Sigourney Weaver would be proud of the new generation. It took 30-some years, but now women of all ages can be tough heroines. Ellen Ripley started the revolution that led to Thelma & Louise, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Alias and Kill Bill. There actually used to be a fight to get people to consider... more

Sigourney Weaver would be proud of the new generation. It took 30-some years, but now women of all ages can be tough heroines. Ellen Ripley started the revolution that led to Thelma & Louise, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Alias and Kill Bill. There actually used to be a fight to get people to consider women as action heroines. Now it might be a cliché, but it’s a good thing that credibility is no longer the issue.
Now action heroines come as young as the Spy Kids or Hit Girl in Kick-Ass. At 16, Hanna has four years on her youngest competitors. It’s not a competition though. All the strong women can live together in harmony.
Saoirse Ronan plays Hanna, a 16-year-old girl raised in isolation by her father Erik (Eric Bana). When she feels ready, she re-enters society and mysterious secret agents, led by Marissa (Cate Blanchett) come looking for her. On the road, Hanna meets a traveling family and befriends their daughter Sophie (Jessica Barden). They don’t see when she escapes from covert facilities or knocks out spooks.
Hanna comes from director Joe Wright. It is his first action movie after the dramas Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and The Soloist. Sitting in a Beverly Hills hotel room with the Brit was a bit like chatting in a pub. He wasn’t from the rah rah Jerry Bruckheimer school of in your face publicity. He was just a guy who liked to talk about movies, and he happened to have just made one about a teenager kicking ass.
SG: Will girls look up to Hanna?
JW: I hope so. I hope so because she does not conform to the contemporary kind of conditioning of beauty or idea of femininity. She kind of exists outside the realms of the objectification of women and she’s kind of a free spirit.
SG: Besides beauty and the physical, should she be a role model for handling life?
JW: I don't know about handling life but certainly looking at life. She doesn’t judge anyone, has not been conditioned to see the world as we’re forced to see it. She’s like an alien who’s been dropped onto the planet and sees the world through very clear eyes.
SG: Were you resistant to the action genre?
JW: No, I saw it as a real challenge really. I thought it would be really fun to do those sequences, to try and do those sequences. I imagined that I would learn and grow as a director so no, I was not put off by it at all. In fact it was one of the reasons why I was interested in it.
SG: Are action movies our fairy tales these days?
JW: Certainly more so than Disney fairy tales are, yeah. I think probably the horror film is closest to the fairy tale because they’re generally about young people leaving the safety of their family home, embarking on some kind of journey where they encounter evil or
dark forces and are required to overcome those forces. So I think that’s kind of the structure of a lot of fairy tales.
SG: I was thinking Die Hard, Indiana Jones and James Bond are the stories I remember from childhood.
JW: In that sense, yeah. There’s certainly a nostalgia for the action film but I’m not sure if they are as archetypal as real fairy tales.
SG: How is Hanna a fairy tale?
JW: Well, it adheres to the original structure as I just described. That’s the way.
SG: Does Hanna’s interaction with Sophie reflect any of your thoughts about society?
JW: Very much so, yeah. I think that Sophie, the character Sophie symbolizes for me contemporary culture’s obsession with the superficial. So I thought that was an interesting character to expose Hanna to and to see what Hanna would think of such a person.
SG: Could the existence of characters like Hanna get people to reexamine their values?
JW: I hope so. I think that’s what storytelling is for really. Storytelling for me is about seeing the world from someone else’s point of view. I find that can be a very useful emotional tool.
SG: After Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, did people bring you all the period dramas they had?
JW: Yeah, obviously people like to categorize you as a director and so people assumed that I’d be interested. They’d assumed that was the point of the films I made rather than understanding that actually the point of those films was not the period they were set in but really the themes and stories that were held within that period.
SG: Do you expect to get all action scripts after this?
JW: I don't know, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. I like action movies. I just don’t like kind of testosterone driven misogynist right wing ones. I like films with a social and moral conscience so the conditions would have to be right for me to do another one.
SG: I understand the testosterone aspect. What would make something right wing or misogynistic?
JW: Well, I think that when I say right wing I mean kind of center right wing. I’m not talking about fascist groups but I’m talking about kind of Fox News. I think that women in a lot of action movies are sexually objectified and I think that’s a misogynistic view because it negates the woman as an individual. It forgets the fact that she’s a person basically and just sees her as a sex object.
SG: Is that why you dressed Hanna in baggy clothes or big furs?
JW: Yeah, I wasn’t interested in dressing her in skimpy tops or any of that crap. That’s not who she is and I certainly wasn’t interested in making her sexy or anything like that. That’s not what it’s about.
SG: As far as a political perspective, do you notice that in recent action movies or going back to the ‘80s?
JW: Certainly back in the ‘80s but there’s still a strain of it through modern action genre as well.
SG: Are you talking about a pro-military perspective?
JW: Yes, of course. I mean, it’s deeper than that but it’s a pro-military perspective. I think it supports a political status quo that I’m not quite sure I believe in.
SG: Even Die Hard, even if it’s just stopping the terrorists and saving the day?
JW: It depends where those terrorists are from, really, doesn’t it?
SG: How important are the Erik and Marissa characters?
JW: Obviously they’re like her surrogate parents almost. I like the kind of matricide aspect of this movie. I think there’s a lot of representations of the oedipal myth in culture, the son killing the father but it’s rare that you see the daughter killing the mother. I watch my girlfriends’ relationships with their mothers and it’s a very difficult relationship often. I think there’s as much of a battle to overcome your mother as a daughter as there is to overcome your father as a son. So I was interested in that kind of relationship. Obviously Erik is the only person she’s ever known up until the age of 16 so he’s vital to the story and another wonderful archetypal character.
SG: Are you still doing Anna Karenina?
JW: I hope so, yeah. We’ll know hopefully by the end of April.
SG: When you have a screenplay and a novel, what do you relate to first?
JW: The novel. I have been thinking about the idea of making Anna Karenina for some time but felt that the only person who could really do it justice was Tom Stoppard and so I went to Tom Stoppard and he agreed to write it. It’s worked like that really.
SG: Does the audience get when it’s about universal themes or is there a target audiences that just loves the historical costumes?
JW: I hope that the films always have a kind of emotional truth and certainly I think Pride & Prejudice, the themes of pride and prejudice, of falling in love, these are things that people still do. I’m not trying to update them or make them relevant to an audience. I’m just trying to stay true to the core human emotions which I don't think have really changed or perhaps will ever change.
SG: Is that the same approach when you do a contemporary story?
JW: Yeah, very much so. You look for the core emotional truth of the thing.
SG: How did you discover the films you like?
JW: I don't know actually. I guess you kind of just come across them. I talk about film a lot. I talk about film with people who’s tastes I admire and people suggest stuff or I read books about film. I love film so I’ll find a film in a book that I haven’t seen or a director who’s work I don’t know very well and I’ll go and investigate. It’s like a wonderful detective mystery.
SG: How much time are you able to spend watching movies?
JW: Not enough.
SG: I feel that way too! I can never watch enough, even if I see five a day.
JW: No, not nearly enough. When I was a kid, I used to watch probably six hours of television a day and that was lovely. I could certainly do with seeing more films at the moment.
SG: What would you say to parents who worry their kids are spending too much time watching movies or TV? Can you assure them it’s creative?
JW: I’d engage them in a conversation about the artistic creative merits of what they’re watching. I think there’s a big difference between watching something for the purpose of understanding something or educating yourself regarding something and just fucking watching shit for the sake of zoning out. All this reality TV and stuff, I would certainly question my child watching too much of that, but if they suddenly take on an avid interest in Howard Hawks or the French New Wave I would certainly encourage that. It depends what you’re watching and why you’re watching it.
SG: But if the kid comes up with a great analysis of Jersey Shore, then you'd have to accept that.
JW: Yeah, if they came up with a good reason, then absolutely.
SG: Who is your creative group that you discuss movies with?
JW: Just friends really. A lot of actors. Unfortunately not so many directors. Writers, artists generally. I love London. It was interesting, when I came and made The Soloist in this town, I was very excited because I was told that everyone here talked about film the whole time. But what I discovered when I got here was actually everyone talked about the industry the whole time. They didn’t actually talk about film, the aesthetic language of film. So they talked about who was in what or how much any given film had made at the box office, all of this kind of crap. So I left L.A. after a year having made The Soloist and practically went straight from here to Tblisi, the capital of Georgia, former Soviet Union. It was a film festival and there were all these filmmakers from Turkey and Poland and Russia, former Yugoslavia, Croatia, Bosnia, Iran, Albania and it was the most thrilling environment because people were really discussing film language and grammar. You’d go to a screening of a silent Russian movie and there wouldn’t be a seat in the house. The aisles would be packed with people sitting on the stairs, students often sitting on the stairs watching these movies. I just found that to be so refreshing and rewarding. That’s heaven to me.
SG: I would settle for talking about the industry. I find people here won’t mention film at all, like it’s a dirty word.
JW: Well, maybe they feel like they’d be a cliché if they did. You should go to the festival in Tblisi if you ever get a chance. It’s a really fascinating festival because you feel like it’s really on the front line of life. It’s a really interesting festival. You should certainly do some of the European festivals and other parts of the world because you get a completely different perspective. There are festivals in practically every country in the world. Try going to Tblisi. The London festival is very good now as well. The Edinburgh festival is great.
Hanna opens April 8.

