R.I.P. Stuart Gordon (1947-2020)
Mar 29, 2020
Veliki režiser horora, Stjuart Gordon, umro je pre nekoliko dana (tačnije, 24. marta). Tužno je znati da nikada nećemo videti novi film ovog originalnog, divnog čoveka, najpoznatijeg po filmu RE-ANIMATOR. Povodom tog filma svojevremeno sam napisao: „Gordon nas podseća koliko neukus i smrt i perverzija mogu da budu smešni! Više memorabilnih replika i upečatljivih set pisova nego ijedna druga zombi komedija! Džefri Kombs u jednoj od antologijskih uloga vascelog žanra.“
Srećan sam što sam ga imao priliku upoznati i intervjuisati na festivalu Fantazija u Montrealu 2010. Tada sam se i naživo uverio koliko je on jedna topla, inteligentna, talentovana, ljubazna, duhovita, divna osoba.
Iza sebe je ostavio klasike koji će se s uživanjem gledati i u decenijama koje dolaze – pod uslovom da opstane neko čovečanstvo, da neko preživi ovu, i predstojeće apokalipse. Gledaće se, što se mene tiče, pre svega i iznad svih sledeći: RE-ANIMATOR. FROM BEYOND. DOLLS. DAGON. STUCK...
Baš pre neki dan, razgovarajući sa Acom Radivojevićem o trenutnom njanjavo-poludupastom stanju u horor filmu (mačku o rep okačite te žvake o „renesansi“ koje vam pedluju horor sajtovi!), prizvao sam primer Gordona kao reditelja vrste filmova kakvi danas nedostaju. I još, umetnika čiji su horori, čak i kad su snimani sa jezivo niskim budžetima, IZGLEDALI lepo, jasno, dopadljivo, za razliku od traljave digitalne neosvetljene tmuše u koju imamo da škiljimo danas.
Sticajem okolnosti, više sam o ovom značajnom, uticajnom i talentovanom reditelju pisao na engleskom nego na srpskom, pa da ne bih prepričavao i prevodio samog sebe, radije ću da od tih mojih tekstova za Rue Morgue i drugde načinim jedan smisleni omaž ovom velikanu.
Dakle, sve ovo dole, (c) Dejan Ognjanović za Ghoul Inc.
In his rich career of a B-movie maverick, Stuart Gordon fought with censors, producers and financiers, constantly struggling to preserve integrity of his vision. Interestingly, almost all of his best horror films are inspired by works of the two giants of horror fiction – Edgar Allan Poe (The Pit and the Pendulum, 1991; Masters of Horror: The Black Cat, 2007) and H. P. Lovecraft (Re-Animator, 1985; From Beyond, 1986; Castle Freak, 1995; Dagon, 2001; Masters of Horror: Dreams in the Witch-House, 2005).
I met him at Fantasia, Montreal, where he presented The Raven, a play about E. A. Poe which he directed and co-wrote with his old friend and collaborator, Dennis Paoli.
Stuart Gordon has a unique talent to unite the things which are either considered too disparate (like sex and horror) or those which are rarely blended with such an unmitigated success (like horror and humor). Nowhere is this mixture so successful as in his debut, Re-Animator, a timeless classic which is at once sick, depraved, hilarious and utterly what-the-funny. Many directors aimed for that particular rainbow, but only a few (like The Return of the Living Dead, 1985, and Braindead, 1992) can parallel the insanity and unpredictability of Re-Animator's inspired splattstick.
Unity of opposites? Hell, yeah! Rooted in literature and theater (where his productions were nominated for many important awards), Gordon mastered B-movie entertainment of the horrific and provocative kind. The same man who concieved the gleefully sadistic The Dentist (1996) also wrote the kiddy fantasy hit Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989). With equal wit he adapts Lovecraft and Mamet (in Edmond, 2005); he is as inspired by the most outrageous fantasy of From Beyond (1986) as he is by the gritty reality of Stuck, 2007 (based on a true event). From the depths of the Charles Band and Brian Yuzna produced exploitation he is struggling to be political, socially conscious and subversive.
Gordon represents the true spirit of the independents which reigned in the bygone (?) days. His ability to join the unjoinable and make it enjoyable is all but forgotten in this day and age where young horror directors can barely concoct a story worth telling – far from imbuing it with wit, energy and subtext like Gordon so effortlessly could. As such, he is both a relic from the past and a lasting inspiration to all those who can see beneath the surface right into the bloody beating heart of B-moviemaking.
Top 5 reasons to love & respect Stuart Gordon
1. No one mixes sex, horror and humour quite like him! Case in point: the legendary, much-censored scene from Re-Animator in which decapitated and reanimated Dr. Hill is "giving head" to naked and strapped Barbara Crampton.
2. No one does the body horror quite so fleshy, gory and gooey. Just think of the unrestrained insanity of From Beyond: the flying creatures, the mutated lecherous doctor, the protruding pineal gland, the sadomasochism, the eels from beyond… all that, and more, in one single movie!
