Interviews
[Sundance ’12] Interview: ‘Red Lights’ Director Rodrigo Cortes
Rodrigo Cortes’ film Red Lights (review) divided audiences at Sundance. Some viewers really dug it. Cortes could tell I was not a fan, even though my questions were objective and diplomatic. It was cool though, he welcomed my discussion anyway.
Red Lights is named for the giveaway clues that something doesn’t belong. Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver play scientific debunkers of paranormal hoaxes, faced with their match (Robert DeNiro), who either can circumvent all their countermeasures, or he really has psychic powers.
In his introduction to the premiere screening, Cortes told the audience not to expect anything. Now that you may have heard, we present my discussion with Cortes from the Sundance Film Festival. Q: Your introduction said don’t have any expectations. Are you being modest or do you have concerns?
RC: No, no, no. I was not being modest and I didn’t have any specific concern. It’s actually my way of proceeding usually. I try to keep my expectations neutral about things because this way you can react in real time with whatever reality brings to you. If you have a very petrified map about things you expect from things, then you have to constantly compare things themselves with your idea about what those things should be in your head. In real life, that’s not the best way to perceive reality. What I was trying to tell the audience is that if they wanted to have a clean experience of whatever they were going to see, no matter if they liked it or hated it, they better see the film not only with their minds but also with their bones, with their muscles, just to try to be guided by the energy of the film, whatever it brought them to, and once they arrived to the end, then they can say, “Okay, I enjoyed this ride” or “I found this ride totally unsatisfying” or “I wish I never rode this horse.” But not making it compete with a previous idea of a nonexistent film.
Q: But you can’t say that before every showing in every theater in America.
RC: Of course. Certainly. Actually, it was basically a funny way of starting, saying, “Okay, don’t expect anything.” From that moment on, the movie is going to defend itself. Premieres are different though. There’s a very weird energy in premieres that can make you leave or that can kill you or that can get you even. When you see a film three years later, you have a DVD or you see them on the TV, you see a film. That’s it. Films usually when they are released have not a clean perspective, but that’s film. That’s part of the game. You can’t help that. It happens to me constantly. I see a film, I love it. I see it two years later and say, “Okay, it was not that good. I thought it was much better than it really was.” And sometimes, you see a film, if you don’t like it or you miss it, then a couple of years later you say, “Okay, what was I thinking? This movie’s really good. I simply thought it was going to be another film.” Or you see it and you confirm what you thought on the first view. All these things can happen but when you see them in this clear way which is impossible at the beginning, they don’t compete with themselves. You can’t help that that happens in a world premiere and that can help you many times. Sometimes things happen, even if they are over exaggerated or whatever, and they create a kind of energy which the snowball starts to roll and it feeds off this previous energy, and sometimes it doesn’t go that well or whatever. You have to be very supportive with that and try to enjoy the process because that’s what reality is about. Life is about that.
Q: I find myself discussing that a lot as my opinions on certain films change. To me that seems like a valid signpost of where I am in life if I relate to a movie more or less than I used to. Are people too hung up on preserving their first impression for the rest of the life of a movie?
RC: Yeah, you’re right. But on the other hand, this is just talking the talk in a way because then reality is what reality is. So it’s better that you just serve reality and try to enjoy the ride because there are a lot of surprises in front of you and that’s another reason for keeping your expectations neutral. You never know how things are going to go. What happens one day can change the direction of something. It’s pretty cruel in a way but that’s part of our business.
Q: Why is the paranormal big again?
RC: I don’t know, I think in a way it’s always been big.
Q: They always say that about trends. Certainly it’s come back with Paranormal Activity.
