Q&A WITH D. KERRY PRIOR, DIRECTOR OF THE REVENANT
November 30th 2011 00:02
Kerry: We were able to get this movie financed for a miniscule amount of money through this company called Pan Am Pictures—they had bought the name and logo from the defunct airline, and used it for their film company, which should have told me something about the way this company worked. The idea was to shoot for a week, cut together a trailer, go to AFM and pre-sell the movie; use the advance money from the presales to finish the film. This worked great—best trailer and one-sheet Pan Am ever had. Sold something like four times the budget of the movie. What I didn’t know is that the owner of this company—we’ll call him “Pan Am Sam”--would solicit investors from which he would steal every other dollar, invest what was left over in movies, which he would sell to foreign territories, collect the deposit money and then never deliver the movie, keeping the deposit. Anyway, he never came up with the rest of the money to finish the film, and in the mean time, the two “producers” I had hired to help make the movie started embezzling money from the budget to pay for rent and marijuana, so the whole thing fell apart. I went and “lifted” the negative from the lab, suspecting that these stoners would collude with Pan Am Sam and try to take the film, so when they did that a few months later, and discovered the film boxes which I had carefully returned to the lab filled with sand (inspired by Raiders of the Lost Arc), the mob guy left messages on my answering machine threatening to kill me. The LA district attorney was looking for me, a Hollywood PD detective was looking for me, and the lab was threatening me with a lawsuit. For a while I didn’t leave the house without a switchblade, even to go jogging. Anyway, suffice to say the movie was never completed.
In the mean time I made another movie, which is an equally entertaining and tragic story of failure. It ended up in court; people fighting over money. Really ugly. Everyone is friendly and generous when a project isn’t worth shit, but then, when people smell money, everything changes. The claws come out. The thing is that these kinds of failures, especially when there are lawsuits and lawyers involved, take so much time and money. It can be really wasteful and destructive. I went broke, got evicted from my apartment, was staying with friends or in crappy Bukowski-esque Hollywood hotels; it was a mess. So, I took work doing visual effects and sculpting and whatever I could to get by, and in my spare time I would be writing, and trying to get projects off the ground. There were some miserable times in that period.
H: Did you make any shorts before your first feature? If so what format did you use?
K: I shot miles of Super-8 film when I was a kid. In film school I made shorts in 8mm and 16mm. It was really before video was a viable substitute for film, even as a learning tool. Cutting film was dramatically different than cutting video; this was before digital editing systems were widely available.
H: How did you get your first break in Hollywood? What lead to your involvement with visual effects?
K: I hitchhiked to Hollywood when I was eighteen. Looked up some guys who were university alumni of my dad’s who worked in the biz, and they hired me to run film to Technicolor a few times a week. That eventually turned into a full-time job as PA, and I segued into doing FX animation and Model building.
H: You were part of the Dream Quest team and worked as a special effects artist, model maker, and with motion control on several commercially successful movies, what was the most enjoyable to work on? What was the most difficult aspect on some of the big budget movies?
K: That was a really fun time for me. I was working on all these big-budget movies for Hoyt Yeatman and Tom Hollister and all these other FX geniuses of the time. I learned a lot, and was really stoked to be part of all that. I was a little guy on a big team of people, so I didn’t really have much artistic impact on the final product, but it was fun, and a really exciting time in visual effects.
H: You’ve also worked in the camera department and as an editor. Naturally all these positions aided you when it came to directing, but was there any one position that had the most impact on you as a filmmaker?
K: All those positions were useful in learning what it takes to put a movie together, It’s very useful to know how to shoot, because then you know what a camera can do and how to get what you want and your DP can’t dick you around; editing is tremendously useful, because when you understand how to cut you know what to shoot, what parts you need to collect. But probably writing had the most impact. Writing is storytelling, and learning how to tell a story; that’s what the job is.
H: The original Phantasm is one of my favourite horror movies. Do you have any interesting and/or amusing anecdotes from your experiences working on the Phantasm sequels?
H: I’m rather curious about your involvement as wardrobe assistant on two soft-core sex romps directed by Madison Monroe, pray tell?
