DARREN LYNN
  BOUSMAN

After helming three successful sequels to the most popular horror franchise of the 21st century, Darren Lynn Bousman wanted to create a new kind of experience in both the horror and musical genres.

Having directed the stage version of REPO THE GENETIC OPERA in 2001, Bousman was so insistent that it be his next project that he made a ten minute short film featuring one of the opera’s musical numbers to get it greenlit. The film attracted an eclectic cast featuring Alexa Vega, Anthony Stewart Head, Paul Sorvino, Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton, and Bill Moseley.

To promote REPO, Bousman sat down with the Colonel for an in depth discussion at New York’s Lionsgate offices on the challenges in getting REPO made, selecting the diverse cast, his grass roots campaign, and the cult following the film has already amassed in this Colonelscrypt exclusive.

COLONELSCRYPT: Where did the roots for REPO come about for you to direct it? Did it come from being a fan of ROCKY HORROR?

DARREN LYNN BOUSMAN: I’ll give you a back story about me. I’m from Kansas City. I never fit in to any group. I was unathletic and not very bright when it came to school. When I finally got to high school, I was introduced to the theater department and we would go to ROCKY HORROR every Friday night. It was the first time going to ROCKY HORROR where I felt I didn’t have to be someone else, I could be myself. I saw fat kids wearing skin tight fish nets and spandex body suits and hot girls wearing next to nothing and there was this mish mash of different people and nobody cared. That was the changing moment of my life where I realized that this was what I wanted to do. I always wanted to feel comfortable. That turned into something serious when I started watching JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR where anytime it was shown as a play or movie, I would seek it out and I just immediately gravitated to those things.

CC: What was it that drew you to JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR especially?

DLB: Because as a society, when we are out walking or working out, we are listening to music. When we are in a car, we are listening to music. When we are in clubs, they are playing music. When you are on a date, you either go out to a movie or watch TV at home. Those are two of my favorite things; watching movies and listening to music. When I saw JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR and ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, they combined two of the things that I loved. When you combine those two things, it was amazing. It was an assault on my senses.

CC: With that said, how did you become specifically involved with the horror genre?

DLB: The reason why I got involved with horror is that I love the idea of being able to offend and disgust people because when you offend or disgust someone, it stays with you. It’s not a passing movement. For example, if you saw TROPIC THUNDER which is a comedy, you’ll say it’s funny and the conversation will end there. When I saw REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, I talked about that movie for weeks and weeks later. When I saw INSIDE, I talked about it over and over and over again. Horror films and gore films resonate with me because it’s the kind of movie where if you like it or don’t like it, you’re talking about it after the fact. It’s either “That was ridiculous,” or “I love it.” Either way, you are talking about it and those are the movies I want to make, the movies where people are talking about it afterwards.

CC: Do you find that your projects overlap sometimes because you had the three SAW films back to back to back and now only a year after SAW IV you release REPO?

DLB: I was extremely lucky and this is the first time in my career that I have not been working. The SAW films are done so fast. For example, when I did SAW III, from the minute when I stepped onto the plane without a script to Toronto to when I turned in the final product, it was only four months. That was pre-production through shooting through post. REPO was crazy because I did SAW II, III, IV, and REPO back to back to back to back. There were no breaks. I was in the edit room for SAW IV from 9am to 3pm and then I did pre-production on REPO from 3:30pm to 10:30pm so they were both happening at the same exact time.

CC: Did you use any of the same props and effects from SAW IV onto REPO?

DLB: This is a funny story. I knew I was doing REPO when I was doing SAW IV so I would put things into SAW IV that would find its way into REPO because we had no money for REPO and it’s a hard thing because when you look at the movie but we had nothing. We had less than SAW III and SAW IV and they were very low budget. At the beginning of SAW IV, I told the producers “I want a mausoleum.” They said to me, “What do you need a mausoleum for?” At the beginning of SAW IV, there’s a mausoleum. There was no need for that mausoleum other than I needed it for REPO. There was a big scene in SAW IV that got cut that took place in a graveyard. The reason I had that graveyard built for SAW IV was because I knew I could use it for REPO so I was constantly overlapping stuff because we had no money. The same thing happened with costumes. I wanted people to look gothic so there’s that look in SAW IV. The producers would ask me “Why would you need that?” Now you know. It’s because of REPO. REPO has been a movie that I’ve wanted to make for seven years and have been attempting to make it since before SAW II. I was directing the stage production of REPO when I got SAW II. People have asked me what it’s been like to go from the SAW films to REPO but in reality it’s been going from REPO to SAW and now back to REPO.

