|
Interview:
So Alex what’s your film BLOOD CAR
about?
In the near future gas prices are
over $30 a gallon and a guy invents a car that runs on
blood. That’s the easiest way to say it. And I should also
say that the film is pretty silly and fun, or to others-
tasteless and obscene.
Would you consider this a horror
movie?
Not really. We started with the
intention of doing a horror movie but we failed on that
front. It is a comedy, with some satirical undertones. We
like to laugh and write jokes and poke at people more than
try for something actually scary or horrific. We just want
to be sure were making a movie no one has seen before.
That’s the really important thing.
Did you have any films in mind
while you were writing and shooting the picture? Any
inspirations?
Oh yeah, sure. I’m a huge Sam
Fuller fan. The way his movies have themes that are taken
straight from newspaper headlines is something that always
interests me. Roger Corman’s Bucket of Blood was a big
influence too. That movie is basically about a guy trying to
be accepted and get girls, and to do so he has to do some
horrible things. The idea of people trying to help society
through science and it backfiring on them comes from a lot
films. I love that idea. The guy in our film, Archie, is
trying to help society by designing a car that runs on Wheat
Grass and he accidentally makes one that runs on blood. He
has only good intentions that all go to hell.
Another thing we do in the film is
borrow from everywhere. Myself and the co-writer, editor and
DP Adam Pinney always talk in movies about the way we write
and shoot and edit. It is always something like, “Let’s try
a little thing like the Wild Bunch here or some lighting
like Natural Born Killers or let’s do a gag from The
Shining, but make it funny.” We’re movie geeks so everything
is a hodge-podge of movie references, some of theme we might
not even know about.
So I’m curious. Where does one
come up with the idea of a BLOOD CAR?
Riding in the car, shooting around
ideas with Adam Pinney and Hugh Braselton- someone says, “A
car that runs on blood.” Then we start laughing and throwing
around jokes and we go from there. That’s what we always do
when we hang out, talk about movies and pitch ideas and see
if anything sticks, and Blood Car was not only funny to us,
but the idea was something we could pull off having very
little money. There’s something about the idea of a car that
runs on blood that excuses the movie (to me anyway) from
having to pull out all the big budget bells and whistles.
I noticed your main character of
Archie likes to be urinated on and wear oven mitts during
sexual intercourse. Is this character based on anyone you
know? It’s OK, you can tell us.
Oh yeah. No one has ever asked
that, before. When I was growing up my parents were really
good friends with some really interesting people that liked
to party. I was really young then and could be wrong but I
remember seeing Rudy Giuliani, Barbara Bush, Oliver North
and other misfits like them hanging around (I have a very
vivid image of Ann Landers with her nipples on fire on my
4th birthday) You should know, my parents were famous for
having really awesome parties that these people could show
up to and let their hair down.
They would always lay under a glass
coffee table and watch Lewis Grizzard poop on it- they
thought that was hilarious. Every time Clarence Thomas would
show up there would be tons of cocaine. (Tons to me when I
was 6) They really got into cattle prods and peanut butter
in the summer of ‘88. Newt Gingrich got his hands on some
peyote and my date for Senior Prom saw him reenacting the
Ali/Foreman fight in the cat box. That ruined my date!
My Dad still jokes about those
times and gave me Caligula on DVD for my birthday and asked
if I wanted to watch some home movies. He’s such a jokester.
Lately since my folks are getting older the parties are a
little more low-key, like a small get-together where Sean
Hannity and Tucker Carlson suck off some midgets dressed
like Care Bears. Everyone gets older.
One of the reasons I feel the
film works as well as it does is because of the awesome
cast. Where did you find your principal leads Mike Brune,
Anna Chlumsky and Katie Rowlett?
I’ve known Mike Brune and Katie
Rowlett for about 6 or 7 years now, maybe longer. We all
went to college together at GSU in Atlanta. After Blood Car
Katie, Mike and I had a huge falling out. They both just
turned into assholes. Mike had some really promising acting
gigs after Blood Car. He got all kinds of jobs in smaller
parts on a ton of television shows- Lost, 30 Rock, one gig
as a WWF manager. And he blew it every single time. He was
always late and “on something” his yoga instructor told me.
He called Alec Baldwin a fascist in
a table read and they got into a fistfight. He always had a
pack of people with him and none of them had a car or would
pay for their food or drinks. The kicker was when he wrote
this script in which he played Charles Lindbergh and was
killing women in St. Louis with orgasms. He was to star and
direct. He went off his rocker and gained a good 220 pounds.
