were children from the ‘80s and ‘90s to now. Children that are here now they have internet from birth. I mean I couldn’t imagine just growing up and going ‘well, that’s a tablet, that’s just how that works’. Children now can never imagine being without that. It’s very strange. I think we’re very lucky in one respect in that I think the entertainment we had as children was quite sophisticated in some ways and so it’s worth looking back and worth a revisit with new eyes. And with the fresh tools at our disposal.

 

What’s next for Knightmare as well as the things you’re doing like your own show (MMORPG). What sort of plans have you got for Knightmare, for the future and for yourself?

In the immediate future of Knightmare we’ve got two more shows here at the Southbank on the 28th of May and the 11th of June. In between that I’m going to be at the UK Games Expo doing Knightmare and my solo show, and then there’s Edinburgh. After that I’m assuming we’re going to do more of the same really. Hopefully just continue to do more, I’d really like that. My solo show again, it’s following a similar path because it’s a very similar audience. It’s a live D&D game but very, very improvised. So if you’ve never played D&D before it’s absolutely fine, we literally make up new rules. It’s really good fun. So, that’s going to go to Edinburgh, that’s going to go to the UK Games Expo as well. In between that I’m shooting another film.

  

Finally, after all of the effort put into setting it up and getting the good crowd reactions you had a great critical response to it when it premiered. How did that all feel when it started to get that positive reaction and word of mouth as well?

Yeah, the first Edinburgh was incredible, it’s a literal dream come true. I’d done a few Edinburgh’s beforehand where I’d been on free Fringe where no one has known who I am, you’re just there doing a show and trying your thing. I’ve done another show where we went into a bigger theatre and paid a lot of money and then ended up losing a lot of money so I’ve seen both ends of the Edinburgh stick before Knightmare came along and then to have it sell out is incredible. It was weird at the time, because I think at that time I’d spent 12 weeks non-stop working on the show. I think I took one or two days off in 12 weeks and then did a month’s run at Edinburgh so I was in such a haze that when people were going ‘it’s sold out Paul, it’s a real success’ it took a couple of weeks at Edinburgh for that to sink in. I was just like, I don’t know how to interact with people and things anymore. Once I did, without wanting to put in hyperbole, it’s really defined my career in a sense. It’s given me such a great kicking off point.

Paul made Ghosts of Darkness recently with writer and director David Ryan Keith. Read our review here.

Knightmare Live plays the Underbelly Festival at Southbank in London on May 28th and June 11th and will play the Edinburgh festival later this year. You can find both Paul and Knightmare Live on Twitter.

Guy Hendrix Dyas | PASSENGERS

Guy Hendrix Dyas is an Academy Award nominated Production Designer who has worked on films as diverse as Inception, Superman Returns and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. His most recent film is Passengers, where his original and stylish work earned him his second nomination. Guy took some time out to sit down with Starburst to discuss spaceships, The Shining and that fourth Indiana Jones outing.

 

Starburst: Good afternoon Guy. Firstly, congratulations on your Academy Award nomination.

Guy Hendrix Dyas: Hi, and thank you very much.

 

So, it’s day one, 9am, you have your coffee and a blank sheet of paper – how do you begin designing a film like Passengers from scratch?

A good question. Starting a project like this is interesting because you actually start before you start preparing for an interview with the director (Morten Tyldum). In this case, I read the script which was really talked about and on the blacklist, and I made some pencil sketches of the Avalon, which is the main spaceship in the film. I showed Morten what I had in mind and, unusually, I was hired on the spot which was very lucky.

 

You mentioned the ship and it’s such an original design. There are so many boxy behemoths in films set in space.

The only thing that was mentioned in the script about the ship was the shield at the front, and that’s the most fanciful part – this umbrella-like screen that deflects meteors and the like. The rest of the design actually came from sycamore seeds, and how they fall from trees. I tend to look to nature a lot when designing. It’s very dangerous to look at too many other films. I think seedpods were my inspiration due to their aeronautical design and their motion.

 
 

The ship becomes such a key part of the film, and it feels like you’d set out to design the most extraordinary hotel you could.

When I read the script I got excited about the notion of creating a spaceship that didn’t have the same aesthetic quality running right from the front to the back. When you look at other ships you pretty much get the same design all the way through. What I had the chance to do was look at ocean liners and cruise ships, and design it as a commercial vessel, so that when the passengers wake and before they leave to settle on the planet Homestead II, they can enjoy a range of facilities from bars and entertainment centres to art galleries and health centres. As a designer, this afforded me the opportunity to play with moods and colours. You could walk from the modern grand concourse into an art deco bar, and hopefully, the audience watching are as interested as the passengers would be.

 

Talking of the bar, that becomes the focal point of the story; where the characters spend much of their time and where all the key events seem to take place.

I should mention that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was a huge inspiration for me. Jack Nicholson’s character regularly visits a bar and talks to an imaginary character. Morten recognised the similarities with that story and with Passengers, and so we took the liberty of including a little nod to The Shining. The sets are very different but there are similarities thematically. 


We wanted to ask about the lighting effects on the ship. Was there an ongoing conversation and process with the director of photography regarding lighting certain shots and how the light effects were crucial to the character of the ship?

Yes, and it’s great that the ship is recognisable as a character, as this was something Morten and myself really strived to achieve. As for the lighting, I worked with Rodrigo Prieto (Director of Photography) and we decided that as Jim (Chris Pratt’s character) was walking around the ship alone, it was waking up prematurely and lights were slowly coming on. I had to design the effects with the DP so that we created that impression. The lighting also takes on different moods, such as when it’s night-time there are subtle lighting changes and the sound of crickets. That idea came from me taking a transatlantic flight and noticing that when the crew want to wake you up gently there are these soft, pink lights in the cabin. It’s all about giving a sense of time and place.

