Exclusive Interview: David Hess talks about Smash Cut
The film's premise is said to be inspired by the career and filmography of cult director Herschell Gordon Lewis whom invented the gore genre--
Television news celebrity April Carson (Sasha Grey) turns to the services of private investigator, Isaac Beaumonde (Jesse Buck) to seek her missing sister and assumes a role in a horror movie in the process. Carson eventually learns that the movie's director, Able Whitman (David Hess), is not only responsible for the disappearance of her sister, but that he has rendered her sister's body into props for the production. Able Whitman then requires more "props" for his film, which means more body parts,
which in turn requires a killing spree. Meanwhile, detective Beaumonde pursues an increasingly deadly and grisly case........
(The following interview was conducted in the SF Bay Area in late February 2009. Both David Hess (HESS) and interviewer Jamie Morrison's (JM) names will be shortened to initials)
JM: Your character in Smash Cut is a Director named Able Whitman. Tell us a little about Able's life.
HESS: Able was totally about film-making.......he was a professional. It's not that he was a bad filmmaker, he just wasn't a very good filmmaker. Able sees himself as a serious filmmaker and pictures himself like an American Fellini.
Able would open a film, people would laugh him out of the theater, then he'd go to this club where his girlfriend was waiting for him, and he'd get drunk.
This happened a few times. The last time they're on the way to his place, he has
an accident which kill his girlfriend – yet Able survives.
Already being a tortured soul, it just pushes him over the edge.
HESS: He was devastated. Able had all these pressures......He finally came up with this brilliant idea, he sees his dead beloved in the trunk just laying there bloody and just gorgeous, he thinks “I'm going to immortalize you” (she's lost an arm already *laughs*) so he decides to put her in his next film as a real live manniquin.
Critics and the audience look at the scene and they just love it. Able now goes on this vendetta, and kills everyone that's ever crossed him and he has a real plan in mind. The more he kills and puts his victims in the movies, the more the critics praise him.
JM: What did you do to get into the character for this role?
HESS: We were working on the role for quite some time. I was on the phone with Lee (Demarbre ) and Rob (Menzies) re-writing stuff, and I brought Michael Berryman on the phone to try to get him into the film....
JM: (Interrupting) You got Michael Berryman in the film? This is off the subject, but what's your relationship with Berryman?
HESS: We're close friends. We see each other a lot, even outside of the movie industry. We've worked on several films together, it was natural for me to call him.
Back to getting into the role............I didn't want to portray another Krug character, and as we talked about this after reading the script, I started to see the humor in it. I started to see this incredible black comedy where this guy (Able) is totally obsessed, nobody understands him, and he really envisions himself as a great director, but he's just not.
JM: So is Able a likable character, or just purely going for audience sympathy?
HESS: I've never personally played a character for audience sympathy. I've always tried to bring a slice of realism to the character that shows they're like everybody else, but just happens to kill people sometimes (laughing).
JM: Director Lee Demarbre has referred to Smash Cut as a “labor of love, created as an tribute to the great HG Lewis.” How do you think this film might bring justice to the splatter-film subgenre especially with the problematic, and quite simply, bad, remakes of HG lewis films that have occurred in the past few years?
HESS: Actually I didn't think the remake of 2000 Maniacs was too bad. Lee is definitely doing Smash Cut as a homage to HG Lewis, but there are many other homages in the film. There's this spatter technique that Lewis developed and a lot of it was tongue in cheek, nobody really got it at the time, people simply thought it was bad film making, it wasn't, but they weren't sophisticated enough to understand it. It is such a pleasure to work with somebody with these sensibilities.
JM: How is HG Lewis on a personal basis?
HESS: Lewis is a hoot. He is an economic genius, besides being a fun filmmaker.
JM: So maybe I should ask the creator of “2000 Maniacs” what to do with my 401k?
HESS: Don't think you have the largess. He works with billionaires for economic advice.
HESS: There's going to be a limited US release, as well as Canada. The film will probably hit the festival circuit -- US, Canada and Europe. I don't know what the audience will be, none of us do....I mean, we are all part of the audience. Best of all worlds it will go theatrical and flood the theaters.
JM: Is there anything in particular about Smash cut that you think will grab an audience's attention outside of the cult/horror genre? I know that fans will flock to this due to the all-star cast, but what about others?
HESS: I think this film breaks a lot of barriers. We all try to expand the characters, everyone just trying to elaborate their individual characters to show that they're more than just screen characters, more than 2-dimensional. It's a fusion film, and hopefully it will open up some new doors for film making in general. It certainly didn't hurt being able to shoot with the Red Camera!
To be continued in Part 2......................
David is scheduled to appear as part of "The Baddies" from Craven's Last House on the Left at Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors on April 17-19, 2009 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Come meet David and the Baddies as well as HG Lewis, Sasha Grey and more at the GRINDHOUSE Table.