Duncan Jones's debut feature Moon (2009), a retro-1970s science-fiction/art-house epic that ingeniously managed to be hit a lot of the same notes that Kubrick and Tarkovskiy hit despite a miniscule budget and having only one principal character (played by Sam Rockwell), nabbed Jones a BAFTA award... more

Duncan Jones's debut feature Moon (2009), a retro-1970s science-fiction/art-house epic that ingeniously managed to be hit a lot of the same notes that Kubrick and Tarkovskiy hit despite a miniscule budget and having only one principal character (played by Sam Rockwell), nabbed Jones a BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer and dumptrucks full of other nominations and accolades. His most recent feature Source Code (starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) could be pitched as "Die Hard by way of Quantum Leap served in eight-minute repeating chunks of Groundhog Day." SuicideGirls talked to Jones (who is the son of Rock god David Bowie) in Boston in a luxury hotel that used to be a prison while Jones was getting texts from Gyllenhaal asking how things were going and two of the three devices brought to record the interview shit the bed. Warning, minor spoilers follow.
 
Michael Marano: Without giving away too much of their plots, both Moon and Source Code deal with issues with identity in enclosed environments, which are artificial constructs. Is modern society by definition a construct? And how do you find authenticity, which is sort of the quest of both these main characters [in Moon and Source Code], in these artificial constructs?
 
