In 1985, at a particularly young age, I was introduced to Stuart Gordon by way of a rental from a local video store in Memphis, Tennessee. The film was Re-Animator and the production value on the whole title knocked me out. It was one of the first times I realized that films without mass theatrical distribution could be as good (if not better than) as movies showing at your local multiplex. Jeffrey Combs' portrayal of Dr. Herbert West in that film created fans and made it one of the most beloved characters from the horror genre. From then on, I was constantly on the lookout for projects that had Gordon's name attached.
Gordon's early roots are firmly planted in the stages of Chicago theater. There he met and befriended Pulitzer play-writer (Glengarry Glen Ross) David Mamet, who wrote aggressive male-driven stories that raised profanity to the level of classic art. Horror fans everywhere respect Stuart Gordon- from the many films he did with Charles Band and frequent collaborator Brian Yuzna to his recent work for NBC's Fear Itself.
The following interview was the first one I ever conducted with Mr. Gordon. It was published back in May of 2008 for Oddity Cinema- a now-defunct publication out of Edmonton, Canada. It's not the best one I did with Gordon, but I think the article still has value.
What can I say about this documented moment in time? I can tell you Stuart Gordon was one of the nicest people from the movie business. He always came across calm and polite every time we spoke. He enjoyed meeting his fans and answering a few questions about his work, as well as the work of other filmmakers. My pal, the late Chas. Balun- who created Deep Red Magazine and wrote for Fangoria, always said out of all the people from the horror genre he'd dealt with, Stuart Gordon was his favorite. That statement wasn't based solely on his work but on the man himself.
One thing I do remember about this first interview that went down over a decade ago was that I conducted it from my home office. That particular day, I was having trouble with the cable service and my telephone disconnected four times in the forty minutes I spoke with Mr. Gordon. Yet, through all of my communication troubles- Mr. Gordon remained good-natured and comical about it all.
Sadly, on March 24, 2020- Stuart Gordon died in Los Angeles. The cause of death is listed as multi-organ failure. He was 72 years old. He will continually be missed. He IS one of the true Masters Of Horror.
Bryan Layne: Do you remember a specific film that might have influenced your decision to get into filmmaking?
Stuart Gordon: Well, you know, there are a bunch of them, but one of them that really got me excited was 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Stanley Kubrick movie. That movie was like a religious experience for me.
BL: That one changed everything, didn’t it?
SG: It sure did. It’s still the greatest science fiction movie ever made.
BL: You got your start in stage productions and theater?
SG: Yes, I did. I did theater for a number of years before I did films.
BL: How did you find the theater experience to be?
SG: I really enjoyed it. I was the director of a theater company in Chicago. We had some great people in the company. We performed on and off-Broadway and we toured Europe. We did original plays and adaptations. We were the first to do the professional production of David Mamet’s work. We actually had a fantastic time with the whole thing.
BL: So David Mamet was part of that troupe?
SG: Yes he was. He worked with all of us.
BL: Was Jeffery Combs a part of that early troupe also?
SG: No, actually he wasn’t, but he certainly could have been. I met Jeffery when I was auditioning for Re-Animator, which was my first film. He comes from a theater background and because of that we really hit it off.
BL: I noticed a long time ago that he seems to be your go-to man for projects.
SG: Yes, absolutely and it all goes back to those theater days, which was a repertoire company. When you find people whose work you admire and everybody can, sort of, understand wavelengths you hang on to him or her as long as you can. You wind up wanting to do as much work with them as possible.
BL: Are you single-handedly responsible for directors constantly casting him in nutty roles most of the time?
SG: (Laughing) Well, you know, Jeffery is like a chameleon. He can be anybody and that’s what's so cool about him. I’ve seen him play just about every kind of role imaginable. A lot of the time, the public doesn’t even recognize him when they are seeing him on screen. He’s in a film I did recently called Edmond and he plays a desk clerk in a hotel. It seemed to me that nobody realized it was him for the longest time.
BL: That’s right, he was eating chicken in that scene, correct?
SG: Yeah, that’s right. That was all his idea, actually. His fans seem to be genuinely amazed at all the various characters he’s capable of portraying. We just did a thing together for Masters of Horror where he played Edgar Allan Poe. He really did channel Poe. He became him and it was quite a thing to witness.
BL: Did he wear a prosthetic nose for that one?
SG: Yes, he did. He had a fake nose and that was about it, except for a wig.
BL: He sure did look a lot like him.
SG: Yeah, one of the things I realized was that Jeffery has wanted to play Poe for a very long time. When I began reading about Edgar Allan Poe, I found out that he and Jeffery are almost identical in terms of looks and build. The color of their eyes is even similar.
