Interviewed on 10/04/2013
Stuart Gordon is a man who needs no introduction to fans of 80’s horror films. This generations younger fans may not be as familiar with his name, but they all know his accomplishments. His name has come to be synonymous with Lovecraftian horrors. His films are often inspired by early 20th Century horror scribe H.P. Lovecraft. Gordon is the man who brought us such cult classic films as Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dolls, Robot Jox, Castle Freak, Dagon, only to name a few. Most might also not be aware that Gordon penned and co-created the family friendly Disney film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids along with frequent collaborator Brian Yuzna and Ed Naha.
Gordon had one of the highest honors bestowed upon him when he was named a Master of Horror for the Showtime anthology series, Masters of Horror, alongside such notable writers and directors as John Carpenter (Halloween), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), Larry Cohen (It’s Alive), Don Coscarelli (Phantasm), Joe Dante (The Howling), Mick Garris (The Stand), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Dario Argento (Suspiria), and more.
Stuart Gordon didn’t start out in the horror genre; in fact, he had his humble beginnings as a playwright and theater director in Wisconsin and then Chicago. While in Chicago, he formed the Organic Theater Company and became its artistic director in 1970. He wrote and directed plays alongside such notable pre-fame names as Joe Mantegna (Homicide), Dennis Franz (NYPD Blue) and Meshach Taylor (Designing Women).
Currently, Gordon has a number of projects in the works, but he is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a film adaptation of his play Nevermore – An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe, starring Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, From Beyond). You can visit Nevermore’s Kickstarter Page to donate until October 31st!
Join me down below as I chat with Stuart Gordon about his days in the theater, his love of H.P. Lovecraft, why Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a horror film, Edgar Allan Poe, and more!
Horror Society: It’s a pleasure to speak with you Mr. Gordon; you’re a true legend in the horror genre. To start with, most people know you for your films and film career, but you also have a rich background in the theater as well. In the late 1960’s, you wrote and directed many theater productions in your home town of Chicago. Can you talk about that for a minute?
Stuart Gordon: I was the artistic director of the Organic Theater Company and it was a company dedicated to creating
new work with a resident ensemble. I was lucky to have some of the best actors in the world in that ensemble, Joe Mantegna, Dennis Franz, Meshach Taylor, André DeShields, all of them have gone on to great things.
HS: Do you miss Chicago at all?
SG: I do, but I think Chicago has changed, it’s not like it was back then. All of these people came to Chicago to take advantage of the hungry audiences that wanted to see exciting new work. There were people like John Malkovich there and William H. Macy, David Mamet, whose work we produced at Organic. Our first production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago which was the play that sort of put him on the map. We had an amazing group of people there, we were all getting started. I think there are new people coming out of Chicago today, but in those days it was very very heady, there were so many amazing talented people.
HS: Back in the 80’s, you had a string of films working with Charles Band, first with his Empire Pictures and then Full Moon Pictures. A lot of people have negative things to say about Band, how was your relationship with him?
SG: I really liked Charlie Band. If Charlie Band has a fault, it’s that he tries to do too much. He is never satisfied with doing a few movies. One of the motto’s when I was working with him was that he wanted to do a thousand films by the year 2000. I don’t think he came close to that, I think he did maybe a couple of hundred, but he constantly moved as many films into production as he could. There’s a real enthusiasm for genre films there. So many places always try to find reasons not to do something, but Charlie is always trying to find ways to do things even if the ideas are enormous like in Robot Jox. We did that on a low budget but not really that much money. The budget was around six million dollars.
HS: I have to give Band a lot of credit because he gets movies made a lot of times when no other people can. A lot of people are struggling to get films made even today but he seems to find a way to get them pumped out and get them made.
SG: You’re exactly right! He never stops, he’s the energizer bunny.
HS: Right. What do you say to people who comment that Lovecraft is unfilmmable that his work doesn’t translate well to film? Obviously you’ve made several Lovecraft films.
SG: Yeah, I’ve done five movies based on his stories. I think what’s important is picking the right story. There are some of his stories that I think would be very very difficult to tell. A lot of them are very internal, very complicated but other stories of his a full of action and make wonderful films. The thing I discovered when I did Re-Animator was that, all of Lovecraft’s work is public domain. There’s a treasure trove with all his great stories just waiting to be made into films and many of them have. They have an H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival that started in Portland, Oregon 20 years ago, I think. I was at a Lovecraft festival in Providence this summer, there’s another Lovecraft festival in Los Angeles, and it’s really building.
HS: I’m familiar with many of the Lovecraft Film Festivals.
SG: Seeing what people are doing is exciting.
HS: What drew you to the works of Lovecraft?
