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Swinging a DVD Pick-Axe with My Bloody Valentine 3D Director Patrick Lussier
by Troy Rogers
 When
the horror genre got a huge and bloody boost in
the 1980s due to the explosion of the VHS home
video era, a slew of cult classics were cinematically
born. Although some went on to spawn sequel upon
sequel over the years, My Bloody Valentine took
its place in the halls of horror fame in its original,
pick axe-wielding form with only one movie. One
of the best, most underappreciated slasher movies
of its time, My Bloody Valentine took horror fans
deep into the dark, claustrophobic confines of
a coal mine to witness the terror created by crazed,
vengeance seeking miner, Harry Warden, a mysterious
figure in a gas-mask out for blood beneath the town
of Valentine Bluffs. Flash forward 28 years later
and both Harry Warden and My Bloody Valentine
have been brought back to life in 2009 thanks
to director Patrick Lussier.
This time around for My Bloody Valentine, Patrick Lussier chose to remain faithful to the original gas-masked, pick-axe swinging Harry Warden while setting the story in Pennsylvania and incorporating a variety of new elements to bring Valentine into the contemporary horror world in both 3D and 2D. By drawing on the advances in technology to create My Bloody Valentine 3D, Lussier can now add his name to the list of the new wave of horror directors that are ushering in a new era of 3D films in the same way others did in the '80s on movies like JAWS 3D, Amityville Horror 3D, Friday the 13th Part III 3D, and more.
With My Bloody Valentine 3D Special Edition swinging its way to DVD on May 19, we dusted off our old My Bloody Valentine gas mask to go one-on-one with new Valentine director, Patrick Lussier, to find out what he loved about the original, whether the remake was ever intended to be a sequel, how he approached the 3D aspects of the film, working with writer Todd Farmer on the memorable sex-scene, and why he feels the alternate ending on the DVD works better than what's in the final cut.
THE DEADBOLT: What did you love about the original that got you excited for this one?
 LUSSIER:
I think the thing that always stayed with me
from the original, from seeing it all those
years ago and than revisiting it when it came
up to remake it, was the fact that it was an
industrial story. That it was about an industrial
town. That it was about working class people
and that they weren’t a bunch of high school
kids and that they were more adult, although
they may not behave that way, and that it had
this incredibly vicious and cool iconic killer.
You know, this kind of Darth Vader meets Norman
Bates kind of guy. That was really fun, that
the miner is a great villain, and that was something.
In all of the changes we made, we made very
little changes to that character. We really
used the first film as a template for what he
looked like, how he acted, and what that presentation
was, because I just felt the way he was in the
original film was so effective.
THE DEADBOLT: So were there any clashes over whether it should be a direct sequel over a new remake?
LUSSIER: No, never. It was always designed to be a remake. When we were writing it, once Todd [Farmer] came onboard and we started working together, one of the things we realized that was kind of a cool thing to do was ... the ten years earlier opening of the film. In a lot of ways that is the original '80s film, and the kind of '80s film motif compacted into 13-minutes. That was when we realized, "You know what? We have the opportunity to do that. We should really make that opening." And that was Mike Paseornek and John Sacchi. Paseornek, especially, was a huge believer in that approach and wanted to have that opening really capture that vibe of the original film. And then what the rest of the film is, sort of feels like, while it’s a continuing version of our characters, it could also be translated as what could’ve happened next to some of those characters from the original.
THE DEADBOLT: As compared to 2D movies, how difficult is it to approach a scene knowing that you're stopping the pace to focus on one specific 3D shot?
 LUSSIER:
You have to frame it differently. You have a
tendency to frame a little bit looser and hold
shots a little longer. Like shots look longer,
but it doesn’t - Pace-wise there are only a
few instances in the film where we specifically
adjusted the pace to cut to 3D. For the most
part we were very aware going in that we could
do both. That we could have something that worked,
because we were cutting the film 2D, and we
could have a film that was really effectively
2D. When we first watched it in 3D, there were
only a half-dozen to a dozen mechanics that
we changed to exploit the 3D.
THE DEADBOLT: How do you find the right sense of timing so the 3D doesn't last too long, like the pick-axe through the car window?
LUSSIER: You know, everything is kind of driven by rules of story and everything like that. In terms of something that is leaning on the audience too long, it depends on what you’re going to cut to next. So, often when you put the 3D movie together you can’t just think about the one individual 3D shot, you have to think about how each one of those things relates to the shot ahead of it and behind it so that you’re not having something that’s way out of the audience, something that’s way behind and way back, because then that really starts to give you a huge amount of eye strain.
 So
you have to be very cognoscente for the depth,
like I do a depth map. And for the fight scene
at the end between Jensen and Kerr - SPOILER
ALERT for those who haven’t seen it -
was all shot with the same depth for every shot,
because it’s this very rapid cut. There are
a lot of fast cuts in it. You need to have the
depth the same for every single shot and every
single cut so when you watched it, it would
just go by like you would see in the other version.
It’s still in 3D, but the depth isn’t changing
radically from cut to cut and really giving
you a strain.
THE DEADBOLT: What gave you the inspiration for the shovel girl? How did that hit you?
