Filmmaker Lucky McKee certainly lives up to his name. Just after releasing one film, May, McKee was invited to participate in one of the greatest gatherings of directors ever on television, Masters of Horror. McKee has apparently proved himself to certain Masters with May becoming a cult film and The Woods quickly gathering buzz on the festival circuit. He handled his episode of Masters of Horror like a pro. McKees episode, Sick Girl, has Angela Bettis [star of May] as a lonely and awkward young entomologist. She meets a young artist [Misty Mundae] and they fall in love but soon one of Bettis pets escapes and infects them with a disease.
Buy the Masters of Horror DVD Sick Girl
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Lucky McKee: Just preparing for a trip. Im going to Fantasia this weekend to show The Woods and The Lost.
DRE: Are they the first public audience to have seen it?
LM: No, I brought it to the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival a couple months ago. It went over really well there.
DRE: Has it been picked up yet?
LM: Yeah, Sony owns it. I made it for MGM. Thats why its taken so long for it to come out because right as I finished the film, MGM got bought by Sony. Nobody wanted to claim it because its a little left of center. They finally figured out who owns what and theyre going to get it out there.
DRE: How was it going to these Masters of Horror pizza parties in the first place?
LM: Awesome, man. I had become friends with Tobe Hooper awhile before that and eventually they just started inviting me and Eli [Roth] and Richard Kelly and Tim Sullivan to these dinners. It was totally surreal man. I grew up idolizing these guys and I still idolize these guys so to be invited into that circle was a pretty big honor for me. Just being invited to dinner with them, much less making one of the shows was unbelievable.
DRE: Was it Tobe that invited you to the dinners?
LM: I think it mightve been Mick Garris because Mick and Tobe are really good friends. They just asked me to come along. Its really cool because its like a round robin thing. You just move from chair to chair and introduce yourself and listen to these guys tell war stories and stuff like that. I have nothing but respect for those guys and a good handful of them have been great mentors to me going through my first studio experience. It is awesome to be able to learn from brains that have that much information in them.
DRE: Were you able to eat pizza or were you too nervous?
LM: I ate but not very much. The ones I went to werent at pizza joints. They were at OK restaurants. I think I ate a hamburger next to John Carpenter at the last one.
DRE: So obviously it was Mick who asked if you wanted to direct an episode.
LM: Yeah. Word just came through my agency that [Roger] Corman wasnt able to do his episode so they thought it would be cool to bring in some young blood. Everybody was really big fans of May and I think Tobe had been watching me put The Woods together and was really impressed by that. I guess their rule was that you had to make two interesting films in the genre to be able to jump in there. We just clicked. It was really effortless, actually.
DRE: The other guys who directed episodes have done extremely low budget movies and some of them have done extremely high budget movies. I think any budget you throw at these guys, they could probably do something. But with you coming from just low budget experiences, was Sick Girl much of a problem for you?
LM: Not at all. I adapted the material to fit the situation and just made sure that what I didnt have in experience I made up for in enthusiasm and preparation. We came in under schedule on a lot of our days. We had 10 days to shoot and it was organized just the right way. I had a really good team and I had worked with all the actors before. The whole thing was like baby bears bed. It was just right.
DRE: Was it the same script Corman was supposed to shoot?
LM: No. They gave me three different scripts, one of which was Haeckel's Tale that Mick Garris adapted from a Clive Barker story. That didnt really strike my fancy. They sent me another one written by the guy that wrote 30 Days of Night [Steve Niles]. It was a really cool script, but not my cup of tea. Then Sick Girl seemed like something I could work with the writer a little bit and then take into my own hands and turn into one of my things.
DRE: At this point we dont really know what your sort of thing is exactly.
LM: I guess not. Ive been involved in about six movies in the last several years and Sick Girl is the second one thats come out to the public. But weve got a few more things rolling out this year, so youll get an idea relatively soon.
DRE: Did you work much with [Sick Girl screenwriter] Sean Hood?
LM: Sean did a pass for me on the script and changed the main character to a woman for me, which was something I asked him to do. Then I took it over from there because I have learned that I have to take the script into my own hands before I film it so I can really soak it in my bones and make it my own thing. This is a directors show, so it had to have some stamp on it.
