If Chuck Russell had his way, he’d make a movie about film fanatics who burn film critics and make it the most hilarious horror comedy of the 21st century! This outrageous notion comes from my hilariously candid conversation with the American filmmaker behind the strange titles mask, scorpion king, the bloband more. Sitting down with The Hindu after a session at the 55th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, Russell is at his best.

“Let’s kill the critics first. Remember, they’re called critics, so they think their job is to be mean and critical. The real question is, are audiences watching films?” Russell posed.

I just mentioned how efforts by young Indian filmmakers to speak to a less explored genre, such as pure-genre horror, are often scrutinized as imitations of the West. Whether it’s a serial killer or military assassination, he says, the human condition of being attracted to murder is universal, something that makes the world of pure genre horror universally appealing. A proponent of less explored subgenres in horror, Russell emphasizes viewing horror as a cathartic experience. “If you can face death in a movie, and walk out with your arm around your girlfriend, everything is fine. I believe horror and comedy release endorphins.

Over more than 40 years of making Hollywood movies, most of which are cult-classic adaptations or remakes, Chuck Russell has become notorious for putting wild spins on the source material. Take mask For example; With the help of Jim Carrey’s talents, Russell puts a hilarious new twist on Mike Richardson’s green cartoonish troublemaker. Russell says he never imagined it would become a pop-culture phenomenon.

“Here’s what happened: As a young producer, I made a film called back to school With Rodney Dangerfield. It was a big hit in America, and I thought I’d become a hot young producer, but it flopped overseas. That’s why I wanted to do comedy as a director – I wanted it to be universal and I wanted it to require no language.” Russell was inspired by the over-the-top acting school of Jim Carrey, Buster Keaton and Harold Sounded like great silent film stars like Lloyd. “I thought that silent comedy – with music and inspiration from Looney Tunes and all that – could move into different languages ​​and succeed where I failed in my other film.”

You can never get Russell to make a remake that he isn’t completely confident about. “I was once offered a Luc Besson action movie remake. Why would I do that? Luc Besson is still alive! I only do remakes when something can be improved.” And he found the Elm Street series at that time,” Russell directed a nightmare on elm street 3,the blob by origin, and sorceress These are great basic ideas that I can develop with modern technology and modern characters.” sorceressWhich premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival earlier this year, is a remake of Kevin Tenney’s 1986 film. He says that this film was the last of his such remake experiments.

Given his history with remakes and adaptations, one is naturally curious as to how he decides what to re-imagine and what to discard.

“It’s not intellectual to me. I’ll take the basic idea of ​​an idea and literally deconstruct it, explode it into something big and wild.” Elm StreetRussell wanted to create something new that would take the film series beyond what franchise creator Wes Craven had achieved. “It really worked and the third film became a fan favorite. God bless Wes!

with the 1988s the blobJoe Irwin S. Yeworth Jr.’s 1958 sci-fi horror film, its underlying concept was a pure-evil amoeba that eats everything around it. “You can’t think beyond the blob. The Blob is ultimate simplicity boiled into pure evil. Even at the time, the original film was extremely ridiculous. Even the word ‘blob’ makes me laugh! Even the word ‘witchboard’ makes me laugh. It looks like a switchboard!”

The idea of ​​what a witchboard was, and the wormhole his research on witchcraft took him to, sealed the deal to make the film. “Original sorceress This film was the first Ouija board film. I realized there is no witch in the original movie. I really delved into the witch of the 1700’s and her influence today.

In his study of the cult – “which I do very carefully because evil is the real children,” he warns – Russell learned that it was pendulum boards that burned witches at the stake. “Ouija boards exist because the Pope, in the 1700s, outlawed pendulum boards. If you have these you can potentially be burned at the stake and called a witch. So I discovered it in my studies of the supernatural and I was fascinated by it. They’re all dangerous, but as a filmmaker, making movies is a great thing.

This kind of concept, he says, allowed him to go back to practical effects. “So I can use it as a vehicle to try everything I’ve ever wanted to try, in and out of dreams, in and out of hallucinations, and in and out of good and bad.”

In his speech, Russell mentioned his interest in rebranding popular stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger (in) rubber) and Dwayne Johnson (scorpion kingThe director revealed one trick he used to make these stars feel comfortable while shooting dangerous stunt sequences – doing the stunts himself in front of them!

“I am very conscious that they are human beings; They hurt the knees, especially if one has been doing this for a while and I am extremely conscious of safety. These are really dangerous stunts – and I take my hat off to Tom Cruise. The most interesting trick is that these stars see me doing this. I would not tell a star sitting on my chair to climb on top of that train compartment and do this or that.

So Arnold’s fight scene on top of that train car rubberRussell was there with him before filming the scene. “It’s like, ‘If the director can do it, why would I complain?’ But it’s also a good skill set because you have to know what you’re asking them to do but it may seem easy to them, so whether it’s a stuntman or we’re hiring a CGI. Yes, I’ll be there with them, and if they don’t like it, we’ll cut the scene.

As we end our conversation, I ask him who would win in a fight to the death: Freddy Krueger, the Scorpion King, or The Mask? “Oh my God, it’s hard. I think the Scorpion King will bite the dust. Sorry, Dwayne. But between The Mask and Freddy Krueger? This is a tough one, but I think I’ll give it to The Mask because he has the power of good in his hands.