Interviews
Exclusive Interview: ROBERT KURTZMAN - THE RAGE
By Janet
Mar 10, 2008, 08:33

Robert Kurtzman is a man who has worn many hats during his impressive career. Directing (WISHMASTER), producing (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN and the upcoming BUMP with SAW'S Tobin Bell) and special effects with K.N.B. EFX Group, just to name a few. Now, he and his crew at Precinct 13, a state of the art SFX company he founded in 2004, have done the ALMOST impossible. They have made a fun, in-your-face thrill ride called THE RAGE, without a big budget. How did they do it? Good old fashioned hard work and, oh, being phenomenally talented doesn't hurt either.   

THE RAGE is out on DVD now. Robert was kind enough to talk to me about the movie, the business, his future projects and his drive-in movie escapades.

Fan Girl: Tell us a little bit about THE RAGE

Robert Kurtzman: It is kind of this throwback, a drive-in film. It is about a mad doctor, played by Andrew Divoff, who is a Bela Lugosi-style mad scientist. He creates what he calls his rage; it is a mutant germ that turns people into blood crazy, bloodthirsty maniacs. And he prepares to unleash it on the entire world to destroy the pharmaceutical conglomerates. To destroy those who found a cure for cancer but had hidden it from the entire world. It is his retaliation.

One of his subject’s escapes from the woods and gets ate by vultures and eventually it starts to spread through the wildlife. It is kind of a madcap thriller, roller coaster ride. It is madcap B-movie madness.

FG: I talked to Robert Englund recently about horror comedies. Do you see the trend coming back?

RK: Yeah, it can. That is the type of movie I like to enjoy every once in awhile. I hang out with a group of people, everybody brings a movie, and sometimes they are big ones. Sometimes they are these ridiculous little low-budget movies. For example, we just watched POULTRYGEIST from Troma last night and it was pretty funny. I really enjoyed it and of course it is completely over the top, you know, tasteless and everything else.

FG & RK: (laughs)

RK: I enjoy that every once in awhile and it makes a good night.

FG: It would be nice to see more of that, you know it doesn't always have to be so serious and so DUN DUN DAH! (Tries to do serious horror music) It can be fun, you can watch it with a pizza and a group of friends.

RK: Right, it is a party movie. I really like that stuff in movies. I used to do that at the drive in. We'd go to the drive-in, 4 or 5 of us and sneak in beer and just hang out and watch crappy B-movies. Sometimes dusk 'til dawn, all night horror films. They would put 5 of them on in a row and you had really good ones and really cheesy ones but you loved them the same because it was part of the experience.

FG: You filmed THE RAGE in Crestline, Ohio as opposed to L.A. Did you like filming in Ohio better?

RK: Well yeah, I did actually (laughs) It is a little different because my other films, out here in L.A. and the ones we shoot in New Mexico are like studio pictures so it is a big crew and a lot of protocol. It is a different style of movie making. This was kind of like a big group of friends, we got together and we all kind of did 3 or 4 different duties each. We built our own sets, everybody painted the sets. We all did the effects; we all ran the camera, the dolly. You know, it was just one of those movies.

That was the difference, we would have never been able to make that out HERE. We kind of had to go outside the eye of Hollywood, to make it outside of Hollywood, to take that kind of risk.

FG: Yeah, where do you find the testicular fortitude to make a movie like that?

FG & RK (Laughs)

FG: What inspires you?

RK: We just talked about it for so many years and then we finally decided to put our money where our mouths were, just go out and do it. We raised what we could and we said we are going to adapt to what we get to fund this for. We'll adapt and have fun because we just wanted to make a fun ride, a really entertaining B-movie. We knew it was going to be a B-movie from the get go, that was the plan.

John Bisson and I wanted to go back in time like 20 years and do our EVIL DEAD. The experience of doing a film like that, that B-movie experience where you put a team of friends together and shoot it in the backwoods of Michigan or wherever, that is what we wanted to recreate.

To make our first film in the spirit of independent films like EVIL DEAD, PHANTASM and RE-ANIMATOR. We not only wanted to have the experience of making a guerilla style drive-in movie with a group of friends and filmmakers but we also wanted to do it on similar budgets to those films. This is about half of what they make Sci Fi Channel movies for today. We did the film for what those films cost in the 80's, and we did it without the 20 years of inflation added on. So we really did make a drive-in, Grindhouse 80's film with a touch of 40's and 50's fun thrown in.

You know, I got into the business out here through make-up effects and then moved into directing and producing but it is a different beast out here when your dealing with the studios. It is not so much hands on, as a director your basically isolated on the bigger films. Your isolated from the knowledge of every department, you know what I mean?

FG: Yeah

RK: You don’t know what every department is spending exactly. The producers will just tell you when you’re going over. This was different because we had to learn it all from the ground up and that was the fun of it. We'll raise the money we can and go through the experience of creating something from scratch

FG: And it is probably more of a comfortable, family-type atmosphere filming that way..

