ARROW VS. POLLY STAFFLE PART 2

VIEL-GILANTE JUSTICE

CCF: We mentioned Christian Viel earlier. You and him made “Deaden,” which is a really great revenge movie. To me you really came into your own with that film and you could be such a bad ass action star. Have any other filmmakers picked up on that and contacted you for similar type roles?

JF: I’ve been offered stuff. Whether it will happen or not remains to be seen. I don’t believe anything until the check clears. But there are some Hollywood people that have seen the film that are saying really good things about it. My intention with “Deaden,” other than getting a film past the development stage, was to show people that I can hold my own. Before Deaden, all people saw was, “Oh, there’s John Fallon doing a two line cameo” or “There’s John Fallon the critic pretending to be an actor.” It’s actually the opposite. I actually studied acting and film. I never studied journalism for shit. I’m actually pretending to be a journalist.

CCF: (LOL)

JF: (LOL) That’s another conversation. Point being is, I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. When I wrote the screenplay, of course Christian also had lots of input, but as I wrote the screenplay I wrote to cater to my strengths. We shot the film in 13 days. We didn’t have any rehearsals whatsoever. So it had to be stuff that I knew I could connect to and be able to do. So basically, the character of Rane in “Deaden” is all the stuff I am really good at doing in one film.

CCF: I was just blown away by that movie. You really did a great job with it and I think if more people see that, it’s going to lead to some really good stuff for you.

JF: I appreciate it. I hope so. It is getting distributed on DVD in the states by the end of this year. Initially it was supposed to be summer and then I heard August. It’s out of our hands. The distributor has it, so it is up to them. They’ll put it out when they put it out.

CCF: “Deaden” is a very brutal movie. To me it wasn’t mean spirited like a lot of the horror movies and stuff that’s being put out right now. One of the things I know is you and Christian were partly inspired with disappointment from “The Punisher.” But also at the same time was there some pent up anger towards, I don’t know, the Hollywood system?

JF: (LOL)

CCF: And not being able to showcase your acting and you just being seen as “Fan boy John Fallon” doing the cameos?

JF: No, not mostly from that. I enjoy doing the cameos. I love being on set. Next to sex, being on set is my favorite thing to do. I loved doing “Saw II.” I loved doing “Alone in the Dark.” The pent up anger for me, Christian had his own shit going on with the “Samhain” stuff, but on my end, I had a film with a studio that had been in development for a couple of years. It was one of my scripts and I flew back and fourth to L.A. and we were like inches away from signing the papers. It was going to be a $10 million budget. It was going to break me out, at least as a screenwriter within the Hollywood system. Then at the last, last, last second, something really left field happened and killed the deal. So that was two years of my life… and it just got shot down. I was pissed. I was really pissed. People know me just from the site, but I’ve been in the film industry here locally in Canada for a good eight or nine years. I got so fed up after that deal got shot down that I said, “I just want to make a fucking movie. I don’t care about nothing. I just want to make a movie.” And Christian was at the same place mentally – “Fuck studios. Fuck the system. We just want to make a movie.” To make a movie within the studio system, it’s feasible, of course there’s a zillion of them happening, but one thing that I learned is there’s so much bullshit to swim through that you put all your energy into ducking the bullshit to finally maybe make a movie. I wanted no bullshit and just put all my energy into making the film, so did Christian. We saw the Thomas Jane “ Punisher” movie and we didn’t care for it, but we both liked the vigilante subgenre. We went out for a couple of beers, started shooting the shit, talking about how would we do it. Eventually we just said, “Fuck it. Let’s do it. I’ll go write the script and let’s see what happens.” So we did.

John Fallon and Berge Garabedian (JoBlo.com) have a drink in hopes of reviewing a Larry Clark film objectively.

CCF: Early you mentioned you told JoBlo you wanted the site to be called “Arrow in the Head.” Where did that come from originally?

