Earlier today, Disc Dish spoke with the filmmakers about shooting their film on locations across Burkina Faso and Ghana in West Africa. As the two explain on the discs’ fine commentary track, it was a dangerous if heady experience that found them having to deal with knifepoint muggings, corrupt politics, import/export nightmares, dysentery, food poisoning and leading man Rob Freeman contracting cerebral malaria.

Disc Dish: Your excellent commentary on the disc for The Dead details the hell that was the film’s shoot in West Africa. Okay, so were there any fun parts?

Jon Ford: When we wrapped, that was the most fun!

DD: That bad, huh?

Jon Ford: Oh yes, like we said. But here’s something, at least for me: The zombie in the opening scene—the one with the wonky leg–we found him carrying bags for a local guest house, which he did for something like a dollar a day. Obviously, it’s the worst job for a guy with a bad leg to have. We wanted him to be in the film and we needed him to shoot on a Saturday, but he was really nervous because he had a job and he needed the money. We offered him $50 and he was the happiest guy you’d ever seen! He loved making the movie and everything he did with us. It was like he was on vacation.

Howard J. Ford: For me, it was while we were shooting in the desert, being out there under the sky. We slept in a wicker tent—no walls or anything on those things. The bed is like a hammock, so you’re suspended above the ground and a whole world of little creatures crawl beneath you. And no toilet or anything—you would dig a hole and just take care of business. But looking up at the sky and at night, there are those stars—stars like you’ve never seen. Unbelievable.

DD: It sounds like the extremes of shooting a zombie movie in West Africa yielded a kind of spirituality.

Jon Ford: It did, it actually did, in a way. I think that when you’re placed in a very stressful situation, you revert to a very primitive part of the brain. You put on fronts when you meet other people, but out there, the real you comes out. We went to a dark place, a very dark and bizarre place, and then we came back again, into the light. Maybe the spirituality came after we wrapped, like I said before.

The zombies are loose in West Africa in The Dead.

Howard J. Ford: We went into villages and provided work for the people there. We gave them money and supplies and work. We weren’t there trying to save the world or anything—we were making a movie. But it’s an amazing feeling giving food and money directly to starving people.

DD: The Dead has long been on your agenda for more than a decade, even prior to your first feature film, the 2000 chiller Distant Shadow. And after that film, you embarked on a decade of shooting and directing commercials.

Jon Ford: The Dead was the very reason I wanted to become a filmmaker. It was the movie I wanted to make—it was my goal to make the best possible film, not just the best zombie film. That’s why it broke my heart so much that we had to chop out pages and adapt to our shooting situation when we finally made it. It became a shadow of what it could have been.

DD: Have you considered remaking it on a larger scale? Or maybe a sequel?

Howard Ford: We’ve talked about going back to try it again. We talked about that even while we were making it! On one hand, if enough people see the film and buy the film and the right kind of money is generated, it would create the need for us to go back and do it again. We’ve already got a load of scenes and a structure worked out for a second part. But we also think there was genuinely a curse on The Dead. Too many bad things happened. We might not come out alive this time.

Jon Ford: Shooting The Dead was the most miserable experience of my life.

DD: Yeah, I believe you!

Buy or Rent The Dead
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Here’s a transcript of my exchange with the legendary Mr. Allen. And, yes, it was a thrill to be able to share a few minutes with the brilliant filmmaker who made Annie Hall, Manhattan, Love and Death, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Enough said.

Disc Dish: For many years, you’ve been associated with making films on location in the New York area. The last decade has seen you making films abroad, a very radical change. That said, I have two questions: First, business considerations aside, when it comes to making films abroad, what has the experience of working on films on foreign soil with foreign crews been like for you?

Woody Allen: Okay, first off, I can’t leave business matters completely unconcerned, because I originally went to London because they offered to back Match Point and I had a very nice experience in London. I found that foreign crews there are just like American crews, and it was no problem. I found the same thing to be true in Barcelona and Paris. They’re film crews, electricians and carpenters. They know what to do, and the language barrier is minimal. Most of them speak a little English or I can struggle through a minimal amount of French. You learn how to communicate quickly.

In the U.S., I worked with a Chinese cameraman, Zhao Fei, for three pictures, three years, who never spoke a word of English. But it doesn’t matter because you’re talking about the same things. Once you learn the same 10 signals, everything is the same. So, it’s no problem working in foreign countries. It’s the same exact thing. I’m working in big cities — London, Barcelona, Paris and soon Rome — and it’s just like working in New York. Everyone is very professional and very nice.

One nice perquisite is that these foreign countries welcome you so generously that everybody cooperates in such generous ways. They close off streets; you get police help. It’s so wonderful working abroad because everyone is so enthused over it.

Disc Dish: Okay, my second question is directed more to your reputation as a cinephile. Are there are specific filmmakers and films that have inspired you or that you keep in the back in your head wherein the filmmakers, like you, are associated with making films in their native country and then they enter a period where they leave their home turf and make films elsewhere?

Woody Allen: The only person that comes to mind, although I’m sure there are many others, is the wonderful film director Jules Dassin. He was terrific in New York — The Naked City, which revolutionized the whole way of looking at certain kinds of film — and then he left for Paris because of the blacklisting.

When he went abroad, he did Rififi and other great films, some with his wife [Melina Mercouri]. He did some of his very, very best work as an ex-patriot, and why not? You get a new location, fresh sights, fresh ideas. The people, as I said, are every bit as good and competent, and so are the actors and actresses. It’s not like you leave home and are stranded in the desert where nobody knows what to do with a lens. It’s not like that. You go to a new city, and you’ve got new restaurants and new places to go to. It’s actually very exciting.

Disc Dish: But you’ll be back in New York one day, I hope.

Woody Allen: I would love to! New York is a fabulous city to work in. There are a million things to do here, a million stories to tell and a million great locations in the city. I’ve made many, many movies here, and I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of New York City.

What’s great also is that there’s a certain advantage to be in your own home. For instance, I’m going to Rome this summer, so I’m not going to be able to see any baseball. And I’ll have three months of using a hotel shower. I have a great shower at home, where the water comes out hard and hot, compared to a hotel in a foreign country. It’s nice to work at home — my own bed and my own house and all of my surrounding pharmaceuticals. But there are exciting things for me to discover abroad as well.

Buy or Rent Midnight in Paris
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Disc Dish spoke with Vachon about her work on Velvet Goldmine and the importance the film holds for herself and her favorite director.

Disc Dish: I’m psyched to be speaking to you about Velvet Goldmine, which I know meant a lot to you and [director and longtime collaborator] Todd Haynes.

Christine Vachon: Oh yes. We both love this movie so much.

DD: Prior to Velvet Goldmine, you produced two of Todd’s earliest features, Poison and Safe. What kind of benchmark was Velvet Goldmine in your professional and personal relationship with him?

CV: The experience of making it brought us so close together, and we found ourselves really leaning on each other both creatively and emotionally. Professionally, I guess the way I can best put it is that it was the time we began making movies with real stars and real budgets. I can’t remember Velvet Goldmine’s budget exactly, but it was somewhere around the $7 million range, which at the time was a lot of money. And it was an incredibly ambitious film filled with costumes and stars and set pieces. It had to feel real big and real and I think it did.

DD: The movie is probably best known for its soundtrack, which is filled with period songs, cover versions, new material and an original score. You could probably make a documentary on how you put all that together.

CV: It was unbelievable, all the music. Right, rights, rights…

DD: David Bowie famously refused to grant you the rights to use his material.

