Q&A: MATT O. TALKS “BLOODY KNUCKLES”

BloodyKnuckles_Still_1-thumb-1540x900-49064

The Fantasia Film Festival launched a new ‘Fantasia Underground’ section this year, to celebrate ballsy, off-kilter DIY films that may not have the budgets to compete against http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2021/02/viagra-to-order/ the big guns in the festival lineup. The section includes the World Premieres of Andres Torres’ BAG BOY LOVER BOY, Bennett Jones’ absurd musical comedy I AM A KNIFE WITH LEGS, pinku legend Hisayasu Sato’s HANA DAMA: THE ORIGINS and Vancouver director Matt O’Mahoney’s feature debut BLOODY KNUCKLES, a HANDS OF ORLAC-type tale of a controversial cartoonist whose disembodied hand takes on a life of its own after being cut off by a ruthless Chinese ganglord who was the subject of ridicule in his comic “Vulgarian Invasions”.

Matt_O_2

Matt O’Mahoney (pronounced “O’Manny”, not Mahoney like POLICE ACADEMY)

O’Mahoney is no stranger to the Fantasia crowd, having helmed the equally outrageous short film ELECTRIC FENCE which played the fest in 2010. Edited by Scott Belyea and shot by Scooter Corkle (whose own proposed directorial feature debut CHLOE AND ATTIE – an adaptation of his Bloodshots-winning 48Hr film – was part of the Off-Frontieres Market this weekend) BLOODY KNUCKLES signals an underground spirit thriving in Vancouver despite the gentrification that willfully pushes out a lot of the city’s more subversive elements, and where independent artists often have to struggle to make their voices heard over the loud din of the imported US film industry.

Matt O’Mahoney sat down for an interview over breakfast in the days leading up to his highly-anticipated World Premiere.

****

Spectacular Optical: Tell me about how where to buy propecia it came together, why this story for your first feature?

Matt O’Mahoney: It was something that was kind of eating at me, I was writing a different script at the time and was not totally happy with it. I wanted to make a comment on something that was bothering me, which came out of the Muhammad cartoon crisis.

SO: Explain what that is.

MO: So in Denmark in 2005, there was this contest asking people to draw the prophet Muhammad, you know like people’s personal interpretation of it. And these things were published, and it became this buy viagra fed ex huge freakout and there were riots and death threats, all over the Muslim world, and the Danish embassy was being burned down, and so there was a big conversation that happened after that about embracing self-censorship. And saying well, you know, maybe we should just not do things like this.

SO: Why, were http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2021/02/internet-pharmacy-propecia/ the drawings offensive?

muhammad_cartoon1

One of the illustrations that appeared in Danish paper Jyllands-Posten, this one by 73-year-old artist Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard received threats on his life after this picture was published.

MO: Some of them were, a couple of them were very surreal, and there was one where there was Muhammad and his turban was a bomb and everything. And besides the ones that were offensive, the gripe that a lot of people had was that there can be absolutely no depiction in any form of Muhammad. Like not at all. So it was really crazy and the newspaper that published them got death threats and it was pretty serious. And normally people would say well, it’s free speech and it’s going to ruffle feathers sometimes, and that’s the point of free speech. But the tide was starting to change against that, people were starting to think, well maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. And I thought that was really kind of unravelling what so many people had fought for, you know?

And so it kind of came from there, but I was also working on this crazy world with Chinese gangsters and I wanted to incorporate that more. So I made this whole little world and I wanted to make it about this cartoon controversy and make it more about people running away from free speech, thinking that maybe you should just shut your mouth and not go around pissing everyone off all the time.

SO: So why Chinatown in particular?

MO: I’ve always been a big fan of Chinese gang movies, like TONGS and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, and because it was inspired by the Danish Muhammad cartoon issue there was a lot of talk about Muslim extremists, and I didn’t want to make a movie about Muslim extremists. Because this is not a problem unique to Muslim extremists. Larry Flynt is not in a wheelchair because of Muslim extremists, he’s in a wheelchair because some other lunatic shot him because of what he showed in his magazines. Every political belief, religion or system has suffered from this problem of shutting people up who say things they don’t want to hear.

SO: The Chinese stereotypes in the movie are very specific to the 1980s.

MO: Yes. And that’s what I was kind of going for aesthetically.

SO: The cartoonist’s roommate Ralphie is Chinese and works at a Mexican Pizza place where he has to wear a sombrero and moustache…

MO: ‘Sanchez Pizza’, yeah.

SO: So there are a lot of racial stereotypes in the movie. It reminded me a bit of THE LAST DRAGON, where you have all the Chinese guys who are obsessed with rap and all the black guys are into Kung Fu!

MO: Yeah, totally. And actually that Sanchez Pizza outfit was from a movie called LOVERBOY with Patrick Dempsey, where he worked for a place called ‘Señor Pizza’, and I always loved that, and so when I was trying to think of a ridiculous place for Ralphie to work, that was in the back of my mind. But we had to change the name, we couldn’t use ‘Señor Pizza’ or the LOVERBOY people could sue us. Really, unless everyone signs off on everything, you kind of leave yourself susceptible to lawsuits. Our whole movie could be shut down because of ‘Señor Pizza’!

