Live Freaky Die Freaky director John Roecker
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

The straight to DVD stop motion animation feature film, Live Freaky Die Freaky, certainly lives up to it’s name. It’s about a world where the only book left is Helter Skelter and the entire world starts to follow it’s teachings. It’s the Charles Manson story told in the style of Davey and Goliath. Even Manson’s torture and rape scenes get the animated treatment. The film is written, directed and animated by John Roecker and produced by Tim Armstrong of Rancid. It stars the voices of Nick 13, Billie Joe Armstrong as Manson, Viggo Mortensen, Warren Fitzgerald, Asia Argento and many more members of the Hellcat Pictures family.

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Daniel Robert Epstein: Hi John, are you ready to do our interview?

John Roecker: Do I have to put my pants on?

DRE: I never have my pants on when I do these things.

JR: Excellent, so we’re on the same page.

DRE: What are you up to?

JR: Just detoxing from Christmas and that’s about it.

DRE: What’d you do on Christmas?

JR: We had like 40 people in the house and it turned into a weird orgy of presents and debauchery, same old thing.

DRE: Was the whole cast of Live Freaky there?

JR: We had a couple. We love to celebrate our pagan rituals.

DRE: Whose idea was Live Freaky?

JR: Oh it was all mine and then Tim [Armstrong] was the one that pushed me into actually being able to do it. Everyone was telling us we couldn’t do it, even Troma said they couldn’t make the movie. So I said we should just make the movie and see what happens which is a very naïve way of doing it but it was something we really had to do.

DRE: Why did you feel that way?

JR: Just because of what’s going on right now. We’re back in the 50’s because everyone’s become so conservative so we wanted to make a wakeup call. I wanted shake people up a bit and say, “This Christian thing is really scary. It’s an evil thing.” I wanted to expose the hypocrisy of the right wing.

DRE: How do you feel the film does that?

JR: It’s based in a bleak future where the book Helter Skelter is found and people reinterpret the whole thing as this madman being a messiah. Not unlike what they did to Jesus just because of a book. I’m sure someday there will be a cult of Harry Potter people.

DRE: [laughs] I think there is now.

JR: It is not all that ridiculous when you think about Scientology.

DRE: What made you decide to do it in stop motion animation?

JR: Stop animation is the only way I could have made this movie. I tried to make it with sex dolls and they kept on popping so I figured I would just go for it. I was really naïve when I thought “We’ll be done in a couple months” because it took a very long time.

DRE: These things usually take years.

JR: It took two years.

DRE: How big was your animation crew?

JR: [laughs] Two people.

DRE: Oh my God!

JR: I would watch those Nightmare Before Christmas documentaries, just to get some kind of clue because there are no books on stop motion. Tim Burton would fly to the set of Nightmare Before Christmas, look at the sets and leave. I was like, “Oh God if I could only do that.”

DRE: Did you design all the puppets?

JR: Yes and I did the storyboards as well.

DRE: Was Charles Manson a difficult character to envision?

JR: No, not at all because as a punk rocker, he was our little role model. He was our boogieman that we had in fliers, he was our swastika thing to shock people. We’d always have a copy of Helter Skelter in junior high to ward off certain people.

DRE: Would you like Manson to see the movie?

JR: I would love to. I think he’d like it a lot. But I don’t know if he’s allowed to because it’s so dirty. It is funny because we actually spent more money insuring this film than we spent on it.

DRE: Why is that?

JR: Normally you have to insure your film and it doesn’t cost that much. But we couldn’t find anyone to do it and we kept telling people that they are really only sculptures; it’s not a real penis. I find it really amusing how you can actually freak people out with just puppets and some clay.

DRE: [laughs] The sex scenes are really gross.

JR: I don’t think they’re gross. I think they’re pretty hot.

DRE: No you don’t.

JR: What’s wrong with you man?

DRE: You don’t think they’re hot!

JR: I think they’re really hot. It’s totally like puppet arousal. It’s this new sexual craze I’m making. It beats plushies.

DRE: Actually two years is also a pretty short time to make a stop motion feature film. You must have been working all the time.

JR: Yeah, we were really dedicated. When we started we had these flaky animators. There aren’t a lot of stop motion animators out there because it is a lost art form because everyone does CGI now. The new King Kong movie is like a cartoon. The 1976 version is so much better. Maybe it’s a man in a monkey suit, but it still looks better than a cartoon. But anyway, I would look at people’s stop motion reels that were five minutes long and I would ask them how long it took and they would say “Three years” and I didn’t understand why.

DRE: How much did you work with the people providing the voices?

JR: I would go down to Oakland where we recorded and be there the whole time. I got Davey Havok, Lars [Frederiksen] and Billie Joe [Armstrong] to record at the same time. Then when Tim was on tour with The Transplants we would go to recording studios in whatever town he was in.

DRE: What were Tim’s duties as producer?

JR: He basically told me one thing, “Here’s the check and don’t change anything. Keep the script as it is and don’t let anyone tell you to take anything out.”

