- News Askew: Hi, Vincent. Thanks for taking a moment of your time to talk with us. We hear that “A Better Place” will be featured in October’s issue of Fangoria magazine. Congratulations. Must be a dream come true for you. What can we expect to see in the article?
Vincent Pereira: Well, Mike Gingold (one of Fangoria’s editors) actually visited the set way back in 1995 (during the filming of the “Whipporwill Asshole” scene) and at the time, interviewed a lot of folks, like Rob and Eion- he never did get to talk to me at the time because I was so friggin’ busy.
ANYWAY, a few years passed and during that time A BETTER PLACE was actually completed, and i got a copy to Mike at a Fangoria show, and apparently he liked it- when Don May and I started talking about doing the A BETTER PLACE DVD last winter, again, Mike got interested- I saw him at the Fangoria show that year, and he came to my “New Filmmakers” screening in March, and told me then that he would probably be running a piece on the film around the time the DVD was going to come out.
So anyway, Mike finally called me last week and told me they were set to do the article for the October issue, and we finally talked about the film – I really don’t know how much of the article will be the on-set stuff, although Mike did have all his tapes from those interviews, and how much will be the recent interview with me. Don May saw a copy of the finished article and said it’s a really good piece, so we’ll just have to wait and see. I also sent them a whole bunch of photos, so hopefully those will bee in there too.
NA: Can you give us a rundown of the features and extras that are confirmed for the A Better Place DVD?
VP: Sure – a brand-new cut of the film, elliminating some material from the festival print, while restoring a few scenes that aren’t in that print, as well as a seperate section of outtakes and deleted scenes, all-around commentary (both for the feature and the deleted scenes), of course the BEAUTIFUL new transfer that we did on a High-Definition Spirit-datacine up in Montreal, mildly letterboxed at 1.5:1 (the same aspect ratio as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE).
NA: How about the stuff that MIGHT get on there but isn’t finalized at this point?
VP: I’m hoping to also include a promotional trailer that Scott Mosier cut together, and we’re 99% sure that we’re going to be doing a 5.1 remix at Skywalker (WOO HOO!!!), and I’d also like to include screenplay excerpts of scenes that either were never filmed or substantially changed during shooting, with their own audio commentary to help illustrate how things change from script-to-screen, especially at this level were a lot of times you’re sort of “winging it” and doing things on the fly.
NA: We know there’s a DVD release planned for late 1999. How about for those folks out there with VHS? Will they be seeing ABP on cassette as well and, if so, what extras (if any) will be on that version?
VP: There should be a rental cassette released at almost the exact same time as the DVD – as for ‘extras” there would be none, aside from it being the same cut of the film that’s included on the DVD, and the same transfer.
NA: Do you hope to continue showing ABP at festivals and special events after its home video release?
VP: If people want to show it, sure. I won’t be actively submitting though.
One thing I’m keen on is doing college shows, like the Flixtour. Auborn Moon, the college booking agency who handled the Flixtour and also handles Kevin’s college bookings, is actually going to be handling college distribution of A BETTER PLACE. They have one show booked for me, for October at Binghampton University (or is it Colleege?) in New York. If any other schools want to book it, they could get in touch with Jeff Hymen over at Auborn Moon (see the link for “How to book Kevin for an appearance” at www.viewaskew.com)
NA: Let’s switch gears and talk a bit about your new script, Autograph. How’s that coming along?
VP: Very well – it’s taken me forever to write but I’m finally wrapping up. I actually wrote the ending and have a grand total of 115-pages so far- I have two transitional scenes to write to bridge two holes and then it’s done. So basically, at the end of this months I’ll be shopping that around with Kevin and Scott attached as producers to try and get it up and running ASAP.
NA: I realize you want to keep the script under wraps, but is there anything you CAN share with us about the film?
VP: Sure – in a nutshell, it involves a young screenwriter who is putting on a benefit play in his hometown- one night while driving home to his condo in the driving rain (yeah I know it’s a cliche, but bear with me), he stumbles onto a murder-in-progress- a young woman comes running out in front of his car and he ends up hitting and killing her! The murderer who was persuing her then basically turns his rage on my lead guy since he interupted him in the midst of committing his “act”, and prevented him from completing it – however, instead of killing the guy, he rather starts to fuck with his life and make it a living hell, killing people AROUND him and setting it up so he finds the bodies. That’s the basic jist of it – of course there’s lots of twists and turns and a “surprise” ending.