CV: He did. That was early on, when Bowie’s camp told us we could not use his music. Todd had really conceived the film with all of Bowie’s music in place. But when we found out we couldn’t use it, in a weird way it was very liberating, because it gave us a chance to re-conceive the entire film, for the better, I think. I don’t know if Todd would completely agree with me.

DD: Starting anew certainly gave you an opportunity to deal with a handful of amazing musicians.

CV: It did. We had an an incredible dinner with Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry in London and they made amazing contributions to the film. All the musicians did — Grant Lee Buffalo, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, Placebo, Teenage Fanclub, so many.

DD: It must have been a daunting task to put it all together.

CV: It was definitely hard to keep it all organized. There was no Internet back then, of course, and my music supervisor was in New York City with musicians recording tracks and then FedExing them to us in London. We would get back our comments to them and there would be more FedExing back and forth and then we’d move forward.

DD: Yow. And that doesn’t even include the live music that was being shot on-set.

CV: The live music and the performances were positively exhilarating. It always brought everyone to their feet and reminded us all of what we were doing.

DD: Both you and Todd talk about that in the new commentary track you recorded for the Blu-ray.

CV: You listened to the commentary? How was it?

DD: Outstanding, truly. I listened to it the whole way through, something I haven’t done in quite a long time, but that’s because you were both so into it. And Todd brought so much supplemental material with him to the recording session — notes, stuff from the Internet, old magazine articles. It was like listening to an eager dissertation.

CV: Todd took this commentary very seriously, just as he did the movie, which has really taken on a life of its own over the years. He really wanted to do it justice and give its fans all he could.

DD: Your contributions were also quite fine.

CV: Well, thank you. We had never done one for Velvet Goldmine, though I did them with Todd for Poison and Safe. Getting to watch the movie again was a real treat. We set out to make Velvet Goldmine the movie that it was at a time that was very important for both of us.

HBO Home Entertainment

Directed by John Landis and starring Steve Martin (It’s Complicated), Chevy Chase (Caddyshack) and Martin Short (TV’s Damages), Three Amigos follows a trio of silent movie stars as they head to Mexico and find themselves living out their roles as celluloid heroes when they’re wrangled into rescuing a poor village from a gang of nefarious banditos. The large-scale results of their “gig” include lots of bullet-ridden action, horse-mounted adventure and good-natured comedy.

Disc Dish spoke to John Landis about his film’s new Blu-ray incarnation, which also features twenty minutes of previously unseen deleted scenes.

Disc Dish: We last spoke a couple of years ago when Animal House made the jump to HD and subsequently Blu-ray and you mentioned you wanted to see Three Amigos get a high definition makeover.

John Landis: I always wanted Three Amigos to look better than it did on VHS and DVD. The transfers all came from old theatrical prints and it never looked good. So I’m very happy this opportunity came around.

DD: You also told me that you were unhappy with the way Animal House looked on in the high-def format—it was a little too pretty for your taste.

JL: I still don’t think Animal House looks great on Blu-ray. It’s too bright—like a Doris Day movie. The Ten Commandments just came out on Blu-ray and it looks beautiful and that’s the way it’s supposed to look. But not Animal House. I tried to get the transfer technician to put some of the grain back and to darken the print, but that only worked so much. Every time he made one of the alterations I wanted, he would write down in his notes ‘image degraded by director.’

DD: I hope you’re happier with Three Amigos, which looks dazzling on Blu-ray.

JL: Oh, I’m thrilled with the way Three Amigos looks!

DD: [Cinematographer] Ron Browne’s work is really stunning. (Note: Browne passed away this year at the age of 83.)

JL: Ron was an excellent cinematographer. He’s someone I met while I was working on George Burns Comedy Week on TV back then. Ron primarily worked in television, but I know that he also had experience on westerns—he worked on � The Big Valley with Barbara Stanwyck in the Sixties.

DD: They say that all American filmmakers want to make a western at one point in their careers.

Chevy, Steve and Martin look forward to saving Santa Poco in Three Amigos.

JL: My favorite movies are westerns. I just love them. And I loved making Three Amigos, which was my own kind of very stylized western. I was recently talking to Walter Hill (The Long Riders) and he said, ‘If [the studios] knew how much fun it was to make a western, they wouldn’t let us.’ I agree with him.

DD: My favorite character in Three Amigos is the bandito leader ‘El Guapo,’ played by Mexican actor and filmmaker Alfonso Arau. Did you two exchange any directing tips when you worked together?

JL: No, not then–he had only done a few low budget Mexican movies at that point. But I do have a wonderful story about Alfonso and his wife that I could tell you.

DD: Please do.

Alfonso Arau is 'El Guapo' in Three Amigos.

JL: At the time, Alfonso was married to a woman named Laura Esquivel. She appeared to be a very nice person, but she never, ever talked. Really, she never said anything while we were shooting Three Amigos in Tucson. One night, my wife and I were having dinner with she and Alfonso and I asked her why she never talked. I thought that maybe she had a problem with the language, but it was clear that she spoke excellent English.

Well, then she launched into a story. She had married Alfonso ten years earlier—it was his second or third marriage—and shortly after their wedding, they went to an astrologer in Mexico City to do their charts. The reading predicted that on their twelfth wedding anniversary, she would write a book and it would become the most successful novel to ever come out of Mexico. And [the reading also said] that Alfonso would soon direct a movie that would also be hugely successful.

Then I asked her what the book was going to be about and she said, ‘I don’t know—I’m thinking about it. That’s why I don’t talk.’

So Laura Esquivel proceeds to sit down and writes a book filled with recipes and, two years later, on their twelfth wedding anniversary, she turns it  into Like Water for Chocolate, one of the best-selling books in the history of Mexico and an international bestseller. And a couple of years after that, Alfonso directs the film version, which became one of the most popular Spanish-language films ever released in the U.S. and a huge hit around the world.

DD: That is a seriously crazy story.

JL: Yes it is. And it’s absolutely true.

Buy or Rent Three Amigos
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Disc Dish: How did Restitution come your way?

Tom Arnold: The usual way—somebody sent it to my manager and I read it. I was interested from the beginning; they did a really good job with the overall story and the mystery.

DD: You had a lot of fun with your character—the nutty next-door neighbor.

TA: I actually called the [co-writer/director] Lance Klawas and told them that it’s not for me to make the decision, but if you’ll let me mess around with the character, I can add in a little more, a little extra.

DD: With all your character’s talk of soft erections and gay hugs, I got the feeling that you injected some of your standup act into the role.

TA: Well, he had to show some humanity! Lance and [co-writer/star Mark Bierlein] were cool with the fact that my character was more comfortable, more natural. It brought out a little something different in the leading character, too. To me, my character had to be a bit of a truth-teller. Whatever he says, it’s got to be true by the end of the film. Whatever minor notes or suggestions I made, they worked, I hope. I think they were grateful.

DD: Script-doctoring aside, maybe it’s time for you to direct a film of your own.

TA: One time a few years a back, I was offered a horror movie to direct, but it wasn’t the right time for me. If the opportunity arose now, I would certainly consider it. I know what directing entails. Well, not everything, but I see a lot of my friends heading that way and I directed an HBO special for my ex-wife years back, so I know I could do it.

DD: What else have you been up to lately?

Tom Arnold shows his concern in the thriller Restitution.

TA: I just finished shooting an episode of Sons of Anarchy—I’ve done a few of those over the last couple of years. And I’m been doing a bunch of different smaller parts in smaller movies. One that I did a year or so ago, Pool Boys, was just released on DVD now. It’s silly fun from the American Pie people. What else? We’re just finishing post on a post for Fox Sports. I’m also doing stand-up a week a month on the road. And I’m working on another book.

