Feature Category: Interviews

Ever since The CW debuted The Flash, Candice Patton’s Iris West has been one of the most interesting and intriguing characters in the show. A comic book character who actually goes on to become the wife of the Scarlet Speedster, Iris has certainly had an up and down time of it in the two seasons of the TV series to date. With Season 2 of The Flash released on Blu-ray and DVD later this month, we were lucky enough to grab some time with Candice to discuss the progression of Iris over the past two seasons and what lies ahead for her.

STARBURST: Now that you’ve had a second year of playing Iris West, how much more comfortable do you feel in that role now?

Candice Patton: Yeah, there’s something about playing a character for two seasons that helps you relax and it makes it easier to come to work now that you have that under your belt. But the thing about this show is that there’s always multiple arcs, different timelines, and the Speedforce, so I never know what they’re going to throw at me. So that’s also really exciting, being able to play different versions of her.

And the character of Iris has certainly progressed a lot since the first season. Some people maybe saw her as a little whiny and needy in Season 1, but Season 2 saw her more confident and standing up as a prominent member of Team Flash. How has that been for you to play her a little differently in this most recent season?

That’s a personal opinion. I’ve never found her whiny or anything. That’s something that certain fans took issue with. They have a hard time watching women grow on television. They want to see them be perfect from Day 1. We’re very complex individuals, we make mistakes, we struggle to grow up, and I think that’s just all that we’ve been seeing in Iris. There’s been a lot of development in her becoming a stronger woman, so Season 2 is just a display of her kind of slowly coming into her own.

Could that maybe be something that could also be said about watching male characters grow, too?

Sure, yeah. But I can only speak for myself, being a woman and playing a female character. You find often that it’s difficult for people to want to watch women struggle and be a little bit messy.

With you playing a character that has comic book roots, and given how fans can be very precious at times, how have you found it dealing with ever-passionate comic book fans?

Fine. I mean, I don’t really engage in a lot of opinions of other people, but I think overall the experience for all of us on the show has been quite receptive. They’ve responded really well, and I don’t think we’d be going in to our third season if they hated it, so we’ve been really lucky.

You’ve obviously shared a lot of screen time with Jesse L. Martin over the two seasons, but there’s now been a new addition to the West family in the form of Keiynan Lonsdale’s Wally West. How enjoyable was it to have another addition to the family?

Great! Keiynan’s such a great addition to our show. Wally West is such an iconic character in the comics, and so I’m excited to hopefully see the development of that character. Wally has been such a great addition to the West family. I think it’s given Iris another great family member to kind of play off of.

One of the highlights of Season 2 for many fans was the Kevin Smith-directed episode, The Runaway Dinosaur, in which you were given a lot to sink your teeth in to. How was it working with Kevin?

Great. He’s a fan of the Flash comic books and a fan of our show, so any time we can have someone on our show who’s excited and passionate to be there, it makes us passionate and excited. So I think that was extremely evident in the final product that he turned out, that we were all having a really, really good time.

Being so heavily involved with this show now, have you noticed a change in other projects that you’ve been approached for? Have people offered you more Iris-esque roles?

People forget that we’re shooting ten months out of the year, so that leaves very little time to do other things. The projects that I’ve been offered, a lot of them are great. It’s just that with Iris, there’s so little time to do other things. So I’m definitely looking forward to a point in my career when I can expand and do something different. When that opportunity comes, I want to make sure it’s the right project.

Is that almost a sort of double-edged sword to the success of the show? Because it’s so popular, it means that you guys work so hard but have very little time for any other projects…

We’ve only been shooting two seasons, and we’re now going in to our third season, so I’m still in the honeymoon stage of this show, and I think I will be for a very long time. It’s a great place to go to work, we have fun, we’re all challenged and excited for every storyline that we’re given. So for now it doesn’t seem cumbersome to be working ten months a year on the show. I mean, it’s definitely hard work and we get tired, but as of now I’m very happy doing the show and focussing on The Flash. There will be a point where I obviously, as an artist and an actor, that you want to expand and do other things creatively.

By the time Season 2 came to an end, Iris had become a vital cog in the Team Flash machine and had finally hooked-up with Barry. Then everything was thrown up in the air by the very final moments of the season. Where can we expect to find Iris in Season 3, or is that still being kept under wraps for now?

Yeah, we’re all really in the dark for next season. I haven’t seen a script. I know very little. We start in about a month , so I assume I’ll be seeing stuff soon. It’ll be interesting to see when and if Barry comes back to the original timeline, how all of his relationships have changed. That’s the thing with time travel. You can’t time travel without changing something. So I think it’ll be fun to figure out what the writers have in store for all of us in terms of the changed dynamic with our relationships with Barry.

From your point of view as an actress, in terms of something to sink your teeth in to, what direction would you like to see the character take?

You know, I’m still hoping to see more from Iris at Central City Picture News, to see her career develop there, and also to see more storylines where she helps Team Flash, in the way that she does kind of in the comic book with Picture News and Iris being such a big part of that. I’m wondering if there’s kind of a way to tie that in to our show.

As a show, The Flash brilliantly balances the huge special effects and the strong core of relationships at its foundations. What’s it like to work with the likes of a Jesse L. Martin or a Grant Gustin on a daily basis? It seems like it’s a really tight group that you guys have there…

Yeah, I’m lucky that most of my work involves Jesse Martin or Grant Gustin – both incredible actors. With Grant being so young, it’s quite incredible to watch him work. For me, especially the scenes with those two actors, it’s incredibly, incredibly simple and easy and a joy to shoot. We’re able to sit down and have the conversation, but we don’t really say too much about it. Again, that’s a testament to their artistry. It just makes my job a billion times easier.

And once The Flash is in your rearview mirror, what’s you dream projects to be doing in the future?

I have a really big heart for independent features. That’s something that I really hope that I can do once The Flash is done. I really want to do some really profound, gritty indie work.

Season 2 of The Flash is available on Blu-ray and DVD from September 12th.

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We catch up with author J. A. Ironside, to talk about her novel I Belong to the Earth.

