Lupetin, Michael (Adina)

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I Married a Monster From Outer SpaceHorror is primed for some new blood to flow through the aisles. Every year it seems we’re slapped with any number of retreads of old ideas cast with new faces and flashed up for the ever dumber movie-going public. Interestingly enough, for all the focus groups and polls that Hollywood conducts, they have yet to realize that horror fans are dying for new terrors and fresh ideas.

Last week we brought you the news of a new type of horror that was just in the incubation stages of development (see the link below) called Adina.The movie feels like a stab at a fresh vein of horror. Adina aims not only to give us some new thrills but also to make us use the lump of zombie bait that lies nestled between our ears. I recently got to talk to the movie’s screenwriter, Michael Lupetin, about such small ideas as life, death, sex, and the illusion called time.


D.W. Bostaph: Adina is your answer to the recent glut of Hollywood remakes. What spurred on this reaction?

Michael Lupetin: It was reaction to all films out there in theaters. We both really love B-movies, myself in particular, and what makes the great B-movies so wonderful is subtext. They purport to be about aliens or catwomen, like I Married a Monster from Outer Space or Cat People, but they are really about love, marriage, and sexuality. Or take films like the original Chainsaw or The Hills Have Eyes; again they are about the dysfunctional family and the myth of family within our culture.

Today most Hollywood $100million films are just B-movies, but because they need to appeal to such a large international audience, the filmmakers strip out all subtext. The films become flat and one-note.

DW: In the attempt to do something fresh, you have created a new type of creature for the film. Can you give us an idea of what Adina truly is?

ML: Adina is a gamelon. These people or “creatures” are ancient. We don’t know how many there are, but we now that Adina is not alone. Gamelons never die. They remain young and beautiful forever but they must kill. They kill the people they fuck. The human dies at the point of climax. If a Gamelon does not kill, it will grow old but never die. It will just get older and older.

DW: Adina’s reasons for killing — youth, beauty , and sexual desire — seem to be shallow in a very Brett Easton Ellis type of way. Do you think that today’s world is devolving into a mirror of the great materialistic Eighties?

ML: The biggest myth is that the Eighties “ended.” I remember when Clinton came into office in the early Nineties and everyone screamed that the greed of the Eighties was over. The Nineties would be a time for the “people”. Health benefits, gov’t programs, a new egalitarian society. But it didn’t happen.

Bill ClintonThe stock market became a more and more important part of all our lives. I think it all got greedier and more decadent. We just pretended it didn’t. Look at the success of “Sex and the City.” It looks just like the Eighties, but the show was a hit in the 21st Century. And what about the trophy houses bulldozing through our forests?

DW: The mingling of the body and spirit that you have described as part of the absorption process Adina uses sounds interesting but not really scary. Do you feel that this is a horror film, and where does the true terror come into play?

ML: This is a great question. We both love horror, but it’s always hard to nail down a definition for any genre. For me, horror goes beyond being scaring. The core elements and thematic concerns we have in the script make it a true horror film. In a way it is like David Cronenberg.

In Adina, the real horror lies in the fact that she doesn’t really know who or what she is. What could be more terrifying than that? Imagine you wake up and suddenly your entire world is re-defined — you’re having visions to an ancient past and you kill when you have sex? Now that would be terrifying.

DW: The mind/body problem is a supreme example of a Cronenbergian issue. The loss of one’s sense of self in the wake of transformation. Is there a more acute form of horror out there?

ML: In our film, Adina loses herself, or rather her old self, and gains an entirely new way of seeing the world. She loses sense of time. There is no yesterday, today, or tomorrow. She is free from everything.

DW: You describe the inner turmoil that Adina faces with regards to her “abilities”, where does this come from? Why has she not accepted what she is?

ML: This is really linked to her mother. Some Gamelons do not choose to kill. They get old like all of us, but they don’t die. Adina’s mother in the script has hit 58 years old. Not a bad age. But in the script one character tries not to kill and literally becomes hundreds of years old. Their existence is dreadful; bed ridden, incontinent, almost a vegetable, but very much alive inside. Can a Gamelon live like this forever? I wouldn’t want to. And Adina is at a point in her life when she must face these issues.

DW: Neve Campbell is attached to the lead role of Adina, which would make this her first horror film since the end of the Scream trilogy. What were your thoughts on Wes Craven’s slasher reinvention films?