DD: You’ve got a lot of things going on.

TA: Yeah, but the truth is I’d love to do one job—get on a series for seven years or something and then get to come home and be with the family. I find a lot of work, but I’m not thought of as the kind of guy to be sent up for a series.  My agent kind of has it easy—I don’t get a lot of auditions and meetings. I need more of those and more opportunities! People remember me a certain way, but I’ve been getting darker lately and would love to get that out there. But I don’t expect results—I know better than that.

Read our review of Restitution here!

2010 movie Beautiful Boy (Anchor Bay; Blu-ray $29.99, DVD $$26.98; released Oct. 11, 2011), starring Maria Bello (Grown Ups) and Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon), tells tje hard-hitting story of an unhappily married couple (Bello and Sheen) on the verge of separation. Their already-strained marriage is tested when they learn that their 18-year-old son committed a mass shooting at his college and then took his own life. The life-altering tragedy forces the couple to face their own feelings of guilt, rage and blame as they attempt to absorb the event and slowly put their private and public lives back together.

Ku spoke to Disc Dish about the film’s production.

Disc Dish: I can’t imagine it was easy to get a tough drama like Beautiful Boy financed and off the ground!

Shawn Ku: No, it wasn’t the easiest sell, but the idea is one of those things that people are struck by. We had a producer who really stuck by it for a while, but he just couldn’t make it happen. Then we had [producer] Lee Clay, who was really committed to it and who really got it going. It’s always hard to make a movie like Beautiful Boy and we knew that if we wanted to move ahead with this one, we had to make it on a dime.

DD: Snagging Michael Sheen and Maria Bello to star couldn’t have hurt.

Michael Sheen and Maria Bello's strained marriage is put to the ultimate test in Beautiful Boy.

SK: Michael was working like crazy then, as was Maria. But they wanted to be involved and they shoehorned the time period in. Of course, they were a big part in getting the financing to come through. When you’re getting everything lined up, you inch your way down the same double helix path — casting and finance — and hope they end at the same time.

DD: And how long was principal photography?

SK: We had an 18-day shoot in downtown Los Angeles. Our cast and crew worked for nothing.

DD: Two-and-a-half weeks, yikes!

SK: There’s a lot of pressure when you’re working under a tight schedule like that. And we had no pick-ups or reshoots planned. We had to build them into the production. It was challenging.

DD: The heat is on.

SK: Somebody told me once that directing is like getting pecked to death by crows — everyone needs a piece of you, time-wise or mentally. They’re right.

DD: Michael and Maria appear to have risen to the occasion.

SK: For them, emotionally, it must have been pretty tumultuous. There wasn’t a single day without a heavy scene. But they’re both pros, and we had a really, really smooth shoot.

DD: I always think about how an actor has to carefully modulate his performance in a tough drama or tragedy when nuance and degrees of intensity are so important.

SK: Oh yes. It’s the actors who are bringing life to it. They’re rounding out all the features of the character and adding in the shades.

DD: The art of acting.

SK: It’s really interesting, because when you’re writing a screenplay, it’s coming out of you chronologically. But when you’re shooting it, it’s in a different order. When a character is on paper, it’s only two-dimensional and you’re only visualizing it.  There was one particular time when we were doing a scene with Maria and as the writer, I wasn’t thinking about it on the same level as she was. I had it in mind as a single scene, but Maria, as an actor, had placed it in the context of the overall story. She took into account what had happened before and what was going to happen later on. We tried it different ways and her way was the best.

Frank Henenlotter’s The Godfather of Gore documentary is informative and a lot of fun, but I think I learned more about Lewis from my rapid-fire 15-minute phone chat with him. The 82-year-old creator of the splatter film proved to be sharp, funny, worldly, self-deprecating and definitely on his game — just as an exploitation king should be.

After pleasantries were exchanged, I asked Lewis about the effect his hop-skip-and-jump life and career — which found him living and working every from Pittsburgh, Chicago and Oklahoma City to Racine, Wisconsin and Starkville, Mississippi — may have had on his filmmaking. From that starting point, we steered into as nearly as many different directions as there were cities in my question.

Disc Dish: Herschell Gordon Lewis, you’re a real journeyman — both artistically and geographically.

Herschell Gordon Lewis: I’m very pleased to have had an eclectic background.

DD: Did living in so many different parts of the country affect your filmmaking?

HGL: That’s a very astute observation!

DD: If you’re answering ‘yes,’ then thank you.

HGL: Well, then it’s an astute question! I’d have to say that my kind of background tends to purge away the idea that anything I’ve done is “golden.” And what I’ve seen and done — the consequence of things — has gone into the creative product I’ve excreted.

DD: You’re not coming down on the places that you’ve lived, are you?

HGL: No, no, not at all. But the reactions to the movies speak for themselves. Maybe it’s more about where I came from in my head. After I made Blood Feast, I was an outlaw. We were criticized by nearly every motion picture publication and film society in the country. ‘How dare we make a movie like that!?,’ they all screamed.

DD: Okay. And where are you living now?

HGL: Pompano Beach, Florida. I’ve had enough of cold weather.

DD: Your low-budget filmmaking techniques have been a topic of discussion for many years—

HGL: (interrupting) —Two words you never hear on my set:  “Take two!”

DD: Right. So, I’m thinking maybe we can talk for a sec about how you think your films compare to those of your contemporaries, most of whom are no longer with us — Ray Steckler, Russ Meyers, your one-time partner Dave Friedman and so on…

HGL: That’s a dangerous question. You’re asking me to criticize my contemporaries who did what I did…

DD: You knew them all for years and worked alongside of them at times….

HGL: Well, they didn’t do what they did as well as I did!

The red stuff flows in 1963's Blood Feast.

DD: A-ha!

HGL: But you’ve got to have a good campaign. If you don’t know how to promote your picture, then it’s going to the bottom of the sea. For [1967’s] A Taste of Blood, I insisted that we had to use “Gouts of Blood” for the campaign. Friedman said, ‘We don’t need Shakespeare!’ But we used “Gouts.”

DD: Since your “retirement” nearly 20 years ago, you’ve made a handful of movies, alongside a zillion other horror and exploitation filmmakers who are all basically doing their own version of your thing.

HGL: My whole trick was to walk away! I don’t want to be known as the kind of fella who made Scream... and the next Scream, and the Scream after that. The same movie over and over again. We didn’t do that. We broke a new bottle of champagne each time. Cheap champagne.

DD: And buried in that broken glass are your movies, nearly 40 of them. That’s quite a filmmography.

HGL: Film history is a funny thing. Who knows what people will think in another hundred years? If you show them Melies’ A Trip to the Moon, they would probably say, ‘Who made this today? A 4-year-old? A kid with his mother’s camera?’

DD: But it’s preserved, it’s still here. Just like your films, first on DVD and now on Blu-ray.

HGL: Exactly. That they still exist now is amazing, a bunch of ancient movies with a cast of nobodies! And they’re still showing. They’re part of film festivals every Halloween.

DD: So your legacy is ensured.

HGL: They’re not classic movies. I know that. But just like Columbus claimed he was the first one to “do it,” so can I. They’re not classics. But I’m in a footnote to motion picture history, and I’m proud of that.

Disc Dish: I really enjoyed you in The Entitled. You definitely worked for me as a good, nasty party girl.

Laura Vandervoort: Thanks! Yes, she was mean, but had some more dimension when you see the problems she had. The question was, do I just play her as just a rich snob, or do I reflect on her cocaine problems and her relationship trouble? I never want to play a character that’s one-dimensional. I still want to get some empathy from the audience, even though she’s pathetic. Of course, I original wanted the part of [kidnapper] Tatiana, the bad girl. I’m always looking to play the part that people don’t think of me in.

