George Romero, David Cronenberg and Hairspray
Last weekend was fun. Finally got to see Night of the Living Dead in a theatre. Really beautiful flick in a theatre. I can only imagine what must’ve gone through people’s heads watching those zombies chomp on flesh in the ’50s. Romero was there and he talked for an hour afterwords and then did a signing. Very nice man. He’s a lot taller than I realized!
Because this was on a Saturday and coincided with the Fangoria show I missed out on meeting H.G. Lewis, which sucks. But on Sunday I went out and finally got to meet David Cronenberg. He was really cool when I accidentally met him outside as he was getting out of his car and walking in. Then I walked in and he was still going up the escalator. I got the feeling he looked at me like I was a nerd stalker, but maybe that’s not true. The main reason I think that is that during the signing, he was just so not into doing an interview. Which is okay, I mean, he’s busy, but then 50 people later my friend Tavis asked for an interview and he told him to call Sony Pictures.
Now, I did ask David for an interview via email and he assistant said he was too busy, so maybe that’s part of it, because I asked again. But that’s how it works a lot of the time. David was really really cool with the Q&A and I’m really happy to have met him. I’d love to have a conversation with him someday, but for the moment I believe he’s only doing interviews for Spider.
And I must say when I met Stephen Lack, the star of Scanners, he says that David changes his email address and phone number after every movie. Hey, he’s David Cronenberg. He can do what he wants. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Spider, but I’ll keep watching his movies.
Bill Lustig and Jay Douglas, formerly of Anchor Bay and now with Blue Underground, were both there too. It was nice to meet Jay. He really digs this stuff.
I also saw the John Waters’ music Hairspray last week. It was really just plain fun. The movie itself though also really was just plain fun. For the musical they’ve cut out the hypnowheel therapist. What I enjoyed most in the midst of all the bubblegum colors was that the guy who created this thing made a movie with a fat purposely ugly drag queen eating fresh dogshit off the sidewalks of Baltimore. Then I really began to enjoy the show. It was just so perverse! I can easily imagine seeing people checking out John’s ‘other’ work because they enjoyed Hairspray so much. I also got a piece of long confetti from the giant hairspray can that shoots the stuff out at the end of the show. Fun!
Psyched for next Tuesday as Penn Jillette and Mia Farrow are starring in Bob Balaban’s The Exonerated for a week. Tuesday is opening night and while that’s not always best as it’s nice for the actors to get a couple days’ audience feel, I’m sure it’ll be a fine time.