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Charles Band (Part 4) Go back to Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3 of this very long interview.
"Thank you. That's another example where we didn't have a home at the time and I probably should have not made that investment without a cable network or someone really solidly behind it. Because they all want their own input; it's not good enough that you make something that's probably in most places at least on a par with what they're turning out. If they're not involved emotionally and creatively from the get-go, they're not going to pick it up. “I designed that as something that could maybe get me into the cable TV business. We shot them well, we spent money, we shot them on 35mm. They weren't done cheaply as a lot of this programming is done. But I couldn't find a buyer so as a result we just released them on video and that was that. It was a clever idea. We had about 20 of those projects developed and we were busy writing scripts because there's so many wonderful classic monsters to bring back and have young kids involved in those adventures." Looking through the vast number of films you've been associated with, there seem to be a lot of instances when a title or a concept has been in development, fallen through for whatever reason, then reappeared quite a few years later. Do you always keep a stock of unused titles and ideas? "As we speak I have a board in my office that covers two walls with almost every movie - not every movie but a couple of hundred movies - in the form of little pieces of colour cover art, essentially video and DVD covers. I look at this every day, wondering: 'Well, that was a good idea that didn't fly. Maybe there's a way to bring that back and do it a little differently.’ That's the strength of this weird library; I've been doing this long enough. Filmonsters is a good example. There may be an opportunity where it's exactly what someone's looking and I'll go in there and dress it up and who knows, we may be in that business, ten years after we made those pilots and they didn't go anywhere. So you never know. It's still a valid idea."
"There was no deal. It was just that we were involved with them. This is during the period when I was distancing myself. The idea at the time was: oh my God, you can save money with digital video and forget shooting on film. JR was a big proponent of that, and a few others at the time. The business was really shrinking at the time, meaning that if there were only ten dollars to be had, you'd better spend a few less if there's going to be any business at all. One way to accomplish that, it seemed at the time, was doing digital post-production. “I really regret, although you learn from all of this, the three or four years when I made - or rather, caused to be made - 20 or 30 of these DV movies. Because for the most part they're all very inferior quality. I was not involved with... any one really. JR was line producer on them with a few other fellows. I eventually got the impression that people realise that, unless you're Robert Rodriguez and you've got 100 million dollars to play with when you can paint every frame, this digital deal - either it's extremely low budget, and these movies don't benefit from that dirty look, or it's something where you've got to spend far more than we've got to spend. “So ironically a combination of events took place and then I stepped back and just wanted to do it the old-fashioned way. I wanted to be directly involved from soup to nuts, shooting everything on film, making the movies I made back in the eighties and early nineties. Unfortunately during those few fallow years and the years where I think a lot of people were misguided, one of the people I was involved with, who was out there as my front man, line-producing and finding young directors from the mid-west, was JR, and a few others. That's a body of work that I hope to eventually forget about."
"That was actually fun and it's a pity it didn't work well enough to continue on as a series. It's not complicated. I have a lot of good movies that have never gotten a lot of play. Shatner and I are friends and I said, why don't we do something where you're the late-night host? There's no show quite like it any more. I grew up when you would watch on a Saturday night and there was always Elvira or whoever. There was also some wacky host who hosted these movies. You would cut back during the commercial break and they would have something funny to say or a little vignette. That was my model for what was eventually aired as William Shatner's Full Moon Fright Night. “We took 13 of my movies and we wrote not just introductory and closing pieces but a bunch of interstitial stuff. So if you watched Vampire Journals or Head of the Family or Oblivion, whichever movie you watched, in this case on the Sci-Fi Channel, Shatner was the host. It was actually very clever. We wrote some clever stuff and I shot all this material: Shatner poking fun at the movies, and I also brought a bunch of people in for interviews like Roger Corman and Stuart Gordon and Stan Lee and all sorts of people I've worked with who were all happy to talk about their experiences in the business. So each episode not only had Shatner as a book-end and as a fun commentator, but also most of the episodes had an interview with some luminary in the genre. “It was fun and they all aired on Sci-Fi Channel a few years ago but they put it out in a very late slot and maybe the alchemy wasn't quite there - who knows? The ratings weren't quite what they wanted and what we had hoped would happen, which is another season, didn't happen. It was a one-time deal, but we do have 13 of these which we haven't re-released, which would be fun because Shatner's commentary and the interviews would make for an interesting new edition of some of these movies." Although a lot of your films are now on DVD, they're not really Special Editions, are they? Are you planning to do Special Editions for any of these films? "I'd like to but there's so much stuff going on right now. I'm putting a lot of energy into the birth of the new label and the new movies. I've shot five movies in twelve months and they're just beginning to come out. And I've got the action figure line that I'm excited about and that's going to all happen in late August. Once that's all up and running, the idea of bringing back some films and doing Special Editions; there are a lot of movies from the late eighties and early nineties which I sold the rights to that were never released in their original director's cut. They were all cut down for R ratings. It's a job to go back to the negative and do all this, it's not easy - but that's going to be worth doing because some of them I think people would enjoy looking at in a Special Edition format."
