Stuart Gordon makes a small departure

Crave Online: Even though this isn't a horror movie per se, did you have to keep some of the outrageous moments because it’s still a Stuart Gordon movie? For example, that fight in the hallway with the frying pan.

Stuart Gordon: Well, it’s funny. I think one of the reasons that that scene with the frying pan works so well is because it’s the first time in the movie that she takes the initiative. Up until that point, she is asking him to help her. “You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to take care of this.” And all of a sudden she becomes empowered and I think the reason we liked that scene so much is because she is becoming active.

Crave Online: But the outrageous gore moments in the garage, do you still have to throw those in for your fans?

Stuart Gordon: I never think of it as throwing anything in for my fans. I think of them as this is what could happen next. When we were working on this, we were talking about what were some of the obstacles this guy could encounter. Initially in talking to John Strysik, it was about is there enough material here for a movie. You describe this to somebody and you go, "Well, that sounds like you could do maybe 20 minutes on that story." So we started coming up with ideas for things that could happen, things like the dog or the family of immigrants who are afraid of being deported and those kinds of ideas. None of that really happened in the real story but it seemed like something that could happen.

Crave Online: How many times did you send a stuntman through the windshield, and was it movie glass?

Stuart Gordon: It wasn’t candy. It was hard plastic, like styrene plastic of some kind I guess. Very brittle. The problem we had was shipping the stuff to St. John. We had something like 11 windshields and only five of them made it there, you know, because they broke on the way.

Crave Online: How many takes was it to do that?

Stuart Gordon: I don’t remember but I was going to say I think at least three.

Crave Online: What kind of challenges did Stephen Rea face being stuck in that window?

Stuart Gordon: Oh, he was in the windshield for three weeks. He said, “The real guy had been in it for three days. I’ve been in it for three weeks.” And he always would say, “I know my lines today. ‘Help, help! Help me!’”

Crave Online: Did he get dizzy?

Stuart Gordon: He did because his head was lower than the rest of his body. Yeah, it was very hard for him. And it was one of these things where he’d have to go through three hours of make-up every day before we even put him into the windshield. And he knew, because we talked about it a lot. He was bitching about, “Oh no, I got to go into that windshield again.” And I said, “Well, come on, what did you think, we were going to CG you into it?” He goes, “I know, I know. But doing it is a little different than thinking about doing it.” But he was incredible and one of the things about his performance that I really like is that he really makes you feel it. He makes the audience really feel the pain. This is one of my big beefs about horror films is that people are stabbed or they’re shot or they’re whatever and you never get any sense of anyone being in pain and how much this would hurt. It’s almost like we’re not going to do that because that’s too upsetting. That’s why it kills me in TV when they want to not show the blood. If you’re going to show violence, let’s show it the way it really is. I was just watching Reservoir Dogs the other day and that scene with Tim Roth in the beginning when he’s been shot. How many times have you seen a person shot in a movie? About three billion times? Here’s Tim Roth who was shot and you really feel how painful it is and he’s crying and he’s screaming and it’s really disturbing. You get physically sick just watching it. It makes you realize how rare it is that you see somebody playing the pain.

Crave Online: Is it true that you don’t like blood?

Stuart Gordon: Well I don’t like seeing my own blood. That’s for sure. I’m a total sissy. I am completely. If it’s real blood, forget it. I’ll pass out.

Crave Online: This is inspired by a true story. Did you need to change much to make the movie?

Stuart Gordon: We didn’t change much. I would say the first half of the movie is pretty accurate in terms of what really went down. Immediately after she put him in her garage she did go and have sex with her boyfriend. That really did happen. That was one of the details that jumped out at me when I was reading about it. Where we departed from the truth was with the idea of him getting himself out of the windshield because Gregory Biggs, the man that this actually happened to, never did get out. We did several drafts where we followed the real timeline of the story. At one point I remember John Strysik, the screenwriter, says “What if he tries to get out? What happens?” In a way it makes his character become active rather than just a passive victim. All of a sudden things started happening in the story. That last half just wrote itself.

Crave Online: There’s a multi-ethnic cast in stuck. Did the real story involve African-Americans, Caucasians and Latinos?

Stuart Gordon: In the real story, Chante Mallard, the woman who hit Gregory Biggs, was a black woman. So there was a racial element to the story originally. I think one of the reasons that she was afraid to report it was because she thought, "A black woman hits a white guy, she’s toast. That’s the end." So there was this in the back of her mind all the way through that there was this idea of our society being kind of the haves and the have nots and if you’re not white, you’re in the have nots. And that was one of the things we were trying to get across.

Crave Online: Is there a reason you cast Mena instead of a black woman?

Stuart Gordon: The reason was really because Mena really wanted to do it. Mena got and read the script pretty early on and I got a call from her agent saying, “Mena loves the script and wants to do the part.” I had just worked with her in “Edmond” and I thought great, that’s fantastic. We hadn’t written it as a black woman. We had written it kind of non-descript in the original script. But I sort of got into the idea that she should be sort of a black wannabe, corn rows and all of her friends are black and then maybe even she’s part black. Who knows? Leave that to the audience’s imagination. 

Crave Online: Mena Suvari had a small role in Edmond. Did you immediately think of her for the lead in Stuck?

 

Crave Online: When I was growing up, I saw your films on video because they wouldn’t play in theaters in general places where I lived. Do you have an eye towards making movies that have more of a theatrical marketability these days?

Stuart Gordon: You’d always like to see your movie play in a theater because they’re designed for audiences. The only thing I have against people watching your movie on DVD is it takes away some of the fun of being in an audiences and seeing it with a group of people. But the important thing is that people see it at all and 90% of all movies are seen on DVD. It’s kind of rare for anything to get a theatrical release. So yeah, the bigger the audience the better is always the way I feel. I’m just glad that people are watching them at all.

Crave Online: Well, this film is and Edmond also was in theaters.

Stuart Gordon: Yeah. My other films got theatrical releases, but the kind of stuff I do is not the kind of stuff that a studio is going to put out on 4,000 screens.

Crave Online: Do you have one that you would like to do that would be more mainstream?

Stuart Gordon: I actually do. It’s a pirate movie which I’ve been trying to get made forever. Every time I would be about ready to get this movie made, there would be a terrible pirate movie that would open up and that would be the end of it. Now, finally, with Pirates of the Caribbean, a successful pirate movie, maybe I’ve got a shot.

Crave Online: Well, you dipped your hand in the kid’s movie market a while ago, didn’t you?

Stuart Gordon: Yeah, Honey I Shrunk the Kids. It was an interesting experience. It was funny because people always say, “That’s so different from your other films.” But in reality Honey I Shrunk the Kids is a horror film. It’s got giant bugs in it. It’s got a mad scientist. It’s got a terrible experiment that goes wrong. It’s got all the ingredients of a horror movie. It was funny because it took Disney a while to sort of realize that and then they got really scared and they said, “Stuart, we would really like this to be more like The Absent Minded Professor and less like The Fly.”

Crave Online: So what does that mean for your pirate movie?

Stuart Gordon: Well the pirate movie is not a Disney pirate movie. I like to think of it as a pirate movie that Sergio Leoni would make. It’s a very sort of violent, tough, hard ass pirate movie.

Crave Online: What can fans of the film look forward to on the DVD?

Stuart Gordon: Well, I think of course the usual things. We just recorded a commentary track. I know they’re going to do an interview with Stephen Rea because he’s in Ireland right now, but he’s going to be coming to New York talking about his experiences making the movie. There’s a lot of footage that was shot while we were making the film so that’ll be put together for it. And I think they’re going to do a piece about the actual case in Ft. Worth that inspired the movie.

Crave Online: Thinking back to your earlier movies, Re-Animator has one of the wildest nude scenes that I’ve seen with the decapitated head. What on earth made you think of that all those years ago?

Stuart Gordon: Well, I think again it was a very practical thing. If you’re just a decapitated head, how are you going to get it on, you know? It’s gonna have to be oral sex.

Crave Online: What’s the status of the House of Re-Animator project?

Stuart Gordon: Well, I wish I had good news on that but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen unfortunately. It’s funny. I’ve been having second thoughts lately because I keep reading about Oliver Stone doing this movie about Bush and I kept thinking it’s sort of like old news if you start making movies about the Bush administration. You know, by the time this movie would come out, there’d be a new President and it’s sort of like who cares anymore? But maybe people are still intrigued about him. You know the Bush administration is so audacious that maybe people will still be interested. I don’t know.

Crave Online: Wouldn’t a zombie President be timeless?

Stuart Gordon: Yeah, but I think it has to be kind of the right zombie. It has to be an electable zombie. That’s the thing.

Crave Online: Have you made any progress with The Thing on the Doorstep?

Stuart Gordon: Yeah, I’m still working on that. We’re casting it now as a matter of fact. We’re hoping we’ll be shooting it this fall.

Crave Online: How much Lovecraft remains in your adaptation?

Stuart Gordon: I’ll just give you the set up of it which is our version of it. In our version, it’s about a psychiatrist who gets this patient. This young girl comes in who he thinks has multiple personality disorder and he knows that in all cases of multiple personality disorder, it involves sexual abuse. So he’s very intrigued by this girl but he’s also very drawn to her and one of her personalities keeps trying to seduce him. Eventually he gives in and he’s having sex with her and he says to her, “Is this good for you?” and she says, “Why don’t you see for yourself?” Suddenly they switch bodies and he’s now in her body and she’s in his. This lasts for a few seconds and then he’s back and it’s like what the hell happened. It turns out that this girl is actually a sorceress and wants to take over his body for good and eventually she’s going to become him. That’s kind of the set up of the story. It’s the only Lovecraft story that he ever wrote that has a strong female character.

Crave Online: What was your experience doing the Fear Itself episode?

Stuart Gordon: I actually had a really good time doing it. I was kind of amazed. It was funny when it was going to go to NBC that we would have to cut out all the gore and so forth and the mayhem. They sent me the script and I was like oh, I cannot believe they’re going to do this on TV because it’s pretty explicit. I showed the rough cuts to my wife and she said they’re never going to show this on television. And they are. They will.

Crave Online: Have you found that television has gotten a lot more lax and it’s movies that have gotten more strict these days?

Stuart Gordon: No, I think actually movies have gotten real [lax]. I don’t think lax is the word I would use. I would say there’s less censorship which is a good thing and that they’re letting audiences make up their own minds which I think is great. And I think television is sort of following in that direction, especially cable TV.

Crave Online: Was the budget of an NBC show a luxury to you compared to what you’re used to?

Stuart Gordon: No. I mean the budget on this show was not high. It’s fairly low budget and we had less time to shoot it than Masters of Horror. We had 8 days to do the episode. But I had a great leading lady on that, Elizabeth Moss from Mad Men, and she was terrific.

Crave Online: Has anyone approached you about a Re-Animator remake or anything like that?

Stuart Gordon: No. It’s funny. Every now and then there will be a call from somebody asking about it. It’s not my call. It’s really Brian [Yuzna]’s.

Crave Online: Are you putting any of your older films out on Blu-Ray Hi Def?

Stuart Gordon: Again, I wish I could say yes but unfortunately I don’t have the rights to any of my films. When you make movies, you sign those all away. It’s interesting. A lot of my movies, you know, it’s a small company that initially does it and then that company gets taken over by a bigger company and then so forth. So a lot of my films are now at MGM and I have no control over what happens to them.

Crave Online: What’s your greatest fear?

Stuart Gordon: My greatest fear? Oh my. I guess it’s all our greatest fear: death. Isn’t that the greatest fear which is what all horror movies are about?