BLUEBIRDS OF PEACE AND DESTRUCTION
Interview with
Jean Nicotine [originally published in Rave Magazine, 24/10/06]
Jean: Okay, so are
you going to Manila - what's all that about? What exciting things are
you going to get up to there?
Andrew: The director
of the Cinemanila Film Festival caught my BIFF seminar on Filipino
genre films and invited me to do a repeat screening in Manila. How
fucking cool is that? So I’m screening Filipino midget spy movies
actually IN the Philippines. Plus I’m running amok with a video
camera shooting a doco about my search for Weng Weng, the
two-foot-nine Filipino James Bond. Hence the need to scrape together
my possible bail bond.
Explain the concept
behind Bluebirds Of Peace And Destruction - how does it differ from
something like Lesbo-A-Go-Go?
Lesbo... was
basically a straight-faced parody of 60s porn films, and I always
wanted my next film to be radically different. With Bluebirds... I
wedded the rules of Dogme and exploitation cinema, taking the basic
story of the real-life West End vampire murder from 1989 as a
starting point. Strangely enough, most people find the idea of
recreating the Tracy Wiggington slaying at the original locations in
such grotesquely poor taste, and that’s basically why I made it.
Then you try to do something out of the box, so I watched a mountain
of Godard, wrote the script as an improvisational piece, did a mad
guerilla shoot over 48 hours with a 2-person crew, and stripped all
the expected gothic and vampire imagery from the story, leaving
visual clues to much older blood rituals. There’s no sex either - I
figured if you’re on a serious death trip, bloodletting becomes a
substitute for the orgasm. What happens after such a violent act is a
sense of confusion and paranoia, and that’s what I try to get
across - towards the end, the film literally starts falling to
pieces.
How did you pick
your actors?
The Trash casting
couch - everyone around me is a born performer! Leisa and Starr (the
two vampire leads) have been best friends for years and have such a
volatile relationship with the outside world, I’ve known them for
ages and always wanted to capture their unique chemistry on film.
Chloe who plays the doe-eyed innocent caught in their spiralling
paranoia, she’s a friend of mine who could portray a sense of
detachment perfectly. As for you, my dear Jean - you were always my
first choice for a petulant screaming prostitute.
Describe a regular
day down at Trash Video... fill us in on a background, for the
uninitiated...
It’s like Clerks
but not Clerks 2, if you catch my drift.
What film projects
have you got in the pipeline? Do I recall some talk about backyard
cults and albinos?
My next script’s
called “Happy Otter”, a Nietzchean incest rape-revenge thriller
which I suspect may become THE unfilmable horror film. I can’t
imagine anyone handing over quarter of a million clams to make a
movie that’s destined to be banned in over 20 countries. There’s
no albinos, but there is a dead fetus with lobster claws. Of course
it makes perfect sense when you read the script.
