interview: Richard Gordon

I interviewed producer Richard Gordon three and a half times. First, in his hotel room at the 1997 Festival of Fantastic Films (Richard flew over to Manchester from New York for the FFF every year while he was still fit enough to do so). In 1999 I submitted this on spec to Tim Lucas at Video Watchdog who said he had been thinking for sometime of a career piece on Richard and asked me to expand the feature with questions about some of the more esoteric aspects of Richard Gordon’s career. This second interview was done over the phone, with some additional material faxed over afterwards.

The combined interview ran to 14,000 words and is the longest magazine piece I ever had published. It ran over 20 pages of VW55 in January 2000. One year later I did another phone interview with Richard specifically about his memories of Bela Lugosi and an edited version of this was published in that year’s SFX Vampire Special. What you see here is the full transcript of this third intervew.

Richard Gordon passed away on Halloween 2011 at the age of 85. He was a sweet, fascinating, enthusiastic, delightful, warm, supportive, busy, loyal gentleman and I never heard a bad word said about him. He spent his life doing what he loved, and who can ask for more than that? RIP, dear friend.


Before you met Bela Lugosi, what was your image of him?
"I thought he would probably be a rather difficult person to get to know, not only from his image on the screen but also because one read interviews and articles that said he was a very private person and that he didn’t mix much with people during the productions. And also he had a language problem, particularly early in his career. In fact it’s always been maintained by many people that when he was doing Dracula on the stage on Broadway he didn’t have full command of the English language and spoke much of his lines phonetically. So I thought that was the sort of person that we were going to meet."

How different was he when you met him?
"He was completely different. He was very warm, he was very friendly. He immediately expressed his appreciation that we had come to see him and that we were going to do an interview, particularly for an English publication. He extended himself in the friendliest possible manner. We went backstage to see him and within minutes he suggested that he and his wife would like to take us out to dinner, and he whisked us off to a rather posh restaurant in the area - the kind of restaurant which certainly at that time in our lives Alex and I would never have come to on our own! And he spent a whole evening with us."

How did you approach him in the first place?
"We saw the advertising in the newspapers that he was coming to the theatre. We telephoned him at the theatre, a day or two before the production was due to open, leaving a message explaining our interest and what we would like to do. And we got a call back - I think it was from his wife - suggesting that we come by on that evening and come backstage to see him."

You did a full interview with him?
"Over the course of the evening, yes."

Were you able to sell that to a British magazine?
"We sent it to a British magazine. There were several British magazines - not the well-known ones like Picturegoer and Picture Show and those - but monthly magazines dealing with films, that were being published right after the war. We had some experience with them in England. Honestly I have to admit that I don’t remember the names. They suggested that we could do some interviews and articles and send them back to London for publication - they would pay us and they would be happy to consider them on a freelance basis."

Presumably this was just after Bela had made Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein?
"I think it must have been. You know, it’s a long time ago!"


Was he still a popular figure who could draw a crowd?
"Yes, he was. Not only to a production like Arsenic and Old Lace but also to the Monogram pictures and serials and old films of his that were still playing around. Because after the Frankenstein/Dracula revival success he, like Boris, had come back into the limelight."

Did he discuss the films he had done for Monogram, which were very cheap?
"He expressed some regret that during a certain period in time those were the only films that were being offered to him. But at the same time, he was grateful to be working and he did his best in all of them. He didn’t brush them off and sleepwalk through them or telephone in his roles. He was one of those people, being the professional that he was since his early days on the stage - and in this respect he was very similar to Boris Karloff - that once he accepted to do something, he went at it with the same enthusiasm and the same care as if it were a major production. He never sloughed off anything he was doing."

A lot of critics say the only good thing in most of the Monograms is Bela.
"Exactly. He realised that by giving it his all he could make something more out of the pictures than just another Monogram film because naturally they would trade on his name and it was his presence in the films that made them more successful than the run of the mill Monogram product."

Was he a bit of an extrovert and a showman, especially regarding the Dracula persona?
"He was really always on stage, and he loved it. Even when we went to a restaurant. Over a period of a couple of years we spent a lot of time with him in New York. He was always Bela Lugosi, if you know what I mean - and I mean that in a good sense, not a derogatory sense. He was maintaining his image. He was enjoying it. He felt that was what the public expected from him and he was going to live up to their expectations."

He would have been in his sixties. Was he still good-looking and distinguished?
"He was very distinguished looking. For a man of his age, he was also still very impressive and handsome. The women all went for him and young girls were also extremely attracted to him. He was aware of that and he capitalised on that!"

How good was his command of English?
"By that time, when we met him, he spoke English very well. He had the strong accent which he had till the day he died but he was fully fluent in the English language by then."

