Stuart Gordon: Lovecraft and Beyond
By Greg Reifsteck
Stuart Gordon and I grew up on the same Chicago streets, in a small community called Albany Park. We might have been born a few generations apart, but the same Midwestern sensibility drove us to escape through the world of horror.
It was at a dingy little theater called the Lincoln Village that I first beheld an unrated print of Re-Animator. As the reels un-spooled, I knew I was watching the unique and grisly vision of a director who would only improve with age.
No matter what the project, Gordon's stamp has always been visible. Mild-mannered folk are thrust into extreme situations and forced to find their way out through a maze of obstacles. Science is always involved and often directed at extreme, dangerous and outrageous ends. And there is always one character, brazenly hungry for power, who pays the price in the final reel for wanting to hoard it all for himself. Oh yeah, and there's usually some screaming woman and lots of blood splattering around.
I sat down with Gordon one afternoon to find out if this Windy City native still has the boyish imagination to pull off another macabre tale; to make our skin crawl and our funny bones rattle.
PENNY BLOOD: When did the theater bug first bite you?
GORDON: We had a comedy troupe called The Human Race, and we did skit comedy professionally while we were in college over weekends. But the real serious theater happened when I was trying to get into a film course at the university, and it was full.
So I took an acting course instead. And one of the requirements was that you had to be in a play. The play they were doing was called Marat Sade, which is very much an audience participation piece. So I came up with the idea of having the audience become a character in the play. I fell in love with that. I used to think that theater was like bad movies, because I'd always have these really bad seats in the second balcony and be watching these really small figures overacting badly, as if they were puppets.
But I finally realized the potential, so I started the Organic Theatre Company in Chicago, and did it for the next 15 years.
PENNY BLOOD: How much of an influence did all of this theater background have on you when you did your first feature film, 1985's Re-Animator?
GORDON: It was funny, because we used to use a lot of movie tricks onstage. We used real squibs exploding in people's chests in our play called Cops. We had a swashbuckling pirate one called Bloody Bess that was also very cinematic. We used effects in that one where we had a pirate slit a character's throat and hung him upside down and we had him bleed into a bucket for about 10 minutes. So in a sense we were doing movies onstage without a camera.
So when I did Re-Animator, I used a lot of the similar techniques. I think out of the effects in the movie two of them are optical, and everything else is done practically. I found out in a lot of ways it made things easier because we used to do theater in 3/4 round, so you had to fool an audience that was on three sides of you. With a movie all you have to fool is that one eye, the camera.
PENNY BLOOD: Of course we have to bring up what is probably horror film history's most legendary double entendre. That is the severed head of Dr. Hill [played by the late David Gale] giving head to Megan Halsey [played by a very gung ho Barbara Crampton]. Take us to that day on the set. Can you remember how it was formulated from script to screen?
GORDON: I got this call from [co-writer] Dennis Paoli in the middle of the night, and he was just in hysterics laughing so hard. He said, "I wrote this visual pun," and that was all he would tell me. Then he sent me the script and I thought it was hilarious. We had had discussions about how a guy with no head was going to have sex. So he solved that problem.
Then the first actress we cast dropped out because of that scene. She had gotten second thoughts about actually having to do it. So we replaced her with Barbara. I can't even remember the name of the actress who dropped out [laughs].
During the actual shooting of it I remember one of the prop people came up to me and she said, "Go with this as far as you can, this is your scene. This is the scene people are going to be talking about." I thought that was pretty good advice. When we were looking at the dailies, David Gale was sitting there with his wife.
All of the sudden we heard this gasp, because she apparently hadn't read the script. She turned to him and said "David, how could you!" and got up and walked out of the screening room. David got up and excused himself and went after her. So she was actually furious about it.
PENNY BLOOD: How did you make Barbara comfortable with it?
GORDON: Barbara was very cool about the whole thing. It was really a question with her of how exactly were we going to cover this. How is this going to be shot? She didn't want it to look like a porno film. She was very professional about it. I went through the story boards with her and we even had to do a thing in her contract of how many seconds each shot was going to be involving nudity. And I think with the full frontal thing we were allowed something like five seconds.
PENNY BLOOD: I guess it is the same way actors view love scenes. Some of them just don't think they are very fun or sexy.
GORDON: Well, I don't know, in my experience some of the time they seem to be having a lot of fun [laughs].
PENNY BLOOD: Re-Animator was released by the long defunct Empire Pictures who you ended up doing many projects with including Dolls and From Beyond.