JF: That shit comes from JoBlo. He used to call me “The Arrow.” I was a very forward and to the point kind of guy, so he’d say, “Hey Arrow. The Arrow.” It was a nickname. So when it came down for the site, the first that popped in my head when I read his email was Arrow In The Head. It just makes total sense. That’s how that came about.

CCF: And I understand from Christian that you weren’t really feeling the arrow in the head bit originally in the film “Deaden”?

JF: (LOL) Yeah. He wanted to reference the site in the film. The way he saw it was I’m known for the site, it’s one of my strengths, so I might as well embrace it. For me it was the opposite. I wanted to actually distance myself from the site. I wanted to do this with no website involved. I wanted people to just see me, not The Arrow or Arrow In The Head. So after much debating…well…. he’s the director, so the director wanted that, so I said, “Fuck it. We’ll do it. If it flops, it’s your fault.”

CCF: (LOL)

JF: In hindsight, he was right and I was wrong.

CCF: Yeah, it works great and then it also has the little inside joke… It’s one of the really brilliant things of the movie. (LOL)

JF: Yeah, thanks.

CCF: (LOL)

JF: Yeah, there are a couple of inside jokes in there and a lot of references to other films.

CCF: Like myself, you are a big fan of the revenge films. What is it that personally draws you to them?

JF: I guess it’s the fantasy angle. Revenge is a human emotion that everybody in the world can relate to. We’ve all been wronged. More often than not, we are wronged and there is no retribution or rectification because the world is the world. People get fucked over, the bad people get away with it and life goes on. So the whole revenge subgenre appeals to the fantasy of being wronged, but going beyond the law and our flawed judicial system and bringing justice. I really like that theme. It really appeals to me. There have been so many times that I have found myself in the position of where I got wronged, fucked over or screwed and I wish I could at least kick the guys ass. (LOL) But if you kick the guy’s ass, that’s called assault… so you provoke him and let him launch the first punch – then its self defense. (LOL)

CCF: (LOL)

JF: And la-dee-da there are repercussions and la-dee-done-de-da. But if you are watching a movie like “The Punisher” or “Death Sentence,” it’s nice to see. At least they’re able to do it. (LOL)

CCF: What did you make of “Death Sentence”?

JF: I loved it personally. It’s flawed. But the good outweighed the bad. It’s very old school. It’s very 70ish.

CCF: It seems like in the past couple of years there has been this return to the seventies and eighties. Not only the revenge films, but the action star movies that were once really big and then they sort of went away, have started to come back to life. They brought back “Die Hard,” they’re bringing back “Rambo.” Then there was “Deaden” which is kind of like this combination of the seventies revenge and also the eighties action hero stuff like “Commando” and “Cobra.” What do you think made this stuff die down and what’s bringing it all back?

JF: Well everything works in cycles in every genre. Horror is actually a great example of that. The slasher subgenre as an example died out in the nineties with “Halloween 6,” “Friday the 13th: Part 8” and those films. They made nothing. Then “Scream” came along, revived it and then next thing you know, you’re getting slashers again. “I Know What You Did Last Summer,”“Urban Legends” “Cherry Falls” and all that shit. It goes in cycles. In terms of the action genre, to be honest, I have no idea why it fluttered out. I think society changes, the audience changes. From generation to generation, they are raised through different times, so hence they like different things. For example I was raised in the eighties, so “Cobra,” “Commando” and all that shit, that’s what I love to this day. I show “Commando” or “Cobra” to an average 16 or 17-year-old kid today and he’ll look at me like, “What the hell is this shit?”

CCF: (LOL)

JF: “How come there’s no Ja Ru in there?”

CCF: (LOL)

JF: “ Where fity at?” You know?

CCF: (LOL)

JF: I think that comes into play. At the end of the day, it’s teenagers and young adults that are the main audiences in terms of going to the theatres, so from generation to generation people change so films change to appeal to the people that go see them.

