Hussain, Karim (Bloodline)
Dread Central Staff
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Back in 1999, some Montreal-based filmmakers got the crazy notion to create a anthology film of sorts, but one unlike the world had really seen before. Disgusting and artful at the same time, Subconscious Cruelty quickly became the film that everyone wanted to see but could rarely find. It’s director, Karim Hussain, has since gone on to direct another feature, Ascension, that is also having difficulty seeing the light of day.
His first film solely as a screenwriter, however, is getting ready for a release by Filmax and marks one of the most interesting collaborations in horror in recent memory. Scripted by Hussain with re-writes by Richard Stanley, and directed by Aftermath helmer Nacho Cerda in his feature-length debut, Bloodline was a movie that I had to know more about.
Karim was kind enough to take the time out of his schedule as he finishes his third feature, The Beautiful Beast, to talk about Bloodline, Subconscious Cruelty, and a lot more. I hope you enjoy the results!
Johnny Butane: Sorry to start with something other than Bloodline, but I’m curious how you feel about Sazuma’s recent release of Subconscious Cruelty as a massive special edition.
Karim Hussain : I’m very happy with Sazuma’s release of Subconscious Cruelty. I think they did a super-human effort to try and put the best package possible with the materials they had, and their passion and enthusiasm for the film is really appreciated. I hope the movie’s fans are enjoying the disc.
JB: Why do you think it took so long to finally get a decent release?
KH: I think it was a conscious decision on the part of the film’s producer Mitch Davis, which is cool… A film like that needs time to slowly grow and reach its audience. When it first came out, a lot of people reacted very violently and aggressively towards it, which is fine I guess when you consider the kind of film it is. But this kind of movie is like a really rare wine that needs to age to be at its best, where some people will be able to appreciate and tell the difference between it and other movies, while others will just wonder “What is this strange shit and why am I bothering to see it?” So it takes time for the right people to seek out and find that kind of movie.
For some odd reason, I think a movie like Subconscious Cruelty shouldn’t just be widely available right away. It needs time to age properly so the brouhaha of its initial release matures and people can finally see the film in the context it was always meant to be seen.
The same can be said about my second feature Ascension, which is still tied up from distribution due to all sorts of bullshit fights between the producers and financiers, which will still probably take years before it finds its right audience. Too bad, because it’s a really radical, strange and challenging movie that usually polarizes audiences (especially fans of hardcore horror), even though it did get some good reviews from its few initial festival screenings before the movie got frozen (and also some really angry, aggressive ones that seethed with hatred, much like Subconscious Cruelty when it initially played festivals, though this time for different reasons). I heard it was supposed to come out on DVD in Japan this past August, but predictably the film’s financiers haven’t called me to update me on that one…
But back to Subconscious Cruelty, there’s the old saying… If you make it, they’ll come. Well it turns out that sometimes the trip is longer than planned, more complex, and ends up being very expensive in gas! But it’s worth it in the end. Some people made offers before for the film, but financially they weren’t on the level that was necessary. The Japanese disc, which was very successful, was the version people saw for years, though it was optically fogged in places. There were other small releases in other European countries and tons of bootleg versions. We’ll see about a North American release soon but maybe in Bush’s America it might be a tricky time to put out such a film… Or perhaps not, perhaps it’s absolutely the BEST time for that exact same reason!
JB: It would take a distributor with a lot of balls to put it out in the States. Personally I think Unearthed are about the only ones that could manage it. If they could do both Guinea Pig and Aftermath, I think they could handle Cruelty.
So on to Bloodline; how did you and Nacho initially meet up?
KH : I met Nacho at the Montreal Fantasia film festival in 1997, where he came in to show Aftermath. I used to be one of the organizers of that event. We became friends, shared a lot of interests, then I flew up to Barcelona in ’98 or ’99 to begin work on a project that ultimately ate up two years of development only to be set aside. Then we worked on a number of other projects, with me or him always going back and forth between Montreal and Barcelona (at one point I was practically living half the year in Barcelona), most notably Oblivion, the much publicized film for Filmax that was delayed for the time being due to its complex production structure.
Filmax wanted us to do a more condensed horror movie for Nacho’s first feature, so we got to work on Bloodline, which is based on an old script I wrote back in 1999 that Nacho had kicking around his desk for a number of years. We’d be discussing all sorts of projects and he’d always come back to that one, saying he couldn’t get it out of his mind. So finally he decided to do it and a couple years later and numerous other drafts of the script, it’s shot! We’re all very happy with the way it’s turning out.
JB: The film that you worked on that was put aside, is that Ascension?
KH : Yes, Ascension is my second feature film. Nacho didn’t work on it, though he does have a Thank You credit. It is a 1 million dollar Japanese funded film I wrote and directed starring Marie-Josée Croze, who won best actress in Cannes in 2003 for The Barbarian Invasions. It’s a very weird, dreamy, cynical and ironic movie that sharply divides audiences, especially those looking for a “normal” horror movie. I’m very proud of it. It’s a completely radical film for these days of logic and reason. Every time you watch it, you’ll discover new, strange things. But today is not the time to make such a film as movies have become more and more “product” and less about dreams.
