Interview

[Aardvark]

"Our next guest on Inane Interviews is a "Rogue Hollywood Director", as put by various entertainment publications and heads of several film studios. He's the man who fought hard to bring us his debut film, Blood SlaughterFest, which grossed over one hundred and twenty million on it's opening week alone in America. Let's give an inane welcome to Alex Palter."

 

Cheering from audience as Alex makes his way to the comfortable chair onstage

 

"Doctor Palter, welcome to the show"

 

"Thanks, James, it's great to be here, although I must say, you've looked better in your time"

 

Canned Laughter

 

"Thankyou, Doctor. Actually, for my first question, what are you a doctor in, precisely?"

 

"An excellent question, if I do say so myself, James. Well, it's an interesting story which I tired of relating to people, so I'll just cut it short. My parents insisted I go to collage, I stayed there for several years and managed to get myself a doctorate in god-knows-what. All I can remember from my collage days was the big party that signified it's end involving the lighting of various substances which cannot be named on this heavily funded by the religious right station off the doctorate itself. Some people later told me it was a waste, but the only reason I ever did the thing was so I'd have the privledge of checking the little box marked Dr on mail order forms."

 

"A wonderful story, Doctor Alex-"

 

"Either Dr Palter or just plain Doctor, thankyou"

 

"Sorry, Doctor. Anyway, I'd like to now talk a little about your career prior to Blood Slaughterfest. Previously, the world had never even heard of you. What were you doing until now?"

 

"Well James, before my directing debut, I assisted in the creation of several other action feature films, including 'Kill the Heathens 4', 'The Exterminator 4: Extermination Revenge' and 'Death to the living!'"

 

"'Death to the Living' of course being last years winner of the AFIFF award for the most violent movie of all time"

 

"Yes, I'm proud of that one, as it was my direct influence which increased the bodycount."

 

"Right, onto Blood Slaughterfest. Insiders in Hollywood say that wasn't actually the film's original name, is this true?"

 

"One hundred percent, James. Basically, this film should never have been made. Yes, there are people agreeing with me, but they're pathetic hypersensitive cow-"

 

"Please don't insult our sponsors like that"

 

"My apologies. Anyway, the film began it's life as one of those many scripts that should never have made it through the front gate of any film studio, office or agent in this or any other country. It may have worked as an independant arthouse film that nobody ever sees, but I don't care to speculate. The film had some stupid title like "Le Titty Grabass" or something stupid and had a whole bunch of deep, meaningful scenes involving the bonding yadda yadda yadda... But when someone who wasn't a complete fool actually read the script, they saw it for what it really was. A total, complete, steaming pile of suck,"

 

Real laughter beats canned laughter at this point

 

"Unfortunately, by this stage, the hack who wrote the thing had already signed a contract and had recieved a sizeable wad of cash and the promise of a small cut of the profit made from the film during it's opening night in America. Obviously, the dumbass hadn't read his contract properly, otherwise he would've spotted that and other clauses that would make any sane person think twice. Or he already knew what a load of garbage his script was and was trying to offload it for anything he could get."

 

"Which has been how much at this point?"

 

"Don't interrupt me"

 

"Sorry"

 

Canned Laughter

 

"Anyway, the script got to someone who was meant to make a decision about what should happen to it now, he read it and almost vomitted. He came running into the break room I was in, just to have a whinge about his pathetic life being made harder by more pathetic people. When I heard about the movie, I said I'd do it, if they gave me a large special effects budget. He said he'd have to run it past the finance people, but it made his job easier. After reading the script, I almost cried. In my eagerness to direct my own film, I'd volunteered for the worst piece of tripe since Gladiator"

 

"Truely a shocking waste of time"

 

"Then I got a hold of the contract and my eyes lit up. The idiot had signed away all rights for us to completely alter the title and content of the script in any way we saw fit. If I'd wanted to, I could've just put my own script in place and he couldn't have done a goddamn thing about it. That's when I decided to make a winner. Cut out the unnecessary story bits, shrink the necessary ones, add stupidly large and overpowered guns and fill the thing with violence and witty one liners. Hire a bunch of no-names who look ripped and can string more than 3 words together to pump more cash into effects and hype and I could already see the goldmine I was sitting on"

 

"And what a gold mine it turned out to be. Did the writer have any objections with what you were doing to his work?"

 

"Of course he did, I had him escorted off the lot at one point because he was getting off my nerves. Yelling something about artistic vision, some people."

 

Light laughter

 

 

"So you went ahead and made this year's most contraversial film. Tell me about the court case."

 

"Ahh, that was the greatest moment in my career. I'll be telling my grandkids about that one. I sued the board of censorship, whatever they called themselves."

 

"A landmark decision which has since openend the floodgates, releasing thousand of other violent films, TV shows and videogames. Some have even put you right up there next to Hitler and Hussain as destroyers of civilisation over that one"

 

"Well, they're closeminded biggots who hate blacks, jews and women anyway. Just edit this bit out later"

 

"Already done"

 

"Yeah, anyway, because I flat out refused to tone down the violence in my film, I pissed off a lot of people. It flew through the test audiences, thanks to my policy of only selecting males age 16-25. But the censorship board banned the movie outright, citing 27 'Moral and Ethical Violations'"

 

"So what happened next?"

 

"Well, we did the only thing we really could do under the circumstances. We released it as soon as we could in every single country on earth which didn't follow in America's footsteps and ban the film. We bombarded them with hype about the controversy surrounding it for a week, then dropped it in their laps. It was like Starwars Grand Opening at every cinema on earth."

 

"Except in america"

 

"Except in america. But then one of our lawyers brought to our attention the ammount of internet piracy of our film. If the figures we paid the geeks at internode, internic, interwhoever the hell thos people we got our figures from are, for are truely accurate, then every computer in america downloaded Blood Slaughterfest three times each. Normally, hollywood finds someone responsible for the sharing to sue, we just took the censorshipboard to the supreme court."

 

"The case described as the end of family cinema"

 

"Well, I'd take my family to see Blood Slaughterfest. But it was beautiful. We won easily. I think it was because the judge was one of the people who pirated the movie, but I won't hold that against him. We were awarded the estimated gross sales since the international release date, approximately 200 million, and the ruling of the censorship board was overturned. That weekend, we released it across the country and made another hundred million."

 

"So how many other directors are planning on having their films banned this year?"

 

Canned Laughter

 

"None! The censorship board are scared of us hollywood types, thanks to me."

 

"And unfortunately, that's all the time we have. Thankyou, once again, Doctor"

 

"Always a pleasure, James."

 

"And now we leave you with a trailer from Doctor Alex Palter's Blood Slaughterfest"

 

Cheering and applause as Alex leaves the stage and the shorts play