On Lord of Illusions... (continued)
On Nix, Dorothea clasped close to him. He revolves as he floats over the chasm below them.
NIX : (to unseen cultists) You see, I escaped the grave. So I have to give something to the grave in return.
On the Cultists, listening to their lord with love in their eyes.
A slit opens in the middle of Nix's forehead, above the bridge of his nose (this is an image we saw in the prints in the library), and from it comes a wave of darkness. As Nix revolves, the darkness strikes the ground around the Cultists.
At first they don't realize what's going on. They think this is some kind of bizarre blessing.
NORMAN : What's happening?
NIX : (to unseen cultists) I have to give something back. So I'm giving you.
They're starting to scream now as they sink into the loose sand. They struggle, of course, but the earth seems to be hungry for them. They are dragged down, thrashing as they sink.
BARBARA : (sobbing) Why? Why?
NIX : You're not worthy. None of you. Only Swann was worthy. You just waited like lambs.
Harry appears in the doorway. Nix, still swinging round, has his back to Harry.
NIX : Well I'm not your shepherd.
Draft Four - 7 June 1994 (revised 28 June 1994)
"The screenplay in this particular case is derived from a short story. It's derived from a character I've been writing about for a very long time, so I had a very clear idea of what kind of movie I wanted tomake. I wanted to make a movie which was part detective picture, part horror movie. I wanted the horror to be as intense as I could possibly make it - as far as the MPAA would allow me to go. I wanted the detective elements to have reference to the kind of noir movies that I like. One of the things you have in your head when you're writing a script, or I have in my head when I'm writing a script, is some very specific pictures, and only a handful of them, which are by no means enough to spread throughout a movie. I had four or five images in my head which were starting places for scenes: the look of the magic show - Swann's spectacular - which we've staged at the Plantages; the look of Nix's lair; the cultists' house; the look of the Bel-Air mansion where Swann and his wife, Dorothea, reside and actually Harry's apartment - that was a late addition, but that would be another one where I had a clear idea.
[re. Bakula] "He's the Harry I've had in my head for 8 years - no word of a lie. When he stepped on set, in costume for the first time, which happened to be into his apartment, the set for his apartment, I thought, 'This is wonderful - this is the man I've been writing about for 8 years,' and that's a real thrill to see an actor so beautifully embody somebody that you've been writing about for such a long time - it's a real thrill. I have to say, they used to say that thing on posters: 'So and so is so and so.' Well, Scott Bakula is Harry D'Amour, and it really sends a shiver down an author's back.
"For all of us it was a question of making the picture in the most rational way possible. That required storyboarding the entire picture - which I'd never done before. The only things I'd storyboarded were special effects sequences. But here we were going to storyboard the whole show, that way we would have a clear idea, from day to day, 'cos we knew the days were going to be difficult days because we had so much to do in a short time, because time is money and we didn't have a lot of money. The thing we were going to try and do was pull off a movie that looked like $20m for half that - and that required organisation down to the last degree, and that also required me to know every morning exactly what we needed, there wasn't going to be time for me to play the indulgent director, there wasn't the money for that. So that meant planning the whole thing from the boards and keeping to the boards more or less, which is pretty much what we did.
"You write the script and you put it in the hands of your art director and dressers and so on and you talk and you work through possibilities. I mean, there's an exploratory phase to all of this as well, where you look at other movies and you look at researchphotographs and gradually, something comes together. In a movie, you are in a collaboration; from the moment you put 'The End' on the final page of the screenplay thereafter it becomes a collaboration. You're in a collaboration with your producer, you're collaborating with your actors, you're collaborating with the special effects people, your designers, your PP, your editors and it's very important for me to articulate as clearly as possible what I need, because that's the only way of making a modest amount of money seem like a lot more.
"I think of special effects as being an alternative reality. I think it's very important not to think of special effects as special effects. When the man comes on with the prosthetics, if you spend too much time saying, 'Boy, that's a really great 6 hour application of prosthetics,' I think you're going to signal to the audience something phoney. This is not a movie which is going to spend time admiring special effects artists' skills - extraordinary as they are - part of what they're bringing to the picture again is their own kind of reality. And I said to all the special effects houses working on this picture, all of whom I've known and admired for many years now, I mean we've got the crème de la crème working on this picture, I want to treat what you do as reality.
"When I met Daniel Von Bargen, the actor who plays Nix, in New York, I told him how much I wanted him to play the part, and he said, and it was a stunner, he said, 'I don't think I can do this,' and I said, 'Why not?' and he said, ' Well, because it's a very dark role and I think I'm going to find it difficult to enter into this drama and not end up feeling like I'm drowning in it.' Once Daniel came on set, as Nix, surrounded by his cultists, in this huge set, which represents his compound, surrounded by images of death and destruction, strange writings on the walls, incantations. Any chance I had to lighten the tone was really tough and when we got into that set it was near as dammit impossible not to feel that.