BL: How do you explain your relationship with H.P. Lovecraft? You seem to adapt a lot of his work.
SG: I first started reading Lovecraft as a teenager and his stuff used to just scare the crap out of me. Nobody can write like he can. It amazed me that very few people had adapted his work to film. I discovered early on that all of his stories are public domain. In a way, it was like a treasure trove. It’s available for anybody who wants it. As a matter of fact, there’s a Lovecraft film festival every year in Portland, Oregon and all of these amateur filmmakers do various versions of his stories.
BL: Have you been a part of that film festival?
SG: I’ve been there a couple of times and I’ve always had a great time. A lot of these fans are very, very serious about Lovecraft and are often much more knowledgeable about him than I am.
BL: Did you discover, other than the classical sense, any similarities between the writings of Poe and Lovecraft?
SG: Well, Lovecraft was a huge admirer of Poe. He even tried to imitate his style of writing. There would have been no Lovecraft without Poe, but I believe Lovecraft wound up going in his own direction. What’s great about Lovecraft’s work is that all of his stories are kind of connected together and they form this thing that people call the Cthulhu Mythos; which is kind of this Lovecraftian mythology. It all revolves around these various worlds and creatures.
BL: Tell me about your involvement with Disney for the family film, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
SG: Brian Yuzna and I came up with the idea for that one and it was right around the time we were doing all these movies for Charlie Band. We had completed Re-Animator and From Beyond and none of those films were suitable for children. We really started to focus on an idea that could be turned into a family film and came up with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. We wound up taking it to Disney and they liked the concept.
BL: It was a smash for you, wasn’t it?
SG: Yeah, it turned into a huge hit and then we worked on the sequel, as well.
BL: Is that the closest you’ve ever worked with a major studio?
SG: It really was and it was my biggest success, as well. I think more people know that movie than any other I’ve been involved with. When I meet people and they ask me what I’ve done, that’s the one they seem to recognize immediately because it really did reach such a wide audience.
It was interesting at the time, Disney had just been taken over by Michael Eisner and they were kind of leery about doing family films. The Disney studio had almost been completely bankrupted by a series of bad family movies. They were kind of afraid to do a new family film. The week that Honey, I Shrunk the Kids came out, Jeffery Katzenberg did an interview for The New York Times. He adamantly said Honey was NOT a family film because he didn’t want to get branded in that genre that was killing Disney’s studio.
BL: How do you feel about dealing with major studios?
SG: Lately I’ve been doing mainly independent films. The problem with studio pictures is that you have a lot less control. You get involved with everybody from the creative executive to the marketing department. Everybody seems to have a say in what the final film is going to be and sometimes that can be a good thing. The kinds of things I tend to do are so strange and quirky that I think it’s probably better that I keep it independent.
BL: How about the film you wrote, The Dentist?
SG: I worked on that one with Brian and Dennis Paoli, who is my writing partner.
BL: Do you enjoy watching other directors translating your written work to the screen?
SG: Yes, sometimes it’s great because they will come up with things you never even thought of during the writing process. I’ve always found it kind of fun to sit back and witness how the story is going to be interpreted. With Brian, we’ve done so much work together we are on the same wavelength, almost to a point where we can sometimes finish each other’s sentences.
BL: How did King of the Ants come about? That was a bizarre little film.
SG: That started out from a novel that actor George Wendt brought to my attention. He’s an old friend of mine from my days in Chicago. He had met Charlie Higson, the author, at some point in time. He gave George a copy of his book and he had read it. George brought the novel to me and told me he felt the content was right up my alley. He suggested that if I liked it he would option the rights to put it to film. It was such an extraordinary book, very shocking and a great page-turner. I believe I read the whole thing in a day.
Getting that movie made was not an easy thing because it’s the story of a guy who basically discovers that his talents lay in killing people. It’s actually a very immoral story. I had tons of meetings with studios and they all insisted that the main character had to get caught at the end. You know, we couldn’t just let him go. The most shocking thing is that the character is hired to kill an innocent man and he goes ahead and does it, knowing this fact. When I was reading the book, I kept thinking that something was going to happen that would stop him from doing this, but when he goes ahead and does it, the reader just can’t believe it. Yet, the amazing thing about the writing is that you still like this character. He does these terrible things, but you still care about him.
BL: George Wendt was in that feature as well wasn’t he?
SG: Yeah, George ended up playing one of the best roles in it. It was kind of funny because, up until that character, people sort of thought of him as Norm from Cheers. What’s cool about that role for George is that it kind of starts out a lot like Norm, a really funny and very friendly guy. He winds up being a true nasty bastard and that turn completely freaked people out. George was telling me when his wife saw that movie for the first time, she said to him, "I don’t know who you are anymore."