RC: It’s a kind of fashion in a way and it’s also about wanting to believe there’s something beyond, because that will give meaning to the films we do in a way. So sometimes actually believing in this is to believe in what’s more convenient for us to believe. Maybe now more people need to fill that sorrow than in other moments. I don’t know but I was not so interested in paranormal stuff in itself but about how it affected us and our beliefs. Or about also to make an instance of perception. I wanted to do something with a scientific basis in a way because everything has to do with the mechanisms of perception, with the function of our brain, how our brain is not a tool you can trust in order to perceive reality. Because it lies. It’s an imperfect tool and it lies to you. That’s what I wanted, everything to be so physical and touchable. I love for instance the beginning of Poltergeist when everything’s physical, when you sit a girl on the floor and she slides on it. I personally as a spectator prefer that to the ghost hand coming out of a TV set or blue spirits trespassing walls. It’s like if you would get angry now and everything starts to tremble around and glasses start to explode. Maybe it’s a projection of your psychic energy but maybe it’s an earthquake.
Q: Like when the theater explodes when Cillian Murphy turns on the switch.
RC: There are two different possibilities in that very moment. You have to choose one and you certainly choose one, but the other one is valid too. You think this is real, in another moment you are certain this is not real, these are just fake, this is just fake. In another moment you start to doubt again and you have to become in a way a searcher of Red Lights, trying to find the discordant notes and not all the answers are given. My personal perspective, I love when you have to keep on working, especially if you want to keep on working. If you pretend that and it doesn’t happen, in a minute you become the most pretentious director ever and that means that you failed. You intended something that didn’t happen and it failed. But there are different kinds of movies. Some of them you start to forget them when the end credits start rolling. The day afterwards, you seem to not remember anything about it. And when they tell you, “Didn’t you like how it ended?” And you say, “I wish I knew. I don’t remember. Oh yeah, there was a lawyer, oh yeah right, he dies. Yeah, yeah, I liked that.” With other films you find that they still live inside you and that you can’t help thinking of them and that you want to discuss your own perspective about the film. You have friends and you go on talking about it and you say, “I feel this guy knew how to fly.” “No, I don’t think he knew how to fly. I think he was just pulled by strings and whatever.” “Yeah, but at the beginning, how do you explain this?” “Yeah, you’re right but on the other hand…” Well, that’s a place I would love to put the audience in. I don’t know if I did. I will learn soon, but I wish I got that.
Q: Are you happy to hear there’s a divided reaction to the film?
RC: Yeah, I’m happy to hear that always and I’m ready for that always. It was funny though in a way. I saw all my films and my short films many times with different audiences, different days, different times. I show other people’s films too and sometimes you see a film at four o’clock and people laugh in the right moments. You see that at eight o’clock and for some reason people don’t laugh but you win the audience award which you cannot explain. It was funny to see how different the reactions from the first day were to the reactions from the second day. But debate is always part of the game and I would love not people to love or to hate something, I would love them to be willing to talk about it, telling how much they love it or how much they hate it, wanting to talk about it and sharing their own fears.
Q: Buried was well reviewed and well liked. Why didn’t it get a bigger release?
RC: It was very big around the world. It didn’t work in the states. It made more than $20 million. It’s difficult to explain things after they happen because it’s easy, but it’s convenient. You would only have the answers if you knew how to predict that. It was released in platform. They thought it would grow and grow because of people’s opinion but people didn’t go to the movies. They didn’t want to see the film. Maybe it has to do because you don’t go to the movies for the movies themselves but for what you expect from them. If they tell you this is about a guy in a box for an hour and a half, probably many people don’t want to see it. Because the idea they will have in their mind is that they are going to see something still and agonic and terrible and probably extremely experimental. They don’t think they are going to be on an adventure, they’re not going to think they’re going to see Indiana Jones in a box, so maybe that’s not the easier way to sell a film. On the other hand it would be better for Europe or Asia and the things that did work very well in the UK, in Spain, in Italy, even in Argentina it was number one, you can understand that. I would say there is another thing which is almost cultural which is that we killed our hero. I think there is a cultural thing in the states that people in a way feel they have the right to feel rewarded at the end of a film if they paid 12 bucks. So it’s okay, you made this guy suffer so much, he deserves to be saved. You cannot make me suffer for an hour and a half and then leave me feeling miserable.
Q: I don’t know about that. You’ve got to expect that in a dark movie.