"You know, I can look through the movie and I can say, you know, every two or three minutes I'm saying, 'Geez, why did I do that? Why did I do this?' Well, the answer is you know, I got 50 things right and thirty things wrong and that's a pretty good batting average for me! You make your work and you move on - and you do that whatever medium you work in."
The Making Of Lord Of Illusions
Sci Fi Channel documentary included on unrated laser disc, 1996"When we see young Butterfield, we see this young, rather sexy lad who's obviously Nix's catamite, he's Nix's bumboy, he's shares Nix's bed. Swann on other hand is this wild card, he has looked into the Abyss, the way Nix has looked into the Abyss. Whereas Butterfield is a very attractive lightweight, Swann has this dark undertow which is one of the reasons why Kevin is so perfect for the role. He has this dark undertow which matches Nix's. I think one of the things Kevin does brilliantly and - you quoted me in the article - about him having this quality of having looked into the Abyss. Kevin gives me the impression that he is at any single moment wavering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Genius and madness walk very close in him, and I think that's very powerful and, for somebody like Nix, very attractive."
Explorer From The Far Reaches Of Experience
By Kim August, Pharr Out! 1998[re. deciding against a May opening because of the stiff competition from big budget movies] "All those movies cost upwards of $60 or $70 million, and, good as our movie is, I just thought we'd be trampled to death in that kind of company. So, we decided to wait until those guys had run their spectacular course and toward the end of the summer, probably in August, when they've basically done their business, we can come out with our picture. Though I think that is a very sensible course, I'm a little frustrated because I want the world to see my movie! I'm very excited about it. I've geared myself up for showing [Lord Of Illusions] to the world earlier than this and now I have to be a little patient.
"My enthusiasm never ran out, but God, my energy took a dive, but, I don't know anybody who directs movies, who wouldn't say that about the filmmaking process. It's almost a universal truth. Particularly if you've written the thing and you're also producing or co-producing, as I was in this case. A lot of responsibility lies on your shoulders and we were really trying to push the envelope on the genre. I mean, we weren't taking about a guy with an axe in a dark house. We were putting things on the screen things that hadn't been seen before and nuances that hadn't been felt before and that means you've got to be watching really, really closely and working really, really hard to pull off something fresh, without all the money in the world.
"The good news about this is that the movie is strange and tough and dark. I guarantee you've never seen a horror movie like this. That was always my stated intention. We talked about that right from the very beginning: give audiences something they haven't seen before. The challenge of that is that you can't fall back on the tried-and-true. You can't sit back and say, 'Well, ok we'll do this whole section of the movie like George Romero would.' I couldn't sit there and say to my DP, 'Ok' well you know this stuff, it's been done here, here and here.' We were constantly trying to make it fresh and new. And, that uses up your energy. It uses up your imagination; it uses up your wits. At the end of the day I was literally looking at three sets of dailies.
"The analogy has been made by directors over the years that the moviemaking experience tends to be fairly apocalyptic, you know you feel as if you're either tied to the tracks with a train coming at you 200 miles an hour or you're actually on the 200-mile-an-hour train heading for a brick wall. Whatever it is, it's always about the sense of time and urgency: can I do that, can I do this within budget or can this be done in the time scale?
"I'm sitting here now, writing my next book. The movies are done, Candyman II is out and Thief is doing very nicely. It's all proceeding on its way, but in the middle of it, you cannot see the wood for the trees. And, that's when you're glad you organised the thing and when you're glad that you did the preproduction sketches and storyboards, because at least that means on a Monday morning when your head is turned to custard, you can at least look at the story boards and say, 'Ah, ok, now I remember! Once upon a time in a distant land….'"
Lord Of Illusions
By Michael Beeler, Cinefantastique, Vol 26 No 5, August 1995
...other comments
156 - HARRY'S CAR / CITYSCAPE - NIGHTHarry drives. Swann takes a throatful of brandy. Then he stares at Harry.
SWANN : So what did Dorothea tell you?
HARRY : About what?
SWANN : Me.
HARRY : The reviews were good, if that's what you're asking.
SWANN : But you think I'm an asshole.
HARRY : So you read minds too.
SWANN : (a warning) I can do a lot of shit, D'Amour. But you know that. I like playing with people's heads.
HARRY : Is that the best you can do?
SWANN : It's important to distract them from their banality for a few minutes. It's like a public service. It doesn't mean much in the end. They're all going to die.
HARRY : And you're not?
SWANN : Oh, I was going to discover the secret of the universe. That's why I liked Nix. He promised me all these explanations.
HARRY : And he didn't have them?
SWANN : He had something. He showed me how to bend the rules. A little levitation. A few fireworks.
HARRY : Is that all?
SWANN : No. (a beat) At the end... when we had him cornered, he got into my head. He showed me what we really look like, when the veneer's gone. Jelly. Shit.
HARRY : And you believed him?
SWANN : I saw it with my own fucking eyes! See, that's his best trick. No illusions. Just the truth. (he looks at Harry) Are you ready for that?
Harry grabs the brandy bottle from Swann.
SWANN : Hey!
Harry drinks.
SWANN : Thought not.
Draft Four - 7 June 1994
Jo-Anne Sellar : "Usually on the films I've done, you have to get a name actor to get a green light. This movie was greenlit based on Clive, so it was nice that we could go without having to get a name actor in every role. It allows us to have free rein to cast the right people instead."
The Conjuring Of Lord Of Illusions Part 1 - Preproduction
By Anthony C Ferrante, (i) Fangoria No 138, November 1994 (ii) Fangoria : Masters of the Dark
Von Bargen : "I just saw blood and I kinda turned it down the first time I read through it - oh my goodness - and I'd just kinda skimmed through it, I must admit, and then after talking with Clive, for a good while, I just began to think of it differently. I didn't know what you and I know now about what Clive had in mind when he wrote it, and that makes all the difference in the world really - there's a reason for this stuff happening, as opposed to reading your part and - oh, Nix does what? I'm sorry! But now, I like it, it's really kind of fascinating."
The Making Of Lord Of Illusions
Sci Fi Channel documentary included on unrated laser disc, 1996Von Bargen : "I originally passed on the script, because most of what I saw was this very far-out, evil guy. It's a pretty interesting place to go, to basically play a renegade evil spirit embodied in a human form…you can't play him maniacally evil - that's too predictable."
The Conjuring Of Lord Of Illusions Part 1 - Preproduction
By Anthony C Ferrante, (i) Fangoria No 138, November 1994 (ii) Fangoria : Masters Of The Dark
Scott Bakula : "Harry D'Amour - a character that Clive's been writing about for 10 years. The challenge for me, to bring a character like this to life, is not just doing my normal character work, but someone that everyone seems to know, that's read Clive, and certainly that Clive knows more intimately than anyone else. It helped tremendously to have the writer saying, 'You're the guy, you're perfect for Harry.' Still I had to come up with my own interpretation of Harry - who he was - and bring this 40's film noir detective into the 90's and make him seem fresh and new and relevant to these situations that only Clive could put him in. So, it was a great challenge, and, without patting myself on the back - because Clive would say the same thing - he now writes Harry and thinks of me. So I guess I achieved some sort of success there."
The Making Of Lord Of Illusions
Sci Fi Channel documentary included on unrated laser disc, 1996Famke Janssen : "I thought, this is going to be a really challenging film to do as an actor, no matter what, just because when you act in a horror film you're gonna have to deal with a lot of elements that are not there on the day when you're shooting. So that was certainly challenging - seeing an empty wall and imaging something to come out of that, or looking in the sky and supposedly something is unfolding in front of my eyes that I don't know exactly what to imagine. And of course Clive knows all these things very well 'cos he wrote it, and as much as he could, he tried to explain these things to me during shooting and I kept insisting, 'I want to know more, be more specific,' y'know, 'What does it feel like?' 'What does it look like?' 'Whatever you can give me, because I'm not in your head, I can't imagine these things.' And, of course, funny enough, by the time I saw all this on film, it was so different than what I'd been imagining at the time, because I am not in his head and I don't have his imagination - I wish I did, because he has the best imagination of anybody."
The Making Of Lord Of Illusions
Sci Fi Channel documentary included on unrated laser disc, 1996Jo-Anne Sellar : "The thing that I've found I'm most impressed about him as a director, working with lots of other directors before him, he's extremely decisive, he knows exactly what he wants. When he walks on set, it's never 'if', 'but'. It's like, this is what I want from actors, this is what I want from art direction, you know, across the board - and really, it saves an enormous amount of time and basic clarity in every area.
"We have a really good effects supervisor who's brought really good people to the table, like XFX, who are doing all of Nix's makeup, and then KNB who are doing the general, day to day gory stuff. And then Gene Warren, from Fantasy 2, who's doing a lot, well, 90% of the opticals. And it's a really strong package and a lot of people, when they read the script, and then they met Clive, they really went for it."
The Making Of Lord Of Illusions
Sci Fi Channel documentary included on unrated laser disc, 1996Scott Bakula : "There are definitely some similarities [between Harry and Kolchak, the 'Night Stalker']. If there's a possession or an exorcism, Harry will be there. He's drawn to that environment. The darker forces find those people; they know who they are. He is that person. Clive had this wonderful description: he said, 'Harry is paying off some kind of karmic debt.' I love that. He is forced into wrangling with these forces."
The Big Leap
By Edward Gross, Cinescape, Vol 1, No 11, August 1995
Tom Keogh : "There is a long trail of provocative ideas and themes in this film that Barker never seems to get the chance to explore: generational betrayal, ambivalence over one's destiny, the seductiveness of evil. But while the film feels a little unfulfilled, what's on the screen is extraordinary stuff. Barker is a distinctive visualist as well as a no-holds-barred writer working the psychological swamp of unholy fascination. His most frightening moments in this film are impossible to turn away from, transfixing the audience with its own distorted reflection in a story of false prophesies and mad power."
Lord Of Illusions : Review
By Tom Keogh, 99 Lives - The Video Magazine, 5th June 1997
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