RK: It is but we also had our drama. I mean there is no way around it, when you have a bunch of artists who work together. Everybody is going to get temperamental, we all had our bad days, we still had all that, and it was fun.

FG: Any stories you can share? (Laughs)

RK: (laughs) No, no it is just heated tempers. The way we worked is if anybody blows up or gets upset the idea is we just let it go after that and later we talk about it and laugh like it was nothing. When you hold it in and bottle it up for months and months and months that's when it turns into something nasty (laughs)

FG: You were the cinematographer and the camera operator on THE RAGE too, weren't you?

RK: Yeah, for better or for worse. It was a good experience, I basically storyboarded a few sequences and then we kind of roughed it out because we had the stage to work from. We actually had the set for the mad doctor's lab. So I kind of pre blocked the fights with John, just in the lab ourselves after hours. Just coming up with stuff on the fly, we didn't have anybody second-guessing us.

FG: How many kills can we look forward to?

RK: You know I never counted them. It is funny; it is not as bloody as everybody makes it out to be, in my opinion, but that is only because I see it with a tinge of humor attached. It is not so brutal just for the sake of brutal. I mean it is funny brutal and sometimes I do things that are over the top, just to get a reaction from the audience. Like when I kill my own kids in the movie.

FG: Yeah, I read that your two little ones are in the movie. What do they make out if it? Do they see it as a make-believe, playground-type situation?

RK: No, they see it as a work thing. I don’t think they see it as a playground, they see it as work because they see how hard we work at it. Even though we have fun on set when they came on set the kids had memorized their lines, they nailed every line. I didn’t have to do anything. I just sat back and said 'these kids are amazing'. They are my kids but this was their first time walking on a set. They didn't get nervous and walk away. I had to coax them into a few scares but....

FG: That is really cute

RK: Yeah

FG: Is it true the torture scenes in THE RAGE were filmed in your old middle school?

RK: Yeah, it was actually in my mom and dad's high school. My old middle school but their high school. It is an old 50's high school in the center of town, it has an old boiler room in the basement and off the boiler room is a big old concrete room, and we used that for Gor's lair.

FG: Did you have any full circle moments, you’re making a movie in a place where you may have had fantasies of being a filmmaker.

RK: I didn't think of it that way (laughs)

FG: (Laughs)

RK: You know it's kind of sad, the school is abandoned and it is a great piece of property. It has got a giant auditorium in it and it is only being used for some of the things for the school district, most of it is abandoned. It is just this big empty building in town. I would love to see it where it would be put on the market as a draw for people to shoot movies in it. They could have a high school drama shot in it.

FG: I wanted to ask you about Andrew Divoff, who you have worked with before on WISHMASTER. Is he as professional, prepared, and open as I imagine him being?

RK: Absolutely. He is a complete joy to work with. It is funny because we did WISHMASTER together but we've stayed in touch for years since then, trying to find other movies to do together. This one just came together because it was just the right timing for both of us. When he walked on the set it was just like we were walking off WISHMASTER. It was a very, very good experience.

FG: I trust there is director's commentary on the DVD..

RK: Yeah, it’s actually me and John Bisson doing the commentary.

You know the ‘making of’ is almost as long as the film.

FG: Oh good, I love that.

RK: I couldn't cut it short. I just thought it was fun because it shows the movie was done kind of like this and you can do it too.

FG: Well, anybody who is really into movies and the genre doesn't want ‘the making of ‘ to be cut, you know? They WANT to see everything.

RK: Well, I hate the ones that are more like a press kit version. Just thrown together, like 'oh yeah, everybody is doing whatever'.

FG: They will show a few interviews and some scenes being shot but I like something a little more involved than that.

RK: Oh yeah 

FG: I was going to ask you about John Bisson, did he co-write THE RAGE with you?

RK: We wrote the story together and then John wrote the screenplay. He also production designed the movie. He also designed a lot of the make up stuff, the creature designs.

FG: Renaissance men...

RK: Yeah! We had a very small crew and we had to stretch that crew out over a long period of time. We just did everything ourselves.

FG: I read that THE RAGE is having great success screening at film festivals.

RK: We did Fantasia and Screamfest. It played in Sydney and we are going to Brussels. Also, Amsterdam, Taipei and Brazil. There is another one in France that just played it. It is getting a really good response from everyone, especially at those festivals; they are into those types of movies because it's an audience participation movie. Its something that is plugged in for all those happy go lucky gore hounds.

I would actually like to see the movie translated into French.

FG: (laughs) Yeah I was just thinking that when you said France. (Said in a French accent) Le Monster!

RK: (laughs and talks with a French accent) UH HUH! Le gore!

FG:...and everyone is carrying baguettes of bread

RK: (Laughs)

FG: That has to feel good when something you put so much work into turns out well and is met with a favorable response..

