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>> EXCLUSIVE VIDEO! Check out behind-the-scenes video footage from our "Grindhouse" cover shoot, including a Web-only interview with Rose McGowan. Plus: Read Peter Travers' review of the double feature.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have worked together a lot of times over the years: Tarantino directed a scene in Rodriguez's Sin City, Rodriguez directed Tarantino's script From Dusk Til Dawn, and the two of them both contributed segments to Four Rooms (along with Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell). But their greatest collaboration is probably Grindhouse, the lurid and excellent tribute to '70s exploitation film opening this weekend. (What else are you going to see this weekend: The Reaping? Does Hilary Swank have a machine gun for a leg in it? We think not.) To increase the ambience around their double bill, the Grindhouse boys recruited three horror-movie cohorts to direct fake trailers. They might be the most entertaining part of the whole package, so don't take a bathroom break at intermission.
Exclusive interviews with: Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
Rob Zombie made a career transition from the band White Zombie to directing The Devil's Rejects. His contribution to Grindhouse is a trailer for Werewolf Women of the SS; he called us from the set of the Halloween remake he's directing.
Why the Nazis?
Basically, I had two ideas. It was either going to be a Nazi movie
or a women-in-prison film, and I went with the Nazis. There's all
those movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS;
Fraulein Devil; and Love Camp 7 -- I've always
found that to be the most bizarre genre.
Did you watch exploitation movies when you were a
kid?
Yeah, when you lived in suburbia, drive-ins were the grindhouse
theaters. My favorite triple-bill I ever saw at a drive-in was
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Mother's Day, and I
believe it was Dawn of the Dead, all on one bill. That was
pretty high-powered. I couldn't drive yet, I didn't have a license,
so I would ride my bike to the drive-in and hop the fence, and
there was a little moat that you had to cross to get to the
drive-in. We would put our bikes over our heads and walk through
the water and sit out there by the speakers and get devoured by
mosquitoes for five hours, because we didn't want to pay.
Did you ever go to actual grindhouse
theaters?
I moved to New York when I was 18 and I started going to 42nd
Street. The early '80s were the last hurrah for grindhouse in New
York before Giuliani cleaned it up and killed it. I saw a lot of
great stuff there, a lot of stuff like Cannibal Holocaust
and Make Them Die Slowly and Italian zombie movies. The
42nd Street theaters were more like homeless shelters. There's
people sleeping in there, having sex. There would usually be some
guy playing his radio so loud you couldn't hear the movie, and if
anybody said anything, a fight would break out. Of course, all that
bizarre shit adds to the charm in a particular sort of way.
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Edgar Wright
Edgar Wright is one-half of the creative team (along with Simon Pegg) behind the brilliant Shaun of the Dead and the forthcoming Hot Fuzz (opening in the States on April 30). For Grindhouse, he directed a comedic trailer and implored us not to mention its name (because it's also the trailer's final punchline).
How'd you get involved in
Grindhouse?
In 2005, I was with Eli [Roth] in L.Quentin [Tarantino] was
telling us about the plan for Grindhouse, that he and
Robert [Rodriguez] were going to do a double bill and you two
should do a trailer each. A few weeks later I ran across Quentin
again in the bar of the Chateau Marmont and I acted out my idea for
him. And then I heard that during a meeting with the Weinsteins,
he'd repitched my pitch. The image of Quentin acting out my trailer
is something that I will never see and never get on camera. But I
wish I had.
What was the inspiration behind your
trailer?
In the '70s, when American International [Pictures] would release
European horror films, they'd give them snazzier titles. And the
one that inspired me was this Jorge Grau film: In the UK, it's
called The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. In Spain and
in Italy, I think it's called Do Not Speak Ill of the
Dead. But in the States, it was called Don't Open the
Window. I just loved the fact that there isn't a big window
scene in the film -- it's all based around the spin and the
voiceover not really telling you what the hell is going on in the
film.
Was there any British equivalent to the scummy American
grindhouse theaters?
No, it's a different experience in the UK. But famously, there was
the "video nasties" scandal in the early '80s: there was a massive
witch hunt on horror films because when VHS first started coming
out, there was a rating body for films but not for videos.
Distributors who had shown films like Zombie Flesh Eaters
at the cinema would release them completely uncut and unrated on
video. When people got wind of this, it became a huge scandal. The
government overreacted and impounded about 100 titles, including
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, and
The Evil Dead. So there was a long period throughout the
'80s where these films were just unavailable. Of course everything
that was banned became extremely collectable. I remember being at
art college and having a friend who had a lot of the video nasties
and I watched a whole bunch of them in a row, which obviously
severely traumatized me. I didn't have a VCR, so I used to watch
them in the library, which was a mistake. I'd have to tell people
who walked by, "Hey, I didn't make I Spit On Your Grave.
I'm not the sicko. I'm not even enjoying it that much."
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Eli Roth
Eli Roth (director of Hostel) describes himself as the bastard Frankenstein offspring of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. "In the '90s, everybody said, 'What effect are these violent movies going to have on society?'" he remembers. "And the answer is 'Eli Roth.'" He directed a trailer for the holiday-themed slasher flick Thanksgiving.
