*Sigh* Death of Wolverine and why I need to take a break from Marvel Comics

Marvel's obnoxious price points aside, it is clear that the comic arm is finally pushing me out.

Logan was my favorite character at Marvel for almost 20 years. He was my gateway into the comics realm and I loved him. When Origins hit in 2001 all that changed. To say I was not a fan of Paul Jenkins story is an understatement. Then came Daniel Way's awful spin off series and crap concepts like Daken and X-23.

I have wanted to read Wolverine on a regular basis since those two series and concepts ruined the mysteries and awesomeness of Logan (He will never be James Howlett to me), but outside of Jason Aaron's initial arc which saw my other favorite mutant (ex) David North on the dark side of things,  nada. The previews told me everything.

And now Marvel is killing off Logan because they wrote themselves into a corner with the aforementioned titles and concepts. They can claim reader burnout (and I am sure this is a part), but I knew when they began using the loss of the healing factor (at the same time The Wolverine did), well I knew what was coming. Marvel claim they have no exit strategy for bringing Logan back, which means it will take a few years and some brain-storming to resurrect Wolverine.

Frankly, the new Marvel with its ridiculously forced PC panderings*, overpriced and uninspired characterizations and concepts remind me who is really in charge.

This is not the Marvel that tried everything and anything any more. This a company clearing running out of ideas, eager to make money through stunts, weak events and letting once great characters wither.  With Logan's death, I feel my enthusiasm for Marvel comics dying too. Getting my fix from some of the films is just fine.

Rest in Peace Logan, your last decade was unworthy for you, but I will always remember how great you were before.

*If you're going to make Thor a title and give it a woman, Sif or Valkyrie should have it. Hell, what was the point of Angela being his sister if not to do this...

And if we were guaranteed that Falcon became Cap permanently,  I'd be fine with that. Like Wolverine's death,  Falcon's temporary boost is most likely just a stunt until Captain America 3 will be released. Sam will be in good hands thanks to Al Ewing, but Rick Remender just wrote one of the worst Captain America runs ever and now poor Sam is about to go under his pen as well.

Cynical. Yeah, I am, but Marvel and DC helped make me that way. Deaths do not stick, nor demotions or promotions. Stupid events reign on high and the PC pandering over the past year is very disappointing. It all feels forced.

There is no reason to kill off Wolverine or placing Bucky in space.  I think I'll stick to a select few Marvel movies and just leave my love of certain characters there.

For comics, thank Danu there's more Slaine next year.  < Please don't follow the American big two concepts Mr. Mills, I'd love to see Slaine be an old Barbarian still defending his goddess and realm. >

>>> Note to self, stop typing on an iPad.

Ugh! Starlog Escape From New York remake rumors

You know with the awful E.F.N.Y. remake rumors Starlog just posted, I suddenly do not think my wailings from previous attempts were justified.

If this version goes through, I will skip seeing the film(s). Hunnam is the absolute worst choice of all previous candidates. Just because he can play an outlaw biker does not make him Snake.  And do not get me started on the team concept for this version.

Go away, Joel Silver!

Viggo as Satan a wickedly wonderful Perf

While talking on a board about Angel Heart and De Niro's excellent take on the Devil - how this was my second favorite human Satan, another poster brought up Viggo Mortensen in the Prophecy. I agreed with said poster as it's probably still my favorite Mortensen perf (along with Nikolai from Eastern Promises and Aragorn from well you know...)

I still love Viggo in the Prophecy. It was the first performance of his I saw (and theatrically to boot!) I remember thinking "Wow! The guy who played the devil stole the movie from Christopher Walken."

And lo and behold, channel surfing a few minutes after I agreed about Mortensen, the Prophecy was on the tube.  I watched and fell in dark love with Viggo's devil all over again.

I am disappointed Viggo will not be Stephen Strange, but I'd love to see him play a wizard as he has the warriors down pat. Here's hoping. Mortensen is a terrific actor and one who always challenges himself and the audience. I look forward to what he does next and secretly pine for another genre role eventually.

Trading waiting on Bucky Barnes The Winter Soldier

Bucky was my 'new' favorite comic character of the last decade thanks to Ed Brubaker's terrific Winter Soldier rethink which I gloriously stumbled into in 2005.  I have never looked back - even when I loathed the idea of him as Cap. Jason Latour also did a good run on the character.

As of Original Sin and Marvel pushing everything cosmic (thanks in part to the incoming Star Wars license I am sure), now Bucky will be going interplanetary and to other realms.

Like Asgard (Oh, goody.)

And with additional protagonists. Let's just say I am not a happy camper.  Even if Kot uses one of them in Secret Avengers, this should be Bucky's book. I'd like to see him be a lone wolf for awhile and NOT do the intergalactic/realm business. Did they seriously run out of Earth based stories (YES...if it was Brubaker, I'd wager NO, but it is not so...)

I loved Marco Rudy's art in the New Avengers Annual. His style is perfect for Doctor Strange, does not seem so for Buck.

Look, I can crank and be fan woman BEEP-head here (and I know I am this close to exploding), but then I remember Change is constant. You either go with the flow or you do not. I do not here. I'll wait for the trade and if I don't like it, big whoop. It'll be like the recent Moon Knight runs, quickly forgotten.

