2001 Maniac's director spills his Guts
Originally published 2004
Static Multimedia - Film
"It's going to be a party!" explains Tim Sullivan, associate producer for the cult classic Detroit Rock City (still killing on DVD)."
In the early eighties I had a chance to hang with the legendary king of horror, the very hip and always-gracious Mr. Vincent Price. He was touring his one-man show about Edgar Allan Poe, and I was appointed by the theater to be his chaperone. C'mon, Me? You want me to look after The Abominable Dr. Phibes? Francois Delambre of The Fly, and Roderick Usher of the Fall Of The House Of Usher? You bet! Although, I have to admit, I was secretly petrified. It was a fantastic brush with a film industry icon that embodied everything I loved about the movies growing up: the drama, the horror, and the fun-filled buckets of blood. All these things were rolled into a Saturday matinee. A dollar bought you five candy bars, popcorn, soda and admission to see a double feature of William Castle's The Tingler and House On Haunted Hill. It was schlock-shock-fantastic folks. I was this skinny little kid sitting in the dark and absolutely terrified to death. Yeah--Vincent was my childhood.
He told me stories with lots of antidotes, but the one thing Vincent kept repeating was that all the fun was gone from making horror films. He said that it was all about the money now. He'd just have to hit his mark, say his lines, and then retreated to his trailer for a snooze. He'd sigh big time after telling me, shrug his shoulders, and then get all quiet for a while. He looked older for an instant, just before springing back to life to elaborate on Peter Lorre's (they were pals) antics on the set of Roger Corman's The Raven back when movie making was still fun.
Yeah--gone are the days of P. T. Barnum rhetoric, over-the-top promotional campaigns, and down-and-dirty gimmicks like rigging the theater seats for shocks, rubber bats on fishing lines, and costumed ushers running amuck. What's missing is the thrill - the popcorn tossing, pinching, poking, and screaming-your-bloody-guts-out-fun. But hey, wait a minute! Not true with writer/director Tim Sullivan, Vincent Price fanatic, rock n' roller, and horror connoisseur. He's putting all the "fun" back into film making with his latest flick 2001 Maniacs brought to you by the godfather of gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis (executive producer) and X Men 2 producer Tom Desanto. 'Cause Tim's got the horror bug you see. It was passed along from his pal Freddy Krueger. He's going to pass it on to you. He's going to reap you, creep you, and keep you coming back for more. And for his pal Vincent Price, he's bringing back the good ol' days of gore.
"It's going to be a party!" explains Tim Sullivan, associate producer for the cult classic Detroit Rock City (still killing on DVD), "As our other executive producer, David Freidman, (She Freak, Blood Feast and the original Two Thousand Maniacs) has taught me, sell the sizzle as well as the steak. It's not just the film you're selling to the public. Anyone can make a horror film, but everything surrounding it: the cast, the music, the make-up, and special effects coupled with an outstanding promotional campaign akin to Hitchcock's Psycho Days - that's filmmaking the old horror way."
Although Tim's only 30 something (his energy is pure teenager, his mind a 100 plus), he's been in the biz working with the best and brightest for sometime. "It's all about cycles, everything coming around, everything returning to its origin, roots. I grew up reading Famous Monsters, I was the 16 year old kid sitting in the theater howling at John Landis' American Werewolf In London or screaming at Wes Craven's Nightmare On Elm Street, so as I got older the cycle came around and I found myself writing for Fangoria, working as a PA for John Landis on Coming To America, and reading scripts for New Line Cinema. I was working on Detroit Rock City when I met producer Chris Kobin (with whom I eventually co-wrote 2001 Maniacs and formed our production company, New Rebellion Entertainment) who later approached me about doing an H. G. Lewis remake: more cycles, man! I instantly thought of Two Thousand Maniacs, a sort of supernatural Brigadoon (that old 1950's Broadway musical about an Irish town that comes back to life every year). Maniacs is one of my all-time favorite flicks. H. G. Lewis delivers lots and lots of spills and thrills and gore, he's the master. In casting I thought of Robert Englund (of Freddy Krueger fame) who I interviewed for Go Figure Magazine and then later met while I was working as a script reader at New Line. We've been friends ever since, and so I sent him 2001 Maniacs and he said yes. And that was that, the cycle comes around yet again. Robert's role doesn't require as much make-up as his famous Freddy character, he looks like himself only a bit off, this sinister Southern gentlemen with a nasty confederate flag eye-patch--it's awesome. You gotta see him, man!"
