Aussie director Russell Mulcahy has certainly had an interesting career. Starting off making music videos, he broke into the film world with his bizarre but effective 1984 horror movie Razorback, about a wild pig that terrorises the locals in the Aussie outback. He then hit the big time with Highlander (and we’ll ignore the fact he also made Highlander II), following it with Blue Ice and The Shadow.
In recent years he’s been prolific in both film and TV, getting a bit of a career resurgence recently with Resident Evil: Extinction, The Scorpion King: Rise Of A Warrior and the Golden Globe nominated TV movie, Prayers For Bobby, starring Sigourney Weaver.
His latest movie is the unusual neo-noir Give ‘Em Hell, Malone, starring Thomas Jane, Ving Rhames and Elsa Pataky. With the movie coming out on DVD on Monday May 17th in the UK, Movie Muser’s Tim Isaac spoke to Russell about Give ‘Em Hell, Malone, as well as his upcoming projects, including the pilot for a TV version of Teen Wolf, and Bait, a 3D movie featuring sharks attacking people in the supermarket (no really, it is).
So how did you get involved with Give ‘Em Hell, Malone?
We’d been trying another film on the road, based on a book I own called The Watcher, and while that was going on the script for Malone came along, so we decided to do that.
What did you think when you first read the script for Give ‘Em Hell, Malone, as it is quite unusual?
I guess that’s why I liked it. It seemed to be taking a different direction than is usual for that genre. With any movie I like to take the left hand fork, and Malone definitely gave me the opportunity to do that.
So how would you describe the film’s aesthetic? It’s a bit film noir, it’s a bit modern, it’s a bit 1940s...
Yeah, it’s modern noir. We wanted to set it in a no town, no time place, where the mixture of the classic noir world, plus the cell phones, plus everything else came together. It’s in its own world.
Are you a big fan of film noir?
Oh yes, I’m a fan of many genres, but obviously I grew up and loved films like Killers and many, many noir films. I think they broke the rules, and they generated cinematic creativity. Usually they were b-films and I think in the b-film genre you get a lot more room to experiment. It’s just a great genre to work in, both cinematically and also character-wise, I think.
Particularly visually, Malone is a very stylish movie. Did it take long to come up with the look of the film?
Umm, not really. Because Thomas Jane and I worked closely with Mark [Hosack], the writer, and also I’m good friends with Tim Bradsheet, who’s a wonderful graphic artist. So we were all on the same wavelength of where we wanted things to go.
The opening shoot-out is particularly impressive and kinetic. How do you go about designing and putting together something like that for a film, as it seems like an immensely complicated thing to do?
Well, I guess it’s partly setting up the situation, and also things like I wanted when the bullets hit, whether it’s a wall or a person, I wanted you to feel it. I wanted the camera to be there so it’s in your face, even to the point where it’s under the floor and you see all the bloody footprints as the feet walk over you. I just wanted grab the audience in the opening minutes and also show them different angles on that scenario.
You mentioned that Thomas Jane worked closely with you and the screenwriter, so was he involved in Malone from fairly early on in the process?
Very much so. We talked a lot about his look, the style of the cars, the guns, not so much the cinematic style, even though he’s now a director – he directed a film called Dark Country, which is really good – but he does have a very good visual style. Talking with Tim Bradsheet, we talked about colours, angles and just accentuating everything, so it was taking life and turning the volume up to 11.
The film definitely has the sense of being the start of a series. Is there likely to be a sequel, and if so would you like to direct it?
Oh yeah. We had a great time. We had a wonderful supporting cast come in, people I’ve worked with before, like Leland Orser. A lot of people just jumped on board and came up for the weekend or came up for three days and did their bit, so it was a lot of reuniting with people I’ve worked with before. It was just a very simple idea. What I like about these films is that they seem to be complicated, but they’re actually about a very simple premise, and keeping the audience wondering why the simple premise is so important to someone.
I was looking over your filmography, and it seems you’ve delved into a lot of different genres over the years. Was that a conscious choice on your part?
Well, probably. To be honest my favourite genre is the horror-thriller genre, and they’re the films I gravitate to as a filmgoer. But I also do love making films on much more sober, more human subjects, such as a Geoffrey Rush film I did called Swimming Upstream, and then even exploring humour and comedy such as The Real McCoy or Queer As Folk [US TV version]. So yeah, I have various tastes, which is like my iPod on shuffle, where it’ll go anywhere. I’m pretty eclectic in my tastes.
So you don’t have any preconceptions about, ‘I want to do this sort of film next’, it’s more about what comes along and what excites you...
It comes down to what I would like to see. Generally I feel, since I was a kid, that I like the creepy movies, but I like most genres and feel comfortable with them, and that when I direct them I’m expanding my knowledge as a filmmaker and as a human being. I think it helps one grow not to just get stuck in one genre.
You made a very different sort of film just before Give ‘Em Hell, Malone, called Prayer For Bobby...
Again yeah, a very passionate human story. It has Sigourney Weaver in a true story, and again done completely from the heart. What I stopped doing, well, not that I ever really started, but you have to wake in the morning and go to the set feeling like you’re making this film from your heart. The budget and whatever takes second place. It’s whether you’re feeling it in your soul, because that’s where the inspiration comes from. And sometimes it can be just because it’s going to be pure fun, fabulous entertainment. But those sort of films, like Prayers For Bobby, hold a great personal responsibility, and are more nerve wracking, because it is such a real tangible subject [it’s about a religious mother coming to terms with her son’s death, after he kills himself when she rejects his burgeoning gay identity]. Whereas Malone, it’s fun doing it, and you’re dealing with wonderful fiction and you can stretch your boundaries and make your world bigger.
Is it correct you’re working on the TV remake of Teen Wolf?
We’ve just finished the pilot for Teen Wolf for MTV, which is branching out and doing more dramatic pieces. The pilot is not really a remake of the Michael J. Fox film. It’s still about teenagers, but this isn’t so much about the humour. This is much more scary and has a more serious tone. Obviously it still has humour in it, but we're going for a much more serious tone and more scary.
So if the tone is going to be quite different, do you think the people, particularly on the internet, who are going ‘don’t touch my 80s classic’...
Well, I love the 80s one too. So we have not gone and tried to remake that. Instead it’s inspired by it, and then we take it at a different angle, so it’s a lot more real. The kids are real. The situation is more real. It’s taken seriously – in an entertaining way and with some humour in too – but it’s more a mix of horror and some good humour. We always said though that it had to feel real and very ‘now’, so the music is very modern, except when it goes into score, and then it becomes very cinematic. But the classic Michael J. Fox movie is its own wonderful and very much cherished entity, and the new version is its own creature.
I also understand you’ve got a movie called Bait coming up?
Yes, I actually wrote the script for Bait. We’re actually filming it in Australia, in the water, in a giant tank. It’s basically about sharks in supermarket and its car park. Basically the supermarket and the car park is one level below street level, and people are trapped in there with a bunch of tiger sharks.
It does sound like an inspired b-movie premise.
Yeah, and we’re shooting it in 3D. It’s gonna be quite an adventure in many respects. It’s got a lot of shocks and it’s gonna be quite a ride, so I’m looking forward to it. We’re still in pre-production at the moment. I’m currently in LA putting the finishing touches on the Teen Wolf pilot, and then we start shooting Bait June 1st in Australia, so that won’t be out until next year. I’m very passionate about it, firstly because I wrote it, and secondly because I
think it’s a very original piece. I want to make sure people are scared of the supermarket!
Thank you, Russell.
Give ‘Em Hell Malone is released on DVD on 17th May courtesy of Momentum Pictures.
