Repo! The Genetic Opera: Set Report Part 2
Toronto, Canada (October, 2007)
By SpookyDan

In the not-so-distant future when an epidemic of organ failures devastates the planet, scientists gear for a massive organ harvest. A biotech giant comes up with easy organ payment plans, but all financed organs are subject to legal default, including repossession at the hands of repo men.

READ PART ONE HERE

I flew into Toronto with fellow reporters to find out exactly what REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA is and how things were going on set. After a nice evening with many key players at the local bar the adventure had begun. The next afternoon we arrived on set, the entire place was still being shrouded in secrecy. They left us outside this giant converted metal work warehouse in the heart of Toronto just aching to get inside.

As we waited the cast slowly crept out and greeted us, but still not getting in was killing me. Finally, the moment I had been waiting for… a look at the actual sets that Ogre and Paris Hilton have been running around on! The doors open as we’re taken inside a giant warehouse that is dark and dusty. Inside is a giant (and recently dismantled) cemetery set. They told us that the reason it was taken down was because the dirt they had on the floor was causing dust problems all over the set. Now standing in its place stood majestic gravestones and eerie foliage. A bit further inside we see the house that the Repo Man lives in…. it reminded me of the Night of the Living Dead house at the (now defunct) Movieland Wax Museum. The house was oddly off balance, scary and mysterious… what the hell goes on in there?

Around the corner stood the Repo Man “Combat Training Room” which featured a dozen of bodies wrapped in plastic hanging from the ceiling, along with a converted dentist/gynecological chair in the center - this is where the Repo Men of the future practice the fine art of body part repossession. Not surprisingly the walls are made of blood soaked plastic. We then continue to wander through the mammoth structure seeing Zytrate addicts support group posters - Zytrate is the fashionable drug of the future which is a chemical that is extracted from human brains of the dead, and it’s in very high demand. Then we finally arrive at the main event: the opera house. The house was a grand set that has an entire circus midway surrounding it. Production Manager David Hackl explains, ”The entire Repo! world exists within the walls of this building, it’s another world with bigger environments than we have worked on before!” He explained that CGI is not on the menu, except for some slight set extensions and such. The richness of these sets are breathtaking, and while the producers are joking about how small the budget is for a movie of this scope, there is no sign of cut corners anywhere.

The sets are massive, reaching 40 feet into the air and then loaded with freaky extras. Bousman comes over to me and suggests that Alexa Vega sneak me on set with her so I can be in the crowd scene. While the rest of the reporters are being ushered off, I sneak on set and hang out. Alexa grabs me and tries to take me right to the front of the action, but then Bousman stops her because of continuity - if I am next to her in that shot I will need to be on set all day and will miss the evenings (private and exclusive) screening of SAW IV, which I ended up missing anyway. So I stayed in the back and when the reports returned Bousman calls action and the playback begins… Paul Sorvino, Bill Mosley and Sarah Brightman start singing and the shot is astounding. No one will ever see me sandwiched inside this crowd, but I knew I was there, as did all the baffled reporters that had not been yanked into the set.

Then on “take two,” in front of hundreds of extras, Sorvino has a bit of a diva moment. When “action” wasn’t called the way he wanted it, the actors (and I) stand around waiting for him to become less thrilled. In the meantime Bouseman asks the rest of the reporters to join the set to fill some empty spaces. Now my moment of happiness will be shared with the rest of the gang… so much for my 15 minutes. “Action” is yelled out (correctly???) and these creepy henchmen rush in and kidnap Alexa right in front of the opera house while the cast is still singing. What a rush! Getting to see the sets was cool enough, but now I can say that I had my tiny little part in Repo! Woo!

Later we are brought off the Midway Opera House set and into a small circus tent, which was acting as video village for the producers to review the shots. This is where we get to see some footage from the film! If you look at BDTV you can also watch the clip we were shown. What we saw looked something like Dark City, twisted up with Moulin Rouge, and flattened out with a Silent Hill rolling pin.

As a writer for Bloody-Disgusting I know I only needed to ask just one question - just how bloody and violent will it be? Bousman had a lot to say about this, “It's not… this isn't a SAW, he continues, “I think the violence in SAW is in your face, kind of trying to disgust kind of violence. There is more violence in this movie than I think people are expecting from the little clip. For example, Luigi Largo, every time he is on screen, he's killing people and ripping parts of their bodies out. And my man Ogre as Pavi, wears people’s faces. He rips their faces off and wears them and Repo Man repossesses organs all throughout the movie. So that gives you some sort of clue, grave robber has piles of dead bodies and is rolling around in them. I mean, it's violent but it's a very comic violence. It's tongue-in-cheek violence. I think it's the kind of violence you're going to smile at and not regurgitate at. That being said, there are some horrific things in this movie, but it's very much I would say in the spirit of like a SIN CITY type thing where the violence is just over the top.” He also explains that he hopes it won’t be NC-17, especially because it’s sexy, “It's harsh, hopefully it will not be NC-17, but it's harsh, and it's sexual too. It's going to be sexy as well.”

Bousman continues talking about the humor in the film, “Actually, humor is a mitigating factor. You have to know it's okay to laugh. You have people singing, you have Paul Sorvino breaking out in operatic notes in a small little limousine, and you’re going to laugh. So you have to tell the audience that it's okay to laugh right at the very beginning of the movie, because otherwise it's going to be uncomfortable. We want them laughing with us… not at us. So we went into this movie trying to make it- letting the audience know that it's okay to laugh with us. One of the first images we see of grave robber [as] he's bashing down a wall with a human body - like breaking through wall with this body - you can't just help but laugh. I think it's going to help us a lot. In SAW, hopefully we don't want to laugh. It's not meant for that, however this is a much more serious film than say ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, which was all camp. When you go to ROCKY it’s all camp. I would say that this is equal parts camp, drama, tragedy and horror.”

Will a movie with no spoken dialogue (every word is sung), over the top themes and a decidedly harder edge than recent musicals develop a cult-like following? In the words of Paris Hilton, “It’s just a really incredible movie. People are really going to like it.” To that I say…that’s hot!

This is one movie to look forward to next year.