RK: I'm just glad that there are people digging it. You just throw it out there, you make something and you hope the fans like it, if it makes money...great

FG: How did the concept of THE RAGE become a comic book series?

RK: Well, I met with Scott Licina, who was just starting to launch the comic division of Fangoria, and we hooked up. I am doing a project called BUMP with him as well, he and Mark Kidwell, starring Tobin Bell (SAW) and it is based on the Kidwell comic book series.

Scott had handed me the treatment for BUMP and when I came on board for BUMP he started talking to me about other projects for the comic division of Fango. I told him I had this low budget movie I had just done, that I am pushing and me and John Bisson can spin stuff off and either do a sequel or a prequel. He said you want to do something that you couldn't do as a movie because it was too big, like take the idea of what you would have wanted to do with THE RAGE but couldn't.

So we came up with the backstory to THE RAGE. This was our Edgar Rice Burroughs version. We just did a kind of epic version with thousands of zombies and Mayan temples and all kinds of stuff. What happened between the doctor's escape from his own country and when he was hanging out in South America, what led him to the U.S. Exactly where he discovers the mutants to use in THE RAGE formula. So we just went out in left field and did a wild comic idea.

FG: What inspired you to get into the business?

RK: I was always into art growing up and GI Joe action figures and all that stuff but I also sat in front of the TV. I'm the kid in DREAM ON (HBO Comedy Series) just watching his life go by. My years are all categorized in the year certain movies came out, like '77 was STAR WARS,'75 were JAWS. You go back to the 60's with the Peckinpah movies. It is about watching those late night horror-host shows, Saturday afternoon movies and getting to go to the drive-in.

FG: I get the whole drive-in connection. God, I remember seeing THE ORGAN GRINDERS at a drive-in with my PARENTS (laughs)

RK: (laughs) I always had to catch them on the back screen until I got old enough to go on my own. My parents would think we were sleeping and they would be watching DIRTY HARRY on the front screen and out the back window I would be watching another screen. Those women-in-chains prison movies and we were like 'oh my god!' while peeking our heads out.

FG: What movies scared you as a kid? Were there movies that just really freaked you out when you saw them?

RK: OH, THE EXORCIST, it actually freaked me out when I saw it on television, even cut. Probably also HALLOWEEN and stuff. I was a kid of the 80's; my junior high school and high school years were in the 80's, but in 1978 HALLOWEEN came out. Yeah, that scared the hell out of me.

FG: I remember seeing horror movies with my parents. I watched THE EXORCIST with my dad UNCUT. I was 9.

FG & RK: (Laughs)

RK: That is what I'm doing with my kids, start them off with the Universal classics, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, then gradually ease them into more (laughs) horrifying things.

FG: (laughs) Yeah, I don't remember being eased into it, which explains A LOT now.

FG & RK: (laughs)

FG: I was 12 watching THE TOOLBOX MURDERS, Hello! (Laughs)

RK: (Laughs)

FG: What are you doing next?

RK: Well, we are kind of gearing up for BUMP this summer and then I'm out here in L.A. to finish post on a movie called TO LIVE AND DIE, which is my first non-genre action thriller. I'm almost done with that and I'm pretty excited about that film. Also, Just finished THE DEAD MATTER, waiting on Ed Douglas to finish up editing and then we start some post work on that. That was another show we shot at PRECINCT 13 over the summer. Ed Douglas from Midnight Syndicate (A recording act), he directed DEAD MATTER and scored THE RAGE. He raised the money for his production and we basically produced it at the studio with him and put the whole project together with him.

FG: Did you direct some music videos that tie into THE RAGE?

RK: I produced them. One of them was shot at the same time we were shooting THE RAGE. One night we were shooting a RAGE sequence and Mushroomhead came in. We shot all of their stuff for the movie and then Dave Greathouse, a guy who works with us as a make-up guy and who is also Mushroomhead's makeup designer. He basically shot a bunch of additional footage for the videos on the same night. Then he went away and cut it into the DAMAGE DONE video, which is tied into the footage from the film.

Then in the mad doctor's lab we shot the 12 HUNDRED video, which won the MTV Headbanger's Ball thing. They put that together as well, we just produced it.

FG: Are those videos on the DVD?

RK: Yeah, those are on the DVD.

FG: One more question, who haven't you worked with that you have always wanted to.

RK: Clint Eastwood.

FG: Back to those DIRTY HARRY drive-in days..

RK: Yeah, I've worked with somewhat of an Eastwood and a McQueen and that would be George Clooney. But Eastwood is like the last of those guys from that era. You had the Lee Marvins, the Steve Mcqueens, the Charles Bronsons and he is the last of those. I would have loved to work with him.

FG: Thank you so much for taking time out today to talk to me.

RK: No, thank you for having me.

THE RAGE is available now on DVD. The BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE RAGE comic series is available at www.Fangoria.com

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