P.J. Soles Interview - Part I

As promised, here is the first half of my interview with the fabulous P.J. Soles:

AA- When did you first realize that you had become a cult icon?

PJ - I don’t know if I’ve still realized it.

I’ve known it when I’ve gone to conventions or things like the Johnny Ramone tribute at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. There was just all these fans there and they all wanted autographs and to talk about the movies I’ve been in.

People who primarily go to horror conventions love to get posters and DVDs signed from as many people as they can that were in a specific film. When they get to my table I’ve got photos from Carrie and Halloween and The Devil’s Rejects, but I also have photos from Stripes and Private Benjamin and Rock and Roll High School. People see it and they say stuff like, “Oh my God, Rock and Roll High School was my favorite movie!” So it’s really nice. I’m known as scream queen, which is kind of strange because I’ve only done three horror movies, but I’ve also done a lot of comedy as well.

Rock and Roll High School has more fans now than it did twenty years ago. Some of the movies I did have really stood the test of time. So, I guess, just like Ramones it took a long time for me to be recognized.

AA - Carrie seems like the first movie where you started drawing attention. How did you land the part of Norma Watson?

PJ - I went to this joint audition with Brian De Palma for Carrie and George Lucas for Star Wars and I was wearing this red baseball hat and these overalls. Brian looked at me and said, “I’ll put her on my list.” And then he told me, “When you come back, bring your hat.”

We went through quite a few auditions and he always told me that for the next one I should bring my hat. After I was cast, when he first saw me on set, I had the hat, but I wasn’t wearing it. He came right up to me and said, “Where’s your hat? I want you to always wear that hat.” When it was time to film the prom scene he asked, “Where’s your hat?” and I said, “You want me to wear a red baseball hat with a prom dress?” and he said, “Absolutely.” That’s why, for joke, in the scene where we’re getting ready for the prom and I’m under a hairdryer with curlers in my hair, the hat in on top of dryer. I told him, “Okay it’s here.”

AA – Sounds like an exciting audition.

PJ - At the time it was no big deal. It was just go see these two guys. They weren’t that famous. Since then I’ve signed a ton of red baseball hats.

AA - Do you still have that hat?

PJ - No, it disintegrated over time. It was made of this felt-ish material and I wore it all the time when I first moved to L.A. to keep the sun off my face. It was ruined after the first couple of washings.

Carrie was a lot of fun for us to make but none of us thought it would last like it did. When we were filming we were all just trying to get as much screen time as possible.

AA - Rock and Roll High School looks like it was such a fun movie to make. Can you give us a little vignette from making the movie, hopefully one involving the Ramones?

PJ - They were very, very quiet and they always sat on the floor in a corner. Not on a chair or a couch or anything. They wouldn’t come to lunch unless we dragged them. I guess they thought because they weren’t actors they shouldn’t get lunch, but we were like, you are part of this movie, you can have lunch. In the original script they had a lot of lines, but after the first couple of days shooting we realized they were really having trouble and a lot of the lines had to be cut. It actually ended up being so endearing in the movie when they do flub their line. It’s the flubs that make it so special. They did have a lot more dialogue but it couldn’t end up in the film because they were musicians, not actors.

AA - I always think you and Sean Young have good chemistry as friends in the movie Stripes. You’re working with two very funny male actors, but what was it like working with her?

PJ - Sean had come in from New York and she already had the part by the time I auditioned. They’d auditioned like 300 girls for both our roles. I had just finished filming Soggy Bottom U.S.A. and they asked me to go to Louisville to audition So, I did and by the time I landed back in L.A. they’d decided I had the role and I had to fly back again.

I remember I used to call her Sean Very Young. It was her first film and I was ten years older than her so we didn’t have a lot in common. She was fun and interesting. She was always surprising in her boldness and I think she continued to be that way.

With Stripes, I think it’s the two couples in the film and the way they interact that make the film interesting.

AA - Every time I see you in a movie I think, “Wow, that’s some amazing hair.” Is there a specific relative that you know you inherited your hair from or does everyone in your family have such thick hair? What’s the history of the hair?

PJ - Let me give you my younger brother’s phone number. He’s bald. Every time I see him he grabs the back of my head, pulls my hair and says, “Thanks a lot! You took it all!”

I’ve always hated my hair. I grew up in Brussels and it rains 361 out of 365 days a year there so my hair would always frizz. I used to iron it with a real iron, not like girls today. I could have invented the flat iron if I was smarter. Brian DePalma knew. That’s why he gave me that hat to wear, to hide the hair.

