BRAD
     ANDERSON

Brad Anderson has made a career out of breaking all the rules to make deeply emotional, compelling films that attack the human psyche.

In 2000, Anderson was one of the first feature filmmakers to embrace the digital age by helming a movie completely in High Definition. Set in an insane asylum, the movie, SESSION 9, has gone on to become a cult classic. Anderson proved himself a "Master of Psychological Horror" with THE MACHINIST in 2004, featuring a shockingly gaunt Christian Bale in the lead. Recently, Anderson helmed SOUNDS LIKE from the second season of MASTERS OF HORROR, providing one of the series' most thought provoking, twisted episodes.

In this Colonel's Crypt exclusive, Anderson enters the Crypt to discuss the craft of psychological terror, what inspires him as a filmmaker, and his no holds barred opinion on the current state of horror.

COLONEL’S CRYPT: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

BRAD ANDERSON: I think not as much a specific film but the fact that my dad had a Super 8 movie camera, you’ve probably heard this story from other filmmakers. I used to make a lot of home movies as a kid. I got to a point where I could use the camera and my brother and I would make three minute, cheesy little movies on it. To me that was the thing which triggered my interest in making films. I always loved movies but the actual process of making them has been even more of a fascination. I think that’s when I first started getting hooked on the idea of becoming a filmmaker way back then. Films and certain filmmakers have inspired me but the origins of the initial thing that got me excited about making films was actually making these movies as a kid. Then as I got older, I watched many films of course but I went to a film program where I learned more about the process. I got deeply involved in it. For me, it’s always about the craft of making films, and much of my films, particularly the early ones have been soup to nuts kind of productions. I love being involved in all aspects of the process. I never saw myself becoming just a film director as much as being a filmmaker, just being involved in the entire process from conceiving the idea to cutting the films, music, everything, I love the whole process.

CC: I want to talk about SESSION 9, which is a great film, and you shot it in High Definition at a time when shooting on digital was not commonplace for feature films. How much of a challenge was that film to make in that medium?

BA: We were one of the first features that were given a chance to use the Sony High Definition 24p cameras. They weren’t beta testing them really but they were just starting to allow filmmakers to try them out. We jumped on the chance to do that, it was a financial thing as the movie’s budget was minimal and this gives us a chance to keep it small and experiment with new technology. The challenges were, and the technology since then has gotten incredibly better, but what it did allow us to do which would’ve been harder if we had shot it on film was we could shoot in very low light conditions without having to over light things. We’re shooting on location at an abandoned mental hospital where we didn’t have the ability to bring in a lot of lights and didn’t have a lot of time to prepare so we can go in with our cameras and use available light to shoot scenes. With those cameras they’re very light sensitive in a way so we were able to do that and still get a cool image. There were certainly challenges dealing with highly finicky electronic digital cameras in an environment that’s very dirty, dusty, and moist. Being not particularly conducive to that sort of technology proves to be problematic at times where cameras would break down a lot. Film cameras are more robust doing that kind of thing, but the beauty of it for me was for the first time to be able to view these video tapped monitors where you are watching the take in all its glory on a High Definition monitor, seeing the richness of what the shot’s going to look like at the end of the day. There’s a translation from a crappy little handheld video tap to the final image screened on a theater screen at the end of the day. You see the image on how it’s going to be. That was a lot of fun because we could really tailor shots with a kind of detail on what we could see on the monitor. We were able to dwell on all the little details and fine tune each shot; the look of it, the light, the production design, kind of fiddle with it. Sometimes one of the drawbacks is that you get a little carried away and waste time where you are focusing on the tree instead of the forest in a way. Ultimately I thought that part made it much more interesting. So the HD digital thing is now more commonplace, back then it was a little more unusual. It certainly made post production easier in a way in terms of getting the look of the movie the way we wanted to. The cameras then weren’t as up to par as they are now. The images were not as good as you would get video artifacts in the image that didn’t look as good and pristine as film would, but still for your average audience watching that movie I don’t think most people would guess whether or not it was film or video.

CC: What I love most about SESSION 9 is that it showed me how it was possible to make a compelling, emotional film using this medium, and that for very low budget independent filmmakers you are able to make a great looking film at an affordable cost. It paved the way for a lot of these films that are being made now in my opinion.

