From The Vault: Macabre Daily Chats With Director John Landis!

John Landis is a man of many words. Let me be the first to say, this man can talk! I loved it! Some directors you can barely talk to with out falling asleep. Not Landis. His strong opinions and down right grittiness and passion for what he does is unparalleled. As a fan, I was honored to talk to the man behind so many awesome films. Check out the interview below.

We talk Tim Curry, the origins of An American Werewolf in London, and his distaste for 3D money making schemes in films.

 First off let me just thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

John Landis: No problem, so what can I do for you?

Well I wanted to talk to you about a few of your films.

JL: By all means, ask away.

What drew you to Burke and Hare (2010) first off?

JL: Just serendipitous. I was in London with my wife about two years ago and I have a good friend who lives in London named Gurinder Chadha who you might know. Her best known picture was Bend it Like Beckham. Her offices are in Ealing Studios. We were supposed to go out to lunch and she wanted to know if I could meet her at Ealing. I told her I’d be happy to go there because Ealing Studios was a remarkable company in the forties and fifties. It went out of business in the late fifties. They made a number a excellent films. The best would have to be Dead of Night, which they made during the war. Then in the fifties the made a number of extremely black comedies like The Lady Killers, Lavender Hill Mob, things like that. It’s [Ealing] also the only studio I have never been too in the UK. It became a rental lot after it shut down and the BBC used it. It’s the only studio that is actually in London. All the others are outside of London. So we met for lunch and this man walked by and Gurinder introduced me to him. He was Barnaby Thompson. As he walked away he came back and asked, “Are you the filmmaker John Landis?” I said “Yeah” and he gave me this script to look at, which was Burke and Hare by Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft.

They sound like morticians, huh? Ashworth and Moorcroft. (Laughs) Anyway what interested me with this film was that Burke and Hare were real people. Very terrible people. And just the idea of making a romantic comedy about these loathsome guys was interesting because you have to make them sympathetic. We make no apologies for what they did and we show all the murders they committed. The ironies of this film is that there are fourteen or fifteen different versions of Burke and Hare, all horror films. Ours is by far the most historically accurate. The idea was so perverted. It was like, let’s make a romantic comedy about Charles Manson. It was just so ridiculous. (laughs) So it was a real challenge, so I made it!

The cast is just amazing! I mean you have Tom Wilkenson, Tim Curry, just so many great people. In fact, it seems that Tim Curry hasn’t been in a film in sometime. It was nice to see him again.

JL: Yeah, I have been friends with Tim for years. Have you ever seen the film Clue?

Of course I have. Amazing film from top to bottom.

JL: Well I wrote the original draft for that film and I produced it. I did not direct it. Tim was in several movies of mine. I have worked with him at least five times now. He’s just great. Chris Lee is a friend of mine and he just did a day’s work on the film. We got to kill him. (laughs) We have a lot of great people in the film and I was glad to work with them.

The film is very dark in some aspects but still has an overall comedy feel to it.

JL: Well the irony with this film is that these guys are totally murderers. I think this throws some people off. These guys are without a doubt villains, but you end up liking them. We don’t disguise that.

Yeah they are the lovable villains.

JL: Yeah and it is actually a true story.

I think this was an excellent role for Andy Serkis. He is such a great actor.

JL: In all the movies Andy has done I really believe the most sympathetic character he has played was King Kong. I mean when he was on screen he was playing a villain. I was asking him to do a difficult thing, you know. William Hare is a terrible person but you really like him. He loves his wife and she’s a terrible person too. (laughs)

Yeah she’s a drunk and just in it for the money.

JL: Exactly.

How long was filming for Burke and Hare?

JL: Uh, it was forty days.

This was all shot in London?

JL: Actually we shot half  of it in Edinburgh and the remaining half we shot in London.

Speaking of London, I think AWIL has such an impact still to this day and, as a fan, I would like to say thank you for it.