RC: I don’t know, as I told you it’s just theories so you never know. I know a lot of people when they left the room, they were really enjoying the film and at the end they hated it. They gave it an F. They felt betrayed. They felt so betrayed by the film which is something, it’s not that in Europe people are more sophisticated. Believe me, we are not. We are not at all. We love happy endings as much as you do and we love stories as much as you do. It’s only I think that there’s a little more room for certain options in the sense that you accept that there are other possibilities, that happiness is not a right but an option, another option in life.
Q: What’s are you writing and directing next?
RC: My next project is sleeping definitely. I’ve been working for three years from Monday through Sunday, I’m not exaggerating a minute, 15, 18 hours a day. Finished the film 15 days ago. The reels are still dropping. I’m extremely exhausted. I wish I could have a couple of days I could get up late in the morning and for the very first moment in a while, I feel like there is again room in my head to think on something. I don’t know yet what, so when I leave all the snow behind, that’ll be the time to start thinking again.
Interviews
“I Don’t See Retiring from This” – Joe Bob Briggs Talks New “Last Drive-In” Format and the Show’s Future [Interview]
Hey everybody, have you heard the news? Joe Bob is back in town!
The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs has returned for its sixth season on Shudder. While the show’s format has been slightly revised — adopting a new biweekly schedule with one film instead of a double feature — the beloved horror host’s approach is much the same.
“It didn’t really change anything,” Briggs tells Bloody Disgusting. “We were crowding all of our movies into 10 weeks once a year and then having specials, and we found that people would rather have more weeks. It’s actually more movies than we had before.
“And some of the people on the East coast fall asleep in the second movie,” he laughs. “It’s about a five-hour show when it’s a double feature because we talk so much. Also, it’s hard to get thematic double features every single time. So our specials are still double features, but our regular episodes are single features.”
The season kicked off last week with The Last Drive-In Live: A Tribute to Roger Corman, celebrating the legendary filmmaker’s first 70 years in Hollywood with a double feature of 1959’s A Bucket of Blood and 1983’s Deathstalker. The special was filmed live in front of a fervent audience of Briggs’ fan base — lovingly dubbed the Mutant Family — at Joe Bob’s Drive-In Jamboree in Las Vegas last October.
In addition to his usual hosting duties, Briggs conducted a career-spanning interview with Corman and his wife, fellow producer Julie Corman. They were also joined by one of Corman’s oldest friends and collaborators, Bruce Dern. In a heartfelt moment of mutual admiration, Briggs and Corman exchanged lifetime achievement awards on hubcaps.
“I’ve known Roger for about 35 years, so I’ve only known him for half of his career,” Briggs chuckles. In his long history of reviewing, interviewing, and talking about Corman and his legendary work, one emblematic encounter sticks out to Briggs.
“I remember the very first time I went to the Corman studio, which was a lumber yard on Venice Boulevard. He had a standing set for a spaceship control room, a standing set for a strip club, and I think he had one other one, and then he had all of his editing facilities there, but it was still a lumber yard. They had not really changed any of the buildings or anything.
“He’s showing me around the studio, and we were walking past a pile of debris, and I said, ‘Roger, is that the mutant from Forbidden World?’ It had just been thrown over in a corner. And he just said, ‘Yes, Joe Bob, I believe that is. He was apparently no longer needed.’ I said, ‘Roger, you gotta get with it! That stuff is worth money.’ But he was like, ‘When the movie’s over, the movie’s over.’ That was Roget to a T.”
At least part of Corman’s longevity can be attributed to his shrewd business practices and pragmatic approach to the industry, which has included working in every conceivable genre of cinema. “I couldn’t think of a single genre he has not made,” Briggs says.
“When we did this interview at the Jamboree, I said, ‘I’m gonna name the genre, and you tell me what you love about that genre,’ and every comment that he made involved money and box office performance,” he snickers. “None of it was involved with love of cinema, although I did get him to say that his favorite genre is a genre that he didn’t dabble in much other than his first movie [1954’s Highway Dragnet], and that was film noir.”