There is an interpretation of Bucky I do enjoy and he's up on the big screen.  That's important, as long as there is an incarnation I enjoy somewhere, terrific. And if not, as Francesco Dellamorte says, "life goes on."

Movies

Argh! All this CATWS promo talk from the Russos is making me wish it was already this time next year. They are teasing bits from Cap 3 and I am giddy.   Presuming I will remain in one piece after seeing Mad Max Fury Road (hopefully in MeMAX, uh, yeah right, IMAX.)

What about Avengers Age of Ultron and Ant-Man? I will probably see A:AoU at cheapie price in the morning and Ant-Man? I'll skip it unless there is a Bucky Barnes-related post credit scene. I'm perfectly fine with skipping Marvel Cinematic Universe films if I have no desire/reason to see said film.

In the Bang Head Here department,  I find out IFCcenter (who are showing a Midnight run of Escape From New York in September which I cannot attend) is screening The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. Awesome sauce. Then I check the screening time? Not awesome sauce.

I can be consoled by the hope of a quick release to Video on Demand.  

And also in past Bang Head Here, I just missed seeing If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death on the big screen. Gods, I love Gianni Garko as the mysterious and fun gambler Sartana (I even helped a former pal in spaghetti western circles with a Sartana website.)  If You Meet... was a part of a Klaus Kinski fest. This makes me think, Why they did not show the excellent And God Said to Cain since Klaus headlined that one?

But when I bang my head (and not just extreme metal y'know) just teaches me to be a little bit more proactive with the revival film houses here.

LOL at the Underworld reboot. Why? The series ran it's course once they ditched Lucian. I still heart that scene in the original where he bites Michael and subsequently opens up a  can of Lycan woof-ass on the car roof and Selene's shoulder... but I always change the channel after that scene.

This weekend, I might watch Ragnarok. I am game for a fun Norwegian take on Indy (no Nazis necessary.)

Captain America The Winter Soldier...some more love

While I wait impatiently for the blu ray release of Captain America The Winter Soldier, some kind foreign soul posted the bugnuts insane highway fight between Cap and the Winter Soldier on the Youtubes.

My adrenalin starts pumping watching this amazing fight. It's to Steve Rogers' adaptability,  he quickly avoids being slashed by the seemingly Soviet cyborg bad ass. This is such a great fight. In a little over 90 seconds, we see a lot of experience and viciousness from both men. I could watch 5 minutes of these two trading blows. Each getting the upper hand before Cap ultimately triumphs (because, he has to. And, too, for Cap to get the wind knocked out of him a second time with that reveal.)

Chris and Sebastian are terrific, as are their stunt guy stand ins.

I said this below, but Chris and Sebastian are a huge reason why I saw this 14x theatrically. Besides the fact that CATWS is a brilliantly scripted, acted and plotted story, the heart and power these two actors bring to their roles is just jaw dropping.

Dang, it is going to be a long 13 day wait. But seeing this clip on YouTube reminds me why I went so absolutely fan woman on this film. It takes the stellar source materials and does something even better with. Yes, there is still too little WS for my taste.

But ...Wow. Watching this scene on a loop, I remember why I am fan.

I truly hope Cap 3 will mix in other Marvel characters as fluidly as CATWS does. And I hope it won't be too many (Falcon and Natasha were plenty good and just enough.)  This is Steve and Bucky's story and I hope we get to see a lot more of Sebastian Stan because he's just fantastic as Buck in any incarnation.

My Argento leanings continue... two books

It boggles my mind I avoided Dario Argento during most of my gore-hound years (yet watched utter garbage by Umberto Lenzi and post The Beyond Lucio Fulci), because I'd heard Argento was the gross out auteur to beat all gross-out auteurs in Italy.  Or maybe it was that sliver of Demons I caught in the late 80s which freaked me out so badly, I skipped all Argento until 2006.

From this point onward, I found Dario's films infected me in positive ways. He wrote terrific female characters until 1987's Opera, his use of color and sound continue to delight me and his set pieces and some story ideas are fantastic. Yes, some are unnerving (Deep Red and Opera are the two still most cringe worthy after so many viewings), but most are thrilling to watch. Death as art and with an Italian director so steeped in art, architecture and color, awful murders become surreal tableaus you must watch. When I was engrossed in web design, color became the life blood of the sites I designed, just as it evokes a very specific, nefarious palette in Dario's work. I found a connection through elements I would have never expected (color and sound) and soon consumed as much Dario as my brain would allow.

I now can giggle at Demons (a terrific concept poorly executed - sorry Lamberto.) Demons, like my fear of William Lustig's Maniac until I finally watched in 2010, were made worse by my imagination creating something more horrific than either film.

Dario's knack for tapping into nightmare imagery is unparalleled. As I finally accept the fact I am a huge fan of his special fears,  I want to know more.  My fondness for his work is nearly matched by his protege Michele Soavi's wonderful horrors (Oh, to have a beautiful copy of La Setta on an official North America dvd. I suspect the unfortunate use of Rolling Stones lyrics is probably the reason why the license has never been granted here.) But I digress...

I have the first editions of Maitland McDonaugh and Alan Jones' Argento tomes and refer to them frequently.

Which finally leads me to the two newish books on Dario.