DD: How did this movie make its way onto your radar?

LV: They actually sent the script to my agent, who quickly got it on to me to see if I liked it. I didn’t know [director] Aaron Woodley at all, but I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

Laura Vandervoort tries to keep it together in The Entitled.

DD: Both you and Aaron hail from Toronto, so I thought there must be some Canadian connection going on.

LV: No, not at all! But they did send me Aaron’s film Rhinoceros Eyes to check out, and that’s all I needed to commit.

DD: I’m sure the cast also had some appeal to you.

LV: Oh, absolutely. And working with them was a great experience. Victor Garber, Stephen McHattie and Ray Liotta — they were all bang-up. It was really cool to work with Ray. And Stephen — I remember Stephen from Emily of New Moon, a Canadian TV series I used to watch when I was growing up. Aaron did an amazing job with those guys.

DD: Now that both Smallville and V have ended their runs, you’re doing a lot more feature film work. Which screen do you prefer, small or big?

LV: It’s going to sound like the easy answer, but I love them both. I do! I really don’t prefer one over the other. With movies, you really dive into a character for two to three months, but then it’s gone. With a TV series, you have a constant location you’re living in, and you’re always working on the same character along with people who are like your own family. I’m lucky to have done both.

DD: I guess that leaves theater as the final frontier. Any interest in taking your act to the stage?

LV: No, not at all! It terrifies me! I did it once in high school — I was Sandy in Grease — and I decided then that I would never do it again. I’ve felt that way for years, and that’s no bullshit. This is the first year since I was 15 that I can say that I would consider it. But if I want to be completely honest, I have to say that I love the intimacy of the camera.

DD: Next time we see you in front of the camera, it will be for the comedy Ted with Mark Wahlberg. Can you tell me a little about the movie?

LV: It’s a comedy written and directed by Seth McFarlane. And it’s the first time he has directed a feature.

DD: Did he bring his Family Guy sensibility to the set?

LV: Oh, he added in a lot of one-liners, some that were a little inappropriate. But it was great. We goofed around a lot and acted silly. It was great working with Mark Wahlberg too. Some off scenes I had with him I was terrified to do, but he was great.

Meet Monica Velour (Blu-ray $34.99, DVD $29.98; Anchor Bay; released on Aug. 16, 2011) concerns a dweeby teenage boy named Tobe (Dustin Ingram), who sets out on a cross-country trip to meet his favorite 1980s’ porn star, Monica Velour (Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City), who’s making a rare live appearance. But Tobe is more than a little thrown when he meets the real Monica, a 49-year-old single mother who lives in a trailer in Indiana and strips in sleazy clubs to live from day to day.

Disc Dish spoke to Bearden about the movie,which is part comedy, part drama and, yes, part romance.

Disc Dish: I’m assuming you have an interest in adult entertainment as your feature film writing/directing debut is about an aging porn star.

Keith Bearden: I think that an adult film star is the ultimate modern celebrity. Just look at them: They’re very popular and everyone knows who they are for a time, but they never make a lot of money and then they fade away. Because we’re America, we have an expiration date on our women. So Monica, like real adult stars, becomes washed up. She slips away and no one bemoans that her days are gone.

DD: The last 20 years have seen a lot of changes in adult entertainment — pornography — and how the public accesses it, watches it and is affected by it.

Kim Cattrall is a 80s porn star past her prime in Meet Monica Velour.

KB: Oh yes. Pornography, we love the entertainment of it, we love the “hot spot.” But the world’s changing so fast that we’re not really keeping tabs on the wreckage. Think about kids these days, let’s say boys. Their first image of a naked woman is not the girl next door, it’s something they see on the Internet or on video. Because kids are now are exposed to so much media, they can become much more affected and isolated.

DD: When did you first come up with the idea for the film?

KB: I wrote it six years ago. I wanted to write a first film that would be cheap to make and with a female lead who was funny.

DD: And did you have Kim Cattrall in mind for the movie from the outset?

KB: I didn’t think of anybody when I was writing it. Producers got the script to the big agencies and there was a lot of interest. Madonna, Courtney Love and Julianne Moore (Chloe) were all on the list. [Then] I got word that Kim Cattrall really wanted to meet with me about it.

DD: You must have thought there was a certain symmetry to the possibility of Samantha from Sex and the City portraying a once-hot adult star.

KB: I’ve never seen Sex and the City! But I watched all of Kim’s earlier films,� Ticket to Heaven, Big Trouble in Little China, Porky’s. My big issue was that Kim looked too good. For Monica, I told her, you’ve got to look like you’ve gone to seed. I wanted her to gain a lot weight and she did, almost 20 pounds.

DD: I hope that was fun for her. I can’t imagine that losing that kind of weight was a barrel of laughs.

KB: It wasn’t just the weight: After we shot the film [a couple of years ago in the suburbs outside of Detroit, Michigan], Kim had to go to a chiropractor for a few weeks because of all the slouching she did while playing Monica. It actually screwed up her posture.

DD: Well, Kim really clicked as a 1980s porn legend who’s just trying to make ends meet 30 years after her star has faded. She gets to be funny and sexy and angry, but also very sad.

KB: It says a lot about our society when our fantasy figures are disposable. Everybody’s more disposable today, athletes, actors, porn stars. We don’t own our fantasies, so we’re ready to throw them away when we’re done appreciating them. We dispose of our history.

From South Korean comedy superstar Hyung Rae Shim (the film’s writer, director and star), The Last Godfather is a zany Mob movie wherein Shim is the goofy grown-up love child of an aging New York Mob boss (Harvey Keitel, Taxi Driver) and has been chosen by his dad to head up the family business. Not surprisingly, this decision does not go down well with the outgoing Don’s associates or his many rivals, led by Polito’s hysterically huffy and frustrated Don Bonfante.

Disc Dish: One of your mentors is the New York theater director and puppeteer Theodora Skipitares, an avant garde artist if ever there was one.

Jon Polito: When I was an undergraduate at Villanova, Theodora came to the school as a visiting professor where she designed costumes and sets, as well as teaching courses. She was a really fringe artist, known as a “performance artist” back in those days. I can tell you that her designs and puppets and courses were brilliant. She turned me on to all the great filmmakers and playwrights, popular ones and others I’d never heard of.

DD: She directed and designed a production of Aristophones’ Lysistrata earlier this year at La MaMa in New York with her trademark puppets and masks and costumes. Real wild stuff.

JP: Yeah, that’s what Theodora does! When I was in New York a couple of months ago, she gave me a poster from the production. Basically, my feeling is coming from that kind of artistic background, I wanted to combine my education and style in any kind of form for the work that was out there. Voiceovers in cartoons, shticky half-hour sitcoms and comedies, anything. When you get a good artistic background, you want to use it for shtick as well as art. Before going into the artistic side of things, avant training and so on, I was a standard actor who came up with the older, more traditional theater styles.

DD: That said, The Last Godfather is pretty shticky. Almost vaudevillian.

JP: Oh yes! All you have to do is look at Mr. Shim’s work. Watching his films is like looking at Keaton or Chaplin, and then it’s slammed all together for Korean audiences. He became a star in Korea doing slapstick. He hadn’t a done a slapsticky thing like The Last Godfather for years.

DD: Was there any communication problem between you and Mr. Shim? I know that English is not his native tongue.

JP: He speaks choppy English and it was a little tough at the very beginning. But when Mr. Shim would talk to me, he would also do a lot of gesturing and through that, I understood what he wanted. I believe that physical, slapsticky comedy is a universal thing, and so does he. There was a translator on the set, but it wasn’t really necessary.