CCF: It’s kind of weird how it works like that. At the same time though, it also makes sense that someone like you, who wrote “Deaden,” and James Wann, who directed “Death Sentence,” being around the same age, would tune into the same thing simultaneously without even knowing it. His film has a strong “Deaden” vibe to it and that could very well just be he was in the same mindset you were of “Hey, why doesn’t somebody bring this back?”

JF: Yeah. The thing is, we are kind of like in an era of… I don’t know, it’s just a weird time to live in society right now in my opinion. It’s very odd times. I noticed people keep going backwards. It’s almost like we have nothing left to offer, look forward to, so people go backwards. Look at the new stuff. Look at “Die Hard 4.” I thought it was okay, but it left me cold. It’s a lot of CGI. It’s big action set pieces. It’s very distant. It’s very cold. Then you rewatch the original and there is soul there. There is heart. There is attention to dialogue and character. It’s almost as time went on, big Hollywood films became more about product. In the eighties, of course this is my opinion, people wanted to make money, but they also wanted to make films. Even a film like “Commando,” there was heart in that film. I think films are just a reflection of our society.

CCF: I get exactly what you are saying that some of them are so cold. A big example with me was “Sin City.” I hated that movie. I know lots of people love it and I’m just “It has no soul.” I Just felt like I was watching pretty pictures. I didn’t feel anything. So yeah, there definitely is this need for the raw energy that was there in the sixties and the seventies. And I hadn’t even thought about it before, but you are right with the eighties action movies. Even the huge budget Arnold Schwarzenegger stuff, it had soul.

JF: Yep. The action was intimate. They were shot with wide shots and more often than not, it was one guy against another guy and you were seeing everything. Today the way Hollywood edits action is go tight, tight, tight, really close shots with quick cuts and you don’t see shit. With “Deaden” Christian and I just tried to go back to the films that we love. In “Deaden” you see the fights. We go wide, we go medium. It’s not an MTV video.

RED HOURS, DEATH RACE & RECON

CCF: Yeah, I see that. You’ve written, what is it, 14 screenplays or something like that, but there maybe more that I haven’t read anything on. What are specific things that influence your writing and having seen so many movies and how do you keep from writing stuff that you’ve already seen before? (LOL)

JF: Well, everything has been done. The upside to that is everybody is an individual, so even though everything has been done, as an individual, you bring where you came from to it. So for example, “Deaden,” it’s not an original concept – “You kill my wife; now I’m going to kill you.” But I like to think that you can see it come from my perspective. There’s my personality traits in the writing and the dialogue, so I bring a unique spin to it, even within a very clichéd subgenre. I write scripts all the time, back-to-back-to-back. Some end up in a drawer because by the time I am done with the first draft I am totally disenchanted with it. So I move on to something else. But what I make sure to do is stick within what I love. I love the horror genre and I love the action genre. I’ve written dramas and stuff like that, but I stuff that back in the drawer where they belong. (LOL) So, I stick to the genres I’m passionate about and that I know. When you are passionate about something, that’s when you do your best work.

CCF: Do you have any plans on directing?

JF: My problem, and Christian always busts my balls about it, is that I have a script called “The Red Hours” and I always said that it was going to be my feature length directorial debut. That script has been with me since 2002. It went through local production companies. It went through B-list actors attached. It’s been through five years of development hell and it never came together. Christian is always saying, “Write another script to direct. Fuck ‘Red Hours.’” I’m too stubborn. I’m like, “No, I’m going to stick to ‘Red Hours.’ I’m going to make it happen.” I’m still actively trying to seek financing. For me, directing is my holy grail. I’ve written. I’ve produced. I’ve acted. I’ve directed shorts and a music video, but never a feature, but that is my ultimate goal and I won’t stop till I make that happen.

CCF: “Red Hours,” I remember reading about that years ago. What was the story behind that? I know it had some kind of rave angle to it, didn’t it?