 I happened to search for Argento at Amazon and two new titles appeared. The Argento Syndrome by author and VFX creator Derek Botelho. Derek was allowed on the Sleepless set so I am curious as how differently he sees Dario rather than family confidant Alan Jones.

Book two is the The Argento, a very wink-wink self published horror novel by Joshua Skye. I see a lot of Skye's love for Dario and Michele Soavi and this boasts a lead who would be right at home in Dario's work (a transgendered woman.) The storyline sounds a bit like La Chesa, as Camila Nicolodi purchases the crumbling haunted home called The Argento. This is one of the last great pieces of architecture by Guiseppi Soavi.

Because I went bye-bye Amazon, I'm holding off on buying these now. Besides, I'm nose deep in Kevin Grant's fanastic Any Gun Can Play: The Essential Guide to Euro-Westerns. 

Rose Elliott and Suzy Banyon: my kind of heroines

It took several viewings of Suspiria and Inferno for me to finally embrace them as fully as Dario Argento's gialli. 

Dario was a pioneer with his horror ladies. Whether they are innocents or killers. What makes most of his early women so terrific is that they just are.  Daria Nicolodi's grating reporter in Deep Red makes that otherwise excellent film an utter chore to get through. We're forced to sit through her annoying performance. She is only early era Argento woman to take me out of the movie thanks to how phony she is. 

Irene Miracle and Jessica Harper's fairy tale women who come up against some very evil witches. 

In rewatching Inferno, I lose interest when Irene's too-inquisitive Rose dies. She was such an interesting character, someone who just could not keep their curiosity contained. Miracle radiated that  fatal curiosity and she was instantly likable. Here's a gal who could transcribe an old book written in Latin with just a English-Latin dictionary. She is written off as a poet (by a drab Mater Tenebrarum no less), and yet there is something captivating about following Rose on her journey.  I suppose a good reason why my interest sags after Rose's demise is due to Leigh McClouskey's wooden portrayal of Mark Elliot. I often wonder how much better the film would be if Mark and Rose switched roles (retaining Rose's excellent under water dip, of course.)  

I also think Veronica Lazar wasn't the most convincing Mater either. The lovely Ania Pieroni was approached to portray Mater Tenebrarum, but she refused for reasons unknown*. She was briefly seen as Mater Lachrymarum and was so perfectly wicked. 

Inferno has some truly wonderful concepts and ideas. It's a terrific film until Rose leaves us. Then it's okay.

Suspiria really grew on me thanks to the psychedelic primary color palette and the fantastic first 13 minutes.  Jessica Harper is very Snow White here. She's terrific as Suzy Banyon, the hapless dancer who makes the mistake of enrolling into that damned Dance Academy in Frieberg, Germany. 

Suzy's slow realization of the horror she's surrounded by is more stylized and fairy tale-like than Inferno.  She takes some time to fully understand and explore the nightmare world around her which is probably why she triumphed in the end.  The film works beautifully because of this. Argento nailed the kind of  hallucinogenic Grimm slant he was going for and his cast went full throttle. 

Props to the set decorator for the witches' secret hall behind the door with the three flowers. I love that corridor with the golden sorcerous script on the black walls, the mesh curtains,you truly get a feeling of utter dread. 

Suspiria is dark fantasy fun with a formidable giallo-like slay in those opening scenes. These witches under Mater Suspiriorum mean business and it's a hoot watching them work. 

I suppose this means I have to sit through Mother of Tears again. :D

* And yet Ms. Pieroni was okay with playing the babysitter in Fulci's House by the Cemetery? I don't get it. Maybe she was afraid to portray an incarnation of Death?

Clive Barker Interview from Pharr Out! 1998

I still count my 1998 Pharr Out! conversation with Clive Barker as one of the best. Here it is, saved from Internet limbo. 


Clive Barker: Explorer from the Further Regions of Experience...

“In a way it’s like a very real world, one that you completely understand the world of Vanity Fair you know encountering the world of mythology.” Clive on his latest novel, Galilee.
Clive Barker’s many talents include those of the playwright, author, director and illustrator. I talked with Clive recently about his latest novel Galilee, his views on art, magic, politics, Sacrament and LORD OF ILLUSIONS.  Barker’s enthusiasm for horror, storytelling and art immediately charms, his refusal to be anything but himself adds to his allure. Without further ado...

By Kim August

Let’s talk about Galilee; I heard the story has something to do with time travel.

Clive: “Not time travel in the sense of science fiction might think about it. They are books which move back and forth through time, just as a function as the way the story is told. They’re two independent novels with the same characters, in a way not dissimilar way to the way The Great and Secret Show and Everville are novels with similar characters or overlapping characters and overlapping concerns. Galilee is a book onto itself. It moves from the present day back into Civil War time through a diary, through a journal by one of the characters whose life it will turn out to have a huge influence on the present day.”

Is this character Galilee himself?