DD: You worked alongside a pretty varied bunch of co-stars in The Last Godfather, from actors like Michael Rispoli (Kick-Ass) and Harvey Keitel to cult dude Jason Mewes (Zack and Miri Make a Porno) and stand-up comedian John Pinette.

Jon Polito (r.) gets involved in a mob scene as Don Bonfante in The Last Godfather.

JP: John Pinette is a physical force to be reckoned with — a comedian with a great presence, a very physical presence. Rispoli is also a real physical kind of actor and someone who always delivers. Mr. Shim had the same sort of visual communication with them as he did with me.

DD: You pop up in so many TV and movie projects, more than a dozen in the past year alone. There are undoubtedly some scripts that leap to the top of the pile, but how do you sort through all the other possibilities that come your way?

JP: I’m basically kind of a whore when it comes to work. Whatever comes down the pike, I’ll do it. It’s what I’ve been doing since working with the Coen Brothers for the first time [in 1990’s Miller’s Crossing]. So many filmmakers all basically feel they have their own Coen Brothers kind of project and they call me to do it.

DD: Well, certainly you don’t do every project that’s offered to you…

JP: You’re asking me if I have standards and the answer is no. (Laughs). I try to do any style of show that there is. I’m like the Eve Arden of my generation. Does anyone know who Eve Arden is these days?

DD: Okay, so what’s next on your standards-less schedule?

JP: After all these years, I got to work with Danny DeVito on an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I play his older brother and it’s a funny episode, a real funny one. It’s a flashback episode, so you see DeVito and I wearing tight pants, doing disco dancing and simulating doing drugs, which was hard to remember — not!! It’s such a disgusting and dirty show — right up my alley!

The lively, comedic documentary follows Phil Rosenthal, the creator of the smash TV sitcom, as he travels halfway around the world to Russia to observe and assist in the adaptation of Raymond to Russian television (where it’s renamed Everybody Loves Kostya).

Disc Dish spoke to Rosenthal, who informed us that the spark that ignited the making of Exporting Raymond and the film’s subsequent release in movie theaters last spring is nearly as funny as the movie itself.

Disc Dish: How did you have to sell the idea of making this movie to Sony?

Phil Rosenthal: I didn’t have to sell it to anyone! I actually had no intention of making it. I was called into the Sony offices. and they told me that Sony had created the sitcom in Russia. They had done it years earlier with The Nanny — it’s called Niania over there — and it became a big hit. Apparently, the people on the show over there were a really interesting bunch who had come from all kinds of different backgrounds. So they asked me if I’d like to go to Russia and observe how we work with the creators over there, and then come back to America and write a fictional feature film about a TV creator of a show who goes over to Russia to have his show translated.

DD: Sounds like a great idea.

PR: I loved it as an idea! So I suggested that if that situation really exists, why not bring a camera crew over and film what would really happen? Then [Sony] says, ‘I love that idea. Why don’t you be the guy to do it? Do your show in Russia, film the whole thing and you can make the movie.’

DD: Wow, it happened that quickly?

PR: It was that quick. But then, of course, it took six years to get going.

DD: The low budget considerations must have sounded appealing to the Sony people.

PR: The way they carried on, it was as if I was making Avatar. And it only cost $1.5 million. And when I first came up with that number, they came back to me and said, ‘Do it for $900,000.’ Right away, they have to set a number so ridiculously low that it can’t be made. That’s show business. I could do a whole other documentary about the release of this documentary.

DD: Getting a smaller film into theaters can’t be an easy feat these days.

PR: It’s nearly impossible, particularly a film like this. But you want to get it out there so it can at least get a little press to carry over to the DVD release and then get awards consideration. But nothing’s in the theater for long; they have to move it out and make room for the next toy they’re selling. They told me to not even bother writing a film unless I’m selling a toy.

DD: They really said that?

PR: Yes they did. It’s very sad.

DD: It’s like all those jibes and sketches about Hollywood, but it’s like they’re not jokes anymore.

PR: I’ll tell you a great line a studio executive said to me. I bring in the movie and he says, ‘I love your film, it’s really quite good. But I must tell you that in our business, good doesn’t really enter into it.’ I told him, ‘Oh, well, that’s the name of my next movie!’

DD: And he wasn’t joking?

PR: No, that was no joke. Why? Am I laughing?

Disc Dish: Tell us about the two different versions of The Blues Brothers, the original theatrical cut and extended version that includes an additional 17 minutes.

John Landis: My original intention in 1979 was to have a road show version of The Blues Brothers, which was about 29 minutes longer than the release cut — it had an intermission and stuff. At that time, the exhibitors had tremendous power. If they didn’t feel the picture would make money, they wouldn’t book it and you’d be screwed. The Blues Brothers, and this is not that long ago, was perceived by the exhibition community as a “black movie,” which really caught us by surprise. I’ll never forget, [former Universal chairman] Lew Wasserman called me into his office and introduced me to Ted Mann [who owned Los Angeles’ Mann Theater chain]. At that time, Westwood Village was the premiere place in Los Angeles for a movie. Lew said to him, ‘Please tell Mr. Landis what you told me.’ And [Mann] told me to my face, ‘Mr. Landis, I don’t want blacks in Westwood.’

DD: Whoaaaaa.

Landis: I was, like, ‘Excuse me?’ Lew Wasserman didn’t say ‘you have to cut it.’ But he made a gesture with his two fingers like scissors, and I thought, “Okay.” So, I made a bunch of lifts, some were very small and some were quite large. We previewed it in West Los Angeles and after that preview, I then cut out an additional 17 minutes. All these lifts and trims were thrown out in 1985. About five years ago, they found the print that I previewed in West L.A. before that second bunch of cuts. It turned out that the son of the manager of the theater had stolen the print. And that’s the extended version on the disc. So it’s not my original cut, but it is 17 minutes longer than the release cut.

DD: So that means there’s another 10 minutes or so floating around from all those years ago.

Landis: It could be out there!

DD: The film stills plays just fine in its two available versions.

Belushi and Aykroyd are Joliet Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers.

Landis: The Blues Brothers was such a weird movie for us to make at that time of Abba and The Bee Gees. And this is a tribute to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and Danny’s passion for this music. To get performers like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, James Brown and John Lee Hooker was amazing. And how did we get these people? The answer is, we called them. Universal Records didn’t even want the soundtrack. They figured “Who’s going to buy this shit?” Atlantic Records, a so-called ‘black label,” put out the record, and they refused to put John Lee Hooker on it. And that was in 1979!

DD: What was it like working with such legendary artists as Ray and Aretha and James?

Landis: The only trouble I had was that when many of them sing, like Aretha and James, they sing every song differently each and every time they sing it. It’s part of what makes them great artists, but it makes them suck at lip-synching. James Brown’s number was supposed to be pre-recorded, but he just couldn’t do it. He’s become much more proficient at some of his own stuff, but this was gospel. So we ended up saying, ‘Fuck it, we’ll do it live,’ and that’s what we did. We also recorded John Lee Hooker live and that was thrilling for me.

A veteran filmmaker and TV director who has been cranking out work for some 25 years, Little has been directing a slew of television projects, including installments on such hit shows as Bones, Prison Break, Criminal Minds and 24 during the last decade or so, though he also found time to direct the lively 2004 DVD premiere movie Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchids.

Disc Dish: Adapting a videogame for a feature film — a fighting videogame, at that — has got to be easier said then done.