DRE: Did you want to change it to a woman because you thought it fit better or because you wanted Angela to play the main role?
LM: Both. I thought dramatically it was more interesting and plus Angela is my favorite. Id redesign the world for her. We just have an effortless working relationship and she truly understands the emotions, sense of humor and style that Im trying to capture. It all just comes out effortlessly from her. We just have that bond.
DRE: Did you help design the bugs?
LM: I had specific requests. I designed with my little thumbnail sketches but KNB really brings it to life. I did design Mistys transformation with the feelers coming out of her back and the way her eyes would open vertically as opposed to horizontally. I thought that would be a trippy image. The bug just came from just going back and forth with KNB. It was really important that it was unique and colorful. I used blue for the first in this movie, including blue light, which Ive always been afraid of so I decided to go for it
DRE: Why did blue matter?
LM: Because I had never used it before and I wanted to take the bull by the horns. Ive always been notorious amongst my friends for saying I just hated blue and I just didnt want blue anywhere. In The Woods, we had my DP remove as much blue light as possible so the nighttime scenes could be really stark and more like moonlight than like a James Cameron movie. That stuff is great, but just didnt fit my sensibility at the time. With Sick Girl I just said, Im going to see what blues all about. It had a cool subconscious affect on me as I was making the film to separate it from others I had done in the past.
DRE: Did you cast Misty because you were in Canada?
LM: No, shes from New Jersey.
DRE: How did you find her?
LM: Chris Sivertson had used her in the opening sequence of The Lost which I produced. She really impressed me. When Sick Girl came along, I thought, How cool would it be to have Angela Bettis and Misty Mundae in a movie together? So I redesigned the part for her and made it about her eyes. Angela really worked with her and helped her prepare. By the time she got to the set, she was a joy to work with. I dont think she had ever been treated as well on a film [laughs].
DRE: I know that you work a lot with your friends. Was it the same for The Woods as well?
LM: No, for The Woods I was isolated pretty much like the main character in the story. I wasnt allowed to use anybody to help me get a foothold in the business with May, which was really hard on me. But I got to work with some great veterans, all of whom I have created new personal connections with and who Id love to work with again. But The Woods was really me just going out on my own. A kid in his late 20s trying to keep a handle on a gigantic beast of a film. I had good veterans around me to help me do that, they really listened to me and transposed what was in my mind onto the screen.
For my next film a lot of my crew that I made May with finally have the resumes and experience so no one to give me shit about using them. So were all going to team back up on this next one Im making.
DRE: How did you like the crews in Vancouver for Sick Girl?
LM: I loved them. The DP, Attila Szalay, was so fast and so nailed the lighting schemes. It was an awesome crew of people. It was a well-oiled machine that was pretty stoked when I came in and was bringing my days in under schedule because they were at the tail-end of a really grueling season. You cant make a good movie without good people.
DRE: None of the directors seems to like their picture on the DVD and Don Coscarelli thinks he looks Asian. What do you think of yours?
LM: I think its cool. I cracked up when I saw it. I was like, Oh man. You got to be fucking kidding me. My face is going to be on the DVD in Wal-Mart? They painted it from a still picture in the movie Roman that Angela and I made where I played the main character and she directed me. Its so funny that it is my sad Roman face staring back at you. I think the DVDs are cool. I think they catch your eye. Theyre different. Theyre not just a bunch of heads floating around in space. Theyre pieces of art, which I appreciate.
DRE: Is Angela anything like the characters youve created for her?
LM: No, absolutely not. Shes just this down home chick from Austin that is a good person with a good heart. She becomes another person when she plays a part. Its amazing to watch her voice and mannerisms change. Shes truly special.
DRE: Were you nervous about acting for her?
LM: Theres a comfort level between us and we shot the movie on digital so it was very intimate. The guy that shot it is Angelas boyfriend and my oldest friend. We used to play soccer against each other when we were in elementary school. The first week of the shoot it was just the three of us, shooting this really intimate, sad, fucked up little movie. Angela is a great actress and shes also a totally natural director and she got great performances out of everybody. I dont feel like Im watching myself when I watch the film and thats a tribute to Angela. Plus I wrote the script, so it was a little bit easier for me because I knew where the material was coming from and what it meant to me personally. It wouldve been harder working off somebody elses script since I am not an actor.
