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Bryan Layne: Are you in the middle of some new projects?

John McNaughton: I’m working with Bill Murray on what will, hopefully, be out fourth collaboration. This time around, he’ll also be producing. We spent quite awhile in Baltimore, earlier in the winter, and I just got back, not so long ago, from Southern California where we were working on the script some more. So, that’s my primary project at the moment.

B.L.: Do you have a title for it?

J.M.: Yes, it’s called KING OF COUNTERFIET. There are always numerous projects I’m trying to get completed. I’m working with a company called Grand Illusions on something that’s a very cool picture called WHAT I DID FOR DEIDRA.

B.L.: What’s that one going to be like?

J.M.: That movie is a very convoluted, twisty-turny crime thriller.

B.L.: Similar to your film WILD THINGS, maybe?

J.M.: Well, sort of, but not quite as –and I hate to use this word, but I will, just because it applies…not quite as campy. I never really thought of WILD THINGS as being camp. I just thought of it as being droll because the guy who re-wrote it has a very droll way with humor and dialogue. Interestingly enough, just this morning–I think it was on Slate –they were reviewing Denise Richards’ new reality show and they said something about WILD THINGS. They claimed it was a cross between James M. Cain and a wet t-shirt contest. Which I got a laugh out of, but by the same token, if one was to watch something like THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, they certainly played up the sexual aspects of Lana Turner’s character and also had a lot of fun with it. I can take a joke as well as anybody, but I do take exception to some degree (laughing).

B.L.: When you completed WILD THINGS, did you realize the sexual content was going to be such a big deal with critics and the public?

J.M.: No, not really–no more than I realized HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER would be made into such a big deal with the violent content. Those two are kind of similar with trying to push the envelope, or push the boundaries. It got to the point, before doing WILD THINGS, that I had been trying to get various projects done and wasn’t having much success. WILD THINGS came along and I had already made my mind up that I truly needed to do a so-called “Hollywood picture” to keep my name afloat in the filmmaking community. I read the original script of WILD THINGS and began to think to myself, “So, what is basically commercial in a film for adults?” You’ve got sex, violence, greed, or money and I figured we were going to do all of that. We were going to do all of that until it comes out the ears on this particular picture. My attitude was, “You want sex? You want violence? You want bad behavior? Well, we’ve got it!” I think that film is a lot of fun and it truly was my first attempt at entertainment.

B.L.: Have you viewed any of the straight to video sequels in that series?

J.M.: No, I haven’t been involved with, nor have I seen any of the sequels. I wish them well, but I already did what I had to say for that series. I mean, from my point of view, everybody was dead except for the Neve Campbell character.

B.L.: Did MPI approach you from the very beginning about directing HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER?

J.M.: Well, I knew those guys for a very long time. I can remember them when they operated out of their parents’ basement and this was before videocassettes. Their business, in the early stages, was running A.V. equipment–like slide projectors or 16MM projectors–to whoever required them at places like The Holiday Inn Business Centers, etc. They were hustling in the world of just getting services on the very fringe of show business and production. They eventually got into the videocassette business, earlier than most of the other people out there, and they started making a ton of money. I had been working for them, basically just bicycling prints to these 8MM projectors at Pizza Hut restaurants, or something to that extent. Anyway, I had left their employ, but I had told Waleed–who is now deceased; there were the two brothers at MPI, Waleed and Malik–of having a dream of making a feature film someday. They eventually got into the video business and started selling a huge amount of units. They were buying up the video rights to horror films and they made quite a bit of money from those. They decided that it would be in their best interests to make an original horror film so they could own all of the rights to a specific title, rather than just license the video rights for a specific amount of time. Ray Atherton, who is also deceased, and myself had done some documentaries for MPI. They were kind of a precursor to some of the shows that were on A&E a couple of years ago about the American gangsters. We were using public domain still photographs and film footage. We did a couple of those under the title of DEALERS IN DEATH and we had some success with them. They marketed them on cassette and we were going to follow those up with a few documentaries on professional wrestling, this was before the WWF. Somebody had all of this old wrestling footage from around the sixties and we were going to use that as the basis for these films. As it turned out, the guys who had the footage, when it came time to make the deal they changed their previously quoted price. So, we told them to piss off, basically. Waleed said to me, “Listen, these guys are trying to shake us down. We don’t want to do business with them, but I tell you what. I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars to make a horror film for us.” It was kind of like the clouds parted and my lucky day had occurred.