CC: The film got greenlit from a short?

DLB: The genesis of REPO was that it started in 1999 as ten minute operas that were performed in rock clubs by two guys, one of them, Terence, plays the grave robber. They decided to turn it into a feature play. I got the play in 2001 and I directed the first stage play. When SAW II came out, the producers gave me a blank check for me to do whatever I wanted to do. I told them about REPO and they seemed impressed until I told them that they sing throughout the whole film. The producers told me to get out of the room. They’re not doing it. So SAW III comes out and does very well and the same producers tell me that now they’re serious, anything I want to do is mine. Again, I pitch them REPO and I was met with blank expressions. Finally, I realized that nobody will allow me to do this unless I show them what it is. I made a ten minute short film with Michael Rooker, Shawnee Smith and Terence. At that point, Lionsgate had passed twice. Twisted Pictures had passed twice. I called my agent up and I said that I wanted to hold a meeting for every executive and announce that it would be my next picture. Everybody showed up. We had models and jugglers and it was like a carnival. We showed the film and immediately Lionsgate came to me and said “If we don’t get this, someone else will” and immediately greenlit the film.

CC: Was that why you didn’t do SAW V?

DLB: The reason I passed on SAW V was because I came to Hollywood to make unique and interesting things. David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Darren Aronofsky all said “Fuck you! We don’t care if you don’t like what we do. We’re gonna do what we like. Hopefully you guys will enjoy it as well.” These filmmakers have balls because they took risks. I love the commercial popcorn movies but I really respect what Lynch, Jarmusch, and Aronofsky all do. That’s what I came to LA to do and then I find myself doing a sequel, then another sequel, and then another sequel. I was like, “I don’t care if people hate REPO or love it, because it’s a polarizing movie, but the fact is we did something different. It’s not a commercial, carbon copy, cookie cutter movie, and that’s what I wanted to do which was to do something that took a risk and we did something that was unique.

CC: What kind of audience would you expect to come out to see REPO?

DLB: I’ll tell you who will come out and see REPO. We’ve had six screenings of it so far. Go on YouTube and just type in “Repo Fan Videos.” First screening we did was in Montreal at the Fantasia Film Festival. I had Maple Pictures at that time, which runs the Lionsgate division up there, and they said to me that it’s OK if nobody shows up because it’s a hard movie for people to catch up. I knew there was an audience for this. As we get to the theater, we see a line that runs for three blocks. I ask the manager, “Is this the line for REPO?” He goes, “No, that’s the waiting line for REPO. The line for REPO is over there!” The line went on for ten minutes walking and it’s all goth. The best part is that there was a storm and fifty tickets were available so there was a rush to get in. The film plays amazingly but the people at Maple write it off as a fluke. We then go to Austin. Austin calls us two days before we get there and they ask if they can add a midnight screening because they sold out the screening in twenty minutes. I said it was alright and the show was added. We get to the show and now everybody are dressed up as the characters. They are dressed up as Repo, as Amber Sweet, as the Graverobber, and they are singing the songs in the lobby. Terence and I walk in and we were treated like rock stars. A lot of the kids who saw it had seen it in Montreal and spent hundreds of dollars to come down to Austin to see it again in Austin. Again, Lionsgate felt it was a weird coincidence so we added another show and there’s a thousand person waiting list to see the movie. Now we go to Spain and the Sitges Film Festival. It was a madhouse and we had police officers at the theaters and it was another sold out performance. So with that said, I’ll tell you who won’t see the movie. It won’t be the high school star quarterback. It won’t be the cheerleader. While I hope they will like the movie, it will be people like me in high school or every Goth kid that goes to Hot Topic. These people don’t have a voice. When you think about it, what movie is there for the people of that culture? When I was in high school, I had long black hair. I wore crazy eyeliner. There really isn’t a movie for us and those that were done made them look like idiots. They made them want to kill themselves or have their rooms filled with black candles and stuff like that. That’s not who they are. I think that REPO’s audience is very niche, but so is Marilyn Manson. Look at him. There’s a guy that maybe appeals to 5% of the people, however those 5% are loyalists. They will buy his CDs. They will buy his merchandise. They will see his concerts. I think that’s the audience we’ll have as well.

