But what starts out as a deal that's too good to be true turns out to be just that as fashionable internal organs become as sought-after as the latest designer bag, or the most prestigious sports car. People buying on time sometimes find themselves short, and out of time ... and a Repo Man is sent to seize the innards by any means possible. Furthermore, Zydrate, which is extracted from the brains of fresh corpses, becomes a sought after street drug and the daughter of GeneCo's CEO is hopelessly addicted, bringing shame on the corrupt family.As the title says, Repo! is a genuine opera, which means the story is conveyed completely in song from beginning to end. But "opera" should not imply that it's all Pavarotti-styled arias. Most of the tunes are hummable rock numbers and ballads not unlike what you've heard in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or Moulin Rouge.
It's directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (of Saw films fame), and is written by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich (who also stars), Anthony Stewart Head as the Repo Man, Alexa Vega as his clueless daughter Shilo, and Paris Hilton and Ogre as the no-good, spoiled rich kids of GeneCo's controller (played by Paul Sorvino).
Repo! The Genetic Opera is one of those cultish, extreme and completely unique films that polarizes fans and critics—people seem to either love it, or hate it. For an artist, this can create extreme highs and lows, but that's what feeds them. No one likes to have their work seen as bland, or "just OK."
Darren Lynn Bousman, as the director of this film, are you concerned about how general audiences will take it?
Bousman: One of things that Terrance, and Darren Smith the other writer, and myself all spoke about coming in is for this movie to work, you have to know it's OK to laugh. You have people singing, you have Paul Sorvino, breaking out in operatic notes in a small little limousine, you're going to laugh. So you have to tell the audience that it's OK to laugh right at the very beginning of the movie, because otherwise it's going to be uncomfortable.
We want them laughing with us not at us. So we went into this movie trying to make it, letting the audience know that it's OK to laugh with us. One of the first images we see of grave robber he's bashing down a wall with a human body, like breaking through wall with this body, you can't just help but laugh, I think it's going to help us a lot. In Saw, hopefully we don't want to laugh. It's not meant for that, however this is a much more serious film than say Rocky Horror, which was all camp. When you go to Rocky Horror it's all camp—but I would say that this is equal parts camp, drama, tragedy and horror.
Darren Smith, as the co-creator of the stage play, and co-screenwriter of the film, how you feel about that?
Smith: I feel that way, in fact I'd say it's even better than what we we've been working on this for years and played it on and off Broadway. And all that, but it's even better than anything we imagined. And you know too we are doing the science-fiction film, but we don't have a Minority Report budget to do it. This is a relatively low-budget film. So we had to really rather than be gadget heavy and all the bells and whistles from the technology, we had to just kind of simplify what is his future like? This is 2056 were only going 50 years in advance, but how do we take this future within the realm of what budget that we can do? I'm hoping from what I think we've done I think we pulled it off. I think we've done a great job of just getting inside a new and different surrealistic world.
Paris Hilton, you play Amber Sweet, the Zydrate-addicted so-called "scalpel slut." How do you make her sympathetic?
Hilton: Well, Amber is sweet and she's a very tortured girl. I think the main thing is she wants attention from her father, who runs GeneCo, this huge corporation. They're very wealthy. You can have all the money in the world, but you can still be unhappy—so she gets addicted to Zydrate, this futuristic drug, as well as plastic surgery—because she keeps wanting to change her appearance to get attention from her father. So all of his children in the film, I think, are just wanting to be loved and they're trying to get it in the wrong ways. It was such an honor to be offered a role like this because I usually get cast as the blonde airhead/blonde bombshell, and I think this time I was cast as something completely different. It was a lot of fun playing someone who looks nothing like me and playing someone who's so crazy. And the music is fantastic! It was such a fun film to do, and we all became so close in our Repo family.Why should people see this movie? Why a science-fiction rock opera?
Hilton: There are so many movies out right now which are the same thing. You know what's going to happen in the end, all the same storylines with different actors ... but this movie is so unique and so different, and we're already having screenings where people are coming dressed as the characters. They know all the words to the songs; it's already got a cult following and it's not even in theaters yet. It's an experience. It's something you have to see on the big screen. It's an event.
Terrance Zdunich, how do you describe it?Zdunich: It's hard to do. And I think oftentimes the best work is that way, but I mean, if you were to compare it to Sweeney Todd, which I saw and I actually enjoyed. It's like us in the sense that there is music, and there is something Gothic about the overall aesthetic, but I think a major difference between us and Sweeney Todd is ... the music is huge. I liked Sweeney Todd, but the songs are very musical theater and ours is much more rock.