JF: Yeah, to some degree. It’s not as prominent as you might think. When I wrote it at the time I had a really nasty break up with my ex-girlfriend. It started making me reflect on relationships and the politics that comes with relationships in this day and age. I started questioning things like, “What is a man today?” You know in the seventies a man was a guy that grabbed a girl’s ass, chugged a beer and took another guys head and smashed it into the wall. Today you do that and you are a caveman. What I tried to do with “The Red Hours” is take these thematics and express them physically through horror conventions and scenarios. I tried to do a thinking-man’s horror film. Your basic audience will probably just see it as a fun “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” meets “Go” meets “Lost Highway” meets “tits” kind of film. Your more cerebral audience will see that there is a social commentary there. For me personally, it’s one of my best scripts as far as how I feel about the writing, the story, the dialogue and everything. That’s why I really have a hard on for it to be my first one.

CCF: With “Deaden” it had a conscience. It was a revenge movie, but it’s not like it had this happy Hollywood ending where, “Oh, Rane’s the hero,” which is how they usually end. And like with this one, you said it has that aspect that some people might not catch, but the people looking for the deeper meaning will. Do you consciously write that subtext into your scripts?

JF: A lot of that comes organically. But with “Deaden” I did go into it with the intention of making the most emotionally realistic vigilante film that could be done. I watched “Death Wish, “Rolling Thunder”… I watched all of them before I wrote “Deaden.” One thing that bothered me about those films is that the wife/brother dies or whatever and then the hero blinks or maybe has a crying scene and then that is totally abandoned, he becomes a rock and just kills. The way I wanted to go about it was if I see my wife get raped and murdered and I then go on a revenge spree, well I didn’t forget that my wife got raped and murdered, hence I’m an emotional wreck. You know? Borderline psychotic. That’s what I wanted to convey with “Deaden.” I wanted the lead to carry that pain and be affected by it throughout. Audiences will decide if I succeeded or not.

CCF: You mentioned several times about how clichéd the revenge subgenre is, but that is the thing, almost no matter how many times the same movie is done, to me it is still enjoyable and watchable. Fun. I know you are big on “The Crow” and that is one of my big ones too, “Desperado” is another great one and there are just so many. It would be a shame if Hollywood decided, “Hey, they got something here” and just started flooding the market like they have done with horror, but it still seems like one of those things that can be done over and over and over and it still works.

JF: I think if it is done with heart it works. I think there are two kinds of films that are happening these days. There are film’s that are solely made to make money. I call them “opening weekend” movies. They are made on the cheap and they are put out to make their money back over opening weekend and then they are shipped real fast to DVD and they make a profit there. That’s the process for some people. The other films that get made are from people that are writing screenplays, not because they are thinking of the million they are going to make at the end of it, but because they want to write a screenplay and they have something to say and the directors behind the projects are there because they want to make a film and have something to say. When money is at the bottom of your priority list in terms of the creative process that’s when good stuff comes out of it. There are some people that come into the industry because they want to be stars and they want to be millionaires and they don’t last long, unless they’re lucky, because there are MUCH easier ways to make money than getting into the film industry. (LOL) I got in because I love films. That’s it. If I become a millionaire that’s great. (LOL) I won’t complain. But if I don’t, that’s fine because that’s not my priority.

CCF: I know one of the things you got cast into recently was the remake of “Death Race 2000.” How weird is that for you, being such a big Sylvester Stallone fan, to get cast in a remake of one of his movies?

JF: My agent gave me a call and said the “Death Race” people wanted to see me and I thought, “Oh shit, that’s pretty cool. If I get a part in this, I get to be in a remake that Stallone was in.” So I went and auditioned. It went well. A week later I got a callback and they wanted to see me again. So I went back and reauditioned. Then recently, my agent called and said I got that part. But yeah, I’m really happy because I’m also a big Paul Anderson fan. I know I’m in the minority, but I pretty much enjoyed all of his movies.