Duncan Jones: I would say that you're correct, that both these films do deal with that. I would say that it wasn't a conscious choice on my half to be doing two films that covered the same ground in that way--or, at least, different aspects of the same ground. When I read the Source Code script, because it was something that had been written by Ben Ripley, it was introduced to me by Jake Gyllenhaal. I actually had a chance to meet with [Gyllenhaal] and I very much wanted to work with him. I'm a huge fan of his. And he suggested that I read this script, Source Code. He was a big fan of Moon... and I think he was the one who saw the similarities, more than I was. I think he saw Moon, read Source Code, and said, 'I think that would work well together!' When I read the script, I was immediately getting excited about the big differences [between the two movies]. The fact that it was a pace-y, sort of Hollywood-feeling film where I thought there were some interesting ideas in it. There was a little touch of romance, a little touch of mystery. I would get to work with more than one actor! After Moon, this was a big move for me! And then it wasn't until afterwards that I started to notice the similarities. So I think that on a subconscious level, the question of identity in particular was something which was appealing to me.
 
MM: Both Moon and Source Code have protagonists who are facing, in the classic sense of the word, glamours--the appearance of a world or reality that is based on illusion.
 
DJ: I haven't heard that word in a long time! That's kind of cool.
 
MM: You came of age in the 1970s, in the UK, and that was a world of glamour and science fiction. It was a world in which women with purple wigs could be on Gerry Anderson's Moon Base [on the ultra-rad-mod-fashioned SF show UFO]. It was also sort of the Golden Age of Doctor Who. Does this inform your storytelling? This collision of glamour and hard science-fictional constructs?
 
DJ: I don't know. It's true that I was born in London in the early 1970s, but we traveled so much. I have a very eclectic taste in movies and literature, not only because of the fact that I was traveling so much. But [because] my father's influences, when I was growing up, were pretty varied. And what made him enthusiastic, obviously, trickled down to me. I used to read every evening. That was sort of a house rule. I had to read an hour or two a night. And science fiction in particular was one of the things that was kind of my candy. If I was finding it difficult to get my nose--or brain, rather--into a 'For Kids' biography of Abraham Lincoln, he'd hand me George Orwell's Animal Farm or something to keep me interested and keep me reading. That sort of was my introduction to science fiction.
 
MM: Source Code is, in some respects, a disaster movie. And yet the very nature of this disaster movie, which deals with identity, demands very strong subjective camera and sound work. How do you balance disaster-movie spectacle and intimacy, when you've got a story like this?
 
DJ: Well, reading the Source Code script for the second time--the first time I read it just as the audience--reading it for the second time, I was trying to do it with my director's hat on. And that's where you really see where the problems lie, or at least the puzzles that need to be solved. One of which is: we're going to be revisiting an event multiple times. Visually, I wanted to keep that stimulating and interesting and keep the audience engaged and feeling by the end of the film that they've seen something fresh the whole way through, and not been subjected to a repeated event. But at the same time, the whole story--well, as much as possible--is told from the perspective of Colter Stevens, our main protagonist, Jake's character. And you need to find a way to move the camera in such a way that it always, as much as possible, his perspective on things. I approached it fairly strategically. I broke down those elements where there is a repetition, and tried to ensure that each time there is visual variety. Not just in the camera positions, but also if there was enough of a change in the narrative or if new characters were being introduced, that we could move events around the environment, the train that he is on, so that by the end of it, it doesn't feel like you've actually seen the same thing twice.
 
MM: There are two main dramatic arcs in Source Code. You have the Jake/Michelle arc [taking place repeatedly on the train] and you have the Jake/Vera arc [taking place at the same time in a different context]. These are essentially two one-act plays that are going on simultaneously. How did you structure these two dramatic arcs? These two intense dramas happening parallel to each other?
 
DJ: I think it's fair to say there were unique acting challenges for all of our principal actors in this film. Jake has the obvious one. He's a character who finds himself at the center of a mystery with revelations occurring throughout, that really allow him to react in dramatically different ways throughout the whole film. So, as an actor I think he has the opportunity to do many things. But there is a lot of freedom there. For Michelle Monaghan, who is a character who finds herself on a train repeating the same event, she has an arc which has to last over the course of the entire film, and she has to repeat [the same] eight minutes, and generate parts of an arc each time. So that every time, she's starting in the same place. And each time, there's a different ending. And if you look over the course of the film, there's an evolution from the start to the end of the film. That's particularly difficult. One of the things we were able to do [for her] was shoot the film in order, to try to help her. Otherwise, it would have been pure chaos. For Vera Farmiga's character, it was a very different problem. She has an arc, but she also has to perform inside a confined environment. A lot of her performance is being recorded by a camera which is sitting right in front of her [character]. And she has to be able to communicate and get across her state of mind with small nuances, knowing that the camera for most of the time is capturing her in a medium close-up.
 
MM: Source Code deals with quantum physics and different universes, and I couldn't help but think of a quote from Philip K. Dick which says all existences, all possible universes, are like an infinite number of suits lined up in an infinite closet. And God wears different universes and realities according to His different moods. Looking at your take on alternate realities and universes in Source Code, where does quantum physics end and philosophy begin? Or, did you just want to make a fun movie?
 
DJ: Well, that's an interesting question. Because Ben Ripley has written a script which I think is structurally incredibly sound. [A]s a fan of science fiction, I see that genre being split between hard scifi and soft scifi, with hard scifi being stories where you can see how the world we live in today can by a process of evolution or technological innovation wind up where the science fiction is. And soft science fiction is where you're talking about dragons and magic and crazy stuff. Now, time travel and parallel realities, for me, feels like it's in the gray area between [hard and soft scifi]. And although I think the logic is consistent and makes sense in its own right, it's difficult to know how we go from the reality we're in now, to one where we have the technology to actually be able to access that power. So, I wanted to set up some very clean rules at the start of this film that explain what it is that we're investigating, [and to] through lightening the tone of the movie, and injecting it with some humor, ask the audience to just take a leap of faith.
 