When Tim speaks, you sit back and let him go. He never talks about himself unless he's dragging someone else into the spotlight. He's constantly spelling names as he explains, "You've got to shine the light on other people. They make your dreams come true. You got to be with the best and these people really are: make-up for 2001 Maniacs is another cycle, of course, Vincent J. Guastini, Emmy award winning make-up artist (Saturday Night Live). He did Jay and Silent Bob, Requiem for a Dream, Dogma...he's amazing and very talented. I met Vinnie in NYC a while back, roommate of another incredible make-up guy named John Dods who gave me my start - I pumped blood for the cult classic The Deadly Spawn at the age of 16, and Dods did the make-up. I'm actually doing the commentary for the upcoming DVD…anyway, I helped Vinnie get some work on the film I worked on in 1986, If Looks Could Kill. The usual body parts, severed heads, and he was great, the best. When 2001 Maniacs was announced in the trades I got this letter from him, expressing a desire to work on the project. I called him up, I'm shouting, "Hey, Vinnie, it's me, Tim Sullivan!" He's screaming, I'm screaming. We hadn't talked in years. Wait 'til you see these effects; they're all practical, made for the set, no CGI bullshit. When it splatters, it's real! It's like fourth of July fireworks that are very, very wet."
Tim believes that the Hollywood slasher has gone all corporate on us, all cock-tease with no punch, "soft". "Yeah-the 90's gave us all these self referential, cynical, Melrose Place-type satires with pouty girls on the posters, but they never delivered on the T n' A and gore," he tells me. "Three ingredients make for a great horror film: sex, gore, and a rockin' sound track. We're covered on all fronts: When Gordon's Two Thousand Maniacs came out starring then Playboy's 1964 Pet of the Year Connie Mason, it made quite a stir. Well, she's back in our version, still as beautiful as ever, plus we're doing a thing that she arranged through Hugh Hefner: the "barb-e-cuties". Five gorgeous Southern bunnies running around killing helpless Northerners! C'mon already! Big photo shoot planned for that. Our leading young stars are also amazingly talented and amazing to look at. We basically raided the WB and MTV. So even our hacked up body parts will be beautiful. Everything's so lovely when it's dipped in blood."
On the side, we talk about violence and our world at present. Tim gets all serious, lowers his voice a bit, says, " Listen, I am very well aware that in this post Columbine, post 9/11 time with so much real life violence out there in the world, many might think we don't need further violence on the movie screen. But I know for me personally, in order to deal with the real horrors, there is no greater cathartic release than being able to sit in a darkened theater for two hours, facing fears and letting out steam in cushioned, air conditioned safety and comfort. Scream, laugh, have fun. A total roller coaster ride. Nothing more than magic tricks. Illusions. That's what horror films are for. Now there's a thin line between sadism and gore, torture isn't fun, and so we don't torment our characters, the minute they know they're gonna die, it's quick, it's over, like David Warner in The Omen. He looks up at that sliding glass window and swoosh, he's decapitated, he's gone".
He's quiet for a while. Then he's spouting once again with more names and more spellings "Oh, oh! And John Landis who's in Maniacs, plays Professor Ackerman. Again, that circle comes around. I reconnected with him at the friar's club last November, we were celebrating Forry Ackerman's (editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland) 85th birthday, and John gets up and says how I started as a PA, and now I'm directing this feature, and he wants to be a Maniac! Everything I once did prepared me for this ride, like Detroit Rock City, Gene Simmons and KISS, that's how I met Matt Sorum of Guns N Roses who is composing the score with the amazing Lanny Cordola; they created this sound they call industrial rockabilly that's going to blow the roof right off the theater. Ray Manzarek of The Doors is gonna do a cameo as the undertaker (I've co-written a film with Ray that he's directing and I'm co-producing with Brett Nemeroff called Riders On The Storm), Charlie Daniels and Rob Zombie are working on a remake of The Devil Went Down To Georgia - how cool is that? We've even got a choreographed musical number! What horror film has a musical number? Lin Shaye (Detroit Rock City, Last Man Standing, Kingpin) plays Granny Boone, a sort of Irene Ryan from the Beverly Hillbillies, and she leads this hootenanny that ends with a lot of people getting killed. Rock n' Roll's redneck Ted Nugent plays Sheriff Howell, the Southern voice of reason, while Paul Stanley of KISS and his son Evan play creepy gas station attendants - Evan does a banjo number, parody of that scene in Deliverance and he's only seven years old."
