Titel: Koffie en een gesprek met Simon Cathcart (Engels)
Auteur: Frank
Categorie: Interview
Datum: 08/10/07
Een week voor het BUTT Film Festival in Breda kreeg ik een mail van Simon Cathcart met de vraag of ik op het BUTFF aanwezig zou zijn en interesse had in een interview met hem. Het resultaat van deze korte mailwisseling valt hieronder te lezen. Naast dat Simon aanwezig was voor het interview, was Jason Hyde ook aanwezig en om bij te springen tijdens het interview.
Voor meer Simon Cathcart; houd het nieuws hier op Top of the Flops goed in de gaten!!
Frank: Simon, you’ve left Australia to go to Tokyo and England afterwards. Why did you leave Australia?
Simon: When I was growing up, my main concern was the late 70’s and 80’s pop. When I was 12 to 16, London was potentially the pop music culture, like everything I wanted in my life. But I didn’t wanted to go there directly, I wanted to pass by another country and stop over for a bit. So I lived in Japan for a while. A girl that lived in Japan for a while, she invited me to stay with her and I did. She actually showed me an exhibition of Japanese tv commercials. And I saw commercials I have never seen in my life. Totally mental, so I thought, what is this country? I ended up living in this country because she asked me to stay with here for a while wich I did. Staying with her was a disaster but Japan was really great.
Frank: What did you do in Tokyo when you stayed there?
Simon: I did all kind of things in Tokyo. I lived like a bachelor, sort of party animal. I was absorbing Japanese culture and abusing it in equal measures, partying along and….
Jason: Karaoke!
Simon: Karaoke!!
Simon: Lots of models there, so we has a good time.
Frank: I read on the internet that you went to London to get depressed?!?
Jason: Laughing
Simon: Yeah, well the flipside of Australia as being a sunny happy country for a young artist, it is important that you need a certain amount of pathos, gravitas and the best place to get that is London. London as being the cultural centre of the world, before that it was Paris and maybe before that it was Rome or something. London in the late 20th century for me it was where it’s at. And that’s why I can’t pull my paws out of London. It keeps pulling me back all the time.
You live in Londen?
Simon: Yeah, in the heart of London.
Frank: Can we see the London depression in your movies?
Simon: Oh, I think so, I think what signifies or what will articulate how British this film is, is the humour. That’s where you can see it is a British film. Because of the wits or the dry humour that we put into the film pasted around the movie from a English perspective. And how we don’t like it very much; the real horror, the real gore. We softened it, make it pallid and at the same time prolonged it and everything else. We used the genre of horror but tried not to mock it, but ride along as much as possible in and out of the genre. It’s not taking itself to serious, I think that is what British humour does. It refuses to take itself to seriously.
Frank: You’ve also done something in the theatre and made a performance technique for acting. What can you tell me about that?
Simon: I Started out in a theatre in Japan which was a wonderful experience. Afterwards in London I kept going straight into theatre. I didn’t think about acting much until later. I was involved in plays, also through and across in America. I soon realized that theatre is dead as an art form because al the effort which goes into the performance of it is gone and never captured the way you wanted too. But I was trying to earn a living so I went back to college and studied filmmaking. And there it merged; my knowledge of theatre and my knowledge of filmmaking and developed a performance technique that I knew would work. There are so many actors in London, it’s a very big theatrical country which has all this theatrical training but don’t have any knowledge of how to work with a camera. And that was a way for me to meet people like Jason and to hook up and then expand things to films and put it on track.
Frank: What can you tell me about your movie Black Velvet?
Simon: It was a short film, a drama. Everybody thinks it is a documentary about the oil industry but it’s not, it’s a drama. Two American businessmen turn up in a small Irish town and try to take over a piece of land so they can dock and land an oil rig there. The guy who owns the land is a wily old fellow who won’t sell them the land. And so they use classic armed oil men, sort of a bullying techniques to try get this land of this people. And it’s indirectly a way in which the energy industry, the attitude of the energy industry in a way it’s literally spelling it out in the behaviour in these oil guys and how they are to get what they have to get. I try to give a little subtext on how the oil industry, the energy industry works. I try not to preach in it too much. I try to let the performances and the situations speak for themselves. We made that in Ireland and that was a wonderful experience.
Frank: What kind of response did you get to Black Velvet?