“No. The book has been described as a dynastic saga. It’s a book about two American dynasties. One of them, the Geary family, a human family based I would say upon well, take your choice of any very rich and tragic American family; the Rockefellers, the Kennedys. A family of incredibly powerful, influential people whose life as a dynasty seems to be in some way doomed. We’ve seen even recently the tragedy hitting the Kennedy family again. And the Geary family have had murder, suicide, just about everything thrown upon them and yet they have remained incredibly central to the American dream. As obviously the Kennedys have, yet the Gearys are rotten to the core. They have histories which go back actually to the Civil War which the journal describes. That history is filled with terrible deeds. The other family is the Barbarossa family. They are as secret as the Gearys are public. They are a family of not quite human people, Galilee is the prodigal child of the family. He is the one who travels the world distanced from his family. I won’t go too much into his background because I don’t want to give it away. He falls in love with one of the Geary women.  Galilee has a relationship with Rachel, who is newly married into the Geary household. It’s, if you will, a sort of Romeo and Juliette kind of relationship. The Barbarossas and Gearys are two families that basically loathe each other for reasons that the book will make clear. It’s a large, I hope emotionally rich story about families. And that's such a universal subject by definition-we’ve all got them right?!  (laughs). And every family, however innocent it may seem at first blush, has its secrets. Its stories, the dark deeds which are brushed under the carpet. The book explores a lot of that stuff but on a grand scale. I love this book. I love it just in part because it’s given me such a chance to explore such a large range of characters; from Rachel, who is a little town girl from Ohio who is working in a jewelry store in Boston at Christmas, and Mitchell Geary- who is the best looking of the  Geary sons-walks into to buy a piece of jewelry for his grandmama, and falls in love with her on the spot. She’s drawn into this rich world of galas, luncheons and mansions and money. So part of it is watching this rich man’s world through her eyes, which is fascinating and then you know, discovering of course that it’s all empty. These people despite all their wealth and their power are haunted and profoundly unhappy, because they’re nurturing these terrible secrets.”

Getting back to the time element, I heard something about the time of Christ...

“We are and we aren’t. I don’t want to give too much away, yes. We go back in the book a very long way. In the next book, we’ll go even further. Let me give you a tease: Galilee’s mother and father are the first of their race. So he has no grandparents, and yet they were alive before Rome was built. It’s fun. In a way it’s like a very real world, one that you completely understand the world of Vanity Fair you know encountering the world of mythology.”

And now onto a favorite subject of mine; LORD OF ILLUSIONS. I’m glad that you enjoyed the piece I wrote on the site...

“Let me tell you first off, I thought that was a really excellent summary of the film. And it was so great to have somebody revisit the movie and discover things I sort of seeded away in the movie, which I don’t think many people at least with their first glance at the picture, see. It was because of reading that, that we’re having this conversation now. It was a really wonderful analysis of what the picture was attempting to do.”

Thank you. I have to say that some very obvious things went over my head-the whole BLACK SUNDAY reference.

“First off, you didn’t see the mask pieces?”

I did but it didn’t quite click immediately. I was like I’ve seen this before but where?

“Right..." (laughs)

I heard you mention the connection while preparing for this conversation, and I went back and watched BLACK SUNDAY and said ‘Oh my God!’

“Maitland McDanagh did the first review of the movie in FANGORIA, and Maitland has always liked what I’ve done and she really liked the movie.  A really smart review analyzing the fact that the movie was sort of a Chinese box of tricks. It contained references to a lot of movies, and I don’t know if she mentioned BLACK SUNDAY-I’d be surprised if she didn’t-but those images of Barbara Steele with the mask going on are some of the most powerful images in Horror movies. Amazing. And then of course it comes off and she’s got those holes! So we did the thing on Nix, we really tried to echo that on Nix.”

His eyes were like hers also.

“Yes.”

Was that one of the reasons you cast Daniel Von Bargen because that Barbara Steele-like gaze?

“I don’t know if I consciously made the connection. The fact is that Daniel scared the shit out of me. I actually flew out to New York, I’d seen film of him and I thought he was wonderful. And I called him up and said ‘I’d love to cast you.’ He said ‘I don’t think I want to do this, it’s very evil, I’m not sure I really want to do this.’ And I said ‘Let me fly to New York and convince you.’ And we flew to New York-my casting person and I-and we rented this little hotel room. Daniel has an amazing presence. The physical presence that you get out of him on the picture is really Daniel.  And of course, those extraordinary eyes!

He came into this little room which barely seemed large enough to contain him. And he read portions of the dialog for us. I said ‘What can I do for you that you will be in my movie.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, it’s very dark and there’s five hours of makeup every day-’. It’s hard for an actor to get up at 3:00 a.m. and sit in a chair for four-five hours and then walk around the set with people looking at you like you’re the Devil incarnate (laughs). It’s really hard. He was wonderful.  I called him up in New York after we flew back and I said ‘Please, please do this. You will make all the difference in the world.’ Luckily for us, he said yes. And that sort of flickering intelligence in him, that sort of sense that this was a man at the worst of life, and had seen it for all that it is, so much a part of what makes the character work on the screen. I think.”

Your commentary on the LOI laser about your fondness of the way Nix looked like a vagrant instead of this noble prophet, made me immediately think of the Keeper of the Lament Configuration in the first HELLRAISER.

“There you go! Absolutely. Well, you know I think those characters that don’t have a completely clear narrative purpose can sometimes be scarier than the people who fit into the narrative clearly. Isn’t it one of the reasons why Renfield is so scary in the DRACULA movies? He’s whispering in cell there, eating these flies. There’s something deeply distressing about the fact that this character, is just this minor character in the narrative, but he’s crazy. He’s like us. He’s not a demon, he’s not a higher life form or a lower life form. He’s like us. Sometimes it can be scarier to have a guy whose dressed in dirty garbideen with burning eyes that have all the special effects in the world.”