SO: So who did the actual comic book drawings in the movie?

MO: I did. I actually talked to Robin Bougie about doing it at first, and he was totally game to do it. But then he couldn’t do it because he was working on the Graphic Thrills book.

SO: Yeah I was going to ask whether Robin had been involved at any point, or if his Cinema Sewer magazines had been an influence at all in terms of controversy.

MO: Yeah, I knew that he would be sympathetic to what the film speaks about, because on that issue he and I are pretty much on the same wavelength. And I’m also just a huge fan of his stuff. So it was just a matter of timing that he couldn’t do it. But later when it came time to film the ‘Canadian terrorist’ parts I asked him to be in it, and he’s like, “What do I have to do?” And I said “You just have to kneel on the ground and look scared, and there’s a big box of 8mm porn loops in it for you!” So that sweetened the pot a bit.

vlcsnap-2014-07-27-18h10m10s71

Cinema Sewer’s Robin Bougie in his BLOODY KNUCKLES cameo

SO: I had some racist amateur porn comics that I had inherited in a big haul once and I didn’t even want them in my house, and Robin later wrote an article about them in Cinema Sewer. For me it crossed a line to own them, even though in general I feel like a drawing is fantasy and I think with fantasy everything is fair game. If people aren’t really getting hurt I don’t think there’s any problem with exploring the sickest shit. Because that’s how people figure stuff out, that’s how we work out how we feel about things.

MO: Absolutely.

SO: If we just refuse to think about it at all, then we don’t know where our boundaries are, and what our morals are. So where is the line for you? Because obviously your film is about free speech and the character getting his drawing hand cut off serves both a practical purpose for the narrative as well as a symbolic purpose, in that it’s like the castration of his creativity. And there are a lot of things in the movie that people could be offended by. I mean, you can tell you’re just having fun with them but you could totally see some uptight people getting offended. But is there anything that you would find too offensive to put in a film?

Bloody Knuckles 2

MO: I don’t know if there’s anything for me personally. Other than the legality of material, I just don’t believe in censorship for any kind. Now, I say that, but we do have certain standards that I think are necessary, like you can’t slander someone, you can’t libel someone, and we have laws protecting children because everything about that is about victimizing a real human being. So the law prohibiting it is a justifiable one. But pretty much anything up to that I think is permissible. There’s this scary thing happening in the UK called the ‘The Dangerous Pictures Act’, in which any kind of violent pornography, bondage, things like that, are not only illegal but punishable for up to a year in prison just for possessing it. And they’re looking to expand that. So things like that really, really bother me. Anything that’s between consenting adults I think people have a right to engage in it. Even things I find personally abhorrent, like the Westboro Baptist Church, I hate those kinds of people. But I make a point in the film that if those people are protected, then you’re protected. A lot of these despicable people have actually helped protect our own freedom of speech. And then in terms of stuff that I would never do or show in a movie, there’s stuff I wouldn’t do stylistically just because it’s not me. I wouldn’t make a movie like A SERBIAN FILM. I wouldn’t even make a movie like IRREVERSIBLE, that’s just not my voice.

SO: Is that because of the comedy elements in your films?

MO: Yeah, my movies are a little lighter, I think Gaspar Noe is a fucking genius and I love his films, and I like exploring that as a viewer, like “where are you going to take me, how bad are you going to make me feel?” But as a filmmaker that content is not really something that comes to me. Even when I’ve tried writing things like that, people can tell it’s not me, whereas with things like ELECTRIC FENCE or BLOODY KNUCKLES, you can tell that’s my voice coming through. So that’s the only reason I don’t go into anything kind of mean-spirited or nasty, just because I think there are a lot of people out there who do it much better and have more to offer. But who knows, maybe someday I’ll think of an idea like that and be really attached to it and have to do it.

BloodyKnuckles_TeaserPoster_825x1275 -thumb-630xauto-49063

SO: Where did you get your funding from?

MO: Well, my father gave us some money and then we had some other investors, it was really hat-in-hand, trying to get a bit here and there.

SO: Did you apply to that Telefilm low budget category? Because I think they only have it for first-time feature filmmakers.

MO: No, I think at the time, we had a little bit of money and I really didn’t think Telefilm would ever go for a movie like this. It’s a low budget splatter comedy about the right to offend, and I just didn’t think they would respond to it. And plus it was inspired by really trashy exploitation pictures, and even though they have a legacy there, I don’t know that it’s something they really want to get behind. My mentality was just let’s try to crank it out and get it done like the people who inspired me. We just got really, really lucky in that it was just after Christmas, and the industry in Vancouver had really died down, everything was really slow – it doesn’t get up and running again until pilot season – so there were a lot of people around who were willing to come out and work. We got a lot of really great people who came aboard for practically nothing. That’s how we got Image Engine. And then right after that they got NINJA TURTLES.

