Father Geek here this New Year's Eve, scrape'n the moldy ol' Crusty Seaman off my Geek Headquarter's monitor, after receiving his latest load (make that download), sent in to the AICN headquarter's compound here in North Central Austin. It consists of his thoughts on that "GREATEST little horror flick you may NEVER see at your local theater"... MAY. (one of my TOP 10 films of 2002) Annnnnnnnd his close, if not too private, encounter with ANNA FARIS, one of May's (Angela Bettis') love interests in this absolutely phantastic cutting-edge, new-age terror film from the twisted mind of Lucky McKee... Father Geek here was lucky enough to see this new jewel in horror's long-lived crown, and meet Ms. Bettis and Writer-director Lucky McKee a couple of months ago at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain where it WON the only multiple awards given to any movie when it took home the prizes for both BEST ACTRESS and BEST WRITER, and that was against competion with genre films like DARKNESS, SPIDER (best director), DEMONLOVER, THE EYE, TED BUNDY, CABIN FEVER (best make-up), DARK WATER, A SNAKE OF JUNE, and REIGN OF FIRE (best effects) to name only a few.Now, here's Quint's take on the whole thing...
Now, here's Quint's take on the whole thing...
Ahoy, squirts! Crusty ol' Quint here with a little review of a nifty, fucked up little horror flick called MAY, which Harry screened for those of us lucky BNATers a couple weeks ago.
I'd been trying to see this movie for a year. I bought tickets for it when it premiered at Sundance. I had no press pass and very little cash, but I figured it was high time for me to get a little of the Sundance experience and bought about $80 worth of movie tickets. At the last minute I was hit with the realization that it was going to cost a helluva lot more than I had to stay out there. I was debating if the experience of cheaping it around the America's biggest film festival was worth the risk of freezing to death in the Orca when I get an offer from Bumble Ward to visit the set of Paul Schrader's AUTO FOCUS (READ ABOUT IT HERE!!!). That clinched it. My $80 was forever lost and I missed out on MAY.
A few months before BNAT, Harry saw the film and was going on and on about how great it was, not helping to keep my anticipation of the film at a reasonable level. Shortly after Harry's ravings I was offered a sit-in on the local press junket for THE HOT CHICK and interviews with stars Rob Schneider, Anna Faris (yeah, the hottie from the SCARY MOVIE films) and director Tom Brady. Ms. Faris was quite a large part of why I accepted the invite as I hate junkets as a general rule and didn't think the flick was too hot. But Ms. Faris is a beauty and I couldn't turn down talking to her about MAY, which at that time was a complete mystery to me as a film.
The junket lived up to my opinion of junkets. Nice people, but terrible set up. Round table interviews are the devil. Their only purpose is to hand out soundbites to a bunch of publications at the same time. There is no flow to the interviews, no real sense of the person being interviewed. Plus everybody at the table claims right to everything that's said as their own. I hate round table interviews so much I've passed up the opportunity to sit in on talks with people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jason Lee. Those are people who seem to only exist in soundbites. The only way an interview would be interesting with either of them would be a one on one look at their careers and personalities.
Enough of that bullshit, though. I ultimately went to ask this one question to the lovely Ms. Anna Faris:
CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT 'MAY?'
Was that worth the two hours of waiting around? I think so. I had a great time beforehand talking with this guy who was introduced to me as John. We talked for almost an hour about LORD OF THE RINGS, how he had just gone down to New Zealand and met up with a buddy of his that helped create WETA and got to see all the props from the films. We talked about collecting film, film history, and where film is going. We were joined by a writer for UT's rag, The Daily Texan, who was just as much a geek as I am. It was a great conversation.
I knew this John guy was somehow involved with THE HOT CHICK as one of the producers, but other than that he was a total stranger. Soon before I was called away, I found out that John was John Schneider, Rob's brother and manager/producer. Regardless of what I think of THE HOT CHICK (pretty bad, but not as bad as I was expecting... Not JOE DIRT bad) John was a very cool guy, somebody I had a great time talking to.
But you're not reading this to know about my adventures during THE HOT CHICK junket. You want to know about MAY... Here's the one question and answer I got in to Anna Faris:
QUINT: CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT 'MAY?'
ANNA FARIS: "May is a film written and directed by a man called Lucky McKee. It stars Angela Bettis as May. I play a young woman named Polly who's a lesbian, a really aggressive lesbian. Charming, I think. Yeah, that was a neat part... It's a horror movie that has a lot of comedic elements, but it's still really horrifying. It's a film you don't forget."
That got my mouth watering. I needed to see Anna Faris play an "aggressive lesbian." And saw it I did. The character of Polly is a sweet little lesbian best friend to the main character of May, a shy, extremely weird, but sweet introvert played perfectly by Angela Bettis. Throughout the movie Polly is trying to turn May over to the dark side and the sexual innuendo is priceless.
May is caught up on a mysterious grease monkey with perfect hands played by Jeremy Sisto. They meet, sparks fly in a really kind of sick and weird way and then the shit hits the fan. Their on again and off again relationship plays hell on May's already cracked sense of reality. Her grasp on right and wrong isn't helped by the tempting little lesbian, nor by the fucked up family heirloom, a creepy-ass doll in a glass case, that might have some power over May.
Everybody in May's life fails her, hurts her in some way. All she sees around her are little perfect pieces, but no perfect wholes. If no perfect people exist, why not make your own?
May is not for the weak of heart, but it is also not merely a gross out gore flick. MAY is incredibly character driven. There is humor, but it is never the wink-wink, nudge-nudge say no more kind of self referencing humor that bogs down most horror films these days. The humor is almost always character driven. The film is filled with real people. Real fucked up people, sure, but totally believable.
The gore is top notch, the creepy factor is set to 11 and the atmosphere is perfectly set. What more can you ask of a horror flick?
I'm hearing some disturbing things about LIONS GATE dumping this film sometime in January. It seems they're pushing HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and totally neglecting the two horror gems they have right now: MAY and CABIN FEVER. That's very sad since HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES is a sloppy and boring horror film. A total missed opportunity. In the last couple of years I had hoped that LIONS GATE was picking up where MIRAMAX left off, championing great indie filmmakers and getting behind offbeat stories. If LIONS GATE lets either MAY or CABIN FEVER die to push Rob Zombie's crappy excuse for a horror film they will have lost all respect I have for them as a studio.
If you're a horror fan, keep your eye(s) open for this film. If the rumor I hear becomes a reality, I doubt Harry or Moriarty or myself will keep quiet about it, so keep checking back here. We'll make sure you folks who are interested in seeing this film know when to look it up at a theatre near you.
I'm off, squirts! I have an interview with the talented Tom Woodruff Jr. that I'm currently transcribing. For you horror fans, Mr. Woodruff was the man in the suit in PUMPKINHEAD, not to mention the guy who played Gillman in one of my all time favorites THE MONSTER SQUAD. He's also worked on the effects for flicks like ALIENS, TERMINATOR, PREDATOR, TREMORS and just finished up a little stint on Joe Dante's LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION. We talk about all those flicks and much more.
I hope to have that in before the turn of the New Year. 'Til then, this is Quint bidding you a fond farewell and adieu!
-Quint