It won the New Visions award at the 2003 Sitges International Film Festival, which should have helped launch a small art-house career for the film at least in Europe, where the movie would have been more appreciated, but there was a conflict that arose between the investors and producers, so at the end of this fight, the film ended up on a shelf for a while. No one was handling it, even for festivals, and I was in Barcelona working on Bloodline, so I couldn’t undertake the distribution career of a feature film.
It’s a really tough movie for some audiences to get into, granted, but at the same time for those who like a challenge when they go to the movies, I think it’s a real treat for them. Well, live and learn and on to the next project as they say.
JB : Is Oblivion still something you’re planning on doing together? Can you give me some info as to what that’s about?
KH: I cannot really say what will happen with it, nor can I really talk about it. All I can say is that the script gets really great reactions and we hope to one day make it.
JB: No problem, understood!
So where did the idea for Bloodline come from?
KH : Bloodline is based on an original script I wrote in 1999, which originally had the odd title of The Bleeding Compass. A Canadian producer asked me to write a low budget horror movie for him, so I thought I would surprise him with something I would deliver very fast. The general idea came from some images I had in dreams, the concept that there could be no greater ghost to haunt one’s self than their own.
It was a very strange, obsessive little script; inspired by many trips I took to my father’s farm in my youth. The layout of the farm in the movie is still a bit similar to the layout of that farm. In the night, that place was one of the most fantastic, terrifying and ghostly places imaginable. So much black space, so much darkness where anything could happen. Many of the buildings were in bad shape, rotting. It was so beautiful. I grew up going there practically every weekend and my imagination would run wild.
So I basically crammed many of the ideas and imagery I thought of there into the script and structured it around the concept of looking into your own eyes, only the reflection is of yourself dead. I always loved Russian cinema, so I wanted to do a kind of homage to that odd world of folklore and isolation. The idea was to do a pure horror movie where again, family was the culprit, a theme that is common in my work.
I originally wrote it very rapidly, almost like in a fever, I think in like a week. People I knew inspired some of the characters. Strangely enough, ultimately that producer wanted something more sadistic and gore-soaked, so he passed on it which I always thought was an odd decision. So I started showing it around to other people…
Nacho had read it at the time and thought that draft was very rough, but he always kept coming back to it and saying how much potential he thought it had. We had been working together on all sorts of stuff, and in the interim I re-wrote it a bit and the title changed to Haunted Light. I had tried to set it up at a couple different companies with me attached as a director but it kept on getting delayed, or they just didn’t get it. At that time it was a very dreamy, stream of consciousness kind of horror movie, not so concerned about story mechanics as it was nightmarish imagery and concepts.
Then Filmax wanted us to do a relatively low budget horror movie, and Nacho thought this could be interesting for him to direct, so we sat down in Barcelona and re-wrote the film together rather radically in early 2004 and called it Bloodline. We went through numerous drafts and ironically, from how things are looking, some things in the movie are actually a bit similar to that very first draft I wrote in 1999, which I think is pretty fun.
Afterwards, I was busy in pre-production on my new film as a director, La Belle Bête (The Beautiful Beast) and we needed a really good writer to finalize the production shooting drafts with Nacho, so he and I both thought Richard Stanley would be perfect. Richard’s an old friend and he was excited to come in and work with Nacho on this strange, dreamy horror movie set in Russia. We’re all thrilled with the way it’s come out.
JB: The cast seems to be made up of Russian actors and actresses….
KH : Actually, the casting is mostly Bulgarian actors pretending to be Russian, as the movie was shot in Bulgaria. Since many Bulgarians have problems with Russia for various reasons, there’s irony there. The two leads are the main foreigners. Anastasia Hille is from England and has been in quite a few movies, like Wisdom of Crocodiles, RKO 281 and The Hole. Karel Roden is Czech and is a regular in Guillermo Del Toro’s films. He played Rasputin in Hellboy, was in Blade 2 and The Bourne Supremacy amongst others. Both are very experienced and excellent actors, but not household names, which can be a good thing in keeping the audience concentrated on the story and situations as opposed to the “star power”, a quality you found in early Romero and Carpenter films.
JB: What involvement did you have in the casting process?
KH : I was not involved in the casting, other than Nacho calling me up and consulting with me here and there, asking my opinion so I don’t know the politics behind the casting, but I do know that Nacho is very satisfied with the performances.
JB: Were you able to be involved in Bloodline’s actual shoot at all?
KH : I was not on set for the shoot of Bloodline because it was filming at the same time as Beautiful Beast. I was in Montreal, Nacho was in Bulgaria. We spoke on the phone a lot and called each other up every Saturday to trade war stories. Richard Stanley was on set a bit to do some final polishes with Nacho, but we consulted each other on most everything. Ironically, Bloodline finished its shoot on the exact same day I finished mine. Like some sort of weird lost twins connected from afar telepathically.
JB: Can you tell us a bit about The Beautiful Beast, your next feature?