BA: Thank you. The whole intent of making SESSION 9 was to do a movie, to write something and conceive a story and location that would allow us to do it quickly and cheaply. We shot the whole movie in 21 days at one location which was intentional. We didn’t want to be running all over the place finding different locations so we wrote the story specifically for that one location knowing that we would be able to get a lot more out of the day, we didn’t have to move around much. We wrote a story that wasn’t special effects driven, that didn’t have a big cast, just a small group of people, so it allowed us to get as much bang for our buck in a very limited period of time and I think shooting on digital only helped make it happen. With film it would’ve been more cumbersome shooting in that location on a small budget. We didn’t have the ability to bring in big generators and lights and that stuff, it was much more small scale.

CC: Your episode of MASTERS OF HORROR, SOUNDS LIKE, was recently released on DVD. What was it about the short story by Mike O’Driscoll that inspired you to adapt it for MASTERS OF HORROR and how did you get the opportunity to helm an episode?

BA: I was approached by the producers who invited me to do an episode. I had seen some of the episodes from Season one, and obviously some of the directors they worked with were some classy, big time directors, so I didn’t want to pass up the chance to be part of that experience. Also, as I started into it, I realized because it was a Showtime series and it was all about the directors, you know, the “MASTERS OF HORROR,” so the producers allowed you to make the show you wanted to make. There was very little interference from both the producers and the network people, so it was kind of like making a small, independent film in a very short, typical TV schedule, but still you could make the kind of movie you wanted to make. They gave you free reign to come up with an idea and do it however you wanted. I liked the short story merely because it was about a guy who is plagued and haunted by this acute ability to hear almost everything around him. Much of the story was told by his ability to hear certain things and in the end how it drives him mad. I liked the idea of doing an episode where much of the story was mainly told with sound as opposed to just dialogue and images. I wanted to play with that idea. Initially I wanted this guy to say nothing, there would be very little dialogue and have it be only what he hears in the weird way that he interprets the sound and how it starts to haunt him. I found that challenge to be something that drew me to it. Also, I liked the main character, kind of this melancholy guy dealing with the tragic death of his son and he’s trying as best he can to keep his life together and his marriage together and it’s just not working.

To me, the best horror is the horror that’s grounded in emotion, and particularly into characters that can carry that emotional weight. You don’t fear for a character if you don’t care about that character. I thought that with this story, I wanted to do something that was about this guy’s struggle to keep his life together and how his grief in the end kind of gets the better of him. It’s not your typical splatter fest, typical horror concept, but that’s never been what’s really interested me about horror in the first place. I’m drawn more towards the psychological aspects of it and less drawn towards the physical manifestations of it. I always wanted to get into the heads of the characters as opposing to having their heads lopped off.  That’s always sort of what’s interested me and this story and this character felt like they were in that ballpark. Ultimately it was a chance to use the medium of sound as a way to help tell a story, to flesh out a character who was a sympathetic soul struggling through his grief and how that intense level of grief of losing a child can drive you mad. It’s understandable, it’s plausible, and it’s credible, whereas a lot of horror tends to stem from less plausible circumstances, people turning into vampires or werewolves, or guys running around with chainsaws. That’s one level of it but to me, the more interesting aspects of horror are those in which anyone can identify with under the circumstances. Anyone can understand the notion of losing your mind if you had to contend with that kind of loss. That to me is what is more interesting. SESSION 9 had elements of it too, as well as THE MACHINIST, characters that are dealing with emotional loss and how that can make your life a living horror, and make you into a monster. Those are the things that I’m more interested and I think they’re more cinematic.

CC: One thing I’ve noticed in all of your films, from your early romantic comedies to SOUNDS LIKE, is your painstaking attention to detail. For each project, how much preparation do you give yourself as a writer, producer, and director in order to make sure that you have everything that you need for that project to go forward?

BA: As much as it’s necessary and as much as I can. I feel preparation is critical in making a movie, especially if you making a movie with limited budget and a limited amount of time. You have to go in there prepared so you can get as much in the can that you want, to get a scene the way you envision as close as your original vision as possible, you need to have that preparation. On the other hand, I don’t want to over prepare, be so meticulous that there’s no room for improvisation or no room for thinking on your feet and making it up on the spot. That’s critical, particularly in my first couple of films, those romantic comedies which you referred to, a lot of those were unscripted and it was utilized in the wit and creative talent of the actors who talk the lines and improvise the scene. I like to keep that energy on the set. You don’t want to go in with this approach where everything is so prepared you don’t even have to be on the set, everything is run like clockwork. I don’t think anyone really makes a movie like that. I think that’s a little bit of a myth but I do think preparation is critical. I like being involved with details. I find that part of the process to be really fun. I don’t want to be some kind of micro manager but on the other hand I like to give my input to the wardrobe department and to the production design team, and to the actors of course, that’s what’s all fun about it, certainly with actors, they appreciate directors being prepared and knowing what they want. In addition to listening to their input and respecting their ideas, that’s critical as well. I’m not one of those tyrannical film directors that demand every line and scene be done exactly the way I want it to be done, I’m open to suggestions. It’s all in the details, these subtle nuances that separate a good scene from a mediocre scene. Everything’s sort of been done before and it’s the details, the small touches that separate a scene from being very familiar into something that’s unfamiliar and unique. I like being involved with that, particularly since I’ve written many of the films I’ve done. I have a very particular vision of what I want. When you direct someone else’s script, you’re interpreting another person’s imagination a little bit. It’s a whole different process when you’re directing your own material, there’s less of a translation error. You’re just going from what you’ve originally conceived to trying to implement it.

