In 2003, I interviewed legendary horrormeister Stuart Gordon for the now defunct Science Fiction Weekly from Scifi/SyFy.com. The piece, originally edited due to length concerns, is no longer available online.
As a Halloween treat, I’m reprinting the complete 6,000 word conversation in three easily-digestible blog entries.
One of my more enjoyable assignments, I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did chatting with the affable Gordon.
Stuart Gordon Interview
With Rick Klaw
Know for his creative uses of graphic violence, disturbing situations, and a diversity of subject material, Stuart Gordon is a legend in the low budget horror film industry. His movies Re-Animator and From Beyond influenced an entire generation of filmmakers including Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. While with Disney he created the popular Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and adapted Ray Bradbury’s play The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, which he first brought to the stage as part of the groundbreaking Organic Theater Company. Science Fiction Weekly was lucky enough to catch up with Stuart Gordon at the Alamo Drafthouse for the Austin, TX premiere of his latest film, King of the Ants, to discuss Lovecraft, the state of horror, Disney, perversity, and other interesting topics.
To prepare for this interview, I watched the only two Stuart Gordon films that I hadn’t seen. They were Castle Freak and The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, which I viewed back to back.
GORDON: (laughing)
I’ve got to tell you, I was a little confused. How do you go from being the guy who did things like Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit? Most people don’t do those kinds of things.
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a horror movie about a mad scientist whose experiment gets out of control with disastrous results. Everyone always goes, “Well, how can you do From Beyond and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” and I say, “It’s really the same movie.” The story is the same.
Yeah. You take the gore out, and it’s pretty much the same story.
We had some pretty horrific…I mean, it was funny. Disney was very worried about it when we were working on it, they kept saying “We want this to be more like The Absent-Minded Professor and less like The Fly.”
(laughing)
(laughing) They didn’t go for The Fly?
I had a big argument with them about what the ants should look like in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. They said to me, “What is this ant gonna look like?” and I said, “Well, it’s gonna look like an ant.” They said, “Isn’t that gonna scare the kids?” I said, “What do you think it should look like?” They said, “Well, we think it should have blue eyes, like, look sort of like E.T.”
Little eyelashes, maybe?
I said, “Well, E.T. scared more kids than an ant does.” Finally, it came down to, I had to take the executives to the shop that was building this giant ant puppet, and I said, “In a way, it’s good that they think it’s scary when they first see it, then it turns out that it’s not scary, it’s nice.” And when I said that, the ant, the guy that was puppeting it, had the ant come up and he put its antennae over my shoulders and sort of nuzzled me, like a horse would nuzzle somebody. Then all of a sudden it was okay. The Disney guys got it. They were very concerned about that movie.
Yeah I can see that. And with your reputation, of course, preceding you.
Yeah. And The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit I had originally directed as a play at The Organic Theater Company in 1973.
Really?
Yeah, with Joe Mantegna playing the same role that he plays in the movie. So it was kind of a return to my roots.
Right. You might be directing a David Mamet film? That’s kind of the same “going back to your roots” thing?
Yeah. Although the Mamet thing is a little more like the other movies I’ve done in that it’s a very disturbing piece. But, you know, Ray Bradbury became a good friend after we did the play, and we stayed in touch. He came up to me one day, we ran into each other on the street, and said, “What about doing The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit?” I brought him over to Disney to meet the executive who was the head of features, and Ray Bradbury wore a white suit. I thought, “We can’t lose!” We walked in and he said to the executive, “Boy, I’m so excited. The last time I was here, I had lunch with Walt.” And the executive said, “Walt’s dead.”
(laughing) Wow!
Yeah, yeah, so Ray and I are like, “What’s going on here?” Then Ray says, he’s trying to kind of smooth things over, he goes, “I want to congratulate you on the success of the animated features.” The guy goes, “You don’t have to lie to me. The only person you have to lie to is your mother.” Then Bradbury says, “Well, sometimes, you just feel like you’re in a room full of mothers.” That was the beginning and the end of the meeting right there. The guy passed on the project, and I called Ray to tell him, and he said, “Gosh, it’s really surprising, because I know that Roy Disney really likes this story and play. He’d seen the play many times.” I called Roy and I told him what had happened with the executive, and he said, “Well, come on to my office.” We go to his office and there’s the executive sitting there, and Roy says, “I think we should make this movie, don’t you?” That’s how it got made.
Soon after you returned to horror with Dagon. Do you see your career going in that direction, or are you looking to do lighter fare again or does it really matter that much to you?
I kind of like to mix it up a little bit, because I think if you do the same thing too often, you get kind of tired of it. King of the Ants is a kind of different thing for me, too.
It is a different kind of film for you. I know you’ve talked about this elsewhere before, but the people reading this interview may have never heard this story, how did King of the Ants come about?