GORDON: Empire ended up picking up the movie. When we were shooting it the film was being produced by Brian Yuzna independently with investors to back it. He then worked out a deal with Empire Pictures, who would distribute it in exchange for providing post-production facilities. When they started seeing the dailies, Empire got more and more involved. They liked what they were seeing and they asked us to switch cinematographers. They suggested that we use Max Ahlberg [replacing Robert Ebinger of Student Bodies fame] who had been doing a lot of their films. I thought that turned out to be a really good call.
The original DP was good, but inexperienced, and when you have an inexperienced DP and a director making his first film it is kind of a recipe for disaster.
PENNY BLOOD: Kind of like the blind leading the blind. How was it working under such a small specialty genre-driven studio in its heyday, with you as one of its hot commodities?
GORDON: From Beyond and Dolls were shot back-to-back in Rome. It was so funny that they offered me a three-picture deal, but didn't tell me I was going to be doing the three pictures in Italy. So, I moved out to L.A. and as soon as I walked into their offices, they said I was leaving in a month to start prepping overseas.
Those two movies were shot in the same set and we redressed and repainted in between them. But, it was a very Roger Corman approach.
PENNY BLOOD: What has been your big secret to getting a good looking movie when given such a limited budget?
GORDON: This is kind of a dull answer, but I really think it has to do with preparation. The more you can plan something, or the more time you have the better. Whenever anyone says to you that you have to start shooting next week, you're in trouble, because you really don't have time to work things out. And sometimes you can plan things out so you can solve most of the problems before you even shoot.
PENNY BLOOD: You have used Jeffrey Combs in many films over your career. He first starred as Herbert West in Re-Animator, then as Crawford Tillinghast in From Beyond. He also showed up in Robot Jox, Pit and the Pendulum, and Castle Freak.
You’ve made him deal with some pretty unorthodox treatment over the years. Did you ever push him further on purpose because you always knew he was game?
GORDON: It's funny because when we did Re-Animator Jeffrey was not a big fan of horror movies, and he hated all of the blood. There's that scene where he's using the bone saw and he ends up coming up to the elbows in blood. And he shakes the blood off of his arm and there's this disgust on his face. That was genuine, because he's not acting in that moment.
The thing that's great about him, and Barbara and the rest of the little ensemble company I had put together, was that they really got good at convincing an audience that the most outlandish things were happening. They really put themselves into the moment and believe it themselves. No matter how crazy or extreme, or on the edge, they'd go there. And I love them for that.
PENNY BLOOD: You've told me before that you made Combs eat something pretty nasty during a certain scene in From Beyond.
GORDON: There is the scene where he is eating brains. They brought us the brain and it was made of this rubbery substance. And I wondered, how is he going to eat this? We had to shoot it in about three seconds, so we looked around for something that he could really east, because if he mimed it, it would look fake.
So they came up with this dental adhesive that they use to put false teeth in, and it was this pink goop. It looked disgusting. So he was chewing on this stuff, and he went to say his line, and he couldn't open his mouth because his lips were stuck together.
PENNY BLOOD: You've managed to break genre a few times, by writing Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (which was originally a horror script), and even direct David Mamet's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. But otherwise it's been sci-fi or horror. Do you feel like you've been pigeonholed when you've tried to get work outside of those genres?
GORDON: Well, when they want to do a romantic comedy, they don't think about me [laughs].
PENNY BLOOD: Would ever try to tackle one?
GORDON: Sure. I like doing other things. In fact I think it's actually healthy for me because if you do too much of the same thing you start to get tired of it. And I think then that's the kiss of death. That's why for me I liked running away and joining the circus for a while because for once the audience isn't sitting there screaming, they are laughing. It's funny because there is a similarity between the two. But it's nice to have a change of pace.
PENNY BLOOD: Is that what you've tried to do in your horror films, make them scream until they laugh?
GORDON: Well the thing that I think is so funny is when I was doing theater we did a lot of comedies. And you'd always get these audiences that are sort of sitting there going: "Make me laugh, damn it!" With horror movies you've got an audience that really wants to laugh. They would love to laugh, because laughter is the antidote to fear. It's a way for them to escape from the movie. So I always like to give them a few moments where they can laugh, so the laughter doesn't happen at the expense of the scares.
PENNY BLOOD: Have there been any horror films that have influenced you? Were there any that you might have robbed or pillaged from for your own films?
GORDON: Well, I've stole from lots of movies. I'm a huge fan of David Cronenberg and his stuff. It always freaks me out. He's able to make you believe these insane things, and as soon as you walk of the movie theater, you're going, "wait a minute, she had what in her armpit?"
PENNY BLOOD: He always has something sticking out and going into something else doesn't he? That's sort of a Cronenberg staple.