CCF: That must really have you feeling good with people taken a little notice of you since you went through the traditional channels to get this?

JF: I guess. I know Paul Anderson is aware of the site. I have interviewed him before. I know he has read all the reviews I wrote about his films, so whether he remembers who I was when casting came about, I don’t know for sure.

CCF: Do you know much about what you will be doing in the film?

JF: Right now, I haven’t read a script and my part is a mystery to me. From what I understood, the script is being rewritten at the moment. I know I play a skinhead and I’m one of the villains. That’s the only thing I know. I don’t know how many lines I have or how many days I shoot. Like I told my agent, “As long as I have one line and I get punched by Jason Statham, I’m a happy man.”

CCF: (LOL) Besides this movie, what else do you have going on lately?

JF: Right now, I recently finished my draft of “RECON 3” and Christian is now doing his pass on it. We will be shooting that next year, most likely around summer time. I’m also in the process of selling a screenplay to a production company in the states. We are at the paperwork process, which is always the really fun part where basically they try to fuck me from every angle. Whether that crosses the finish line or not remains to be seen. I am also writing another action script that I’ve pitched to Viel and he liked. “Deaden” was a homage to seventies and early eighties and this one will be more of a homage to mid-eighties and early nineties. More like a “Rambo” type of picture. I’m writing that right now with the intention of shooting that next year as well. Acting wise, I’ll be acting in “RECON 3” and will be the lead in the action flick if and when that’s off the ground.

CCF: Is that “Death Row”? Is that the one you are talking about?

JF: No, “Death Row” is a zombie action flick that Christian and I wrote together. It’s actually one of the best scripts that I personally have ever written. I know that Christian actually feels the same way on his end. That one has just been shopped around so far. We hear a lot of: “Oh yeah, we want to do it.” You explore it further and it turns out they don’t have a dime. So how they are going to do it? We don’t know and we move on. The film biz is a lot like shooting darts. There’s a big dart board and you keeping shooting darts at it and hopefully you’ll hit a bull’s eye at a certain point, but you are going to hit a lot of dead weight in the process. You might be shooting darts for years and years until you hit one bull’s eye, but that’s how it is. That’s fine by me.

CCF: That doesn’t ever get too frustrating?

JF: It did. I learned about the film industry by going through it. I didn’t know shit when I got out of school. As far as acting, it’s very simple. You audition and you get the part or you don’t get the part. In terms of production and finding financing, it’s a little trickier. I learned the hard way about liars, about people who are trying to screw you, people that will dwindle you along for years and they never had the intention to make the film in the first place. They’re just dwindling you along, for reasons that are still unknown to me. So, what happened to me personally was I got jaded. I kind of got detached. It was the only way for me to be able to survive emotionally. You invest yourself into something you are passionate about and you get screwed, then you really take it to heart. You take it really hard, but if you do that for so many years, you’ll be a total emotional wreck. At some point I realized that and found out I basically had to build a shell. I know how the industry is now, so I know what to expect. Basically, you do everything that you can, if it happens, great. If it doesn’t happen, at least you did your best. Pick yourself up and try again. That’s all you can do.

CCF: Yeah and if does ever get too much you can just write another “Deaden” and get it out of your system.

JF: Yeah! (LOL)

CCF: Now, with the “RECON” movies. I actually still haven’t seen any of those, but I know you were in the first one right?

JF: Yeah.

CCF: And then you wrote…

JF: I co-wrote and played the villain in the second one.

CCF: It was a different character, right?

JF: No, it was the same guy. My character from the first one is a rapist mercenary scumbag and I get killed. In the second one, my body got taken by the aliens and they turned me into a psycho cyborg. In part three, my character comes back to cause more ruckus.

CCF: Cool. Alright, that looks like that’s about it.

JF: Thanks a lot for having me Chad.

CCF: No, thank you. It’s a pleasure.

- CCF, October 2007