DRE: Youre not doing an episode for the second season of Masters of Horror, right?
LM: I havent been invited. I would gladly go at the drop of a dime but Im shooting something else this fall.
DRE: Were you surprised at how quickly May became a big cult movie?
LM: It didnt feel like it happened that quickly. I wrote the movie in 1996 and we finished it in 02. It took about a year for it to come out after Sundance. It was building word of mouth at festivals and stuff. I think people identify with some of the emotional themes in it and anybody can relate to being lonely. The movie is rooted in my love of Nirvanas music and the images that painted in my head and Martin Scorseses Taxi Driver and Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. Those are pretty universally recognized great artists and great works of art. I used those as heavy inspiration and tried to make the movie with the seriousness of those works.
DRE: Obviously Sick Girl has a lot of loneliness aspects to it too. Does The Woods touch on that as well?
LM: Yeah. Its about a girl that gets sent to boarding school in the middle of nowhere. Her parents leave her there and she doesnt want to make friends with anybody. Shes very different from May in that shes a tough girl. She ends up not being able to escape and finds one good friend and now its those two against the world. Its definitely a story about a girl thats isolated emotionally, but she handles it in a completely different way. She was a really fun character to direct and the actress, Agnes Bruckner, is also very special.
DRE: Were your parents divorced or were you a latchkey kid?
LM: My parents divorced when I was in middle school. That was tough, but ultimately it was for the good of both of them. They still have a healthy relationship. My parents never talked down to me growing up so I learned a lot from that.
DRE: Were you one of those lonely kids who just watched movies at his house all day?
LM: Yeah, I was a comic book kid. I eventually found my way into films when I realized I couldnt draw as good as my favorite artists. I started making videos when I was 13 years old. I had like a couple friends who would make movies with me, but it wasnt their passion besides my friend Kevin Ford, who ended up shooting Roman for us. Its lonely when youre the only one into a certain thing, but once I went to USC, it was exactly the opposite. Now it was like everybody and their fucking brother wanted to make movies. May definitely sprang from those experiences and emotional things I was going through. Its an angst movie for sure, but I felt like I got a lot of negative stuff out of me. Making that film changed me as a person.
DRE: Do you have a girlfriend?
LM: Yeah.
DRE: Did you meet her on the road?
LM: I met her on The Woods. She was the apprentice in the sound department on The Woods. Weve been together ever since.
DRE: Is she a horror buff?
LM: Not really.
DRE: Hows that working out?
LM: Its all good. Shes just interested in film in general. She went to film school herself but shes more interested in the technical process of making film than the creative stuff.
DRE: Obviously youre a guy who generates most of his own material, but have you been offered awful sequels and stuff like that?
LM: Yeah, after awhile I had to tell them, Stop sending me remakes of Japanese things. I want to make American horror films. The Japanese are doing fine on their own. Its great to take inspiration from them like theyre taking inspiration from David Lynch, but at the same time I dont want to just remake something that one of my contemporaries just made. I just think thats insulting to them and boring for me. Remakes are all anybody wants to do. Its annoying. Those are the films that are coming out and The Woods has been sitting in limbo this whole time while its still as influenced by films like Suspiria and things like that. Its still got its own stamp. Its unique and I think thats part of why it hasnt come out yet. I think the studios a little bit baffled by it.
DRE: Are you the point where you want it to go straight to DVD?
LM: Yeah. I just want people to be able to see it. I dont want anybody to ask me about it anymore. I just want them to see it and not speculate on what it is. When they see it, theyll just say, What was the big fucking deal? This things cool. Its interesting. The audiovisual experience of it is the one Im the most proud of. The only frustrating thing is that it plays really nice on the screen and the cinematography is totally lush. For the sound design I used this guy named Ronald Eng who works with David Lynch a lot. He just spent months just doing such intricate work at every level on the thing. Hes great. Ron also did a favor for us and did the sound on The Lost, which is a totally different type of soundtrack. Its much more abrasive. He put so much density into the sound. When it gets loud, it gets fucking loud. Were in the red. We had to mix the movie not unlike a Nirvana record with that loud/quiet loud sort of approach which worked great.
DRE: Does Roman have a distributor?