I just remember seeing him and going ‘Whooa!’

"Absolutely. Early on in the pet store he’s eating these locusts off his hand. You’ve got this ‘Oh what the fuck’ and then he steps into the fire.’”

Why do you think Swann was Nix’ favorite?

“Because he was good. When we see young Butterfield, we this young rather sexy lad whose obviously Nix’s catamite, he’s Nix’s bumboy, he’s shares Nix’s bed. Swann on other hand is this wild card, he has looked into the Abyss, the way Nix has looked into the Abyss. Whereas Butterfield is a very attractive lightweight. Swann has this dark undertow which is one of the reasons why Kevin is so perfect for the role. He has this dark undertow which matches Nix’s. I think one of the things Kevin does brilliantly and- you quoted me in the article-about him having this quality of having looked into the Abyss. Kevin gives me the impression that he is at any single moment wavering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Genius and madness walk very close in him, and I think that’s very powerful and for somebody like Nix, very attractive.”

And why do you think Swann followed Nix in the first place?

“I think Kevin has it right when he quotes the conversation in the car, the conversation that is only in the director’s cut-”

Yes, ‘the secrets of the universe...’

“Right. Nix seems to have them, yet he didn’t. What he had was a very simple idea which is that there’s NOTHING. There’s nothing. Which is, of course, incredibly powerful as well. That we’re shit. One of the great sadnesses for me having to cut the picture down to the length that MGM was comfortable with, was that I felt that first time round when the picture came out, the reviewers thought the movie was more emotionally simple that it is, because conversations like that were removed.”

Would you ever write a short story or novella about the events that led up to Swann binding Nix?

“I haven’t really thought it through too closely, but I don’t discount the possibility that we might go back there. I’m doing some Harry D’Amour stuff right now for a collection of short stories.”

Are they all going to be D’Amour?

“No. Some of them will be D’Amour. It will be a collection that will be visiting a whole bunch of my mythologies and one of them will be Harry.”

I’ve heard talk of a LORD OF ILLUSIONS sequel or series.

“We’re still talking about both of those things. Scott wants to do it very much. The thing we have is I like this picture very much, and I’m really proud of it I don’t want to do a sequel if it’s just opportunist.  If we’re going to do it, let’s do it properly. If you do it as a tv show, the problem is that you’re stuck with kind of rules and regulations of tv.”

You couldn’t show or do a lot of things you’d be able to show on film.

(laughs) “LORD OF ILLUSIONS you can’t show. You can show it on HBO, SHOWTIME. It’s been on SHOWTIME lots of times now, they’ve shown the directors cut. On regular tv there’s no way you can go anywhere near that stuff, which is irksome to say the least, because I think of a lot of the power of the kinds of things that I do like Cronenberg, it really doesn’t have a life I don’t think unless you do with it with real gusto.

I think I need to step up to the plate in cleanest, clearest way I can and without apology, and with as little interference from the MPAA as possible. That’s why I’ve always tried to put out uncensored versions of things. We’re still hoping that we eventually get an edition of NIGHTBREED on DVD and laser which will replace the 25 minutes that are missing. Its irritating as hell to have these pompous sons-of-bitches who think they know what will corrupt America you know (laughs), always the most self righteous ‘Oh no-no! you can’t possibly do that!’”


This is ironic. As I was waiting to talk with you, I was watching a news program which brought up the case of the N.E.A. (National Endowment for the Arts) and the whole ‘Decency Act’ clause they inserted after the Mapplethorpe exhibition in Ohio. And now these four artists have been fighting the clause and have won every case, it just went to the Supreme Court.

“I can’t wait for Jesse Helms to shuffle off this mortal coil. He’s a dinosaur, but he expresses a point-of-view that is held-perhaps not as extremely as his-but is nonetheless held by a lot of people, perhaps in the Bible Belt, it’s held widely. Somehow or another artists need to be morally responsible. I don’t know what morally responsible art is except dull. It is not my responsibility as an artist to be providing social structure by which people live their lives. My job as an artist is very simple: express what God has put into my imagination. Jesse may say that the Devil put it there, but God put it there. And I feel wholly comfortable with my relationship to Christianity, my relationship to religion as a whole, and it disgusts me that the Jesse Helms of the world-he’s not alone-should use religion, as they very often do, as validation for the repression of the divine spark in us, which is our imaginations.”

When the LOI sequel does go through, would you use Kevin in another role?

“Yes. I love Kevin. He was in GODS & MONSTERS, which I produced.”

Yeah, he told me about that. When is GODS & MONSTERS coming out, do you have a release date?

“November right now. I think they want to wait closer to Oscar time because Ian McKellen does such a great job in the picture, we hope that he might be up for a nomination for the picture. We’re looking toward the end of the year.”

I’ve noticed in both films and fiction (and I’m guilty of this too), that all magicians especially good ones suffer terribly for their magic.  Why do you torment your characters like Swann and Tesla who come into magical power?

“Coming to power is hard. And you’re familiar with the shaman as a wounded healer.”