STARBURST: You’ve described I Belong to the Earth as a homage to Wuthering Heights. When you were writing it was that your intention from the beginning?

J. A. Ironside: Yes and no. In part it’s a homage but the aspect that does jibe with Wuthering Heights – namely the ongoing haunting or curse centered around a pair of lovers who allowed selfishness and a toxic form of love to divide them – is in part a reaction to the huge number of YA fantasy books that center on a love triangle as a central theme. I think there’s something unhealthy in that dynamic – in the person at the top of the triangle viewing their self-worth through the lens of having two people fighting for their affections. It was also a reaction to people who describe Wuthering Heights as a sweeping romance because while it was many things, it definitely wasn’t that. It cheapens the brilliance of what is essentially a rather unpleasant book with unlikable characters to just boil it down to a romance when it was an intelligent and somewhat scathing social commentary on just how toxic certain forms of love can be and how keeping women sequestered in the way they were in 19th C Britain, led to them contributing to their own downfall. So yes I acknowledge the excellence of WH and I’m a bit cheeky borrowing the author as a walk on part but really I wanted to look at the theme of love – of all kinds – under a very unforgiving lens

Is that why the audience sees the romance between Haze and Katherine from the eyes of a third party observer (be it Emlynn or Helen) rather from the perspective of the lovers themselves?

Yes in part. For one thing the MC – Emlynn – starts her story as very much an outsider. There’s the accident and her brain injury, her stutter, the fact that she has an affinity with the Dead – all things which mark her out and not in a good way. Helen is an outsider too in this trio of characters in that she wants normalcy whereas Kate wants adventure and Haze has his own dark motives. So both are somewhat excluded. And as you said it means that the reader isn’t drawn so much into what is a very toxic love story.

During the book Emlynn also has a romantic story of her own, was that to serve as a foil of sorts to the dynamic between Kate and Haze?

Emlynn’s own romantic subplot did serve to show a ‘healthy’ approach to a romantic love – which even so is complicated in itself simply because people are complicated – as opposed to the self-involvement of Kate and Haze’s relationship. But it also was a developmental stage for Emlynn because after the accident she has cut herself off from other people. She’s dropped contact with old friends, has serious trust issues and doesn’t make new friends. So it also show’s Emlynn starting to heal and accept more people into her life again. The risk being that people can leave you, via death or other means so to open yourself up to friendship or family or love is to potentially get hurt in the future. So it signals both of those things.

Often when reading books or watching films we judge the characters for not spotting certain things sooner, or for taking certain actions. Do you think that we take for granted that we have a certain distance from the material that the characters do not share? I.e. judging Emlynn for not noticing certain parts of the pattern sooner?

That’s a complicated answer. In some respects, if you’re really in the MC’s head, you might not see certain aspects of a situation because you are experiencing it as the MC does. I think in the horror/ paranormal/thriller/mystery type genres in a lot of cases you do have a distance a perspective as the audience that is not afforded the MC. In Emlynn’s case, she is a classic reluctant hero. She really wants nothing to do with the situation, she just wants all the weird stuff to stop happening. She is also blinded to the situation in many ways. One, because the Pattern naturally protects itself – there’s a part of the book when Emlynn can really see the scope of the pattern and it’s when she’s being driven back from hospital – so she’s outside the field of influence. Another aspect is that she’s been closed off for so long that she is far more used to ignoring supernatural phenomena than confronting them. Finally the huge emotional strain she is under after the accident, after her mother’s death, the strained relationship with her family and a certain healthy amount of self involvement, all get in the way of her seeing what’s happening. So I think that yes as the audience it’s easy to judge – it’s even part of the fun, we love it when we cotton on to something before the MC does most of the time – but I also think it was in keeping with the situation.

Without spoiling the story for people who haven’t read it yet there are no easy answers in this book, either in terms of the ghosts or for Emlynn’s issues for her family. Was this element important to you and do you feel that too many YA books fall into the trap of trying to make the ending too tidy?

The family dynamic, especially between the three sisters, was very important to me because I haven’t seen that dynamic explored very much in YA fantasy. It’s difficult to say what ‘too tidy’is, because one person might like all the loose threads accounted for while others like things left wide open or indeed, on a double ending where you’re not really sure but you pick the ending depending on which makes the most sense to you given the evidence. I personally like to have a few open threads. Perhaps the biggest one I have left open is what really happens to Kate and Haze? A lot of people have said different theories on this and it’s really interesting to hear them. No one is wrong or right incidentally. As regards the family dynamic, I felt that evidence of change (that’s not too spoiler-y is it?) would be more likely than a rounded finish because people are complicated and interactions are hard so something too tidy wouldn’t have worked, in my opinion. In other YA books I’m nearly always far more angry over a contrived or unearned ending than one with no loose threads.

One thing that is interesting about I Belong to the Earth is it doesn’t feel like anyone is receiving punishment as such, rather they are living the consequences they have created for themselves.

Thanks. Yes that was ultimately what I was aiming for. We all make good and bad and indifferent choices and generally we are all called upon to live with them to some degree. Plus I wanted to get away from the idea of judgment because ultimately, who is the fit person to judge the others? It was a deliberate contrast with the notion of sin that is sort of buried in the subtext of the book – notably most in Helen’s worldview.

This idea of living with those choices even extends to a character who acted under the influence of possession, something that is normally used as a way to have characters commit certain actions and allow the author to maintain them as blameless. Were you tempted to let the character off the hook as other writers may have done?

No. It was very important that, especially given the circumstances of those actions, that that character should accept some responsibility even if it wasn’t fair. There are too many books that allow similar actions whilst under the influence of something else, to explain why a character acted badly but not make them accountable. I’ve always thought that if you were in a situation that made you act so against your natural inclinations – via possession for instance – wouldn’t you start to doubt yourself when that influence was lifted? What made you such an easy target? Was there something dark in you that made it easy for that outside influence to use you? And this is exactly what happens to this character who no longer trusts themselves anymore. To the extent that there is a companion novella coming out early next year that explains how they come to terms with what they did and what they did next. Should be released alongside book two which is roughly scheduled for release January 2017.

So there will be a book two?