Do you remember the old SERGEANT BILKO television series?

B.L.: I sure do. Phil Silvers, right?

J.M.: Yes. There was a particular episode that I’ve always remembered. Sergeant Bilko was always gambling or wheeling-and-dealing. At the beginning of this episode, a voice spoke down from heaven declaring that today was Sergeant Bilko’s lucky day. No matter what, he refused to recognize that it was his lucky day. His various platoon members are coming to him with hot tips on horse races, etc. The whole time he wasn’t paying any attention to the things that were transpiring around him. Finally, at around 11:30 pm, it somehow became apparent to him that this was his lucky day and that he’d screwed up all these opportunities over that time. So, he got his guys together and they scraped up all their dough to place it on a horse that was running. They were all huddled together and listening to the race on the radio. It turns midnight before the end of the race and the horse just drops dead or something. It led me to believe that we all get a lucky day in life. And that, sort of, was mine. MPI’s headquarters, at the time, was around the corner from a 7-11 that sold lottery tickets and after I left the office, having made a verbal deal to complete a feature film–which I had no idea was coming my way–I walked around the corner and bought lottery tickets (laughing) and I never buy lottery tickets, but I figured this was my lucky day.

Of course, I didn’t win the lottery.

B.L.: What was your intended goal when you first approached HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER?

J.M.: The goal was Waleed said, “We need a horror film.” And I loved horror films. I just read where Guillermo del Toro was hired by Peter Jackson to work on THE HOBBIT. Del Toro has always been quoted as hating sword-and-sorcery films, but I did not hate horror films. I truly enjoyed horror films and I had always been a fan of the genre. So, Waleed asked me to make a horror film for a hundred thousand dollars. I saw the whole matter as, if that’s the task, to make a horror film with that kind of budget…ergo, we are going to horrify the audience to the best of out abilities.

B.L.: I’ve got to tell you that I like HENRY, but I’ve probably sat through the complete film only twice and that’s simply because it’s not a very fun ride.

J.M.: No, it’s not and that was the intent. It was like; you’re only going to get one shot to make a feature film. Okay then, wake-up everybody and watch this!

B.L.: What did you think of the finished film?

J.M.: Well, you just don’t know. You are too close to it for far too long. It was twenty-eight straight days of shooting, with no days off for myself. I was on the couch for ten days afterwards because the resources were so slim and the days were so long. Directing a film for myself is usually detrimental to my health. It just takes so much emotional wear-and-tear. So, you put it together and you know what you were going for, but until people see the film, you have no idea what you’ve done. We went for something as extreme as we could make it. Although, on the other hand–as Henry is to Otis–there are certain places Henry won’t go that Otis would. One of the things was showing Becky actually being murdered. It was like, no, you just can’t do that to the audience.

B.L.: Was the film slapped with a X-rating or a NC-17 rating?

J.M.: It helped create the NC-17 rating. There was a lady at the MPAA that stated there weren’t any editing cuts that could be made to HENRY to get our desired rating. It was the overall moral tone they objected to, but it was slapped with a X-rating and I believe, to this day, there’s a lawsuit still going on contesting the X-rating. It was released unrated as a result. Based upon HENRY, Almodovar’s TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! and Peter Greenaway’s THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER–those three films were the movies that were used as examples by those who thought that there should be an adult, but not pornography, rating.

B.L.: When you first heard about the concept of the NC-17 rating what was your reaction?

J.M.: Well, nobody wants an NC-17 rating for his or her film. I forget the percentage of ticket sales in America at the suburban multiplexes, which are usually within shopping malls. Almost in every case, at the least nothing harder than an R rating can be shown. So, you’ve reduced your visibility by about ninety-five percent.

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