I understand that you enjoy “horror, mondo and psychotronic cinema.” What are some of your favorite films?
Black and white horror classics like the original “Cat People,” “Mad Love,” “The Black Cat,” “Island of Lost Souls,” “Freaks.” Euro-horror like Bava, and especially Polanski: “The Tenant” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” Sixties and Seventies docu-horror: “Night of the Living Dead,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Big Eighties Splatter: “Dawn of the Dead,” Carpenter’s “The Thing,” “Videodrome.” Eroto-horror like “Moju: The Blind Beast” and “Dead Ringers.”
I’m obsessed by “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” those 1960’s Euro-crime movies like Bava’s “Danger: Diabolique,” the Mabuse movies with Gurt Frobe, and the Edgar Wallace movies with deranged killers.
“Mondo Cane,” of course. I love the sequence with Yves Klein. “Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video” is great, too. And “Ecco!” with the George Sanders narration.
Horror movies are my first love, but I love all genre films: film noir, monster movies, spaghetti westerns. Euro-fantasy: Karel Zamen, Jan Svankmeyer. Art films are just another genre, and I like the weird ones: I don’t know what “Possession” is about, but it’s worth it to see Isabelle Adjani love a squid.
Anything that makes you go “What the–?!” when you’re channel surfing at 3 AM.
How did you wind up co-writing Marilyn Manson’s “Holywood” screenplay?
Producer Neal Edelstein read my script “Chrome Gothic,” a blood-and-thunder love story with hot rods and organ transplants, and referred it to Manson when he was looking for a co-writer. I like “Holywood,” but New Line aborted it in the post-Columbine fall-out. Manson’s said he might adapt it as a novel, or a manga, or even an anime.
Any new projects on the horizon?
“Matrix” producer Andrew Mason is setting up “Chrome Gothic;” I’ve seen some concept art and it’s killer. I’m adapting a horror novel for David Goyer. And I’m writing a psychedelic Euro-style action movie.
I’ve done a lot of producing, so I’d love to set up a whole slate of twisted genre films like Love Object, stuff that’s too weird for the studios to touch. Like Hunter S. Thompson said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