SO: So your main team, Scooter Corkle shot the movie…

MO: Scooter was the DP, Scott Belyea was the editor and Daniel Domachowski was the producer.

SO: How long have you guys all been working together?

MO: Almost ten years. Scooter shot ELECTRIC FENCE – and pretty much all my movies, actually. And ELECTRIC FENCE was all made with friends, shot on weekends whenever we could borrow a camera, I did a lot of stuff myself because I had no resources. We’ve all been working on eachother’s films for eight or nine years.

SO: Do you feel connected to the larger Vancouver filmmaking community, or is it more of a pocket of you guys making these types of films?

MO: I think there’s a bit of a pocket. I did feel kind of isolated for a while but I don’t know how much of that was self-imposed versus imposed upon me. But that’s definitely changing, there are more filmmakers in Vancouver that are doing more challenging genre stuff, there’s a bit more of an edge than when I first came there. When I first came there I was really disheartened because I couldn’t find a lot of people I could even talk to about these movies. And then that changed a lot over the years. But it’s weird, because the thing I then found a little tough was that there were a lot of people who got into horror because it was the thing everyone was doing in town – with things like the Bloodshots contest – and they saw it as this launch pad for their career. And I grew up with these films and love them to this day, so it was kinda like, “get outta here!”. I mean we all wanna get there, so I understand that, but you should do things you really want to do, not just because you read somewhere that it’s really popular.

SO: When I was living there I found the film scene kind of alienating and bourgeois. I mean the Celluloid Social Club, I really like the idea of it, but the kind of people that would go to it I can’t relate to at all.

MO: Totally.  Yeah, it’s very elitist in a sense and can be very pompous. And a lot of times it’s like “why are you looking down at me? I’ve seen your stuff and it ain’t that fucking great!” It’s kind of frustrating. But there’s a lot of new blood coming in, a lot of discontent with the old order and people are now just going out there and doing their own thing. And you need that, you need different scenes, different places to go.

vlcsnap-2014-07-27-18h09m40s253SO: Where was the comic book shop location, was it Neptoon Records on Main St?

MO: Yeah. It was supposed to be an actual comic shop but we really couldn’t find anyplace big enough to fit people in. Somewhere like RX Comics would be where that character would probably hang out, but it was too small to film in there. Even at Neptoon we had people crammed in the basement to do the hair and makeup, and we had a tent outside and someone stole it when a PA went to the bathroom!

SO: Over the ten years I lived there Main Street was transitioning to a more gentrified neighbourhood, with young hipsters opening little galleries and stuff.

MO: It’s totally that. And since Vancouver gets gentrified so easily – I mean, it’s so small – now it’s starting to change into Condo-ville.

SO: That leads me to something else I wanted to ask about the film, namely that Vancouver does have a lot of Asian developers who come over and become hugely involved in this gentrification. And my ex used to work for the government and as part of his job he would do these sweeps of Chinatown for illegal medicines and stuff, so even though the movie is not directly influenced by the situation in Vancouver’s Chinatown, it does reflect that to a certain extent.

MO: It does, yeah. I have to admit that was an unintentional thing, but a lot of that did come from real life observation, although not limited to Vancouver. I mean the pesticide angle in the film, that’s based on true stories, these guys would bring this stuff in and make a ton of dough selling it. And I think that’s one of the things that makes me fascinated with Chinatowns anywhere, I really love the culture and how it’s a bit insular, like “we’re just gonna do our thing”. And there’s such a huge history of the underground network that actually runs beneath Chinatown in Vancouver, and the things you can buy there…I bought a pair of nunchuks which are totally illegal.

SO: I didn’t know that nunchuks were illegal.

MO: In Canada they’re illegal. Which is kind of weird because you can go to Canadian Tire and buy a machete for 15 dollars.

vlcsnap-2014-07-27-18h10m44s162SO: So where’d you get all the leather-daddy stuff?

MO: It’s funny, the harness and the mask I found online on Amazon or something and then the other guy who’s in the full body leather outfit, we needed for the decapitation gag to work; he couldn’t be shirtless because we didn’t have the budget to make a shirtless body that gets decapitated. So he really needed to be covered head to toe in that gimp-type outfit. But that shit is super expensive! All that bondage gear is crazy expensive. So AMERICAN HORROR STORY had a character who wore a kind of a black plastic suit that was popular enough that it became a Halloween costume. I found it on Amazon for $35 so I said let’s just use this and deck it out a bit. So we put zippers and all this stuff on it. And so we dodged a bullet there.

SO: Were you always planning to play the bartender? Were you dying to wear that costume?

MO: Yeah, I couldn’t wait, I was like “this is the best day on set! I get to wear Daisy Dukes!”

Bloody Knuckles (2014) Teaser Trailer from Matt O’Mahoney on Vimeo.

About the author:

Kier-La Janisse

Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, publisher, producer, acquisitions executive for Severin Films and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is the author of Cockfight: A Fable of Failure (2024), House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), and produced the acclaimed blu-ray box sets All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror (2021) and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (2023).

Reply

Comment guidelines, edit this message in your Wordpress admin panel