I’ve seen mention of that.

“In the traditional version of the shaman, the magician, the one who walks between the worlds, one of the things that make it possible to walk between worlds is a wound. The perfected body, the perfected soul is in a higher place. In the unperfected wounded self, the wound is an ability which grants you the power to look outside the conventional, luxurious, hedonistic, the sensual things which preoccupy us in this world into some other place. I think it’s one of the reasons why very often artists are wounded, are psychically wounded in one way or the other. I think actually the truth is everybody is psychically wounded, the issue is whether you own up to it or not.  

I think what I’m trying to do constantly is when I have these kind of journeys into empowerment, is that there is always a price for a that empowerment. It’s the yin and yang; without paying the price, you can’t have the empowerment, but the empowerment to some extent may even cause you to pay the price. You have to grasp something very painful, you have to have to open yourself up to very painful experiences. The pain of the world if you will. And I think that one of the things that artists do, that magicians do, religious figures do is open upthe place in us which we seal off very quickly as children, because we realize if we open up too much, it hurts too much. The world is full of hurt. People die, people leave, the world changes radically, unpredictably; things that we love finish, things that we hate begin. The experience of the world from an early age is primarily, I think an experience of loss and pain and despair. In order to heal those feelings paradoxically you have to put yourself up to them.

My books are very often ‘Look it’s okay to be wounded, it’s okay to be imperfect but be aware that the wound should not just be suffered, it should be used. It should be a way to become the richer, more loving more constructive more articulate human being.”

I liked the way LOI presented death, very in your face.

“Yes. Absolutely. I think that, that’s what I do in two of my movies; HELLRAISER and LORD OF ILLUSIONS. I think Horror movies by becoming jokey recently, becoming very self-referential, and becoming congratulatory actually have lost a lot of the edge they had when I first saw them. We were talking about Mario Bava before with BLACK SUNDAY. It would be true with Argento, it would be true of Romero...”

And the Hammer films, I think.

“I agree. Absolutely for the time if you take them in their historical context. I agree. These are pictures which didn’t have their tongue in their cheek. They weren’t silly little entertainments designed to make Valley kids feel good about themselves. There was some poetry about them. There was some eloquence about them. There was some weight to them and I think we’ve lost a lot of that. I believe in Horror movies, I believe they can contain certain nuggets of insight and poetry and truth which certainly most critics in this country wouldn’t even concede can belong in this genre, but even if they did would not own up to it in their newspaper columns because their readers don’t want to hear that about Horror movies. I believe that Horror movies can be wonderful cinema, wonderful storytelling, and contain pieces of information, emotional information, visual information which can remain in the audiences head long after the spectacle of the sinking ship has disappeared. The great images of Horror movies of the past are part of our cultural heritage aren’t they? King Kong on the Empire State building with Fay Wray. Boris Karloff stumbling to the door...these kinds of images are part of our cultural lives. Linda Blair tied to the bed, spewing pea soup...”

How do you feel about death?

“Um, catch me on a good day. I think that’s worth a volume isn’t it? Or two or three. In the particulars of losing people, who ever likes that? I don’t like the deathwatch anymore than anyone else does. I don’t like sitting with people being with them when they pass away, because it’s very disturbing. On the other hand to deny its ongoing presence in our lives is to deny an important part of what we are as a system. The biological system; we are changing even in this conversation, we are changing in all kinds of subtle ways. Our bodies are transforming, our bodies are ageing. I think it’s important to remember and to allow that to be a part of who we are, as opposed to shunting death and its images and its truth away into a separate compartment. And what Horror movies have done is rub our nose in it and I think that’s pretty healthy.”

In Sacrament, Will and Patrick’s relationship came across as very personal. Was describing this rather difficult for you to do...

“Before I had written it, I literally sat with somebody as he passed which was the first time that had happened. I’ve been with people after they’ve passed away but I never actually sat with somebody and listened to their last breath. An as author or creator you want to be honest.

You want to give your readers as many insights as you can pull out of your own life. Life is raw material and death is raw material too. And we must be careful not to lose the balance between them. For me, Sacrament is a book that was really an attempt on my part to balance off the two needs. One, the need to celebrate the world in all its complexity and all its richness. And there’s a moment perhaps half way through when Will is on his way to Bethlynn’s house in Berkeley and he has essentially an epiphany. It’s an incredibly suburban epiphany because it’s really about a cat on a window sill, cracks in the pavement and the sky and the houses, and my point really in that is you don’t need to go to the Antarctic or to the wilds of some jungle to have an epiphany about the extraordinaryness of the world. It really is a question of just opening your eyes. And Will, who seems to have open eyes all his life really realizes at that point ‘Now wait a second , what I’ve always done is put a frame around it. Whatever we have done has been looking at the world through a lens. The truest lens is my eye and the truest camera is my soul. Now here I am soul and eye and the world.’ So one of the things that book tries to do is balance off this sort of sense of how wonderful it is and how full of mystery even at its most ordinary. Its still a mysterious, wonderful place with that fact that people die, that species die, that hopes die. That time passes suddenly we’re older than we thought we were, and we haven’t achieved what we thought we would achieve and all of that. And Will is a man moving into the middle of phases of his life and trying to articulate what it feels like to be in that place because the author is in that place.”

I really like Will.

