Malone, Bill (Parasomnia)
Steve Barton
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What if sleeping gave you anything but rest? Can you imagine suffering from a disease that eats away your precious time here on our planet? Well, director Bill Malone certainly can, and with his latest film “>Parasomnia he’s looking to explore all of that and more.
Bill and I got together to talk disorder and horror, and as you can imagine,the results were pretty entertaining!
Dig on the interview below! And don’t forget to VOTE FOR US ON PODCAST ALLEY!
***NEW! Not in the mood to download? Check out the entire interview transcribed below!***
Uncle Creepy: Hey everybody, Uncle Creepy here for Dread Central and today, we’re here with director of Parasomnia, Bill Malone, Bill how are you?
Bill Malone: I’m doing great. I’m tired but great.
Uncle Creepy: So hey, it’s a homestretch on Parasomnia at least, right?
Bill Malone: Yeah, we’ve been working on it for a little while now, longer than I even anticipated.
Uncle Creepy: Now, for those listeners out there who have been living under a rock, you know who you are. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the movie?
Bill Malone: Well, Parasomnia is a film I began about two and half years ago. I wrote the screen play and decided that rather than to run around the usual studio and try to get financing, I thought that I would just be stupid and go finance it myself. A friend of mine had been bugging me for a long time, that he wanted to book money in the movie and I said, “Hey, now is your chance.” So he was equally stupid as I was.
So anyway, we started working on it and I’ve been working on it for two and a half years and we’re finally in the homestretch here. So it cool. It’s a little kind of hard thriller romance movie so I don’t know how to explain it really. It’s a very odd movie.
Uncle Creepy: Give us some brief overview without giving away any spoilers.
Bill Malone. Yeah, well the film is about a young art student, played by Dylan Purcell, who while visiting a friend of his in rehab at a hospital, sees this girl who has a sleeping disorder where she is asleep all the time, basically a sleeping beauty complex, and he starts talking to her while she is asleep and slowly falls in love with her. He finds out she is going to be used for some mysterious experiment, but what he doesn’t know is that there’s a psycho in the room next to her who is in love with her, as well, so he takes her home and bad things start happening. So it’s a lot of fun and a lot of, probably 15 fifteen minutes of a picture takes place in her head which is her dream escape which is her real life and it accounts for you know about 120 bed shots so it’s a bit kind of cool I think.
Uncle Creepy: Well yeah, that sounds definitely cool. I could also see why you are a little hesitant to bring it to the studio, unless you’re given somebody something that’s completely spoon-fed lately, they usually turn them blind eye.
Bill Malone: You know I hate this but you think Hollywood would have more imagination at this time, unless you’re making just a straight ahead you know, stab them, slice them movie; they don’t get it.
Uncle Creepy: You know and the landscape has just so drastically changed. I remember I guess early as maybe two or three years ago, when like the director video movies were coming out, they were always like the most of bismo qualities and this and that and the other thing. Now director videos are where all the good shit is.
Bill Malone: Well yeah, I mean I think first of all, a number of things happed; studios have a person said that they only want to make hundred million dollar movies and up, you know, so that doesn’t leave very much room for anything that’s going to be unique because certainly, they’re not going to spend their hundred million dollar plus budget on anything that’s risky, so that has been very difficult. And a lot of these major studios have closed their little “indi” arms that they had, so there’s actually very few places to go to with the film now.
Uncle Creepy: That’s a shame, it really is but you know what? I mean there are festivals like Scream Fest, which your film is playing at, which we just can’t wait for and the advent of real quality DVD director video movies and I say advent because it’s new to me now. I mean these movies that I would usually like Shutter, which I wouldn’t have even thought about watching, ended up being really good. I mean it’s just so different but thankfully, due to those two factors and also the websites and magazines who covered these movies, they don’t really get the mainstream attention, you’re finding an audience that you know you’re seeking and I think that’s a wonderful thing. It‘s a great avenue for everyone.
Bill Malone: That’s very encouraging you know but I think that, you know, I’m a great horror fan. I like to collect movie memorabilia from horror and science fiction films. You may or may not know but you know, I mean they are very loyal and I’m certainly loyal to the genre and we pretty much find that stuff wherever we can you know.
Uncle Creepy: No, totally dude. You know I’ve always said I am so proud to be a part of this fan base. It is the most passionate in the world.
Bill Malone: Absolutely is. There’s just no question about it but I mean even the studios do know is that horror films traditionally don’t lose money because of the fact that the people who like them are very dedicated to them you know so to this thing, I wish they are smart enough about this little one.
Uncle Creepy: Smart enough. Bill, we live in a world where common sense is anything but common unfortunately.
Bill Malone: You’re too correct, I’m afraid.
Uncle Creepy: So two and a half years working on this movie. I mean it had to have been a really labor of love for you.
Bill Malone: My initial concept was to make a film, making it in the same way that David Lynch made Eraserhead with only shooting nights in weekends and you know just do it however you can but as I got into it, I realized one thing; one of our leads, the girl in the story, is like 18 years old and if we shot for five years, can you imagine how she would mature? Then other things happen too. When we started, the film should have blossomed as we went along, a lot of things came available to us but just I would have never imagined in a million years. I mean actually I wound up shooting on the same stage that we shot House on Haunted Hill on, like I had the same office. This is something that there was no way I could have afford it and it was just good fortune.