MM: And speaking of quantum issues, and quantum leaps--
 
DJ: I can see where you're going with this! [Laughs]
 
MM: There is a [vocal] cameo from a certain, well, it's [Quantum Leap star] Scott Bakula! Can we say it?
 
DJ: Yes! It is the Scott Bakula!
 
MM: Can we say it?
 
DJ: Absolutely!
 
MM: Do you want to address this bit of vocal casting?
 
DJ: It's kind of fun! And for people who read this and see the film, and know ahead of time, I'm sorry. But at the same time I think, hopefully, what is particularly effective about this cameo is that it's at a moment where I think the audience will be emotionally invested to the point that they will just buy into what's going on. And that suddenly, for those of you who are fans of Quantum Leap, you will realize that the voice is Scott Bakula, which makes a lot of sense, when you've seen the film. And that's one of those little in-jokes. For me, it's kind of fun, and I am a scifi fan, and when I was reading the script, there was a particular moment at the start of the film, where Jake sees himself in the mirror and sees someone other than who he thinks he is. And I was just thinking, 'Ah! It's Quantum Leap!' [Laughs] And to have that opportunity to make a little tip of the hat the show was important.
 
MM: If I could just jump back to Philip K. Dick and written science fiction. Source Code, in terms of theme and outlook, has more in common with a lot of Philip K. Dick, than do a lot of recent movies that are nominally adaptations of his work. [In Source Code] you've got the fragility of reality, scary government agencies working behind the scenes pulling the levers of reality, you have the question of 'What is human and what is construct?' Were you consciously referring to Philip K. Dick?
 
DJ: A great deal of my imagination stems from my love of Philip K. Dick, and also J.G. Ballard, another science fiction author I love. So, absolutely! Certainly not in a conscious way. But he was formative in my appreciation of scifi.
 
MM: Source Code deals with an act of terrorism on US soil. Did you feel a need to be sensitive with regard to possible raw nerves while making this movie, so that you could make it a fun ride?
 
DJ: There were early drafts of the script that were set in New York. And I know that the producers felt it was important to move it from New York for obvious sensitivity reasons. They were looking for a city that would work. And Chicago, being a location everyone on the East and West Coasts can relate to, seemed like a sensible idea. I think that Chicago is a great city anyway. It's very multi-cultural. And for me, in particular, there is this sculpture in [Chicago's] Millennium Park by Anish Kapoor called The Cloud Gate, which really lent itself to some of the subtexts of the story. And I wanted to use it. Fortunately, Mr. Kapoor gave us permission and we were able to. So there was extra value added by being based in Chicago.

Source Code in theaters now

by Sash Suicide (image) (image) (image) Theodore Russell (pictured with his mistress Phecda Suicide) INTO: Sleeping, and being a bear. NOT INTO: Hair dryers, plane flights, and vacuum cleaners. MAKES ME HAPPY: Chewing on shoes, cuddling, and going on walks. MAKES ME SAD: Being alone, and getting in... more

by Sash Suicide








Theodore Russell (pictured with his mistress Phecda Suicide)

• INTO: Sleeping, and being a bear.


• NOT INTO: Hair dryers, plane flights, and vacuum cleaners.


• MAKES ME HAPPY: Chewing on shoes, cuddling, and going on walks.


• MAKES ME SAD: Being alone, and getting in trouble.


• HOBBIES: Eating books, eating shoes, eating in general, humping my penguin pillow pet.


• 5 THINGS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: Chew toys, food, belly scratches, my mom and dad.


• VICES: Anything that looks expensive or meaningful- I will chew. It's inevitable.


• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Chewing things, and sleeping.

Get to know Theodore Russell's mistress, Phecda Suicide, over at SuicideGirls.com!

‪I first met Leigh Whannell as the writer and costar of‬ ‪Saw. I thought it was a really cool indie‬ ‪movie that came out of nowhere with a mind-blowing surprise and a theme that really spoke‬ ‪to me. When Whannell wrote two sequels in two years, I really got into depth with him on‬ ‪Jigsaw’s... more