It was really George Wendt who brought the book to me, and he said, “If you like this, I’ll option it.” I read it, and it was… I was completely shocked by this book, ‘cause, it’s the story about a guy who murders an innocent man about a third of the way through the story. I couldn’t believe that they were going to have this very likable protagonist commit murder. But he does. And somehow, you’re still with him, and that was the thing that really drew me to the story. I couldn’t figure out how the author had accomplished that.
So you hired him to do the screenplay?
Yeah. And he worked on it… I would say he worked on the screenplay for almost two years. He really did a lot of departures from the book. First of all, the book is set in London, and Charlie Higson, the writer is English, Americanized it and moved it to L.A. He really did a lot of changes, particularly in the second half, from the novel. It was a big departure. In the novel, the main character does not end up going back to the wife of the man that he murders. That was all new, specifically created for the film.
It’s interesting; because it reminded me of…have you ever read The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks? Are you familiar with that book?
No.
It’s about a little boy who has this wasp factory. He keeps this factory and he grows wasps in it. He goes out every day to predict things, and the wasps tell him that his brother, who’s a serial killer, has escaped from the insane asylum and is coming home. The whole story is him doing these depraved things to welcome his brother home. These horrible, horrendous acts. It reminded me a lot of that, and it’s interesting, because the whole tone is very similar. I don’t want to tell you more, because the end of the book is a big shock ending. It’s one of those ending where you go, “Whoa.”
It turns out he is the brother.
No, no, his brother shows up. It’s much more shocking than that. It’s one of those things where you see the end, you read it, and when you re-read it again, you see the ending coming, but you don’t catch the clues the first time.
That’s great. I’ll look for it. That sounds good.
The ending of King of the Ants definitely left it open for a sequel. Are there plans for a sequel? Did Higson write more stories?
Well, he’s written more. He’s written three other novels, but they’re not about this character. They’re all great. All of them would make great movies. But, I have talked to him about a sequel, because it would be kind of fun. We’re talking about some ideas for it. There’s still a few people left alive. Including the little girl, the daughter, which could be pretty horrifying sequence. We were even thinking on the idea that Susan could still be alive, that she’s not dead but she’s had some, brain damage so that she doesn’t remember him.
Do you want to direct more crime films?
To me, it’s all about the story. The thing I loved about this was that I never knew what was going to happen next, so if it’s a story that’s a good story, I’ll do it. It doesn’t really matter if it’s Lovecraft or, horror, or what it is, as long as it’s something that I think is going to keep people guessing and wondering and sort of on the edge of their seat.
Early in your career you were closely associated with Lovecraft. Nobody else has ever made as good or successful Lovecraft films as you. There have been many Lovecraft movies made, but you seem to be the only one who was able to pull it off.
Oh, thank you.
They’re not exactly like the original tales. You have added your own vision to them. Lovecraft fans, even though they’re such a rabid lot, almost universally love your movies. Why are you able to make good Lovecraft films when nobody else can seem to do it?
You can’t literally take something from the page and just shoot it, because, Lovecraft wrote great stories, but you have to make a movie. It’s a different medium. One time I was working on a play adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut book called The Sirens of Titan. Kurt Vonnegut came to see it when it was in previews, and he had the best comment. He looked at me and said, “I think you have to pretend I’ve been dead for ten years.”
(laughing) No problem there with Lovecraft.
Well, yeah. What Vonnegut was saying was that we were too literal, too literally following the book, and that we have to…you have to make changes. You have to combine characters and you have to make it more visual or more action-oriented, or whatever. You have to be able to take some liberties with it to make a good adaptation. And I think that’s true with Lovecraft, too. I think you have to go for the essence of what he’s trying to do, but you can’t slavishly follow the stories. I think it’s a question of choosing the right stories, too, because some of his stories are very internal, and those would be very difficult to adapt. But the ones that I’ve picked have been more action-packed. Re-Animator is like wall-to-wall action. The short stories are just…they’re amazing. And the same is true of “The Shadow over Insmouth”, which is the basis for Dagon. It’s a chase. There’s a lot of action in it. I think that’s kind of the secret. I’ve been lucky that I’ve had Dennis Paoli to work with, and he really understands Lovecraft.
What drew you to Lovecraft and what made you interested in doing this stuff?
I always found his stories to be the creepiest stories when I was a kid. I would read him when I was a teenager, and he just…suggests so much. The idea of all of these hidden worlds, and that, I think, is really tantalizing. He has this comment where he says: “Man lives on an island of ignorance, sort of surrounded by forces that are beyond his control.” I think that’s something we all can relate to. We all feel that way a lot especially these days. So in a way, Lovecraft has become more timely as time passes and his fans are now legion. And he’s just building power.