 

There is a trend of returning to practical effects with some CGI polishing in films. Is that something you take into account more and more when beginning the design process?

I started my film career at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, and began working on films like Twister and Men In Black. These were the first generation of heavy visual effects films, and despite our best efforts, were always a little disappointing. Cut to now where I’m production designing, I have knowledge of all the pros and cons and this allows me to be more educated in my choices of using practical and digital effects. The production designer’s job is to make sure everything you see on the screen looks perfect, whether that’s a period film or a futuristic film. It’s all about the research and burying myself in the knowledge of whatever it is I’m working on. It’s also about choosing where to draw the line between the effects. With Passengers we really needed the actors to feel like they were really there so we set about building interiors and creating the ship. We used CGI only where necessary, for example when Jennifer Lawrence’s character is in the swimming pool, and to extend certain rooms such as the pod bay and the dining room. We built a huge number of sets for Passengers to create this reality.


Finally, you’ve worked both on original projects and franchise sequels. Is it considerably more difficult to design when you have people’s strong expectations as to what something should look like?

Absolutely. It’s rare for a sequel to be as good or better than the original. For example, I worked with George Lucas on the fourth Indiana Jones film and the expectations and pressures were so high that it was impossible to reach. It’s impossible to recreate what the originals achieved, even though we rebuilt all the sets exactly. We also used too much CGI which I regret, but the story George wanted demanded it.

 

 Passengers is Released on DVD and Blu-Ray on the 8th May (Read our verdict here)

The Soska Sisters | SEE NO EVIL 2

Here at Moonbase Alpha, we can never get enough of the Soska Sisters and the fantastic horror output these Twisted Twins dish out on a regular basis. As such, we were huge fans of Jen and Sylvia’s See No Evil 2 – for which we chatted to the terrible twosome about a few years ago – and that also means we’re massively excited to see this brutal and brilliant slasher broadcast on Horror Channel this coming Friday.

Ahead of that showing – Friday at 10:50pm – Horror Channel themselves caught up with girls to discuss See No Evil 2, their career so far, the role of women in horror these days, their much-discussed Rabid remake, and being huge fans of the WWE (with the wrestling superpower’s resident Big Red Machine, Kane being the star of the See No Evil series).

You can find the full interview below:

Horror Channel: It’s been while since we last chatted and apart from See No Evil 2 what have you both been up to?

Sylvia: It has been a while, but it’s really cool that we get to chat again. We hosted a reality horror gameshow from Matador, GSN and Blumhouse called Hellevator that was like ‘Saw the gameshow’. We had a blast making it. I really can’t even believe that was a job a person could have. We’re still trying to get it over to the UK – I think the audience over there will really enjoy it. We have had a lot of fun working in television, it’s something we’re interested in pursuing more of not only in front of the camera, but behind the scenes as well.

Jen: Oh, it’s been ages! We’ve been up to nothing but trouble. We made an action movie with the WWE and Lionsgate called Vendetta where we made everybody’s favorite Superman Dean Cain break bad fighting the Big Show in jail. It was basically a Punisher goes to jail movie for us. We got to achieve a big bucket list dream and start writing for Marvel comics! We did a ‘Night Nurse’ and a ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ story so far and are stoked to do more with them. And we’re re-making Canadian Horror King David Cronenberg’s Rabid. We keep busy.

Did the incredible, international success of Dead Hooker in a Trunk surprise you?

S: We were working very hard towards getting that kind of reaction, but considering how many films and filmmakers come out now, it’s always such an unpredictable journey. I remember we would carry screeners in our purse with these little booklets, just in case we met anyone who we could get the film in front of, but it really paid off. I’ll always be particularly grateful to the people who saw that first film and decided to support two very different filmmakers.

J: In a way, when I really think about it, yeah. It’s a weird “WTF is even happening” film and it’s really “us”. The humor, the insane plot, the passion, the violence, and that take no prisoners attitude. I was both surprised and delighted to learn there are so many fellow weirdos like us out there. I love all our fans, but the people who have been in our corner since Dead Hooker In A Trunk have a very special place in my heart.

How did your family react to how it took off?

S: My parents couldn’t have been more proud. My dad appears as the Rabbi in the flashback, we shot at our church, we had a lot of support from our church on that one, ha ha. We’re very lucky in the way that our parents have always been incredibly supportive of what we wanted to do. My mom tells me it wouldn’t have made a difference because once we got an idea in our head, even as little kids, we had to make it happen.

J: My folks are the best. They’ve always been so supportive of our paths wanting to be artists. They’re both artists themselves so they never told us to settle on “normal jobs”. I think they couldn’t believe how big it got. When people starting yelling, “Dead Hooker In A Trunk!!!!” at us in the street it was like, “wow, what is even happening to our lives??” They’re very proud. They always get to see the early cuts and my mum will let me know when the gory bits really sell. I have no idea what’s too much anymore. I don’t know if I ever did, ha ha

When American Mary showed at FrightFest a few years back it gained huge critical acclaim, what are your most vivid memories of this time?

S: I remember lying awake in my hotel room with Jen at the Soho and being extremely nervous and excited. The next day our film was going to play in front of a huge crowd and we were going to be wearing these fantastic outfits made out of surgical plastic created by Enigma Arcana that we were going to wear for it. I kept thinking about what a surreal situation that was and it’s kind of a vulnerable story, so I was feeling that. But I couldn’t have dreamed up a better audience. I remember Mike Hewitt from Universal made sure we got a bunch of people from the European body modification community in the front rows of the theatre, so seeing their faces and getting the reactions from the crowd was a beautiful experience. I’ll always be in love with the UK because of truly wonderfully they have treated us throughout the years.