‪I first met Leigh Whannell as the writer and costar of‬ ‪Saw. I thought it was a really cool indie‬ ‪movie that came out of nowhere with a mind-blowing surprise and a theme that really spoke‬ ‪to me. When Whannell wrote two sequels in two years, I really got into depth with him on‬ ‪Jigsaw’s morality.‬ Seven Saws later, Whannell has written another script for his directing buddy‬ ‪James Wan .‬
Insidious deals with more themes that are‬ ‪bigger than the immediate story. In Insidious, parents Josh (Patrick Wilson) and‬ ‪Renai (Rose Byrne) find their homes (that’s plural) haunted by spirits. So it’s a ghost‬ ‪story.‬
‪These ghosts are from a realm called The Further, the realm where souls live. That’s nice‬ ‪if Josh and Renai’s son has the power to leave his body while he sleeps. Not so nice if the‬ ‪evil souls of the dead come after the boy’s body while he’s out. Whannell also plays Specs,‬ ‪a paranormal investigator in the film.‬ ‪I reunited with Whannell in Austin where his film had just premiered at the‬ South by Southwest on opening night. He’d had one hour of‬ ‪sleep after the midnight premiere, which made me feel guilty for getting a whole four.‬ ‪Perhaps we were both a bit closer to The Further than the waking world for this discussion.‬
‪SG: Is The Further a concept in spirituality and metaphysics that you’ve been‬ ‪interested in before?‬
‪LW: Yeah, insofar as it is the afterlife. I’ve been fascinated with that topic for‬ ‪as long as I can remember. I don’t know what’s out there. That’s my belief, that the‬ ‪universe is full of mystery and I don't know what happens after we die. I don't know if‬ ‪everything goes dark or if there’s something more. And I wouldn’t claim to know and I’m‬ ‪afraid that I’m only going to find out once I die, so I’m kind of obsessed with the topic‬ ‪of ghosts because seeing a ghost is a confirmation during your lifetime that there may be something else beyond your death. I haven’t personally seen a ghost or had any experience but I know plenty of people who have. So I’ve been fascinated with that topic and I guess The Further represents the mystery that lies outside our death. From the moment we’re dead, what happens then?‬
‪SG: The Further seems connected with metaphysical ideas with whatever energy our body has, that there could be a realm where our energy exists in a different form.‬
‪LW: Totally, absolutely. I spoke to a medium before I really started getting into the writing. I had everything sort of sketched out but I was just talking to him about his job. He was talking about ghosts being energy. We have energy in us, like electrical energy, the human body. When we die, the energy doesn’t just disappear, it sort of becomes part of the atmosphere. That is what he was saying a ghost is. It’s that energy manifesting itself as something so it’s kind of an interesting idea what you’re talking about. It seems at face value like an outlandish concept that is representative more of the horror genre than it is of real questions about what happens after we die. But if you look at it from a different angle, sure there’s ghosts in white makeup but really what it’s looking at is this realm that could be all around us. There’s so much we don’t know as human beings. There’s so much we don’t know about space, about the human brain. I wouldn’t even begin to‬ assume anything about what you’re talking about, like a plane where human beings can exist that isn’t this plane, that’s a different level.‬
‪SG: That was my way into it. It didn’t have to be ghosts for me to be interested.‬
‪LW: Right, exactly. You’re one of the only people who’s picked up on that. It doesn’t necessarily have to be ghosts. It could be a time loop of people repeating things. It’s really just “the beyond,” the space between.‬
‪SG: Where did you find the maturity to write parents when you’re not one yourself?‬
‪LW: I have a lot of friends who have children and my brother has a daughter. I’ve kind of observed this shift in the last few years. As you get older, I’m 34 now, so I’m starting to see the effects of aging, those first little creaks, the wrinkles and three day hangovers, saying things to kids like, “Oh, this music sucks. When I was growing up we listened to Nirvana. That was real rock. What the hell is this Lady Gaga bullshit?” Once you catch yourself saying something like that, you realize that you are your parents now.‬
‪SG: I find myself saying, “Ra ma ramama? Come on, that’s gibberish!”‬
‪LW: [Laughs] You know what you sound like though, don’t you? You do. You catch yourself and you’re like, “Oh my God, that’s something my uncle would’ve said.” Yeah, I find myself lecturing kids about the golden age of hip hop which of course was my age. In 30-40 years time, not even, sooner than that, the cover of Rolling Stone will be Kurt Cobain and Trent Reznor. It’ll be the icons of our youth. Instead of‬ Mick Jagger and Jackson Browne, it’ll be Curt Kobain and‬
‪Chris Cornell. Each generation gets to a certain point and position of power in the world, and then says, “What I grew up with is the most relevant, important stuff.” Then forces it on everyone else.‬
‪SG: Can you imagine the generation that grows up on your films and holds them in that regard?‬
‪LW: That’s an interesting point. I know, it’ll be interesting because I think they’ll regard Saw the way that you and I regarded Freddy and Jason. I look back on Freddy and Jason now and all the hours I spent watching that stuff as a teenager and it was cool. I was so excited about seeing that stuff.‬
‪SG: What has it been like for you to start one of the horror movements with Saw and then see another movement begin with the Paranormal Activity type movies?‬
‪LW: That’s been an interesting changing of the guard. It makes you realize that the media cycle we live in is more accelerated. I think trends dip in and out much quicker. There can be a microtrend that lasts for a very short time. I think that with horror, the comment I get a lot is, “Oh, well horror’s back in now. It’s popular right now.”‬
‪SG: They were saying that when we were growing up.‬
‪LW: Right. What you and I know and what these people aren’t getting is that horror is always there. What comes in and out of popularity are the different subgenres of horror. For a little while it’ll be slasher films and then that’ll run its course. Then it will be ghost movies and then it will be torture porn, extreme horror films like Saw and Hostel. Then that’ll run its course and something new will come in. There’ll always be something new. It’s like whack-a-mole. You can whack one head but something else pops up over here. I also get the comment a lot, “Well, horror’s back in right now with Saw.” And I’ll say, “It’s always been around. What about The Others, The Sixth Sense?” “Oh, that’s not horror.” And I’m like, “Yes, it is.” “No, that’s thriller.” And I’m like, “No, The Others and The Sixth‬ Sense are horror films.” So I also think people have trouble perceiving exactly what is a horror film. To me, a horror film is something that is purposely trying to scare you or unsettle you. That is horror. Within that phrase lies everything from Cannibal Holocaust to The Others.‬
‪SG: You talk about an accelerated media cycle. Isn’t there an accelerated production cycle too? We’ve never seen franchises release a movie a year before.‬
‪LW: It’s unprecedented. It started with Saw. We’ve created a monster. When people ask me, “Is the Saw franchise really over?” I say, “Yeah, these guys, these producers have worked their asses off. They’re exhausted.” They made one film a year for seven years. They literally finished work on one film on a Friday and had to start working on the next film on Monday. It was that much of a turnover and I think they’re ready to‬ just take it easy for a while.‬
‪SG: I do hope you’re a millionaire from executive producing the seven Saw films. How have you supported yourself with that franchise?‬
‪LW: [Laughs] Well, James and I get residuals from the Saw films, the fact that they make them. So it’s definitely been good to us in terms of letting us be more choosy with our other projects. I think if it wasn’t for the Saw sequels, we would be out there shilling for whatever projects we could get to put food on the table. The Saw films have been this thing that has allowed us to be really creatively choosy. It’s been at least a cushion of okay, a Saw film’s coming out this year, I don’t have to worry about taking a job.‬
‪SG: You always said you intended us to assume Dr. Gordon died after he cut his foot off.‬
‪LW: I know!‬
‪SG: How did you feel when they said, “We want to bring back Cary Elwes and this is how Saw VII will end?”‬
‪LW: I didn’t have much to do with it. The thing is, because it’s such a‬ collaboration, after part III as you know I didn’t have a direct involvement. So they made four more movies. That’s four movies they made without my direct involvement. I think it would’ve been impolite of me to come in and say, “At this point, no, you can’t do this.” It was better for James and I to say, “Listen, we know the films we’ve done and we know our mythology and we’ve created this character. It’s now been taken over by new owners. It has a new foster home and it’s best to let them do what they did.” To their credit, the‬ producers were always pretty stringent about giving the fans exactly what they wanted. They really worked their asses off on those films so I didn’t really say anything. I just let them do it.‬
‪SG: Certainly if they chose to go in that direction, they came up with a sensible reason for Dr. Gordon to survive and it ends the series on a high.‬
‪LW: Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve always chatted to you with every Saw film that I was involved in and seen you and you’ve been there from the start. So you’ve really seen this evolution from this standalone indie film to oh, now there’s a II. Oh, now there’s a III. Now it’s a mythology. It’s this intertwined storyline that goes on. And you’re making me think about a lot of things or articulating a lot of things that I don’t usually think about, like yeah, one film a year. That’s an unprecedented concept.‬
‪SG: How about this? You’ve had five screenplays produced. How weird is that?‬
‪LW: I know, it’s cool. It’s a weird concept. I almost meld the three Saw films into one in some way but they’re not. They’re three separate movies. The weird thing is, over the last two years, I’ve written four films that haven’t been produced yet. Over the last two years, I’ve written four scripts that you haven’t seen that are all in various stages of development and/or production. None of those scripts were a horror film. One was a noir thriller. One was a children’s film. One was an Australian film, like a crime drama and one’s a comedy. So it’s pretty crazy that the films that are actually tangibly seeable are all horror films, yet I’ve spent the last two years concentrating on anything but horror. But to you, it doesn’t exist. To me it’s my whole life but to you, these films haven’t been produced yet. So I’d love to chat with you during the press talks for one of these other movies just to see how that goes.‬
‪SG: Will each one of those, even the children’s film, have a twist ending?‬
‪LW: No, the noir thriller had twists in it. The children’s film is fairly straight ahead. That’s going to be an animated film hopefully. A company’s picked that up that’s going to hopefully turn it into an animation, so that’s probably the most exciting project just in terms of the newness of it. The process of animation’s just so foreign to me so that to me would be the big one. We’ll be talking about that in 2015.‬
‪SG: Scream 4 is coming out. Do you imagine they’ll have some commentary on the Saw movement?‬
‪LW: That would be very interesting if they did have it because they kind of made that their thing. Here are the rules. I wonder if they’ve adjusted their rules.‬
‪Insidious opens April 1.‬

