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B.L.: Were there any problems with the distribution of HENRY?

J.M.: It wasn’t so much problems, but it was given to a company that really had no resources. It was actually going to be distributed by Vestron and they got cold feet and reneged on their deal. It was then given to a little company called Greycat Films that really, really had no resources to actually take it out themselves. They had to receive monies from MPI and, consequently, it was really a tight-fisted release and there was a great deal of acrimony between the two entities. It did get released in America and it did play everywhere, but it was not what most would call well distributed.

B.L.: You said earlier that they gave you a hundred thousand dollars to complete HENRY. Did you wind up needing more than that?

J.M.: I will only say this: to this day I’ve almost never gone over budget. I’m really responsible to budget. We budgeted, honestly, to finish the picture, but we didn’t budget for prints of the film. So, when we got to the prints stage, there was an additional eleven thousand dollars that we didn’t budget for because their initial idea was that HENRY was only going to be a video release since MPI was a video company. We were pretty close though. I think we were over by a couple of thousand; one or two thousand dollars.

B.L.: And you made more than that back, of course?

J.M.: Well, they did (laughing). They made a lot more than that back. They sold HENRY all over the world and it did pretty well. They also did extremely well with it on video.

B.L.: Does it surprise you that HENRY has held-up and is still highly regarded to date?

J.M.: Well again, I think we just tried not to make a crappy film. We tried to make something that would get to the truth about human behavior and not rely on the horror cliché. To me, HENRY is really a character study about people who happen to do very horrific things. It’s horror only by default, but it is first and foremost a story about those people. It’s not the “booga-booga” type of stuff.

B.L.: What kind of stock did you film HENRY on?

J.M.: It was Kodak Eastman stock. I kind of remember we had the high-speed stock and the daylight stock. Both stocks were 16mm.

B.L.: And it was blown-up for theatrical release?

J.M.: Yes it was and that was actually another tack-on to the original budget. There was a Chinese-American gentleman named Dick Lim. He was the go-to guy to film optical work here in Chicago for many years in the advertising business. He had an optical bench and he did the work for us at a very reasonable price. He really did do a brilliant job.

B.L.: I have heard this story before, but I wanted to give you a chance to retell it. What can you tell me about the Michael Rooker jacket story?

J.M.: When he came for his interview, he was basically wearing the HENRY outfit, except for his shoes and socks. He had some kind of Rockport shoes, or something similar, that weren’t true HENRY shoes. They weren’t terribly fashionable, but Henry would not wear Rockport. He had that Carhartt jacket and it was Rooker’s own personal jacket. That was our basic wardrobe for him. He had like Dickies workpants; those blue workpants. I just saw a guy crossing the street yesterday here in Chicago wearing those kind of pants that factory workers and guys like that always wear. Anyway, that was our HENRY jacket. I mean, we did have some money, but when you shoot blood or gore scenes, you buy multiples of the wardrobe because you’re going to get them bloody and then you can’t reshoot the take before they were bloody. We didn’t have the money to buy multiples of wardrobe. So, you’ll notice before Henry kills anybody, if it’s going to be bloody, Michael always takes his jacket off.

B.L.: What was MPI’s reaction to the finished film? Did they realize they had a hit on their hands?

J.M.: No, not in the least bit. They were expecting a ‘B’ grade horror film. I don’t think they got what we had done. It was an art film in their eyes.

B.L.: Do you think you would have been as successful had you followed the typical horror genre blueprint?

J.M.: I seriously doubt it. When you are working with that small a budget… I mean we did do some special effects, but you really have to be working with a little more money if you want to compete with the horror genre, as we know it. It would be more of a fantastic type of picture. A film that is less realistic and relies more on its traditional “booga-booga” gags for its horrificness, rather than focusing on the dark side of human nature.

B.L.: Upon completing HENRY, the film was shelved, was it not?

J.M.: Yes, it was, for about three or four years.

B.L.: How did that make you feel?

J.M.: Well, the first big word my father taught me, as a kid was perseverance.

B.L.: Were there any specific films that might have influenced your approach to filmmaking?

J.M.: I just always loved movies and television shows during childhood, also art. I came into it more through a love of certain people–like Martin Scorsese and John Carpenter–who were just complete and utter movie fans, and although I loved movies, I probably loved television more because I was of a television generation. I went to the movies certainly, but I saw a lot of old movies on television. I also loved art and rock ‘n roll from growing up in the sixties. It was all a piece of American popular culture to me. At the time–and I’ve kind of changed my views on this–I felt that you had to be purely original, and that to take from anybody else was not cool. I’ve since come to realize that there was no bigger thief than Shakespeare. We all build upon what has come before and nothing comes from nowhere. It kind of gives one license to steal. Which I think is one of the great revelations that you learn from working in the arts. You have that right (laughing).

B.L.: You might very well be responsible for filmmakers and the public taking notice of Bill Murray’s acting ability when you cast him in MAD DOG AND GLORY. Did you realize he could pull it off at the time?

J.M.: You know when the test was? The big test, in my mind, was when his character, Frank Milo, does a stand-up comedy act. I think MAD DOG AND GLORY was the first C.S.I. movie. I had never heard of the crime scene investigation units until I saw the script for MAD DOG AND GLORY. Also, although we didn’t show the scenes, Bill Murray’s character is always talking about visiting a shrink. So, it was the first time anybody thought to give a gangster a psychiatrist. The test for Murray in that role to me was when his character did stand-up comedy as a form of therapy for himself. As it was written in the script, it was really funny, but it was funny because it wasn’t funny at all. When we had Bill Murray standing up at the nightclub being horribly unfunny (laughing)…being funny, being not funny. It was like getting Pavarotti to get up there and sing off key. It goes against every fiber of their being. I thought if Bill could pull that aspect off then we were golden with his performance because he’s got to have bad timing and totally screw the jokes up. That’s very difficult for somebody who’s world class at something.

