Gregory Dark is best known for transitioning from making porno films in the 80s to becoming one of the most sought after and talented music video directors in the business. He is finally making his feature film debut with See No Evil. See No Evil is a brutal horror flick in the style of 80s slasher films. It stars the pro wrestler Kane as a gigantic serial killer, who is murdering a group of juvenile delinquents who have been sentenced to clean the burnt out hotel he lives in.
Check out the official website for See No Evil
Daniel Robert Epstein: I was told that you were very excited to do this interview.
Gregory Dark: I love SuicideGirls.
DRE: What do you love about it?
GD: I think the girls are phenomenal. I used to shoot adult stuff a long time ago and thats the vision I always had back then. When I shot music videos, here and there Id be able to get things in. I did a Sublime video called Wrong Way where I made Bijou Phillips look like a Brigitte Bardot character. I love the whole concept of the website, the photography, the imagery and what not.
DRE: As long as Im talking to an expert, do you think its pornography?
GD: I dont know what pornography is anymore. I could argue it either direction. You could say See No Evil is pornography but theres not any sexual content per say. You can say a movie like Hostel is pornography. There was a Newsweek article where [Lionsgates co-president of marketing] Tim Palen at Lionsgate was interviewed and he talked about torture pornography. Its no different from sexual pornography I suppose. Its a different way of approaching the emotions. I dont consider pornography a bad thing if you think about it philosophically. I think its a very healthy expression of society. Thats how I looked at it when I made adult films. I also did things like conceptual art pieces using sex scenes where I didnt try to make them erotic. I tried to make them bizarre and unusual and almost anti-erotic to see how the viewer would react.
DRE: Howd they react?
GD: I think they quite liked them. Theyve never seen anything like that.
DRE: Everyone always likes something.
GD: I did very well with that stuff. A couple of museums in Europe played my movies. When I started doing music videos, a lot of the times you couldnt do these sorts of things but here and there I was able to push the envelope.
DRE: If you do a Britney Spears video, you can probably get away with something.
GD: I dont know about nowadays. At one point you could. When I did a Britney Spears video, they wanted her to be the sweetest most obvious girl next door that you could find. It was before she became Britney Spears the stripper. I did the one where she had to have her shirt buttoned up to her neck. Now she has to have her breasts exposed and wearing a thong.
DRE: Im sure youve been offered many films before you decided to do See No Evil.
GD: Yeah, you get offered a certain type of picture. But a music video director will probably not get offered romantic comedies.
DRE: Though Im sure you must have been offered horror movies.
GD: Yeah, you get horror movies here and there. I was going to do a werewolf movie with Ice Cube called Stray Dogs a few years ago. It was a really big budget movie and we ended up not doing it because New Line ended up pulling the greenlight back.
DRE: When you think horror movies you dont usually think of [chairman and owner of World Wrestling Entertainment] Vince McMahon.
GD: No, you dont think Vince McMahon. The thing about Vince is he wants to play his own game the way he wants to play it. I thought See No Evil was basically Friday the 13th. Its a people in an enclosed environment getting picked off so I had to figure out what to do with that. This guy Kane is very interesting, very menacing and scary. Hes able to do all of his own stunts and he can go to a psychotic place so I tried to develop that. I came in late in the game and I tried to develop a bit of a back story with him being kept in a cage like a dog. The most unclean insane way of keeping somebody to create a socialized psychosis which had to do with murder.
DRE: These are big words to describe a movie where a guy runs around with a hook. Were these thoughts in your mind when you were directing your actors?
GD: I explain those things to my actors and certainly Kane really understood them. To me the whole movie is about creating a psychosis and how a psychosis is either a chemical experience or its a socialized experience that becomes a chemical experience.
DRE: How much was Vince involved?
GD: We shot in Australia so he wasnt on set. But wed run stuff by him and hed like it or he wouldnt. This is his first theatrical release movie, so needless to say he wants to see it work. I thought it would be really interesting to make an old school type of horror movie like from the early 80s. I didnt develop the script but thats what the script was. I thought that was interesting because so many horror movies of today are like TV movies. They are really boring in many ways. Theyre not horrible, theyre not brutal but theyre not upping the ante in terms of brutality or anything like that. Theyre a lot of wind blowing and sound design. Those are the elements of more contemporary horror especially with the American remakes of Japanese horror.
DRE: When you talk about horror movies in the 80s, a lot of those movies did not have strong stories and the viewer often had to make leaps of logic. I found when watching See No Evil, you had to make those leaps as well.
GD: I looked at it like a rollercoaster ride of death. Youre locked in this box with this crazy guy whos hooking you, squeezing you, chopping you so how are you going to get out? That was the idea.
DRE: Was him using a hook as a weapon always in the script?
GD: I think the first draft he had a hook.
DRE: Kane told me that there wasnt much CGI used with the hook.
GD: No, he actually did it. He was very adept at throwing this thing.
DRE: Thats scary.
GD: Hes huge but hes also very coordinated and he learned how to throw a hook. He thought of it as a soft martial arts weapon and he was able to learn how to use it.