But it wasn't always easy, things weren't always on the cool, as Tim reflects about a fire that burned his set down, "Yeah- the good, the bad, and the ugly of this business we call show. June 10th and we're on the set of Camp Crystal Lake of Friday The 13th where we're filming the movie. I'm off doing make-up tests and I get this call, hey, man, your set's on fire. Great. I was like a prizefighter that was told the fight had been postponed. We were all set to go, actors in costume, production meetings and then "poof", a fire hits, the financier pulls out and you're back right where you started. But now we're in negotiations with Lion's Gate Films for domestic distribution, and Emmet Furla Films are talking about picking up international. This is way cool, as Lion's Gate is really proving themselves as the new leaders of balls-to-the-wall flicks. They just picked up Rob Zombie's House Of 1000 Corpses and Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, so once Robert Englund finishes shooting Freddy Versus Jason in December, we'll be ready to roll. So yeah, sometimes cycles can reverse. And I guess I'm like the Romper Room punching clown, hit me all you want, I don't fall down (laughs).
There's so much going on in Maniacs that we have to take a breather, I can't type as fast as he's telling me his secrets, tossing me his soul. It's a packed fun house and I don't want to give away too much of it. You're going to have to hit the theater with about a dozen of your friends, sit in the dark, get scared, laugh your asses off.
And now it's after midnight and he's got me pacing, I'm screaming into the phone, "I can't wait to see this picture, man!" Because suddenly I realize, Vincent never really left us, his spirit for mischief, humor, down and dirty fun, it's all there in Tim Sullivan, the prince of horror films. So, really spent, I just ask him, blurt right out, what's in store, what's next, director? I swear I heard him wink, heard music while he spoke, "A remake of David Freidman's She Freak with our generation's Marilyn Monroe." He whispers, "I can't tell you who she is, but she's really rock n' roll!"
In the early eighties I had a chance to hang with the legendary king of horror, the very hip and always-gracious Mr. Vincent Price. He was touring his one-man show about Edgar Allan Poe, and I was appointed by the theater to be his chaperone. C'mon, Me? You want me to look after The Abominable Dr. Phibes? Francois Delambre of The Fly, and Roderick Usher of the Fall Of The House Of Usher? You bet! Although, I have to admit, I was secretly petrified. It was a fantastic brush with a film industry icon that embodied everything I loved about the movies growing up: the drama, the horror, and the fun-filled buckets of blood. All these things were rolled into a Saturday matinee. A dollar bought you five candy bars, popcorn, soda and admission to see a double feature of William Castle's The Tingler and House On Haunted Hill. It was schlock-shock-fantastic folks. I was this skinny little kid sitting in the dark and absolutely terrified to death. Yeah--Vincent was my childhood.
He told me stories with lots of antidotes, but the one thing Vincent kept repeating was that all the fun was gone from making horror films. He said that it was all about the money now. He'd just have to hit his mark, say his lines, and then retreated to his trailer for a snooze. He'd sigh big time after telling me, shrug his shoulders, and then get all quiet for a while. He looked older for an instant, just before springing back to life to elaborate on Peter Lorre's (they were pals) antics on the set of Roger Corman's The Raven back when movie making was still fun.
Yeah--gone are the days of P. T. Barnum rhetoric, over-the-top promotional campaigns, and down-and-dirty gimmicks like rigging the theater seats for shocks, rubber bats on fishing lines, and costumed ushers running amuck. What's missing is the thrill - the popcorn tossing, pinching, poking, and screaming-your-bloody-guts-out-fun. But hey, wait a minute! Not true with writer/director Tim Sullivan, Vincent Price fanatic, rock n' roller, and horror connoisseur. He's putting all the "fun" back into film making with his latest flick 2001 Maniacs brought to you by the godfather of gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis (executive producer) and X Men 2 producer Tom Desanto. 'Cause Tim's got the horror bug you see. It was passed along from his pal Freddy Krueger. He's going to pass it on to you. He's going to reap you, creep you, and keep you coming back for more. And for his pal Vincent Price, he's bringing back the good ol' days of gore.
