INT: Gregory Dark

Director
Gregory Dark is a complicated man indeed. The
visionary director, who’s helming this summer’s horror feast SEE
NO EVIL, starring WWE’s Kane, started his career in the most
unusual of places – adult films. Having
made over 40 sexy adult-themed films, he then went on to do even more
memorable work directing various music videos, including one for Britney
Spears. It’s quite an unusual start
for a guy who graduated from Stanford and whose work has been compared to
visual artists like David Lynch and David Fincher.
SEE NO EVIL, a film about a deranged serial killer, marks Dark’s
first foray into the horror genre and he sat down to talk about his early
work, his arresting visual style, and some of his own favorite horror films.

Gregory
Dark

The
road for people in adult material is usually one of no real mainstream
success. How did you go from doing
that, to music videos, to now directing a feature film?

I
haven’t done adult stuff in a long time.
What I did was very kind of conceptual art adult stuff that was
really not about eroticism, it was about anti-eroticism.
I have a Graduate Degree in Art from Stanford and I used to do
performance art. So I thought to
myself, if I could do performance art using sexual content, that’s what I
would do to, sort of, mess with the adult audience, which is ultimately what
I did. I subsequently then did
the thrillers for Showtime and Cinemax and many, many music videos.

I’ve
heard your work compared to the likes of David Lynch.
How would you describe your unique visual style?

David
Lynch? You know, I’m very much
a music video director. You
know, I kind of like working with camera techniques, coloring techniques,
every kind of mechanical technique you can imagine that I think I’m
probably comfortable with. David
Lynch is more, I don’t know, he’s very surrealistic I suppose, right?
David Lynch is a surrealist. So I think a lot of my early work is
very surrealistic. Now I try to
make it…infuse the realism into realism.

Who
are some of your influences in terms of directors, regular and in the horror
genre?

In
terms of regular directors, David Lynch, (Jean-Luc) Godard, for editing
styles; I’m a big post production sort of maven and editing styles and why
scenes would play a certain way for French new wave.
Horror movies – Wes Craven. They’re
sort of standard guys; it’s just that I’m more interested in a bit more
surrealism, surrealism in cinema.

As
far as Kane goes, did you call him Glen, Kane, or Jacob?

I
usually called him the name of the character (Jacob Goodnight), so he
constantly identified with the character.
That’s sort of a technique I always use, cause they have to be the
character for it to come off at all.

What
was it like working with Glen Jacobs aka Kane?

Glen,
Kane? (Laughs)
He was amazing, he truly was the character; he became the character.
He has a really great apprehension of acting technique, both Meisner
and method. And he only had one
line in the movie, but you could see every one of his emotions, you could
see every one of his decisions, it was fantastic.
He was really this character.

Was
he different then his on screen character, in between takes?

He
would stay there, in character. He
wouldn’t joke around so much; he’d kind of be the character that he was
supposed to be. He’d sit alone
in the corner, he’d stare, you know, he was very interesting.
But I encourage that because I think that the character becomes more
believable. You know, from the
time he hit the set, until the time he left, he was Jacob Goodnight.

Was
it a conscious choice for Kane’s character to have little to no dialogue
right from the get go?

Yeah,
but when I got involved I thought he shouldn’t talk because I think the
more you talk, the less frightening he may be.
So I thought to myself, shit he shouldn’t talk, he should just be
this killing machine, that has all these emotions that we see during the
killing machine aspect of his personality.

So
what made you want to take on this particular movie?

I’m
a big fan that 70’s flicks like Friday the 13^th, Halloween,
these kinds of movies. And I
thought to myself, if I could apply a bunch of music video techniques and
also some realistic special effects CGI work to a movie of that kind, I
think that would be…also that gritty.
You see what I’m saying? As
opposed to being slick, that would be kind of a really fascinating challenge
and that’s what this movie had for me.

Who
do you see as the audience for this film?

It’s
for people who play (Grand Theft Auto) San Andreas, videos games, it’s
very kind of graphic novel, very gritty, realistic.

What
are some of your favorite horror films?

I like
the original Eye, the Japanese version, the original Ring, the Japanese
version. I don’t like any of
the, sort of, milk toast, PG-13 horror movies that are coming out
periodically lately. Those are
like thrillers – they’re an excuse to do a thriller.
After Se7en, it was very hard to do a thriller, cause TV does such a
good job. And so now they’re
trying to thrillers, they’re trying to put a supernatural overtone to it,
because it’s hard to beat TV in thrillers.

With
the arrival of a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes,
what’s your take on horror remakes?

I
think it depends on how they’re remade.
I mean, I like the original Hills Have Eyes, it was better then the
remake that I saw, you know I just thought, it was okay.
I think it’s hard to remake those movies, I think you have to
change them to some degree, if you’re going to remake them.
I kind of did like new Texas Chainsaw that Marcus (Nispel) did,
although I still like the first one. But
you know, I didn’t hate that movie. I
was engaged and I thought it had an interesting look and he tried to do
something a bit different and I think he did a good job.