Favourite Movie Friday with Sean Byrne

His demented Aussie horror The Loved Ones is loved by more than one, and Sean Byrne consequently loves many a film. Here are his favourites:

“I probably sound like every other director in Australia but Pulp Fiction is a favourite of mine. That plays perfectly, like a record, and there are so many great sequences in that film that would play perfectly as short films on their own. I’m a huge fan of Lynch’s Blue Velvet, Lost Highway. Also films by Paul Thomas Anderson, early John Woo, Scorsese, Coppola, that great era of 70s filmmaking where they had a lot of say over the content and the studio wasn’t so involved. Also Raimi and Peter Jackson.”

To love your very own ones read my stories here, here and here.

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Taking the Bait

(Above) Xavier Samuel with his Bait 3D co-stars Phoebe Tonkin and Alice Parkinson on the red carpet at the GCFF.

Hollywood star Xavier Samuel swapped razor-sharp teeth for red carpet at the Gold Coast Film Festival last night. The Aussie actor rushed from a day’s work on shark thriller Bait 3D at Warner Roadshow Studios to attend the festival’s opening night at Birch Carroll and Coyle Cinemas Australia Fair on the Gold Coast, Australia. Samuel, who has been based in Hollywood after his role in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, said he was enjoying being back `home' in Australia.
Samuel's Bait 3D co-star Julian McMahon was supposed to attend the festival, however, cancelled at the last minute. Bait 3D is set inside a supermarket after a tsunami traps a group of survivors inside with a pack of Tiger sharks. Samuel said he was enjoyed working with the `great’ Aussie cast, but spending so much time in the water has been difficult.
"Everyone's very talented," he said.
"But we've been spending weeks in the pool so we're a bit soggy."
Other celebrity guests at the festival opening night included Phoebe Tonkin (Tomorrow, When The War Began), Martin Sacks (Blue Heelers) and John Jarratt (Wolf Creek). Complex Aussie thriller Wasted On The Young opened the six-day festival and was introduced by one of the film’s stars, Alex Russell (above). Russell said he was a `bit nervous’ about introducing the film, but was going to pass on a message from the director Ben C. Lucas.
“What Ben has been saying is that `the film has been with us so long, but it’s yours now,” said the 22-year-old.
“He wants to see what message people take from it and not ram it down their throats, because there are a lot of important messages (in the film).”

The Sydney-based actor has also been filming Bait 3D and had a lot of support in the form of his co-stars Sacks, Tonkin and Samuel.
“We’re all just here to support Alex tonight really,” said Sacks.
Samuel (below) too said Wasted On The Young was definitely a highlight of the festival.
“I’ve been really looking forward to Wasted On The Young,” he said.
“I’m working with Alex Russell now and I have a lot of friends who are in it.” For my exclusive video interviews with Samuel, Sacks and Jarratt, click HERE. The Gold Coast Film Festival runs until Tuesday, November 16 and for the full line-up of films, free seminars and workshops visit here. And as for Bait 3D news . . .I will be making a set visit in the coming weeks so stay peeled for updates on Twitter as it gets closer to the date.

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Open wide, movies inside

Okay, lame title, I know. But serioulsy, there's only so many Gold Coast Film Festival related titles you can write before you hit wall. Sigh, I digress. The festival opens tonight at the Birch Carroll and Coyle Cinemas Australia Fair and there’s a huge line-up of stars coming along for the opening night. Leading the charge is Nip/Tuck star Julian McMahon (above), who is in Queensland filming shark action-thriller Bait 3D. McMahon forged a career in Australian television before he broke into Hollywood as Cole Turner on hit TV series Charmed and roles in the Fantastic Four franchise and RED.

McMahon's Bait 3D co-stars Xavier Samuel and Sharni Vinson will also be at the opening night, along with director Kimble Rendall. Samuel was most recently seen in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Aussie horror flick The Loved Ones, while Vinson had success as the lead in Step Up 3D. They will be joined by Tomorrow, When The War Began stars Lincoln Lewis and Phoebe Tonkin, and other Australian actors including John Jarratt, Dan Wylie, Adrienne Pickering, Cindy Nelson, Francesca Gasteen, and Alex Russell, star of the opening night film Wasted On The Young.

However, it is not just big name actors who are attending, with a who's who of international industry professionals. Along with Hollywood horror screenwriter Todd Farmer (My Bloody Valentine, Jason X), will be producers Chris Adams (Syriana, An Inconvenient Truth ) and Steve Kearney (Jucy) , the founders behind industry consultation company Adams Kearney. Local guests include Oscar-winning special-effects whiz John Cox, producer Chris Brown (Daybreakers, The Proposition) and Emmy-award winning make-up effects artist Jason Baird.

I will be on the read carpet chatting to all of these lovely peeps and I’m off to chat to a few of them at their hotel now, so, keenly stand by for the latest and greatest dets from the festival. In the mean time, HERE'S a quick video I did on some of the GCFF highlights.