"It's going to be a party!" explains Tim Sullivan, associate producer for the cult classic Detroit Rock City (still killing on DVD), "As our other executive producer, David Freidman, (She Freak, Blood Feast and the original Two Thousand Maniacs) has taught me, sell the sizzle as well as the steak. It's not just the film you're selling to the public. Anyone can make a horror film, but everything surrounding it: the cast, the music, the make-up, and special effects coupled with an outstanding promotional campaign akin to Hitchcock's Psycho Days - that's filmmaking the old horror way."
Although Tim's only 30 something (his energy is pure teenager, his mind a 100 plus), he's been in the biz working with the best and brightest for sometime. "It's all about cycles, everything coming around, everything returning to its origin, roots. I grew up reading Famous Monsters, I was the 16 year old kid sitting in the theater howling at John Landis' American Werewolf In London or screaming at Wes Craven's Nightmare On Elm Street, so as I got older the cycle came around and I found myself writing for Fangoria, working as a PA for John Landis on Coming To America, and reading scripts for New Line Cinema. I was working on Detroit Rock City when I met producer Chris Kobin (with whom I eventually co-wrote 2001 Maniacs and formed our production company, New Rebellion Entertainment) who later approached me about doing an H. G. Lewis remake: more cycles, man! I instantly thought of Two Thousand Maniacs, a sort of supernatural Brigadoon (that old 1950's Broadway musical about an Irish town that comes back to life every year). Maniacs is one of my all-time favorite flicks. H. G. Lewis delivers lots and lots of spills and thrills and gore, he's the master. In casting I thought of Robert Englund (of Freddy Krueger fame) who I interviewed for Go Figure Magazine and then later met while I was working as a script reader at New Line. We've been friends ever since, and so I sent him 2001 Maniacs and he said yes. And that was that, the cycle comes around yet again. Robert's role doesn't require as much make-up as his famous Freddy character, he looks like himself only a bit off, this sinister Southern gentlemen with a nasty confederate flag eye-patch--it's awesome. You gotta see him, man!"
When Tim speaks, you sit back and let him go. He never talks about himself unless he's dragging someone else into the spotlight. He's constantly spelling names as he explains, "You've got to shine the light on other people. They make your dreams come true. You got to be with the best and these people really are: make-up for 2001 Maniacs is another cycle, of course, Vincent J. Guastini, Emmy award winning make-up artist (Saturday Night Live). He did Jay and Silent Bob, Requiem for a Dream, Dogma...he's amazing and very talented. I met Vinnie in NYC a while back, roommate of another incredible make-up guy named John Dods who gave me my start - I pumped blood for the cult classic The Deadly Spawn at the age of 16, and Dods did the make-up. I'm actually doing the commentary for the upcoming DVD…anyway, I helped Vinnie get some work on the film I worked on in 1986, If Looks Could Kill. The usual body parts, severed heads, and he was great, the best. When 2001 Maniacs was announced in the trades I got this letter from him, expressing a desire to work on the project. I called him up, I'm shouting, "Hey, Vinnie, it's me, Tim Sullivan!" He's screaming, I'm screaming. We hadn't talked in years. Wait 'til you see these effects; they're all practical, made for the set, no CGI bullshit. When it splatters, it's real! It's like fourth of July fireworks that are very, very wet."
Tim believes that the Hollywood slasher has gone all corporate on us, all cock-tease with no punch, "soft". "Yeah-the 90's gave us all these self referential, cynical, Melrose Place-type satires with pouty girls on the posters, but they never delivered on the T n' A and gore," he tells me. "Three ingredients make for a great horror film: sex, gore, and a rockin' sound track. We're covered on all fronts: When Gordon's Two Thousand Maniacs came out starring then Playboy's 1964 Pet of the Year Connie Mason, it made quite a stir. Well, she's back in our version, still as beautiful as ever, plus we're doing a thing that she arranged through Hugh Hefner: the "barb-e-cuties". Five gorgeous Southern bunnies running around killing helpless Northerners! C'mon already! Big photo shoot planned for that. Our leading young stars are also amazingly talented and amazing to look at. We basically raided the WB and MTV. So even our hacked up body parts will be beautiful. Everything's so lovely when it's dipped in blood."