Ogre, as an industrial musician, without no operatic training (I'm assuming), you kind bring "street cred" to this film. How did you manage to fit in with such a disparate group of singers (Anthony Stewart Head, Alexa Vega, Sarah Brightman, etc.)
Ogre: Well, [my band] Skinny Puppy is a theatrical project anyway, so it was kind of an easy fit for me in a way. I've studied a bit... and earlier on I was kind of pushed into a mask ... my art mentor at the time was a woman who gave me a lot of confidence when I thought I was just a stumbling, bumbling musician and saw something and put me in a class and said it was basically a beginner's mask course. So it ended up being preproduction training for a group of professional mask workers that were going on tour so was kind of out of my element. And coming in to this place I found it to be a great place to hide under and emote from and within Skinny Puppy, we've always used that kind of that kind of facade in a lot of ways, to kind of create characters. So [my character] Pavi became somebody I think that was very reflective of my own insecurities, which I kind of based a lot of my work off of as well and Skinny Puppy.
Why'd you decide to make Repo! your big-screen debut in a big role?
Ogre: Actually it was fear, ultimately for me. My first audition was the for The Crow and I got into a real deal with Alex Proyas and I think the assistant director. I was out of my element in a lot of ways. Considering when you are on stage you have a barrier between the audience and what you are doing onstage and it's a safe place to be, so I was kind of put in a small room with a male who was reading for a female and it's just kind of a shock to me. And I had another audition with Alexandre Aja for The Hills Have Eyes and that went really well and that kind of re-bolstered my confidence to try something [like Repo!] and I kind of did a character analysis and I was going to the audition thinking that I'm never going to remember this, how is this going to work, but it ended up kind of floating around my head anyway and it kind of added to the whole thing. It was a really good day for me and I had to knock-out out the part, the audition itself was a really good experience.
Anthony Steward Head, you did a musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer so we know you can sing, but how do you get your mind this Repo Man character who's so loving and nurturing to his daughter, and yet so deeply sinister in his line of work?
Head: Well, I am loving and caring by day. ... You take one scene at a time. I must admit, the first thing that we did, which was basically Shilo [Vega] waking from a dream, I played it sort of more caring and nurturing then Darren [Bousman] had actually wanted. He made the call and he said, "Now there should be something going on, that this man is disturbed. Concentrate on the equipment of getting him well" and it was a great way to go because the change doesn't happen, so how can you do one thing and still do that. Then very shortly after that I did my most dramatic scene which is Thankless Job, and an extraordinary song. It was one of the first things that I heard when they were talking about it.In "Thankless Job," I basically wheel this guy out of my fridge, a big fridge, he comes out in wheelchair and while I'm getting dressed, the guy is trying to get out and I finally push him over against this large slab-like structure and string him up and disembowel, while singing. And when I say singing, it's like this bizarre showstopper number. It's like Tom Waits, it's a great song and it's one of those that you think, "Why is this guy enjoying it so much?" There is this manic, kind of, not enjoyment, but I think it's the way he kind of just blanks out on what he's doing and I hope there's a moment in the film where you see this noble, other side to it.
Terrance Zdunich, you not only co-wrote the play and performed it onstage, but you also co-wrote this script and star in the film. Yet, on set, it seemed anything but stressful.
Zdunich: Part of it was the music, because not only on set. ... It's not so much a drag. Hopefully you like the music, and a lot of the crew did. What you're hearing is music all day, as opposed to just everyone "shut up, be quiet." We started working together months before filming, which is unusual as well. So the fact that everyone was in a longer period of being together, starting with the studio process and then going with the set. I think it starts to feel more like a family, and more like a traditional theater piece, because in theater you work together every day. You rehearse for months before going on. Whereas in the film, you may not even meet your costars. People that are in the movie, but you are not in a scene with them. Whereas I think with everyone that was in and out of the studio everyday recording, or rehearsing, that everyone had a chance to fall into that bond and carried through to the end of the film.
The Zydrate Anatomy scene, featuring you and Paris Hilton and Alexa Vega, is everywhere we look: online, on TV, in the trailer. What's that scene all about?
Zdunich: They're recovering, but they are on the verge of slipping and I come in, just to give them that little nudge that they need. So the Amber character hates Blind Mag, who is played by Sarah Brightman, because Amber wants to be an opera singer. She wants to be Blind Mag, but she doesn't have the chops necessarily, and so I have just given her a hit of the drug. And she is kind of hallucinating, and blah blah blah, and I whistle a bar from Mag's song, which just enrages Amber, who turns around and goes "Who did that?" I finger Shilo as the guilty culprit.