J: I remember Dead Hooker fans waiting outside our hotel for autographs and photos. It was so cool, but I’m very Canadian so I was all like, “how long have you been out here? Oh no, I would’ve come out sooner! I didn’t know!” I have never received a warmer welcome anywhere in the world. The UK fans know their horror and they got American Mary at a level I didn’t expect anyone to. It meant the world to us. And FrightFest is the best. The gents there were so good to us. I’m dying to return.

 

Let’s chat about See No Evil 2. How were you selected to direct and how much say did you have on the incredible cast?

S: We got the script knowing it was time sensitive and were really excited about the opportunity, but we didn’t think we’d be hired. After American Mary and Dead Hooker in a Trunk, I think people kept trying to put us in this box of this is what the twins make, but we have very diverse interests and like tackling different sub genres. I hear a lot of nightmare stories about people working with a studio for the first time, but we were extremely lucky. Michael Luisi, the head of WWE Studios, hired us to bring a female perspective to the film. We got to pick our team and modify things creatively as we went along to make the sequel really special. We’re fans of the material, so we kept thinking what would be like to bring, knowing we were reintroducing this character from an original that was from so many years ago.

J: We always go to bat for our actors. We love this cast. We got Glenn “Kane” Jacobs as part of it and being huge Kane and Undertaker fans it was really the opportunity of a lifetime. I had wanted to work with Danielle Harris for ages. She’s an icon. True Horror Queen. And we had to bring Katie Isabelle with us. We wanted to give her something really fun to do. We sat in on every audition and met our boys. Kaj-Erik Eriksen is just the best. I met him and felt like I knew him for years. I knew Greyston Holt, a fellow Hungarian, for a while and had been wanting to get him in something of ours. We were fans of Chelan Simmons from the Final Destination series and Tucker and Dale Vs Evil. Lee was another gift from the auditions. And Michael Eklund? He’s the Canadian Daniel Day Lewis. We love him. We were looking for something together for a while and this was perfect.

Were you big WWE fans before this movie?

S: Yes. A lot of people don’t know that we are huge WWE fans. One of the only dreams that my Dad didn’t support was me becoming a professional wrestler and getting tattoos. I guess through working with the WWE and making American Mary, I got to experience those avenues as closely as I could. We’re still such WWE fans. I think the popularity of professional wrestling is like nothing else. You have these super hero soap operas and these brilliant coordinated fights where heroes & villains fight each week and they have such positive messages about overcoming obstacles or never giving up. Then, you see them on their off time and they are visiting the troops overseas or going to a children’s hospital to brighten someone’s day. I still dream of maybe getting an opportunity to write an episode of RAW or maybe get in the ring. With Glenn ‘Kane’ Jacobs and Paul ‘Big Show’ Wight as back up, though. Those lady Superstars are tough, I’d love to train to get in the ring with them. Maybe take on the Bellas?

 

J: Only the biggest. I lose my shit at the live events. I love it so much. Getting to work with and meet so many of the WWE Superstars has only increased my love for the whole organization and what those performers put themselves through. Real life super heroes, all of them! I remember an acting teacher made fun of me for loving WWE and said it was a waste of my time. Guess he can “suck it” (Degeneration X) now.

Did you change any of the script and if so (without giving too much away) was it much and why did you change it?

S: We had a completely collaborative team and that was a very supportive environment to make the film. I don’t want to give too much away, but we switched up the gender roles in this film big time. It’s very subtle, so a lot of people didn’t really notice it until the end. I sometimes think, oh I wish I had done this or did that, but the scene in the morgue with Katharine Isabelle and Lee Majdoub with Kane on the slab was very much us. That character went from being a dude to being Tamara and ended with such a sexy moment. We like playing with people’s expectations and the team was totally down for it too.

J: Ugh, I can’t say much without giving it away but we wanted to give the film that classic 80s slasher feel to it. AND we played with typical gender roles. Nuff said! Can’t say more without ruining everything!

How tough was the shoot, what did you learn from it and if you could go back and do it again what would you change?

S: The worst planned moment was that the big final fight was on the last day and then Jen, Glenn, and I had two hours sleep before we had to get on a plane to fly to New York for New York Comic Con. I was ecstatic to go and it was our first time in New York which was amazing, but the three of us were so dead after shooting non-stop for weeks, then going back into it, but these are the kind of hours you have in the WWE. You don’t really think about all that traveling that they do until you see it first-hand. But then again, sleep is something you can do when you’re dead.

J: Any 15 day shoot is ambitious. You have got to pick your battles. You have to lose some battles to win the war. If I could change anything it would be that promo NYCC trip that made our first time in NY feel like an acid trip.

What’s Kane like in real life?

S: He’s the best. He’s not Kane. I mean, if anyone is Kane, it’s Glenn and he’s such a phenomenal performer that that character is a real guy to people. He was a real guy to me too, until I got to meet the man behind the Devil’s Favourite Demon. He’s very intelligent, he’s ridiculously funny – I think it’s a shame that we don’t get to see more of that comedic genius on the show, he’s very down to earth, and he’s one of the kindest souls I have had the pleasure of meeting. You see him doing different charity events constantly, he’s always giving back to his fellow man, and he’s always visiting people in the hospital. It’s funny that everyone knows him as this monster on TV, but in real life he’s much closer to an angel. I don’t want to ruin his street cred, but Glenn is literally the best. 

J: He’s the coolest. He is SUCH a nice guy. He didn’t set anything on fire or murder anyone that wasn’t meant to be murdered. Glenn is very down to Earth and terribly brilliant.

 

SNE2 is one of those rare things, a sequel that’s stronger than the original, would you agree?

S: That’s what we set out to do. I think one of the most important aspects of a slasher is that you care for the cast so there’s a sense of wins and losses in this horrific situation you’ve placed these people in. We wanted it to be visually beautiful, we wanted to revamp Jacob Goodnight so that he would be more fear-inducing, and we wanted to have a lot of fun killing whoever it is we end up killing in the film. I’m hoping with the set up in See No Evil 2, they’ll let us have another round with a third instalment.