Yes. It’s all written and ready. There are several novellas in between the two books. And two further books finish off the quartet.

Did you know there would be a sequel when you were writing I Belong to the Earth or did you find yourself wanting to revisit the characters after you had finished writing?

I Belong to the Earth was originally intended as a standalone novel. I’m not sure when it became a quartet. I think the easiest explanation is that the characters wouldn’t leave me alone and as it turns out there are many more mysteries for Emlynn to solve.

What is it about writing a quartet out of what you thought was a single book story that most excites you?

It’s always the character journey for me. In book one, I was still getting to know them. Now I know them all really well so watching what they do next and how they react and grow and change is fascinating. I don’t think you can come out of a situation like the Pattern and not be changed in some way so exploring that has been great fun

Recently Zharmae Publishing (the publishers of I Belong to the Earth) has announced that it is shutting down. What does this mean for the series, and where will you be taking it from here?

I actually requested my rights back a few weeks before this happened. I had reasons for deciding to end the contract which I won’t go into. Ultimately it is a big bonus for the series because book 2 has been ready for publication for over a year now so actually it’s sped up the timeline. I will be re-releasing book one and publishing all the others under my own imprint. Having creative control means that I can correct some minor flaws, find more appropriate covers and that fans will have to wait less time between books.

To close the interview, if you could say one thing to any of your characters, who would you chose to talk to, and what would you say?

Ooh that’s a tricky one. I think it would probably have to be Emlynn and I would say ‘don’t be afraid to ask for help’ since her greatest flaw is that she never asks anyone for help.

You can purchase I Belong to the Earth at Amazon.

Since The Flash debuted on The CW in 2014, one of the show’s main players has been Danielle Panabaker’s Caitlin Snow. With Caitlin known as the villainous Killer Frost in the comic book realm, longtime DC fans have been eagerly watching the character’s journey for two seasons now, with Panabaker proving to be one of the true highlights of a highlight-filled series. With Season 2 of the Scarlet Speedster-centric show set to speed on to Blu-ray and DVD later this month, we caught up with Danielle to discuss all things The Flash, not to mention her time working with John Carpenter, and much, much more.

STARBURST: When you joined The Flash, did you expect Caitlin to have so many ups and downs? And how challenging has that been to play?

Danielle Panabaker: No, I didn’t expect her to have so many ups and downs when I joined The Flash, but it’s been a lot of fun. I feel so lucky that they’ve given me such great material and that I’ve been able to get to play so much.

How aware were you of the comic book Caitlin/Killer Frost when you signed on?

Not at all! Everything I know about comic books, which is so not a lot, is what I’ve learned in the last two and a half years. It’s been great to learn more about The Flash and his universe and all the different characters.

No pun intended, but was it ever daunting going in to this role cold?

It was a little daunting. I can’t keep up with all of the villains at all!

We comic book fans are notorious for being a little bit too precious at times. Was that something that ever worried you when you got the role?

You know, I’m always ready to open myself up to criticism. I think you just have to let it roll off your back and, like Taylor Swift, just Shake It Off.

When the show was first announced and Caitlin was announced as a character, people immediately saw that and expected Killer Frost. Obviously we’ve got there in a way, but a different way to what most expected. How much fun has it been to play with people’s expectations of the character?

Absolutely, and I like that we’re sort of taking our time. I would rather we have fun and really get to flesh-out the different aspects of the character rather than jumping immediately to something that isn’t justified.

We have seen Killer Frost a couple of times now, but how much fun is it for you to go full-on ‘supervillain’?

Oh, it’s been great. It’s so fun and so cool. I love the way she looks and I’m grateful to everyone who worked so hard to bring her to life.

And it always seems as if there’s such a close bond with the cast and crew of the show…

We do, we have a lot of fun. There’s a lot of love on our set.

What have been the particular highlights for you during this most recent season and the show as a whole?

Getting to play Killer Frost, and really seeing everyone do their Earth-2 doppelgangers was such a cool experience. Our cast is so talented that they were able to pull it off beautifully. So I think those were some of my favourite episodes, for sure.

One of the big highlights amongst fans of the show is the dynamic and chemistry between yourself and Carlos Valdes . Was that instant and natural or was that something you had to work on?

I think that chemistry is pretty natural for the two of us. Carlos, I really have such affection for him. His first day on camera ever was on Arrow, and I’ve had such incredible people sort of help me and guide me throughout my career that I wanted to in some small way do the same for him. And I think that created a really close bond between the two of us from the get-go.

Caitlin hasn’t exactly had much luck in her love life over the first two seasons, with her romances with Ronnie Raymond and “Jay Garrick”/Zoom now ending well. Do you think she’ll find some happiness on that front in the future?

I don’t know. I think Caitlin will be just fine on her own, with or without a man. Let her take care of herself for a little bit.

Anything you can tell us about Season 3 at the moment or is that all being kept hush-hush for now?

I wish I could. I don’t know anything. I keep trying to get information out of everyone I know, and I haven’t had any luck.

If the transition to Killer Frost is to happen for the Earth-1 Caitlin, are you looking forward to taking the character off in such a different direction?

Of course I would love to see it. I think it’s so fun, something a little different. I think Carlos has had such a beautiful journey, particularly in Season 2, coming to terms with his powers.

Many of our readers may know you for the likes of Friday the 13, The Ward, The Crazies, Piranha 3DD and some other horror efforts. How was it getting to play around in the horror genre?

It was fun! I got to work with some incredible filmmakers. I mean, John Carpenter! I love that I got to work with him . He’s wonderful, so sweet. I had a lot of fun, for sure.

Would you be looking to do more horrors in the future or are you too tied-up with The Flash at the moment?

I think right now The Flash is the main focus for me. We’re busy on the show, we’re on production ten months a year.

Now that Melissa Benoist’ Supergirl is calling The CW home, and with a four-show crossover confirmed for later this year , are you hoping to share some screen time with Melissa at some point going forward?

I am. I would love to. I’ve met her a handful of times and she’s so sweet. Selfishly, I’m happy that she’s coming to Vancouver . I’m happy to have a Vancouver friend. And I hope that I get to crossover there.