LM: Not yet. Were still finishing it up. Were going to be doing some color and sound corrections when we get our asses together. I think itll be a real treat for fans of May because its the flip side. May is a story about a lonely girl that loses her mind and Roman is a story about a lonely guy that starts out crazy and becomes sane over of the course of the film.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy the Masters of Horror DVD Sick Girl
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Lucky McKee: Just preparing for a trip. Im going to Fantasia this weekend to show The Woods and The Lost.
DRE: Are they the first public audience to have seen it?
LM: No, I brought it to the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival a couple months ago. It went over really well there.
DRE: Has it been picked up yet?
LM: Yeah, Sony owns it. I made it for MGM. Thats why its taken so long for it to come out because right as I finished the film, MGM got bought by Sony. Nobody wanted to claim it because its a little left of center. They finally figured out who owns what and theyre going to get it out there.
DRE: How was it going to these Masters of Horror pizza parties in the first place?
LM: Awesome, man. I had become friends with Tobe Hooper awhile before that and eventually they just started inviting me and Eli [Roth] and Richard Kelly and Tim Sullivan to these dinners. It was totally surreal man. I grew up idolizing these guys and I still idolize these guys so to be invited into that circle was a pretty big honor for me. Just being invited to dinner with them, much less making one of the shows was unbelievable.
DRE: Was it Tobe that invited you to the dinners?
LM: I think it mightve been Mick Garris because Mick and Tobe are really good friends. They just asked me to come along. Its really cool because its like a round robin thing. You just move from chair to chair and introduce yourself and listen to these guys tell war stories and stuff like that. I have nothing but respect for those guys and a good handful of them have been great mentors to me going through my first studio experience. It is awesome to be able to learn from brains that have that much information in them.
DRE: Were you able to eat pizza or were you too nervous?
LM: I ate but not very much. The ones I went to werent at pizza joints. They were at OK restaurants. I think I ate a hamburger next to John Carpenter at the last one.
DRE: So obviously it was Mick who asked if you wanted to direct an episode.
LM: Yeah. Word just came through my agency that [Roger] Corman wasnt able to do his episode so they thought it would be cool to bring in some young blood. Everybody was really big fans of May and I think Tobe had been watching me put The Woods together and was really impressed by that. I guess their rule was that you had to make two interesting films in the genre to be able to jump in there. We just clicked. It was really effortless, actually.
DRE: The other guys who directed episodes have done extremely low budget movies and some of them have done extremely high budget movies. I think any budget you throw at these guys, they could probably do something. But with you coming from just low budget experiences, was Sick Girl much of a problem for you?
LM: Not at all. I adapted the material to fit the situation and just made sure that what I didnt have in experience I made up for in enthusiasm and preparation. We came in under schedule on a lot of our days. We had 10 days to shoot and it was organized just the right way. I had a really good team and I had worked with all the actors before. The whole thing was like baby bears bed. It was just right.
DRE: Was it the same script Corman was supposed to shoot?
LM: No. They gave me three different scripts, one of which was Haeckel's Tale that Mick Garris adapted from a Clive Barker story. That didnt really strike my fancy. They sent me another one written by the guy that wrote 30 Days of Night [Steve Niles]. It was a really cool script, but not my cup of tea. Then Sick Girl seemed like something I could work with the writer a little bit and then take into my own hands and turn into one of my things.
DRE: At this point we dont really know what your sort of thing is exactly.
LM: I guess not. Ive been involved in about six movies in the last several years and Sick Girl is the second one thats come out to the public. But weve got a few more things rolling out this year, so youll get an idea relatively soon.
DRE: Did you work much with [Sick Girl screenwriter] Sean Hood?
LM: Sean did a pass for me on the script and changed the main character to a woman for me, which was something I asked him to do. Then I took it over from there because I have learned that I have to take the script into my own hands before I film it so I can really soak it in my bones and make it my own thing. This is a directors show, so it had to have some stamp on it.
DRE: Did you want to change it to a woman because you thought it fit better or because you wanted Angela to play the main role?
LM: Both. I thought dramatically it was more interesting and plus Angela is my favorite. Id redesign the world for her. We just have an effortless working relationship and she truly understands the emotions, sense of humor and style that Im trying to capture. It all just comes out effortlessly from her. We just have that bond.
DRE: Did you help design the bugs?
LM: I had specific requests. I designed with my little thumbnail sketches but KNB really brings it to life. I did design Mistys transformation with the feelers coming out of her back and the way her eyes would open vertically as opposed to horizontally. I thought that would be a trippy image. The bug just came from just going back and forth with KNB. It was really important that it was unique and colorful. I used blue for the first in this movie, including blue light, which Ive always been afraid of so I decided to go for it
DRE: Why did blue matter?
LM: Because I had never used it before and I wanted to take the bull by the horns. Ive always been notorious amongst my friends for saying I just hated blue and I just didnt want blue anywhere. In The Woods, we had my DP remove as much blue light as possible so the nighttime scenes could be really stark and more like moonlight than like a James Cameron movie. That stuff is great, but just didnt fit my sensibility at the time. With Sick Girl I just said, Im going to see what blues all about. It had a cool subconscious affect on me as I was making the film to separate it from others I had done in the past.
DRE: Did you cast Misty because you were in Canada?
LM: No, shes from New Jersey.
DRE: How did you find her?
LM: Chris Sivertson had used her in the opening sequence of The Lost which I produced. She really impressed me. When Sick Girl came along, I thought, How cool would it be to have Angela Bettis and Misty Mundae in a movie together? So I redesigned the part for her and made it about her eyes. Angela really worked with her and helped her prepare. By the time she got to the set, she was a joy to work with. I dont think she had ever been treated as well on a film [laughs].
DRE: I know that you work a lot with your friends. Was it the same for The Woods as well?
LM: No, for The Woods I was isolated pretty much like the main character in the story. I wasnt allowed to use anybody to help me get a foothold in the business with May, which was really hard on me. But I got to work with some great veterans, all of whom I have created new personal connections with and who Id love to work with again. But The Woods was really me just going out on my own. A kid in his late 20s trying to keep a handle on a gigantic beast of a film. I had good veterans around me to help me do that, they really listened to me and transposed what was in my mind onto the screen.
For my next film a lot of my crew that I made May with finally have the resumes and experience so no one to give me shit about using them. So were all going to team back up on this next one Im making.
DRE: How did you like the crews in Vancouver for Sick Girl?
LM: I loved them. The DP, Attila Szalay, was so fast and so nailed the lighting schemes. It was an awesome crew of people. It was a well-oiled machine that was pretty stoked when I came in and was bringing my days in under schedule because they were at the tail-end of a really grueling season. You cant make a good movie without good people.
DRE: None of the directors seems to like their picture on the DVD and Don Coscarelli thinks he looks Asian. What do you think of yours?
LM: I think its cool. I cracked up when I saw it. I was like, Oh man. You got to be fucking kidding me. My face is going to be on the DVD in Wal-Mart? They painted it from a still picture in the movie Roman that Angela and I made where I played the main character and she directed me. Its so funny that it is my sad Roman face staring back at you. I think the DVDs are cool. I think they catch your eye. Theyre different. Theyre not just a bunch of heads floating around in space. Theyre pieces of art, which I appreciate.
DRE: Is Angela anything like the characters youve created for her?
LM: No, absolutely not. Shes just this down home chick from Austin that is a good person with a good heart. She becomes another person when she plays a part. Its amazing to watch her voice and mannerisms change. Shes truly special.
DRE: Were you nervous about acting for her?
LM: Theres a comfort level between us and we shot the movie on digital so it was very intimate. The guy that shot it is Angelas boyfriend and my oldest friend. We used to play soccer against each other when we were in elementary school. The first week of the shoot it was just the three of us, shooting this really intimate, sad, fucked up little movie. Angela is a great actress and shes also a totally natural director and she got great performances out of everybody. I dont feel like Im watching myself when I watch the film and thats a tribute to Angela. Plus I wrote the script, so it was a little bit easier for me because I knew where the material was coming from and what it meant to me personally. It wouldve been harder working off somebody elses script since I am not an actor.
DRE: Youre not doing an episode for the second season of Masters of Horror, right?
LM: I havent been invited. I would gladly go at the drop of a dime but Im shooting something else this fall.
DRE: Were you surprised at how quickly May became a big cult movie?