J: That’s what I think, but I’ve heard people say the opposite. You can’t make everyone happy, I suppose. And those people are idiots. No accounting for taste! I wanted to create this extension of Jacob Goodnight’s world that made the audience actually feel something. I feel that’s the main difference between a horror film and, say, an action film. If you care when someone dies you’re probably watching a horror film and if you don’t care someone did something wrong. We wanted to redesign the Jacob Goodnight character. The fans wanted a mask and we were totally into delivering. What’s a horror icon without a cosplayable costume, right?

Are you pleased SNE2 is getting its UK TV premiere on Horror Channel?

S: Nothing makes me happier! You guys were the first ones to put us on TV and now look what’s happened. Technically, this is all your fault.

J: I am deliriously excited. I LOVE the UK Horror Channel!! You guys have been so deliciously delightful to us. You cared about us before anyone got aboard the band wagon! We Soskas don’t forget stuff like that!

If SNE3 ever came about would you be up for it?

S: We have been talking to the team for years about making a third one. We nicknamed it 3 No Evil and we have a killer idea set up for it. The team is interested in coming back, maybe this UK TV premiere will be what gets them to say, why not, how bad could it be?

J: 3 No Evil? I’ve actually been dying to do a sequel to our sequel. It would be so fun to reunite with Glenn and company. We have some big plans for him in the future…

How much in the last 10 years has the movie industry changed for women? Are you now rightfully treated as equals?

S: There’s definitely more of a spotlight on the inequality in hiring female directors which has opened up this dialogue that has been going strong for years. You look at filmmakers like Ana Lily Amirpour with A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Julia Ducournau with Raw, Agnieszka Smoczyńska with The Lure, and so many others – and you see these unique perspective films and you see that audiences are hungry for that. There’s this misconception about who the film-going audiences are and what they will pay to see in the theatres, but then you see someone try something different like Jennifer Kent did with The Babadook and its insanely successful. Yet instead of looking for more new ideas to give audiences more of a variety, they try to recreate the last success and there’s no art in that. Creating true equality is an ongoing process, but I truly don’t mind. There are no other sister directing teams that we are following in the footsteps of, every step is new ground that hopefully makes the path less unruly for those who come next.

J: We’re getting there but we’ve still got a ways to go. Female filmmakers are making a lot more noise about diverse representation and the fans are echoing that call. Ladies still have to fight hard for those opportunities and get overlooked for their male counter parts. If another male director with less experience than me gets another superhero franchise I might lose my shit. With all the attention on female filmmakers right now, particularly in the horror genre, I think we’re gonna see more of a shift in hiring (and paying equal wages). But ask me next time we chat, we’ll see how far we came.

So, what are you working on at the moment?

S: We are very honored to have been the team chosen to take on the remake of Cronenberg’s Rabid. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of remakes but that’s if they don’t have anything new to bring to the story. We have a unique perspective just because of who we are to tell the story from Rose’s eyes as well as make a commentary on the increasingly rabid world that we live in. Also, we’ve been dying to get back into body horror. Ten years into David’s filmmaking career, he remade The Fly and it brought him to this new level. This is ten years into our career and this will be our first film that gets a wide theatrical release, so it feels like a good pairing. We just have to make sure we don’t let down our country, our fanbase, and our hero. No pressure.

J: Rabid! And sadly a bunch of stuff I can’t talk too much about. I will say that one of our original scripts has now gone into production and I’m really beside myself about it. It’s a dream I’d forgotten I’d even had. We wrote this particular script at the same time as American Mary and it’s maybe my favorite thing we’ve ever written. It’s a “fuck yeah” film so get stoked for that. We have quite a few films in production and Kill-Crazy Nymphos Attack!, our (very) graphic novel that we’re doing with Daniel Way with artwork by Rob Dumo. It’s coming this summer, so grab that if you want to be horribly offended.

See No Evil 2 is broadcast on Horror Channel, 10.50pm, Friday April 7th.

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Titus Chalk | GENERATION DECKS

Titus Chalk is a Berlin based games and sports journalist best known for his work with the likes of Deutsche Welle, Tagesspiegel, and FourFourTwo. He’s also a massive fan of Magic the Gathering, and has recently written a book called Generation Decks: The Unofficial History of Gaming Phenomenon Magic: The Gathering. We caught up with him to find out more.

STARBURST: What’s the elevator pitch for Generation Decks?

Titus Chalk: It’s the story of a life-changing card game called Magic: The Gathering, which captured the ‘90s Zeitgeist before becoming a worldwide gaming phenomenon that millions of people play today. The book tells the story of the business misfits who made it – bagging millions of dollars in the process – and the community who fell completely in love with the game – including myself. In American high school movie parlance, it’s how the nerds went from jock bullying victims to self-identifying geeks – because someone came along and believed in their smarts and gave them a platform to use them.

How long did it take you to put together the book?

The idea first came to me in 2010, when I left my job at Haymarket Publishing in London, moved to Berlin and went freelance. On some level, I was convinced there was a story to tell about Magic and that, having gone freelance, I might have the freedom to do it. But it took another couple of years for me to actually get cracking on it – a mixture of gaining more experience and confidence as a writer, and a few other things falling in place in terms of earning money and being more established in my new home. Some time around late 2012, I realised Magic would be turning 20 years old in August 2013 – a good time to get a book out. I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of publishing – so had clearly left it too late to work with a paper publisher. But I discovered self-publishing and felt very empowered by that. I then spent all of 2013 working mostly 6 or 7 days a week to bring in money, whilst also researching and writing the book. I self-published an early version of it at the end of that year – then realised, “Hey, this is an actual book. And Magic’s story is worth more than just a one-off anniversary telling.” From that point on, I began hunting for an agent and eventually found the right publisher to work with in Rebellion. All in all, a pretty long trek from initial idea to it hitting bookshelves!