DRE: Not that you were intimidated, but how was it just having such a large man in that costume on set?
GD: Well because hed get so much into character youd wonder if he was actually going to do something particularly violent. It was very hard to tell when he was just being Kane. He flipped out once and just broke apart a whole room. This is a seven foot man with that kind of strength and he just lost it in his character. He completely incorporated the method acting technique at one point and became the character.
DRE: What was your biggest challenge going into See No Evil?
GD: I wanted to take this very obvious storyline and figure out how to make it more visual. Using some contemporary techniques and contemporary camera moves I wanted to figure out how I could create a sick bit of a back story for the killer.
DRE: Obviously someone thinks that music video directors will make good horror films. How did music videos prepare you to make a horror film?
GD: I used a bunch of techniques that we havent seen so much in horror films. I used hand crank cameras. I used a rig that fits on the person and you point the camera at them and you actually walk with it, like if you see the Richie in the movie running down the hallway, thats that technique.
DRE: Did you try to subvert the things that people think music video directors do too much or did you just want to do a stylish movie?
GD: I think it was time for me to do a stylish movie. But I didnt want to take away from the horror and brutality because thats what I think this movie is. It fits very well into that idea of torture porn and its almost beautiful in places and yet its sickening,
DRE: How did you move from doing porno films to more mainstream work?
GD: I did a couple low budget movies back in the late 80s. Then I did a bunch of erotic thrillers for Showtime which led to music videos.
DRE: How many music videos have you done?
GD: Ive done about 250 music videos. Ive done everybody you can think of except for Christina Aguilera.
DRE: You must have adapted very well to doing music videos.
GD: Yeah, it was easy. I have a graduate degree in art from Stanford University. I used to do performance art, sculptures and paintings with performances around them. So music videos were a very easy transition for me.
DRE: Was there any resistance from industry people with you doing mainstream work?
GD: I hadnt done a hardcore porno movie in an awful long time. I did all these other things in between so I transitioned so the jurys ultimately out. Sometimes they like me as a video director sometimes they dont. I did do a pilot for MTV last year and Im doing three more pilots this year for them.
DRE: What are the pilots youre doing?
GD: Im doing a horror pilot and two I cant really talk about. One is based on a series of horror movies and I did one called To the Limit which is about street racing, Fast and the Furious meets Real World. That ones more like a reality show. The other two are a cross between scripted and reality.
DRE: Would you do a sequel to See No Evil?
GD: Sure. I think there are a lot of things you could play with.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website for See No Evil
Daniel Robert Epstein: I was told that you were very excited to do this interview.
Gregory Dark: I love SuicideGirls.
DRE: What do you love about it?
GD: I think the girls are phenomenal. I used to shoot adult stuff a long time ago and thats the vision I always had back then. When I shot music videos, here and there Id be able to get things in. I did a Sublime video called Wrong Way where I made Bijou Phillips look like a Brigitte Bardot character. I love the whole concept of the website, the photography, the imagery and what not.
DRE: As long as Im talking to an expert, do you think its pornography?
GD: I dont know what pornography is anymore. I could argue it either direction. You could say See No Evil is pornography but theres not any sexual content per say. You can say a movie like Hostel is pornography. There was a Newsweek article where [Lionsgates co-president of marketing] Tim Palen at Lionsgate was interviewed and he talked about torture pornography. Its no different from sexual pornography I suppose. Its a different way of approaching the emotions. I dont consider pornography a bad thing if you think about it philosophically. I think its a very healthy expression of society. Thats how I looked at it when I made adult films. I also did things like conceptual art pieces using sex scenes where I didnt try to make them erotic. I tried to make them bizarre and unusual and almost anti-erotic to see how the viewer would react.
DRE: Howd they react?
GD: I think they quite liked them. Theyve never seen anything like that.
DRE: Everyone always likes something.
GD: I did very well with that stuff. A couple of museums in Europe played my movies. When I started doing music videos, a lot of the times you couldnt do these sorts of things but here and there I was able to push the envelope.
DRE: If you do a Britney Spears video, you can probably get away with something.
GD: I dont know about nowadays. At one point you could. When I did a Britney Spears video, they wanted her to be the sweetest most obvious girl next door that you could find. It was before she became Britney Spears the stripper. I did the one where she had to have her shirt buttoned up to her neck. Now she has to have her breasts exposed and wearing a thong.
DRE: Im sure youve been offered many films before you decided to do See No Evil.
GD: Yeah, you get offered a certain type of picture. But a music video director will probably not get offered romantic comedies.
DRE: Though Im sure you must have been offered horror movies.
GD: Yeah, you get horror movies here and there. I was going to do a werewolf movie with Ice Cube called Stray Dogs a few years ago. It was a really big budget movie and we ended up not doing it because New Line ended up pulling the greenlight back.
DRE: When you think horror movies you dont usually think of [chairman and owner of World Wrestling Entertainment] Vince McMahon.
