Stuart Gordon: The Re-Animator Speaks!By: Rich RosellStuart Gordon, legendary director behind the 1985 H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Re-Animator, has been entertaining horror fans for years with a steady stream of darkly memorable films, such as Dolls, From Beyond and The Pit and the Pendulum.
dOc had a chance to sit down with Stuart Gordon during a recent film festival in Chicago, where his latest Lovecraftian film, Dagon, made its midwest premiere. Gordon sets the record straight on theater, Peter Pan, similarities between Honey! I Shrunk the Kids and Re-Animator, as well as working in Spain. dOc: There's an infamous story that I've heard about you that involves a racy version of the play Peter Pan that you were involved with while you were in college that got you arrested on obscenity charges. Is that an urban legend or is that true?
SG: It is true. It was a production of Peter Pan at the University of Wisconsin in 1968, which was the same year as the Chicago Democratic Convention. I had been protesting against the war in Viet Nam, and got tear-gassed by the Chicago police, and it suddenly struck me that you could take Peter Pan and turn it into a political cartoon about the whole situation. So, Peter Pan became the leader of the hippies and yippies, Captain Hook became Mayor Daley, and the pirates became the Chicago police. We left all of the James Barrie dialogue intact, so when they all went off to Neverland they sprinkled pixie dust on themselves and think lovely thoughts, and up they go. That was an acid trip, which was visualized by a psychedelic light show that was projected onto the bodies of seven naked young ladies, that sequence got me and my wife arrested. They told us that it was obscene, and that we had to close the show. We felt that it was a violation of free speech, and so we performed anyway and were arrested for it. It was a serious charge—obscenity is a felony offense—and we were facing ten years in prison if convicted. Luckily, our defense attorney discovered that the guy who had brought the charges against us was a convicted child molester, and as soon as that information was passed along to the District Attorney, the charges were withdrawn. So it had a happy ending.
dOc: You're best known as primarily a horror director, but I think a lot of people might not be aware that you were co-founder and artistic director of the Organic Theater (in Chicago). How long were you there and how did that prepare you for the leap into directing films?
SG: Actually it comes right out of the Peter Pan story. My wife and I started the Organic Theater in Madison, but we were harassed there by local law enforcement who were upset that we'd gotten away. I'm from Chicago, and I came here to visit family, and while I was here I went to Lincoln Avenue. There were two new theaters that had just opened, one was The Body Politic and the other was The Kingston Mines. Paul Sills, who ran The Body Politic, knew of my work and said, "Why don't you guys move here, they'll leave you alone. If there's three theaters, we can call it a scene." So we did. The Organic came to Chicago in 1970, and I was artistic director here until 1985 when I went off to Los Angeles to do movies.
dOc: Meaning Re-Animator?
SG: Actually Re-Animator was done in '84, and released in '85. When I finished Re-Animator, I came back to Chicago and did more theater, and we took one of our productions to the Goodman Theater. Then Re-Animator became a hit, and I was offered a three picture deal, so we moved to L.A., and as soon as we got there they told us, "Yes, it is a three picture deal, but we want you to shoot the movies in Italy."
dOc: Well, they could have saved you a step if they had told you earlier. How did shooting the films in Italy work out?
SG: It was great. From Beyond, Dolls and Robot Jox were the three I did under that agreement.
dOc: A lot of your more well known films have a direct influence from H.P. Lovecraft, if not being outright based on his stories. When did you first discover his writings and how did you decide those were the stories you wanted to film?
SG: I started reading Lovecraft when I was a teenager, and his stuff always scared me. It's very disturbing. What got me started with Re-Animator was when I was talking with someone about the fact that they were making all of these vampire movies, and I said, "I wish they would make a new Frankenstein movie." This friend then said "Have you ever read the Lovecraft story 'Herbert West, Re-Animator'?" I had never heard of that story, so I was kind of intrigued. I discovered it was out-of-print, and I finally ended up going to the Chicago Public Library and found that they had one copy of it in their rare books collection. I had to fill out a postcard to request it, and six months later I had the postcard sent back to me saying I could come and see it, but I could not take it out of the library. When I got there what they handed me essentially was a pulp magazine, which was how it had originally been printed. It was so old, and the paper was so cheap, that it started crumbling in my hands as I started turning the pages. I asked them if I could Xerox it, and they let me do that. I was knocked out by these stories. He wrote them as a serial, as six short stories. Each story is only about two pages long, and he sold it to a magazine called Home Brew. Lovecraft sort of disowned the stories, I think, because he was actually being paid to write them. He considered himself an artist, and didn't like the idea of doing work for hire. They were ideal movie stuff. Unlike a lot of Lovecraft's stories, they were very action-packed and very graphic. None of this "It was too horrible to describe, and then I fainted." He laid it all out there, so we were able to take those stories and jam them into a movie.
dOc: Is there a dream Lovecraft story you'd like to do? I know your latest film, Dagon, is a combination of a couple of Lovecraft stories as well.
SG: Dagon is that dream Lovecraft for me. It's my favorite story. It's actually based on two of Lovecraft's stories: Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and Innsmouth, I think, is my favorite Lovecraft story of all time. It took us fifteen years to get it made, but finally it's on the screen. 
|
|