Looking away from The Flash, is there any particular dream project out there that you’d like to tick off your bucket list?

I’d love to work in a period piece somehow, to go back in time to the 1800s where everyone wore corsets and were quite formal. Or I could go back to the early 1900s. That would be really fun.

Maybe you could get yourself involved in Legends of Tomorrow and their time-travelling antics?

Oh, don’t worry. I’ve asked. I love so many of those actors so much.

And did anything come back on that?

Trust me, I pitch stuff all the time. I get nothing back.

Season 2 of The Flash is available on Blu-ray and DVD from September 12th.

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Director Kate Shenton was back at FrightFest this year with Egomaniac. It’s a semi-autobiographical satire following a lady horror director who wants to make her film but is told to insert a talking dog (and other things) she’d rather not have into places she doesn’t want until it results in deadly consequences. Shenton was nominated for the inaugural Screen International Horror Rising Star Award at FrightFest. We spoke to Shenton about the psychology behind Egomaniac.

STARBURST:  What was the motivating factor behind Egomaniac?

Kate Shenton: It’s kind of almost about the heart-attack of getting into the industry and realising the beast that you are dealing with. I think it’s a film that a lot of filmmakers will associate with. It’s surprising how many people have already come up to me and have said they have experience of that beast.

Such as how the industry can be rather sexist? How does the lead character of Catherine (actress Nic Lamont) demonstrate the issue?

It’s not a sexy film. At all. If I’m honest it’s quite harsh about the way that sex is used in the industry and there are a few scenes that touch on it very, very closely. I think that anything that may be perceived as a little bit sexy is done in quite an ironic and quite a dark way. It isn’t a ‘look, she’s all scantily dressed and running for her life’ type thing. If anything it’s, I wouldn’t say slightly critical, but it’s kind of assessing that side of the industry. But no, it’s not a sexy film. I’m sorry guys, I’m sorry.

How would you like audiences to react to the characters?

I think there is a real honesty to the brutal stereotypes of the characters. It’s easy to look at the characters and go ‘that’s a stereotype’, but even though this film is not based on anyone real, the characters are an amalgamation of different people that I’ve met and that I know other people have met. I’m taking certain lines people have said and taking certain actions and combining into a character. It’s a very fictionalized version of what has happened to me. We made sure in the script and in the performance that no one was an impersonation, but there’s definitely a lot of elements of certain people that have been come across. Already people who have watched a film have recognised characters in that they’ve experienced someone similar. They’ve had someone in their career that has done similar things and said similar things. It seems very close to the bone…

How was Egomaniac filmed?

There was a lot of room for improv. The photography scene was entirely improvised and I would say about a third of the film is improvised. A lot of the actors are people I’ve worked with before and also people I know who’ve had tough experiences within the industry as well. As much as it was a cathartic release for me, I think it was also a cathartic release for much of the cast. I was planned that in the script and it was always written down that it would be improvised and I knew the cast that I had were strong at improv, particularly the lead actress, Nic Lamont. She and Adam Rhys-Davies are the two leads and they have done improv musicals. They are a comedy double act so they connect very well. You just know that if you put those two into the room they’re going to rock it and have fun and they have that chemistry between them. That’s where the humour comes from as that’s what the film is about: it is about people. It is about the characters in the industry and the kind of people you can occasionally come across.

How would you like people to react to Egomaniac?
I hope it will make people think. I hope that if anybody has behaved in a way shown in the film… it may make them question their behavior. Mainly because someone might make a film about it! I don’t think people are really that aware of it. People have come up to me and have said ‘I didn’t realise the kind of things that are happening until I saw the film and now I’m seeing it all the time’.
Maybe it’ll start a discussion and maybe that discussion will make it slightly easier for someone who is just starting out.

What can audiences do to best support growth in filmmaking?
Even something as simple as following someone’s Facebook account or Twitter page and sharing the content and getting the word out there. Even if it’s just putting a little bit of money towards a campaign – it doesn’t need to be a lot. But you need to do something otherwise it’s all going to disappear. If people don’t cover their costs they won’t be able to make another film. I think that something you need to be conscious of if you love film. You need to put something towards it and then films can get made.

Egomaniac will be screening at festivals all over the world soon.

THE ZELDA SYMPHONY OF THE GODDESSES started four years ago as a way to help celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the classic Nintendo video game series, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA. The latest iteration of the tour is entitled Master Quest and includes music and imagery from the entirety of the series, including the latest instalment, Tri Force Heroes. We spoke with producer JASON MICHAEL PAUL about the history of the touring symphonic presentation.

STARBURST: How did you initially come to be involved with the Zelda Symphony?

Jason Michael Paul: I was the one that Nintendo approached when they thinking about doing a Zelda Symphony. They asked me to produce a segment at the E3 press event as part of the 25th anniversary of Zelda showcase they were putting on. They were looking at a lot of ways to celebrate the franchise, and they thought that the most memorable way would be to create a musical from it. That was really the kick-off.

I had been working with Nintendo for some time, going back to Play: A Video Game Symphony, so I had forged a relationship with them then, having Koji Kondo perform at my concerts on piano, and participating in that way. So, I had a really good relationship – they had a lot of trust in me – and so, obviously, when the 25th anniversary rolled around, they called me up. The rest of this is kind of just a spin-off of that.

It seems that a lot of these symphonic concerts started out as audio-visual mixtapes, but have really progressed to being more specifically themed.

I disagree. When I first started doing video game concerts with the likes of Final Fantasy, I was sticking very true to the format that my colleagues in Japan and Europe were doing, which was a truly symphonic playback, devoted to a single franchise… Then, what I did was move away from that format and started presenting more within a program.

I’d say that my greatest success has come in the single-program format – as in, a single brand – because it’s an easier idea for people to understand, which is why I think that there’s a greater success with something like the Zelda Symphony as opposed to Play: A Video Game Symphony or RePlay: A Symphony of Heroes – it just takes more explaining.

 

Considering Japan, that makes perfect sense – video game music over there has always been afforded a respect it took time to receive everywhere else.