I'll start: (video) I like when she talks about butter. MMMM flux and butter.

Fans have been yearning for years for a hardcover volume of Starstruck. However their long wait is over, since an IDW published collection will hit stores in April. Writer Elaine Lee has lived with these characters for longer than anyone, though, and she isn’t finished with them. Starstruck debuted... more

Fans have been yearning for years for a hardcover volume of Starstruck. However their long wait is over, since an IDW published collection will hit stores in April. Writer Elaine Lee has lived with these characters for longer than anyone, though, and she isn’t finished with them. Starstruck debuted as a play, and was then published as a comic in the early 1980s. The science fiction story is told in a nonlinear fashion with a vast cast of characters including multiple female heroines. Starstruck ahead of its time when it first came out, so reading the book today, it feels very contemporary.

In comics, Starstruck remains Lee’s best known creation, but it’s far from her only one. She collaborated with her Starstruck artist, the great Michael William Kaluta, on short stories for The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine. There was Vamps - a mini-series she did for Vertigo about a group of female vampires who take to the road on motorcycles after killing their male master - which spawned two sequels, Vamps: Hollywood & Vein and Vamps: Pumpkin Time. There was Saint Sinner, a book she collaborated on with Clive Barker for Marvel, BrainBanx, a great mini-series from DC’s short-lived science fiction imprint Helix, and Steeltown Rockers, a rare slice of life mini-series from Marvel comics about a group of teenagers forming a band. And the aforementioned are just a few of her many post-Starstruck projects.

It’s been far too long since there was a brand new Elaine Lee-written comic book on the stands, but in addition to the hardcover collection of Starstruck, there’s also a new Honey West comic, which Lee is writing for Moonstone Press. She took time out to talk with us over e-mail.