GORDON: Yeah! "The new flesh"- I love that! But he's fantastic. And then there's Dario Argento, who creates these dreamlike atmospheres, I love his work, too. When I was working on Dagon, I was thinking a lot about Tobe Hooper and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when I was doing all of those skinnings and that kind of thing. That was kind of a homage to Tobe. You just have to steal from the best I always say.
PENNY BLOOD: Dagon was your return to horror, ‘cause you had been doing sci-fi for the most part. How was it getting back to the scares, with of all people Brian Yuzna, it was kind of like returning to the family, a sort of homecoming.
GORDON: It was really coming back in more ways than that, because it was a script that we originally wanted to do right after Re-Animator. So it was kind of like getting back into the frame of mind that we were in when we did Re-Animator, which was very balls to the wall and go for it. It was really fun and great.
PENNY BLOOD: But you were going back to that mind frame with seasoned experience this time.
GORDON: Every movie is different, and you have to discover its rules, and Dagon had its own set of rules to it. I mean the thing that just about killed us was all of the rain and the water. I had never shot with water before, and now I understand why people don't do it. It doubles the amount of time everything takes, and you're cold and wet continuously.
PENNY BLOOD: It must be very miserable and tough to keep up morale.
GORDON: It is rough. I mean we were out on the open sea shooting. There was one time when a big storm came up and I thought I was in The Perfect Storm, and I was just hoping we were going to make it back to shore alive.
PENNY BLOOD: Are you going to make any more movies with Filmax's label Fantastic Factory, which you made Dagon with over in Spain? Have they asked you to do any more films for them?
GORDON: No, I think they are doing a lot more films with Spanish directors. I think they sort have moved into that frame of mind. I felt good that I was brought in to help get it started with some strong films. I always felt happy to do Dagon, it was a project both Brian and I wanted to do for 15 years.
PENNY BLOOD: While were talking about Brian, what did you think of his second Re-Animator sequel, Beyond Re-Animator? Does it have your seal of approval?
GORDON: I would [have gone in] a different direction with it. But I think it had some really great moments in it. My favorite scene, of course, was the rat and the penis fighting it out. I think he has a spin off movie there.
PENNY BLOOD: Did he come to you for any influence or any input?
GORDON: No, no. It was all a surprise when I saw it. I keep trying to convince him that I have an idea for a Re-Animator movie, but I can't convince him to do it. It takes place in the White House and it would involve the president.
PENNY BLOOD: You could always do it with Governor Schwarzenegger, sort of a Terminator/Re-Animator thing.
GORDON: It's funny you say that. We used Peter Kent, who was Arnold's body double, in Re-Animator. He was the big guy that goes berserk. Arnold actually had a private screening of Re-Animator in his home - and he loved it. He ended up recommending me to direct Fortress, so I'm very grateful to Arnold.
PENNY BLOOD: When was the first time you read H.P. Lovecraft, the author that's been so much of a thruline in your career?
GORDON: I started reading Lovecraft when I was in high school. I was a big fan of those guys. I started with Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, and then you eventually find Lovecraft. And I thought his stuff was incredible, and my favorite was “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” which of course became Dagon. He's such a fantastic writer, and a treasure trove of wonderful stories. The other thing I discovered when I did Re-Animator was that all of Lovecraft's work was public domain. So it's available for anyone who wants to do it.
PENNY BLOOD: Your next project is trying to bring David Mamet's play Edmond to the screen. You've worked with Mamet back in your Organic Theater days with Sexual Perversity in Chicago.
GORDON: When I first met Mamet he was in his 20's and he was trying to get something produced. Every week he would hand me a new script, and say, "Here, read this one." They had great characters and great dialogue, but there were no stories in them. That was the big problem. He gave me a script that was called Sexual Perversity in Chicago, but it was basically little monologues and vignettes between characters. And then he gave me another script called Danny Shapiro and His Search for the Mystery Princess, which was about a relationship that goes bad. I said to myself, "here is a story finally" and we emerged the two scripts into one. And it took off; it was the script that kind of put him on the map.
He has always been very grateful for that, and we stayed in touch over the years. I saw the play Edmond when it was produced about 20 years ago, and was blown away by it. It's very strong and scary. This average guy breaks up with his wife and goes on this odyssey to get laid.
He ends up killing a waitress and going to prison, and then finds out after he gets raped by his big black cellmate that he actually likes it. He's really happy. So it's very twisted, and because its is such a controversial storyline, Mamet has never been able to get it produced as a film. After I did King of the Ants Lonnie [Lionel] Smith whose one of Mamet's ensemble players, and a good friend of mine, said I should talk to David about doing Edmond. If I could get King of the Ants made, maybe I can get Edmond made.
Now it looks pretty good. William H. Macy wants to play the lead role, and Julia Stiles is going to play the young waitress that gets killed. It has a great cast.