LUSSIER: [laughs] Well, you know, that inspiration is quite simple. That’s the original Day of the Dead shovel gag that George Romero did when they were in the catacombs, the mines underneath the silo area in that film when he shovels the guy and pops the head off. And the other shovel gag that I always loved was the one in Dead Alive when they cut off the top of the guy’s head and it’s sliding across the floor and the eyes are moving around. Those were the inspirations for that shovel moment and we just wanted to do something - We felt that opening needed to be shocking. You know, you wanted to have shocking kills. We originally talked about trying to do homage to the shower scene in the original Valentine in that sequence. We had written it, but the problem was is that it was such an elaborate thing to create, and so easily lifted out of the script, that we just couldn’t afford to do it. But we had all those things in mind.
THE DEADBOLT: The alternate ending made a lot of sense, like a more visible set-up to a sequel. How come you went with the other one?
LUSSIER: You’re talking about the alternate ending on the DVD?
THE DEADBOLT: Yes.
 LUSSIER:
The alternate ending on the DVD was actually
created editorially. The way the real alternate
ending worked on the page is that; Tom’s there
and sees the miner come out - another HUGE
SPOILER [jump to the next question now
if you haven't seen it] - and then he’s just
screaming, ‘No, no, no,’ and the miner swings
at him and we cut to black, the movie’s over.
We don’t go outside. We don’t do anything. That
was the way the film ended on the page. And
then we came up with - while we were shooting
the alternate of doing the big scene outside
- pulling Axel and Sarah out, doing that moment,
and then the whole "Tom killing the rescuer".
The simple thing is that the cut that is the
alternate ending would’ve been the perfect way.
We should’ve used that in the film. But the
simple thing is that we didn’t come up with
it until after the film was finished.
THE DEADBOLT: So what can you tell me about a sequel, the original cast, where's everything headed?
LUSSIER: At the moment there are no plans to do any sequel that I’m aware of. You know, myself, Todd Farmer, Jensen and Kerr and Jaime and Edi, we all talked about it. If we're to have a chance to do a sequel, we have a great story that brings back all of the survivors, maybe some longer than others. Depending on how long they continue that surviving trend then we would do that, but at the moment I think the studio has opted to wait and see if they want to do it. It’s not on their current roster, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
THE DEADBOLT: How beneficial was it to have Todd in the movie as Frank the trucker?
 LUSSIER:
Oh, fantastic. He did not, in spite of popular
belief, write that part for himself. We came
up with that scene and created Frank and I knew
that Frank was going to be very difficult to
cast. I had in my mind a mental image for Frank
and it was always Todd. I kept thinking I wanted
somebody big. I wanted somebody big and strong
and who could kind of play it not like a total
asshole, but play it kind of like an asshole
with a bit of a wink. You know, some guy who
is a lovable dick. We had auditions of local
actors in Pittsburgh ... A lot of them were
really nervous about the nudity and I said,
‘Okay, the only person I want to be nervous
about the nudity is Betsy Rue," - Rue wasn’t
- "and I need this scene to be all about her.
So I need somebody who will make the scene all
about her, who will be completely invested in
making the scene all about her."
I was telling Todd that and he said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s going to be really hard.’ So I said, ‘Why don’t you play it, Todd?’ He went and nervously asked his wife, and Melanie, his wife, was very excited that Todd was going to have the chance to be in the movie and also be in the movie naked. I think her response was, ‘Rock Star!' So having Todd there was perfect. He and Betsy had worked out so much of the funny dialogue between the two of them. You know, that sex scene went on much longer and was unbelievably goofy, because the two of them had worked out this insanely goofy escapade. And it was the right tone for the film. We didn’t want to do some erotic sex scene. That’s not what we were interested in doing. We wanted to do something that was fun.
THE DEADBOLT: Whenever you looked at Kevin Tighe, did you hear the alarm from Emergency?
 LUSSIER:
[laughs] I didn’t. You know, I think Kevin is
an awesome actor. He’s so dedicated and smart,
but I loved Emergency as a kid. I mean, Matewan,
and what an insane villain Kevin is in that
show and how much of a bastard he was in all
of those episodes of Lost and how great he was
in the Stephen King mini-series Rose Red, Kevin
is so versatile and so smart. When you’re working
with him you totally forget he’s ever done anything
else, because all you’re seeing is the character
he’s bringing to you at that time. Kevin’s a
riot to work with. He’s a real cool, intuitive,
instinctive actor and he’s a real force of acting
nature, and he was a riot to have. But once
you’re with him he so embodies Ben Foley that
we forgot about his days on Emergency.
THE DEADBOLT: There’s one more thing outside of My Bloody Valentine I wanted to ask you. Have you seen Midnight Meat Train?
LUSSIER: I have.
THE DEADBOLT: What did you think?
LUSSIER: I liked it. [Ryuhei] Kitamura is an incredibly brilliant director. His Japanese films, Alive, Azumi, Sky High, are incredible. He is a real talent. I think the film is gorgeous. I think it is a hard story. The commercial nature of that story, that’s not for me to say because it is a really brutal story. But he executed it beautifully.
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