How would you describe Magic the Gathering to a non-gamer?

A popular shorthand to describe the game is a cross-between poker and chess – there’s the card-playing aspect of poker, the randomness of what might come off the top of your deck. But there’s also the strategic element that goes with chess. The big difference to those games – or indeed to any game when it came out in 1993 – is that with Magic, instead of sharing a deck or a set, each player collects their own cards and tailors the deck they want to do battle with against their opponents. With well over 10,000 different cards in the game these days, it means there are huge strategic implications to how you build your deck – each card has a unique effect on the game. And it also means that no two games are ever really the same. It’s a deep and addictive game, with so many levels to engage on – from the complexity to the fantasy flavour. Its creator, Richard Garfield once called it, “The game bigger than the box” and he’s absolutely right. It’s always evolving, with each new card printed meaning as a player you find yourself thinking about Magic long after you’ve actually set down your cards and finished a game. Magic’s variety and perfectibility are what keep us players hopelessly hooked on it.


Why is this story interesting to those who don’t play Magic?

Well, Magic came along at a pivotal moment in our popular culture – just as the world was tipping from the analogue world into the digital one we know today. The game itself, the company who make it, Wizards of the Coast, and the players – all of them were at this amazing juncture and kind of took the bullet first if you will of this huge change in society. They rode out the worst of this sudden change, dug out new opportunities and really presaged in many ways how we were going to get to grips with a more connected culture. The game was so huge when it came out and appealed to such a technical crowd, that Magic players were one of the first big communities online. They showed what would happen as the underground coalesced and went overground thanks to being better connected. Many went on to be professional gamers – something we take for granted today with the advent of eSports – but was radical back in the ‘90s. And the business itself had an amazing ascent (after a flirtation with disaster), which gave the world a taste of dot-com era Silicon Valley culture, before Silicon Valley itself. The book’s the story of a game, of a business and of a community – all shaped by one of the biggest shifts in connecting and communicating the world has ever seen.


What style of Magic do you play?

I’d say I’m a semi-competitive player. Which I guess means a competitive player who isn’t very good! I was a much more casual player when I was writing the book, but after interviewing so many professional players and diving deeper into the community than I had ever done before, I got hooked on playing all over again. Whereas I have always loved what’s called Vintage Magic (using the game’s oldest) cards, I recently started playing Standard again (that’s with the newest cards, available to everyone) for the first time in almost 20 years. By writing about the game in such an in-depth way, I really got a new appreciation for it – just how much fun the actual playing of the game is, how fun it can be to learn and compete, and how rewarding it can be to feel part of this big community worldwide who are all hugely invested in Magic.

Why the blend of semi-autobiographical and factual?

Once I really began writing the book in earnest, it became clear to me that I was going to be interviewing a lot of high-level players who had achieved great things in the game. While their story is very important – a kind of rags-to-riches tale in some cases – I also wanted to tell a story that the bang average player could relate to. I discovered the game at a very painful time in my life, after my parents’ business had gone bust and we had had to move around the world to New Zealand, having lost our house. I was 13 at the time and, as a teenager in a new and completely different school and country, I felt awful. My friends were thousands of miles away, back home in the UK, and there I was, awkward and sad and painfully aware of how different I seemed to my new Kiwi classmates. Magic gave me a way to fit into a new community, and while every player has a different story I think many will relate to that feeling. Magic – and games in general – are so important because they allow people to find something in common. To interact with each other in a structured way that helps them make new friends. And I think sometimes that’s a role that mainstream society overlooks when it thinks about the gaming culture.

What do you have planned next?

Right now, I’m trying to move on to writing some fiction – short stories about the world I see around me as an ex-pat, living in Berlin. I can’t say I’m an expert yet, but it’s a great challenge to take what I’ve learned as a journalist and to try and progress my writing in that way. I’m hoping to land in the US at some point, perhaps do a post-graduate writing course there. In the meantime though, I’m chipping away in my local library. And jamming games of Magic – usually online – whenever I can!

Generation Decks is out April 6th from all good book shops.

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James Cullen Bressack | BETHANY

James Cullen Bressack is a talented and prolific writer/director/producer, who has just teamed up with actor Zack Ward (who you might remember from the classic Bob Clark movie A Christmas Story) to form a production company (Grit Film Works). Their first release – which stars Ward – is psychological horror thriller Bethany. We caught up with James to find out more about it…

STARBURST: What were the influences for Bethany?

James Cullen Bressack: Bethany was very heavily influenced by Mommie Dearest and The Babadook. I really wanted to craft a film about a woman who was barely holding herself together, while completely falling apart. Mommie Dearest is a terrifying film that I don’t think people examine enough. When I was little, someone very close to me grew up with an overbearing mother that lived vicariously through them. I watched and saw how much pressure and pain this person went through when trying to live a life for two people instead of one. It’s hard enough to try and fail on your own, but when someone’s hopes and dreams are bundled up into your every move, failure is devastating.

I watched as this person became the shell of who they once were and completely fall apart, just out of fear of failure. A bad stage mother has the ability of taking something a child is naturally good at and loves and turning it into something they fear. I watched a natural talent fade away, and give way to fear and an eventual mental breakdown. I say witnessing that really influenced my need to make this movie.

Bethany is very on the money with some of the depictions of mental illness, was there a conscious effort to keep the more supernatural/haunted house elements reigned in at any point?

Claire is such a tortured and tragic character. The horrors she endures are palpable, both set in the real world and the supernatural. I remember continuously saying I wanted the film to feel like a quilt, where you don’t know where one scene ends and the other begins but we travel in and out of our lead’s subconscious. I feel that one element is not mutually exclusive. The film always toes the line of ‘is she crazy, is she not crazy’ and I want every single moment to make you change your mind about if she is sane or not. Is she creating this in her mind, or is it really happening? Is the ghost playing tricks on her, or is her past catching up on her? So many questions.