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Byrne, baby Byrne

Despite a disappointing weekend at the Australian box office, I still reckon The Loved Ones is one of the best Aussie flicks you will see this year and so, I shall continue to harp on about it. This time that harping comes in the form of an exclusive chat with writer/director/producer extraordinaire Sean Byrne. As you can see from the interview, he is quite the lovely chap and definitely a director who is going to tackle a lot of genres with gusto. But what stood out to me most about Byrne is his sheer passion for movies and that, my dears, is something we can all relate to. Judge for yourself below.

Movie Mazzupial: Firstly, where did you come up with this idea? Did you have a really bad experience at your formal?
Sean Byrne: (Laughs) No, it was remarkably normal. Maybe that’s why I had to think of something crazy. It stemmed from desperation really, I had written a couple of screenplays that were too offbeat so I thought I’d have a crack at a horror film because I knew they sold internationally. There’s also a lot of mediocre horror out there, so I thought I could make something good with characterisations that make it stand out from the horror pack.

MM: And the characters, you have created some truly demented ones, particularly Lola and her daddy. It feels like they could go down as iconic horror characters like Freddy Krueger, Mike Myers or Mick Taylor, is that what you set out to do?
SB: These films thrive on the marketability of the villains. I was really looking for some kind of signature and I’ve never seen a father daughter torture team. I wanted to cut through the clutter and the thought of pink satin would be so vibrant and arresting. My 5-year-old niece was going through that stage of development where she’s thinking her prince will come and is obsessed with glitter and tiaras. I thought it would be interesting to take that innocence and mesh it with the awkwardness of being a teenager and raging hormones. Then when it came to her father, I did a lot of research on Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. Especially Ed Gein, he’s the psychological profile behind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho and Silence of the Lambs. Dahmer now isn’t someone that has been tapped into which is unusual given all the horror films out there and some of the things he did with the head drilling.

MM: Now, speaking of head drilling, that scene was a particularly . . .I’m not sure memorable is the right word, but it stays with you.
SB: It’s one of my favourite parts of the film because there’s no safety net. I love watching it with an audience because they have no idea what’s coming. With the film we had one foot in commercial territory and one foot dangling over a cliff, and that’s the cliff part. I was looking to write a horror film and what finally sat me down to write it was the idea of `what if I merged Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, with Carrie and brought the prom to a cabin in the woods?’ I studied Misery too. Princess has Carrie’s vulnerability, Annie Wilkes’ from Misery’s sadism and the spoilt quality of Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a horror film, but it’s not an ordeal for the audience. It’s a rock `n’ roll horror film with a sense of humour.

MM: (Laughs) That’s quite a combination. It looks like you went into the shoot very prepared.
SB: Yes, I came up with 250 page scrap book which had film references, case studies and palette references. I think Kathy Bates’ performance is so brilliant as she’s a woman who’s obsessed with a guy and even though he’s polite when he knocks back her advances, she goes off the deep end. I also looked at the females in films like Carrie, Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, Natural Born Killers, Single White Female, and got a lot of ideas from that.

MM: The casting process, what was that like? You manage to draw out some incredible performances, Robin McLeavy and John Brumpton in particular, but Xavier Samuel too is fantastic and despite only having a few lines of dialogue, he’s someone that you’re really rooting for to escape.
SB: I was really happy with the casting, we just went through the traditional process. I tried not to go in with too many preconceptions. There’s a point when the writer has to let go and the responsibility goes to the actors who walk in the room and elevate it beyond what you expect. If you don’t care, then you don’t scare. I was adamant in casting actors who understood the craft and I’m really proud of everyone that’s in the film. We talked a lot about not treating this as a horror film, because so often it’s considered disposable. The situation is on the page and by treating it with the integrity of a drama . . . it doesn’t matter what type of film you’re making it comes down to the authenticity of the performance.MM: In the film, there’s both nail-biting suspense and cringe-worthy gore, how important was it to find that balance as opposed to just having another torture porn film?
SB: It was vital. The key word is fun and I wanted it to be a fun, freaky, midnight rollercoaster ride. The audience need to be able to take a breath and have a laugh and prepare for the next white-knuckle onslaught. I could push the extreme nature of the film if it was minced with a jet black comedy sensibility. It becomes deliciously warped.

MM: This is your first feature, it has gone on to be select at over 20 international film festivals, won a swag of prestigious awards and the critics are frothing over it, could you have ever expected a response like this?
SB: I didn’t expect it, but I was definitely aiming for it. I was meticulous in my preparation; we didn’t have a lot of time to shoot and, like most Australian films, not a giant budget. It’s really rewarding to see audiences responding to the beats that had been planned. I was trying to never to be a slave to the horror formula and instead study horror films and be inspired by the work of Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sam Raimi and Disney. We shot in 27 days on a budget just under the 4 million mark, which isn’t too bad, but I wanted a beautiful candy-coloured slick look to it. I’m big fan of Bruckheimer films, I think they have a lot of integrity to them because they say `I’m here to entertain’. The have such a perfect sheen to them that I want to get out of my seat and lick the screen. I think it would taste really sweat. Having that Hollywood glossiness to it helped pushed the horror a bit.