Did he consider himself Hungarian or a naturalised American?
"He considered himself a naturalised American. He was very pro-America and felt that was where his career really came to a head and that was his home."

At that point, he was at retirement age. Did he intend to ever retire, or did he expect something big to be around the corner?
"It was a combination of factors. He didn’t want to retire because acting was his life. We felt he couldn’t afford to retire because he’d been through some pretty tough times. When he was doing well he lived very lavishly; I don’t think he ever thought much of the future. He was married quite a few times. I don’t think he could afford to retire and also I don’t think he had the desire to retire. He enjoyed the spotlight and he was determined to get back into the spotlight.

“The thing that triggered our representation, you might say, was that right from the start he talked about doing a revival tour of Dracula on the stage. He felt and he thought that if it could be set up in England this might be an entry back to Broadway, because if he went to England and did it on the stage in London and it was a success, there was every possibility that it would then be brought to Broadway and he would come to full circle. I think that from the beginning, his interest in Alex and me - and again I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense - was that, being that we were from England and had connections in England, he saw possibilities that we might be able to accomplish something that the other people around him couldn’t do.

“He didn’t have an agent at the time. He had a manager, a young man we met who was also at Seacliff, who was always around him. The manager wasn’t able to do very much for him, in particular not with regard to anything like setting up a tour overseas, and that’s what prompted Bela at a certain point to suggest to us that if we would take over, so to speak, the management of his career while he was in New York, we might be able to accomplish something."

He had been to England twice before, to make The Mystery of the Marie Celeste and Dark Eyes of London. Did he have fond memories of those?
"He had very fond memories of working in England, particularly Dark Eyes of London which he felt was one of the best things he had done. It had offered him a very good dual role and of course the picture was very well regarded at the time. The Mystery of the Marie Celeste was a bit of a disappointment for him because before he went over there and started making the film, they had promised a much grander production which in the end it wasn’t. But he enjoyed being in England. He was always very well received there, very well liked there, and he felt very comfortable working in England."


What was Lilian Lugosi like?
"She was completely devoted to him, certainly at the time that we spent with him. She looked after him in every possible way, she never left his side. She protected him from and against any kind of criticism and hostility and problems which could arise otherwise. She also acted, in some respects, as a nurse, looking after him with his illnesses and his health problems and everything else."

What was his health like at that time?
"His health was good but he suffered from these pains that came from, I think originally, his injuries in the First World War. At least he always maintained that was where it started, He would have attacks of pain which would make it extremely difficult for him to function and she would take care of him with medication and injections and so on."

Were there areas of his life that he wouldn’t talk about?
"Not that I recollect, no."

What were his favourite topics to talk about?
"About his success as a romantic leading man in Hungary and all the great roles he had played there. He did Hamlet, he did Romeo. He was really a highly regarded classical actor. Then he had some success in Germany too, both in films and on the stage, before he came to America. He talked a lot about his years overseas."

You set up two TV shows at this time, Suspense and The Milton Berle Show. How did those come about?
"Those were actually people who approached Bela and wanted him. We helped to negotiate the terms."

So people were actively seeking him out?
"People were seeking him out, particularly while he was living in New York, because of which he wasn’t so much in demand in Hollywood. They knew he was available in the East."

Was he approached about any other work?
"He did a couple of plays with the hope that they might come into New York, but nothing happened like that. He did some personal appearance tours in movie theatres along with showings of his films. Generally he was busy but not doing anything really important which is what he was looking for."


What did Bela think of Boris Karloff and what did Boris think of Bela?
"I have always said - and it’s a fact - that this rivalry between Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and the feud between them was a myth that was perpetrated by Universal in order to promote the films in which they appeared together, like The Raven and The Black Cat. They didn’t have much in common so they didn’t socialise, but they were on perfectly friendly terms when they worked together. Boris actually felt sorry for Bela that Bela’s career had gone downhill the way it did, and felt that a lot of it was Bela’s own fault because he didn’t make the effort to learn the English language and reduce his accent sufficiently to be thought of in Hollywood as an actor who could play other kinds of roles.

“He was sorry that Bela had not had the success that, after playing in Dracula, he should have enjoyed. He often asked about Bela and said, ‘Poor Bela, I’m sorry that things went wrong for him the way they did.’ Bela was a little envious of Karloff’s success but not in a hostile way because although he didn’t talk about it much later, the fact is that, as you know, he was asked to do the Frankenstein film but he turned it down. So sometimes he would say, ‘If it was not for me there would be no Boris Karloff,’ but of course that’s not an accurate appraisal of the situation."

You set up the British tour of Dracula which was long regarded as a disaster but is now known to have played successfully in 22 venues. There was a book about it.
"I contributed to the book and collaborated on the book."

To what extent was it a success or failure?
"It was a failure because it didn’t accomplish what the grand plan was, which was for it to come into London and have a West End production. The whole idea of doing the tour was to create interest and hopefully establish that it was a money-making proposition and enable it to come into London where, if it had a successful run in the West End, one could then have tried to revive it in New York. When I have said in the past that it was a flop, in the overall scheme of things, that’s what it was.

“It was very hard on Bela, travelling the way he had to, doing the performances the way he had to, the conditions under which he had to work. At that stage of his life and at that stage of his health. He persevered with it. It made money in some locations and flopped in others. Overall, we considered it a failure."

Did you use the Hamilton Deane script that Bela performed in 1927?
"Yes."

Did it have to be updated?
"No, it wasn’t updated. It was played in period and as it was originally."

Did you come over and see it?
"I was still in America at that point, when it opened in Brighton. I did not actually see it during the tour, no."


Did you ever see the Broadway revival with Frank Langella in the late 1970s?
"Yes I did. It was a completely different version of Dracula, just like some of the films that have been made since. As far as I’m concerned, Dracula was Bela Lugosi and Dracula was the film that Universal made. All the other variations of it I don’t have that much respect or feeling for."

Why didn’t Dracula make it into the West End?
"I think what was wrong was the management was under-financed and had agreed to do this whole thing in the belief that all they had to do was put Bela Lugosi’s name in front of the theatre and that’s all that was necessary. But there was nothing to back it up. From all accounts I’ve heard, and from the many letters I got from Lillian at the time, it was very second-rate. The whole production was done on the cheap and it just didn’t back up Lugosi’s performance."

Was there much press interest in Lugosi’s visit to England?
"There was considerable interest when he arrived and there was considerable interest when the production opened, but - except for the local papers of course - the press didn’t follow it around."

When it finished...
"It wasn’t really that it was finished. It was that the management ran out of money and decided they couldn’t continue with it. Nothing had happened with regard to a West End production up to that point - and they just shut it down."

How did that lead into Mother Riley Meets the Vampire?
"It left Bela stranded in England with very little money and no plans for the future because it was unexpected. It was at that point that I came to London and tried to do something to help him financially and also to get him back to the United States. George Minter was doing the Mother Riley series; I was representing George Minter and Renown Pictures in America at the time, on the distribution of his pictures. George and I reached an agreement to do this film, which was almost ready to go anyway, although it wasn’t quite the picture that it became when Lugosi joined it. But it was a film that was very close to starting production, so it was a great opportunity for Bela to get some work immediately, and also to use the money to return to the United States."

What did the backers of the film think when the idea of Bela being in it was raised?
"There was really only George Minter who had to make the decision, although he must have discussed it with Arthur Lucan at the time. George had the rights to the Mother Riley series. He had already made two or three of the pictures, and I don’t think he had to consult anybody else."

How did Bela and Arthur Lucan get on together?
"They really never understood each other! Arthur Lucan was always Old Mother Riley - on stage or off - and always behaved accordingly. You never saw him at the studios when he was working except in the Old Mother Riley get-up. He used to arrive at the studio already fully dressed and made-up and he would leave the studio the same way. They came from two such totally different backgrounds and two totally different personalities and never quite understood each other.

“The biggest problem was that Bela, with his stage training and years of experience, would take a script and very quickly learn it until he knew it off by heart and stick to it absolutely during the filming; and Lucan was used to ad-libbing and going off the script and doing all kinds of things when shooting started that weren’t in the original screenplay. This was something that Bela found very hard to cope with. This was the problem when he was on the Milton Berle television show - that Berle started ad-libbing and Bela couldn’t follow it. He wasn’t prepared for it."

Ad-libbing aside, did Bela enjoy doing comedy?
"Yes, he did. He enjoyed it very much. For instance, he was very pleased with his role in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which was after all a take-off on his own characterisation. I think he would gladly have done more comedy if it had been offered to him. But he couldn’t really cope with Lucan."

That was his first film for three or four years - was he glad to be in front of a camera again?
"I think he was glad to be working. Let’s put it that way."

Did he prefer stage or film work?
"He preferred stage work, if he could get something worthwhile."

Did he go back to America after Mother Riley?
"He went straight back to America as soon as the shooting was finished and the studio released him. He immediately went back to America and he went directly back to Hollywood. He didn’t stay in New York any longer. At that point, my brother took over the taking care of him and I was really sent out of the picture. That was the last time I saw him."

Did you follow the last few years of his life?
"I followed it from a distance. But I was then busy in New York with my own production plans and we drifted apart."

How do you think Bela wanted to be remembered?
"He never really talked about anything like that in those terms, but I’m sure he wanted to be remembered as the star of Dracula."


What’s your most abiding memory of Bela?
"My most abiding memory of him is the extreme loyalty he had towards anybody who either did something for him or was making a genuine effort to try and do something for him. He was a very generous man, very warm-hearted. I think as a result of that a lot of people tried to take advantage of him also, and that’s where Lillian came in and tried to keep a very strict control over things. But he was a very warm and outgoing personality.”

interview originally posted 3rd November 2011

interview: Harold Gasnier

I interviewed actor/director Harold Gasnier by e-mail in August 2008 after reviewing his film The Demon Within.


What did you set out to achieve with The Demon Within and to what extent did you feel you achieved that?
“I set out to achieve the look and feel of an ‘80s-style horror. Something that made you think, more than just a slasher picture. I feel this was achieved, but primarily I wanted the movie to look good. Great photography, good looking cast and above average performances.”

How did you gather cast and crew together?
“The cast were picked initially from various casting notices placed on a few good sites. This was shortlisted to about forty after the initial CV and photo session. The shortlisted ones were invited to live auditions and from the taped auditions the final cast selected. I was looking for fresh new faces that worked together.

“The crew was a different matter. I have worked in the past with the DOP and he could interpret my ideas - but more than that I could trust him. The rest of the crew were either word-of-mouth or once again crewing notices placed on the web. Nearness to the locations and availability on the four-week shoot were paramount, as being low budget our greatest expense was accommodation and excellent food. Keeping them all well fed and watered meant it was the most joyful of movies I have worked on.”

What aspects of your experience directing your previous films were you able to use on The Demon Within?
“In a nutshell, planning. As much as you can plan a movie, especially when there are a lot of outdoor locations, that is vital. Especially as the weather before the first day of photography had been dreadful, just weeks of constant rain. On the first day, as if by magic, it cleared up. A good schedule, reasonable hours and a good night’s sleep are also high on the list.”

How does being an actor help (or hinder) you as a director - and vice versa?
“Being an actor helps you know what the cast are thinking and helps you working with them to conquer their inexperience. Explaining to them why you are doing something instead of being left in the dark. After all we are, in a form, training the actors of tomorrow. Going into technical overdrive alienates them; bring them on your side and you can show them what you want and get it. I don't feel being an actor hinders the production but I did make one concession as an actor: rehearsal. Rehearsal before first day of photography commenced. This is an expense that low budget films often can't take, but believe me, if we all know what we are doing before the first day of shooting it speeds up the process much more. Have your DOP there and work out those angles and that lighting.”

Geek Alert: what parts did you play in Doctor Who and Blake’s 7?
“I am surprised at the attention Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 still attract after all this time. At the time I didn't think it was going to be a cult sort of thing. In Doctor Who I played a Parliamentarian in ‘The Awakening’ and another character in ‘Destiny of the Daleks’ but for the life of me can't think who it was. Both with Peter Davidson. Blake’s 7 was again two episodes in which I played Zordon, a Mecronian with the lovely Glynis Barber in a catsuit - very nice behind had Soo Lin.”

What are your plans for your next project?
“What next? Hmm, where do I start? First off an anthology with three other directors. No title as yet but set in a brothel. Casting early September, shooting mid to end, ready for AFM in November. Then I have a script being optioned and three others in development, plus I am midway through a Summer Season as an actor. Life is never dull, I wouldn't have it any other way.”

Website: www.24carrotfilms.co.uk
interview originally posted 11th August 2008

The Great Bear Scare

Director: Hal Mason
Writer: John Barrett
Producer: Mary Roscoe
Cast: Ted E Bear and Friends
Country: USA
Year of release: 1983
Reviewed from: UK VHS

Big disappointment, this one. It takes a lot to be disappointed by a 23-year-old, 22-minute cartoon about a teddy bear because, well, expectations are naturally low, but let me explain.

Back in 1992, when I moved to Stoke-on-Trent, I spotted this tape in a video store. There on the cover was ‘Ted E Bear’ - blue hat, blue waistcoat, green bow tie - and ranged around him were Dracula, a werewolf, a witch and a Karloffian Frankenstein monster. The sleeve blurb about ‘monsters’ naturally led me to believe that this was some sort of House of Frankenstein-style monsterfest. And I love monsterfests!

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, The Monster Squad, Mad Monster Party, Mad Mad Mad Monsters. Heck, I even enjoyed Van Helsing (dumb, but fun). Any time you cram a bunch of classic monsters together in one film, you can count on at least one person in the audience. I included The Great Bear Scare in a list of Frankenstein films that I was compiling in those days, when the nascent internet was not yet a feature of film research and you had to plough through books and magazines and, well, browse video stores. But I never watched the video. Had no time, had no money.

