been open to adapting outside ma- terial? Oh, I’d always been open to it. Tech- nically, in fact, I also adapted Andre Norton’s The Beastmaster, although I basically took the idea of a man who had [communication] abilities with an- imals in some sort of situation of con- flict, and I took it from 1000 years in the future into 3000 years in the past, and made it original, except for that germ of an idea. I started off always writing my own scripts, but we’re talk- ing about two ways of going about it and both can be creatively satisfying. Truthfully, I think it’s a lot easier to adapt something, but maybe I’m get- ting lazy in my old age. You know, there are many directors who never write or even adapt their own mate- rial. But nobody’s ever come to me with a terrific screenplay on a platter along with five or ten million dollars and said, “Go make this.” That does happen to some directors, just never to me! [Laughs] So I have to build things from the ground up. Certainly the fun thing about adaptation is that you can make movies in worlds that you wouldn’t necessarily know about yourself. For instance, Joe Lansdale’s brilliance in conceiving this drama about Elvis in a rest home – who else but Lansdale would think that up? So executing what had been his vision was a load of fun. And it was the same with John Dies.
Once again you were dealing with a low budget on John Dies, even though it’s practically bursting at the seams with monsters and all manner of demanding special ef- fects. Did you ever consider making it a more “straight” film? What were the biggest challenges? Oh, we had to make it with modest means, but I take great pains to de- sign my films as expansively as I can. Sometimes I get a little irritated when I read reviews – and this goes for all my movies – and they talk about “B- movie” and all that. I make inexpen- sive movies, not cheap movies. The big challenges on John Dies were twofold. First, we weren’t going to be able to afford stars, so we made a leap of faith and went with a couple of unknowns to carry the movie. And yet we were able to surround them with some recognizable faces in the sup- porting roles. That worked out well, because we were so lucky to find these two [lead] actors – they were terrific, and really good people. Sec- ond, the effects were like a big cloud hanging over me. I said, “I’m going to
and terror around that movie; it had to be seen, especially as we all liked to be scared,” recalls the award-winning actor of the movie’s reputation. “It didn’t disappoint; it scared the shit out of me. And I have always remembered being very impressed by the sense of inter-dimensional craziness, the cosmic dimension of the horror – John Dies at the End, obviously, has that in spades. Then of course I saw Bubba Ho-Tep, when I was an adult. Words are inad- equate; I think that is a truly brilliant film in every sense of the word. It transcends genre for me and just exists on its own plane entirely. There’s this large scope to Don’s films that I love, a sense that they move beyond and continue to exist beyond the confines of the story and the screen. Don’t know how he does it, but I like it a lot.” After remarking in an interview that he’d always wanted
W
to work with Coscarelli, the director got hold of him and they decided to collaborate on the sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep, called Bubba Nosferatu. Giamatti was set to play Elvis’ controlling manager, Colonel Tom Parker, but the project fell apart. Later, when Coscarelli stumbled upon David Wong’s novel John Dies at the End, Giamatti came on board as both producer and co-star after getting a taste of the surreal story. “It is simultaneously profound, stoned, goofy, mind-
bending and scary,” he says of the novel’s appeal, which he likens to the work of writer Douglas Adams (The Hitch- hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). “And of course the movie also has all the kind of mundane, middle American details and a sense of gritty reality that reminds one of Stephen King. I [also] liked the elements that felt like a Philip K. Dick novel – mundane metaphysics, I guess you could call them. Unexceptional people thrust into very challenging circumstances that raise actual philosophical questions.” Giamatti (pictured looking at Coscarelli)
plays reporter Arnie Blondestone, the incred- ulous journalist who meets up with Dave (Chase Williamson) at a Chi- nese restaurant to hear his bonkers tale of the drug Soy Sauce, which opens the mind to a world full of monsters, alternate realities, time travel and other tripped- out notions perfectly at home in a Coscarelli movie.
HEN PAUL GIAMATTI WAS GROWING UP ON THE JERSEY SHORE, HIS OLDER BROTHER SNUCK HIM INTO PHANTASM AND OPENED A DOOR INTO ANOTHER DIMENSION OF CINEMA.
“There was a strong sense of real weirdness
Arnie exists in the story as the viewers’ surrogate, taking in all the insanity, simultaneously sceptical and curious... at least until he gets a first-hand glimpse of an otherworldly thing that shocks him out of his disbelief. “Arnie is the framing device, pure and simple; that’s his
function,” explains Giamatti. “Though this being the piece that it is, and a Coscarelli movie, he does get pulled into the action to some degree, which I loved. I loved doing that kind of film noirish framing gimmick, it feels very funny, the take it has on that classic movie trope. He’s a goofball, a kind of small-time but self-important wannabe Rolling Stone type; he thinks he’s cool, he’s got a whole overin- flated sense of himself, a whole sense of his kind of radical journalistic past, which I found funny. He’s a great character who also happens to be there as a strong structural device, or vice versa. I do really like the idea that the mayhem over- takes even the framing device.” Though the actor is best known for roles in award-win-
ning dramas such as American Splendor, Sideways, Cin- derella Man (for which he got his Oscar nomination) and Barney’s Version, he’s also been involved with some un- usual genre projects, including M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, the pilot for the animated adaptation of Mike Mignola’s The Amazing Screw-On Head and another voice- work gig in Rob Zombie’s The Haunted World of El Super- beasto, as Dr. Satan. John Dies at the End is a no-brainer for someone who likes to dip his mind into weirder waters. In fact, if you ask Giamatti whether or
not he’d give Soy Sauce a go, the answer isn’t surprising. “I would absolutely try it. Why
not? So it might permanently alter the space-time contin- uum, big deal. I’d have to have a shot of it. Good times.”
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