NA: I understand that Dario Argento was a big inspiration as you wrote Autograph.
VP: Yeah, the film will really be my “love-letter” to Argento. It really is structured likee one of his early murder-mysteries, and also the early flicks of DePalma. I’m kind of sick of all these teen slasher films nowadays and this trend of making “horror comedies”- I mean, I like both SCREAM films with the SCREAM knock-offs have been terrible. AUTOGRAPH takes itself a lot more seriously- no ribbing on the genre here, plus the characters are all older, in their late 20s/30s.
NA: Have you shown the script to any studios at this point?
VP: No, I don’t think it’s a good idea to show an unfinished script. I want to direct this and thus, it has to be PERFECT for me- I wasn’t about to get into a situation where I had a deadline, and possibly ended up with something I didn’t like. So, when it’s finsihd later this month then the shopping process begins.
NA: Is it possible that View Askew Productions may pick up the tab for this one as they did with ABP?
VP: Kevin and Scott will executive produce, but this is way beyond their league budget wise – we’ll have to find the money elsewhere, but Kevin and Scott will be involved with that finding process.
NA: What are your future plans for Autograph? How soon would you like to start making this thing?
VP: Like I said, ASAP. I have it in my mind that it’s set during winter, so I’d like to film it before next spring. best bet would be late winter/early Spring of next year, stylistically for me that is.
NA: So you’re planning to direct and edit the film yourself then.
VP: Otherwise I wouldn’t have spent so much time writing it and getting it right.
NA: By the way, we hear you’re working on some sort of action movie. What’s up with that?
VP: Well, it’s funny how that happened- when I first started writing AUTOGRAPH, the original idea was that the main character was going to be an actor who had just had a big break-out hit movie that summer, and was returning home to act in a local play for charity- so anyway, I was writing the scene introducing Dave (the main character) as this actor, and I just sort of came up with a one-line description of the “action” movie he’d been in and put it in there- it was in the context of this “Entertainment Tonight” type TV program doing a profile on him. It was a really quick thing, a one-line plot description, but when I re-read it, the idea just jumped out at me- I was like, “Damn if that doesn’t sound like one of those action scripts that sells for a ton of money on spec.” It was just such a neat and tidy concept and SOUNDED like a “hit” screenplay. Well, I kind of put that in the back of my mind and forgot about it, because I didn’t think I could write the script for this fictional “film” and also include referneses to it in AUTOGRAPH, especially since the AUTOGRAPH references where kind of making fun of it.
Then, Scott Mosier suggested to me that I change the character of David in AUTOGRAPH from an actor to somebody a bit more down to Earth- make him be famous for having committed some act of bravery as opposed to being a “famous actor” who the audience might have trouble relating to-and after mulling it over I agreed with him and made the changes, which then freed up that “action movie” idea. So earlier this summer, I wrote an outline and sent it to a buddy of mine who has a similar dispostion as me, and said basically, “I want to write something fun, a bit of a satiracal action flick, and try and sell it- here’s the outline, want to collaborate?” He wrote a few scenes and I dug them, then I re-wrote them and added my own things, and we’ve been going strong ever since. That’s how we’ve been doing it- I send him an outline, he does the initial draft, and I redraft, and it’s been working really well that way.
My friend (Pete DeWolf) actually finished the first draft yesterday, and now I’m going to revise it. It’s been an awful lot of fun to write-the thing really practically wrote itself, it just FLEW- and it’s really fun to read, and hopefully others will think so too.
NA: While we’ve got ya here, we’re sure many netizens are curious: Any more news on the Dogma board screening that you’re organizing?
VP: Nope.
NA: We know you’ve appeared as the fun-loving Cigarette Fairly in your pal Brian Lynch’s “Big Helium Dog”. Anything else we have to look forward to from you in the future?
VP: Well there’s my cameo as “sleeping guy on church pew” in DOGMA, but beyond that, no, unless somebody out there wants to cast me in something. As it happens I’ve been told that I look like either Campbell Scott (SINGLES, THE SPANISH PRISONER) or that virgin jock kid from AMERICAN PIE by several people, so if anybody has any parts for Campbell Scott and/or virgin-jock-kid-from AMERICAN PIE look-alikes, you’ve got my e-mail addy- send offers! 🙂
NA: Thanks for your time!
VP: No problem.
We’ll see ya with another major update tomorrow, and we’d like to again thank Vincent Pereira for all the exclusive info as well as taking the time to answer the tough questions. ‘Til next time…
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