DIABOLICAL
is a serious departure for me. It requires a big
budget to shoot. I want it to look slick like
SILENCE OF THE LAMBS did. This one I will not
attempt without investor dollars so I can do the
movie on a level much higher than I've been
forced to work at up till now.
Another
thing is it's not a comedy. It has zero humor.
Its stark, grim, deadly serious and my goal is
to scare the shit out of an audience. It will be
my first time attempting a truly frightening
movie and I really, really want to be able to
film it the right way.
It
deals with demons and Christianity in a more
Biblically accurate way than most horror movies.
It goes into THE EXORCIST territory laced with
PASSION OF THE CHRIST and its my attempt to be
more faithful to the Bible while doing something
honestly disturbing.
Bottom
line though is it is a horror movie, not a
religious movie in the classical sense.
I
want to shoot it in 35mm with a full seasoned
crew and actors. I understand having name stars
attached helps with distribution deals and that
may be forced on me as part of getting a budget,
but I'd rather have really excellent unknowns in
the main parts so face recognition doesn't
detract from the audiences's being sucked into
believing what they are seeing.
The
screenplay is written, except the very last 10
pages. I want to do another
re-write before saying this is it, the
script is finished. Some things in the
script I feel work, other things need
improvement. The basic story is good and
original, and set in New Jersey.
I
wrote it in "shooting script" format,
which means I went into great detail about sets,
camera angles, lighting, editing, in the script
itself. Anybody reading the script who has the
ability to visualize in their mind's eye written
description should have a pretty good idea of
how the completed feature will look after I
shoot it just from reading the detailed script.
Hollywood,
it seems, has a problem with Christianity and
the Bible. Even when they make Biblical
movies they rarely get the facts right and its
mostly fabrications with spiritual music and
melodramatic fluff acting.
Sometimes
fake religious movies can be nice. I love KING
OF KINGS (1962) even when more than half of it
is Hollywood BS. The music is great, Jeffrey
Hunter makes the perfect Catholic style
traditional blonde haired blue eyed Jesus (which
isn't accurate), and the authoritative narration
of Orson Wells has a good feel to it. I
prefer it to Mel Gibson's awful PASSION OF
CHRIST.
THE
PASSION OF CHRIST had more ugliness, more
violence, more inhumanity, more graphic gore
effects than most horror movies and still is
considered a Christian movie. Unbeleivable. Its
over two hours of murdering Christ with very
little of anything else. Satan would watch it as
a loop like a snuff film.
THE
PASSION OF CHRIST failed to show all the
wonderful things Jesus did in his life prior to
being arrested and killed. It opens with him
being arrested and tortured and that's all
the movie is about. After Christ rose from the
dead he again did wonderful things not shown in
this movie. Instead Mel Gibson ends the movie
with Jesus sitting up and a brief special effect
of a hole through one of Jesus's hands.
That fast little throw away ending doesn't
counterbalance all the sadistic bloodshed that
we witnessed for the previous 2 hours.
Mel,
it seems, is clueless as to the point of
what Jesus died for. Jesus's life before
and after his death has superior meaning than to
simply watch his gruesome murder. Jesus
Christ died to pay for our sins so that whoever
believes in him and accepts his sacrifice will
be forgiven and allowed in Heaven. Almost no
Hollywood product includes that message which is
the whole point! Mel dropped the ball big time
too, in my opinion, as did KING OF KINGS, the
one I like.
Anyhow,
DIABOLICAL is my attempt at dealing with demons
closer to what is written in the scriptures.
Biblically THE EXORCIST wasn't accurate either.
What would stop the demon from going right back
up those steep stone steps, through the window and
into the body of Linda Blair again after it
killed the Priest? I'll tell you, NOTHING. And,
from my research, alot of Priests die like the
one in THE EXORCIST because they make the mistake
of thinking they can beat the demon
"personally" without God's help. They
do ask the demon to come into them instead, like
the young Priest in THE EXORCIST. That's like
crawling into the mouth of a Great White Shark!
As
I was working on the script late at night by
myself weird stuff actually began to happen.
Doors slammed shut, windows slammed open, stuff
got pushed off shelves and tables. What I was
writing was pissing something off and I'm pretty
sure it wasn't God and His Angels! The only time
this crazy stuff happens is when I am
researching and writing the DIABOLICAL script.
Any other time all things are normal.
Of
course nobody believes me when I tell them what
is happening. "The wind opened the
window/closed the door/knocked things off
surfaces" they say. Yeah, right...
The
first time the door slammed shut very loudly I
jumped, startled. But I came to expect the
temper tantrums of my invisible unwanted guest
and as I worked on the script asked myself, OK,
what's going to happen tonight?
(to
be continued)