Uncle Creepy: Yeah, I mean when things come together, there’s definitely a reason to smile. How did you get involved with Scream Fest?
Bill Malone: Well actually I had known Rachel you know, who runs it, for quite a long time and she has been asking me about Parasomnia. It just coincided that we happened to finished film up in time for this year and it was coming up and she asked me if I wanted to bring it there, I said “Absolutely.”
Uncle Creepy: Isn’t she just the sweetest little thing?
Bill Malone: She is. She is so dominant to you but sweet.
Uncle Creepy: All right, you know, it’s like when I see her and I give her a hug; I’m always afraid I’m going to break her.
Bill Malone: I know.
Uncle Creepy: She’s like so tiny and meanwhile, she puts on this giant kick ass fucking horror fest and you like “Wow.”
Bill Malone: Yeah, I know it’s great. She is really is and God bless her and I hope more people do that. There are certainly a lot of those festivals popping up now. This is great, you know like you said. The fans supporting the genre.
Uncle Creepy: And speaking of the genre, you’ve been in it quite a bit in your career man…
Bill Malone: You know when I first started directing, it’s very easy to get pigeonholed in this business. I’m sure you’re aware.
Uncle Creepy: Oh God, yeah.
Bill Malone: And I thought to myself, would I mind being pigeonholed as a horror director. Absolutely not, I like it and I love the genre and so I started out with that in mind if that’s what I was going to do and you know it’s been pretty great. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do things like “Tales from the Crypt” and other shows that were a lot of fun.
Uncle Creepy: Now, what do you think it is about the horror genre? Is it the fun, is it the fact that you really don’t have to adhere to many different kinds of conventions?
Bill Malone: I think it’s very exposed to those things. But for me, like you said, you don’t have to stick to conventions but beyond that, I think it’s the most artful of film you know genres that you can pick. I mean, there are very few genres that I can think of that you can actually do in any climate, use new techniques, and do whatever you want to do as long as it makes within itself; it’s great!
Uncle Creepy: Yeah and that’s an interesting point, too, because pertaining to other genres. I mean you can laugh but you can’t feel comedy. You know you can take part in but you can’t really feel dramatic whereas horror is a genre that’s named after an emotion that it actually elicits in its viewer and I think that’s a big part of it.
Bill Malone: Well it’s so hard. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to it myself. I think it puts me much more in touch with life. I think in those moments when you’re terrified, you much more for those minutes or whatever it is, an hour and a half or whatever. But it’s a great feeling and a great way of being sort of in touch with the cosmos. I’m not getting too crazy here but the movies, when I was growing up gave me really a sense of wonder. When I was a little tiny kid, my mom took me to see Creature from the Black Lagoon and I still remember that very vividly, seeing creature swimming underwater and it was like a wonderful ballet and just you know stick with you, that amazig sense of wonder really.
Uncle Creepy: Plus I think that movie in particular had probably one of the most kick-ass monster suits every made even by today standards.
Bill Malone: Yeah, you know what? I’ve gotten an argument with studio health advisers and they called me to see if wanted to do their remake and I said “You guys aren’t going to hire me.” And they said “Why?” I’ll just go and tell you right now with the view web and you’re not going to like what I’m going to tell you. To tell you is, the Creature from the Black Lagoon is the greatest monster ever made and you know you’re not going to redesign it. If you go redesign this, it’s not going to be the creature but if someone says make a Humpty Bogart movie and I got somebody else playing Humpty Bogart. He is so unique and if you try and redesign this, it’s not going to be the Creature. I said “I could maybe make it scarier or something. But you’re not going to turn the creature into something else.”
Uncle Creepy: Oh, there’s no need to man. It’s almost like, well I don’t know if you want to go this far, but it’s almost like putting a mustache on a Mona Lisa.
Bill Malone: Absolutely. It is. The design is still beautiful particularly to my mind, the first film, the Creature from Black Lagoon, there’s just something wonderful with the way that it was. It has a lot of the same schemes that the monster makers later on used.
Uncle Creepy: Absolutely.
Bill Malone: It’s just a wonderful costume and I would agree with you. I mean most effects guy that you talk to you in town if you say, “What’s the greatest design ever” and they’ll say the “Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
Uncle Creepy: Yeah, I mean it really doesn’t get much better. It looked fishy you know. It moved like a fish out of water would like a fish gasping for air. It was brilliant.
Uncle Creepy: So what’s coming up for you after Parasomnia?
Bill Malone: Rest. For about two and a half years. I haven’t had a breath even, I wasn’t actually complaining about it recently but no, I’ve got a couple other projects, one is that of big sci-fi things that I’ve been wanting to get off the ground and called Phoenix Dust and it’s a very cool movie, then I’ve got another little small film called The Box, but yeah there are several things that I really want to do but I think I need a little vacation here…
Uncle Creepy: Dude, when the movie plays at screen fest, go home, pop a bottle of wine and just drift baby.
Bill Malone: I think I’ll be in the back vomiting…
Uncle Creepy: Well just make sure no one doesn’t slip because then you have a freaking lawsuit.
Bill Malone: Oh no, there you go!
Uncle Creepy: Listen, we’re just about out of time but I want to thank you so much for stopping by and talking with this a little bit.
Bill Malone: Well thank you so much. I really enjoyed everything.
Categorized:Interviews News