JL: You’re very welcome. It was a pleasure making that film because it was a negative pickup. What that is is you make a deal with a distributor company, which was Polygrand at that time, and they agree to give you a certain amount of money when you give them the finished film. With this agreement you go to a bank and you borrow the money and you have to get a completion bond. It’s sort of an insurance policy. So when the movie is done you get the money back to the bank and the distribution company gives you the money you originally agreed upon. What’s great about this process is you have no interference. I mean I was signing the checks. I had complete control of the film, so it was just a pleasure to make. I wrote it when I was a kid back in 1969 while I was working on a film called Kelly’s Heroes in Yugoslavia. I wrote it then, and nobody would give me the money to make it. So I ended up making it in the long run and thankfully it was successful. The only reason I got to make it was that I did three movies that were commercial successes–Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House,and The Blues Brothers.

Oscar Winning Special Effects Artist, Rick Baker

I heard that you and makeup effects master Rick Baker went back and forth a bit on how you wanted the werewolf to look.

JL: I never went back and forth with Rick about that. I told him exactly what I wanted. He wanted it to be a two-legged wolf man and I wanted it to be a huge monster wolf from hell. But ya know, I win cause I’m the director. (laughs)

There are so many variations on what a werewolf should look like, but I think your version is still the best.

JL: Every movie makes its own rules. There is no right or wrong way to do it. I mean if you ever see the Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr., he gets bit by a huge dog, then ends up being a two-legged wolf man. I never understood that. And people who say there are rules with vampires or werewolves one must follow is bullshit! They’re made up, fake, so they can be anything the filmmakers want them to be. There are no rules. (laughs)

Masters Of Horror Series ‘DEER WOMAN’

 I am also a fan of your film Deer Woman that you did for the Masters of Horror series.

JL: Oh yeah?!

Yeah I love how, and I think you’re the only director that can pull it off still, it blends horror and comedy so flawlessly.

JL: Deer Woman was meant to be funny but most horror films, or should I say fantasy films, have what is called suspension of disbelief. For me, the film that did this the best in the horror genre was The Exorcist. Now I am not Christian or Catholic, and I certainly don’t believe in the existence of the devil at all, but when I saw the movie it scared  the fuck outta me! I mean the film gives you that suspension of disbelief that there is a devil and this little girl is really possessed.

Do you think there is a lack of good horror films out there right now?

JL: I think there’s a lack of good everything right now not just horror. (laughs) That’s just me. I think the last great horror picture I saw was the Swedish film Let The Right One In. I thought it was just a terrific film.

As a writer, what is the hardest part? Coming up with the beginning of a story or finishing it?

JL: Well that’s interesting. I find it hard to come up with a story I wanna tell. I mean, once I have the story I want to tell then I don’t find writing it that hard. But coming up with the story in the first place is hard.

What are you a bigger fan of, comedies or horror?

JL: Neither actually, I don’t gravitate to any specific genre of film. I love all films. I love musicals and I LOVE Westerns.

What are some of your favorite westerns then?

JL: The problem when you say the word “favorite” is that it labels things. I can name you twenty-five different great Westerns. There are just so many. It’s hard to just label one.

What do you think of the trend in films that are using 3D?

JL: It’s bullshit. It’s just a way of making more money. Most films should not be in 3D. I have not seen a film that utilizes 3D better than the original Creature From The Black Lagoon. The technology they keep praising is bullshit. It’s exactly the same. The difference is that it’s digital. The digital projection allows you to use just one projector. In the old days you had to use two projectors and if they weren’t perfectly insinc you’d get a headache and it wouldn’t work. The optics are the same. There is no great advance. It’s just a scam. I think people are sick of it.

It’s just sad that so many people fall for it all the time.

JL: Well I don’t think they do any more. You don’t go see a movie cause it’s in 3D.

No, no you don’t.

JL: You go because you wanna see it. A good 3D movie has to work flat also. I mean I like 3D, I just think it’s a fad. Just bullshit.

Well thank you for spending a few minutes with me. It really meant a lot to me as a fan.

JL: You’re welcome. And thank you very much!

This interview was conducted back in 2011 originally for Truly Disturbing.com

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