ML: They’re great films. Wes Craven is a horror god and has always been able to re-invent the horror wheel. Before Scream, I was really annoyed with all the lame tongue-in-cheek horror films. No one was making serious horror films. Then Scream came along. They were funny and scary films. But Wes did the tongue-in-cheek thing so well that he locked the door on these kind of horror films. Who would dare do another? So horror is now back to being serious.

DW: Yet, Craven has caught a lot of flack for those films, and mainly because they ushered in an age of teeny-bopper friendly films that a lot of horror fans were unhappy with. Now with Neve making a return to horror in a film you are pledging as serious, yet very ambitious, are you concerned that the fans will be unwilling to accept her back into the genre fold?

ML: No fear at all. Neve is an adult woman now and her audience is as well. As you get older, you desire more complexity and want a film to question the things that concern you beyond your teens and twenties.

DW: Was Neve one of the women you had pictured for the film?

ML: Absolutely. She has everything needed for the role. This is a more sensual and adult role than she is used to playing so we were a bit afraid to approach her even though we knew she would be perfect. Then her films The Company and When Will I Be Loved got released. She is very much a sensual adult woman in these films, and we thought, let’s send her the script. The worse that can happen is that she’d say no. But she said yes!

Nicholas RoegDW: Nicolas Roeg, who directed one of my more favorite films, The Man who Fell to Earth, is helming the project. How did he come to be involved?

ML: Very simply, he was at the top of our list and we sent him the script. We thought he’d never even open it. Instead he read it and loved it! What could be more exciting?

DW: One of the more curious parts of the ideas behind Adina is the concept of time that you bring to the table. Care to discuss?

ML: The time aspect was actually Nic Roeg’s idea. And it really added something profound and special to the project. There is no time in the film. Only now. This also makes one question one’s idea of death.

DW: String theory addresses a lot of these issues and is a very hot topic right now, in not only physics but metaphysical and philosophical circles. Where did you first come to learn of the theory?

ML: We are all so smart on this project and so well-educated (just kidding). Seriously, as we began adding these new ideas of time and space, we began researching string theory; and it just seemed a natural concept for Adina. The Gamelons actually have an understanding of time that we simply cannot fathom.

DW: Brian Greene’s Elegant Universe is a great history of the development of string theory from feeble beginnings to ultimately becoming a viable unified theory of physics. Yet, the concept is so vast and difficult for some to get their brains wrapped around, how are you planning to tackle the subject within the film’s context?

ML: I see you’ve done your research. The theory is linked to the Gamelons. They understand time and space differently. In fact there is no time. Only now. This is truly the ultimate level of growth for Adina. She begins to accept who she is, a Gamelon, in many ways because she begins to understand the notions espoused by string theorists.

DW: Life, time, death, and the meaning of it all. Adina tackles each of these. Deep, thought-provoking material makes for a great discussion. Is there any one philosopher that you found fit into the argument(s) you examine within the film?

ML: Our philosopher is Nicolas Roeg. He is an extraordinary man. As we developed the script, we researched so many philosophers and then added a Wagnerian sense of time and space, one evoked particularly in Wagner’s opera, The Flying Dutchman. It was really Nic who brought so many disparate ideas regarding string theory, and then Bernadette and I ran with it all.

The weirdest thing is that we take this very serious theory and make it sexy and dangerous without ever comprising the ideas or dumbing them down. I’m very proud of that.

Neve CampbellDW: Sex and death, the creation of life and the end of life, are always destined to be intertwined. Horror films examine both but always get a lot of criticism for examining the issues, which at their core, are two of the most intrinsic to human nature. Why are people afraid of these subjects?

ML: I understand why people are afraid of death. We don’t know what lies beyond, and our culture’s ignoring of death doesn’t help. BUT SEX! Why be afraid of sex? And don’t blame the Puritans. They were a rather cool and progressive group. I will never understand the fear of sex, but perhaps it is truly the fear of intimacy and losing one’s self. I like that explanation. And we explore that in Adina.

Regarding horror, I love horror and don’t know why the genre is so defamed. But ultimately it is that horror films aren’t afraid to explore all of our urges. Our loves, our fears, our nature … and this scares some people (no pun intended). They don’t want to cross that line. Maybe they’ll discover who they really are. That’s what happens to Adina, and it terrifies her until she embraces it.


Will horror fans embrace Adina? Right now Lupetin, co-writer Bernadette Elliott, and director Nicolas Roeg are dangling a huge bloody carrot in front of the genre community. I know I am planning on following. Any film that not only offers a new and interesting creature but attempts to nail down such heady topics is a rare breed of horror. One that is definitely worth keeping tabs on.

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