Simon: Very positive of course, it’s a killer piece of marketing to make a film about the energy industry. The bad thing was 9/11 happened the day after we finished editing it. It was very hard to get attention at any the festivals because it was a bad time for America and the whole world was talking about it and everyone was sensitive about things anti-American. So it was very difficult to get it into festivals straight away. It played in LA at the Galway film festival and it did very well there. It was well received. I should really re-release it.
Frank: I read that you want to re-release it as a kind of director’s cut?
Simon: Yeah, it is a really nice little picture, shot on 16mm with beautiful Irish scenery, fantastic valleys and mountains, helicopters. It’s like Dallas comes to Sligo!
Frank: Well that’s a comparison…
Frank: From Black Velvet to Stagknight. Stagknight is something totally different.
Simon: Well, yeah, not totally different. I like ensembles, I like groups of people. Each has a filmmaking voice, like being a band, that kind of idea. Well it is very different because it’s a younger youth-orientated thing, but it’s still about guys and guys things. I’m kinda interested in men. They are my kind of subject in filmmaking and study in how guys are when they are in a group in a forest trying to survive. It’s a little metaphor about men, the bonding, the male bonding.
Frank: Male bonding, a little bit of gore
Simon: Yeah, the gore and the girly screams and manly screams.
Jason: And manly screams, especially when I die!
Simon: Jason has the kill of the movie.
Frank: The Kill?!
Jason and Simon: Yeah, THE kill!
Frank: What was the inspiration for this movie?
Simon: I was interested in why films where banned in the 70’s and 80’s in England. There were about 50 films which were later dubbed Video Nasties. And those films were actually proper b-movies that were made by Wes Craven and Argento, great directors that made films that were banned. I was very curious about what you had to do to get your film banned and illegal to show. So I got to studying these films that were banned. I wanted to look at them all, find them all, look at the posters, study the scripts and found that they have common things in mind like strong visual violence. They have these elements in them that made them banned.
Jason: I like the Samurai Assassin, I Spit On Your Grave. It gets on your senses with the murders with the axe and. There's a load of movies that were very brutal and were banned.
Simon: There are a load of movies that were very, very good and were banned for very different reasons. I mean there are all sort of absurd reasons the British board of certification had. Like you cannot show blood on a nipple for example. Like there was one particular film that had blood on a nipple and was banned. I looked at all these kind of things and thought if I do this, this and this my film will get banned. That was a good idea if we wanted to make a movie as realistic as possible. But then we looked at it in a way that we don’t really like full on gore and full on shock horror because were not trying to be too dumb. We were trying to make a movie but observe the principles were these films come from and why these films are banned. So I tried to get al the elements and make into this as rich as I could in the history of the genre of these video nasties and banned films. That’s what kinda ticked it off. It went just more and more ridiculous and more and more funny as we went along. Right on to when filming it with the actors. No matter what the scene is, no matter how incidental, even just walking through the shot, you have to do something funny. It doesn’t matter how small it is, there has to be something funny in this scene. We did that for every scene, and of course we developed the comedy aspect.
Frank: Is it a horror or comedy movie?
Simon: It’s a horror movie but in a comedy style. It would be under the banner of a horror movie with it’s style and suspense. The only thing we don’t make fun of is the Knight. We don’t mock the Knight, we don’t take a piss out of him or change the monster. But all the guys will get torn apart with a great sword.
Frank: How was the shooting of this film, the responses of the actors and stuff like that?
Simon: Well shooting films is always tough but you’re out in the woods and you’re running around getting things organized. It’s like operating a factory in the woods. You’re not in the studio environment.
Jason: I think it was hard and long and creative, all those different things. Otherwise everyone survived and no one died on set. You know it’s always a pain in the arse when someone dies while making a movie.
Simon: All the guys were really great, really good performers. From completely different backgrounds and lots of different things and it was quite good. I think the actors where great considering we were spending 24 hours a day in a wet cold damp forest while moving around and running around in pvc suits, superhero suits while losing a few pounds in it.
Frank: You play a role in your movie as well, you’ve also played a role in Black Velvet. Will this be sort of a director’s trademark for you?
Simon: Yeah I think so, I like that. I like acting. I don’t think that when you’re directing a film you’re acting and when you’re acting you’re directing at the same time. It’s perfectly possible for anybody to go in front of the camera and throw some lines, then go behind the camera and look in the tv screen and say: “Yeah, that was good, let’s do that again!” It’s perfectly normal to do that. There is no barrier between directing, filming and acting. I just wish that I had died as well.
Jason (laughing): We wished you did!!
Simon: I think everybody feels like that, maybe on the next one. In Stagknight 2.