Although, when I first started out in New York I three spots for Alberto Balsam where they divided my hair in half, the frizzy half and the smooth half after using their product. That’s the only time I liked my hair because it got me those lucrative commercials. At the end I say, “Now can you do the other side?”

AA - What influence has the word “totally” had in your life?

PJ - Oh my God, it’s been very beneficial. When I sign autographs, I just write, “Totally, PG Soles”. When I pose for a picture with someone they don’t want me to say cheese, the want me to say totally. Whenever I hear it from somebody else, my daughter always says, “You started that word.” I’ve been very slowly trying to write my autobiography and I’m thinking of calling it The Totally Girl. It has sort of defined my career. If you can get one word associated with you, that’s a good thing.

AA – You’re writing your autobiography?

PJ - Yes, I just feel like at convention I should offer more. I have pictures, but I’d like to offer something new. I don’t have any childhood trauma or anything like that. I grew up around the world. That to me is the most interesting part. I’d actually be writing it for me really even though I’d call it The Totally Girl.

Stay tuned for Part II in the next day or so.

Phil Gelatt Update!

Phil Gelatt's film The Bleeding House got picked up by the Tribeca Film Festival!

It'll also be on cable pay-per-view from April 20th - June 20th and available on DVD sometime after that. It seemed like a good time to find out what Phil has been up to since his first interview, so I asked him a few questions. Enjoy!:

1) You are both writer and director of The Bleeding House which will premier at the Tribeca Film Festival. How did you get involved with the project?

I originated the project myself, years and years ago. I used to be an assistant to some independent film producers in New York. And then I quit my job to start writing, and one of the first things I wrote was the script that would eventually become The Bleeding House. It was a much much different story back then. I never intended to direct it myself but eventually that idea became very appealing and luckily I wrote it to be a very very low budget movie so we were able to raise the money from family and friends. And I'm still a bit in shock that Tribeca picked it up. It'll be in a festival AND on Video on Demand AND on DVD. I even got to do a director's commentary... on which I sound completely silly.

2) How did you come up with the story?

I really started with the setting (old house in the middle of nowhere) and an interest in doing some genre tweaking (I wanted to play with some of the formal aspects of a slasher film and make them do something else). And from there a story just kind of formed bit by bit. I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave at the time so I can feel a heavy Cave influence in the whole thing, in particular in the figure of the villain of the piece who is even named Nick. Luckily, I had producers working with me who are talented at story development, they were an enormous resource in refining and developing the whole thing.

3) Are you a big horror fan or just a versatile writer?

I am a big horror fan but in a kind of an odd way. I guess I self-identify as a horror fan but I have very specific types of horror, flavors of horror, if you will, that I like. I'm a discerning (read: picky) fan. Like Clive Barker? yes. Stephen King? Not really, no thanks. H.P. Lovecraft? Definitely. The Saw franchise? Never. Argento? Oh yeah. Eli Roth? Jury's still out. I'm a big fan of heavily atmospheric horror, somewhere between suspense and nightmare; I usually like the sinister over the explicit. And I like horror that is blended and mixed with other genres; horror that is masquerading as something else.

4) I hear that Victoria Dalpe is quite the hot little number. Were you tempted to break out the old casting couch when you knew she was up for the part of Beth?

She is QUITE the hot little number. I tried to get her onto the old casting couch but she thwarted me. She has a very particular process, you know.

(Okay, for those of you who don't know Phil, Victoria is his wife.)

5) What's the best / worst thing about directing?

God, that's a hard one. The best thing is really everything you do that isn't on set. Editing is great, writing is great, pre-production is great. Being on set is incredibly hard, at least it was for me. You have to be completely focused and making quick decisions, correctly, for 12+ hours a day. It is exhausting.

5 ½) how bossy are you in your regular life?

I'm not terribly bossy in my regular life, I'm more stern and occasionally asshole-y, especially when in discussions on certain topics. Strangely, I don't think any of that came out while I was directing. I was more terrified that I was going to screw something up.

6) Looks like your graphic novel Petrograd will be out with Oni Press soon. What else are you working on?

Right now I'm finishing up a screenplay that I was hired to write almost a year ago. It's been a long process but I think it's some of my best work as a writer actually. Here's hoping it actually gets made. I'm also putting the finishing touches on a series called PARIAH that is coming out this summer from Sea Lion Books.

http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/bleeding_house-film35065.html

Upcoming P.J. Soles Interview!!!