What was the inspiration for
Thanksgiving?
My friend Jeff, who plays the killer pilgrim -- we grew up in
Massachusetts, we were huge slasher movie fans and every November
we were waiting for the Thanksgiving slasher movie. We had the
whole movie worked out: A kid who's in love with a turkey and then
his father killed it and then he killed his family and went away to
a mental institution and came back and took revenge on the town. I
called Jeff and said, "Dude, guess what, we don't have to make the
movie, we can just shoot the best parts."
How long did it take to shoot?
Two days. If I actually thought about what I had to do, I never
would have done it. But how can you say no? When Quentin calls, you
gotta accept the charges. I scheduled it in Prague right after my
Hostel: Part II shoot. I told everybody, "Get me the
oldest, crappiest cameras we can find and let's just chop people's
heads off for two days and get as many naked girls as we can and
just trust me." No matter how many movies I make my whole life,
that two-and-a-half minute trailer is what I'll be remembered for:
"Eli Roth -- he had a guy fucking a turkey with a decapitated head
on it."
Did you have a good time making it?
It was the most fun I've ever had shooting anything. All I want to
shoot now are fake trailers, because there's no rules. You grab
your friends, point a camera at someone, have them say a line, and
it looks like a huge punch line from a scene. But the best part
about trailers is it's all money shots. Everyone tells me that I'm
extra happy whenever I'm shooting a kill scene. They say, "You're
different when you're shooting a torture scene or a decapitation.
You have this sparkle in your eye. You're bouncing around, you're
glowing -- any time you're killing people or you're shooting
nudity."
So are you going to make more?
I'm talking about doing a whole movie of fake trailers with Robert
and Quentin called Trailer Trash. Robert hit the nail on
the head when he said that you feel as if you've shot a real movie
in two days. I can shoot my blaxploitation movie, I can shoot my
Vietnam flashback movie, I can shoot my 80s sex comedy: Eager
Beavers. I can do every holiday slasher movie: Passover
Massacre, Hannukill.
Arbor Day!
Well, Mad magazine did that in 1981, so I'd have to
license it. I still have that issue -- in fact, the design for the
titles in Thanksgiving are taken from Arbor Day.
How'd you get all those Czechs to play pilgrims in the
parade scene?
We made announcements on the radio saying, "Come be in a Quentin
Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez movie." And so everybody in the town
showed up, including seven-year-old majorettes. And we explained
that someone's going to get their head chopped off, but nobody
spoke any English. As soon as that head came off, blood squirting
everywhere, the girls just ran screaming. It was actual panic: kids
were crying, they've got blood on their white shoes. After a few
hours the girls got the joke and they all started playing soccer
with the head.
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Robert Rodriguez
When Robert Rodriguez called us, the day after he finished his work on Grindhouse, he was already looking ahead to his next movie, which will either be an original thriller or Sin City 2: he had already come up with a theme song and sung it into his answering machine. He directed (and wrote, and photographed, and edited, and wrote the music for) the first half of Grindhouse, a zombie film called Planet Terror, plus a fake trailer for Machete.
Why a double feature?
I came up with the idea to do a double feature about three years
ago, before I did Sin City. And I got really excited
because I was looking at my old script files and I thought, "I'm
never gonna have a chance to do all these movies I've had ideas
for. Maybe I should start doubling them up and do double features."
So I started drawing posters for them and I just got so excited.
But then I did Sin City. And right when I finished I was
visiting Quentin to show him my edit of the scene he directed. I
went into his house and he has all this junk on the floor, just
like my house. And laying on the floor, just like the one laying on
my floor, is the same double bill poster I was using as an
inspiration, of Dragstrip Girl and Rock All
Night. And I said, "I have this idea and I think this could be
our next movie. I was gonna do a double feature but you should do
one and I'll do the other." And right off the bat, he said "Oh, we
gotta call it Grindhouse."
You started working on Planet Terror a while
back?
I wrote the first 30 pages of it back in 1998. I was doing The
Faculty and I told the actors, "Zombie films have been dead
for a while, but they're going to come back. We've got to be the
first." And then I never got around to it, and sure enough, zombie
movies came back. But I thought I still had some ideas that hadn't
been done yet.
How did Bruce Willis get on board?
I showed him an early test I did of a Machete trailer and
a sample of what the opening titles would be and the aging on it.
He said, "I'll come do anything on the movie. Whatever you got,
I'll come do it." I said, "Want to play the bad guy? You get to
kill bin Laden." And he said, [raspy Willis imitation]
"Who better?"
How did the trailers happen?
Quentin came up separately with the idea of the trailers. I didn't
even know about it until I read it in the trades. It said something
like "Rodriguez and Tarantino doing a double feature and Tarantino
says there's gonna be fake trailers." And I thought, "There
are?"
You ended up doing one yourself, for
Machete.