CC: Do you think that the following that you have will come from your work on the SAW films?

DLB: In a way I do but here’s the crazy thing. Look at the cast of REPO. You have Bill Moseley who is a horror icon. You have Paris Hilton, who is a media whore. You have Sarah Brightman, who is a classically trained opera singer. You have Ogre from Skinny Puppy. These are genres you are not supposed to cross. Sarah Brightman fans do not watch Paris Hilton movies. Skinny Puppy fans do not watch Alexa Vega in SPY KIDS so I think what we have here is a pure “What the fuck” factor. People look at the cast list and outside of the cast, the artists who played on this. We have people from Bauhaus to Guns N’ Roses to White Zombie to Jane’s Addiction all playing the music on this. We have Joan Jett in a cameo so whoever thought that Paris Hilton and Sarah Brightman would be singing against Guns N’ Roses music. It’s all from a pure insanity standpoint.

CC: Did you have a say in the casting?

DLB: I did. This was a movie that I’ve been living with for seven to eight years now and I consider it a dream come true for me to have Anthony Stewart Head in the film. When I was doing the stage play, I wanted Anthony Stewart Head. When I talked to the producers, I gave them my list for the top five actors for Repo Man. The list said, and I’m not shitting you, Number One, Anthony Stewart Head. Two, Anthony Stewart Head. Three, Anthony Stewart Head. I had that and they said “Who the hell is Anthony Stewart Head?” I thought they were ignorant. I told them to get the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER DVD and CD, then I told them if that doesn’t convince them to get the JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR CD to hear his brother Murray Head. They’re very talented. They said no and then I started getting their suggestions. They suggested Jon Bon Jovi or Lenny Kravitz. I felt that’s what we didn’t need because that’s what everyone would expect and it would lessen the picture. So then I made copies of the “Once More With Feeling” episode of BUFFY and put it on everyone’s desk. Then, I managed to get a hold of Anthony. He was in LA for a day. He lives in London but luckily he was in LA. I asked him for a favor to come to the recording studio and record this song. I sent him the short and I told him that he was who I wanted for this. He was my hero and everything. He learned the song in one day. The best was the producers show up and I have them listen to Anthony so now they’re bombarded because Anthony is now in their presence. He does the audition and at that moment, they all said that he was Repo Man.

CC: Speaking of the diverse musicians used, one of the musical producers was a Japanese producer, Yoshiki Hayashi. How did he get involved?

DLB: This was like a puzzle and I wanted to get an eclectic group. I didn’t want this to be like CHICAGO or like RENT. I like those movies but this had to be the anti-RENT and the anti-CHICAGO. I went out to assemble a crazy group of people including the crew. Yoshiki had an amazing studio in North Hollywood. He saw the short film and said that he loved it. I told him about the feature script and he said that when the film was being made that we could use his studio and he would help produce the music. He was there every single day and has an amazing ear for music. We spent a month and a half in his studio recording everything.

CC: He helped with the music on SAW IV?

DLB: That’s how I met him. I was showing the film to everyone who would watch it to get everyone involved and he saw the short film because of that.

CC: How did you figure that Paul Sorvino could fit into this role?

DLB: Have you met Paul Sorvino?

CC: I haven’t.

DLB: Paul Sorvino is the most unique, insane, crazy, awesome person and his favorite thing to do is to talk about Paul Sorvino. If you ever get in a room with him, he’ll talk to you to death about Paul Sorvino but the first thing he’ll tell you is that he’s an opera star. The first time I met Paul, I asked him why he wanted to make this movie and he said “When I die, I don’t want to be remembered as a guy in a mafia who whacked people. I want to be remembered as an opera singer.”

CC: And Alexa Vega?