MM: How much of that sheen and glossiness can be attributed to your background in commercials and short filmmaking?
SB: Yeah, definitely, a lot of it.MM: When a debut film gets the response like this has, the Hollywood offers come flying in. Is that the situation you’re in at the moment or have you been batting them off to work on another one of your own projects?
SB: I’m right in the middle of writing another project, but this film has opened a lot of doors for me, both in Australia and in Hollywood. I’ve been sent a lot of scripts and I’m attached to quite a few projects. It’s very difficult to get money for a film, so I need to have a few going at the same time. I’m more interested in material. The next original thing of mine I’m working on is a bent home invasion thriller. That’s the great thing about genre, because it affords filmmakers a great luxury. There’s already an audience and they know the formula, so you’re able to bend it.

MM: Just before I started speaking to you I was reading an article that described you as the `new voice in Aussie horror’. How do you respond to something like that?
SB: I just love cinema and I feel like I’ve got a good range as a director. I want to work in all genres. Horror is a great way to start because so many of my heroes have started in horror, like Spielberg, Coppola, Raimi and Jackson who really got to stamp their own personal style on the genre. I just wanted to create something fresh.

MM: Since Saw and Wolf Creek, there seems to have been a real rebirth of Australian horror, is that something you consciously wanted to be part of?
SB: I wrote the first draft of The Loved Ones before Saw came out, that’s how long it takes to make these things. I knew Wolf Creek opened doors for Australian horror filmmakers because it proved that well-crafted Aussie horror has an audience. But we’re very different films. Wolf Creek was based on a building sense of dread, while we’re a glam horror film. We’re mirror balls and they’re the desert.The Loves Ones is out now.

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Oh, to be loved . . .

Are you sick of hearing about The Loved Ones yet? No? Good, because HERE is my online video review of the film. I argue that it’s worth watching simply for my awesome earrings and believe me, they are awesome.

The Loved Ones is out now and stay peeled for my exclusive chat with director Sean Byrne.

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Love hurts, love scars

Roy Orbison once sung about how “love hurts, love scars''. That sentiment has never been more fitting than in the new Australian horror film The Loved Ones, where love also nails your feet to the floor and pours salt into your wounds. Literally.

Still blaming himself for the death of his father, 17-year-old Brent (Twilight alumni Xavier Samuel, above) takes solace in smoking dope and the affections of his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine). But after he turns down his classmate Lola's (Robin McLeavy) invitation to the prom, things get considerably worse. Turns out Lola, nicknamed Princess by her warped father known only as Daddy (John Brumpton), isn't quite as innocent as she seems. Rather, she's a psychotic combination of Annie Wilkes from Misery, Carrie from, well, Carrie and Hedy from Single White Female. Lola gets her daddy to abduct Brent and bring him back to their isolated home where they have their own `prom' complete with torture, cannibalism and things you never want to see done with a drill. Ever.

Coming from a background in commercials and short films, writer/director Sean Byrne has made an incredibly stylish and original feature in The Loved Ones. From the arresting pink satin of Lola's dress to the glitter and sparkle of the demented prom, he has made a glossy product to rival the sheen of any Hollywood production. Considering The Loved Ones was made on a budget of just $4 million makes the feat even more impressive.But what really separates it from the mediocre horror mob (besides the kick ass Aussie soundtrack) is Byrne's characterisation. The sadistic and severely insane team of Lola and her daddy will go down as iconic horror movie villains to rival the likes of Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Of course, they would be nothing without the talents of McLeavy and Brumpton. McLeavy's performance, in particular, is reminiscent of John Jarratt's turn as Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek. Despite limited dialogue, Samuel too is amiable as the protagonist and his pain, both physical and emotional, draws the audience behind his plight to escape the duo and seek bloody revenge.

Given the success of The Loved Ones overseas, so far it has been officially selected in over 20 international film festivals, comparisons between other Aussie horror success stories like Saw and Wolf Creek are inevitable. While it too has a black humour sensibility that is iconicly Australian, it also manages to find that rare balance between gut-wrenching gore and white-knuckle suspense so many other filmmakers seem to overshoot.

The Loved Ones is a rock 'n' roll horror film unlike anything this country has seen in a long time. It's a glam, gory and goofy experience that for once is not an ordeal for horror audiences to sit through.

The Loved Ones is out in cinemas tomorrow and you can watch the trailer below. Stay posted for my exclusive chat with writer/director Sean Byrne coming in the next few days.

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