The film is actually quite funny. At SXSW it was a blast watching it with an audience and even more so at [Montreal’s] Fantasia Film Festival where the crowd completely went along with the dark comedy. It has such a nasty comedic side to it, did you originally want it to be that funny?
I’m glad to hear that. The film really benefits from seeing it with an audience. That’s what I intended it to be, but, yeah, its funnier than most westerns, especially the second half, which is meant to be outrageous, heightened, over-the-top film. I really hate to be bragging and I usually don’t, but I would put this movie up against anything else out there right now, I’ll put it up against everything. I meant it to be a cinematic experience. Movies don’t feel like cinema anymore, they feel like commercials.
It’s best enjoyed with an audience.
Yes, exactly. There’s nothing better than watching this movie with a packed house that “gets” it. The experience is memorable and cinematic.
Which westerns influenced you the most?
It has to be the Clint Eastwood “Dollars” trilogy [“A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” The absurdist nature, only cinema can bring you that. I took the humor in those films as inspiration. It’s not realism, but cinema. In those films if the filmmaker doesn’t exist then the film doesn’t exist either. Take away Leone and you don’t have those movies, the same can be said about any Terry Gilliam or David Lynch movie.
You are clearly in a western phase at the moment, but do you want to eventually go back to making horror movies?
Not right now. I’m sure it’ll happen again eventually, if an idea strikes me then yeah, I made a bunch of them I’ve made bunch in a row. It all has to do with inspiration, where is it coming from at any given moment or time. I never really planned on being a horror director, it just happened.
So out of curiosity, what’s your next project?
Actually [laughs], I am working on a TV series that could somewhat be considered horror with a dash of sci-fi, the deal is almost done with that project. I really want it to be a watercooler show, where people the day after ask their co-worker at work, “Did you see that?” I also wrote a 1960s LSD hippie movie, a cross between “Easy Rider” and “Picnic At Hanging Rock.”