3. No one ever used Jeffrey Combs to his full potential the way Gordon has – inspiring not only his comic genius (in career-defining Re-Animator) but also his drama potential, first in Castle Freak, then as Poe himself in The Black Cat, and ultimately (and even more seriously) as Poe in the theater production of The Raven, directed and co-written by Gordon with Dennis Paoli.
4. No one honors Lovecraft with so much freedom, yet respecting his spirit and subtext the way Gordon does. Case in point: Dagon (inspired by "The Shadow over Innsmouth"), the closest anyone has approached a proper HPL adaptation so far, capturing both the decaying seaside town atmosphere and the implied sexuality + sadism from between Lovecraft's lines.
5. No director from the 1980s has retained the true spirit of the independents quite so consistently and subversively the way Gordon has. This is obvious both in the films he's made (King of the Ants; Stuck) and the one he was not allowed to, because of the touchy politics (The House of Re-Animator).
U opširnom intervjuu koji sam uradio sa Brajanom Juznom – producentom prvog Re-animatora (i rediteljem drugog i trećeg dela) – on mi je sledeće imao kazati o saradnji sa Gordonom.
Brian Yuzna: I think that Stuart Gordon is an incredibly talented director, started as a theater director, and RE-ANIMATOR was the first movie for both of us. The budget was very small, under one million dollars. He always does what he wants, but we’ve always had a lot of fun working together. Our ideas are very similar in the sense that we both like excess. With RE-ANIMATOR we went with a number of versions of the script, based on how extreme it was, did it go far enough. I thought that if the movie was not good, then at least it would be shocking. But since Stuart is so talented the movie turned out very good as well.
When we moved to FROM BEYOND, that’s still a pre-digital age, and it was very difficult to do monsters. In fact, when we decided on that story, we thought that it had this machine in it that would sell it. We basically used the Lovecraft story by the main titles. The whole Lovecraft’s story takes place in the prologue to that movie, and then it becomes a kind of action movie with explorers into this other dimension. For example, the great monster at the end was our attempt to present a shoggoth from Lovecraft’s stories, based on the drawings of Bernie Wrightson. Today you can really realize his visions. Back then everything had to be plastic, and was very clumsy, but we had a lot of fun doing it.
I co-wrote the story adaptation with Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli, but only Dennis Paoli wrote the screenplay. They came with this Dr Pretorius, who is taken from THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and who inaugurates the new world of gods and monsters. This character was not in the short story, but he exemplified the theme of a man for whom the senses are not enough, who must go further - this became the theme of that movie. And we took from the short story the idea of the pineal gland as something which enables one to see another dimension. And the gimmick is, if you can see them, they can see you, and they’re hungry.
I think it was a great writing done by the screenwriters. Today when you watch it, the effects seem clumsy. We had to make giant lamprey worms. Today you could do it digitally and it’d look really great. We had to actually build it, and it doesn’t move very much. These types of effects tend to be tricky.
The idea of pineal gland coming out of Jeffrey Combs’s forehead – he always complained that we’re giving him a “dog dick” in his forehead, and we assured him that it wasn’t that. This kind of thing would also be much easier today; we had to put him a kind of helmet on his head with a mechanism to move the “gland”. I think those movies work more because of the good writing and directing than because of the effects. In BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR we had to make the small fingers-creature with stop-motion, today you could easily do it digitally. But I think there is a kind of charm in puppetry.
Ceo ovaj moj intervju sa Juznom možete čitati OVDE.
A kad smo kod intervjua, rekoh već, uradio sam veoma opširan razgovor i sa Gordonom, pre 10 godina. Njegov veći deo, mada ne u celini celosti, izašao je u knjižici intervjua HORROR HEROES, spec. izdanju RUE MORGUE magazina. Za ovu priliku, u znak sećanja na njega, za blog sam izdvojio njegove odgovore na nekolicinu mojih pitanja.
(Uncut verziju ovog intervjua, kao i moje razgovore sa desetinama drugih svetskih majstora filmskog i književnog horora čitaćete, jednog dana, kad budem rešio da je vreme da podvučem crtu, u knjizi STRAŠNE PRIČE...)
IF YOU CAN THINK IT, YOU SHOULD EXPRESS IT
A Stuart Gordon interview
by Dejan Ognjanović
Horror is still perceived by the media as a second-grade genre, immature, perhaps even dangerous...
- I don't believe it. I like what Stephen King says about it. He says that it's the reverse spiral of death. We all think about death, and that's what horror is all about.
So, you have no problem being called a horror director? You don't feel ghettoed?
- Sometimes I do, but I think that people who despise horror are snobs, those who try to put it down. My feeling is that it may not be for everyone, just like not everyone likes eating escargots, but that doesn't mean it's bad. All it means is that it's not for them. What I think is funny, if you look at all the greatest films of all time, the films that people remember, that are the most popular, that made the most money, they're either science fiction or horror.