I did a lot of research on mental illness before making this film, and how people with PTSD (non-war related) behave. There is a lot of manic behaviour on display here, which makes the film more terrifying because if what is going on with her is real, no one believes her because they think she’s crazy.

It’s arguably your strongest film to date, was there a particular reason you didn’t put the film into festivals before release?

I truly feel it is my strongest film. My grandmother was a huge supporter of me as a filmmaker. When I was 18 years old and I wanted to go and make movies, she always told me I would build skyscrapers from the top down. She believed in me and my abilities, though she never got the chance to see me grow as a filmmaker. She passed away on the first day of me filming Hate Crime. It’s taken 12 movies since then for me to make something I thought was good enough to dedicate to her memory. Bethany was that film. It has so much of me in it, it just felt right.

I didn’t go the festival route on the film, because I had already partnered with Uncork’d Entertainment for a theatrical release, they had seen an early cut of the film. I do wish that it had played some festivals, though. I would have been really interested to see how it did on that circuit.

You have formed a production company – Grit Film Works – with Zack Ward, how does that relationship work in regards to writing, etc.?

Zack and I are writing partners. We have a natural flow and are able to work together so effortlessly on the story that it just makes sense. The guy is super talented and pushes me to write.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on an animated kid’s movie that I co-wrote with my dad and directed. It’s something really special I hope everyone checks out.

Bethany is released in the US on April 7th and reviewed here.

Michael Yezerski | THE DEVIL’S CANDY

Composer Michael Yezerski has scored a lot of films and television in his native Australia, but he’s recently gained a lot of acclaim and notice for his latest work, the score to the festival-favourite heavy metal horror film, The Devil’s Candy. The movie tells the story of a tortured artist whose family’s new house harbours a strange evil, which takes his work in disturbing directions.

 

For the score, Yezerski collaborated with members of drone act Sunn O))), and created sounds from such actions as taking his wife’s violin and “torture the crap out of it.” Given that the film’s soundtrack includes metal notables like Slayer and Ghost, Yezerski’s work needed to occupy a unique position in The Devil’s Candy. We spoke about all of this and more via email with the composer.

 

Starburst: How aware were you of the “popular” music in the film before you started work on the composition of the score?

 

Michael Yezerski: I came onto this film very late and everything was already in place in terms of the sourced tracks. Music is an intrinsic part of Sean’s process. Every choice he makes is deliberate.

 

Did the songs which your score would be next to affect the music you were making?

 

Not really. We conceived the score as a separate entity to the source tracks. They play different roles. The score was designed to engulf you and reveal itself slowly, so at first you don’t notice that it’s there, but eventually it makes its presence felt, particularly at the climax. The score is like a puzzle. We reveal clues to its identity throughout the film, then it all comes together at the end. In fact I wrote the score partly in reverse order. The first cue I wrote was the climactic scene. I wanted to know how huge and loud we could get so I could plan all the other music and create that build throughout the film.

 

It seems like the work of acts like Sunn O))) were a major inspiration, because it’s this perfect counterpoint to all of the thrash and death metal on the soundtrack already. Is that the case?

 

Well that whole world – noise rock, black metal, drone – was a key influence for us. It’s the music that wells up from somewhere dark and deep, spilling out onto the surface of the earth with a primal, inexhaustible energy. Metal for us isn’t always thrash. The score starts as ambient doom and only gets turned up to 11 in the final act.

 

The quiet parts of your score – and there are many – scratch at the ear like the voices heard by Jesse and Ray. How do you balance the need for subtlety with the need for the music to be audible? Is that the reason The Devil’s Candy score is so strongly percussive – so that the audience feels it, even when they can’t quite hear it?

 

When I first started in this career I wanted my music to be heard. Now I prefer for it to be felt. My scores are story. When people listen to the album, I want them to be reminded of this story, of the journey within the film. My music builds from almost nothing to a wall of sound. We start with a noise drone, then we add one element, say, a heartbeat. Then another layer of drone, then some tortured violin sounds – each having their place and not interfering with one another. Maybe some crazed guitar here and there. We increase the tempo, we add percussion.

 

Then, before you know it, we arrive at “The Churge” – demonic vocals and deep organ sounds. We continue building until finally we arrive at “Consumed by Fire”, a cacophony of thrash guitars, giant drums, vocals and pain. The point is that that the story justifies this journey. The only time that the music is “heard” in a traditional sense is when the story allows it. The rest of the time it should sneak into your soul.

 

One point – those voices that you hear in the film are actually Sunn O))). Sean had the ingenious idea of weaving their tracks in and out of the film as a narrative device.

 

The way that Flying V gradually works its way into a more dominant position was something we appreciated when we heard the score on its own, but it’s especially impressive in the context of the movie. Given that opening scene, was it a really important point with which to connect the beginning and ending of the film?

 

The Flying V guitar is a key element in the film and it was my role to give it a sonic identity that matched its visual impact. We spent a lot of time getting the sound just right. How do you make an electric guitar sound monstrous? No easy task. Once we had that sound down we could bring it in and out as the story required us to. That is also what is brilliant about Sean’s writing. He foresaw the musical and sonic potential of this object.
 

In the press release for The Devil’s Candy score, you’re quoted as saying, “The cue ‘The Swing’ contains the DNA for the rest of the score,” and given the absolute kickstart that scene gives to the rest of the film, it seems very apt. When you saw the film for the first time, were you particularly taken by the way it unfolds and reveals?