Dwight Little: People ask me about adaptations all the time, and my first response is that’s the story of our business. Books, Broadway plays … and now we have videogames. I wanted to look at the Tekken universe and find the inspiration to make a martial arts action movie that also had family dynamics and all the visual angles of the tournaments, the lights, the backgrounds and so on. The tournament parts freshen up the Enter the Dragon aspects of the film, while the whole corporate government set-up has a very Rollerball and Running Man kind of feeling.

DD: Still, you have a core audience that primarily wants the thrills they enjoy in the videogame.

DL: Of course, we want to please and entertain the gamer audience, but we want action and martial arts fans, as well. The world of Tekken has to feel authentic, but we also want to build on that base. With any movie, you want to say, ‘Let’s get the core demographic, but then build on that.’

DD: There’s action to spare in Tekken. You corralled yourself a group of performers who were definitely up to the task.

DL: I wanted the martial arts to be authentic, which is why we got people like Gary Daniels, Lateef Crowder and Cung Lee. These guys are the real deal — authentic MMA fighters or martial artists. Once you have people like that, then you have to get your stars to go toe-to-toe with them, and that can be a challenge. I didn’t want to double the actors for the fighting scenes, and we never had to do that, but it’s tough when you have a real fighter up against an actor.

DD: Nearly the entire film was shot in Louisiana, specifically Shreveport.

DL: Yes, Shreveport worked well for us. We found a stadium that was kind of abandoned, The Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium. It’s on the old State fair grounds and it’s famous because Elvis got his start there and it was at that stadium that at the end of one of his concerts, the announcer said, “Elvis has left the building.”

DD: Did all your recent work in television inform anything you did on Tekken?

The fight is on in Tekken (in case you don't see the title on the wall).

DL: Generally, working on television has sharpened me. I did 10 episodes of The Practice with David Kelley, who’s probably the best writer on TV. His work attracts the best actors, so I can say I was working for quite a few years with some of Hollywood’s greatest talents. You learn how to do quality work extremely fast on television. I’ve handled almost every situation that could come up, from the action of Prison Break to the drama of The Practice or the lighter comedy of Bones. And that’s definitely something I bring to my film work. You have to have a lot of confidence to show up to the set of a feature. You have to be able to handle it all quickly and think on your feet.

DD: Hey, speaking of action and television, I must ask you about one of my guilty TV pleasures, Dollhouse, which was canceled after its second season.

DL: Dollhouse had a really intriguing concept. I wish it had found its voice. I don’t know how to put my finger on why it didn’t work. [Dollhouse creator] Joss Whedon works in his own head and in his own universe, and I think the show got caught up in its own mythology. I would have taken it in a more action-oriented direction — certainly Eliza Dushku is very capable of doing that. I think they should have played it like that a little more, particularly as it was a Friday night show.

Disc Dish spoke to filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke about the Blu-ray/DVD Combo, Blu-ray and DVD of her fantastical, horror-flavored Red Riding Hood, a 2011 movie re-imagining of the classic fairy tale, starring Amanda Seyfried (Chloe).

In talking about the treasure trove of bonus features on the Red Riding Hood Blu-ray, Ms. Hardwicke showed herself to be enthusiastic, perceptive and even a bit silly.

Disc Dish: The Red Riding Hood Blu-ray is overflowing with so many supplements that we didn’t know where to begin!

Catherine Hardwicke: Yes it is, thank you! I guess I was really thinking about filmmakers when we put it together. As a filmmaker, I always appreciate the bonus materials on DVDs and Blu-rays. I learn so much while I watch the making-ofs. So I thought to myself, ‘Let me put on some weird stuff that I usually don’t see on there.’

DD: Were there any specific discs that you looked at that directly influenced the making of Red Riding Hood?

Amanda Seyfried is Red Riding Hood.

CH: With this film, I was kind of venturing into the CGI world, which I hadn’t done before. So I was looking at the behind-the-scenes features on 300 and The Matrix as much as I could.

DD: You cover all that CGI work in the Red Riding Hood bonus materials.

CH: We do, yes. My first jobs were with visual effects companies, and I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that you can’t always afford to build the whole set as you see it in your mind. So with the proper [visual effects], you can do all the things that you want to do as an architect or designer. That’s what the case was in Red Riding Hood; we had to create our own fantasy world, with visual extensions that make the world extend into the horizon.

DD: You didn’t have to visually manipulate Amanda Seyfried, did you?

CH: (laughs) Oh no! Look at those eyes and that beautiful skin. I would never touch that!

DD: The three extended rehearsal sequences among the supplements were something we don’t see that often.

CH: I can’t say that I even thought about putting in the rehearsals and the castings tapes early on. I just sort of went with it. The actors saw us filming things when they were rehearsing and they went with it, too. The rehearsals that we put in weren’t dramatic. I think if we had filmed a super heavy dramatic scene, it would have been a distraction to the actors.

DD: The alternate cut of the movie is another prominent extra on the discs.

CH: Yes. On the spur of the moment when you’re shooting, you get a crazy idea and say, ‘Let’s try this!’ Some of the shots in the alternate cut are of those spur of the moment ideas. I like both versions, but the one I put in the theater was the right one for that audience. The alternate one was a little sexier and a little edgier. It’s definitely worth seeing.

DD: And then there’s the “Red Riding Hood in 73 Seconds” piece, which is a lot of fun.

CH: (laughs) 73 seconds, yes! I came up with that one night while we were working on it. I wanted it to actually be 60 seconds, but it came out being 73.

DD: You’re like a sorceress with all these tricks and spells that can be activated with the touch of a few buttons.

CH: That’s funny, isn’t it? But I’d love to be a sorceress.

The last couple of years has seen Stevenson pop up in able supporting roles in The Book of Eli, The Other Guys and the summer blockbuster Thor. Kill the Irishman represents his first starring role since 2008’s ultra-violent Punisher: War Zone.

Disc Dish: How did Kill the Irishman come your way?

Ray Stevenson: I was shooting The Book of Eli in New Mexico when Jonathan Hensleigh called me up and told me about the story. Then I met Jonathan and he gave me the script to read. And then it hit me that four or five years earlier, I was watching a show called American Mobsters or something like that and it had a segment on Danny Greene. It wasn’t until I read the script that I remembered who he was. At the time, the movie’s title was The Irishman.

DD: But you had met Jonathan Hensleigh before, yes?

Ray Stevenson is Danny Greene in Kill the Irishman.

RS: Jonathan’s wife Gale Anne Hurd produced The Punisher, and I had met Jonathan one night while we were doing it. He’s an interesting guy. On the surface, you meet a guy who’s a trained lawyer, but there’s a quirky artist beneath that as well. What’s funny is that Kill the Irishman came out of the blue. Gale hadn’t told me anything about it. It began with that phone call from Jonathan.

DD: It was one of many successful casting phone calls he apparently made, along with others to Christopher Walken ($5 a Day), Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) and Vincent D’Onofrio (Brooklyn’s Finest).

RS: It’s really a testament to the movie and the actors that nobody brought any ego or status to the film. They were all there and jazzed to do the story. It’s a true collective piece; there’s no time for messing about when it’s that kind of project. When it’s a movie like Thor, which cost $150 million, you’re an important part of the engine. With Kill the Irishnman, which had a budget of about $10 million, there’s more of a collective ownership, a collective piece of all of us in the movie.

DD: I imagine every actor wants to make a gangster film, and with Kill the Irishman, you got your opportunity to do so. Tell me about making a Mob flick about a 1970s tough guy.

RS: It’s important that you mention that, because it’s with historical hindsight that we say that he lived in that era. Danny Greene didn’t get up in the morning saying ‘I’m gonna be a Seventies guy.’ It’s such an amazing period — the last great fling of Americana, with the oversized lapels, cars and sideburns. Nothing ever got bigger. It was all larger than life! After that period, things began to get smaller, sophisticated and more hidden. You didn’t really see crime on the streets after that. I’m talking about serious mobsters. They would be out on the street, walking among us and conducting business. Back then, you would sort out your business yourself. I enjoyed that aspect of the role.

DD: There must be a dream role lying somewhere between your portrayal of a centurion in Ancient Rome and a gangster in 1970s Cleveland. What would it be?

RS: Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is the role I’d like to play. Coriolanus is my favorite play and it has so much contemporary resonance. Here’s a guy who’s literally born to lead a country but has to humble himself to others in order to do it. And then the tribunes get him lambasted. It raises so many issues that are not palatable — the idea that there are people who are too stupid to vote, all the stuff about everyone being born equal when we’re not. Fantastic stuff. I’ve seen it on stage so many times, and I’d love to do the role. If it’s meant to be, it will happen. And if it doesn’t, I can always enjoy reading it again and again.

Disc Dish: Where does Another Year fit in with your journey with Mike Leigh, whom you’ve worked with on seven films?

Lesley Manville: It would be right up there, like All or Nothing back in 2001. Sometimes you have a cameo in Mike’s films, other times you have a middle-type part, and they’re all fantastic. It’s a tribute to him, as we want to do the work. Speaking for myself, he gives me a chance to play challenging characters that are a long way off from what I’ve done for him before.

DD: It’s a strong movie, Another Year.

LM: It’s a nice film, yes, a substantial film. It deals with all the tough stuff that grown-ups have to deal with.

DD: Your character, Mary, is quite a handful. Not to mention she drinks a bit too much.

LM: She is the sum total of her own doing. What the film says is that it’s quite arbitrary where you end up.

DD: Can you describe the rehearsal process Mr. Leigh goes through with his cast before the shooting starts?

LM: We have so long to create the characters. For Another Year, we had many, many weeks to prepare. We start with nothing; there are no imposed details on it. It’s not like sticking on a Band-Aid. We work through our creations very thoroughly. By the time the characters make it to the screen, we know who they are.

DD: You’ve also been doing a lot of television work over recent years. Is it as rewarding as film or theatre?

LM: Television is difficult and I don’t particularly enjoy it because of the lack of time and rehearsals. It’s not terribly satisfying. I enjoy my theater work immensely. I’ve worked with fantastic directors in the theater.

DD: Are you interested in sitting in the director’s chair yourself?

LM: I think I could direct if I wanted to. Mike Leigh says I’d make a very good director. But the idea of it has never gripped me enough to do something about it. I don’t know … I like acting too much. If I was directing, I think I’d start telling the actors how to do their jobs.

Go Malcolm!

Disc Dish: Watching all the featurettes on the new Clockwork Orange Blu-ray, I learned that the film seems to have been shot very loosely and quickly, which contradicts the obsessive nature we’ve always heard about Kubrick. There were quick set-ups, a realistic number of takes, and so on.

Malcolm McDowell: Clockwork had a very small budget – Stanley wanted to prove he could do a small-budget film after the escalated costs of 2001, which brought down a whole regime at MGM. I very rarely remember doing over 10 takes for any scene. Usually, I get there fast – the quicker, the better, for me. It’s more spontaneous, more alive, and you find it as you do it.

I do remember one scene at the end where I’m in the hospital bed and we made it to about 10 takes and since I knew the dialog so well by then, I decided to just do it off the top of my head. It really infused the scene with energy and lifted it up. And that was the one they used. There were quite a number of improvised scenes that we did at first and then worked out. The ‘Singing in the Rain’ scene is well-documented, for example, and the eating scene at the end. That’s something that Stanley would love to do, because it was a good way to get point across without  laboring over it; we would make the scene naturalistic when the film is not naturalistic at all.

DD: And his dealing about actors?

MM: It was confusing working with Stanley, at first. I had worked with Lindsay Anderson who was an incredible man and director and a nurturer of actors. He would walk you through it and give you ideas and so on. With Stanley, I would ask him if he had any ideas and he would say, “I’m not an actor. That’s why I hired you.” When he said that to me, I was taken aback. I figured the best way to handle it was through humor. So I asked for a call sheet and I showed it to him and I said, “Hey Stanley, see this on the call sheet? It says ‘S. Kubrick, director.’ How about a little direction?”

The more I thought about it, I realized that it was incredible gift — that he gave me the opportunity to come and show him what I thought. When I asked him early on about how he directed when he was shooting, he said, “Well, I’ll tell you this: I don’t know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want. That’s a very important thing for a director to know — he’ll know when he’s got what he wants.”

That’s an amazing safety net for an actor. I would try certain things and he’d look at me and say ‘boring.’ Or ‘I like it.’ His directing of actors is a very misunderstood thing. I know that on every other aspect of the film down to the PR, Stanley was paranoidly hands-on.

But with his actors, well, I think he was a little bit intimidated by actors because they were the only people who could totally fuck him up. If they didn’t know their lines or something like that, it would drive him insane. Even if they were nervous or just needed talking to, he just had no idea how to do that. I would tell him, “all you have to do is sit down with them and talk to them like they’re normal people.” And he would say, “I don’t have time for that kind of thing.”

DD: The years between A Clockwork Orange in 1971 and, say, Time After Time in 1979, where you played a charming H.G. Welles in modern-day San Francisco, must have been an interesting time in terms of you breaking free of your Clockwork image.

MM: I’d come from Caligula before Time After Time, which was simply mind-numbing. The following year, I noticed that I was on a lot of 10 Worst and a number of 10 Best film lists with those two films. And I thought to myself, “now that’s the kind of career I like. I must be doing something right.”

The Big Bang concerns a Los Angeles private eye (Antonio Banderas, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger) who’s hired to track down a missing woman and a stash of diamonds that subsequently plunges him into an even bigger mystery concerning particle physics and a reclusive billionaire (Sam Elliott, The Big Lebowski) trying to recreate the universe-forming “big bang.”

Despite his two earlier DVD premiere movies, Mr. Krantz is a veteran Hollywood wheeler-dealer and agent who worked at CAA for some 15 years. At the agency, he packaged such highly regarded TV series as David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and medical drama ER, along with producing such shows as Felicity and 24. He also exec produced Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. when it was a TV project and then produced the feature film version when it went theatrical in 2001.

Krantz was only too happy to discuss his three-tier Hollywood career of being an agent, a producer and, now, a theatrical feature film director.

Disc Dish: You said in an interview a couple of years back that it was tough for people to take you seriously as a producer, then as a director. Has that that perception changed?

Private eye Antonio Banderas begins to see the light in The Big Bang.

Tony Krantz: I think it has, but it has been an educational process for people. The first two films I did, Sublime and Otis, were made to be direct-to-DVD movies, while The Big Bang is a theatrical film. People in the entertainment business are focused on what’s in front of them right now, so they’re not interested in being with Tony Krantz as a director and producer after being an agent for many years. But I’ve been, luckily, successful.

DD: And how are you finding the directing stage of your career?

TK: The directing is the part of it that’s the most challenging. It deals with a much larger and fundamental idea of being able to express yourself creatively in a marketplace that responds immediately to your work. As a painter or writer, it’s different — you’re not dealing with the marketplace directly. In those cases, you’re not going to get notes from a city.

DD: How has working with actors changed for you over the years as an agent, then as an producer and now as a director?

TK: That’s a great question, and I can first tell you that it’s changed completely. As an agent, you’re representing the actors, but you’re not really there when they’re creating. As a director, it‘s the most intimate relationship you can have with actors, who really are the most incredible people — and the most vulnerable people — you can imagine. For their job, they’re willing to becomes a different person, willing to put themselves aside to let another character come through. It’s an emotional strength, an intellectual strength. Acting is a powerful professional that’s been misinterpreted by many. The best actors can be the most extraordinary people who have absolutely no consideration for themselves.

DD: How extraordinary were the actors you worked with on The Big Bang when it came to disagreements or conflicting interpretations concerning their roles?

TK: It’s was a complicated process, but there weren’t that many disagreements. Actors read the scripts before they commit, so they know what movie they’re making and they know the vision they’re making. Hopefully, there aren’t any major disagreements or a lack of clarity. As a director, you’re also dealing with a timeframe, so you need to communicate cleanly and clearly with a direction that’s do-able. It should be very specific and, again, in a way that communicates. And be ready when you’re directing. If you’re directing someone like Delroy Lindo [Malcolm X], you’d better know what direction you’re going in.

DD: Having worked with many TV and film directors over the years, can you tell me which ones have inspired and informed you and your work the most?

TK: There are three. First, there’s J.J. Abrams [Star Trek], who’s maybe the Steven Spielberg of his generation, mostly because of his positivity. He has a sense of making what you feel and think matter. He really puts the spirit of humanity into his work. Second is Aaron Sorkin, who’s yet to direct. That opening scene of The Social Network, when the girl breaks up with Zuckerberg and he tells her, ‘What I don’t need is another friend.’  This, coming from the guy who’s going to invent Facebook. It was a brilliant idea to put that at the beginning of the movie. Third is David Lynch, who lives in the world of dreams and soul and mind. He’s an American treasure, wholly unique and absolutely special.

DD: Okay, off the track a bit for my final question, but it’s one that I’m really curious about: How did you get Johnny Marr to do the music for The Big Bang?

TK: When I was a young agent in the early 1980s, my roommate managed UB40, Simple Minds and [Johnny Marr’s band] The Smiths. Johnny came to L.A. and spent about a month with us in the Hollywood Hills house that we had. Cut to 20 years later, I’m listening to his solo record Boomslang in my car and loving it. So, I get in touch with him and I find out that� Mulholland Dr. is his favorite film! Next thing you know, he’s doing The Big Bang score. He did every piece of music in the movie. I would work with him on everything, if I could. You’d have to be nuts not to work with Johnny Marr.

Disc Dish caught up with Goldbach as his film was being released on Blu-ray and DVD from Anchor Bay. (Read our review.) An amiable, talkative fellow, Mr. Goldbach chatted with us about the origins of Daydream Nation and his experiences working with rising star Kat Dennings and seasoned leading man Josh Lucas.

DD: How did the idea for Daydream Nation come about?

MG: I wrote it about eight years ago. At the time, I was in a funny middle stage — sort of outgrowing the chip on my shoulder from high school and entering the uneasy world of young adulthood. When I was writing it, I was reading a lot of Southern Gothic writers and watching films that definitely played a part. Terrence Malick’s Badlands and Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter were also a big influence. But I wanted to take it out of the South and keep it geographically vague. It really shouldn’t matter where it takes place. I’m hoping people from small towns can relate to it.

Kat Dennings takes the disaffected teen route in Daydream Nation.

DD: I’m assuming that Sonic Youth album of the same name also provided some inspiration?

MG: Daydream Nation was a really important album for me and, yes, I wanted to write a movie that could be beautiful but then could become scary. I wanted to capture that teenage bi-polar feeling.

DD: It’s a really handsome-looking movie. Independent films are looking nicer and nicer as the years go by.

MG: Thanks! We shot the whole movie in 22 days with no pick ups or extra days — all on HD. Even though it looks beautiful, we couldn’t even get a SteadiCam, which was frustrating. I wanted it to be visually stunning and have a sense of style and really reflect the dark world that they’re in — the anxiety-ridden teenage world where everything is beautiful one minute and then a minute later, you’re in danger.

DD: I really enjoyed the performance by the principals, particularly Kat Dennings and Josh Lucas.

MG: Kat is a fantastic actress, and I’m thrilled she could finally show the world a more complicated part of herself. She carries the picture. As the filming progressed, Kat began to know the movie better than I did. At some point towards the end, though, like a proud father, you have to let the film go off on its own. But in this case, Kat made it a joy to do so.

DD: The film also provided Josh Lucas with one of his darkest roles.

MG: He was like, “mess me up and make me look my worst,” which is hard to do because he’s so naturally handsome. For a long time, Josh has been an underrated actor, which I can’t understand. He loves doing indie films — he’s done a lot of them, and he’s sympathetic to the constraints independent filmmakers face. And he’s usually the one helping you to get it done.

A deep-voiced, rather intense-sounding man who loves watching movies as much as he loves making them, Gianfrance discussed his cinematic influences, work in the documentary field, of course, Blue Valentine. (Read our DVD review.)

The movie, which was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for Williams’ performance, tells the story of the troubled relationship between a young married couple.

Disc Dish: First things first, I was reading that back in the 1980s, you studied under the great avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

Derek Cianfrance: At the University of Colorado, yes, from 1992 to 1995. He taught my film appreciation class, and I learned so much from watching films with him. It was great.  He would show us films by Leni Riefenstahl and have us look at the images closely to find the subliminal swastika imagery in the grain structure. I don’t know if I ever saw swastikas, but I find myself zoning out on the images, understanding the power in the images. And Brakhage introduced me to the movies of John Cassavetes (Rosemary’s Baby). In fact, the last time I saw him was in front of the school bookstore and he bought me a copy of Ray Carney’s book Cassavetes on Cassavetes.

DD: Very, very cool! Okay, now let’s talk about Blue Valentine. It has been well-publicized that it took you a long, long time to get the film off the ground.

DC: There were a bunch of opportunities to make the film over the last 12 years with other actors or financial people involved. I met Michelle in 2003 and Ryan in 2005, and once I met them, I just knew they had to be in it. But for a bunch of reasons, it couldn’t happen — and I knew that waiting would be the right thing. Michelle and Ryan were right for each other. So I waited and pushed for the right time with the two of them.

DD: Ten years-plus is a helluva long time to wait.

DC: It is. It’s strange, for that 12 years, I felt that I was cursed. But when I finally shot the film, I realized I was blessed. The actors were at the right age, and I had had enough experiences in my life to tell the story. When I wrote the first draft of Blue Valentine, it was 1998, and I was 24 years old.

Love is found and love is lost for Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine.

DD: I really enjoyed the splintered chronology of the film — leaping back and forth between the couple’s meeting and then their breakup.

DC: Structurally, Blue Valentine was heavily influenced by The Godfather Part II. But 13 years ago, it was mostly influenced by Gone With the Wind — the harsh, brutal aspects of Gone With the Wind. And, of course, Cassavetes’ films played a big part. Also [the Russian film] The Cranes Are Flying by Mikhail Kalatozov was a big influence. It’s a great example of big, bombastic, bragadocious filmmaking.

DD: After watching your movie, I’m thinking that your experience making documentaries also added to the mix.

DC: Working on documentaries kept me busy and sharpened my tools. Like [documentary filmmakers] Frederick Wiseman, the Maysles brothers and the Dardennes brothers, I wanted to make films that were truthful and honest. In documentaries, I liked the idea of taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary, and vice-versa. And that’s how I approached Blue Valentine. I took two extraordinary people, Michelle and Ryan, and put them into an ordinary situation. And I took their ordinary characters, Cindy and Dean, and dropped them into an extraordinary situation.

DD: You put that very well.

DC: I think I did, yeah.