They're certainly among the most memorable, thanks to the striking imagery that they use.
- Brian Yuzna had a very good point when he said that, if you had to pick one image from all the movies of all times, the most popular image, he believes it would be Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster. Everybody knows who that is. So, horror leaves a lasting impression. What I think is really interesting about horror is that people who scare us the most – we love the most. Which is kind of strange because you'd think that people who scare you, you wouldn't want to have anything to do with them, but it's the opposite, you want them to scare you.
What do you think about the notion of going too far in terms of movie violence?
- I don't think you should ever censor yourself. That's a lesson that I learned when I was working on From Beyond. I'd say to myself: "Audiences are not gonna be able to handle this. This is too much." There was a scene that was shot, edited, that existed in a couple of cuts. It was a scene, right at the beginning of the movie, where Jeffrey Combs's character is trying to call the scientist guy, and he opens the door, and he's got a naked woman, all tied up, you know, and she has a nail pounded through her tongue, and Jeffrey's character unties her and lets her go. I thought a woman with a nail through her tongue was too much, and now every other woman has a pierced tongue. (Laughter) So that taught me a lot: never ever censor yourself. My feeling is: if you can think it, you should express it.
What about a director's responsibility? Could you damage minds, hurt people?
- I don't think that's really the case. It works the opposite way. I think you help people. When I worked in theatre I used to read Artaud, about his notion of "The Theater of Cruelty", and his idea was that all theater should be acts of violence, crimes committed onstage, because he felt that it's a way for people to get these ideas out of their system, that it's a way to purge these ideas, that it was a healthy thing, a cleansing. And I think that's true. We all have very dark thoughts, and we think about murdering people, or torturing someone or whatever, and to express that through a movie, which doesn't really harm anyone, I think it's healthy.
When you were making Re-Animator, were you aware that you're pushing the envelope?
- I wanted it to have something to set it apart from other films. And Brian Yuzna, who produced the movie, had a film festival in his house, which went for a couple of weeks, and each day he'd show me some movies. He wanted me to be aware of the movies that were being made at that time. As the matter of fact, it was Rosemary's Baby that had the greatest effect on me. I read Roman Polanski's autobiography, and he talks a lot in that book about how people see things, about vision and how the eye works. And watching how he shot Rosemary's Baby, how he made everything look subjective…
What is it that affects you most in horror films: is it violence, gore, chills, suspense...?
- This is how it works for me. Number one, it has to be a well-directed film. There are tons of movies that are really bloody, but they're so badly made – they couldn't scare anybody. So, yeah, it can be about the imagery, but it's even more about the acting, caring about the characters, and if you care about them and you get involved in the movie then you feel as if something's being done to you. And that really is upsetting. For example, one of my favorite movies is Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. By the end of that movie I was on the floor, under my seat, I was creeping out. Then I saw it again on the American television, and they cut out all the blood out of it... at the end, when they're killing each other. None of that was in the movie, and I was still getting upset because the acting was so good. Jeremy Irons is so great in that movie. That's what was making me squeamish, really; it was him.
What exactly were your intentions with Re-Animator: was it to shock people, to gross them out, to entertain them...?
- Well, all of the above. What I think Brian was trying to get across to me was that you had to have something in the movie that would set it apart from all the others. That's when Dennis Paoli and I came up with the idea that the dead people in this movie, and especially Dr. Hill, want to have sex with a living person. That's something you don't ever see in horror films. Zombies always wanted to eat people, but we thought: how about if they want to fuck people? It was the sexuality of Re-Animator that I think really set it apart. And when we wrote it, Dennis asked: "How is he going to have sex with her if he has hid head cut off?" – and then he answered his own question.
O tome kako sam upoznao Gordona, kakav je bio uživo i naživo, možete detaljnije čitati u mom slikovitom izveštaju sa Fantazije, OVDE.
A evo ga i tekst o RE-ANIMATORU koji sam pisao za moj nekadašnji blog na engleskom, THE TEMPLE OF GHOUL. Izvorno izašlo OVDE.
Re-Animator (1985)
Režija:
Stuart Gordon
Scenario:
S. Gordon, Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris
Uloge:
Jezik:
English, German
Zemlja proizvodnje:
U.S.A.
King of the Ants (2003)
Režija:
Stuart Gordon
Scenario:
Charlie Higson (screenplay) (as Charles Higson), Charlie Higson (novel) (as Charles Higson)
Uloge:
Jezik:
English
Zemlja proizvodnje:
U.S.A.
Edmond (2005)
Režija:
Stuart Gordon
Scenario:
David Mamet (screenplay), David Mamet (play)
Uloge:
Jezik:
English
Zemlja proizvodnje:
U.S.A.
Dreams in the Witch-House
Masters of Horror (2005–2007)
Režija:
Stuart Gordon
Scenario:
Mick Garris (creator), H.P. Lovecraft (short story), Dennis Paoli (teleplay), Stuart Gordon (teleplay)
Uloge:
