I DON’T LIKE RULES

ROB ZOMBIE

rob-zombie-breed-grainy-3.jpg

Jan Doense had a chance to sit down with Rob Zombie on July 1, 2014 when the rock star and filmmaker was in The Netherlands for a concert. Jan loves a lot of Zombie’s movies, especially THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, which he finds mind blowing. He also had an ulterior motive to speak with the filmmaker: to gauge Zombie’s interest in doing a reboot of the COFFIN JOE movies, a project Jan himself was attached to as a co-producer. (Spoiler: it never came to pass.)

We’re both big horror fans. Now, my mother recently told me that she hoped it would be a passing phase in my youth. Has your mother ever said anything about your horror passion?

No, my mom likes all this stuff. So she never had any problem with it. But both of my parents thought I was a little bit nuts. Once you’re a bit successful, they’re like: okay! As soon as they see you can make money, they’re happy. Until then, they think you’re crazy.  

But what made you a horror fan to begin with?

I dunno. I think growing up as a kid – I lived on the East Coast – in an old New England town that looked like Sleepy Hollow, where there were lots of old cemeteries. So, there was always that look about everything. Also, in the late sixties there was a big boom of horror on television, because that’s where I saw everything. All the old Hammer films were on, the old Universal films. There were TV shows like The Munsters, The Addam’s Family and The Twilight Zone. There was so much horror stuff. I think that all influenced me. Ever since then I’ve been into it.  

What came first: wanting to make films, wanting to make music, publish comics?

I really loved all of it at the same time when I was a kid, but I never thought I could do any of it. It just didn’t seem possible. But as I grew a bit older, first towards the end of high school, and then when I was about nineteen, I discovered I could play punk rock. If you listen to Led Zeppelin you don’t immediately think you can play that, but if you listen to punk rock – which I loved – I really thought that if I could get some friends together we could start a band. So that’s why the music came first.

Now, making movies: I didn’t have a clue how to do this. Because back then, you still had to have film and a camera. Editing wasn’t like now, where you could do it on your phone. I always wanted to do it, but it just didn’t seem feasible. When the band started to become more popular and we started making music videos, I saw that as a way to get into films.  

So, as a filmmaker you are completely self taught.

Yeah. I’m self taught in everything. I don’t like being taught. When someone starts explaining things, I stop listening. I’ve always been like that, even as a little kid. I was terrible in school, because I wouldn’t listen. I would rather just figure it out myself. Even now, with everything from Avid editing to Photoshop, no one ever taught me. I just sit there and figure it out. Same thing with films and music.

I think it’s kind of good that way. I went to college for painting. I used to love to paint. But when I was in college, the way the instructors would deal with you, really made me hate painting. I realized so many of the instructors are failed painters. They don’t even like their students. They see them as competition. That really turned me off of painting. I never wanted that to happen with other things I love to do.

And also: I don’t like rules. In school people are always telling you what the rules are. These are the rules of filmmaking. These are the rules of this and that.

Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding in House of 1000 Corpses

Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding in House of 1000 Corpses

I can imagine being a self taught painter, but as a filmmaker you need equipment and a crew. As a director you need to be able to instruct those people, tell them what you want.

Oh yeah. By the time I made my first movie I had already made about thirty music videos. I learned a lot. It’s different, but it’s the same. You know what the art department does, how wardrobe works, what a camera crew consists of. The basics I knew. So, when I started my first movie, what I learned was stuff like scheduling. The reality of making a movie, which you are not going to learn in school. You can only learn that by making a movie. So by the time of THE DEVIL’S REJECTS I felt like I had gone through a crash course of filmmaking.

 

I was watching the making-of of THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, which is almost as long as the film itself. One thing that struck is how well prepared you are.

That was the main thing I learned on my first movie [HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES], was that you really have to be prepared. Once you’re on the set, there is no time. You already have to know the answer to every single question. That’s what I did on THE DEVIL’S REJECTS. I prepared every tiny little thing.

 

I assume that you also started making horror movies to share your love of the genre with other fans. It must be a bit disheartening to discover that there’s also a lot of criticism from horror fans of your movies.

Oh, I don’t care. Really. There’s harsh criticism on everything all the time. But the criticism changes as the years go on. Back when the first movie came out, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, everyone hated it.

 

Not me.