On the side, we talk about violence and our world at present. Tim gets all serious, lowers his voice a bit, says, " Listen, I am very well aware that in this post Columbine, post 9/11 time with so much real life violence out there in the world, many might think we don't need further violence on the movie screen. But I know for me personally, in order to deal with the real horrors, there is no greater cathartic release than being able to sit in a darkened theater for two hours, facing fears and letting out steam in cushioned, air conditioned safety and comfort. Scream, laugh, have fun. A total roller coaster ride. Nothing more than magic tricks. Illusions. That's what horror films are for. Now there's a thin line between sadism and gore, torture isn't fun, and so we don't torment our characters, the minute they know they're gonna die, it's quick, it's over, like David Warner in The Omen. He looks up at that sliding glass window and swoosh, he's decapitated, he's gone".
He's quiet for a while. Then he's spouting once again with more names and more spellings "Oh, oh! And John Landis who's in Maniacs, plays Professor Ackerman. Again, that circle comes around. I reconnected with him at the friar's club last November, we were celebrating Forry Ackerman's (editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland) 85th birthday, and John gets up and says how I started as a PA, and now I'm directing this feature, and he wants to be a Maniac! Everything I once did prepared me for this ride, like Detroit Rock City, Gene Simmons and KISS, that's how I met Matt Sorum of Guns N Roses who is composing the score with the amazing Lanny Cordola; they created this sound they call industrial rockabilly that's going to blow the roof right off the theater. Ray Manzarek of The Doors is gonna do a cameo as the undertaker (I've co-written a film with Ray that he's directing and I'm co-producing with Brett Nemeroff called Riders On The Storm), Charlie Daniels and Rob Zombie are working on a remake of The Devil Went Down To Georgia - how cool is that? We've even got a choreographed musical number! What horror film has a musical number? Lin Shaye (Detroit Rock City, Last Man Standing, Kingpin) plays Granny Boone, a sort of Irene Ryan from the Beverly Hillbillies, and she leads this hootenanny that ends with a lot of people getting killed. Rock n' Roll's redneck Ted Nugent plays Sheriff Howell, the Southern voice of reason, while Paul Stanley of KISS and his son Evan play creepy gas station attendants - Evan does a banjo number, parody of that scene in Deliverance and he's only seven years old."
But it wasn't always easy, things weren't always on the cool, as Tim reflects about a fire that burned his set down, "Yeah- the good, the bad, and the ugly of this business we call show. June 10th and we're on the set of Camp Crystal Lake of Friday The 13th where we're filming the movie. I'm off doing make-up tests and I get this call, hey, man, your set's on fire. Great. I was like a prizefighter that was told the fight had been postponed. We were all set to go, actors in costume, production meetings and then "poof", a fire hits, the financier pulls out and you're back right where you started. But now we're in negotiations with Lion's Gate Films for domestic distribution, and Emmet Furla Films are talking about picking up international. This is way cool, as Lion's Gate is really proving themselves as the new leaders of balls-to-the-wall flicks. They just picked up Rob Zombie's House Of 1000 Corpses and Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, so once Robert Englund finishes shooting Freddy Versus Jason in December, we'll be ready to roll. So yeah, sometimes cycles can reverse. And I guess I'm like the Romper Room punching clown, hit me all you want, I don't fall down (laughs).
There's so much going on in Maniacs that we have to take a breather, I can't type as fast as he's telling me his secrets, tossing me his soul. It's a packed fun house and I don't want to give away too much of it. You're going to have to hit the theater with about a dozen of your friends, sit in the dark, get scared, laugh your asses off.
And now it's after midnight and he's got me pacing, I'm screaming into the phone, "I can't wait to see this picture, man!" Because suddenly I realize, Vincent never really left us, his spirit for mischief, humor, down and dirty fun, it's all there in Tim Sullivan, the prince of horror films. So, really spent, I just ask him, blurt right out, what's in store, what's next, director? I swear I heard him wink, heard music while he spoke, "A remake of David Freidman's She Freak with our generation's Marilyn Monroe." He whispers, "I can't tell you who she is, but she's really rock n' roll!"
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