| |
So tell me
how you got started in this business? When
did it really click for you that this was what
you wanted to do?
I think it was when I was really little. My dad
had a Super 8mm film camera and also a couple of
still photo cameras. He filmed us a lot, and I
was always fascinated by the camera and the
process of recording reality and images onto this
thing, at the time, called film. I got addicted
to taking photos with a little 110 film camera,
and also got addicted to watching old movies. My
favorites were the feature-length and short films
of 'Abbott and Costello', the 'Three
Stooges', and Charlie Chaplin, which my
dad loved. I also, like my dad, became absorbed
with anything Peter Sellers was in. These things,
along with my love for comic books, which I
started reading and collecting when I was 6 years
old, really informed it early on. I never really
thought about making movies or directing or
anything till I was a junior or senior in high
school though. My friend, Brian Cleveland, who
now also works in the film industry, got me into
it. I was a painter and an artist at the time,
and started the Society of Fine Arts (SOFA) at
Greenhill. I also loved music like crazy. He
basically pulled me into the home movies he was
making at the time. He had state-of-the-art
equipment for that era, and had amazing
influences and films to watch. I watched a lot of
cult and foreign films with him, and that, along
with the realization that you can just go for it,
are what did it for me. I then went to college,
and did that whole thing. Afterwards, I worked my
way through various production and
post-production jobs, mostly on TV shows, until I
found my inspiration to make my first Super 16mm
short film, "Nobody". I made the
mistake of shooting it during El Nino. That was
fun. I'm still very proud of that film. It was
one of the biggest productions I've ever had
actually.
You're
the founder of Bloodshot
Pictures. What was your intent when
you began this production company and how has
that evolved in from then until now?
It was always my intent to create a place for me
and my colleagues to do stuff, and also create a
brand identity. Bloodshot Pictures is just as
much an idea as it is a thing. It's still
evolving, and we'll see where it goes. We're
actually thinking about opening a retail store in
LA sometime in the next couple of years possibly.
We'll see. I'm all about surprises.
Tell me about
the film you are currently shooting
'Noirland'. Give me a teaser that is going
to make it absolutely irresistible.
A catatonic serial killer is placed under deep
hypnosis to free his last victim, and revive him
into coming to terms with the sadistic acts he is
responsible for. James Duval plays the serial
killer. His character's name is Tiberius Malloy.
Oh, and this is going to be my best narrative
film thus far. I hope those are reasons enough.
It has an international cast, is extremely
provocative, and has a lot of stuff going on in
it. It's my biggest homage to the film noir
genre.
You've made
several films in a relatively short amount of
time with titles like 'The Devil's Muse', the
aforementioned 'Noirland', and 'In a Spiral
State'. I imagine filming that many
films also is sort of a crash course in
filmmaking, especially since you tend to direct,
produce, write, and act as cinematographer, etc.
in most of them. What are the
biggest lessons you've learned that you
would like to pass on to all the novice
filmmakers out there?
It's all so varied. I never set out to shoot my
films honestly. As far back as
"Nobody", I've always worked with
experienced DPs. I've been blessed to work over
the years with amazing people like Michael
Hofstein, Clay Liford, Neal Fredericks, Mark
Mervis, Andrew Parke, Josh Orlando, and others.
However, I'm very hands-on, and always have been.
Making a movie is like making a big, big painting
or performance piece. Also each of these projects
is very different in the way that it's conceived
and then executed. I shot very, very little of
'The Devil's Muse', but after I
experimented more and more, and especially as I
started to DP other people's work, I started
feeling more confident about shooting. I directed
and lensed a few music videos, and they helped
push me in that direction more too. 'In A
Spiral State' was supposed to look and
feel a bit like the reality shows, 'Intervention',
and 'The Real World', so I
decided to shoot that film a lot more
off-the-cuff. It's perhaps the most visually
experimental and truly raw-looking movie I've
done aside from 'Clay Fields'. 'Noirland'
is a different story all together. Yeah, so no
crash-course of any kind really. Just balls out
going for it, with a plan and a passion. It's all
about primal instinct and intuition. I go for
where the beauty and the tears are.
So which of
those many hats you wear during the making of one
of your films do you see as your greatest
strength and which do you see as the one that is
the most difficult for you?
Conveying thoughts and emotions with my eyes and
the on-camera rehearsal process. It's just
psychic stuff. I don't know. It's all about doing
things the way that nobody else does them or
would dare to. I'm all about just doing things
the way they feel right, even if it's just on the
spot.
What's the
best damn thing about making movies?