BL: What can we expect from House of Re-Animator?
SG: Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that film is going to be made. It’s really kind of sad. I think we missed our chance. The plot was very much about the Bush administration. We couldn’t get anyone brave enough to get behind that concept and provide the financing to put it to film. Everybody was afraid of offending that administration, so because of that it doesn’t look like that film will ever go into production.
The main setting of the script is, of course, The White House and all of the characters are based directly on the Bush administration. I mean it starts out with Dr. Herbert West re-animating the Vice President, Dick Cheney. It’s amazing to me how few movies there are that have taken the Bush administration to task. The one that’s coming out now about Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay that’s like, only the third movie that’s been done that is critical of George W. Bush.
BL: Well, I was looking forward to that film and I hate to hear it’s not going to be made.
SG: I know, it’s a drag. I’ve gotten so much interest in it and it seems to be the one everybody asks me about. Unfortunately, the people who finance these things were just scared to death of it for the wrong reasons. I’ve basically given up on the whole thing because I think it’s just way too late to get it out there. If we started filming now, by the time it got released, I feel it would be old news.
BL: How do you feel about filming on digital video?
SG: I, myself, have never shot a film on digital. I have produced one called Deathbed and found it to be quite interesting. I do think that’s where everything is heading. It really is a great technology and it allows films to be made very inexpensively. It used to be that you had to have close to a million dollars to make a movie. Now you can do it on your credit card. For the one I produced, I worked alongside these young guys who edited the film on their Macs at home and they did the mixes there as well. It was incredible how much they could do and how sophisticated a product they wound up creating for very little money.
BL: Edmond was a wild film. How long ago had David Mamet written that one?
SG: I believe it was written in 1982. It’s a pretty old piece, but it still manages to completely shock audiences. I saw that original production back in '82 and I was just knocked out by it. I had never seen anything that was that frank and had a main character that says things to people most of society may think but are always afraid to say out loud. Edmond was also another one of my films that was very hard to get made.
BL: Was William H. Macy a part of your early theater troupe?
SG: He was not in my theater company, but I knew him back then. After David Mamet worked with us, he started his own theater company and he brought Bill Macy into it. We all knew each other, but filming Edmond was the first time I got to work with Bill. It was a wonderful pleasure to work with him and he’s a great actor.
BL: Yes, I remember pulling for him to win the award for Fargo and was disappointed when he didn’t win.
SG: Yeah, I think just getting nominated is an honor in itself. Sometimes people win and they never work again. It’s kind of weird. It’s sort of like a curse or something. So, I think the best thing is to just get nominated.
BL: How did you enjoy filming in Spain for your film Dagon?
SG: I enjoyed working there and stayed in Spain for about a year completing that film. It started with Brian Yuzna and he was working with a company called Filmax. He branched that company off into another division called Fantastic Factory and it was to specialize in horror films for an international market. Dagon had been another project of mine I wanted to do for a very long time.
It was originally going to be my follow-up to Re-Animator, but we could never get people interested in the concept because the premise was so strange. You know, this fishing village where the inhabitants were turning into fish. When I would get to that point while pitching the film, everyone in the room would wind up laughing and that would be the end of it.
Brian eventually contacted me and decided we could finally make Dagon, but he informed me we would have to film it in Spain. He brought me to a section of Spain called Galicia, which is located on the Northwest coast. It actually is very, very similar to New England. It was fog-shrouded and the city has all of these legends about witches and monsters, a very supernatural area full of superstitious people. It seemed very ideal for me to be filming there.
BL: Dagon was your first time collaborating with actor Ezra Godden, correct?
SG: Yes, it was. Ezra is great and later on, I used him in an episode of Masters of Horror that I directed. He’s a wonderful actor that fits into that Lovecraftian world really well.
BL: What’s new coming out that you are involved with?
SG: I’ve got a new movie coming out at the end of May called Stuck and it stars Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea. It’s written by the guy who wrote Deathbed, John Strysik. That one is based on a true story about a woman who hits a homeless man and he goes through the windshield of her car. Instead of taking the guy to the emergency room, she panics and puts him in her garage while he’s still stuck in her windshield. This actually happened about seven years ago.
The guy was alive in this woman’s garage for several days, begging for help. She kept going out there to apologize and told him help was on the way. Basically, she was waiting for him to bleed to death. When I read that story, I thought it was much more horrifying than anything I could dream up on my own. So, that’s completed and it will be available on May 30th.
I also just finished an episode for a new television series that is kind of a spin-off of Masters of Horror called Fear Itself. That series will be broadcast on NBC on June 5th and it should wind up reaching a very wide audience. It features several people involved in the horror genre, so be sure to look for that one.
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