Richard Stanley Interview

Richard Stanley is the award-winning South African-born filmmaker, who made a name of himself with his first feature film, the sci-fi movie Hardware (1990). A low budget movie about a mad-dog android loose in an apartment was released in 1990. Although some critics slammed it as a Terminator rip-off, it was much lauded for its striking look and bleak, vividly realised vision of the future and the film became a financial success. The 1.5 million dollar budget was paid back quite handsomely and continuation was imminent.

Stanley followed Hardware with Dust Devil (1992), a story based on the myth of a supernatural Namibian serial killer. A fallout with the distributors led to the re-cutting of the US version, while the bankruptcy of the British-based production company Palace Pictures temporarily shut the post-production down in Europe and the film remained unfinished. Finally Stanley himself managed to finance a new, restored print from the original negative, which has later gained a cult following similar to Hardware.

His third feature was to be The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), an adaptation of the famed H.G. Wells novel. Unfortunately it ended up a victim of creative disputes, leading to him being sacked a few days after production began. The finished film, released in 1996, carries little to no resemblance to the version he was originally set to make, using only about two words of his original script.

With Hardware finally receiving a DVD/Blu-Ray release, and getting the VIP treatment it deserves from Optimum Releasing, our very own Wayfarer was able to speak to him about the movie as well as a couple of other projects...

I have a very vivid memory of going to see Hardware on its release, it stands the test of time very well, with it's sociological, political and spiritual themes resonating more now then perhaps before. How do you see it after the last twenty years?

I'm a little depressed that it resonates after 20 years (laughs). I would have hoped that the issues weren't hot topics anymore. I think the only thing which hasn't worked out is the legalised government marijuana. I didn't foresee the anti-smoking political correctness thing, that's a little more Demolition Man. The rest of it, I guess by taking the worst case scenario each time, we've ended up with something disturbingly close to what might happen. I never really believed in faster than light travel and the total artificial intelligence or anything. It was always too plain that the greenhouse effect and different problems were going to kind of give us real lifestyle issues in the twenty-first century. It was coming out of Make Room, Make Room (a novel by the author Harry Harrison) which I read when I was twelve or thirteen and scared the crap out of me (laughs).

A lot of what Hardware captures is the run down of society; the constant recycling, the need to risk life by traversing radioactive wastelands to make a living. This seems a lot more believable than machines, literally, taking over the world...

Well I never believed that they really could because they’re too overspecialised to an extent. This comes up in the Hardware sequel script quite a lot; what happens to the droids when they're up and running. They're still ultimately overwhelmed by natural forces. In the second one I can't see them being bright enough like Skynet to actually run the place.

I'm very grateful that the film has finally got a release in the UK. It's had some poor releases in the past, I feel. The film works so much better on a DVD medium rather than VHS purely because of the colours used and the darkness aswell. I understand that some scenes have been reinstated for the latest release?

I haven't actually watched the release yet, I've been given my copies today so I’ll find out what they've done about the scenes. i think they've put them on a separate feature. I'm not sure they've reinstated them. (The scenes referred to in this answer, and the subsequent question, refer to the deleted scenes on the Optimum Release's special features)

One of the most striking scenes in the film, for me, is the use of music to imagery using the signature track Order of Death by Public Image Limited during the sex scene. I believe that Stacey Travis' character Jill was watching a Holocaust film at the time, originally?

That's right, yeah, she was watching a holocaust documentary, which was deleted because it was thought to be a flippant use of the holocaust material. In the last twenty years I've made a holocaust documentary of my own which contains the same footage. (The 2001 documentary The Secret Glory available in the 5-disc North American Release of Dust Devil). I would have hoped, by now, that it's proof that it wasn't flippant. I'm well aware of what the images were about.

I found a little piece of the Director's Cut, on VHS. It was only about half an hour of the thing, a little piece of it before the final music went in. It's certainly a much harder and nastier movie. Once it was edited down the rough edges of the characters were knocked off. A poppier soundtrack and things had smoothed over some of the move making it less intense as say Combat Shock. (a 1986 movie renowned for it’s depressing and extreme content).

I've found it irritating over the years, that some very good movies have had the same kind of troubles, Blade Runner being an example where they felt the need to add narration. I believe that they ADR'd dialogue into Hardware?

Yeah, I've never been able to take that out. No one’s wanted to open up the dialogue tracks to lose the ADR. The irony of it is that I think that the whole shtick about the droid insulation system being vulnerable to water was actually added in Post which gave the impression that the character knew what was going on and had some kind of plan.