It allows me to take my mind off of conventional
reality, which can be so frightening and
off-putting, and go into a fabricated world. At
the same time, I love reality, and as
contradictory as it sounds, I love making my
films and the set, when we shoot, a real
experience. It's all about reality in many ways.
I want everything to look and feel real. It's got
to be real and sometimes just a bit beyond it
too. I also love the alchemy of picking out and
working with my cast and crew. Shooting on full
moons is also a favorite, and has been a serious
part of my moviemaking since about 2001 or maybe
even earlier. I don't know. I just really,
really, really love making so-called movies. I
just want to take people into a world, and maybe
either hypnotize them or get them to hallucinate
just a little. For me personally, it's also a
dream to be able to work with so many people I
love and admire. One of the greatest blessings is
being able to get people like David J, Cinque
Lee, Julie Strain, Robert Williams, Rena Riffel,
Serj Tankian, Elissa Dowling etc. to be in my
movies and music videos.
Do you have a
career aspiration?
My biggest one is to stay healthy and alive for
as long as possible. I also want to make more
films with bigger and bigger budgets and cast as
the years progress. Ultimately it would be nice
to leave a sizeable body of work or catalog of
films, and to keep adventuring into different
genres and also different mediums, not just film
for instance. I'm interested in making music,
photography, painting, and continuing to write.
I'd love to publish a book of short stories. I've
talked about that idea for a long time. Oh, and I
want to make some more money, and maybe relax on
a luxurious vacation someday. Both of those
things would be really nice.
Do you
have any other projects lined up you would like
to let the racksandrazors.com readers know about?
I do. I have two
features in post right now, that I can't wait for
people to see. One is a thriller that is
completely original, which is a very hard thing
to claim these days. It's called 'Telephone
World', and I really don't want to say
much about it, except that much of it happens in
real time, and there's a lot of crying and
emotional torment in it. It's also got one of the
greatest female acting performances I've ever
seen in a movie in it. I'm not joking when I say
this. Elissa Dowling is dynamite in this movie.
She's mind-blowing. Anyhow, the other one is my
first ever documentary, which is called
'The New Erotic' and it's about the new
wave of erotic and pornographic directors and
photographers that are changing the shape of
adult entertainment and erotic art. That
documentary is going to be amazing for people to
experience. It's very subversive, and it's a very
unique take on the subject. The people in it like
Kimberly Kane or Ed Fox or Eon Mckai are so
creatively talented and interesting, that people
will be astounded. They're amazing artists
honestly. 'The New Erotic' is
almost finished editing-wise, and should be out
at the end of May. The last project to mention,
of course, is 'Noirland', and I
can't wait to be done with that one. Other than
that, I've my hands in a few projects here and
there also, and am developing some other
projects. I'm putting the final touches on a new
script that is pure horror genre stuff. I can't
reveal the title of that one yet, but suffice it
to say, that's it's probably the most commercial
thing I've ever committed to paper. I hope people
will enjoy these various projects and films!
You've made so many films in such a relatively
short period of time. What
has been the most frightening thing that has
ever happened during the actual filming of one of
your movies?
Oh wow, really the single most frightening thing
is the only one I kind of don't want to mention
as it involved someone betraying my trust and
attempting to steal one of my movies from me
outright. I can't even go into details on that
one; because it's something I really don't like
thinking about and had such a bad effect on me.
Plus I made peace with the person, even though
they did so much damage to me, and we were at
odds for a long time. Otherwise, not much really
happens. I mean, I've shot in haunted places.
I've shot stuff in scary neighborhoods, and none
of that is necessarily frightening really. The
most frightening thing is when people die in real
life. When my friend, may he rest in peace, Neal
Fredericks, who was the original DP on 'The
Devil's Muse' when it first started out,
died in a small plane crash just two days before
we were going to shoot a scene. He was out of
town, and was to come back straight to the set.
We'd only shot a little bit of the film at that
point, but he got a gig and went out town to
shoot. When he came back, he was supposed to come
straight to our set, and shoot some more. When he
died, it was incredibly devastating, and so
shocking. It rattled the entire production, and
continued to do so. I've lost a lot of friends
and family over the years, and when a person dies
in real life, it is easily the most frightening
thing period.
Vampires,
werewolves, zombies, witches, creatures, aliens,
telemarketers...what does it for you horrorwise
Ramzi and why?
They don't really do much for me per se. I mean,
I should say, they are things like any things. So
in the right story or setting, they're amazing.