Okay. Not you. But most people did. Most reviews were bad. Everyone seemed to hate it. But now, everyone loves it. Now they say: that’s your best movie! We love it so much! That’s happened with all the records and all my movies so far. At first they say it’s not as good as the last one, and then you come out with a new one and suddenly everyone loved the one before. It probably takes time to judge things. I’m the same way. Sometimes I see a movie I really like, and then I see it again and I think it actually kind of sucks. The opposite happened as well: hated a movie the first time, saw it again years later and thought it was fucking genius. Criticism seems so random. I couldn’t be a critic. See something and immediately have an opinion on it. And so many of the movies I love, and the directors I love, even Stanley Kubrick, got bad reviews at first. Now he’s considered the greatest American filmmaker and all his movies are classics. And everybody was constantly trashing every movie he made. 2001, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BARRY LYNDON… Didn’t matter what he made, he got trashed. So… it’s all a bunch of bullshit. [Laughs]

The Devil’s Rejects

The Devil’s Rejects

In HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL’S REJECTS you had all these little in-jokes for horror fans to enjoy. But with THE LORDS OF SALEM you kind of steered away from that. Was that a conscious choice?

I just wanted to do something different. It’s really easy to do the same thing over and over again. A movie like THE DEVIL’S REJECTS is the most natural movie for me to make. I really like handheld camerawork. I like really rough movies. But I thought it might become a trap if I do every movie that way. So with THE LORDS OF SALEM I thought I would make it very simple, very composed. I won’t move the camera a lot. All the camera moves will be very slow. I’ll make things symmetrical. Just so that the movie felt different. I wanted the whole movie to seem like it was a dream. If I shot it in that other style it wouldn’t seem that way. For my next film I’ll probably go back and it will be more in the style of THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, if the actual story fits that style.

 

Is that the project called 31?

Yes. That’ll be the next thing.

 

When are you planning on shooting it?

I’ll probably start prepping in October and shooting in November.

 

How on earth do you combine recording, touring, preparing movies, shooting movies, finishing movies?

Well, I kinda do everything all at once. While I’m touring now I’m also working on the film. When I’m back home I will finish the record and also start location scouting. Once the movie actually starts in October, then I won’t do anything else. No music, no nothing. Then it’s one hundred percent the movie.

 

There are a lot of references to other horror movies in your films, but mostly from the seventies.

That’s my favorite time period of filmmaking. All my favorite directors and favorite films are from the seventies. The directors I really loved are the ones no one ever mentions as my influences. Everyone talks about John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper, but Don Siegel, Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah, those are the people that really influenced me. But people get hung up on the fact that I’m a horror director, so they assume all my influences must be other horror directors. But I really love seventies filmmaking. It was the last great time period of American cinema. The reason is: in the eighties all the corporations started buying the studios. Then it was all about: make as much money as you can for the shareholders. Now it’s pathetic. You can’t get any movie made that isn’t BATMAN or SUPERMAN or HARRY POTTER.

 

But even if you work on a smaller scale, like yourself, you can have problems with…

There are always problems. Because it’s really hard to get films made. The biggest thing that screwed horror movies is PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. Because they made it so cheap. It looks like it’s really cheap, ‘cause that’s the style of the film. So now every studio thinks that every horror film can be made for that same amount of money. But you can’t. You need actors, an art department. Not every movie can afford to look like it’s shot on someone’s cell phone.

THE DEVIL’S REJECTS cost seven million dollars. THE LORDS OF SALEM cost two. I can’t do it any cheaper than that, because then I can’t hire any quality people anymore. Shooting days get shorter. We shot THE LORDS OF SALEM in twenty days. That is fast! Especially in that style, because setting up shots takes a lot of time. THE DEVIL’S REJECTS took thirty days to shoot. HALLOWEEN was even more than that. That’s the difficulty.

The Lords of Salem

The Lords of Salem

How would you feel about doing a re-imagining of COFFIN JOE?

That’s funny that you should ask that, because I was just talking about that this morning.  

Well, I know the people who hold the rights and they asked me to ask you.

[Laughs] Okay. I don’t know. I’ve always loved the COFFIN JOE movies. I just don’t know  if people know those movies. Do people know them? I don’t think they do in America. 

Well, I read the script and there were some really good ideas in there.

I like the idea of it. And I also like the last movie [José Mojica Marins] made, EMBODIMENT OF EVIL. That was pretty cool. It actually looked pretty expensive. But it’s weird when you associate one actor with a character like that, and then you get somebody else to play it. I think that’s what they want to do. They want to get somebody younger.  

Yeah, the idea is to move the story to New Orleans.

Is that what they want to do? I haven’t read their script. I would rather go down there and shoot it in São Paolo.  

I think they would be open to any suggestion you make.

Somebody has already contacted my manager. They didn’t send us any script, just the idea of remaking COFFIN JOE. I got the e-mail about two days ago. It could be really cool and I think it’s a great character. I always loved those movie. I first met [José Mojica Marins] twenty something years ago, the first time I went to São Paolo. Yeah, so I do like the idea, but at this time I don’t have much information. I get a lot of offers and most of them don’t happen.

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This interview first appeared in a shorter version in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws. Above is the full version of this talk, edited only for clarity