Well, yeah – it was always regarded as a powerful medium. It’s one that the Japanese culture can’t ignore. A lot of the cartoons and video games that we experienced in the United States, they’ve been celebrated in that country since the beginning. Mario, of course. Dragon Quest – that’s one that the composer, Koichi Sugiyama, had been producing concerts with just the visuals for years and years. He was really the first to do it. That’s in Japan. Of course, in Europe, Thomas Böcker was doing the European game concerts. He was producing symphonic concerts.

When I did the first in the United States with Final Fantasy, I combined it with the video aspect that no-one was really doing at the time, and that’s really how I put my fingerprints on it: really combining it in that way, and putting the multimedia aspect to it and trying to sync up the visuals to it; putting a story to it, based on the games at that time. That’s pretty much what we did with Zelda, except we created a four-movement symphony that is performed as part of the concert.

That’s actually one of the things we are really curious about: what are the challenges of syncing such a large group of musicians to a visual medium in a live setting?

Well, the concerts have gotten better and more evolved, because the visuals are more timely. It’s evolved quite a bit – we have new technology that allows us to keep in sync. There are wireless click tracks that I’ve developed, so our technologies and our abilities to make the concert a more compelling and more complete retelling have just really gotten intense.

We perform our music with a 66-piece orchestra and a 24-voice choir, and the charts are done masterfully by A-list Hollywood composers and arrangers. It’s just how I treat the scores and my concerts. Given my background – I have a lot of experience doing these concerts, as well as classical concerts that reach beyond video games, like Luciano Pavarotti and the Three Tenors that are very highbrow events. That’s what my idea is: I try to create that kind of highbrow event where hopefully, it’s an elevated event, like when you’d go see a symphony perform a Beethoven or Brahms program.

 

What’s it like taking some of that early music – some of it thirty years old, at this point – and orchestrating it for a symphonic orchestra, versus some of the more modern pieces with their greater complexity?

Obviously, when the music was composed, it wasn’t ever intended to be performed by a choir or conducted. It was always intended to just be the blips and bleeps of a video game on an 8-bit or 16-bit console. So now, as video games have evolved, they’ve been treated more and more like films and film scores. Now, you have video game companies creating original scores and writing and arranging music.

Nobody was even thinking about it back then, unless you’re someone like Koichi Sugiyama, as I said, with Dragon Quest or even Nobuo Uematsu – he was surely thinking about these thing. It’s just been a natural evolution. It’s no different than someone taking these scores that were written for orchestras and performing them with rock bands – you’re creating different arrangements.

ZELDA SYMPHONY OF THE GODDESSES MASTER QUEST plays in the UK on the following dates:

Birmingham, Symphony Hall October 9th

Manchester Bridgewater Hall October 13th

Glasgow Clyde Auditorium October 20th

 Tickets are available now from all usual outlets

Worldwide dates and tickets for ZELDA SYMPHONY OF THE GODDESSES MASTER QUEST can be found at zelda-symphony.com.

Up to this date, Disco Cinematic Records has only been releasing the cassettes of Vi-Res, the electronic project of Michael Figucio, who founded the label along with his wife, Kerry, in May of last year. However, not only is the label moving beyond tape to vinyl, they’re also moving beyond just Vi-Res. The first vinyl release on Disco Cinematic will be SNDTRK, a 12-track compilation of the best in film score influenced musicians, such as Repeated Viewing, and the Wolfmen of Mars, Slasher Film Festival Strategy, along with Figucio’s Vi-Res. It may also be the only vinyl release from Disco Cinematic, according to a post on the Spin the Blackest Circles soundtrack forum. It was such an intriguing statement, we spoke to Figucio ask the Australian musician about the label and its upcoming release of SNDTRK.

STARBURST: I imagine that everything behind this forthcoming SNDTRK LP started with Vi-Res. How did Vi-Res start?

Michael Figucio: Vi-Res started from a combination of me making instrumental music and a film renaissance that I was having at the time. I have always wanted to score film of any kind so I eventually decided to make music for imaginary films and stories.

The synth / soundtrack crew seems to be very tight online. What’s it been like, the experience of interacting with all these like-minded musicians?

Everyone is down-to-earth and approachable. We are not so much tight but just shout out to one another when online and have the occasional chat. For me, it is good to know that there are likeminded people about, even if they are in other continents. I don’t know of many musicians in Australia and of none in my local area that are moved by soundtracks in particular so it is really good to have contact with these artists that are really friendly. It’s fantastic when new artists come along too, it keeps things interesting. There are no egos on display here.

Was everyone you approached about being on the album into it from the start? Did anyone say no? Alternately, were there people you wished you’d asked, in hindsight?

There were a couple of artists that politely turned us down due to being involved with other projects, but everyone else agreed. I was surprised because I thought that only a couple would say yes. We physically couldn’t fit any more onto the record. We have since discovered more artists which is interesting for future prospects.

There’s SNDTRK the podcast and SNDTRK the album. Did they come about simultaneously, or did one come from the other?

The album came first. The podcast was made due to discovering more artists that I feel compelled to share.

As amazing as SNDTRK sounds blasting out of stereo speakers, there are some real headphone delights to be found. Was mastering this for vinyl and getting everything just right a real priority?

Sound quality was priority one on the production side. We wanted the tracks to have the best sonic presentation and take advantage of the vinyl sound characteristics. That’s why we opted for 180g black vinyl; we didn’t to take any risks with splatters or splits. The novelty is in having these twelve artists on one album.

Even though your act, Vi-Res is on the compilation which you’re releasing, ‘Bow’ doesn’t come until the second song of the second side. How did you determine the sequencing?

Track-by-track and side-by-side. When I heard ‘Technicolor Road’ by Wolfmen Of Mars I thought, “That’s how you start a film and that’s how you start an album,” then I just thought, “What should go next?” and kept up with the feeling of how the tracks flow together with each other.

When I heard Albatross Wirehead’s ‘Basement’, I thought that it would be a good ending that feels like an open ending and suggestion that there may be a sequel. I made three different sequences in this style, and then Kerry and I tried them at different times of the day: meaning that we tried them when we were getting motivated in the morning, on a vague Sunday afternoon, when we were studying or internet surfing, and when we were having a few drinks. We found that the final sequence works for both casual and intentional listening.

