Interviews
[Interview] Tim Kirk Talks ‘Terror of Frankenstein’ & His Unique Approach to Films
Like I said in my review out of the Stanley Film Festival, Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein is a truly bizarre experience. It takes the existing film from 1977 and reimagines it in an entirely bold and darkly humorous way. Have you ever watched a director’s commentary in a packed theater before? It’s very weird. Tim Kirk’s film takes it a step further – presenting a twisting, almost esoteric narrative delivered by two actors and Leon Vitali, who actually starred in the 1977 film as Victor Frankenstein. It’s a trip, man.
After playing email tag for a little bit, Kirk was gracious enough to sit with me at the Stanley Film Festival a couple days after the film’s world premiere. We discussed the conception of such a weird project, the effect he hopes the film has on people, and other interesting nuggets concerning the task of creating such a unique film with his partner and friend Rodney Ascher.
Note: After I turned the recorder off, Kirk and I talked for about another 20 minutes or so about deception, what juggling does to the mind, and our mutual admiration for ventriloquism and William Goldman’s book Magic. It was one of the better discussions I’ve had in a while. Tim, if you’re reading this, make a doc about the dark history of ventriloquism, please.
ON THE CONCEPTION OF SUCH A UNIQUE WORK:
When Rodney and I started working on Room 237, both of us hadn’t seen The Shining in a number of years. So when we were cutting it we were just looking at pieces of The Shining, but then we decided we should just watch the whole movie. And something really elemental had changed for the both of us since we had both last seen it: we both had kids. It really changed the film for me. It really became about fatherhood, making it scary in a whole different way, you know?
So then I kept thinking about what are some of the other great horror films about fatherhood, and Frankenstein is obviously one of the big ones. And I got kind of obsessed. I watched about 20 different ones. There are some really good ones and there are some really horrible ones.
Then Rodney met Leon Vitali here at the Stanley, he suggested doing that film because then maybe we could get Leon on board. So I wrote the script and I sent it to Leon. And I really held my breath. But he’s a much better sport than I could’ve ever hoped.
WHY AN EXISTING FILM?
Well my cousin Jay Kirk, who co-wrote with me, had the idea of doing a commentary. But our initial thought was to make a film that would sort of compliment the commentary. So we started developing that but then when Rodney suggested using an existing film, I though it would be more interesting because we don’t have any control over what’s actually in the picture, so it’s going to force us to find a way to make it work. It turned out to be a far more creative process because we couldn’t just do anything. We had to make it fit with what was on the screen.
I’m afraid to say how many times me and Jay watched Terror of Frankenstein during the writing and editing process, but it had to be dozens and dozens of times. It’s one of the closest to Shelley’s novel, but what’s interesting is that, and we talk about this in the commentary, is that in order to make it more accurate, the filmmakers had to reject things that had become almost canon for the story of Frankenstein because of Hollywood. Like the grave robbing and Igor, they’re not in the book. So not only did they do a faithful version, they also rejected other version that came before.
ON WHAT HE HOPES THE FILM DOES FOR PEOPLE:
I’m kind of hoping for a weird experience because those were the ideas that I was drawn to. Like Oh this is going to be so fucking weird. Like in the film we have the bit where the monster and Victor meet for the first time. And in between there’s a flashback where we talk about how great Frankenstein is and how he’s such a great actor. Then we come back and we’re like Oh my god he’s terrible. That’s the kind of stuff where I hope it’s going to be really weird to experience. And also just the slow, dawning horror of what’s happening in the commentary.
ON WHY HE MAKES ATYPICAL FILMS:
I think it’s that, both me and Rodney both have an interest in meta and messing with form. I think when we get together we both bring that out in each other. Those are the type of projects we gravitate towards. With Room 237 and The Nightmare, after living in that world for a while, Terror of Frankenstein just made a lot of sense.
ON WHETHER LEON VITALI PROVIDED ANY INSIGHT ON THE FILM:
No, he didn’t really. After I had finished the script we had a conversation and mainly he just wanted to tell me about where the film landed in his life and career . It was an interesting place – right after Barry Lyndon and right before he really started working with Kubrick. So he’d already gotten interested in the behind the scenes aspects of filmmaking. So making Terror of Frankenstein was in many ways a transition for him. It makes me thankful that Leon is so cool. And he nailed it in two takes, straight through. It was amazing.
• Photos via the Stanley Film Festival and James Dimagiba
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.