ALEX DUEBEN: Now Starstruck has a somewhat complicated publishing history, to say the least. But it started out as a play. What we’re you trying to do originally? What was this odd science fiction play you wanted to make?

ELAINE LEE: I was in my mid-twenties, living in New York, and acting in a soap opera called The Doctors, which paid well, but was not very challenging work. While this was going on, I was also in an acting class with a bunch of really terrific young actors and we all became very close. About 2/3rds of these actors were women and, at the time, there weren't a lot of great parts for women. In TV and film, they were casting at least 11 roles for men for every role for a woman. We started talking about forming our own theatre company and writing our own material. Around the same time, I discovered Heavy Metal Magazine, which featured the work of some incredible European comic artists. My Dad had been a big science fiction fan and, when I was a kid, he had taken me to sci-fi and horror movies and had bought me comics, but I gradually lost interest in comics during the teen years. The stuff in Heavy Metal completely blew me away and I wanted to do a play that was something like the stories they published. 

So... my friends and I formed Wild Hair Productions and produced three plays. Starstruck was the third of these plays and it was written for the actors in that company. The idea was to do something really wild, so that we could all show off and do parts we would normally never be cast for. I was five feet tall and weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet, but I wanted to be an amazon starship captain, so Galatia 9 was the part I came up with for myself. Being completely flat-chested, it was easy for me to build a fake breast into one side of my costume and look like I only had one. Some of the other characters were a telepathic space nun who got knocked around by psychic vibrations, a sexy pleasure droid reprogrammed to be a brainy science officer, a vain villain with a split personality, and an evil seductress traveling in a ship made of the living flesh of millions of Galactic Girl Guides. The play was really a humorous take on all the sci-fi movies and TV shows I saw as a kid, with a generous helping of Heavy Metal thrown into the mix. Boy, was it fun to do!

AD: How did it end up as a comic?

EL: Though I created the Starstruck world, characters and plot, my sister Susan Norfleet and husband (now Ex) Dale Place wrote some of the original play's dialogue with me. Susan and I were sitting in an Upper West Side restaurant called The Library, talking about costumes and props for the play. We had a stack of science fiction magazines on the table. So, this big, bearded guy is sitting at the bar and he walks over to us and says, "Hi! You girls science fiction fans?" He told us he was an artist and I wrote down his name and number on an index card, along with the note "might be of help with the next play." A week or so later, I walked into West Side Comics and saw a poster for a book called The Studio. On the poster was a painting I had seen and loved on the back cover of Heavy Metal and it was by Michael Kaluta... the guy we'd met in the restaurant! I called and told him I was leaving him comp tickets for our currant play at the box office. He came to see it, loved it, and was gradually sucked into doing the Starstruck poster, then the costumes, then the sets. 

After the run of the play, the option was picked up by a producer, but it quickly became clear that he wasn't going to do anything with it. Because it would be a year before the option was up, Michael and I secretly began work on a Starstruck comic during this time. Michael drew the characters in Starstruck to look like the actors in the original production.

AD: Comics was a new form for you. Even after writing plays, was it intimidating to craft a story in this new medium?

EL: Not intimidating, but challenging. Whether you are writing a play, a screenplay, of a comic script, you are writing dialogue and describing visuals, so the forms have much in common. One big difference is the amount of dialogue in a comic versus a play. Plays are all about the talk and a character might have a monologue that's a page and a half long. You can't have that with a comic, though we did include one scene in the graphic novel where Brucilla's dialogue balloons begin to crowd Galatia off the page, in order to show that the character was a loudmouth. 

Other differences? During the early days, in a moment of frustration, I remember yelling, "I can't think in little boxes!" That stopped being a problem pretty quickly. I had to learn to see long shots, after being used to seeing characters relating to each other from only a few feet away. You can show amazing things in a comic that you could never do on stage. You don't want to fill up lots of pages with talking heads.

AD: What was the process of putting the comic together with Kaluta like?

EL: The process changed over the years. At first, we would work in the same room together. I would be scribbling script on a yellow legal pad (no computers in those days), while Michael sat doing layouts at his drawing table. I would often stand behind his shoulder, as he did layouts, cutting out some of the excess dialogue on the spot, as I saw what he was drawing. By the time we got to Brucilla's story, the third section in the original graphic novel, we changed things up. We knew the story would revolve around a space battle, so I asked Michael, "What would you really like to draw?" He said things like, "I'd like to have the hull blown off the ship, so I could draw the characters piloting the ship's skeleton, protected only by its force shield." So I took three or four things he wanted to draw, and shaped the story around those things. 

By the time we started working on Starstruck: The Expanding Universe for Dark Horse, I was writing at home and sending him scripts. I had a small child at the time, so it had to happen that way. And we both knew the universe so well by then that we didn't need to be in the room together.

AD: Now again there is a crazy publishing history with multiple companies behind the book but what we’re now seeing from IDW is the definitive version. This is the whole enchilada?

EL: Nope. Not the whole enchilada, but enough to satisfy your enchilada craving! This 360 page book is about a third of what we have planned. We are already planning for the next installment. But Starstruck Deluxe Edition is the definitive version, insofar as it is the version of these stories that we're completely satisfied with. Lee Moyer's painted color is wonderful! 