Now here it is in Help the Aged for 50p. Now, I get to watch it. And you know what? There’s no Frankenstein monster in this film! Nor is there a werewolf! I’ve been had.

Here’s the plot. Rumours are circulating in “beautiful downtown Bearbank” that tomorrow night all the monsters are going to emerge from nearby Monster Mountain and take over the world, starting with Bearbank itself. Ted E Bear bravely volunteers to go and investigate the mountain, a news story which is covered by Patti Bear on K-BEAR news (the cartoon actually opens with a ‘we interrupt this programme for breaking news’ caption).

Dracula and a witch named Miss Witch see this news report and Drac decides to fly down to Bearbank and check the place out. Unfortunately his magical spell of ‘Lumpkin pumpkin, make me a bat!’ doesn’t work very well so although he flies there he has to walk back, accepting a lift on the way from Ted E Bear (who doesn’t recognise him).

Ted discovers that inside the mountain is a whole city populated by monsters, but these are generic big, ugly monsters, plus assorted witches and ghosts. There is a mummy glimpsed briefly in one shot but there are no werewolves and there’s no Frankenstein. I want my 50p back!

Ted has been told that “bears are afraid of nothing” so he reasons that if bears are afraid of monsters, then monsters are really nothing. The monsters chase him around the monster city (which includes locations such as Madison Scare Garden and the Vampire State Building) before he escapes and is picked up by Patti Bear in her news blimp. He broadcasts a message back to Bearbank that the bears should not be afraid of the monsters so that, when the invasion starts, the ghouls are easily routed by bears who do little more than shout boo and occasionally pour pots of honey on them.

I’m sure there must be a moral in here somewhere but it’s hopelessly confused. Is it that we shouldn’t be afraid of monsters, or that monsters don’t exist, or that we shouldn’t be afraid of anything, or... what? Like most people, I get annoyed when moral messages are spelled out simplistically, but in this instance it’s all very muddled. It’s like there are several bits of different morals all bolted together in the hope that one general moral will emerge.

Then there’s the animation, which is among the cheapest I have ever seen. Most movements are done as a simple dissolve from one character position to another, so while the movement isn’t jerky, it’s very limited and there’s no real inbetweening. The exceptions to this are facial movements, which are properly animated, and anything moving in a straight line without changing shape, such as Ted’s car or Patti’s airship.

The Great Bear Scare is a sort of sequel to The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, a 1973 DePatie-Freleng production although the only shared credits are Tom Smothers as the voice of Ted E Bear and ‘ghost writer’ (as he is credited here - ho ho, very satirical) John Barrett, who in ‘73 shared writing duties with Larry Spiegel. Both animated specials are based on books by Barrett who also wrote Ted E Bear books on Thanksgiving and Easter, although neither of those seems to have been animated.

Smothers, of course, was half of the comedy folk act the Smothers Brothers. Largely unknown here in the UK, I used to have half a dozen LPs by them which were unfailingly hysterical. Over the years he has made numerous appearances on TV, and occasionally in films, usually with his brother Dick. The rest of the voice cast are Louis Nye (a frequent stooge for Steve Allen who was in Larry Cohen’s Full Moon High) as Dracula, Lucille Bliss (The Secret of NIMH, Robots) as Miss Witch, jazz singer Sue Raney as Patti Bear, Hal Smith (hundreds of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s cartoons including Owl in many Pooh animations) as town mayor C Emory Bear and Hans Conried (Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan) as ursine scientist Professor Werner von Bear. That last name is a gag on rocket scientist Werner Von Braun, of course.

Director Hal Mason was a well-known animator who worked with Walter Lantz on characters such as Woody Woodpecker and Oswald Rabbit. His most famous creation was the Pillsbury Doughboy. The Inaccurate Movie Database confuses him with another Hal Mason who was production supervisor on many classic Ealing comedies. He directed a Chipmunks Christmas Special in 1982 and this appears to have been his follow-up project although I can find no other actual directing credits for him. He passed away in 1986.

Producer Mary Roscoe had worked on various Warner Brothers properties in the 1970s including Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century. She was also responsible for the Americanisation of the Japanese Voltron cartoon series. The Great Bear Scare appears to be the only credit of any sort for either production company DimenMark International Inc or executive producer Thomas A Mayfield.

Music on the cartoon is credited to Thomas Loose and Edward Yelin. Loose was a prolific composer of stock music tracks which have been used in Night of the Living Dead, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a whole bunch of Russ Meyer pictures, Trader Hornee, The Adult Version of Jekyll and Hide and many other movies far, far removed from animated teddy bears.