In the wrong setting, they're boring, cliché,
and make me angry at laziness in storytelling
motifs. However, at the same time, the monster is
something that is part of the human psyche. Human
beings need monsters to exist, so that they can
further label or falsely define evil. Demonizing
people is where it started, but there's also a
bit of innocence about monsters too. I mean, I
love James Whale's "Frankenstein"
because of that innocence and beauty. On the
other hand, when people do interesting things
with these famously mythic creatures, it can be
really great too. I'm a fan of a couple of
vampire movies, I guess. I do love 'Near
Dark', 'The Lost Boys',
and 'Nadja'. The coolest recent
creature film I've seen is also a bit of a
psychological sci-fi film at the same time, and
it's an indie called "The Shriven" by
Brian Schiavo, who I think is a new talent in
this genre. Anyhow, I think telemarketers are the
most annoying in the whole bunch, but all of
these things can become cliché in the wrong
hands. What's awesome is when people do it right
like some of the examples I just mentioned. Oh,
and my favorite witches will always be tied
between The Wicked Witch from 'The Wizard
of Oz' and Witchiepoo from 'H.R.
Pufnstuf'.
What was the
first movie to scare the shit out of you?
I don't know if I have the right answer for you
on that one, as I watched and read a lot of scary
and disturbing stuff as a kid. I mean, when I was
like 4 or 5, I was already addicted to watching "Alfred
Hitchcock Presents", "The Twilight Zone", "Night
Gallery", and "The
Hardy Boys", which all made me
dream and also got me frightened from time to
time. And although I never saw the whole movie
until I was much older, the shower scene in
'Psycho' both titillated and terrified
me when I first saw it on tv. That was probably
back when I was like 8 or 9 maybe? But the first
film to have a truly profound effect on me with
violence was probably much, much later really,
because I know when I saw 'Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer' in the
theater when it first came out, it shook me to my
bone. It was so powerful, creepy, and felt so
real.
And what was
the last horror movie you saw that really annoyed
you?
There are a good number of horror films that have
never gotten distribution that I think shouldn't
ever get distribution probably. There are also a
lot of movies out there that are basically the
same movie over and over again. So a good half of
so-called horror movies out there annoy me, but
at the same time, there are so many that I also
love. It's hard to single out one that annoyed
me, since most of the time; I'm thinking about
the ones that I love.
Okay, we're
pulling into the Ramzi Abed Drive In. What
three horror flicks are on the triple bill for
tonight and what goodies are they going to be
serving up at the concession stand?
Well, if we're talking about things that I want
to see, they'd only straddle the horror genre in
a way, but they're bound to mystify and disturb
the audience. So, I don't think they're films
that horror fans would normally consider horror,
but to me they're amazing, so I have to mention
them. Let's just go ahead and put up three
somewhat recent films from the last decade... 'Demonlover',
'Irreversible', and 'Antichrist'.
Oh, and what would they serve? Probably coffee,
cigarettes, and sushi.
And your
favorite horror flick death scene?
Hmmm. This is a difficult question, as I don't
necessarily want to glorify the act of dying, but
cinematic murder can be beautifully executed, no
pun intended. The elevator scene in 'Dressed
to Kill' is pretty mindblowingly
well-staged and powerful. I'm also a huge fan of
the film, 'Tenebre', and every
death scene in that film is a subversive and
almost sexual piece of art. To go a bit more
mainstream and more current, I also really love
the big freeway pileup death scene at the
beginning of 'Final Destination 2'.
It's a great chain reaction effect, and one of
the few times I was able to forgive myself for
seeing conventional CGI, because I thought it
worked really well there actually.
What's the
best Halloween costume you ever had?
That's actually a strangely tough one. If I go
back far enough, my favorite was in 5th or 6th
grade, when I dressed up as Sean Connery's James
Bond from 'Never Say Never Again',
the only unofficial Bond movie released. Other
favorites over the years were when I was dressed
as Hunter S. Thompson back in 1992 when I was in
college at Pitzer. That one was really more like
role playing. I even had tons of things in my
black doctor's satchel, including grapefruits,
writing utensils, and hallucinogens. Another one
I loved was dressing up in my cat mask from my
films, 'The Interview' and 'Upside
Downtown'. That mask actually makes a
sort of re-appearance in a newly stitched up form
in 'Noirland'. Hollie Stevens
wears it in a signature shot in the film. Oh, and
for those who wonder about it, 'Upside
Downtown' has not been released yet, but
it will be sometime in the next year or two.
What scares
you in real life?
Death, injustice, and pain. Pain is probably the
scariest thing of all. When something hurts,
especially if it's inside your body, and there's
nothing you can do about it... Well, that's the
scariest thing probably. |
|