 

It’s a completely shocking scene and not in a conventional way. It just floored me when I first saw it. I wondered how on earth I was going to score it. For one thing it’s a very dark scene yet it is shot in broad sunshine – one of the brightest scenes in the film. I wanted to write a cue that I had never written before. Something very simple – so simple, in fact, that it put you on edge immediately. I used a drone and an increasing heartbeat as a base for the track. I then added some crazy violin noises and other layers, but the construction itself is simple. There is something oddly unsettling about simple repetitive music. It’s like it flies in the face of a convention that music should build and change and grow in recognisable ways.

 

The Devil’s Candy is being released by Death Waltz Recording Co., which will put your score in the company of another heavy metal horror film, Deathgasm. Were you aware of the label and their work before you became part of it?

 

Absolutely. I couldn’t be happier to be working with the Death Waltz team. I have loved their art work for years (Mondo) and Matt Ryan Tobin’s cover art for this release is just brilliant. I also think that James Plotkin did a phenomenal job with the mastering on this release.


 

What projects are you currently working on, to which people can look forward?

 

Peer Pedersen’s We Don’t Belong Here comes out in April. It’s a synth wave score for a film about a family on the edge. I have a few other things that I can’t reveal just yet but I am very excited about.

 

The Devil’s Candy is currently available digitally from Death Waltz Recording Co. via Bandcamp, with a vinyl release due out in May.

Professor Elemental | STEAMPUNK

Chap hop sensation Paul Alborough, otherwise known as Professor Elemental first gained notoriety with his music video for his cult hit Cup of Brown Joy and has since become one the faces of Steampunk, with spin-offs including an appearance in Disney’s Phineas and Ferb and his own comic book. We caught up with the Professor to find out more.

STARBURST: How did you become Professor Elemental?

Professor Elemental:Well, originally it was Tom Caruana, the chap who produces all my tunes. We got together and spent a very silly night, mostly in a tree. We were going to do an album set in different periods of time and we ended up just doing the Victorian song. We’d watched a documentary on the subject whilst in a bit of a state and decided to do a one-off Professor song. Then I realised that I had found my muse and identity.

How does taking on the persona of the Professor change your performance?

It makes a huge difference; it’s something to hide underneath. I was a hip-hop MC for years before taking on the mantle of Professor Elemental. It wasn’t very interesting; no one needed another white, middle-aged, middle class MC. As soon as I found another niche, I found a way of communicating with people who are like me in the sense that they are nerds. It was nice to reconnect with a group that I always felt I belonged to. It also allows me to be much sillier.

What is the story behind your cult-smash single, Cup of Brown Joy?

I recorded it when Tom was out the room as well. It’s always the way; the big epic songs that you toil for years over thinking that they’ll be a masterpiece, nobody pays any attention to. The little silly song that you knocked out late at night when your producer was out of the studio, that becomes the thing that you get known for. It’s the way it seems to work. I wasn’t expecting anything from it, but that and the video that Moog did completely changed my life and allowed me to do this for a living. That song going viral on YouTube made all the difference.

How has the Steampunk community changed your life?

As is the way with so many Steampunk people, most of them don’t know they’re doing it until somebody tells them. I had loads of Americans getting in touch saying “Hey Man, you’re so Steampunk, you have to come to a convention.” I had no idea what they were talking about and it’s only through that I discovered it and embraced it myself. I’ve been delighted to discover that Steampunk is often made up of all the people who didn’t belong or couldn’t fit in to all of the other subgenres. All the people on the edge of all the other subgenres seem to end up in Steampunk and I very much put myself in that camp as well.  It was like finding a lost tribe. “There’s my people all along!”

Where does the song Don’t Feed the Trolls come from?

Like anyone who’s spent more than half an hour on the Internet, I’ve seen some awful bullying, and I’ve had people trolling me in the past, particularly some of the more sexist trolling. Particularly nasty campaigns like the whole GamerGate make my blood boil. The thing upset me so much that it seemed like a very obvious topic to do a song about. It’s always nice to do something where you feel a bit of passion about. I was able to channel my anger into raising a load of money for charity and we made a lovely video out of it as well.

Steampunk is very well defined as a literary genre, but not so much when it comes to music. Can you help define it?

It’s all over the shop, it’s a mess. It’s a huge great glorious mess of music. It’s got certain themes that come up and there’s a certain sensibility to it; all of the bands are lovely people. In terms of genre, there are none. If you look at The Men Who Will Be Blamed for Nothing to Mysterious Freak Show to someone like me or Montague Fromage, it’s all over the place. It’s a nice umbrella for lots of lovely and weird bands. I think it’s separated itself from the literary genre; people are into it for lots of different reasons. I know people who like the historical aspect, others concentrate on the persona. I just go along because I like fancy dress and it’s filled with nerds I can talk to.

Will Steampunk run out of steam?

I think it’s safe from that. Once us nerds like something, we stay with it forever. We don’t tend to chop and change all that much. Also, there is no way for the mainstream to get into it and ruin it, like so many other things. The entertainment industry tried it and couldn’t make any cash out of it, so that kind of protects it, keeps it safe. Similar to Live Action Roleplay; it’s something that is always going to be doing its own thing. It is completely inclusive and extraordinarily polite.

Is Steampunk a revolution through manners?

I think it is, actually. It’s a nice way of placing manners at the forefront of things. Something about Steampunk that builds these layers of English manners.

What’s your next big project?

After trying the whole crowdfunding thing with Don’t Feed the Trolls I’m going to go searching for Geoffrey. He’s my ape butler who at the end of one album stole my time travel trousers and got lost in time. I’ve decided to pull together every aspect of what I’ve been doing so far. There’s going to be a comic part of the story, an album part of the story with every different guest star that I could possibly pull in, with some really weird and wonderful people. I’m trying to make a Marvel/DC style event.

If you were stranded on a desert island, how would you survive, and what one book would you want for company?