K: It was more than two. I worked on a whole bunch of those things. But to call it soft-core implies porn, which is misleading: these things were the cinematic equivalent of Harlequin romance novels. They were for chicks. And a lot of them were directed by women. They were all about romance and chivalry and period costumes. You’d shoot for like, five days - just bang out this little movie - it was low-budget but people took real pride in their work; the crew, the actors; they weren’t just making schlock, they were taking it seriously and trying to do nice work. This was in that time where I was taking whatever work I could get to get by. Lisa Rose, who was costume designer on Roadkill, was kind enough to hire me to assist her on these shows. We had a ton of fun. Lisa had a great time creating these elaborate period costumes, and I had a great time helping the talent in and out of them. It was kind of bizarre, because these beautiful women would just take off their clothes in front of me. It was all business. At first they would look at me like, “Wait, am I about to strip in front of a guy?” and then there would be this beat and you could see them think it through, “Oh, no, he must be gay. Yes, of course he’s gay; he’s an assistant costumer.” And then they would strip and I would tag and hang up their costume. And after that they never thought about it again. It was great. In retrospect it seems funnier, because I was also taking work as a club doorman at the time, so sometimes I would go from doing assistant wardrobe during the day, to bouncer at night. Lisa and I are still good friends.
H: Tell me a little about the process that enabled you to get The Revenant financed? Was the budget what you wanted and/or expected?
K: It took a year to get the financing. And we had a ton of investors, all very enthusiastic, until it came to writing a cheque. Then they would just disappear. Stop returning calls. Finally I was left with one investor, and after the others dropped out, and of course, after we had our cast together, he picked up the slack.
H: Shooting a low-budget feature is always about compromises. What were some of the ones you were forced to make on The Revenant? What were some of the unexpected joys during the shooting and post-production?
K: Ugh. Jesus. Every day of production was a compromise. It’s painful to get into it. Usually it was because we were running behind and couldn’t get the extra take that I felt the actors needed to get the performance I wanted. I’d be like, “Shit, I know we have this if we could just do one more take,” but we were out of time and had to move on. It was especially hard on this shoot because the coverage was designed to be long master shots, and there were so many elements that could go wrong in the course of the shot, and then you have to start over from the top of the shot; we were rarely doing pickups, just had to shoot the whole shot over. A lot of stuff could be fixed in post, like makeup effects, which always seemed to get to the set either on time, or complete, but never both. So we fixed a lot of makeup FX mistakes in post. In fact, there’s not a department on the show that the compositors and visual effects crew didn’t help out in some way. Somebody, maybe it was Hitchcock, said you only ever get about 60% of your vision on film. That’s about right. I still have nightmares about that 40%.
On the other hand, stuff happens on set that turns out better than you had imagined it. At some point in the shoot every member of the cast surprised me with a performance that went well beyond what was on the page. One time we turned over and Wylde went into his lines, and he spit out a performance that he hadn’t done at all in rehearsal; he just was in the moment - totally in character, playing off of Anders, and I was like, “Shit. He knows this character better than I do, and fucking wrote it.” Anders, Wylde, Louise, and Jacy; each one of them blew me away at some point with their performances. And really, that’s what this movie is about, the characters, the relationships. Sometimes it’s the stuff you have no control over that really turns into magic.
Jacy King
H: While broad humour in horror is easy, black comedy is a more difficult beast to balance, and so was the screenplay to The Revenant easy to write? Were you always intending the movie to be as cleverly, yet crudely comic as it is ghoulish and uncompromising?
K: First, thanks. That’s a real compliment. I’m not sure it was as premeditated as you are making it sound. I was just making the movie I wanted to see. I felt like the humor helped power the violence, and vice-versa. Regarding the screenplay, no, it wasn’t easy to write. I don’t think anything is easy if you really have an emotional investment in it, if your heart is in it. It was fun, but it wasn’t easy. This screenplay was rewritten myriad times, and each rewrite was a huge struggle, a battle. There’s at least a couple of screenplays worth of subplots that were discarded during the process.
H: What is your attitude to the increasing use of CGI in movies, especially in the horror genre? What has your own approach to the use of CGI vs. traditional SFX makeup in The Revenant?
K: CGI is great. It’s a tool you can use to tell a story. So, if it’s used well, no problem. That said, when I was a kid I can remember being blown away when I saw something incredible that I couldn’t figure out. Now that you can portray literally any event, a little of the wonder is kicked out of it. But that doesn’t affect storytelling. CGI is a problem when you devolve into deus ex machina. You want to write situations that it seems impossible for the main character to get out of … and then he/she finds a way out of it. But if you write a situation that is actually impossible for the protagonist to get out of, and then break the rules of the universe you are creating, that’s just bad writing. Seeing CGI used a lot to break the rules of the universe of the movie it’s in, that’s when I don’t like CGI, when it’s a cop-out.
H: Who are some of your special effects heroes?
