INTERVIEW: Jose Prendes

- By Dave Dubrow

With his latest film, The Divine Tragedies, winning copious plaudits from film festivals and critics alike, we were damn lucky this week to grab some of filmmaker Jose Prendes’ spare time to chat all things metaphysical, Cronenberg and, ahem, sharks…

You’ve referred to The Divine Tragedies as a “metaphysical serial killer movie.” What do you mean by that?

I’ve been interested in metaphysics for a while in terms of what is real and does believing something make it real. Real whacko sounding stuff, but it’s intriguing to think about. I’m fascinated by the theory that we dream up our reality, that the real nature of space and time in unknowable because we are our own filters and we don’t realize it. I’ve also always wanted to re-tell the Leopold and Loeb story, I found something so horrifying about these two guys who thought their intelligence made them better than mere mortals, so I wanted to explore that story with these metaphysical concepts, because they seemed to fit perfectly. The movie can be viewed as a very violent statement, but to me it’s a very beautiful movie about what reality is like and what it means to be a human and understand that experience.

Tell us what it was like working with horror film legends Barbara Crampton and Ken Foree (interviewed HERE). Did you write the parts with them in mind?

We had a little From Beyond reunion, it was great! I didn’t write with them in mind, because the script came together very quickly, even before I thought of casting the roles beyond Thomas and Charles, who were cast before I got the greenlight. Obviously, Barbara and Ken are horror legends, so it was a dream come true to make cinema with them. Barbara was hesitant at first, because her role is so opposite to who she is and the roles she’s played in the past, but she wanted the challenge, and she absolutely blew me away. Ken really wanted to play his part, because he’d never played anything like it, and he was just a delight to work with. Both of them were so generous and went above and beyond. I was very honored that they came on this crazy journey with me.

I noticed that Thomas, Charles, and even Vanity typically dressed in vintage clothing rather than modern styles. Why?

There was a certain anachronistic style I wanted to infuse into the movie, so I talked with my costume designer J.D Koumendakis about keeping everyone old fashioned. It plays into the idea that we shape our own reality, and Thomas and Charles and very classy psychopaths. Also I patterned Vanity’s look off of the amazing silent film actress Louise Brooks and told Barbara that I wanted her character to basically be Bette Davis, and she understood what I meant immediately. Also, going contemporary with the fashion just wouldn’t have the same flavor for me.

Actress Hannah Levien played both the single mother Genevieve and the sharp-talking streetwalker Vanity, evoking the concept of the Madonna/whore: two sides of the same woman. Was this the statement you intended to make?

Absolutely! From the beginning, I wanted the same actress to play both roles. They are different characters, but with the same face. Some people haven’t caught that actually, it’s kind of become an Easter egg. I didn’t realize it was that well hidden. The idea is that this movie, this world we see, is a projection of the brothers, Thomas and Charles, so they only see one kind of woman, whether she is the innocent single mother or the dirty hooker who’s up for anything. They are all interpretations of their mother, sick as it sounds, but that’s the idea. The only woman they really knew was her. Hannah gave us some pictures of herself and we put them around Mother’s bed, because that’s what she looked like when she was young. You can’t really see it, because we didn’t focus on it, so that’s definitely an Easter egg to look for. I really tried to bury hidden messages and little surprises along the way, because I love it when a movie is so dense that it deserves multiple viewings to really soak it all in, so I tried hard to lay in a lot of stuff that you would miss the first time because you’d have no idea where it’s going. I will say that I had my amazing art department go out and find me a can of Calumet baking powder, referencing it’s so-called importance in The Shining, and I put it in a scene just as a visual hint to the audience to look closer.

Charles’s hallucinations were vivid, disturbing, and even funny at times, particularly the hotel bathroom vision and the movie theater performance near the end. Barring concerns about content rating, was that as far as you wanted to go?

It’s tough to discuss that, because the bathroom vision has been cut for the wide release, but I believe it will end up on the deleted scenes. The movie theater sequence was the one that almost made Barbara not want to do the movie, she felt it was too strong, but she ultimately understood what it meant and why it had to be what it was. All of Charles’s visions are part of his internal, damaged reality bleeding into the real world, or what he considers the real world. I’m not a fan of graphic stuff, I don’t think it’s always necessary, but sometimes it is needed to make statement, or put an emphasis on a moment. The scene in the bathroom where Charles’s hands become genitals was to me the main reason to make the movie, because it is so weird and disturbing, but in a poetic way, and that’s the kind of stuff that’s missing from horror movies made now. To me, everything should have a meaning, and the bathroom sequence specifically had meaning to Charles. Horror used to be able to inspire great imaginations, and now it’s all just kids screaming and pointless deaths. Again, I wanted to go old fashioned. I wanted to do something completely out of the box, but never in detriment to the story, or the characters.