That's right all you rock-n-rollers, horror freaks and comedy fans, that's P.J. Soles from:



Carrie
Halloween
Stripes
Private Benjamin
Breaking Away
Rock and Roll High School

Anyway, stay tuned!

Consumerisms in World History by Peter N. Stearns

This book started out a bit vague and I was wondering if I should continue pursuing it, but I'm so glad I did. Get 15 pages in and this book becomes excessively interesting.

Here are some tidbits of what I've learned so far: It was only in the early 18th century that people began to be thought of as consumers. Before that there really wasn't access to goods and almost everyone was living hand to mouth. The first consumer goods were salt and sugar. Salt actually had the practical attribute of preserving meat, but sugar was the first actual luxury item. No one needed it to survive, but everyone craved it.

During the French Revolution Parisian workers insisted that they be provided with "goods of prime necessity", by which they meant sugar, soap, candles and coffee. A hundred years earlier and candles would have been the only thing on the list that wasn't considered a luxury. But in that time period novelties became necessities.

Pre-1770 the English didn't mind getting wet. They just walked out in the rain. The French nobles had started mimicking the Chinese by using umbrellas about a hundred years early. This filtered down to the middle class and by 1770 made it's way over to England. But many of the English didn't like umbrellas calling them foreign and effete. The essayist Horace Walpole criticized the French for "walking about the streets in the rain with umbrellas to avoid putting on their hats." A decade later and everyone in England was using an umbrella. In fact, the umbrella began to be considered very English.

Okay, I'm only on page 25 of this book and obviously really enjoying it. More later.

Remedy for a Song Stuck in Your Head

Okay, I had a song really wedged up in my head for severals days and it was quite an annoying song so I was a bit desperate to get rid of it. My usual remedy, humming The Girl from Ipanema, wasn't working. So, I had to turn to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Check out this fab video for: A Taste of Honey It also must be said that this is one of my favorite album covers of all time:

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Heartbreaker is Hilarious

Gird your bits for subtitles, but it's worth it. Heartbreaker is hilarious.

It's a French screwball comedy in the 1930s sense of the term, but really well written and well cast. If you have Netflix you can download it immediately. An hour and 44 minutes well spent. As a side note to the movie, the female romantic lead has this big gap between her front teeth. Love it! She's very pretty, but with this delightful flaw. Any American actress would have had that erased immediately and much to her detriment. Nicholas Cage used to have such a distinctive gap back in the 80s when he did Valley Girl, but now sadly it's gone. Listen up Hollywood, pretty with a flaw becomes intriguing / interesting / memorable. Put watching Heartbreaker at the top of your to do list. You can thank me later.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

It took me a while to warm up to this book but I'm glad I stuck with it. Engaging story, interesting characters with real problems and an unusual structure, but not to the point of distracting. I have to confess that I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts on this compelling book. (Hectic week) So I'm going to cheat.

Here's what Booklist had to say:

High-school senior Vera never expects her ex-best friend, Charlie, to haunt her after he dies and beg her to clear his name of a horrible accusation surrounding his death. But does Vera want to help him after what he did to her? Charlie’s risky, compulsive behavior and brand-new bad-news pals proved to be his undoing, while Vera’s mantra was always Please Ignore Vera Dietz, as she strives, with Charlie’s help, to maintain a low profile and keep her family life private. But after Charlie betrayed her, it became impossible to fend off her classmates’ cruel attacks or isolate herself any longer. Vera’s struggle to put Charlie and his besmirched name behind her are at the crux of this witty, thought-provoking novel, but most memorable is the gorgeous unfurling of Vera’s relationship with her father. Chapters titled A Brief Word from Ken Dietz (Vera’s Dad) are surprising, heartfelt, and tragic; it’s through Ken that readers see how quickly alcohol and compromised decision making are destroying Vera’s carefully constructed existence. Father and daughter wade gingerly through long-concealed emotions about Vera’s mother’s leaving the family, creating the most powerful redemption story of the many found in King’s arresting tale. Although King’s characters turn into the people they’ve long fought to avoid becoming, they ultimately rise above their challenges, reflect, and move on. A worthy, well-crafted addition to any YA collection.

My one disappointment with the story was I didn't feel like I got enough out of the ending. I craved another page or two. But I had to be satisfied with the story that the author wanted to tell.