B.L.: I remember your film NORMAL LIFE was a huge critical success; was it popular with audiences?

J.M.: I know it wasn’t popular with New Line Cinema, which was the company who paid for it. It was distributed rather like HENRY. Prints were dropped off in vacant lots for whoever might want to thread them up somewhere. It was distributed in around thirty-six cities, most of which I’ve never been to and I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around the United States (laughing). It was just a very lousy release. They also really didn’t like the picture. It did get great reviews, but the people responsible at New Line Cinema, at that time, were just incompetent. The picture was forced upon them and I believe they decided, before they even saw it, that they didn’t like it–may they all rot in Hell. Not everybody at New Line, just two particular individuals who are long since gone.

B.L.: Did you find the MASTERS OF HORROR episode you directed to be a good experience?

J.M.: Yes, it was actually. I think all of the directors were treated very well on that show and I found the Vancouver crews to really surprise me. I was planning on doing something much more kitschy because I just didn’t think for the budget we had we could pull something off that was polished. The Vancouver group that they put together really surprised me. We were able to do something for 1.3 million dollars that was pretty damn good looking. It was interesting because I expected it to look a lot more funky and to see the seams going in, but there was just a wonderful group of people in Vancouver that were really good at what they did–all of them. There was a great cinematographer, a great production designer and great costume design folks involved with that one. I thought we were trying to do a little homage to the Hammer films and the production designer built that graveyard just for our episode. It was pretty amazing that it could be built and still he was able to build all the other sets we needed within a 1.3 million dollar budget. So, yeah, I enjoyed that experience very much.

B.L.: That wasn’t your first time filming in Canada, was it?

J.M.: Oh no, I’ve done a lot of television in Canada. Actually, I made a movie called SPEAKING OF SEX in Canada and had another wonderful experience in the release aspect of filmmaking. You may have never heard of that film.

B.L.: To be honest, no I have not and I’ve been following your career close enough.

J.M.: Well, here’s the cast in a film that has never been released in the United States: Bill Murray, Catherine O’Hara, Lara Flynn Boyle, James Spader, Megan Mullally, Hart Bochner, Phil LaMarr, Melora Walters, Jay Mohr and a few others.

B.L.: Why haven’t we seen this feature?

J.M.: Well, it is comedy and we took it to some extremes. Late at night, they show this American cinema series out here that was done in the eighties, perhaps. One of the shows was on film noir and they were interviewing Martin Scorsese. He would be hanging around with his friends and family–Italian Americans from Little Italy in New York–and they would be talking about gangster pictures. They would say to each other that there always seemed to be a scene where a guy takes the girl into a room, they close the door and they could never show to the audience what was going on behind that closed door. When Marty got to do MEAN STREETS, his ambition was that he was going to show that to the audience. SPEAKING OF SEX was a wonderful script written by Gary Tieche. It was like a Preston Sturges type of comedy; very wild and about human foibles. Where Preston Sturges couldn’t show all of the sex, we showed it. It was my first full-out comedy. I certainly might have made some mistakes, but the picture played pretty well. It was shown at The Tribeca Film Festival and The Chicago Film Festival. It played well in front of the crowds, but it was made for a French company, Studio Canal, which was the art film division of Canal Plus. They were involved with Universal Studios at that time and they kind of took a financial nosedive. The whole setting of SPEAKING OF SEX takes place in Boise, Idaho–we filmed it in Calgary–and there was a very bumpkinesque nature to some of the key characters. We had a lot of fun with being in Boise; sort of Bumpkinville. To the French producers, this was their worst nightmare. They were two very sophisticated men who’s attitude was that they just weren’t interested in The Beverly Hillbillies. They just didn’t get it. They didn’t like it and the company was going down the toilet. So, that film is little seen.

B.L.: What about video? Will SPEAKING OF SEX ever hit the shelves?

J.M.: Sort of…somewhere. It’s funny because I was in Australia a couple of years after it was completed and I was scouting locations for a film that didn’t get made for RKO. The people who were our local contacts picked us up at the airport and then we all went out for dinner. It was a man and a woman who had a production company in Brisbane and they were very nice people, Tony and Simone were their names. Tony said to me, “Oh, I really loved your movie.” Often when someone says that to me, they are usually talking about HENRY and it kind of gets under my skin because I have made other films (laughing). I asked Tony which film of mine he was referring to and he said, “The new one, SPEAKING OF SEX.” I had to ask him where in the hell did he see it. He goes, “Oh, I rented it at the video store.” I said, “No Shit.” I gave him a hundred dollars and asked him to please rent it again. Then I had him just tell them he lost it so I could keep it because I didn’t even have a copy for myself.

B.L.: How about the film THE NIGHT JOB I’ve been reading about? What can you tell me about it?

J.M.: There’s also another wonderful script called SWEET that I’m doing with producer Peter Newman. The last thing he produced was THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, but he’s produced a lot of smaller pictures over the years. I just talked to Michael Mailer, who is one of Norman’s sons and the producer of THE NIGHT JOB. As a director, you need to have a number of those projects kind of tumbling around in the big dryer, you know? Then, hopefully, you put together a cast, then you find the money and then you get the picture done. THE NIGHT JOB is a wonderful script and I hope someday the money will come.

B.L.: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me and I look forward to all your future work.

J.M.: (laughing) So do I.

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