That’s a good one. I would eat all the foliage and very slowly eat my own clothes until I was stuck eating my own hair. To read, I would probably want a Pan book of Horror stories. A big, big book of horror stories.

Professor Elemental can be found on Twitter via @prof_elemental, and his new album, The Giddy Limit, is out now. He will also be at this year’s Weekend at The Asylum event in Lincoln.

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Andrew MacLean | HEAD LOPPER

Andrew MacLean is the author and artist behind comic books such as ApocalyptiGirl: An Aria for the End Times. His current project is Head Lopper, a madcap fantasy adventure. We caught up with him to talk about his latest work.
STARBURST: So, what’s Head Lopper about?

Andrew MacLean: Norgal and Agatha, a sword-swinging nomad and a severed witch’s head, respectively. They travel about, getting in fights with monsters and sorcerers, and somewhere along the way heads get cut off.

How would you describe it to an elderly relative?

I’d say it’s like Conan. It’s the only thing I can think of that they might have heard about.
How different is it from ApocalyptiGirl?

I wrote and drew the both of them, but otherwise they are different in every way. It’s visually very striking. Why that particular direction?  It’s just the way I like to draw.

The fight scenes are a bit grand. Where did the inspiration for that come from?
Probably the choreography of Samurai and martial arts films. I’m a big fan of that stuff.

It’s been described as Hellboy meets Adventure Time. Is that a fair description? Are those two things inspiration?
I’m a huge fan of Hellboy so I get that reference for sure but I’ve never really gotten into Adventure Time so I can’t say whether it’s fair or not but it’s not on my radar.

Why is fantasy so popular right now?
Probably because it’s been so unpopular for a long time. Sooner or later all genres come back around. I can only assume Game of Thrones was the major catalyst for fantasy. Then again, if not them, then someone else.

Will the hero ever shave his beard?
Nope.

What other projects do you have planned?
I’m opening an apparel/accessories company with my wife – laserwolfattack.com – but otherwise Head Lopper really takes up all of my time.

Head Lopper is available via Image Comics in graphic novel format.

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Marissa Meyer | HEARTLESS

Marissa Meyer is an American novelist, best known for The Lunar Chronicles, which are fairy tale stories in a sci-fi setting. Her latest book, Heartless has delighted fans. We caught up with her to find out more.

STARBURST: How would you describe Heartless to an elderly relative?

Marissa Meyer: A prequel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland that tells the story of how a fairly normal teenage girl would ultimately become the infamous Queen of Hearts.

Out of all the characters from Alice, why this one?

I love villain origin stories, and I grew up surrounded by Alice in Wonderland (my mom is a mega-fan). One of the wonderful things about Alice is that it’s full of fascinating, quirky characters, but we learn so little about them, so there was a lot of room for me to play around in this world. And to me, the Queen was the biggest mystery of all. Why is she so merciless, so angry, so… well, heartless? I felt like there must be so much more to her and her backstory than Lewis Carroll gave us, and I really wanted to explore that.

Tell us about Hatter.

If the Queen hadn’t captured my attention first, I’m sure Hatter would have! He is another of those characters that looms so large in classic literature, and so many of our childhood memories. In Alice he is random and rude and there are a hundred curious things that he says that seem to have deeper meanings (such as an apparent relationship with Time). And other than Alice, he and the March Hare are also the only characters that reappear in Alice through the Looking Glass, which just made him even more intriguing to me.

When I started writing my version of the Hatter, I wanted to show how charismatic he was – a fashionable businessman known for his elaborate tea parties – but as the story goes on we also discover that he’s harboring more than one secret. I loved writing him and being able to slowly reveal those mysteries throughout the story.

Why did you torture your characters so?

Ha! Can you imagine reading a book in which nothing bad happens to the characters? How very dull! Torturing characters is sort of in the job description.

How is Heartless different from the many retellings of Alice out there?

There are a lot of wonderful adaptations out there, though the vast majority of them are true retellings – books that re-imagine the plot and the world, such as with a steampunk spin, or by adding in zombies, etc. Heartless, on the other hand, isn’t a retelling but a prequel… it takes place before Alice had fallen down the rabbit hole. While I’ve certainly taken a fair amount of liberties with Carroll’s world, I also put a lot of effort into making sure that there is nothing in Heartless that would directly contradict what’s in the originals. My hope is that readers will come away from it thinking that this truly could have been what Wonderland and these characters were like twenty or so years before Alice arrived.

Will the public ever tire of tales of a woman wronged?

I don’t think any of us can say for sure what the public will or won’t tire of, but woman-wronged stories have been going strong since before the Grimm Brothers and Shakespeare and even before Greek Mythology, so… I don’t think it’s in any danger of running out of steam in my lifetime.

What was the most wicked scene to write?

I can’t go into detail because spoilers, but there is a scene near the end of the book that was incredibly difficult for me to write – both technically and emotionally. I knew it was coming and had been planning it since I’d first conceptualized the book, but it still broke my heart when I got there.

How does this compare to your previous work?

There are a lot of differences between Heartless and my first book series, The Lunar Chronicles. For one, Heartless is a stand-alone novel, so it’s generally a more simple story – fewer characters and subplots, not as many epic battles, stuff like that. Also, whereas TLC was science-fiction, Heartless is about as fantastical as a story can get. Sort of the point of Wonderland is that things don’t always have to make sense, so I really got to let my imagination run wild with this book, rather than always feeling compelled to have a scientific explanation for everything.

There are certainly a lot of similarities too, though. They both are inspired by well-known stories (Alice and fairy tales), they both have strong-willed female protagonists, and they both have plenty of romance amid all those monsters and battles. Of course, I also hope they’re both fun to read!

What’s next?

I have a novel coming out this November titled Renegades, which is a love story involving superheroes and supervillains. Beyond that… we’ll see! I have no shortage of ideas.

Heartless is out in paperback now.

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