SG: I remember reading his stories when I was a teenager and they scared the crap out of me. The first one of his I ever read was Dreams in the Witch-House. The idea that witches were going to come through the wall of your bedroom and grab you, pull you out of your bed and take you off to a hideous place is terrifying. I remember locking my windows even though it was the middle of the summer and we didn’t have air conditioning. I didn’t want the witch to get me.
HS: I totally agree, I love his writing and I’m a big fan of Lovecraft myself.
SG: Great. That’s one of the things I like is the idea that when I was a kid, Roger Corman was making Poe movies and it was those movies that really got me to read Poe. I’m happy that maybe some of the films I’ve done with Lovecraft have done the same for someone. Also getting back to Charlie Band, I think Charlie is a younger version of Roger Corman. Roger Corman gave a lot of people their start like Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson and Charlie has given a lot of people their start as well.
HS: Yes, definitely. I would agree with you on that. Of all your Lovecraft films, Re-Animator, From
Beyond, Castle Freak, Dagon, Dreams in the Witch house, which one is your favorite?
SG: It’s really hard to say because I like them all for different reasons. There has been a couple of screenings recently of Dagon which I was happy about because that film never got a theatrical release here in the States. Luckily I was able to get a 35 mm print; they screened it both in Providence and Los Angeles recently. I’ve never seen it with an audience on a big screen.
HS: That would’ve been great.
SG: Yeah it was great.
HS: What’s your take on sex and horror films?
SG: I kind of think it’s two sides of the same coin. Going back to the ancient days in the middle ages, there was something called Death and the Maiden and there is a lot of drawings and paintings that feature Death which is the Grim Reaper holding on to a beautiful, usually naked woman. It’s like a woman symbolizes life and the Grim Reaper of course is Death, so you can’t have one without the other.
HS: I totally agree with you on that.
SG: Good, there are no arguments here (laughing).
HS: When you were filming the scene in Re-Animator where David Gale’s disembodied head is basically assaulting the naked Barbara Crampton. Did you ever think to yourself this is never going to make it past the MPAA? Were you trying to push the envelope as much as you could with that scene?
SG: I absolutely was. It was funny because we knew when we wrote the script that was going to be the scene that was going to have people talking. You’re always trying to come up with something when you do a horror film that separates it from all the others and that was definitely the scene. As a matter of fact, even before the movie was made, the first artwork that was done was created by a terrific artist named William Stout, showed that scene. That was part of the reason we got people to invest in the film.
HS: Well, it’s a great scene, one of my favorites.
SG: It’s a scene that people never forget. We call it “The Scene”.
HS: When you were making Re-Animator, did you have any idea at all that it would be as popular as it has become and still endure to this day?
SG: That amazes me because the movie is over 25 years old and how many movies that old do we watch today? Very few. I never expected that to happen, I was just hoping to create something the fans would enjoy. The fact that people are still enjoying it today, I find astonishing and wonderful.
HS: I know a lot of us love the hell out of Re-Animator, it’s a classic.
SG: I think it still shocks people, which is great. Most movies after a certain amount of time goes by, they lose their edge. I remember going to see Night of the Living Dead at a midnight screening when it came out in the 60’s when people were fainting and running out of the doors. Now you can see that movie uncut on TV at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I don’t think you’re going to see Re-Animator at 3 o’clock.
HS: Probably not (laughing). Does it bother you to be labeled as a horror director? Do you mind that at all?
SG: No, I don’t mind, I love horror. I think doing horror is difficult. People seem to think it’s schlocky and easy. I’m proud to be associated with horror. I like to do other things as well. If you only do one genre all the time, you kind of lose your edge. You have to mix it up a little bit.
HS: That brings me to my next question, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is one of the most commercial
projects that you’ve written. Would you want to do more projects like that?
SG: I did actually. I worked for Disney for 10 years after I did Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and I was trying to do more family films. Although, I should point out that Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a horror film. It’s got your mad scientist, it’s got giant insects, and it’s got your typical horror movie set pieces. When I was working on it, Disney was very nervous, they kept saying to me “could you make this more like the Absent Minded Professor and less like The Fly?”
HS: I guess I’ve never really looked at it that way. I’ve seen the film several times, you’re right; it’s got all the elements there.
SG: Yeah, there are parts that are scary. I think one of the most perverse scenes I’ve ever been involved with in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is where the Dad is about to eat his little boy in a bowl of Cheerios.
HS: Yeah!
SG: You know the kid is going “Dad! Don’t eat me!” You can’t get much more Freudian than that I don’t think.
HS: That’s true. Is there anyone in the industry that you haven’t worked with yet, that you would like to work with?