Katie Rowlett actually realized
after the film came out that the nasty things she said and
did in Blood Car might embarrass her friends and family. She
went what I call “God Crazy” She plays the tambourine and
sings in one of these cool-new-hipster-Christian bands. She
speaks to High School kids about no sex is the only safe
sex. She goes to bus stops and gets kids to pray for prayer
in schools. She has a very superior “I feed the homeless,
therefore I can judge you” tone of voice she uses when
leaving sermons on my answering machine. She has a long list
of teachers, youth sport coaches and YMCA volunteers that
she has disgraced because of religious differences and wild
accusations. And she runs a retreat every summer to help
rehabilitate gay people back into straight ones called Get
That Gay Out.
Anna Chlumsky lived
in/beside/around a dumpster behind my apartment. After the
My Girl thing she couldn’t keep her head together and from
what I hear had some tough times. I always caught her going
through my trash, looking for half finished beers and heels
of bread. She would draw crude, avant-garde headshots on
cardboard with ketchup and mustard packets and submit them
for projects. As a joke, one of the guys in our production
office brought her in for a reading. Everyone laughed and
thought it was so funny to watch her struggle through the
lines for the Vietnam Vet character in Blood Car- but I
could see through her shit covered face and knew that if we
cleaned her up and got her a better looking glass eye should
could probably pull off a pretty awesome performance.
Were there any major changes
from the original draft of the script and the final product?
Oh indeed there was. There used to
be a whole subplot involving one of Archie’s students. It
just didn’t work so we changed some things in the edit room
and shot a couple extra scenes. Things always change from
idea to actual footage and you have to adapt to whether
things were better or worse than you planned. We added the
dead baby ending and the agents in the control room in post
too. We also once had a drag race scene in the film manly to
tip our hats to Two Lane Blacktop. Boy, that scene was a
nightmare.
If the Blood Car could talk what
would its catch phrase be?
Save Gas…Drive BLOOD CAR. Or Hey
Hey Hey! I’m the Blood Car- Look at me! (Uhhh that was
terrible)
It seems like the majority of
horror films I watch these days are completely unoriginal.
Yours is the complete opposite. Were you guys intentionally
going for something off beat and different? It seems like
you could have easily had a killer car running around town.
I don’t like to know what is going
to happen in a film. It is just boring. I want to be
entertained and not see something I have seen a million
times. Adam Pinney says it best, “What’s your favorite cover
band?”
If you have an idea to do something
exactly as it has been done before- I don’t really see the
point. Originality is essential in making movies. Or putting
two ideas together that no one has done. That’s why I watch
movies- too see something new. So the idea of just doing
some killer car movie never really crossed our mind, you
can’t really get excited enough to embark on a feature film
with no money and get people to help you out if you’re doing
some half assed idea. Maybe you can get half assed people in
on that. So yes, we are always going for something
intentionally off beat and different. If people want to view
something that will play it safe and do something that won’t
be too challenging or different they can turn on the TV,
right?
Did you have a favorite moment
in the film? Mine is the sex scene in the junk yard. I just
love the idea of a brunette taking it from behind in a pick
up truck surrounded by dirt and crushed cars. That’s almost
as awesome as wearing oven mitts during sex. So what’s
yours?
My favorite moment in the film in
when I’m watching it with an audience and they realize that
Archie is going to put Mrs. Butterfield in the trunk. It
holds a really wide shot for quite a while and the audience
collectively goes, “Ahhhh, I get it.” All together. It is a
great moment. I also like the moment in the film when we see
Lorraine’s (Anna Chlumsky) doodle on her note bad. That shot
usually sends someone towards the door. I like when people
have polarizing opinions of a film. If you make something
for everyone you’re really not making anything for anyone.
So have you seen any other
horror flicks that have caught your eye in 2007?
Yeah. Murder Party was fun and
funny. It is out on video now and in early 2008 The Signal
will be out in theatres. Pretty awesome movie- nothing like
Blood Car. I also saw Susperia for the first time in 2007. I
know it came out in the 70’s but it is so damn cool. And I
saw my first Russ Myers film in 2007 called Up! IT IS A WORK
OF GENIUS. Everybody steals from that guy. Wait, that’s not
horror. Was The Host a horror film? Really loved that movie.
What are you working on next
Alex?
All of us here at Fake Wood Wallpaper are all working on the
next movie. Mike Brune has a short he wrote and directed
called The Adventure www.theadventurefilm.com that will have
its World Premiere at the International Film Festival of
Rotterdam. That’ll be cool. We are doing a 35mm blow up of
the short, which looks amazing. Hopefully you’ll see it at a
film festival near you, or hopefully you can request it at a
film festival near you.
Myself, Adam Pinney, Mike Brune and
Hugh Braselton are all writing feature length scripts which
involve Existentialism, fireworks, divorce, plagiarism,
armed robbery, Little League Baseball, dinosaurs with laser
guns, incest and a giant bull. So hopefully you’ll be seeing
our next feature film real soon.
Thanks so much for the
interview, any final thoughts or comments?
Not really, was that not good
enough for you? Jeez you got some nerve, pal.
|
Writer/Director
Alex Orr
