The Editor. Directed by Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks. Starring Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Paz de le Huerta and Udo Kier. Screening Sept. 27 11:30 p.m. (Rio Theatre) and Sept. 28 4 p.m. (Vancity Theatre)
The mayfly lives for only one day but before it dies, it dances.
Midnight movies share a similar fate; doing their dance of gore, sex, violence and the bizarre during the brief stretch between 12 and the moment the theatre lights illuminate - signifying the movie's death and sanity's return.
The Editor is a midnight movie. You can tell because early in the film a whispering killer uses a syringe loaded with a paralysis-inducing drug, a Brazilian wandering spider, and an axe - all on the same victim. Vancouver actress and burlesque star Tristan Risk suffers the grisly fate, moments after swallowing fire in the culmination of an erotic dance.
"We're very insecure filmmakers," explains cowriter, co-director and costar Matthew Kennedy. "We figure if we just pack in as many set pieces as possible; if there's a car chase, someone naked, someone having sex, someone being murdered, someone being lit on fire every five to 10 minutes, then people will feel like they got their money's worth."
While many film festival selections offer meditations, The Editor only wants to entertain, offering nudity when the plot demands it and often when it doesn't.
"That's how you make exposition more exciting, is what we think," Kennedy says.
The actors didn't mind the sex scenes, but Kennedy says there was a little resistance from his wife regarding his part in a goofily erotic moment that incorporates an anniversary cake.
Like the copious gore, the sex stems from the Italian horror movies of the 1970s, which the filmmakers both love and mock.
Movies like Don't Torture a Duckling and Suspiria were branded giallos, featuring psycho-sexual killers, homes built atop portals to hell, unearthly colour palette and
the logic of. .. well, logic was often in short supply.
Kennedy and the other members of Winnipegbased genre filmmaking collective Astron-6 reveled in the tropes of giallos: the snap-zooms, the wooden line deliveries that result from the odd translations and unorthodox dubbing, and the convoluted plots.
The notion for The Editor was born - appropriately enough - in the editing room.
Co-writer, co-director and star Adam Brooks was cutting together Father's Day, which features a priest and a hot-headed street hustler named Twink who join forces with the bereaved Ahab to fight the Father's Day killer.
"He was kind of losing his mind," Kennedy recalls, discussing the editing of the movie.
Having just watched House by the Cemetery, directed by godfather of gore Lucio Fulci, Kennedy suggested the story of the mad editor should be done in the giallo style.
It was around that time the filmmakers were approached by Rue Morgue to concoct a movie premise for an art project celebrating genre film posters.
The emerging poster featured a blood-splattered movie projector and the tagline: "He'll leave you on the cutting room floor!" "Once we had a poster for free we were like, 'Well, now we have to make the movie,'" Kennedy recalls. "It turns out that a movie costs a lot more than a poster, so maybe it wasn't worth it based on that alone, but when we were done the movie we had a poster all ready."
The plot of The Editor revolves around the murders of the cast and crew of a giallo movie. The editor, played by Brooks, is considered the prime suspect, particularly after the astute Inspector Porfiry (Kennedy) notes all the victims are missing the same fingers as the editor.
There are chainsaws and nightmarish imagery along the way, but also a fair amount of satire.
When Porfiry stumbles into the suspended body of a murder victim he demands to know why the body hasn't been cut down.
"I couldn't find a ladder, sir," his deputy replies.
The movie was finished on the day it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. The final budget was a little less than $150,000.
"We ended up having to kill ourselves to do it," Kennedy says.
They had to fire their crew after running out of money with most of the movie needing to be shot. That left only friends and parents on the set for the movie's most dangerous stunts.
Asked about filming a car chase, Kennedy talks about the thousand times his car needed to be jumpstarted.
"Thank god it didn't quit."