K: Well, going way back, as a kid I loved Ray Harryhausen, and like most eleven-year-olds, tried doing stop motion with my Super-8 camera. As a kid I used to love reading about the old monster-makeup movies like Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera, I loved Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney Jr., and would tape up my nose and make bald-head wigs as a kid to look like The Phantom. I studied work and methods, and later tried to emulate his work doing the low-budget stuff I worked on in the 80s. When Star Wars came out I read all about John Dykstra and the Dykstraflex camera. And when An American Werewolf in London came out, it blew back the doors on FX makeup and everyone was trying to be Rick Baker for years. That really defined that period of FX and filmmaking in general.
H: Were there any specific movies that influenced you during the writing and directing of The Revenant?
K: Oh, yeah. In particular, when I was designing the coverage, I looked at movies like Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, The Shining, Funny Games, and other Michael Heineke films, and Paul Verhoeven’s stuff, Total Recall and RoboCop. Also looked at Jaws and Close Encounters because I loved the camera moves and cutting style Spielberg was using on those flicks.
H: As a screenwriter any tips you can give for budding horror movie writers?
David Anders
H: And as a director what advice can you give for short filmmakers keen to make a feature?
K: Go work on a feature from beginning to end. It gives you a really good idea of what is involved. Once you see it completed from pre-pro to post, it will give you the courage you need to do one yourself.
H: Do you think there are any taboos left in cinema and if so what are they? Are there avenues of darkness still to explore within the horror genre, and if so, can you hint at any?
K: As culture changes, taboos change, so yeah, there are probably always new taboos to poke at. A lot of the standard taboos have been picked over at this point. But certain things will always be taboo; it’s just the approach to them that changes; how do you scratch this cultural scab? Political incorrectness is taboo now. That’s interesting. You have to ask why; what is everybody so afraid of? What is political correctness hiding? Must be something. That seems like a good scab to scratch right now.
H: What’s your attitude toward the current Hollywood trend of horror movies aimed at a younger demographic, and in doing so often sacrifice the visceral, truly nightmarish elements that makes the genre so unique and effective?
K: Well, there’s money to be made in that demographic, right? That’s fine. I don’t go to see those movies, but they aren’t aimed at me. It’s not on my radar, so I guess I don’t care.
H: What horror movies - foreign, indie, Hollywood - from the last few years have really impressed you? Any up and coming directors that horrorphiles should keep their eyes out for?
K: Going to festivals with The Revenant has given me a chance to see some great movies. I’m not sure it counts as a horror movie in the truest sense, but it is certainly horrific and hilarious and fucking brilliant: Dog Tooth, directed by Georgios Lanthimos, won best picture at the Stockholm International Film Festival, and will probably always be one of my favorite movies. What a great film; it’s really fun to discover a movie and realise, “Oh, that’s going to be a movie I love for the rest of my life”. You feel like you’ve just received a Christmas present. Triangle was a riveting; we talked about it, right? [Triangle screened at Sydney’s A Night Of Horror Film Festival 2010 where The Revenant also screened and where Kerry was special guest] I caught myself with my jaw agape at several times during that screening. There was that moment when she backs into the skipping record player where I suddenly realized that I was watching something really great. And if you haven’t seen Reflections of Evil, by Damon Packard - get it! I’ll lend you my copy. It’s hilarious and brilliant and disturbing, a total freak show. But not at all what you expect from a horror movie, it’s really more like post-modern deconstructionist pop-cinema on acid. Anyone reading this: stop right now, open another window, and search for Reflections of Evil. Buy the DVD. Then write me and thank me for giving you a Christmas present. I know Damon is trying to get his next picture funded right now. It’s called Fox Fur.
H: Finally, what have you got in the pipeline? And will there be a sequel to The Revenant?
K: A lot of people ask about a sequel, which is funny because the movie hasn’t made a dime [yet ... it’s taken Kerry a long time to get The Revenant properly distributed]. But yeah, that’s got me thinking about a sequel. I’ve got some ideas. I thought it would be fun to have Miguel, played by Emiliano Torres, and maybe some of his gang of Mexican zombies, and the liquor store robber, played by Senyo Amoaku, meet up in Iran, and even though they hate each other, they band together to survive, with Miguel trying to get home to his two daughters, Senyo’s character trying to get to Sudan, and the two of them hiding out in a tank, and killing and eating Muslim extremists along the way. It’ll probably never happen.
In the meantime I’m rewriting a screenplay of my own, with the intention to direct. It’s about a guy who trepanates himself and his dog to increase their telepathic connection. Then, using this newfound power, they bust up a terrorist cell. Based on a short story I wrote. It’s called Merry Christmas from Me and Bubbles.
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