As a parent yourself, did you find Barbara Crampton’s vitriolic lines to Thomas difficult to write?

Not at all. I’ve been writing for twenty years, and I’ve gotten to a real sweet spot where I can detach from myself and channel whatever the situation or character is and bottle it up on paper. The story and the characters came to me very quickly, and I just sat down and wrote the damn thing in a week. I saw the thing and I recreated it on paper, warts and all. If anything, being a parent connected me more to the characters and the situations. You realize how special and delicate life is when you hold your baby for the first time, it changes your frame of reference.

There’s a certain David Cronenberg Videodrome style to Charles’s hallucinations. Was that intentional?

Cronenberg, to me, is one of the most visionary filmmakers of all time. I hold Videodrome, specifically, as a template for what a horror movie should be. It should be unique, shocking, and make you consider the world around you in a different way, and that’s what I tried to do with Divine Tragedies. I would even call it a love letter to Videodrome, and Cronenberg’s influence was what directly inspired that deleted bathroom sequence with Charles.

You’re also a book author, having written the novels Sharcano and Elementary, My Dear Watson! The Astounding Adventure of the Ancient Dragon. Talk to us about the difference in process from writing a movie like The Divine Tragedies and a novel like Sharcano.

There is a difference only when it comes to the standard elements like format and time commitment, but it’s all writing to me. If anything, I think I outline and plan more when it comes to script, because you need to bring that finished product to a neat and concise end. With a book you can have a strong concept and a great handful of characters and then let the story happen to them at its own pace. Scripts can be very constrictive with budget and page count, but a novel is very freeing, almost like a writing vacation.

You also wrote the screenplay for the movie Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark, so clearly you’re into sharks. Tell us about your interest in that subject. Were there any secret sharks in The Divine Tragedies?

My favorite horror movie of all time is Jaws, and I saw that at an early age, so it stuck with me. I’ve always been scared, I mean fascinated, by sharks. I was hired by the Asylum to write their third Mega Shark movie after the surprising success of Sharknado, so sharks really came into my professional life at that time. I had been talking to a publisher, Curiosity Quills, for a while, and I asked them if they’d be interested in something that was post-Sharknado. They said yes, and I wrote Sharcano, which I tell folks is the ultimate, big-budget version of a B-movie. There is one big shark secret in Divine, because if you look closely Barbara’s Mother character is seen frequently reading a book, and it just so happens to be the best-selling sharks-from-hell epic Sharcano.

Given a James Cameron Avatar-sized budget, what would be your dream movie to create?

I’ve worked in the low-budget game for so long, I wouldn’t know how to handle a Cameron budget, but I have two dream projects. First, I would love to remake Metropolis; turn it into a massive, Shakespearian trilogy that tells the rise and fall of mankind. The second one goes back to my early love for Jaws. I would love to direct Jaws 5, and finally give the shark a fitting, worthy sequel. I’ve got one hell of a story worked out already, and the third act is phenomenal.

The man himself, Jose Prendes.

Tell us about your upcoming projects on screen and in print.

I’ve got a lot of stuff happening, I believe in keeping busy, because you could be dead the next day. I have two books coming out this year. The first is The High-Concept Massacre: Genre Screenwriters Tell All, and it’s an interview book with thirteen screenwriters who spill the beans on the true ins and outs of being a Hollywood screenwriter. Funny enough, I interview Carl Gottlieb, who wrote Jaws, Jaws 2, and Jaws 3. The second book is something for the 90s kids TV fans, it’s titled The Are You Afraid of the Dark? Campfire Companion, and as you can guess it’s an episode guide for the beloved kid-friendly horror series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and it features exclusive behind-the-scenes pictures and interviews with the cast and crew. That one will be available in October to celebrate the show’s 25th anniversary, and High-Concept will be available sometime this summer, I believe. You can get both through http://www.bearmanormedia.com and I assume Amazon as well.

As for movies, I am in post on my documentary Unspeakable Horrors: The Plan 9 Conspiracy. After the bleakness of Divine, I needed to make something light and fun, but something that would interest not only myself, but film fans alike. The doc focuses on a handful of scholars who swear there are hidden meanings buried throughout Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, and to back them up I have folks like Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander who wrote Ed Wood, and a whole bunch of other Hollywood insiders who agree that there is more to Ed Wood than we had all foolishly thought.

Also, I’m currently prepping a TV show, Veronique Von Venom: Horror Hostess Hottie for the Roku channel OSI74, and you can find out more about them here: http://osi74.com

And lastly, there has been such an overwhelming response to Sharcano, which is available on Amazon, that I finally made some time and am currently working on the sequel, which is titled Sharks of the Living Dead, and continues the sharkpocalypse trilogy!

Dave Dubrow