The Great Bear Scare has a few very weak gags, paper-thin characters, a plot that makes little sense, an unclear moral message, limited animation and no Frankenstein or werewolf, despite what the sleeve promises. It’s pretty rubbish all round, to be honest.

MJS rating: D
review originally posted 18th November 2006

interview: Debbie Rochon

After years of watching and reviewing Debbie Rochon movies, I finally got around to asking Debbie for an interview after watching Ivan Zuccon's Wrath of the Crows. Debbie kindly answered these questions by email in July 2013.


How did you come to first work with Ivan Zuccon on Colour from the Dark?
"Ivan had contacted me to play Lucia in Colour. At the time I hadn't heard of him so I watched his previous films and was really impressed with his style and vision. It was pretty easy to say yes to working with Ivan after seeing his work. He has the understanding that film is a visual medium and tells his stories with such a unique style. Sounds pretty obvious but many film makers do not tell a story with visuals and don't have such a deep understanding of cinema as Ivan does. Plus the script was really amazing. This was a character that I was so excited to play. I am forever grateful I had the opportunity. I'm very proud of the final outcome."

What were your expectations when you flew out to Italy to make Colour, and how closely did they match what you found?
"I had very high expectations, because, as I said, I knew I was walking into a situation where I would be working with a very talented director and crew. The cast was extraordinary as well. But working one on one with Ivan I have to say it surpassed my expectations. His only concern while making the movie was the movie itself. There is no ego on his sets. There is no worrying about how he will go about selling it. While shooting he is only functioning as a pure artist and he enjoys every part of it. This makes for a perfect situation for any actor. He knows what he wants and knows what is best and loves collaborating. It was one of the highlights of my acting career."


As an actor, what are the contrasting challenges and opportunities of something serious and quite powerful like Ivan's films vs the broad comedy of, say, Troma films?
"I have made a lot of serious films but often they are not as widely seen as they should be. That being said, I do enjoy comedy quite a bit. Comedy allows you to make very big choices and really have fun with them. Like absurdist theatre. I have always loved working with Lloyd Kaufman because he also allows for a lot of collaboration. Not only is it fun working with Lloyd but some of my lifelong friendships are because of Troma. Tiffany Shepis, Trent Haaga, Doug Sakmann, Gabe Friedman, Jamie Greco and more including Lloyd himself. Ivan and his family, crew and Italian cast are much the same in the sense that they become family. You admire them, trust them and sincerely love them. The seriousness of Ivan's films is just as engaging. His sets are perfectly run so that you have the ability to really do your work and the work is what's respected and nurtured. I love working on the subject matter that he chooses. Very demanding in a great way and very gratifying when it all comes together."


What is your take on the allegorical/metaphysical nature of Wrath of the Crows, and what ideas were you able to bring to the character of Debbie?
"You could describe Wrath as a combination of Anagogic and Topological interpretations of the story Ivan is telling. Set in a visceral, violent, horror-friendly setting it has a pretty powerful punch and is equally beautiful as it is brutal to watch. In my opinion it gives a wider variety of people the ability to enjoy a film like this. It completely delivers in a visual capacity as it does in a 'film that has something to say' capacity. This is exactly the type of film I enjoy as a viewer. I hope it finds the great audience and distribution it really deserves. I also think with these qualities going for it, it will be the type of film that will stand the test of time as the subject matter is timeless itself. The role was written for me, and that's a pretty big compliment in itself. After reading the script I felt that, for my role to forward the film and to represent a female very different from the others, I needed to focus on the anger that comes from betrayal, which is where my character first turns the corner that leads her down the path where we find her."

How has Ivan progressed as a film-maker in the five years between Colour and Wrath?
"He has always had the most incredible eye for film. I think he is growing into a film maker that can't be denied. You can look at his first films and see incredible talent, this is very rare. But with time and certainly his most recent film he is tackling not just subject matter but creative visual story telling to a true masters level. To me his is a true master of cinema. One of the greats of this time."


