INTERVIEW  : Dave Warner
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MARCH 4th, 2000 : interview with Dave Warner Writer of CUT .

 Just saw CUT and I'm still sitting back analyzing it.. With tons of horror film watching behind me I've just got to suck it up a little more.

Hopefully  this interview will tie up any loose ends I might have about pre-production  and content interpretation of the film.

1. One of the most interesting things I've found while reading other interviews is that SCARMAN was added to original drafts, prior to

SCARMAN  who or what was the killer?

 Without giving too much away because hey, we might want to revisit some aspects sometime in the future, I can say there were multiple killers but unlike SCREAM 2 ( which came out here after writing the original CUT drafts) the killers weren't working together.

2. CUT is by no means the first Australian SLASHER film, films like FINAL  CUT, BLOODMOON and HOUSEBOAT HORROR proceed it by at least a decade. However  CUT seems to be inspired by some of Phillip Brophy's work (Body Melt) whilst  also being inspired by WES CRAVEN/  WEINSTEIN films SCREAM, ANOES and The BURNING respectively. Was it your job as the writer of CUT to sit down and try to incorporate the influences of these films so as to make one of these post-modern slasher films, or were you trying to make an Australian Horror Film??

 My approach was to make an edge of the seat thriller that took place in the slasher/youth sub-genre, that was also funny, and also Australian. The idea of doing an Australian horror film was there with Kimble, Martin and me from our very first meeting but we all agreed it shouldn't strive to say "hey look at me, I'm Australian" the Australianess of it should come out through the characters and through the perverse sense of humour that Aussies have. So we never set out to copy a particular style of slasher film, we wanted to get something from lots of slasher films and other suspense flicks, and put that in with our own sensibility.

3. Horror films set on a movie set are not a new concept, but the use of student filmmakers is. It's hard to say that the film was inspired by THE BLAIR WITCH as the BLAIR WITCH was made overseas and out of sight at the time of pre-production on CUT (although you hear the words Blair Witch in a scene). This year not only CUT will have the students getting killed while they make a film, but there will also be the film "Urban Legend 2: The Final Cut" directed by John Ottoman using a similar concept. As a writer how easy is to be ORIGINAL in the realm of creating stories for films??

I don't think it's hard. Everything I've done whether it be music, novels or screenplays, is original as far as I know, at the time of writing. Of course it's hard in Australia as it takes so long to get films up, and by that stage somebody else in the U.S. who thought of a concept 2 years after you did, has made the movie 2 years before you! I wrote thefirst draft of CUT in Dec 97 and the 2 and a bit years to see it on screen is amazingly quick. I have had a vampire film in development since 1992 that had elements only explored by BLADE 5 or 6 years later. It is galling but there's not much you can do.

4. This film reminds me of an Urban Legend that I was into when I was in High School. I used to be a big ALIEN/ ROSWELL/ AREA 51 buff. The story  goes, "once upon a time there was a film crew making a movie that exposed aliens (it was well researched but targeted at a Horror Audience), they were warned to stop, but when they didn't people in the Cast and Crew started to die, filming was stopped and it never resumed. Had you heard of this legend  before you started writing CUT?

 No. I chose the film student idea because it gave us so many options of interesting film within film notions, video cams and so on. In earlier drafts this was explored even more, but what can I say, a lot of that was CUT!

5. Upon seeing certain parts of the trailer and comparing it to the final  film, there were quite a few sequences contained within it that were  missing. IE DAMIEN's death scene you could have blinked and missed it, in  the storyboards release, he gets slashed and than the LIMB CLIPPERS cut into his head and close on him. However in the film he just gets stabbed in the  face (Sure both would have the same effect, but..). I suppose what I'm getting at is that how much was CUT from CUT and why was this film rated MA  when it really could have been only M, the gore was not as bad as I was bracing myself for. This maybe a question for the director, but as a writer  did you envision this film as being more gorey than it was??

