|
 |
Find interviews by: | ||
| | |
Jake West, Eileen Daly and Rob Mercer (Part 2) Go back to Part 1 of this long interview. You can also jump to Rob's comments or the start of Jake's comments.
Eileen Daly: "As Jake said before, I knew him through doing a couple of pop promos and bits and pieces like that, that he was doing at the time. He told me at the CD-ROM party that he'd written a script, there were three girls, three sexy babes that he needed. And he was pleased with the script and going ahead with it, and he was excited. I said, 'Can I have a role in it?' He said, 'Well, you'll have to cast for it, but yes, when it's actually finalised I'll give you a ring and tell you when it's on.' So he did. He said it was on, so I went up for a casting." What was the stuff you'd done with Jake before? ED: "We'd done a pop promo with me in a cornfield as a butterfly. But bloody thing - it rained and they couldn't get the sun right. So we had to come back the next morning and do a reshoot on that." I can't see you as a butterfly. ED: "I was a good butterfly." JW: "Eileen was wearing a translucent rubber dress, like a condom dress, and she had this full-face make-up like a butterfly's wing across her face. We put her in this chrysalis and she tears her way out of it. So it's all very dramatic. It was for a band called The Rain, a rock band. They never got anywhere, but the video's quite nice. The first day was shit because it rained, but the second day it shined and it was sunny. It was all based around Magritte paintings. Bowler hats and stuff, and sofas in the field. All very silly, but it looked nice." ED: "So I'd done that, and he said there was a casting going, come in. So I actually asked him to bike over the script because I wanted to have a look at it. I thought the script was fantastic. I looked at the script and I loved Lilith Silver! I wanted Lilith, I didn't want the other babes! I got my audition date. I was the first girl to be auditioned, wasn't I? And I knew there was some action in the movie, so when I was making the coffee, I got Jake in the kitchen and I started showing off. Do you remember me doing my kung fu kicks and everything? I was trying to impress him! Showing him my muscles, because I'd been training a lot then. I'd been training for three years and I was a lot bigger. I'd done kickboxing but mainly weight-training. I was really into weight-training, cardiovascular. I loved it, I ate the right food. "So anyway, I didn't hear anything for about three weeks and he was obviously seeing loads of other girls. But I was saying to Nigel, 'Oh God, he hasn't rung, you know. He hasn't rung.' Every now and then I'd say, 'Jake rung?' 'No.' Anyway, he phoned up and he said we've now cut it down to about two or three people, so I'd like you to come in again. So I went in again and then waited another week, biting my nails. Because Jake would never jeopardise this; this is his first film, his baby, and he wanted to get it right. Just because he knows me and he likes me, there was no guarantee. With Jake, just because he knows and likes someone and he thinks they might be right for the part, if someone better came along, I know he would take that other person. Because he's put his life on the line, he wants the right person for it. And that worried me! But then Jake phoned up and said, 'I've got some good news. You've got the part of Lilith Silver!'
Was it a very intensive shoot? Hard work? ED: "Terribly hard work. The crew were great. We all slept in the same house together - it was like a commune. Jake's mum did the food. Everything was really, really simple. Jake didn't have a lot of money to play around with all these fineries like we're sitting here now in a hotel, eating breakfast. But everything was really good. It was very, very cold, I remember. And the catsuit was great and it looked great, but after three weeks of wearing a catsuit, the catsuit did become like a second skin. It was becoming cold. I would sweat underneath the catsuit and the sweat would turn to cold, so when I took it off I would be wringing all round the crutch, all under my bust. So it was hard work, because we had to move constantly. We'd rehearse once, shoot, off. Because we didn't have the fineries of having six takes and four weeks' rehearsal pre-shoot. Because we didn't have a lot of film. Another thing was that Jake's parents were moving to Devon and we had to shoot because they were moving within the time-scale that we were shooting. Their house was so wonderful to shoot at, we had to do it there and then." JW: "There was a lot of location work. We started off in Buckinghamshire, then we came to London and we did a week in London, then we relocated to Kent, so we had to move a whole unit around on a low budget. Normally you're supposed to keep everything isolated in one place. That was difficult, I think, for the actors as well. Eileen was there all the time, because not only was she doing probably the biggest role she's ever, but it was shot completely out of sequence. And Eileen did really well with that." ED: "One minute we were shooting the beginning of the film, and the next minute you're in a scene that's at the end. that sort of thing. Mentally you had to remember the script and all the middle bits that go through it." JW: "Plus you're getting worn out by all the milage. Everyone starts off with loads of energy, but a couple of weeks in, after 18-hour days, everyone's really feeling it. When you analyse the film in a cosy environment, everyone talks about, 'Oh, why did you do it like that? You shouldn't really have done that.' But at the time, in those sort of situations, just getting it done is sometimes all you can do. We were very lucky. I think we got very good results for the limitations of what we were under as well. Eileen really got into the character. I think it took a couple of days, but then you really got it. That thing you did at the beginning of the shoot, which isn't your favourite - the Transylvania one - that was about the second or third day."