You worked with several of your Wrath co-stars on your directorial debut Model Hunger: what can you tell me about this - and when will we get to see it?
"Model Hunger was written and produced by James Morgart. We completed principle photography and the film is almost hitting the picture lock stage of post-production. It's a great tale of what becomes of a woman who was rejected many years ago by the modeling and acting business because of her body shape - she is not a size zero (Twiggy-like). Lynn Lowry plays the lead Ginny to perfection, a vengeful woman who has taken to 'evening the playing ground' by torturing and devouring young women who idolise and attempt to personify this unattainable idea of beauty. Tiffany Shepis plays her new neighbour who has a lot of psychological problems of her own but is convinced something evil is happening next door at Ginny's. Tiffany is really incredible in her role. Wrath star Brian Fortune, who plays Colin in the film, is also brilliant. I couldn't be happier with the entire cast - every character is played perfectly in my opinion. I am so proud of this cast. I can't wait for people to see all of them in this movie."

website: www.DebbieRochon.com (also: www.ModelHunger.com)

Occupying Ed

Director: Steve Balderson
Writer: Jim Lair Beard
Producer: Steve Balderson
Cast: Christopher Sams, Holly Hinton, John Werskey
Country: USA
Year of release: 2013
Reviewed from: online screener
Website: www.dikenga.com

After making The Casserole Club, Steve Balderson directed two lightweight capers about Americans abroad getting mixed up in international crime shenanigans. Culture Shock was shot guerilla-style on the streets of London, The Far Flung Star likewise in Hong Kong. These two films represented a radical departure for Balderson and I would be lying if I said that I thought either really works. However, I can fully understand the catharsis that Steve needed after the intensity of Watch Out, Stuck! and The Casserole Club and hence his decision to indulge himself with a couple of ‘movies’ as opposed to his previous ‘films’.

Well, now Steve Balderson is back with Occupying Ed, a return to (a) form and (b) his home town of Wamego, Kansas. Steve’s body of work is notable for its diversity but his strength has always been in his exploration of characters and relationships. Stuck! and The Casserole Club - and indeed Firecracker and even Pep Squad - explored the relationships between a group of characters in a clearly defined environment (prison, suburbia, travelling carnival, high school). The anomaly in his filmography is Watch Out in which he explores one individual’s internal relationships, collapsing the environment into a single character.

Occupying Ed is something new from Steve Balderson: a romance. Just two characters, one relationship and an anonymous American small town as backdrop. The girl is a free-spirited English chick working as a waitress in a cafe that serves ‘vegan lasagne’. The boy is an uptight tax accountant. It’s an off-the-shelf set-up that is almost iconic of contemporary US indie cinema and this may very well prove to be Steve’s most accessible film since Pep Squad.

Except...

Nothing is ever simple in Wamego. There is a love triangle in this film. Okay, so: three characters, three relationships. That’s fine. That’s been the basis of many, many movies. No problem.

Except...

I told you: nothing is ever simple. This is a love triangle where we never see one of the characters, never see one of the relationships, and where two of the characters are the same person. Like all - well, most - Steve Balderson films, Occupying Ed is much more than the sum of its parts. It is something special, something magical, something unique. I loved it.

Christopher Sams (also in The Far Flung Star) stars as Ed: mild-mannered, single, thin, clean, white guy. British actress Holly Hinton (also in Culture Shock) is Nicole, the mysterious woman who seems to be stalking him and who possibly has some connection with Ed’s occasional black-outs. Ed is losing days at a time, yet he is apparently still functioning during these black-outs, even still going to work.

What we gradually discover, as indeed does Ed, is that he has an alter ego, Helena. During those black-outs, Helena takes over Ed’s body. And Nicole is her girlfriend. So there’s our offbeat love triangle. Nicole is in love with Helena, Helena is in love with Nicole, but Nicole shares a body with Ed, whose relationship with both Helena and Nicole forms the focus of this unique love story.

In our first act, at least, there is a glorious ambiguity to this set-up as we - and Ed - try to work out what precisely is going on. Is Ed possessed by someone else’s spirit? Is Helena just a psychological artefact of some sort of mental health problem. Or is Helena the real person and perhaps Ed is the ‘other personality’? Curiously, the story this most reminded me of was Jekyll, Stephen Moffat’s six-part BBC TV updated retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic. As in that series, there are two personalities sharing a single body who never meet but are aware of each other’s existence through third parties and through the situations they find themselves in whenever control of the corpus returns to their id.

The other comparison that sprang to mind while watching Occupying Ed is the most most famous two-sided love triangle of all: Lois Lane, Clark Kent and Superman. So there are precedents. Sort of.

Whether or not we ever meet Helena on screen is something I want to gloss over, but certainly for the first two acts she’s completely absent and everything we - and Ed - find out comes from Nicole and their two social circles. Helena, like Nicole, works in a cafe managed by June (the ubiquitous Pleasant Gehman) - but she is also able to take on Ed’s work at the tax office where his practical-joke-loving boss Bruce (Chris Pudio) says he doesn’t care what Ed wears to work.

