Editorials
Set Report: ‘Drive Angry’ Part 1: Get Ready for a Violent, Bumpy Ride!
Those of you dying for a film actually shot in 3-D rather than post-converted into a pop-up book will be happy to know that Patrick Lussier’s Drive Angry 3D, the follow-up to his hit My Bloody Valentine reboot, is exactly what you’re looking for. Though it isn’t scheduled to hit screens until February 11th, 2011, inside you can check out the first part of B-D reporter Chris Eggertsen’s visit to the Shreveport, Louisiana set back in May. In addition to interviews with producer Michael De Luca, co-screenwriter Todd Farmer and actor William Fichtner, Chris also had the opportunity to check out the fiery outdoor set to get a closer look at all the action.
“‘Jason X’…did not become the movie that I thought it would be. That happens. It’s happened with every movie I’ve ever [worked on]. It didn’t happen on this one. We wrote it and it’s there. Nobody changed it. Nobody gave us notes and said, ‘We want this. We want the girl to be more this. We want the hero to be a dog.’ We didn’t get any of that crap. This is the movie that we wrote and it’s never happened before.” — Co-screenwriter Todd Farmer
I did have to leave my room, of course, in order to travel to the nearby set – located at the Louisiana State Fairgrounds – and I have to say I was pretty excited to check out what was in store. In case you couldn’t tell by the official title, Drive Angry 3-D is indeed being shot in the third dimension – meaning, like, actually shot in it, not post-converted like other recent weak-sauce debacles (Clash of the Titans, The Last Airbender, et al). The film follows Cage as Milton, a man who is called up from Hell to embark on a bloody quest across the country to hunt down members of the satanic cult who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby girl.
Lussier wrote the 3-D specific screenplay with his Bloody Valentine partner Todd Farmer; they then shopped the script around to several producers, including Michael De Luca (Ghost Rider, Lost Souls), who immediately warmed to the project and signed on to shepherd it. The producer, having established a relationship with Nicolas Cage following their collaboration on Ghost Rider, knew the car-and-genre-film-loving actor would appreciate the aesthetics of the script and sent it along to him; once Cage signed on, he brought production company Millenium/Nu Image – who he had a pre-existing deal with – on to the project, knowing they were currently looking to finance an action movie in that budget range. After the movie was officially greenlit, Summit Entertainment quickly snagged distribution rights Stateside.
“That all happened within a matter of weeks“, said the amiable De Luca when he sat down with us early in the evening, in an auditorium located across the street from the current shooting location. “It was one of the quickest-financed movies I’ve ever had in my experience.”
The producer gave off a casual, relaxed vibe as he explained his first reaction to reading the script. “It blew me away because I like hyper pulpy, super violent kind of Tarentino- esque, Shane Black-esque, Jim Thompson-esque, hard-`R’ character-based stuff. The script that Todd and Patrick wrote is an homage to that aesthetic…it seemed to marry that single minded personal mission of righteous revenge…with the smash `em up redneck car chase movie, `Two Lane Blacktop’ or `Vanishing Point’ or `Dirty Mary Crazy Larry’. So it seemed like a movie written by movie lovers, for movie lovers, and that’s how I took it when I read so that’s why I got really excited.“
Speaking of car chases, the film is certainly heavy on those – the breakdown, as De Luca spitballed, is somewhere around 40% driving, 60% on foot. To that end, the film features a fuckload of classic muscle cars driving at unreasonable speeds to give it the feel of one of the `70s action films mentioned above – think loud engines, twisted steel, gunfights out car windows and massive crashes and explosions done in-camera – no fake CG shit.
“We all kneel at the altar of William Friedkin in `French Connection’ and the stuff in `Bullitt’ and anything we can do practical“, said the producer. “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, but we wanted to be the anti-CGI enhanced car chase movie. So a little bit of what Tarantino tried to do with `Death Proof’. We went in that direction.“
De Luca gave us a little more insight into some specific action scenes featured in the film that he feels really capture the overall tone of the movie.
“Nic starts this movie off in this same kind of genre of `I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. I can’t trust anyone else to do this but me.’“, he said. “We’re back in the age of the individualistic righteous hero. That [opening] scene is a great indicator of the kind of movie you’re going to see. There’s an insane car chase involving an RV, a Suburban, the Dodge Charger, police cars – it was a big clusterfuck multi-vehicle car chase scene after a church gun fight that I think will be a showstopper and that’s kind of in the middle of the movie. And then of course our ending, where Nic goes in for the final kill. Which actually shows his car performing the last example of heroics and just jumping over a prison wall and landing in the middle of this horrific scene where he has to rescue his granddaughter. I think those three bits will be the calling card for this movie in terms of `I haven’t seen that before’. What’s great is they all have an emotional undercurrent.”
Joining De Luca was Millenium/Nu Image-based executive producer Rene Besson, who spoke about the company’s immediate belief in the project and their mandate to allow Lussier to make exactly the film he wanted. “We read the script and immediately knew we loved it“, he told us enthusiastically. “We said, `That’s it. We wanna make this film, period.’ And from that day, we just ran some numbers, we put it together, and within I’d say a week we knew we were making the movie and that was it…you know, we’re very good in that way. And we really don’t get in the way of…the filmmakers making a really cool movie if they know the space really, really well. We’re generally hands-off, you know? And we believed in the script when we read it. And we just felt like we needed to go, and literally weeks later we were making the movie.”
Also joining us in our “holding area” was co-scripter Todd Farmer, a solid tower of a man sporting a beard and shaved head who looks something like a Hell’s Angels bruiser. He made sure to drive home the point that the film won’t be a PG-13 cop-out but the genuine article – a limb-severing, bone-crunching hard-`R’ affair much as My Bloody Valentine was.