While the fourth annual Drive-In Jamboree is still in the planning stage, Briggs is delighted by the event’s continued success. “The Jamboree is something that we literally just threw together. We’ve had three of them now. It’s something where we just show up and try to come up with programming for each day.
“But I really think the Jamboree is more about the mutant family meeting the mutant family. It’s more about people who know each other online gathering and partying with each other in person. It’s not so much about what movies we have. I mean, we always have an anniversary movie, and we always have some special guests and everything, but it’s more about the gathering of the mutants. It’s fun from that point of view. They’re exhausting, I can tell you that.”
The zeal among Briggs’ audience has only grown over the years, from hosting Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, to MonsterVision on TNT from 1996 to 2000, and The Last-Drive-In on Shudder since 2018. “I’m amazed, having been in the business for this many years, that I still have a show at this time, because they say you can’t repeat TV,” Briggs notes.
“Nobody wants to see old TV, and yet I’ve done the same show three times on three different networks, and every time I try to change it everyone says, ‘No, no, don’t change it! That’s the part we love.’ I always want to do something new, and I’m always told, ‘No, you’re the CEO of Coca Cola who went to New Coke.’ You can’t do that. People will revolt. So we’re still doing it.
“It’s one of the few shows that I know of that’s just sort of grown organically over, gosh, almost 40 years. We’ve just added elements to the show. We try things. If something doesn’t work, we throw it away. If something works, we do it forever!”
The mutant family will be happy to know that Briggs plans to continue hosting and writing about movies for as long as he’s able to. “I don’t see retiring from this or retiring from writing. I’m primarily a writer, and the good thing about writing is long after they don’t wanna see you on TV anymore you can still write.
“The difference today, though, is I was pretty much the only guy doing genre films when I started. Now, there are academics that do it. There are entire books written about Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper and even lesser names than those, and there are, of course, a massive number of websites, including your own, so that when something comes out today, there’s immediately a hundred reviews of it; whereas in 1982, I was sort of the only guy, because the movies were considered disposable trash. So I have been surpassed in my deep knowledge, because who can keep up with all that? It’s impossible!”
Diana Prince, who serves as Briggs’ co-host Darcy the Mail Girl and was instrumental in getting him back in the hosting chair, has been promoted to an associate producer this season. “She was sort of always the associate producer, but I guess they finally gave her the title,” Briggs explains.
“Diana Prince is in on all the decisions about programming. I always listen to Austin Jennings, the director, and Diana Prince, the mail girl, because they come from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what kind of movies they wanna watch, and we try to strike a balance between. You know, she’s not gonna vote for Possession, and he’s not gonna vote for Mountaintop Motel Massacre,” he chortles.
“They’re probably the principal advisors, as far as what we show. Of course, [Diana] has a lot of social media clout, and she’s extremely knowledgeable about pop culture. Wow! She has seen everything. She’s seen more than I’ve seen!”
While surprises are part of the fun of The Last Drive-In, Briggs previews some of what’s in store this season. “The place we normally live is the neglected ’80 slasher, and we still live there,” he assures. “But we’re gonna pay a lot more attention to the ’70s especially. I’ve always thought the ’70s are more interesting than the ’80s anyway. And we’re gonna pay attention to some really recent stuff.”
He teases, “We’re gonna bring back Joe Bob’s Summer School, which is something that we used to do at MonsterVision. And we may have a marathon. There’s a possibility of that. But I’ll be digging this new format of being on every other week between now and at least up to Labor Day.”
While Briggs’ hosting format hasn’t changed much across four decades, the world around him certainly has — and that’s why The Last Drive-In remains relevant. He points out, “In the era of streaming, where everything is menus and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of choices, we are that thing called a curator that can direct you to the fun places on the spectrum of streaming.
“Streaming is very confusing for people, and a lot of people don’t like it for that reason. I hope what we’re doing is cutting through the weeds and bringing things into perspective. And, you know, it’s just more fun to watch a movie with us!” he concludes with a Texas-sized grin.
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