DRE: Did you find the idea of him telling you do anything you wanted freeing or constricting?

JR: I thought it was really freeing. But we were still seriously really naïve about doing it all. When the film was finished, Wellspring really came to bat and said, “We believe in this film.” So they were more into the film than the people who did the voices. A lot of other distributors were more interested in the fact that rock stars worked on the movie.

DRE: How was it working with Asia Argento?

JR: That woman is so amazing, incredible and beautiful. We went to her place in Venice and she read the script. She said “Oh my God, Roman [Polanski] is going to hate me for doing this.” But then she said she understood that it was a big fuck you to everything.

DRE: Roman’s had a few of those and so has her dad.

JR: Yeah, I’m really not into these family dynasties, but I have my thumbs up for the Argentos. Actually Asia’s DVD commentary on her movie, Scarlet Fever, helped me a lot.

DRE: Why is that?

JR: Because when you’re having problems with a film I don’t like to hear peppy stories, I want to hear other horrible stories to compare mine to. I listened to her commentary about all the problems she had making that film. I found strength in that so it was nice that she loved the script and understood it because I respect her as an artist.

DRE: Did Tim ever want to distribute this himself?

JR: We thought about it but I wanted to make a real movie. It took so long so I don’t just want to sell it out the back of my station wagon.

DRE: What is Wellspring doing that Hellcat couldn’t?

JR: They’re a real movie company and they put out some really amazing things. I just love being part of their roster.

DRE: They put out Todd Solondz’s Palindromes.

JR: Yeah that movie, Tarnation and the list goes on. They do a really great job in everything they do like the packaging and they have a great staff as well.

DRE: Did you get nervous once certain festivals started banning the film?

JR: That really pissed me off with these supposedly alternative places like Slamdance and South by Southwest banning it. I was getting these form letters saying I was rejected and one place even said that the film was “morally irresponsible” and that “I went too far.” South by Southwest really pissed me off because it’s supposed to be a music festival. I thought it would finally get played in a red state.

DRE: A lot of people consider all animation for kids.

JR: Which is a shame because animation is just another way of expressing yourself artistically.

DRE: I don’t get why puppets doing these things is offensive, it’s not real!

JR: [laughs] I can’t get in these people’s minds. I was locked up two years in the studio and the world around us really changed in that time

DRE: Why is Kelly Osbourne credited with a fake name?

JR: We’ll figure that one out later. I love mystery.

DRE: Oh I see. She was a big pain in the ass, huh?

JR: You’re breaking up [laughs].

DRE: I read that you actually were going to do the Unabomber Manifesto as an audio book.

JR: Me and Exene [Cervenka] actually did that years ago. We had this record store called You Got That Tape and the New York Times came to do a review of it. They asked us what the next project was and I said, “Oh we’re doing books on tape” and they go, “Oh, what kind?” I said “The Unabomber.” At the time he wasn’t arrested and they had just found his manuscript. Then the Times wrote about it. It was cool because Exene wanted to do it.

But the thing about the Unabomber Manifesto was that it was really long. So we decided to just highlight the parts we wanted to do and when we did that it made sense. That also sparked the urge to do Live Freaky.

DRE: What kind of theatrical release is Live Freaky getting?

JR: It is going to be a midnight movie at a few theatres.

DRE: How did you end up directing the Green Day documentary, Heart Like A Hand Grenade?

JR: I was so sick of working on Live Freaky that Billie Joe said “Come on, we’re making this record, bring your camera.” I was there for seven months documenting their American Idiot record.

DRE: That’s good because in the past few years Billie Joe has gotten a lot more credibility.

JR: I think he should because he’s a fantastic musician. The whole band makes it look so easy.

DRE: [laughs] Isn’t one of the big things about punk rock, that the musicians make it look easy but it’s not?

Viggo [Mortensen] has a voice in Live Freaky, do you know him through Exene?

JR: Yeah, I’m godfather of their son Henry. We also had like a lot of fun together. It was so funny because when he first got the Lord of the Rings book I was like, “You’re not going to do that are you? Only the nerds liked that back in high school.” I’m glad he never listened to me.

DRE: [laughs] How did you get involved in the music scene in the first place?

JR: I think it was 1977 and this weird Dick Clark thing was on TV and they showed a clip of the Sex Pistols. Then they made fun of them like, “Here’s something that’s in England that we don’t want to be imported” or something like that. I fell in love with them then so thank you Dick Clark.

DRE: What are you working on now?

JR: I’m doing a documentary called Satan Goes to the Movies. It’s going to expose this whole hypocrisy of how all these Hollywood Satan movies are completely wrong. In real Satanism you don’t sacrifice anything so this will expose the myth.

DRE: Are you into Satan?

JR: No. The only reason that Anton LaVey [founder of the Church of Satan] used Satan was because he wanted to worship the opposite of what the Christians believe. It was more of a shock thing.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Live+Freaky+Die+Freaky+director+John+Roecker/