Eli Roth talks about CLOWN in this exclusive chat.
Love him or don’t (and neither he nor this writer cares which side you fall for), Eli Roth does things his way. Here is a real deal horror movie obsessive who somehow managed to parlay that passion into making the kind of movies he grew up with and, in turn, established a brand.
Among the recent spate of films bearing his name (his recent directorial efforts THE GREEN INFERNO and KNOCK KNOCK among them), Roth is the producer of John Watts’ deranged supernatural body horror movie CLOWN, a film that was released oversees in 2014 but is only now getting a U.S. release (June 17th theatrical and VOD, courtesy of the Weinstein Co. and Anchor Bay Entertainment).
CLOWN sees actor Andy Powers putting on a clown suit for his sons birthday and then, inexplicably, unable to take it off. Slowly and surely the evil suit begins to act like a parasite and turns its host into a very unfunny funnyman.
SHOCK talked to Roth recently about CLOWN, his role in making the movie, his thoughts on combining humor and horror and the very real terrors of movie pirating and how it will affect the genre in the long term.
SHOCK: Now, CLOWN began its life as a short film, correct?
ROTH: Well, sort of. It was a fake trailer that appeared around Halloween about 6 years ago that John Watts and Chris Ford had made, saying that I had directed it. It was cut like HOSTEL and even had the HOSTEL music on it. It popped up on a website and everyone started emailing me, saying “oh my god your movie looks so amazing”. I watched it and I was like, fuck this does look good! So I called John and he said “thank you for not suing me” and I was like, this is Hollywood, let’s make some money first and then we can talk about suing each other. So I asked him if he ever wanted to turn this into a feature, and he did, so I said lets develop this into a script and we then spent a year writing and re-writing it. And the first thing was really cracking the mythology, making sure the mythology was air tight so we understood what the suit is, what it does, what it wants. And so we did and we did AFTERSHOCK and CLOWN at the same time. We did it for a low budget and because of this, we could basically do whatever we want.
SHOCK: The central conflict reminded me of THE WOLF MAN. Was it an influence?
ROTH: Not so much THE WOLF MAN, no. This is much closer to Cronenberg’s THE FLY. Watching Seth Brundle, his story, turning into Brundlefly, that then becomes Geena Davis’ story as she watched him turn into the monster. It’s really about a dad who loves his son, being taken over by this monster and it’s played straight, played real, a real scary, original film that was rooted in mythology. John did a great job.
SHOCK: Do you see the wife character in CLOWN as an enabler? It often feels like a parable about domestic abuse…
ROTH: I don’t see that in the movie. I think she’s just trying to salvage the birthday party.
SHOCK: But towards the end, she makes some ugly choices in order to save her husband and her family…
ROTH: Well, that was a fine line that John was treading and that sequence that you’re talking about – I don’t want to spoil it for the readers – I knew that was where would win the audience or lose them. And that’s the fun of doing a movie at this level is that you can push the envelope.
SHOCK: And John does, especially when it comes to the Clown’s appetite for children…
ROTH: We wanted to stick true to the mythology in fairy tales. In fairy tales, it’s kids who are baked in ovens. If we just had a serial killer doing these things, it’s not the same thing. Clowns are instantly scary; clowns bring joy, there’s an art, but there is a dark side. John Wayne Gacy. That’s what makes it so interesting that here is a monster that has to make you do the unthinkable, or else you’re done. I think the way John handled it is brilliant.
SHOCK: Some critics are calling CLOWN a comedy…
ROTH: It’s not a comedy.
SHOCK: Do you think these critics simply cannot handle that a film featuring a clown as the monster could not be anything else but a comedy?
ROTH: I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.
SHOCK: When I mentioned THE WOLF MAN, I think perhaps it makes more sense to say CLOWN is linked to AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, which some people also called a comedy.
ROTH: Yeah, AMERICAN WEREWOLF is closer to where we’re at here for sure. And as far as it being thought of as a comedy, well, it was marketed that way. “A Comedy with Bite” was the tagline on the poster. The studio did that.
SHOCK: But AMERICAN WEREWOLF is funny in that the humor stems from the absurdity of the situation. But the horror was real.
ROTH: Yeah, that’s what I think, it’s gotta be real. When things are so horrible or fucked up in life, people make jokes to relieve the tension. But if the characters are taking the situation seriously, then you’ll find the humor there naturally.
SHOCK: After all these years making and talking about these kinds of movies…are you still having fun?
ROTH: Oh, for sure. Look at the climate today. It’s all super-hero movies. The fact that we did it, that CLOWN now exists, is a thrill for me.
SHOCK: Have you reconciled yourself to the film piracy issue?
ROTH: There’s nothing to reconcile, it is what it is. It’s awful. You know, there’s no piracy in Japan. There, they feel that if they pay for a movie, then people will make more movies. In America, they think, “oh, it’s the internet, I’ll just take it”. When you’re making movies targeted to college kids, they’re just not going to pay for it. And another thing is, people think everyone lives in mansions and drives Bentley’s in Hollywood, so they think “fuck it, they can handle it”. But when you’re making movies on this budget, every dollar counts, sales matter. It’s not about making people rich, it’s to pay back the people that made the film. So distributors just figure, this is it, they’re not interested in these kinds of movies anymore. They’ll just make another THE HUNGER GAMES. Everyone is shifting that way. When I made KNOCK KNOCK and its #1 on torrent sites and its #38 on iTunes, the division is saying “why are we even paying money to release this if everyone is just taking it”. So you can scream and cry about piracy all you want, but sadly…this is just the reality we live in.