“It’s as violent as you can get and still get an `R’, I think. We start and the moment the movie opens it’s in your face“, said the writer, while also making sure to add that there’s a real character-driven engine driving the movie. “There’s tons of hardcore `R’ action, nudity and you name it, but at the same time there really is a story there. It’s got heart and at the end of the movie people will feel it.“
He also went on to bolster Besson’s contention that Millenium is overseeing the production in a very “hands-off” fashion, giving he and Lussier mostly free reign to indulge in their unhinged, balls-to-the-wall vision for the film. He contrasted that with his experience on another movie he wrote nearly a decade ago, before the studio forced considerable changes on the project that deviated severely from his original conception of it. “‘Jason X’…did not become the movie that I thought it would be. That happens. It’s happened with every movie I’ve ever [worked on]. It didn’t happen on this one. We wrote it and it’s there. Nobody changed it. Nobody gave us notes and said, ‘We want this. We want the girl to be more this. We want the hero to be a dog.’ We didn’t get any of that crap. This is the movie that we wrote and it’s never happened before.”
As far as the 3-D format is concerned, Farmer indicated that they hope to strike a good balance between the fully immersive 3-D of, say, Avatar, and the more “gimmicky” 3-D of a movie like The Final Destination (my comparisons, not his). “I think there’s a place for both…there are moments where it’s just Nic Cage and Amber Heard and you’re in the car with them and it’s not stuff flying at your face but you’re literally sitting in the backseat. You’re sitting there and it’s just sort of interesting. At the same time we’re going to throw cars and guns and bullets and frogs and naked people at your face because it’s fun and that’s the roller coaster.”
Following these initial conversations we were shepherded over to the set, a bombed-out, open-air building located across the street that those on the production were calling an “abandoned prison yard“. The building, sporting exposed walls painted with all manner of Satanic imagery (inverted pentagrams, et al), featured as its centerpiece the aftermath of a car chase that apparently didn’t end well – the two vehicles (one an RV, another a classic muscle car of some sort) casting a devilish orange glow along the walls of the crumbling building as fire shot through their windows in a controlled burn.
The stakes on set were clearly high; I couldn’t help but feel like I was in the way as I desperately tried to keep out of the path of scurrying crew members, rushing around like ants, barked orders nipping at their heels, the flaming vehicles giving the entire scene a hellish severity. The movie does deal with Satanists, after all. Funnily enough, Farmer (under orders from the film’s publicists, no doubt) had been coy about the true nature of the cult during our talk with him, but as we stood there it wasn’t hard to guess at its true nature. Had they been hoping we wouldn’t notice the “666” symbols spray-painted on the walls?
The particular shot being filmed at the moment was focused on Nicolas Cage’s hero, desperately crawling through the dirt near the flaming vehicles as the leader of the cult – the Jim Jones-meets-David Bowie-esque Jonah King (played by Twilight dad Billy Burke) – kicked him over and over, screaming something about “the baby” as he loomed like a rangy, black-leather-pants-clad madman. In short, he looked every inch the satanic dictator. A few paces off to the side, lounging about in disturbingly calm and collected fashion, was William Fichtner, who in the film plays an agent from Hell known only as “The Accountant“, sent to tail Nicolas Cage’s character on his quest.
As several different takes of the shot were filmed, a small group of us gathered around “video village” to look on at the monitors, trading off a thick pair of 3-D glasses to watch the scene unfold in all its 3-D glory. In all honesty I’m not much a fan of the format, but nevertheless it was very cool seeing the raw product unfolding live in three dimensions before my very eyes. I for one came away from the set impressed and grateful that I’d had the opportunity to witness a pretty awesome-looking scene.
After a quick trip to the craft services area to grab some munchies, our group then took a little trip over to a nearby warehouse, where several of the classic cars used for the production were being held. These included a ’69 Charger (more on that later) and a ’72 Chevelle. After several of the straight guys in our group had themselves a nice community circle jerk around the gleaming vehicles, it was off to talk with special makeup effects designer Gary Tunnicliffe, who gave us a peek at a few “severed limbs” from his trailer (including a leg blasted apart by a high-powered gun).
Back in the auditorium, we sat down to have a chat with the dapper William Fichtner, the instantly-recognizable character actor who has been doing great work in major films for years but whom most people don’t know by name. The actor has in the past worked for top-shelf directors like Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, Robert Zemeckis and Doug Liman. Clearly on lockdown thanks to the on-set publicist, when asked to describe his character in more depth Fichtner comically intoned: “Well, he wears one suit with one tie and one shirt. And he always looks really, really good.” Fichtner did indeed look mighty fine, the suit perfectly tailored to his lanky 6′ frame; however, he did sport one tell-tale facial scar. “That’s a 3-D moment; wait until you see how [I get the scar]! I was aware of the 3-D-ness of that one…[but] I think the Accountant has an ease and a grace that…well, he doesn’t want to get dirty. It’s not even about getting dirty, it’s not necessary.“
From Fichtner’s description, “The Accountant” is a fish-out-of-water in the film’s “Red State“, down-`n’-dirty aesthetic, as indicated when the actor described his character’s first appearance in the script.
“It might be 20 pages into the movie and you’ve seen so much by that point – colorful characters and grungy places, and slap the 3-D on top of that like eye candy“, he said. “All of a sudden, this character shows up and there’s no one else looking like him. Hopefully I’ve found the right rhythm; it’s different because he’s different. The first time you see him, he’s just walking down the road, then I run into some people we’ve already met, a waitress and a short order cook. We have a little exchange and it’s very interesting and it has a little ballet to it.“
CONTINUED IN PART 2
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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