AD: Now Starstruck is a pretty nonlinear project, which I love, and I have to say that the structure and the feeling, the complexity, how it moves around, it really feels contemporary

EL: We've been told "Starstruck was ahead of its time," which usually just means "no money for creators!" There were actually some comics fans who were furious that we had a non-linear story, as no one in American comics was doing that at the time. And we had an "ensemble cast" of characters, many of them female, rather than one main guy. These days, with popular TV shows like Lost and Heroes, people are used to non-linear stories.

Remember, when Starstruck first came out, there was no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, no Xena Warrior Princess, no Power Puff Girls. Few fantasy/sci-fi/horror movies with strong female leads, like Underworld or the Resident Evil series. People thought we had some political agenda, because we had a lot of female characters. Now it's not unusual. 

AD: It’s been about thirty years that you’ve worked on this, mostly off, but you keep coming back to it. Do you ever get tired of it?

EL: Because we have so many characters, it's easy to switch between them and feel like you're working on a new project. For example, after doing the play and the Marvel graphic novel, we started doing a series of Epic comics. I was sort of getting tired of the girls, so we took a background character, Harry Palmer, brought him front and center, and did a couple of books that told his story. Harry may be my favorite character in the whole series. We're hoping to do the "definitive version" of his story next.

AD: I’m sure you have a very different perspective than you did back then. Is there anything you’re conscious of or discovered about the book recently preparing this new edition?

EL: A completely different perspective! I was 25 when I wrote the first little scene that eventually grew into the Starstruck play. Now I have three adult sons. Some of it I can tell a much younger woman wrote; those first stories of Galatia and Brucilla, and of Kalif and his sister Ronnie. Then the material written during the Dark Horse years, most it centered on Mary Meda (AKA Glorianna) and her family, was written when I was the mother of a very young child. If I were just beginning to write Starstruck now, it would be a very different story. I don't have any problem putting myself back in the space to continue writing new material, though I did change a few tiny things for this last version.

I've discovered new things all along that I hadn't quite realized we'd put in Starstruck. A fan once approached me at a convention and said, "Why do all of your female characters have daddy problems?" I said, "Oh my god, they do!" I hadn't realized it. It was unplanned, completely unconscious. My own father died when I was 13, so that probably has something to do with it. 

Going back to work on it after quite a few years, I think it holds up amazingly well, probably because it had a retro feel in the first place. It's space opera, not hard science fiction, which also helps. Assuming we'll get to finish everything we have planned, there are some things I had hoped to go into that we probably won't. Things I became obsessed with at an earlier age that don't seem so interesting now.

AD: Recently you also did an audio version of the play. How did that end up happening and what was it like revisiting the play?

EL: Weirdly, Michael and I received phone calls from IDW and the AudioComics Company within two weeks of each other. Something must've been in the air. It was just time to do Starstruck again. While we worked on the new comics for IDW, I wrote an updated version of the play that reflected details of the universe we had created for the comics - Earth becomes Amercadia, that sort of thing - then took that and made changes for the audio version. The play was very visual and physical, lots of slapstick humor. It all had to be verbal for the audio version. Dwight Dixon, our composer for the original production of the play, updated his incredible music for the audio play. The comic series started its run in August 2009, on the same day we performed a staged reading as a benefit in Big Sur.

The most difficult thing about the audio production was getting used to new actors in roles that had been written for old friends, as remarkable as these talented people were! Because Michael had drawn the characters to look like these friends, that's just who they were. Once I met and got to know them, the problem evaporated.

By the way, next month, on April 16, Michael and I will be at I-Con with the guys from AudioComics to do a live performance of a new Starstruck audio play, directed by Bill Dufris and starring the voice of Aeon Flux, Denise Poirier, as evil seductress Verloona Ti. My son Brennan Lee Mulligan will play the role of Rootersnoos ferret Jimmy the Snout, and the very funny young women from his NYC sketch comedy troupe Pink Axe will play three pleasure droids and three Galactic Girl Guides. We'll be casting some small roles from among the con's attendees. Anyone who wants to submit an audition by MP3 should go to the AudioComics site for details at http://www.audiocomicscompany.com/.

AD: You’re also writing Honey West and I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little about that book and who she is and how you got involved?

EL: I got involved with Honey West when Trina Robbins accidentally CCd me on an email to editor Lori Gentile at Moonstone and I replied, "I want to do Honey West!" (Only a slight exaggeration. Trina had recommended me while accidentally CCing me.) 

Honey West was a blond bombshell pulp detective in novels by G.G. Fickling (husband and wife team Gloria and Forest Fickling), published in the 1950s and 60s. A TV series, based on Honey and starring Anne Francis, appeared in the mid sixties. The new comic series from Moonstone is probably based more on the novels than on the TV series. Honey, as she appears in the books, was much sexier and the side characters more interesting, though we did let her keep her pet Ocelot and her convertible from the TV show. My Honey West story is titled Murder on Mars. It sends Honey undercover to solve a murder on the set of a low budget sci-fi film. Ronn Sutton is the artist on the series and the covers are by Lee Moyer, who did the wonderful painted color for Starstruck.

I really loved working on Honey. As a kid, I was very much affected by old sci-fi films like Queen of Outer Space[/] and used that as a template for my story's low budget sci-fi film Amazons of Mars![/] Weirdly, while doing research for Honey, I learned that in order to save the production money, Queen of Outer Space reused costumes and props from Forbidden Planet, a film that starred young Anne Francis. Everything's connected. 

I also have a short story “Mischief” coming out any day now in a collection from Moonstone called Chicks in Capes. And I'm working on a web comic with my son Brennan. Also look for a couple of new audio plays, which should come out in the next year.