Actually not more gory, no - except for one scene near the climax that I won't mention in case we want o use it for a sequel. But generally Kimble always wanted it to be gory. He could answer this better than me but I think he thought that given the humour in the film, the gore needed to be full-on. Personally I find the expectation of the killing the scariest thing about set piece screen killings.

6. Okay, this is where I'm going to start giving out bonus points, there > were a coupla gorey little death scenes, even though they cut away (WOOD  CHOPPER lame CUTAWAY blood on the glass. ARRRG).. But the one I need to congratulate you on is the TAP. I saw it and immediately my darkside said,  turn it on. I was kind of waiting for SCARMAN to laugh a little. Okay, so did you write that or was that on the spot??

I didn't write that but there was a scene sort of similar in an earlier draft in which one of the characters gets skewered through the neck by an umbrella, the umbrella opens like a frill-neck lizard and the victim stumbles to the ground with water from a tap pouring over the umbrella. (even funnier I would say)

7. Australian-ness, to me the film was lacking in this department. I found  the most Australian character to be SCARMAN, the other characters could have  been from any other part of the world. SCARMAN just seemed to have some 'quality' of Australian-ness that was lacking in any of the other characters. To me it was kind of what Aussie Director Phillipe Mora did to Werewolf's when he brought them downunder, he gave them a pouch and made them  marsupials. It could have been easy to just make the Killer the AMERICAN as  in BLOODMOON and not try to develop an Aussie KILLER. Sure this wasn't seen  until the end of the film (through dialogue and expression, damn the mask),  but why did you hold off on SCARMAN talking until the end??

 Again you would need to speak to Kimble about this. I think he would disagree like me that it's not Australian. I think it is very Australian but in an undersated way.

8. Film lecturer Tom O'Regan in his book "Australian: National Cinema"(p.> 175) describes Phillip Brophy's BODY MELT as "a low-budget schlock movie  glorying in its bad taste, visual excess and sick spectacle". If you could  re-word that phrase to suit CUT, how would it read??

 A low budget youth movie, glorying in bad taste, producing more laughs in 86 minutes than Hey dad produced in 86 episodes. 

 9. When you wrote CUT, did you write it completely alone for 2 weeks? Or  were there constant trips to the Video shop? (I find writing late at night > when everyone's asleep by best time). 

 By myself go to whoa daytime hours.

 10. What is your best tip on getting agency representation for your writing  in Australia (well best tip you can give away for free)??

 Agents very rarely actually get you work - they are great negotiating once work is there. Write and send stuff to anybody who might read it you never know.

11. Are you going to be on the writing force for the sequels?? Or is there  another project that you want to finish first??

I would love to be on the sequels. I have three film scripts optioned and in development and EXXXPRESSO has a real good chance of making the screen in 12 months.

SPOILER DRIVEN QUESTION BELOW> This is the end of the interview for those who have not see the film.

 12. The film seems to have an ending flaw. SCARMAN dies when all the film is  burned. However the camera that DAMIEN shot SCARMAN on is surely still in  existence (in the film) and still has the footage shot of his own death. Does this mean there could be a duality in the sequel, that it doesn't start  and finish in some film-school in the USA?? That it in fact needs to finish  back the Swiss Chalet. ?? Surely we can't export SCARMAN yet?? I also found the THIS ISN'T THE LAST COPY OF THE FOOTAGE BIT a little, kind of weak (I  hope you didn't add that). Are there any ideas floating around about where  the sequel will launch from? I think it should start in that CINEMA, all the  kids are murdered, OPENING shot just a mess of bodies, followed by the projection room bursting into flames and SCARMAN melts away again..  MEANWHILE in AUSTRALIA the forensics and other COPPER types are developing  the film shot recently (by DAMIEN), than good SCARMAN pops up and starts his  jolly rampage again. What are your thoughts on the sequel so FAR??

 The great thing about sequels is that there is any amount of places to start from. I have some ideas that could very very different about what happens next.

Thanks for your time in answering any or all of these questions DAVE.

CONTACT ME : SHANE "GORE BOY" GAVIN

These are my email addy's gb@flatrate.net.au or goreboy666@hotmail.com 

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