DLB: The names suggested by the studio were Mandy Moore and Avril Lavigne. I immediately said no. Now if they were in the film, there’s no doubt the film would get wide release and get a lot more press but I needed to stay true to what the movie was. We needed to find a 17 year old girl who looked innocent yet sexy. It was hard because we found girls who looked innocent but not sexy. We found sexy girls who looked whorish and not innocent. I was about to give up on my Shilo when my fiancée saw Alexa in an ad for HAIRSPRAY in New York. I flew in and saw HAIRSPRAY and she was great and had all the qualities I was looking for. She had grown up since SPY KIDS as well as her fans and now it’s time to see her in something new.

CC: Going through the name game here on casting, so we’ll get to Paris. How was she cast?

DLB: Crazy side story. Last night I went to sleep with the TV on and when I woke up this morning, on TV was THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE. (Laughs) I was against casting Paris originally. The company wanted me to think of the press we would get if we cast her. Again, the same reason I rejected the other actors was because I didn’t think it’d be right for the movie. Then all of a sudden as I had bombarded the producers to cast Anthony Stewart Head, in a way they got back at me by bombarding me with Paris. They came into my office and told me “Paris Hilton will be here in ten minutes.” I went “What” and the next thing I see is lightning outside. I’m thinking to myself “How is there lightning on a clear day in LA?” and it turned out to be the paparazzi flashing their cameras. The next thing I know, Paris Hilton pops in and I’m sitting in my chairs, my arms crossed. I’m not happy and I’m thinking to myself that whatever horror cred I have is now going to go down the toilet. She sits down and starts talking. My jaw drops and now I’m captivated and nervous. She’s so charming and is no not the person I was expecting her to be. She walks out of the room and I was amazed. I also felt that “OK, she can woo people but can she sing?” I called her manager and I felt that she deserved a chance so I told him that I would give her one day. I wanted her back tomorrow at noon to learn a song and I sent them the song. I set up a meeting for the next day. She came in and not only did she nail the song but she nailed the character. I then said to myself that this is a fluke so then I gave her the hardest song in the movie and she had until that evening to learn it. Six hours later, she comes back and does the song amazingly. She’s in the recording studio with tons of musicians and memorized it within six hours. We met with actresses that were a lot more credible who were half as good as she was. I spent the next year and a half with Paris Hilton from recording studios to shooting on the set to premieres and what I can tell you about Paris Hilton is that nobody truly knows who Paris Hilton is.

I cast Paris Hilton and the news breaks. My mother calls crying from Kansas City asking me how I cast that Harleton. She’s freaking out and thinks I just killed the movie. Anyway, we’re at the recording studio, and we all step outside to smoke cigarettes in the back. We’re smoking normal cigarettes and Paris comes outside to have a water and talk to me and all of a sudden a van pulls up and paparazzi come out and they just go insane, flashing pictures. Now, a few hours again, that ended up on TMZ and it said “Paris Hilton caught smoking dope in alley.” Now she wasn’t smoking at all. She was drinking water. There was smoke around her which was from all the recording guys and she was behind the studio. Now my mother sees that on the website and thinks immediately that Paris was doing that when she wasn’t. That’s not Paris Hilton. I went out with Paris Hilton in Toronto and we went to a club. The entire time Paris was taking pictures with fans and signing autographs but happened was that it was spun where it was said that Paris Hilton was vain and Paris Hilton was looking at pictures of herself. When you are being followed by a camera every second of your life, something is going to get spun. After knowing her for over a year, I felt that everything I thought about her was wrong. She has made some bad choices but so have I. I really think that Paris Hilton holds her own in this movie and she’s very good. Paris also stayed at the same hotels as all of us. Stayed with the whole crew and ate the same food that we all did as well. She went to the same shitty bar and showed up to every rehearsal and sat there until we needed her. There was no favoritism played with her nor did she ask for it. Some of the restaurants we went to were dive bars and she came without an entourage to show that she wasn’t that person. She really impressed me and won me over as a fan.

CC: Why did you do the back stories of the characters in a comic book form?