GD: No, you dont think Vince McMahon. The thing about Vince is he wants to play his own game the way he wants to play it. I thought See No Evil was basically Friday the 13th. Its a people in an enclosed environment getting picked off so I had to figure out what to do with that. This guy Kane is very interesting, very menacing and scary. Hes able to do all of his own stunts and he can go to a psychotic place so I tried to develop that. I came in late in the game and I tried to develop a bit of a back story with him being kept in a cage like a dog. The most unclean insane way of keeping somebody to create a socialized psychosis which had to do with murder.
DRE: These are big words to describe a movie where a guy runs around with a hook. Were these thoughts in your mind when you were directing your actors?
GD: I explain those things to my actors and certainly Kane really understood them. To me the whole movie is about creating a psychosis and how a psychosis is either a chemical experience or its a socialized experience that becomes a chemical experience.
DRE: How much was Vince involved?
GD: We shot in Australia so he wasnt on set. But wed run stuff by him and hed like it or he wouldnt. This is his first theatrical release movie, so needless to say he wants to see it work. I thought it would be really interesting to make an old school type of horror movie like from the early 80s. I didnt develop the script but thats what the script was. I thought that was interesting because so many horror movies of today are like TV movies. They are really boring in many ways. Theyre not horrible, theyre not brutal but theyre not upping the ante in terms of brutality or anything like that. Theyre a lot of wind blowing and sound design. Those are the elements of more contemporary horror especially with the American remakes of Japanese horror.
DRE: When you talk about horror movies in the 80s, a lot of those movies did not have strong stories and the viewer often had to make leaps of logic. I found when watching See No Evil, you had to make those leaps as well.
GD: I looked at it like a rollercoaster ride of death. Youre locked in this box with this crazy guy whos hooking you, squeezing you, chopping you so how are you going to get out? That was the idea.
DRE: Was him using a hook as a weapon always in the script?
GD: I think the first draft he had a hook.
DRE: Kane told me that there wasnt much CGI used with the hook.
GD: No, he actually did it. He was very adept at throwing this thing.
DRE: Thats scary.
GD: Hes huge but hes also very coordinated and he learned how to throw a hook. He thought of it as a soft martial arts weapon and he was able to learn how to use it.
DRE: Not that you were intimidated, but how was it just having such a large man in that costume on set?
GD: Well because hed get so much into character youd wonder if he was actually going to do something particularly violent. It was very hard to tell when he was just being Kane. He flipped out once and just broke apart a whole room. This is a seven foot man with that kind of strength and he just lost it in his character. He completely incorporated the method acting technique at one point and became the character.
DRE: What was your biggest challenge going into See No Evil?
GD: I wanted to take this very obvious storyline and figure out how to make it more visual. Using some contemporary techniques and contemporary camera moves I wanted to figure out how I could create a sick bit of a back story for the killer.
DRE: Obviously someone thinks that music video directors will make good horror films. How did music videos prepare you to make a horror film?
GD: I used a bunch of techniques that we havent seen so much in horror films. I used hand crank cameras. I used a rig that fits on the person and you point the camera at them and you actually walk with it, like if you see the Richie in the movie running down the hallway, thats that technique.
DRE: Did you try to subvert the things that people think music video directors do too much or did you just want to do a stylish movie?
GD: I think it was time for me to do a stylish movie. But I didnt want to take away from the horror and brutality because thats what I think this movie is. It fits very well into that idea of torture porn and its almost beautiful in places and yet its sickening,
DRE: How did you move from doing porno films to more mainstream work?
GD: I did a couple low budget movies back in the late 80s. Then I did a bunch of erotic thrillers for Showtime which led to music videos.
DRE: How many music videos have you done?
GD: Ive done about 250 music videos. Ive done everybody you can think of except for Christina Aguilera.
DRE: You must have adapted very well to doing music videos.
GD: Yeah, it was easy. I have a graduate degree in art from Stanford University. I used to do performance art, sculptures and paintings with performances around them. So music videos were a very easy transition for me.
DRE: Was there any resistance from industry people with you doing mainstream work?
GD: I hadnt done a hardcore porno movie in an awful long time. I did all these other things in between so I transitioned so the jurys ultimately out. Sometimes they like me as a video director sometimes they dont. I did do a pilot for MTV last year and Im doing three more pilots this year for them.
DRE: What are the pilots youre doing?
GD: Im doing a horror pilot and two I cant really talk about. One is based on a series of horror movies and I did one called To the Limit which is about street racing, Fast and the Furious meets Real World. That ones more like a reality show. The other two are a cross between scripted and reality.
DRE: Would you do a sequel to See No Evil?
GD: Sure. I think there are a lot of things you could play with.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
And Vince is one of the smarter guys you're gonna run into as well - he and Trump aren't great pals just because they're both rich - so I would expect WWE Films to become a serious player in the action / horror genres over time.
thats how I looked at it when I made adult films. I also did things like conceptual art pieces using sex scenes where I didnt try to make them erotic. I tried to make them bizarre and unusual and almost anti-erotic to see how the viewer would react.
- i want to act for this man.
as for the movie, the storyline still looks like something Id like miss.
I really dont understand torture porn.
Why
videodrome
whhhyyy???