Frank: Which of the two do you prefer, acting or directing?
Simon: I don’t prefer either of them. I like being a director, I like to implement my ideas, make them work. I like that I don’t have to ask anybody or take consideration with anybody and do the things that I want to do. I like them both. I like to act and direct, filming, writing, editing and making the tea. It’s all good.
Frank: Stagknight has played a couple of festivals now. How were the responses to the movie?
Simon: Very good! There were laugh out loud moments. I was really joyed to hear people laughing at things that I was totally forgotten about. While making the movie, I was thinking: “Well, this could be funny.” And the people were laughing about it and other bits as well. It’s a real joy to hear people’s reactions, to be amongst them when they are reaction and enjoying the film. That is a real pleasure.
Frank: What do you expect from this night (European premiere of Stagknight)?
Simon: Actually pretty much the same. I expect people to laugh with surprise. I know that the women are going to like it. I’ve gotten a very positive response from girls. Afterwards they were coming up to me telling me that they were really loving the film. They are saying that they don’t like horror movies very much but that they liked this film. I think the reason they like it is that they can watch guys being stupid and the way that they are dying is not too grotesque.
Frank: It’s not an audience attack.
Simon: No, it’s not too grotesque.
Frank: There’s a lot of fun in it.
Simon: Yes, I really liked that kind of Animal house, Porky, Ghostbusters humour and style of filmmaking and wanted to put it in Stagknight.
Frank: Your website is ranked alongside a couple of very big motion pictures or even surpassing them.
Simon: Yeah, we were bigger then Jackass 2 and we weren’t even trying. They were about to come out and were ranked something like 89000 and we were ranked 95000. That’s how big the websites are. Jackass 2 has the MTV logo and a major company behind it and Stagknight has none of this, just ingenuity, cunning, relationships, quality and we have worked a lot of big websites in the movie. I think we are the actually first movie who have worked websites in their movie. Those websites helped promote Stagknight by putting up clips, pictures, talking about it or having competitions. And in a year over 30 million people have come to the website.
Frank: Wow, that’s a lot! I like the games on the website!
Simon: You like Staggy. It works doesn’t it?
Frank: Yeah, it works!
Simon: It’s that kind of humour that’s in Staggy that’s in Stagknight. Like killing boyscouts!
Frank: For what kind of audience is Stagknight?
Simon: Hopefully 16 to 60 year old men and women! I’m thinking it’s more for guys who like guys films. I hope people will come out and say: “Yeah, there were some pretty funny moments in there!” That’s what I expect with this film that people will say; “I really like this bit and I really like when she died and when he said that.” When people wil get out and talk about: “What about that part and what about that bit?” Then I think I have done my job in that sense.
Frank: What can you tell me about your upcoming projects?
Simon: I have a 5 million dollar budget for a next one coming up. It’s a revenge film. Kinda like Stagknight but through the other way. In Stagknight there a bunch of guys wandering about in a forest, in the next movie there will be one guy wandering about ten guys. So it’s like Mad Max or like Hamlet or like any kind of revenge film. It’s a revenge flick, and you’ll like it. It’s all about my experiences on the internet as well. I have used a lot of that knowledge and information.
Frank: Will there be a Stagknight 2?
Simon: Well, I think.. yeah, I hope so! It’s about contracts and stuff that I don’t have to make. It’s about people who will have to pay a lot of money for it. I’d like to do another one. We have to come back as zombies. We’d have to get someone who plays a bitch and is bisexual. And all the guys come back as a zombie army. I think that’s the only way we can do it!
Jason: Yeah, absolutely!
Simon: And they try to take over London or something..
Frank: I’d love to see that movie!!
Jason and Simon laughing.
Frank: Simon, If you have the budget and the complete artistic freedom, what will you be making then?
Simon: You mean like any kind of movie I want?
Frank: Anything you want, no budget, no artistic restrictions, just you and your movie.
Simon: I would make something bigger than The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Star Wars. Everything smashed together and bigger than all of those combined. Bigger than Cannibal Run, bigger than everything you can imagine. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, bigger than Spinal Tap and funnier than Spinal Tap. I like big things, a big picture, a big shot. I would like to make a BIG film.
Frank: Is there anything else that you would like to tell me?
Jason: It’s a small festival but a very intimate and good festival. You get to meet people here like Fred Vogel who is a good lad. There is a good vibe here, it’s very relaxed.
Frank: Guys, I‘m all through. Thank you very much for your time!!Simon: You’re welcome, thank you too!