In fact, everyone seems very accepting of Helena - she’s clever, funny, good with kids, hard-working - which doesn’t exactly do wonders for Ed’s self-confidence. In opposition to this liberal view is Ed’s older brother Troy (a nicely balanced performance by John Werskey: The Far Flung Star, Bite Marks) who, while certainly not a right-wing redneck nutjob, nevertheless finds it difficult to come to terms with the sight of his brother out in public in a dress. (Not showing us this is a sound move: this is a film which actually benefits from tell, don’t show.)

Of course, the nature of the film demands that Ed and Nicole gradually fall into and out of love. It’s that old, old story: boy meets girl (who is the lesbian lover of his transvestite alter ego), boy loses girl (who is the lesbian lover of his transvestite alter ego), boy gets girl (who is the lesbian lover of his transvestite alter ego) back. In fact, there is a complexity to Ed and Nicole’s rocky relationship (possibly because the relationship is, let’s face it, complex) which makes the narrative here seem less like a three-act structure and more like a 23-act structure. But the ups and downs flow naturally and lead to a satisfying conclusion.

What no-one ever comments on - the elephant in the room - is the, er, physicality of all this. To put it bluntly, Helena has a hairy, flat chest and a dick - which is pretty butch, even for a lesbian. But as with so much else, the glossing over of such details adds to our enjoyment of the storytelling - and to Ed’s bewilderment.

While not exactly a romcom, Occupying Ed is played with a light, indie touch that makes the whole 90 minutes a delight (Steve calls it a ‘romantic dramedy’). Supporting the two outstanding lead performances are a cast of well-rounded minor characters including postman Hank (Dwight Tolar), psychiatrist Dr Frank (Melissa Atchison), her gay secretary Lonnie (Ben Windholz) and waitress Lucy (Amanda Deibert, producer of popular YouTube musical LucasFilm/Disney mash-up Bonjour Star Wars!). Balderson regular Garrett Swann - one of the few actors in both of the overseas caper movies - plays the local pastor.

With legislation around same-sex marriage currently being debated on both sides of the Atlantic, Occupying Ed couldn’t be more topical if it came with a free 2014 wall-planner. It’s a film which will play equally well to both ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ audiences (in the sense that those might be defined audience sectors, as I’m not sure either exists in real life). This is exactly the sort of convoluted relationship tale that film festival programmers love and I suspect critics will love it to. It’s a real pleasure to spend an hour and a half in the company of Ed and Nicole (and Helena) and afterwards there is a great deal to think about. Steve’s films always leave one with a great deal to think about but not since Pep Squad has he made a film which could really be described as ‘enjoyable’ (and even that was a black comedy based around jealousy and violence).

The script for Occupying Ed (originally entitled Part-time Waitress) was written by actor/blogger Jim Lair Beard - and a finely crafted piece of writing it is indeed, perfectly suited to Steve’s directorial style. With an easy-on-the-ear soundtrack of contemporary US folk tunes and expert cinematography by Daniel G Stephens (The Far Flung Star, Anatomy of the Tide), Occupying Ed ticks all the boxes that we expect from a Steve Balderson joint.

Could this be an indicator of where Steve is heading? Perhaps we can see those previous, intense films as thesis, the brace of on-the-run comedies as antithesis, and this as the ensuing synthesis. Perhaps, Steve still being a young man, he is embarking here into the next period of his career, effectively combining his defiantly unique style and approach with the expectations and requirements of cinema-going America (and the world).

From Firecracker to The Casserole Club, Steve has ploughed his own furrow, effectively flipping the bird to established ideas of how you make films and (as the second Wamego documentary made clear) how you distribute films. But something extraordinary has happened. Steve’s iconoclastic individualism has become mainstream, not because Steve has sold out but because, incredibly, the world of film-making has come to him. Years ago he said: I don’t need a distributor for Firecracker, I’ll distribute it myself - and that was seen as a brave move. But now that’s what indie film-makers do as a matter of routine. Not by roadshowing a print, admittedly, but by distributing online. We are all Steve Baldersons now.

Occupying Ed, meanwhile, is a delightful film, carried by wonderful acting, beautifully sympathetic direction, a word-perfect script and most of all a brilliant conceit. By exploring an idea which (like so much of Steve’s work) is just half a step beyond reality, Occupying Ed broadens its unique subject matter to a whole world of ideas. This isn’t a film about split personalities, it’s not a film about inadvertent transvestism, it’s not a film about part-time waitresses or small-town America. It’s a film about life and love and sexuality and gender and identity and acceptance. Big issues but not presented in any simplistic or didactic way.

Following his brief diversion to England and China, it’s great to have Steve Balderson back in Kansas, working at the top of his game, making what could conceivably be his best film so far. He has been on an awfully big adventure, but there’s no place like home.

MJS rating: A