The trouble is it kind of sign-posted the end, essentially.

Yeah, it really seems to labor it, I was a bit miffed that it goes over the trip sequence. I made a mistake by having, first of all, the droid speak to the girl at the end and then the girl wear a helmet which meant that they could dub pretty much any line over the droid. The moment she's got the helmet on you can ADR pretty much any line in there which gave the various powers that be the opportunity to ADR the heck out of the last reel; So all those silly Fuck You I know the answers. (laughs)

Right, if this is not the question to ask I apologise but I've got to get it in before the end of the session...

shoot

I'm a big Marillion fan. So, Brave...

I haven't been asked about this in a long time.

I have to ask you what your original vision was. I understand from what you've said on record that the finished film was heavily edited.

There were about three music videos worth of material that was stretched out to make a whole album which was certainly over-diluted. On top of that, I haven't seen what was eventually put out, but I know that the intensity of some of the images were softened, so a lot of stuff got cut out. So more and more performance shots and reused material got kind of looped in there.

I noticed shots of the band appearing out of nowhere which didn't seem to flow with the rest of the material.

Yeah, I think it was the record company trying to get too much of a good thing out of it, having got effectively three and a half promos, somebody thought let's go for it and try and make the whole thing into a feature length, which was a bit of a shame.

I always wondered what your original vision was for the imagery.

It does feel like the rough draft for Dust Devil, some part of that movie; the faceless man in the mirror trying to get to the girl committing murders which was is like the end of Twin Peaks where we find out that Bob was the guy in the mirror jumping from person to another. That was certainly an idea that was floating around back then.

The Opium Den scene in Brave is one of my favorite scenes. It showed a lot of promise.

Yes, a better editor might have been able to do something with it. Some of the cuts were coming in from the wrong places, at times. The Opium Den, I could have done more with that. The Opium Den would have been better had they both been naked, and the girl had been white and the guy had been black and intercut with negative images. Not only would they have been fighting and then fucking, they would have been alternating between black and white and different colours. I think that would have pushed it up to the next level, but you're right it was the beginning of a good idea.

The use of colour in Hardware, especially at the beginning of the film, looked to me like a nod to Argento. Did you consciously reference his movies?

Yeah, i was very influenced by Dario. Dario was the first professional film maker that would speak to me. when I was at a screening at The Scala which made a big impression on me.

Was this when The Scala showed All Night screenings?

In fact it was a test preview for Phenomena.

Was that before it was heavily edited?

Yes, we said don't touch a frame but of course they cut the hell out of it. That and the Warren comic books, Creepy and Eerie magazine that I read as a kid inspired the Hardware look and feel. The character in the Eerie magazine; the Exterminator robot was probably a source for Cameron and myself pre-Droid, pre-Terminator, but also the covers for Creepy Comics that used the very fluorescent reds and oranges with the same fusion of horror, gothic horror and scifi. Yeah, a desire to not do the same as James Cameron or Ridley Scott and the music videos of that period, to ban blue backlighting and turquoises and grey and to deliberately go to a totally different palette from what was going before. Yeah, so red got drafted in from the Dario movies, as being something to distinguish it from the other Terminator/Alien clones, there was a lot of those with people creeping around warehouses, in the late eighties.

The ferocity in Hardware reminds me a little of some of the ferocity of Argento's Suspiria in places.

We used Simon Boswell's music, who scored Soavi's Stagefright, which was an influence too.

One of Simon's themes, No Flesh Will be Spared, does give Hardware that extra edge, I feel.

Simon did some excellent work for us. Stagefright and Demons basically also gave us templates of a bunch of characters trapped in a single location.

On behalf of myself and Mike, who runs the Flash-Bang movie reviews website I'd like to thank you for the interview and say that we'd like to see you make more films.

Well hopefully there's another one on the way, set for an August start date, so fingers crossed.

Are you still going ahead with Vacation?

Yes, set for August.

Bruce Campbell has finished his work on the latest season of Burn Notice...

Yeah, we'll see if we get him or not.

http://www.myspace.com/richardstanley13

http://www.everythingisundercontrol.org/nagtloper/index.php

With many thanks to Optimum Releasing for the opportunity to speak to Richard.

Hardware is out on DVD and Blu-Ray, on 22/06/09

(Wayfarer)