DLB: Terrence is a man of many talents. Not only did he write the script, the music, and play the Graverobber, he also drew all the comics because we had no money. Again, to try to pull off something like this, the initial budget we asked for was $30 million and we only got a third of it, less than a third of it. It was ridiculous and we couldn’t film a lot of what we wanted to film so we decided to use the comic books for the back stories. We couldn’t film them. The comics also served like the narrator in ROCKY HORROR where if you missed something in song, the narrator came in and went “Here’s what you missed.” If you look at a traditional opera and this is an opera in every sense of the word, you are given a program and that program spells out everything that’s going to happen in the opera, and that’s what the narrator and these comic scenes do. They give you a recap if you miss something because if you miss a line of sung dialogue, you would get lost. Also it was a break from the music. Lastly, this is a bigger than life movie. It’s a comic book movie. One of my inspirations was the Warren Beatty DICK TRACY movie. That movie is so crazy and bigger than life. We wanted it to look like a comic book so it seemed like a natural segue to film.

CC: It seems evident that there is room for a sequel.

DLB: The initial cut of the film was two and a half hours and we naturally progressed it down to 90 minutes which is the final cut. The idea was it was a three part movie, this being the middle part. There was a prequel and what happened after the fact. We wrote it as one big thing. When we were greenlit, we realized that we couldn’t film the whole thing. We just decided to take the middle part and do that as the movie.

CC: With the movie, the film’s soundtrack has been released on iTunes?

DLB: There’s three CDs. There’s 22 songs that are on Amazon and iTunes and in January, the real CD comes out with 36 tracks. There were 70 songs recorded for the movie in reality but it cost so much to put CDs out that we had to cut it.

CC: How was it recording the soundtrack?

DLB: We had four weeks to record all the music and there’s 70 songs that were recorded. That means that everybody from Paul Sorvino to Sarah Brightman to Anthony Stewart Head had one week of rehearsal and three to four days on each song a piece. We had a shooting schedule of 30 days. Look at MOULIN ROUGE. They had six days to film the CAN CAN scene. We would have to do three songs a day. To go one step further, the minute we were out of the location, it was torn down immediately so there was no chance for a reshoot. We had to get it right on the first shot most of the time.

CC: Was that the biggest challenge of the film?

DLB: The biggest challenge was getting the film made to begin with. Nobody wanted to make it and I don’t think anyone initially got it. The stage play started with three guys pushing a rock up a hill; myself, Darren Smith, and Terrance Zdunich. We were supposed to go four nights in Los Angeles but we sold out. Four nights turned into four weeks. We then went to New York on Off-Broadway. People started showing up dressed as the characters and then we started to make the movie. People told us that nobody would see the movie and we had sold out screenings in Montreal, Austin, and Spain. That all started as a small, grassroots campaign of three guys who believed in something that’s turned into something much bigger. That’s been the hardest thing. It’s been convincing people this will work because so many times I wanted to throw my hands up in the air and say “Fuck it all!”

CC: What is your opinion of horror today?

DLB: I think that it’s stale and that it’s hard to find a uniquely good horror film. There are a lot of them out there and I’m saying this having made three SAW movies but the reason why I made REPO and I know that people are going to hate REPO but for me it is the first move that I can make to say that there is a way to make unique, strange, out of the box movies because if I see one more fucking remake, I’m going to go crazy. For every fifteen scripts that I get, thirteen are either a remake or a SAW ripoff. People cash in on whatever’s popular and it was important for me to go so far outside of what is popular. I think in the very end, it’s going to take a while for REPO to catch on but that pure uniqueness of it is going to prove popular.

CC: Do you think it will start a trend for horror to go into that risky direction where we don’t see the remakes anymore?

DLB: I don’t think you will see more rock operas but what I think it will do is if this catches on like it has been thus far, I think it will give people more room to experiment and take risks. We are slowly winning over producers as well as they originally thought that ten people were going to show up at the initial screening. The fact that all the screenings have been sold out is proof that people are sick of the same old shit and are craving something different. Maybe this is too different but the fact is people want to see something different and that’s what I hope happens to horror films in that we start seeing new and unique things.

CC: I leave the last word to you.

DLB: I would like everyone to go visit http://www.repo-opera.com/ to find out when REPO will be playing near you. We open in New York and Los Angeles on November 7th and will be making our way across the country. Also check out the website to see the amount of work put into the project. We have the short film, auditions, rehearsals, and lots more goodies up there.

CC: Thank you for your time Darren and best of luck with REPO.

DLB: You're welcome.

(Special thanks to Lionsgate and Int'l House of Publicity)