CC: With THE MACHINIST in particular, what was the process on that film being that you didn’t write the script and what was it that intrigued you to direct it?

BA: I was looking to do something that I hadn’t written. I had written or co-written all my movies prior to that. Scott Kosar’s script was given to me by my agent. I just really responded to the writing and the tone, especially the tone, it was a dark but surreal. The thing about Scott’s writing is that it’s not very detailed. He doesn’t provide any specific direction or description of things, they are very generic in a way, but it’s very good. With an economical writing approach, he captures this sense of a scene or a character, and I think that’s what struck me about the script. It’s a very short script, it was 85 pages. You could read it in a half an hour. It stuck with me after I read it and I thought it would be a good first script for me to direct that I hadn’t written because there was a lot of room to interpret it, and that’s what interested me, it was sort of like a puzzle. The movie itself, the story is a puzzle. I was trying to find a way to bring it to life on the screen. To realize it was a bit of a puzzle and a challenge. I jumped at the chance to do that. It wasn’t that everything was spelled out for me on the script and I was following an easy recipe.  It was very open ended as a story. I totally dug it and Christian Bale had the same response so we did it together. It was something I wanted to do that was dark but not a straight out horror movie. I wanted to do something that was more Hitchcockian and more about suspense and the notion of guilt than about the straight out horror motifs. I responded to, as I was saying earlier, the emotional payoff at the end of the story that this character was goes through, running with his guilty conscience and by the end he has to succumb to it. And ultimately when we got this company Filmax from Spain to finance it, there was an extra added challenge to try to shoot this movie in Barcelona, Spain. Scott’s original script was set just outside of Los Angeles, it had such an L.A. type of feel to it, so we had to rework the script and find a way to make Barcelona into some version of an American city. It kind of worked to our advantage because I think when you see the movie it’s not clear where it’s shot. It could be America somewhere but it doesn’t feel like its America. It creates a weird, alienating tone for the movie. It’s a little more surreal that way. All those factors combined were what made me want to do that movie. I like Scott too. We worked together on the script a little when he was fine tuning it. We had a nice collaboration doing that.

CC: Would you consider directing a script from a source you haven’t written in the near future?

BA: Yeah. I’m in the process of negotiating a deal right now for a movie I would do next that’s a script that was offered to me. The movie I just completed TRANSSIBERIAN is something that I co-wrote with a friend. Right now I’ve exhausted my writing potential so I need to find something else to do. I’ve been reading scripts and there’s one that I’m hoping to do next. Scott Kosar and I are going to be collaborating on a project fairly soon that Christian will hopefully be in as well, bring back the people that made THE MACHINIST.

CC: That’d be great.

BA: I’ve got a few scripts that I’ve written myself that I’m also trying to get produced but right now I’d be happy to fall into a project that’d be ready to go. I don’t have a desire to get deep into writing mode. You finish a movie you just want to sit back and not get too deep into it.

CC: One of the things most talked about in THE MACHINIST was the appearance of Christian Bale in the film. I only want to ask what your initial reaction was when you first saw him after the weight he had lost for the film.

BA: On the one hand, a little bit concerned that he had gone to that extent, but then again also pleasantly surprised because I knew that it visually it would make the movie and his portrayal of the character that much better. He realized that too, that’s why he went to the lengths he did to lose that weight, it was critical to the story. When he first came over to start shooting, he had lost a lot of weight, but he was losing as we were shooting the movie too. From the first moment I laid eyes on him when he came to Barcelona, I didn’t shout out “Oh my god!” I think it might’ve been when he stripped off to do his clothes in this scene in his apartment where he’s scrubbing the floor and you can see his rib cage, at that point we were looking at the monitor, myself and the cinematographer, and went “Holy shit” in what he looks like. It wasn’t like this instant sense of horror; it was more like “You got to eat, man.” By the end of the shoot, he started to regain his weight thankfully.

CC: About TRANSSIBERIAN, what is it about and when will audiences expect to see it?

BA: It’s not a horror movie; it’s much more of a classic, suspenseful thriller. It’s not a thriller really. Like my other films, I don’t fit them easily into one category. It’s about this couple that get on the Transsiberian, which is the longest train journey on the planet. It goes from Beijing to China all the way across Siberia and into Moscow; it’s a seven day trip on a train. They get on this train, this married couple, and they meet a young, backpacking couple that they befriend. One thing leads to another and the married friend has a sexual liaison with the young, backpacker guy and bad things start to happen after that. There’s a murder and then an investigation, and all of it goes down on the train. It’s like MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, and THE LADY VANISHES. It has a Hitchcockian quality to it. It’s a slow build movie, more about this woman, where like in THE MACHINIST, it’s a woman who’s dealing with this level of guilt and tries to cover up a crime that she committed. It’s something that I wrote specifically because I wanted to do a movie on a train. There was a period of course before plane travel became predominant where a lot of stories were set on a train. I just wanted to capture the romance and adventure of that. I had taken the Transsiberian after college I was backpacking through Asia and I took that train, traveling through Russia for a while. I thought it would be a cool location for a movie. Then my friend Will Conroy and I started conceiving an idea to make it work and wrote a script. It was a movie that was also produced and financed by Filmax, the same company that did THE MACHINIST. It was more of a Pan-European production, German and British financing. It’s a much bigger in scope for me that we shot in China, we shot in Lithuania, we shot all over the place. When it’s coming out, I don’t know exactly. It doesn’t have an American distributor yet. We shot it independently of any studio, as I like to do it because you can make the movie you want to make. It’s done now, we just finished the film and hopefully it will be premiering at some point in the near future, at the same time hopefully getting an American company to put it out next year presumably. We have a great cast, Ben Kingsley, Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, good quality actors. It’s a dark adventure story really. It’s different than what I had done before but it was a fun movie to make.

CC: Where do you see the film industry and mainly the horror industry going within the next five years?

BA: I don’t know. At the current rate it’s like once they’ve run out of movies to remake, once the SAW franchise and the HOSTEL franchise run out of steam, what’s going to be left? They’ll have to actually start making original horror film again. I look in the paper and there’s some new Platinum Dunes remake of DON’T LOOK NOW. They’re remaking all these great films, like THE BIRDS. They’re even making remaking remakes. How many versions of HALLOWEEN do we need? It’s absurd. I don’t know. To me, good, original horror, it doesn’t seem like there’s much room for it now. It sort of gets blown out by these huge, studio remakes of quite frankly some mediocre horror films of the 1970s and 80s. I don’t find this new form of torture driven, sadistic kind of genre of films like SAW and HOSTEL, whatever, I’ve seen a few of them and I don’t find them to be scary. I think they’re graphic and they satisfy certain rubbernecking, voyeuristic nuances to see what movie’s going to top the next one in terms of showing what they can get away with in terms of graphic violence. They’re not scary I don’t think. You don’t care about these characters whether they’re some snarky kids backpacking through Eastern Europe who get caught up in this hellacious experience or these dimwitted women who fall prey to these monsters who cut them into little pieces. I just find it all so, I mean there’s an audience for that and those movies can be fun. There’s that part of the horror genre that is probably the most profitable which is why we see so many of these movies. I just want to see more movies that are more psychologically driven and are just smarter. They’re scary not in the way of how they can shock you out of your seat with graphic violence, but scary because of how they can put you into the mindset of say someone who’s losing their mind or thinking of doing some really horrific. To me, horror is much more horrific if it’s about everyday experiences or everyday people, you know, people that most audiences can identify with and also people who are suffering and dealing or living with experiences that you and I can identify with. Not many people have to live through the experience of being chased through a field by a guy wielding a chainsaw wearing a mask. It’s scary in the sense of watching a bullfight is scary. It’s bloody and thrilling in a way but it doesn’t stick with you. It’s not something that chills you to the bone. Then you see a Polanski film like REPULSION. There’s not a lot of violence in that. There’s some gory, graphic imagery but most of it is just innuendo and the horror is implicit as opposed to being explicit, and it’s so much more effective and powerful in a way that in my mind if you want to leave a movie chilled to the bone that’s the movie I want to see. There’s not as much a market for those types of films.

So where’s the horror film industry going? It will inevitably go to the place where the most money will be made, and right now it’s in the remake branch. I think the J-horror thing has burned itself out, and now they’re latching onto the teen slasher movies from the 1980s. When I heard they were going to remake DON’T LOOK NOW, the Nicholas Roeg film, I was like “You’ve got to be kidding me,” and when I heard they were doing away from the Red Dwarf conceit, which is the whole point that makes that movie so disturbing. “We don’t need the Red Dwarf; audiences aren’t going to buy it.” Well what are they going to buy? Instead of a dwarf dressed in red, it’ll be a hot woman dressed in a red bikini. For me, I don’t really care where the horror genre is going because the films I want to make don’t depend on where it’s going. I like making these dark movies that can appeal to people like yourself that are smart enough to see the subtleties of it and also where you want to scare but you want to look for something that’s better than you’re average, dumb horror movie. There’s an audience for this, it might be limited, but I’d be more than happy to cater to that audience than the kind of drive in movie. I’m not saying those movies aren’t fun, they can be fun to watch but if I had my choice, those wouldn’t be the movies I’d watch or make. I’m not looking to do those kinds of films nor am I involved in them. I do my thing my own way and I’m perfectly happy with them. But the remake thing does drive me mad. You’re telling me there’s not an original horror film script out there that’s better than doing a remake of FRIDAY THE 13TH? It’s all so callously market driven, they have a built in brand, and they’re going to market the hell out of it, and the movie will be awful. The remake of TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was ridiculous. The original was so effective, so raw. The remake was more of a commercial for like a retail catalogue. You want to live with the memory of when you first saw that movie when you were a kid and how it freaked you out. It could’ve been a movie that got you excited about the horror genre in the first place. Then these remakes come along and they kind of ruin that experience of seeing the movie. You can’t think of CHAIN SAW now without having the thought of Jessica Biel running through a field, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing (laughs). And it’s that they don’t understand subtlety, they don’t even understand irony.

CC: I’ve always said that horror is a lot more than just a rating and the amount of blood you can put into a movie. I consider one of my favorite horror films to be TAXI DRIVER and I keep on hearing that it’s not a horror film.

BA: What is horror? It doesn’t have to come dressed up as a monster or some mutant bug or some crazy guy with a chainsaw. Horror is anything which chills you and shocks you. It doesn’t have to be this more straightforward understanding of the genre. That’s the problem with the horror genre, the mainstream critics sort of poo poo horror in that it’s a cheap genre for kids and they can bring your girlfriends to where they can see blood splatter on the wall and all that shit. But some of the best directors out there made horror. Stanley Kubrick not only with THE SHINING, but even with FULL METAL JACKET, the ending of FULL METAL JACKET is as horrific as it gets. The genre is so open that you can fit so many movies into the horror genre in some ways but the first thing that comes to mind when you think of horror is Freddy Krueger or Jason, and in some cases FRANKENSTEIN or the early Hammer films. But like you said, putting a movie like TAXI DRIVER into that category makes sense, and that’s why if you call yourself a horror director, it doesn’t mean you’re making exploitation movies to the lowest common denominator to please teenagers. Adults can watch horror too. They may want to call it a dark drama but it still has the same elements and often deals with the same conventions of a standard issue horror genre. I don’t think of myself as a horror film director but I like delving into the dark emotions and the scary feelings that you get when you create a horrific situation or character or story that has that horrific moment to it. The original meaning of horror I believe is Greek in that chilling feeling of the hair standing up on the back of your neck. To me it’s so much harder to get that in a movie, to be chilled, to be scared, to be disconcerted. Those are feelings that are harder to arouse in an audience than to simply chop some guy’s head off due to shock value. In any good horror movie, you have to have those little moments, but how do you get that audience to get that cold, chilling feeling in your chest when something inexplicable happens. Roman Polanski was very good at creating that eerie, scary feeling, but not a lot of horror filmmakers today are trapped in that feeling, they’re going for the easy scares, and with today’s digital technology it’s very easy to make an incredibly realistic decapitation and it’s very disturbing but it doesn’t stick because it’s a character you don’t give a shit about and you don’t care about the story. Some of the best movies are horror movies but people may not consider them that.

CC: Thank you so much for your time.

BA: Thanks for having me and for talking to me. I like your point of view. Looking at the Crypt, I share a lot of your feelings on the horror genre itself and if I can make movies that please people like yourself than I’ll be happy.

NEWS &
UPDATES

ON THE SET
REPORTS

INTERVIEWS

REVIEWS

BLOGS
Colonel's Blog

VIDEOS

MEET THE
COLONEL

LINKS

CONTACT