You’ve stated that Disco Cinematic has some very particular ideals. For instance, this may or may not be the only thing you put out. How strongly do you feel about SNDTRK and its content that you’d be happy with it being your only release under the Disco Cinematic aegis?

Well, I am listening to the album right now and have listened to it so many times through the processes of curating, compiling mastering and reviewing masters and test pressings, et cetera. I really love it. It’s an album that is good from the first play (it’s not a grower) and it holds up extremely well to repeated listening.

It is important for us, personally, to only release something that we enjoy ourselves. If this is the last release from DCR, then we don’t mind. We discovered some fantastic music and came into contact with some great people that we would like to meet properly one day. We have enjoyed the project every step of the way and have been part of making a record that we hope will become symbolic and representative of a genre of music that we love – and believe that it will.

Drop the needle anywhere on this record and you will find a mind-blowing instrumental that you could say would fit into a ‘XYZ’ film — or, lie back, close your eyes, and let your imagination run free.

SNDTRK will be available worldwide on August 26th, and the record will be available through Bandcamp, Ondes Positives, and Two Headed Dog. You can find Vi-Res’ music at vi-resmusic.bandcamp.com.

After selling his first screenplay (the Raquel Welch-starrer Kansas City Bomber) while still a student at UCLA, Barry Sandler quickly proved himself a creative force to be reckoned with. Among his many credits are The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, two star-studded Agatha Christie adaptations (The Mirror Crack’d and Evil Under the Sun) and the ground breaking Making Love, one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to address the subject of coming out as a gay man. But Crimes of Passion, recently released on Blu-ray by Arrow films, remains possibly his best-known and certainly most provocative screenplay. During our far-too-brief chat, Barry told us about the experience of making Crimes, working with its director Ken Russell, and how Anthony Perkins almost shared the movie with a simian co-star. Well, sort of…

STARBURST: Why did screenwriting appeal to you as an art form?

Barry Sandler: As a kid I lived in the movies. I didn’t play sports and I was kind of an outsider and I found a refuge in movies, it was an escape that I had an extreme appreciation and passion for. I also used to write short stories and scribble down my observations of life and the people around me so it seemed a natural consolidation, to combine my love for writing with my life for film. That’s ultimately how it all began.

Crimes of Passion is so different from your other work. Where did the idea for the film come from?

When you say it’s different from my other work, it is and it isn’t. I tend to deal with certain themes in all my work and I’ve always been fascinated by masks and facades and the disguises we wear. But in terms of Crimes it’s certainly the most transgressive approach I’ve taken. In a way I was tapping into what was going on around me during the eighties, it was just at the beginning of the advent of the AIDS crisis… people had difficulties with their relationships, there was a lot of sex going on and it was very easily accessible and a lot of people were using it as kind of an excuse or a defence or a rationale or some way to avoid intimacy, to avoid relationships. I saw all these elements, these sexual dynamics, going on around me. And it was the end of the seventies, just going into the eighties, when I started writing the script. We were still very much coming out of the seventies era of sexual liberation and while in many ways I applauded that and very much was a part of it I saw also there were downsides to it as well. I thought using that kind of framework and arena for an idea for a film would be an intriguing avenue to explore.

So Crimes really came out of a specific moment?

It did, yes. And the script went through different evolutions too. At one time it was just Joanna and Shayne, and then I introduced the Grady character and the Grady character became much more prominent, and the focus shifted… I must have done forty drafts of the script before Ken (Russell) even saw it. So the emphasis kept shifting. In one draft Joanna wasn’t a hooker, and then she was. In another draft Shayne was a psychiatrist… it kind of evolved over a period of years and through many, many drafts.

Did you ever think a film company would be brave enough to take it on, because it is a very powerful film, it really pushes the boundaries?

It does push them. And when we went out with it, it was right at the beginning of the whole Reagan revolution when there was a very strong reaction to the seventies and the sixties and it became a very conservative, repressive time in America, so we were totally going against the grain with something pretty daring. In the beginning, we did have a hard time getting it going – there were certain filmmakers who were interested in getting involved in it – before Ken came aboard we had meetings with John Frankenheimer and John Carpenter… filmmakers were intrigued by it, not studios. And certain actors – I remember Cher was interested in doing it and I had a couple of meetings with her – but the studios wouldn’t touch it. It was too out there and too daring. And then around ‘83, ‘84 New World came on board. New World was kind of an exploitation company but Jonathan Axelrod, who was the Head of Production there, wanted to take it in another direction, he wanted to get into a more sophisticated area. ICM was my agent at the time and they also represented Ken and they knew I had this project and they knew it was a very risky, very daring project. And let’s face it, you couldn’t get more of a risky and audacious filmmaker than Ken Russell! So they said “What would you think if we submitted it to Ken?” and I said “Are you kidding me, my God, yeah!” When I was in film school in the early seventies there were a handful of directors that any film student would cut off their arm to have direct a script of theirs – Kubrick and Mike Nichols, Polanski, and Russell were at the top – and the idea of having my script submitted to Ken Russell, I just jumped at that and sure enough it worked out.

So once we had a package with Ken and the script, we went to Jonathan at New World because obviously, the major studios were not going to touch it: a) they were afraid of Ken Russell to begin with, and b) because of the material, and c) the era we were living in… it was going to be a tough sell. But Jonathan and New World were open to it. And then they co-financed it with Orion Films which was also a pretty daring company so with the two companies’ combined we were able to get it going. But it was a tough one journey.

Did Ken ever say what it was about the script that attracted him? Didn’t he read it on a plane?