SG: Oh my gosh. There are so many people whose work I really admire. The list could go on and on. Over time I’ve had a chance to work with some great people.
HS: If you had a dream project, what would that be?
SG: Gosh, I’ve got a lot of them. You know, it’s funny as you get older, you start realizing a lot of these projects you want to make are not going to happen. One of the Lovecraft projects which I find astonishing is the adaptation that Dennis Paoli wrote of The Thing on the Doorstep, which is a great script and great story. I’d love to get that made. There’s a pirate script I wrote based on a play we did back in my theater days called “Bloody Bess”. There’s a bunch of them.
HS: Del Toro for several years has been trying to get his At the Mountains of Madness made. Is that something you would like to see him get done?
SG: I’d like to see what he would do with it. I think one of the problems with that story is that in a way, it has been made before as The Thing. The background on that story is the guy who wrote it, his name was John W. Campbell, was actually H.P. Lovecraft’s editor. In a way, he ripped off At the Mountains of Madness, and turned it into a story called “Who Goes There?” which became The Thing. That movie has been made how many times now – Three times? I kind of feel that audiences have seen this movie already. But I’m always looking to see what people will do with Lovecraft. That’s one of the wonderful things about his stories is how people interpret them in different ways. I would love to see Del Toro maybe choose another story, one that doesn’t cost that much.
HS: Fairly recently, you wrote and directed the Re-Animator The Musical stage show. How did you ever decide to turn that classic film into a musical for the stage?
SG: It sounds bizarre, but people kept coming up to me and suggesting it for years. I would just laugh because I thought it was a goofy idea. Then one day, it struck me that all of the effects we used in the film were practical effects that could be done on stage, so why not make it a musical? I mean, there’s been so many horror based musicals lately. Re-Animator has a limited cast and locations and could put it on stage. I also should say I had a really great proposal from Mark Nutter who turned the whole thing; it’s almost an operetta where most of the entire thing is sung which I never expected in a million years.
HS: I have not had the opportunity to see that.
SG: Where are you based?
HS: I’m in Chicago.
SG: Oh, you’re in Chicago…oh OK. It’s funny; we’ve been talking about possibly bringing it to Chicago. Maybe at some point, you will get a chance to see it.
HS: That would be awesome.
SG: Yeah, that would be great.
HS: To talk about a project you’re starting on now. You directed the successful Nevermore – An Evening with Edgar Allen Poe with your frequent collaborator, the great Jeffrey Combs for the stage. How did that stage show come about?
SG: Well, we did an episode of Masters of Horror that was an adaptation of The Black Cat where Jeffrey played Poe. He was so amazing as Poe, when I was on the set with him; I started feeling as though I was actually hanging out with Edgar Poe himself. I thought wouldn’t it be great if we could do this in front of a live audience. Be in the same room as Edgar Allen Poe. It got to play in honor of Poe’s bicentennial in 2009. It was so successful; we were touring it all over the place. Finally, we thought about turning it into a film. We have a Kickstarter campaign that just began a few days ago and it ends on Halloween. So, if anyone would like to see that movie get made, head over to the Kickstarter page and donate what you can.
HS: The Kickstarter project for Nevermore runs until Halloween. As for the Nevermore film that you and Jeffrey are trying to get made, would he be a producer on that as well?
SG: Yes he will. Dennis Paoli, who wrote the script, is based on Poe. Almost every word comes from Poe’s writing. It’s 
really the most accurate portrayal of Poe that’s ever been done. Jeffrey’s performance is a landmark performance that’s compared to Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain. I love the idea of getting the chance to put it on film.
HS: I know a lot of people would love to see you back making a genre film again, myself included.
SG: Yeah, me too.
HS: Is there anything else you’re working on right now that you would like to talk about?
SG: Well, I don’t want to jinx them. It’s funny because there are some projects that are pretty close to happening, but I would like to wait until they are in production.
HS: That’s OK, I understand. I’m the same way about things like that.
SG: Hopefully, I will be working on one of them soon.
HS: That’s awesome. Mr. Gordon I really appreciate you taking the time out to talk with me.
SG: I appreciate it and it’s nice to talk to someone who really knows the genre.
HS: I’ve loved your films for many years and I can’t wait to see your upcoming projects. I know that many of our readers and other horror fans are the same way. I wish you nothing but the best of luck, especially for Nevermore. We’ll definitely spread the word around on that. Good luck with that and all your future projects. Keep making the great horror stuff that you’re known for.
SG: Yes sir, I will do my best.
HS: I really appreciate it and you have a great day.
SG: You too.
Watch the Kickstarter promo for Nevermore here:
