Interviews
[Interview] Screenwriter Kevin Grevioux Talks ‘I,Frankenstein’
In “I, Frankenstein,” the monstrous creation of Victor Frankenstein might be mankind’s last chance at survival. Hated and feared at the same time, Adam Frankenstein walks the thin line between man and monster. Wanting to be left alone, Adam finds himself unwillingly involved in a deadly war between two immortal clans. No stranger to comics, screenwriter Kevin Grevioux then turned his Adam Frankenstein into a comic book character.
Bloody-disgusting spoke with Grevioux about how the inspiration came about, what actor Aaron Eckhart brings to the role, and adapting his screenplay into a comic book.
Bloody-Disgusting: Tell me how the concept came about?
Kevin Grevioux: Basically after I created “Underworld,” I tried to do something similar, which was traditionally a horror character, and spin the concept on its on its heels, and turn it into an action-type character. And I thought, the next logical choice was Frankenstein. How can I take Frankenstein, which is traditionally a horror character, born out of sci-fi of course, but turn him into an action hero, and that’s basically I did.
BD: What is it about Adam Frankenstein that interests you?
KG: Basically I like that he’s a big monster, that’s first and foremost. I also think it’s the way he was created. He was born into a world that he never made. He didn’t ask to be here. He is the ultimate abandoned child. Here you have this character who was created by man, created by God, and he was left to his own designs without any instructions from his father. God did the responsible, the only thing you could do with Adam, and he taught him right from wrong. But Victor Frankenstein didn’t do that with his Adam. He just looked at him as a monster, abandoned him, and the monster resented that. And so now that creates within the monster a kind of duality. Am I man or am I monster? Or am I both? Which one is it? Frankenstein is the search for his particular identity.
BD: What is it that you think Aaron Eckhart brings as Adam?
KG: I think he brings an amazing gravitas in terms of acting ability. He can say a lot with just one word, or a movement of his body, or a look. Since he is not a large man, those attributes loom large and really help to create a viable and visceral character.
BD: The film deals with gargoyles, demons, and Adam. Tell me about building the dark world of “I, Frankenstein.”
KG: It’s different than I originally conceived it. My thing was to have this world full of monsters and creatively we weren’t able to make it happen. So Stuart Beattie came in 18 months later, after we were in development with another director, he had a way to pair it down to two, gargoyles and demons. And so, where I had Dracula, the prince of darkness as the protagonist, Stuart came along and changed him to a demon prince. Where I had vampires, he changed them into demons. But the story, or the thrust of the villain, the protagonist, remained the same. I discover the secret of Frankenstein’s creation and use that to create more monsters like him, reanimate life, so they could use those bodies for something sinister, which is to takeover mankind.
BD: You have also written “New Warriors” and “ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction.” Tell me about the challenges of adapting the screenplay into a comic book?
KG: There really were no challenges. My thing is, it was about taking what I had already done and just breaking it up. If there were any challenges, it was trying to find the right artist; so that I could convey what I wrote in my screenplay to an artist that could really do something with it.
BD: The images of “I, Frankenstein” comic can be found on your Dark Storm Studios website. What was important to you to bring from the comic to the big screen?
KG: In terms, monsters that we had never seen before in a way that we had never seen them. That’s what my goal was. Of course we had seen Frankenstein before but I want to see him in a different light. Of course, we have seen vampires before, Dracula. Let’s go a little bit further and what more can we do with that particular character. So that was my goal.
BD: Tell me about writing the comic through Adam’s noir-ish first-person perspective?
KG: That’s what it was. It was a film noir story about Adam Frankenstein in the modern world. And I thought that was the best way to convey the story since it allowed us to get into Adam’s head, and go through what he was going through, being able to think or see what he was thinking, and that was important.
BD: What are your expectations with the audience when they see it on January 24, 2014?
KG: Yes, I think they will have a good time. They will have a blast!
BD: What other projects are you working on now?
KG: I just created a comic book company. I’m working on a CGI animated film. I’m also working on a children’s animated TV series about monsters called “Monstroids,” which is based upon my original comic. So I’m doing a couple of things.
Interview by – Jorge Solis
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.”
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