JW: "One of the good things about doing a film like this, though, because it was such an intensive thing, is that we've learnt so much by doing it. We can look at it now and it's not like we're saying this is the best thing we can ever do. It makes you think, 'God, if it's possible to do that like that, just imagine if we have a bit of time and a bit of money and some space, then we can really do something special.' The learning curve is so steep, doing something like this because it's just crazy. it's not like anything else you can think of. That kind of low-budget shoot is crazy." In reinventing the vampire myth, it's almost like you're having a dig at people who take this too seriously. Is there a danger of alienating your core audience? JW: "There's always a danger of alienating an audience, but that's not a reason not to do stuff. Otherwise, if you're just going to keep it the same as always, then there's nothing new about it. I think the kind of things that I was laughing at and having a slight dig at are the things which generally people find funny about vampires anyway. I think the notion of somebody five foot seven turning into a bat which is about half a foot or whatever is a bit ridiculous, or turning into a mist. All those things used to make me laugh about vampires. So I never really believed in those elements anyway. To me, they were the more ludicrous elements of it. The whole idea of somebody who is immortal, who has this kind of regenerative system if they drink blood, they're not really immortal even. Vampires can always get killed. I figured decapitation is the way to kill a vampire, rather than staking, because if your head comes off you're not going to regrow a new head, however good your regenerative powers are. It was just things like that, things that I just thought, 'Well, if it upsets people then I'm sorry but...' "On the whole, everyone who's seen it out of the goth/vampire audience, these people do have a sense of humour as well. So on the whole they'll have got the joke. If anything they're the people who possibly found it the funniest because they're more into it. The trappings of vampire lore are the kind of things that they actually talk about, whereas the normal Joe Public doesn't necessarily think about that all day." Are you hopeful that this will get beyond the core audience and be seen as a New British Film? JW: "Of course, yes. If there's a chance for a crossover audience, because it's a vampire film, then that would be wonderful basically. A vampire film has got a better chance of crossing over than maybe another type of horror movie. Although slasher movies have become very popular all of a sudden with Scream and the like. The bigger the audience the better, obviously." Some of the mainstream critics are likely to look down at it a bit. JW: "Oh, I think they will, yes. I've got absolutely no doubt that it will get crucified by a certain faction of the critics because it's just not their thing. But what can you do as a film-maker? If I was worried about what the critics are going to say, I'd never make a film. I am quite nervous about that, at the same time though, because I've been working on it for such a long time. It could be very disheartening to have people laying into you when really you're just trying to help the industry. We're helping the industry, we're not injuring it. If people don't like it, that's fair enough, but there's definitely an audience out there for this movie. How big that audience is remains to be seen."
ED: "Oh, of course. I think any exposure is good. Hopefully it helps me to grow and get different parts. I don't want to be stuck as a vampire, even though I love doing it. I adore horror films and that is my main background; I do like that. But in my art as an actress, I would like to grow and do other things. there's loads of other parts out there apart from being vampires that I would like to challenge. Lady Chatterley would be a smashing one, only because I'm not strong in that. I'm Mellor's wife and I'm quite weak and very lovely. There's loads of things. I've been so unchallenged with my acting that I'd like to stretch a little further and work with other people. I just like to work; it's all I want to do. And it's wonderful that everything's coming out now that I've worked for over the past two years. Now it all seems to be coming together. But I hope it doesn't come together. "It's like an orgasm really. You have an orgasm and go, 'Aaaah...' and then you have a cigarette and go to sleep! I hope it carries on. I'm doing my best to try and make it carry on, but I can't do it on my own. I have to have other people. Go and see the film. You can't slate this film because if you knew how much it cost and how hard we worked, why slate it? It's so easy to slate this film because it isn't your Godzilla, it's a small, independent film with a very talented director who's got great ideas. And he's a wonderful editor and he's very talented and no doubt one day he'll be picked up and he'll be in Hollywood, doing big things and good things. It's got some good actors and people worked so hard. It's so easy to slate a low-budget movie because we haven't got the money to make special effects and big squibs and car bombs and what everyone wants nowadays. But what this has got is a great little script, and a very tight, fast-moving, MTV-type concentration so the kids will love it. And the adults. It's got all the ingredients to make a beautiful cake, but if we had five million, maybe we may have lost those. If we had too much money, we might have lost that ingredient." JW: "Hopefully it's got a little bit of charm to it. Often people only realise these things retrospectively. They'll look back at it, after I've made my next film, if I do get a better budget. They'll look back at this and go, 'Oh, it doesn't have the charm of Razor Blade Smile.' But it's hard to say. I don't know what the audience thinks of it yet because we've only screened it a couple of times. This is the second time. So far, the general feedback seems to be positive which is a good indication at this point. But who knows? It needs to enter into history and have the reviews, then see how the fans talk about it. You know how fans are, because they talk about these things for a lot longer than anybody else. So if it stays alive and people are still watching it in a few years' time on video or whatever, then it will be a success. If it's just an ignored little movie, then... It's really hard to say. You've seen enough independent low-budget movies to know: sometimes they just catch on and people really think of them as great things, and other times they just don't." With a character a strong as Lilith Silver, are you looking, however vaguely, at sequels or model kits or whatever? JW: "Any merchandising, I won't be doing, but I'd love it to death. I think it would be great and I'd love to have my Lilith Silver mug and stuff like that! Manga are talking about doing that so I don't know how far that will go. It depends how much money they've got to spend if they license it. There is interest in a sequel from Manga. In the contract they've got me, if they want to do a sequel then I've got an option to write that and I've got control if I want to do it. I can say no if I don't want to, but then they can take it off somewhere else. They're interested in a sequel, but I think it very much depends. We've all seen enough crappy sequels to things to know that just because a film has made a little bit of money isn't always the best reason to do a sequel. I think it's got to be because you've got a fresh spin on the character for the new story. I think the Lilith Silver character's great because she's a vampire and she can fit into different time zones and stuff like that. I think there is a lot of meat there. So if there is a sequel, it's got to be because there's a positive audience response and they want that character to be resurrected, not just because somebody wants to make a fast buck on it, really. Because it's too much hassle making a film to just do it like that." Go back to Part 1 of this very long interview where Jake and Rob discuss the film's development, its release schedule and working with David Warbeck. Official sites: www.jakewest.com, www.eileendaly.com | ||
| | |