"That's easily done, too. Believe it or not, even though it seems like I made it a lifetime ago, I still have the original negative. On that one, if my memory is correct, I don't think there was a lot that we actually cut out because it was before video was really happening. The MPAA was more lenient, it was before the period when they got more difficult to deal with. So I don't remember Tourist Trap as being something we had to cut a whole lot out of - I'm sure there were little snippets cut out - but nonetheless, we could go back and see what's there. That was a long time ago." Some of your more recent films had little Making Of featurettes. "Yes, I made a lot of those and I also have hundreds, if not thousands, of hours if interviews with people: many of whom have moved on in different fields and become very successful; many of whom I have no idea what happened - they fell off the face of the Earth. But there's a lot of material that could be very interesting. There's certainly 30 to 40 people who have gone on to be very successful in their field and their expertise. To go back and get material on Demi Moore and Helen Hunt and all the people I dealt with, like Sam Raimi and Stan Winston. There's so much involved; it's a question of digging back and looking at it and trying to figure out a way to bring it out. Right now we're finding pieces and we're just putting them on as added value on DVDs, just for fun. But there's a lot of stuff there - I just have to one day figure out how to put it all together." Is there anything you have always wanted to make and haven't been able to? "Nope! Believe it or not. There are half a dozen scripts that I can't make on this low budget. They're scripts I'm really excited about and one day, if things get better and I can indulge myself and have a little more money... They're still genre films and they're still commercial but I can't make them for the current budgets and the current formula that hopefully will work for us. But there's not one particular thing. If I had that sort of drive and ambition, I would have been making major studio films years ago, I would have put myself in that market, but I don't have the patience to wait a year or two and make one movie. I can't do that. I prefer to make a lot of little movies and just enjoy that and see if these ideas work." How many pictures will Wizard bring out each year? "I think six is the number. I think that's enough for one guy to do! And I'm on that track. That doesn't mean that there might not be an exception. There are a few directors I've worked with like Ted Nicolau who I would happily work with again and trust to direct a film. But as much as I can, at least for the first year or two, I'm going to try and do it myself. For better for worse, I'll stay real close to this. Starting with the end of June, at least here in the US and probably shortly thereafter in the UK, every two months more or less there will be another Wizard release.” Go back to Part 1 of this very long interview, where Charles Band discusses Wizard video, puppets and dolls, Mansion of the Doomed, Last Foxtrot in Burbank, Christopher Lee and Laserblast. Or go back to Part 2 where he talks about Tourist Trap, sequels, Trancers, Puppet Master, Subspecies, Dollman, Shrunken Heads, Troll and The Dungeonmaster. Or go back to Part 3 where he talks about Piranha Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, Intruder, Clive Barker, Full Moon, adult films and children’s films. | ||
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A few years ago you had a deal with JR Bookwalter and Tempe Entertainment. What was that?
What was the William Shatner project that you did?
I know there are a lot of people who would like a Special Edition of