KH : It’s based on a classic 1959 novel written by Marie-Claire Blais, one of Canada’s most prestigious and greatest writers. She wrote the screenplay with my production partner, Julien Fonfrède and myself, so it’s been a real pleasure collaborating with such a legend here. It’s a dark family drama about a love triangle between a mother, her son and her daughter. Would horror fans like it? Some might, there are some pretty cruel and strange moments in it, but it will be marketed undoubtedly as a drama, as it’s more that kind of film.
It is shot in Québec, which has a rather popular film scene now and it features some pretty big stars for the French-language film world, like Carole Laure (Sweet Movie), Caroline Dhavernas (Wonderfalls) and Marc-André Grondin (C.R.A.Z.Y). I’m very happy with it, currently finishing the editing. It might seem like a departure at first, but it really isn’t that much of a stretch. It actually has more in common with Subconscious Cruelty than any of my other projects, ironically enough! Also, it’s in 2:35 widescreen, which is a fun format to work in as I’m also the cinematographer of my films.
JB: Have you sold any of the rights for Beast yet in terms of distribution? I’d hate to see another of your films go unseen for years and years…
KH : The Beautiful Beast will be distributed in Canada by Equinoxe Films, one of the major distributors here. They did movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding and strangely enough, The Passion Of The Christ in Canada. It will have a national theatrical release in Canada in Fall 2006. Internationally, the film is being sold by Rezo Films, one of the most prestigious art-house producers and distributors of France who are now starting an international sales division. So hopefully they’ll be able to get it out in the rest of the world.
JB : Is there any word on U.S. sales for Bloodline yet?
KH : Filmax would know more about the U.S sales possibilities. Right now I think it’s too early for any announcements.
JB: On a more general note, what is your feeling on the state of horror today?
KH : I’ve always loved horror movies and even though some of the previous work I’ve done might be considered too arty, inaccessible or experimental by some horror fans, I always enjoy sitting down to see a good, hard-core nuts and bolts horror movie.
Today, I think it’s an interesting time. It’s quite shocking how violent mainstream cinema has become and of course that’s a reflection of the conservative wave in America, where violence is encouraged to solve nearly every single problem, so that’s trickling down into the horror movies. Which makes for some pretty thrilling and nasty moments you never thought you’d ever see in mainstream American cinema, certainly.
However, sex is still crazily frowned upon, especially anything which can be considered “deviant” sex for the conservatives, (witness recent ratings problems for Atom Egoyan’s Where The Truth Lies) which is something I find quite disturbing. Violence okay, sex bad; again the same twisted problem that is ferociously horrific when you think about it. I think the one thing I find lacking in current horror movies, is that even though they are delivering ten fold on the hard-core visceral level, there’s not enough actual reflection on the violence and its consequences. Probably Cronenberg’s last film is the only one to recently really touch that.
That said, I can still sit down and enjoy Haute Tension or Saw 2 and marvel at the extremes they go to and have a blast.
Probably my biggest complaint, not just in horror movies but also in cinema in general, is the lack of good music in them. Many of the scores seem so generic and forgettable. Whatever happened to the great scores from the likes of Tangerine Dream, Goblin or John Carpenter from the 70’s and 80’s that were so influential and memorable? It seems that people seem satisfied with having the music go to the back seat and disappear into a kind of aura mediocrity, which I think is the reason many of the new horror remakes aren’t as successful as the movies they’re based on. People forget that half of the reason the original movies were so good was the music!
But yeah, horror today is working, I think due to the fact that many filmmakers who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s who were obsessed with that heyday of horror are starting to make features and they’re recycling a lot of the successful elements in those films. It’s the right political climate to be angry now, so that kind of thing is working, only the movies now have to deliver bang-up punches in the first two or three minutes, and be ultra-fast, which is a bit unfortunate. Attention spans are getting shorter (everything is instantaneous now, internet, mobile phones, if you want to know something, you know it immediately) and audiences have seen SO many movies. Unfortunately I think some people might be forgetting the pleasure of waiting. So that’s reflecting in the horror movies, but I guess you have to roll with the punches.
In the work I do, I try to explore different kinds of pacing and narrative mechanics, take my time with the rhythm, but more and more my films are going to have take this new cinematic pacing into consideration. The trick is to mix both styles up, I guess. Who knows, because in movies, you NEVER know what will work and what will not. If you are making a film without taking any risks or trying to change the current state of things, well then it’s not very exciting, is it?
JB: Not at all, that’s the kind of thinking needed to keep the genre fresh.
Since you mentioned it, who did the score for Bloodline?
KH: Ultimately it’s Nacho’s decision as to who to bring in to score the film, and it is a little too early now to say officially who that will be.
For my own films I direct, these days I always use David Kristian, a popular electronic musician in Montreal who is one of the most eclectic and creative composers I have ever met. He also does the special sound design for my movies, which usually adds a very strange and surreal audio texture to the show.
Of course a huge thanks out to Karim for taking time out to chat with us; it’s very appreciated! Be sure to visit Filmax’s site for Bloodline right here for more on the movie, and stick to Dread Central for more info on Hussain’s upcoming work!
Categorized:Interviews News