He read it on a plane and when he got off the plane he immediately called his agent to say “I’ve got to do this movie” but he was very reluctant to get involved with another American film after the experience he had with (Paddy) Chayefsky on ‘Altered States’. He didn’t want to risk losing control. Apparently, he had turned down a lot of projects, but there was something about Crimes that connected with him. We talked about it, we had a great relationship that extended for years up until his death, and I know from watching him work – because I was there with him every day – that he was most intrigued by the China Blue/Shayne scenes. The scenes with Kathleen and Tony. And that kind of high-pitched almost surreal interplay fascinated him, dealing with themes of masks and facades, illusions and deceptions, with these two outrageous characters going at each other. He was less intrigued with the other aspect of the film which was the Grady home life. He wasn’t really connected into that world, into the American suburban idiom, so I think those scenes were less interesting to him than the scenes which were more outrageous, which were more Ken Russell kinds of scenes. He was interested in the themes inherent in the conflict between China Blue and Shayne.

Did he make any changes himself when he came on board?

That’s a great question because I remember the first day we met – I had it in my contract that no other writer could come aboard, I’d said I’d happily make the changes but there couldn’t be another writer, and he knew that and he had just come off that bad situation with Chayefsky who also had that in his contract, so there was a bit of trepidation or distrust in our first meeting because he wasn’t sure how much control I was going to exert and how much flexibility he was going to have. But I wanted to make it very clear to him that I was just so excited about the prospect of him directing this film, that I certainly respected his vision and I was willing to hand over the script to his vision and I think as the time went by he saw that I was much more open and I was not going to make those demands or take control away from him. By the second or third meeting, we were very much partners in the project. It was really a wonderful working relationship.

In terms of changes, it’s so funny you asked that because he wanted to shoot the script that he read, that he committed to, the script he read on the plane, and when we met with the studio the first time they had made changes, they wanted to water things down – as studios tend to want to do – and he said “No, I’m shooting this script, this is the script that I committed to and that’s the script I’m going to shoot” and he was emphatic about that. So in terms of your question, it was the opposite – he insisted on not making changes!

In fact, the only big change we made together was when Ken and Tony Perkins and I met for the first time, and Tony had just finished doing Equus on Broadway. He’d been there for two years after replacing Anthony Hopkins in the role of Dysart the psychiatrist. I’d originally conceived of Shayne as a man who pretends to be a psychiatrist, and goes out into the red light districts and tries to control these hookers through his disguise as a psychiatrist. Tony wanted to know if there was any way we could change that, if he could pretend to be something else, because he didn’t want to bring the character of Dysart to the character of Shayne. And the three of us sat around over lunch and Ken came up with the fabulous idea of making him this minister, this reverend – it was right at the heart of the mid-eighties where these TV evangelists would go on every Sunday and preach the gospel and people would send in money and then a week later they would be caught in some sleazy hotel with a hooker, so the hypocrisy was incredible. And Ken thought that to tap into that would be pretty amazing. So that was the one big change we all agreed to and we thought it was a great idea.

Anthony Perkins certainly pulls out all the stops during the movie.

He was just an astounding actor. He got so into his part – he created that whole little room, Shayne’s shrine to China Blue, and he designed it and put all the stuff on the walls – he was an amazing actor and he got totally into the character. I mean not to the point where you couldn’t talk to him between takes, he wasn’t that extreme, but he was really pretty devoted.

Kathleen Turner’s performance was so brave, especially at that point in her career when everything was taking off for her. Was she your idea?

This is fascinating. Ken and I spent two or three days in a screening room looking at different films with different actresses – I remember we looked at Jessica Lange and Debra Winger, Sigourney Weaver, whoever was hot at the time – and there was a lot of heat on Kathleen Turner because she was about to come out in Romancing the Stone and she’d already made her mark in Body Heat and apparently she really liked the script, somehow she’d got hold of the script and she wanted to do it. And because she had worked with William Hurt, who had just come off Altered States and had told Ken about how exciting it was to work with her, one of the films Ken watched was Body Heat. But he wasn’t quite taken with her. And I thought “You know what, I’ll show him The Man with Two Brains”, the film she did with Steve Martin, and that’s the movie where Ken fell in love with her because she’s so funny in it. Once that clicked we met her and she signed on. But, it’s worth noting, she signed on at the resistance of her agent, her manager and her fiancé, who didn’t want her to do this kind of radical sexual part when she was about to burst on the scene with Romancing the Stone and be America’s sweetheart. But she wanted to do the part. She was a pretty fearless actress.

Do you have any particularly favourite memories of working on set with Ken and the actors?

The memories I have of Ken, he liked to drink, he liked his wine, so he’d start drinking early in the morning and he got better and sharper as the day went on! I could never figure that out. But at one point Tony Perkins came up to me – and bear in mind that nothing was too outrageous for Tony, he would just take the character to the extreme limit – and he said, “What would you think about it if Shayne had a little monkey on his shoulder?” I said “What, are you crazy? What do you mean, a little monkey?” and he said “Let’s say he walks around with a little monkey” and I said “Tony, this character is so out there as it is, you give him a monkey and it’s going to become a cartoon!” and he said “I don’t know, let’s talk to Ken about it” So that’s when I started to worry because I knew Ken also has very little limitations, so we go to Ken and Ken says “Oh I like that idea but we can’t do it” but they saw how upset I was at the prospect so the next day Ken brings a little monkey with a monkey trainer onto the set! I know he did it to tease me, but I saw this monkey and I went apoplectic. Ken started to laugh. He knew that the idea of Shayne with a monkey was too over-the-top but it’s still funny that he brought the monkey and the monkey trainer onto the set just to make

When you were working on Crimes of Passion, did you ever think you would still be talking about

That’s a great question! You don’t think that – of course, you hope for it – but because we had such problems with the ratings board and the film that New World finally released was such a bowdlerised version that Ken and I both disowned it, we were very disillusioned by the experience. I remember that at the time there was a lot of promotion and publicity about the film getting an X-rating but no matter how many times Ken took it back and re-cut it the studio still said no, it’s got to be an R. The head of the ratings board actually called me – because I was also the producer – and said “Look, you should get your studio to release it as an X and re-legitimise the X rating!” Years before, The Devils was an X and A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy and those were considered respectable adult films but in the intervening years, the X had taken on the connotation of pornography with pornographic theatres and Triple-X ratings and all that. And so nobody wanted to touch the X rating. But because we had Ken Russell and Kathleen Turner and Tony in a legitimate film, they thought we could re-legitimise the X rating. But the studio didn’t want to hear it, so they made us cut the film and release it as an R, so we were pretty upset by that. And New World was excited because there was so much publicity about it and I said “Don’t get excited because if it comes out as an R, people are going to say well, it’s a cut version, it’s going to be a watered down version” and I was right. But, on the other hand, when the film came out on video they released it in the unrated version, and it did very well on video and then on Laser and then finally on DVD. But at the time it was originally released we only had the R version and Ken was very demoralised by that, as was I, so no, you don’t think in terms of what’s going to happen thirty years hence. But the fact is that the film has survived, its endured, and it has taken on this cult following which is so exciting and gratifying to me… there’s such a legend surrounding Ken Russell, and once the film came out on DVD and people started to discover it and talk about it, I began to get a very real sense that Crimes had a following. And now, of course, it’s on Blu-ray! It’s very gratifying to see.