LM: It didnt feel like it happened that quickly. I wrote the movie in 1996 and we finished it in 02. It took about a year for it to come out after Sundance. It was building word of mouth at festivals and stuff. I think people identify with some of the emotional themes in it and anybody can relate to being lonely. The movie is rooted in my love of Nirvanas music and the images that painted in my head and Martin Scorseses Taxi Driver and Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. Those are pretty universally recognized great artists and great works of art. I used those as heavy inspiration and tried to make the movie with the seriousness of those works.
DRE: Obviously Sick Girl has a lot of loneliness aspects to it too. Does The Woods touch on that as well?
LM: Yeah. Its about a girl that gets sent to boarding school in the middle of nowhere. Her parents leave her there and she doesnt want to make friends with anybody. Shes very different from May in that shes a tough girl. She ends up not being able to escape and finds one good friend and now its those two against the world. Its definitely a story about a girl thats isolated emotionally, but she handles it in a completely different way. She was a really fun character to direct and the actress, Agnes Bruckner, is also very special.
DRE: Were your parents divorced or were you a latchkey kid?
LM: My parents divorced when I was in middle school. That was tough, but ultimately it was for the good of both of them. They still have a healthy relationship. My parents never talked down to me growing up so I learned a lot from that.
DRE: Were you one of those lonely kids who just watched movies at his house all day?
LM: Yeah, I was a comic book kid. I eventually found my way into films when I realized I couldnt draw as good as my favorite artists. I started making videos when I was 13 years old. I had like a couple friends who would make movies with me, but it wasnt their passion besides my friend Kevin Ford, who ended up shooting Roman for us. Its lonely when youre the only one into a certain thing, but once I went to USC, it was exactly the opposite. Now it was like everybody and their fucking brother wanted to make movies. May definitely sprang from those experiences and emotional things I was going through. Its an angst movie for sure, but I felt like I got a lot of negative stuff out of me. Making that film changed me as a person.
DRE: Do you have a girlfriend?
LM: Yeah.
DRE: Did you meet her on the road?
LM: I met her on The Woods. She was the apprentice in the sound department on The Woods. Weve been together ever since.
DRE: Is she a horror buff?
LM: Not really.
DRE: Hows that working out?
LM: Its all good. Shes just interested in film in general. She went to film school herself but shes more interested in the technical process of making film than the creative stuff.
DRE: Obviously youre a guy who generates most of his own material, but have you been offered awful sequels and stuff like that?
LM: Yeah, after awhile I had to tell them, Stop sending me remakes of Japanese things. I want to make American horror films. The Japanese are doing fine on their own. Its great to take inspiration from them like theyre taking inspiration from David Lynch, but at the same time I dont want to just remake something that one of my contemporaries just made. I just think thats insulting to them and boring for me. Remakes are all anybody wants to do. Its annoying. Those are the films that are coming out and The Woods has been sitting in limbo this whole time while its still as influenced by films like Suspiria and things like that. Its still got its own stamp. Its unique and I think thats part of why it hasnt come out yet. I think the studios a little bit baffled by it.
DRE: Are you the point where you want it to go straight to DVD?
LM: Yeah. I just want people to be able to see it. I dont want anybody to ask me about it anymore. I just want them to see it and not speculate on what it is. When they see it, theyll just say, What was the big fucking deal? This things cool. Its interesting. The audiovisual experience of it is the one Im the most proud of. The only frustrating thing is that it plays really nice on the screen and the cinematography is totally lush. For the sound design I used this guy named Ronald Eng who works with David Lynch a lot. He just spent months just doing such intricate work at every level on the thing. Hes great. Ron also did a favor for us and did the sound on The Lost, which is a totally different type of soundtrack. Its much more abrasive. He put so much density into the sound. When it gets loud, it gets fucking loud. Were in the red. We had to mix the movie not unlike a Nirvana record with that loud/quiet loud sort of approach which worked great.
DRE: Does Roman have a distributor?
LM: Not yet. Were still finishing it up. Were going to be doing some color and sound corrections when we get our asses together. I think itll be a real treat for fans of May because its the flip side. May is a story about a lonely girl that loses her mind and Roman is a story about a lonely guy that starts out crazy and becomes sane over of the course of the film.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
huge huge fan of Angelia Bettis