“I like Will too. He’s a good man, a bit troubled but he’s a good man.”

I am glad that you wrote Sacrament because through Will I now understand and respect the gay community which I knew so little about.

“That’s so cool.”

I thought the Nilotic coming together as one being toward the end of the book was a nice way to show one who was in complete peace with their masculine and feminine sides.

“That’s right. And I think that the thing about the Nilotic that what it’s learned about gender, has been learned from the world. Rosa says ‘You know Rosa isn’t my real name. I heard the name Rosa McGee on a street in Newcastle. And Steep’s name, well he got that from a spice importer who he murdered. And why did he murder him? ‘Well because men are supposed to murder aren’t they?’ says Rosa. Meaning, I suppose that gender is learned. What we learn about we are supposed to be as male and female is learned. I had a poem in Weaveworld which is written by Cal Mooney’s grandfather which Cal recites to himself. It goes:

The pestilence of families
Is not congenital disease
But the feet that follow where the foot
That has preceded them was put.

and about two years ago somebody who in dealing with abuse in the family asked me whether or not he could use the quote on a poster because it encapsulated their experience of what abuse was within the family. The true disease was one foot going where the one proceeding it was put.  And I think the same is true about gender, so much about gender is learned. I do believe boys are more aggressive than girls. The manifestation of aggression, the way that you are validated in your act of aggression. It’s good to fight, it’s good to hate the person who doesn’t look like you, it’s good to hate the gay man or gay woman. All of that stuff is absolutely about what is taught. The people you learn from are your mother and father first. You learn about it from a lot of other people later, but you learn it first at your mother’s knee.”

When I interviewed fantasy author Louise Cooper she said ‘The Author is both God and Sadist...’

“God and Sadist? That’s very good, I think that’s very good. To me, the functions change depending on what kind of book I write. If I’m writing a book like Weaveworld or Imajica, I am essentially the God maker and the world maker and I am playing God because I’m creating a whole world of flora and characters and situations and philosophies and landscapes.  I think in a book a like Sacrament and in a book like Galilee I fall much more into the Sadist category. I’m observing the world as it is and I’m putting my characters into positions where they will feel pain.”

History of the Devil is my favorite of your plays. I love the scene with Jesus and the Devil, it was just so funny. Any chance of filming that?

“Well, we should get a script for that actually this week yeah. There’s a fellow whose doing a script of it. It’s interesting, you’ll like this: The play was just banned in my home country. There was a production of it that has been touring around and I guess they took it to some place and they said ‘No, no! You can’t do this. This is blasphemous.’ And of course this was a play that was sold out in every other place it went to. It made the headlines. It’s remarkable to me that we should be sitting here in 1998 and it’s still possible for something you can write, can be deemed so troubling to people. Of course the people who did the show were delighted, they made so much money! It was the Christ and the Devil scene that did it. I think he says ‘I fancy a death, something with horses.’ and the Devil says ‘No, too messy.’”

There’s a minor character MacReady. I know you wrote the play in 1982 and are a fan of John Carpenter’s THE THING, was this a nod to the film?

“It isn’t. Though it could be couldn’t it? MacReady was a schoolmate in Liverpool.”

Yeah the other thing that made me think so, was MacReady never got much sleep and Kurt’s character never got much sleep either.

(Laughs) “True.”

You’ve described yourself as a narrative painter would you elaborate?

“One of the modernist positions in painting is painting isn't about storytelling. It’s really only about expressing the moment. So many modernist painters would defend what. I think are incoherent scribblings. With the point of view that well that’s what I thought of at the moment. I’m not totally interested in expressing what I felt at that moment, I’m interested in moving a viewer to become engaged with the drama of the image. So in a sense I suppose that I’m telling a story on the canvas. I don’t know how familiar you are with the paintings but many of them, I wouldn’t say tell a complete story. My paintings seem to be fragments of narrative. I’m doing a book right now for Harper Collins which won’t come out for another year and a half called The Book of Hours which is a book of stories created around a series of paintings which I’ve made. Huge paintings.

This is the new children’s book?

“Yes. It’s for Harper Collins children. I hope it will reach the adult audience.”

I really enjoyed Thief of Always.

“It has that feel to it with a lot more pictures. And the pictures are huge oil paintings. They’re five feet by four feet. And there’s 29 of them, plus 100 smaller paintings. It’s a big visual project, a big narrative project. And what I tried to do and I’ve never done this before is start with a painting and see what stories they are telling me. Once I know what story they are telling me then I write it. And actually in the last week, I’m writing the first of the stories with these paintings in front of me and it’s very entertaining because you sort of get the painting is telling a story and did I subconsciously know what the painting was telling me while I was painting it? Perhaps, I don’t know. It’s a mystery to me.”

What’s next for you?

“That project will take me the next six months. Then I’m producing a bunch of tv movies right now that are in prep. Thief of Always is in prep, Weaveworld is shaping up finally after years of promise for SHOWTIME as an 8 hour series. So I’ve got a lot on that to do. Then I will do a collection of short stories which I talked about briefly.  Which does have some D’Amour, and a HELLRAISER story in it. I’m returning to these mythologies and it was kind of interesting because I thought I would do these things and I thought ‘Geez I want to tell a story about the man with pins in his head. I haven’t told about him for a long time.’ I’m looking forward to that.”