Crimes of Passion is out now on Blu-ray from Arrow Video. You can read our review here.

Following a career spanning several decades, Victor Garber was introduced to a whole new audience when he debuted as Professor Martin Stein in The CW’s The Flash. As one half of the superhero known as Firestorm, Garber’s Stein became an integral part of the Scarlet Speedster-centric show before later appearing as one of the central characters of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. With the first season of Legends soon to get a home release, we caught up with the ever-charming Victor to discuss all things of a superhero slant, the challenges that come with playing the genius Martin Stein, and even what it was like to work with James Cameron on Titanic.

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Australian JAY KRISTOFF is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction. He is best known for his ILLUMINAE series. We caught up with him to find out more about his new book, NEVERNIGHT…

STARBURST: Tell us about Nevernight…
Jay Kristoff: It’s the first in a trilogy. It’s an epic fantasy series set in a world with three suns. With the suns being what they are, it’s never actually night time, hence the name of the book. The only gets darkness once every three or so years. I had an astrophysicist buddy of mine design a trinary star system that holds true. The story centres around a girl called Mia, who is the daughter of a failed revolutionary. She seeks training at a school of assassins to avenge herself against her father’s killers.

How does it differ from the Lotus War series?
The Lotus War was steampunk mash-up, set in a world inspired by a feudal Japan. The technology was based on a fuel source that was a little like fossil fuels in our own world. So they had blimps and chainsaw katanas and samurai power armour and what-not. This setting, Nevernight, is a little more traditional Euro-centric medieval fantasy. It’s kind of a cross between ancient Rome and Merchant Prince Venice. The city at the heart of the novel is called God’s Grave, an analogue of Venice. It’s a got a series of islands, burst with canals. At the heart of it are The Ribs, big towers of ossified bone. Through the name of the city you can surmise that it’s built around the grave of a god by no one is quite sure of the origins of the myth anymore, it happened so far back in history.

Why are Australian fantasy writers always killing gods?
I don’t know. In Nevernight, things are muddied and lost in the depths of time. People don’t quite know why things are the way they are. There are legends about why there is no night, and why the sun dominates the sky. The God of Light and the suns in the sky are his eyes, constantly looking out at people. He’s supposed to be a protector god, but the flipside of that is you get constant climate effects and you don’t get to sleep because you don’t know when it’s night time. You get enormous storms blowing off the sea every 24 hours, which is the only way life would be possible on a world bathed in sunlight. The idea that this god is beneficent is constantly questioned. How this world came to be and how night became banished is part of the overall meta-plot of the novel.

The idea of God’s Grave came to me first and then I built the world around it. I don’t think I have any problem with the gods that live in my head.

You’re better known for the Young Adult series, Illuminae. How does this contrast?
Well, Illuminae is science fiction, this is a fantasy novel. Nevernight has more violence and a little bit more sex. It’s aimed at the more mature end of the spectrum. Younger readers can get into it, the main protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl, so we’ll get a cross-over in readership. It’s a little darker in tone, a little bit more serious. It’s about a school for assassins, so expect some violence and mayhem along the way.

What can you tell us about the Illuminae movie?
They’re looking for screenwriters. The thing about signing an option for film is that you really do surrender all kind of control of your work over to people. Which is why it’s important you sign it over to people that you trust. Plan B is an amazing company that have done incredible films. They’re obviously excellent filmmakers. You also surrender being in on the loop. Screenwriting is a very different process to writing a novel, so you kind of have to take a step back and let things develop at their own pace.

Why are stories about assassins so popular?
As far as society’s fascination with assassins, I don’t know. It’s a question that I’ve thought about a lot. To me, the challenge as a writer was to make an assassin that the reader could still sympathise with. As far as a vocation goes, killing people solely for money is about an evil an act as you can commit. So trying to have someone who does that, whilst still being an interesting and compelling character was a real challenge for me. The book started with a scene in my head, I think it’s the end of Chapter Five, which is a conversation with Mia and Trick. From that conversation, I just wanted to find out more about the character. I think we have a fondness in our hearts for anti-heroes and Mia is definitely an anti-hero. She’s not on a quest to save the world, she’s driven by really quite selfish goals, she want to avenge herself against the people who wronged her. Finding out about those people and what their motives where and her realising her father wasn’t such a great guy is part of her journey. Exploring those themes, those motivations and exploring her selfishness was really fun.

We can’t really talk about fantasy assassins without mentioning Robin Hobb; how has she inspired your work?
She’s a massive influence. Assassin’s Apprentice is one of my favourite books of all time. I’ve still got my paperback copy that I bought back in 1997 pride of place on my bookshelf right now. Robin is an amazing writer, Fitz is an incredible character and I think the Farseer series is indelibly part of the epic fantasy landscape. I think anyone who writes a book about an assassin is going to be compared to Robin’s work. But she’s brilliant, if anyone tells me that they see similarities between The Farseer Trilogy and the Nevernight Chronicle, I’ll take that as a huge compliment. Robin is a huge influence on me and I think many other fantasy writers. It’s impossible to avoid comparisons. Same with Arya and Game of Thrones, such a compelling character. I welcome any comparisons.

NEVERNIGHT is released via Harper Voyager on August 11th.