I wrote that back in '93. I was writing it as a full feature for
Danny Trejo -- right around that time I had cast him in
Desperado and I remember thinking, "Wow, this guy should
have his own series of Mexican exploitation movies like Charles
Bronson or like Jean Claude Van Damme." So I wrote him this idea of
a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the
U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that
they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an
agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought,
"That's Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous
job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it's
peanuts." But I never got around to making it.
There's a lot of medical gore in Planet Terror
-- is that something that scares you?
It terrifies me. That guy showing the gore? That's my real doctor.
I was asking him some technical questions to find out things that
could really happen so I could take them to the nth degree and make
them turn people into zombies. And he's showing me these pictures
while I'm trying to eat. I almost threw up.
You also have your son, Rebel, play a character who gets
his head blown off.
I thought, "I'm making a horror film -- what horrifies me?" That's
probably the worst thing I could think of. I didn't want to
traumatize anybody else's kid -- if I'm going to traumatize a kid,
it should probably be my own. But I did shoot an alternative
version where he lives all the way to the end, and that's the only
version he's seen.
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Quentin Tarantino
We met Quentin Tarantino in Santa Monica, where he was working on the second half of Grindhouse's double bill, the car chase/slasher film mashup Death Proof. Tarantino drank a cappuccino, which didn't seem to add any extra juice to his overcaffeinated personality, and his eyes lit up whenever he got to talk about his favorite old films. "I'm just a frustrated theater owner," he said.
Was there a grindhouse theater near you when you were
growing up?
No, but exploitation movies played all over at mall theaters. I
would chase films all over California -- "My god, Rolling
Thunder is playing on a triple bill with The Howling
in Long Beach!" My local theater was the Carson Twins Cinemthey
showed all the kung fu and blaxploitation movies. This little
Italian family owned and these big-ass Samoans were the ushers. If
anybody tried to steal candy from a kid, they'd send the Samoans in
there.
What genres did grindhouses cover?
All the exploitation genres: kung fu, horror, Italian horror --
also known as giallo -- sexploitation, the "good old boy"
redneck car-chase movies, blaxploitation, spaghetti Westerns -- all
those risible genres that were released in the Seventies.
So how did you settle on the slasher/car
combo?
I realized I couldn't do a straight slasher film, because with the
exception of women-in-prison films, there is no other genre quite
as rigid. And if you break that up, you aren't really doing it
anymore. It's inorganic, so I realized -- let me take the structure
of a slasher film and just do what I do. My version is going to be
fucked up and disjointed, but it seemingly uses the structure of a
slasher film, hopefully against you. Anybody who's interested in
slasher films should check out Carol J. Clover's book, Men,
Women and Chainsaws, which I think is one of the best
film-criticism books ever written. I got inspired to watch all the
slasher films and check out the all the ones that I had missed.
Did you discover any gems?
Oh, yeah. I blew it off when it came out, but My Bloody
Valentine is fantastic! Paramount needs to reissue it with all
the gore intact because they cut out all the gore and its never
been returned back to what it was, but it's a terrific movie. In
the last year or so, I've become a real fan of Canadian horror
films; almost 75% of slasher films came out of Canada, but this is
the only one that really plays it as Canada. It takes place in a
working-class mining town and they have the deep regional Canadian
accents and with the economic depression, the way the characters
are relating to each other, the sense of community, you think
you're watching The Deer Hunter. It's so well done I
couldn't believe it.
That's one of the things I love about Slap
Shot. Everyone remembers that it's a funny hockey comedy, but
--
Yeah! Slap Shot is not that different: they're drawing on
the sense of community and the mills keeping them alive.
Your killer, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), dispatches
girls with his "death-proof" car. What car chase films inspired
you?
CGI for car stunts doesn't make any sense to me -- how is that
supposed to be impressive? You can't compare it to the chase scenes
in The Driver or White Lightning or Dirty
Mary Crazy Larry. A great chase scene that people might not
know about is in an Italian crime movie by Fernando Di Leo: it's
been released to video under a million titles, including
Manhunt and Hired to Kill. And Robert Butler did
a fabulous movie around 1980 called Night of the Juggler
-- that has a car chase with James Brolin all through New York that
is basically the first fifteen minutes of the movie.
One other really terrific car chase off the top of my head is from Strange Shadows in an Empty Room, also known as Blazing Magnums. It's an Italian movie but it was shot in Montreal. And the set-up for the chase scene is completely dumb: Stuart Whitman is a Dirty Harry-like cop who goes to question somebody and the guy just takes off. So then they have one of the most thrilling car chases ever, and when he catches the guy, he's like "Okay, I just wanted to ask you a few questions." It's like something out of Police Squad -- there's twelve people dead back there during this chase and you just wanted to ask him some questions?
I don't think there have been any good car chases since I started making films in '92 -- to me, the last terrific car chase was in Terminator 2. And Final Destination 2 had a magnificent car action piece. In between that, not a lot. Every time a stunt happens, there's twelve cameras and they use every angle for Avid editing, but I don't feel it in my stomach. It's just action.
>> EXCLUSIVE VIDEO! Check out behind-the-scenes video footage from our "Grindhouse" cover shoot, including a Web-only interview with Rose McGowan. Plus: Read Peter Travers' review of the double feature.