This interview also appeared at the official Clive Barker site, Lost Souls. You can see quote here. For more information on Clive Barker please visit the Official Site, Lost Souls, at  www.clivebarker.info

Captain America The Winter Soldier kicks espionage tail

Captain America The Winter Soldier is my most watched current film of 2014.

In a rare example of comic book characters being true to the source material, CATWS combines Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's terrific storyline and tweaks it with a dash of Jonathan Hickman and Brian Michael Bendis villainy.

I could go on for hours about how perfect Chris Evans, Sam Mackie and Sebastian Stan are in their roles, but what made this sequel all systems go for me are the villains.

SPOILERS follow.

After Nick Fury has Black Widow steal S.H.I.E.L.D. intelligence during a routine rescue op,  Captain America finds himself sucked into the plot when that intell makes Nick Fury a marked man. From there, Cap, Black Widow and new pal Falcon slowly unravel Hydra's master plan. A serious wrench is thrown into the mix as Cap realizes everything he thought he knew about S.H.I.E.L.D. and his greatest failure are lies.

The Baddies in this fast-paced thrillfest are the best the Marvel Cinematic Universe have conjured. Without Johann Schmidt, Hydra has grown into something far more dangerous and insidious. Inciting every global conflict since the Korean War, these nefarious serpents infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. decades ago.  Those who refuse to let Hydra do their dirty work meet their demise at the hands of the shadowy Soviet assassin, The Winter Soldier.

You all know who the Winter Soldier is, yet, even with that information the reveal is so well done, it trumps Brubaker's shattering reveal in the source material.

The story is an expert tweak on superb comic stories and Robert Redford's wonderful 70s spy thriller, Three Days of the Condor.  Three Days recently aired, and it was the first time I'd seen it since CATWS's release. I could clearly see a lot of Cap's storyline mirrored in Condor's tale.

I was very reluctant to see this theatrically since the Winter Soldier is my favorite Marvel character of the past decade. I did not want to see him screwed up. Going in with my expectations low resulted in my head exploding Scanners-style. The fight scenes are incredible: the highway fight is the most exciting hand-to-hand battles I've seen in recent cinema.  I love that we see Black Widow finally being Black Widow and the Olympian agility of Captain America. Still, this film would not work without heart and thanks to Chris, Sam and Sebastian we get tons of this. Captain America remains a perfect moral center even when everything else falls around

 Marvel's Cinematic adaptations can be hit or miss (much like their comics), I will gladly watch any Captain America led film as long as the quality remains this high.

Mad Max where have you been all my fan woman life?

Oh, Mad Max. Why did I never understand you before now?

Yes, before the Mad Max Fury Road comic-con trailer nearly kicked John Carpenter’s beloved Escape Universe out of my brain, I  was not a Max devotee. Of the three films, Beyond Thunderdome was the one I’d frequently seen  (and the one I can only watch the first 45 minutes of now but…), The Road Warrior and Mad Max were single viewings long lost in my fan woman brain.

Alas, I was too young to see all these great movies when released, but I distinctly remember one movie ads from my teen years:  The Road Warrior.  And yet, I never followed through after initial viewings decades ago.

My fondness for bikesploitation and spaghetti westerns has grown as time passes. Watching Mad Max last week made me feel like I discovered a more vicious, punk older brother of Carpenter’s Escape from New York.  Viewing Mad Max on my computer, I found myself completely lost in that world. This happens far less frequently than I would like these days, so it was a wonder to get so sucked in. 

Mad Max revels in a world becoming more lawless and chaotic. In the near future, Good cop Max Rockatansky is pushed beyond his breaking point when his family and best friend are murdered by an insane and vicious bikie gang.

In Mad Max, we had a wonderfully realized take on A Clockwork Orange and a villain worthy of making Rockatansky go over the edge: The Toecutter.

For Villains to click with me, they must stand out.  Hugh Keays-Byrne’s glorious Toecutter is a scene-stealer with his many accents, moods and cadaver cleaver. There is something beautifully unnerving about him; as if he is an acolyte of Kali, a creator and destroyer. One who would easily serve up his own men, if the situation demands.

I fall for a character when the actor does. Hugh had a great time making this, as did his Stone cohort, Vince Gil whose Nightrider is gloriously unhinged.  It’s a shame these two did not share a scene because they give the film  a vibrantly dangerous element  which the crazy car and bike chases/wipe-outs only intensify. I love when actors are so enthused, their character takes over.  I believed in the gang taking over the sleepy little old west town, I believed in them running down that couple and running over Jess and the little one.

Since the villains are firing on all cylinders, I also believed in Max.  He might take a back seat to Jim Goose’s explosive Bronze for the first half of the film, but once folks start falling, Max does too.

And so I fall. Vroom, vroom. 

*I am eagerly awaiting Scream Factory's special edition blu coming in 2015. I hope they tagged Hugh Keays-Byrne at the very least. The man is still channeling Toe Cutter and I cannot wait to see his wicked new Mad Max monster, Immortan Joe, in Fury Road.  The older I get the less desire I have to meet people who play the characters I love, but I would travel quite some ways to meet Mr. Keays-Byrne. He’s captivated my imagination in ways only Lo Pan has and that says something.