The press notes for the film THE LORDS OF SALEM barely mention anyone else except writer-director Rob Zombie and his wife and leading lady, Sheri Moon Zombie. I wondered whether the supporting cast which includes Patricia Quinn (from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW), Judy Geeson (INSEMINOID), Dee Wallace (E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, CUJO), Ken Foree (DAWN OF THE DEAD), Maria Conchita Alonso (MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON) and Bruce Davison (LONGTIME COMPANION) had distanced themselves from the movie, which given its quality is not a surprise. Or maybe Mr Zombie – Robert – has chosen to elevate his work above his contributors.
I then started to wonder: what would the on-set conversations sound like?
DIRECTOR: Hon? You’ve got to wake up in this scene showing your ass.
MRS DIRECTOR: But I wear briefs in bed.
DIRECTOR: But it’s better for the character to wake up lying on her chest with her ass in the air.
MRS DIRECTOR: It’s not logical.
DIRECTOR: It sells movie tickets.
MRS DIRECTOR: It’s still not logical. (Pause) My ass is yours and yours alone.
DIRECTOR: Don’t think of it as your ass, or my ass. It’s the character’s ass.
MRS DIRECTOR: But in real life, I would be lying on my side. You would see my –
DIRECTOR: Do you know the pressure I’m under?
MRS DIRECTOR: Pressure?
DIRECTOR: This is my first film for a couple of years. It took a long time to get the finance.
MRS DIRECTOR: Couldn’t you just do another sequel?
DIRECTOR: I have integrity.
MRS DIRECTOR: So you want to show my ass?
DIRECTOR: The character’s ass. You know you’re going to look back at this and you’re going to be glad you showed it.
MRS DIRECTOR: I’ll have dementia.
DIRECTOR: You’ll be glad you posed like one of those models in a Bruegel painting.
MRS DIRECTOR: You know Bruegel?
DIRECTOR: I’m pretending.
MRS DIRECTOR: Why do you have to show me waking up? What purpose does the scene have?
DIRECTOR: You’re a rock chick. You get wasted.
MRS DIRECTOR: And I’d remember to take off my underwear?
CAMERAMAN: Excuse me, we’re losing the light.
DIRECTOR: Your character does not wear underwear.
MRS DIRECTOR: She’s got a salaried job. She understands personal hygiene.
DIRECTOR: - which is why we show her using the toilet.
MRS DIRECTOR: The toilet?
# # #
DIRECTOR: So in this scene we establish that there are three DJs.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: I’m the hip sexy one.
BEARDED GUY: I’m the bearded comical one.
MRS DIRECTOR: And I’m the token female.
BEARDED GUY: Comedy rule of three? How original.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: But tell me, do you know how many people of colour listen to heavy metal music?
DIRECTOR: I know a few.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: Have you just put me in this movie because I was associated with a cool franchise?
DIRECTOR: No. Your character is integral to the movie.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: In what way? I don’t receive a record that features a tune written in the seventeenth century that incites women to prostrate themselves out of loyalty to some dark lord.
DIRECTOR: No, you’re the anchor.
BEARDED GUY: I thought I was the anchor. I mean Heidi Le Roc. I love her man.
DIRECTOR: I meant the anchor for the show.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: But I can’t listen to this music.
DIRECTOR: Have you tried acting?
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: I mean it’s not credible. The music does not speak to me.
DIRECTOR: That’s the thing – it speaks to chicks.
BEARDED GUY: Question. Why is the movie called THE LORDS OF SALEM?
DIRECTOR: The witches. They are the lords.
BEARDED GUY: They are clearly ladies.
DIRECTOR: I’m paying you for comedy. And to be the concerned guy who doesn’t get any.
BEARDED GUY: Why don’t I get any?
DIRECTOR: She’s my frigging wife. The only guy who gets to penetrate her in this movie is some guy in Gene Simmonds make-up who might just as well be played by me.
MRS DIRECTOR: About those scenes. They don’t make any sense.
DIRECTOR: Neither did Hitchcock’s cameos.
MRS DIRECTOR: I’m pretty sure the Master of Suspense never at any point tried to pass himself off as a member of KISS.
DIRECTOR: But wouldn’t it have been great if he did?
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: Why can’t we play funk? Or soul?
BEARDED GUY: A bit clichéd don’t you think?
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: Did you get that part in BONES? Then shut your ass!
DIRECTOR: You don’t understand the pressure I’m under. Can you just play the scene?
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: I cannot see this show being popular – even in Boston.
BEARDED GUY: I cannot see this film being popular - even in Boston.
# # #
DIRECTOR: So in this scene you are three old ladies taking tea together.
OLDER ACTRESS TWO: And we want a former drug addict with a mastiff dog to join us?
DIRECTOR: Yes.
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: I own the building. She hardly ever takes the dog out, because she’s so wasted. The dog needs exercise. It makes all kinds of noise. And the smell of excrement! At some point my character’s got to complain.
DIRECTOR: No, you love her.
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: I’m sure she doesn’t pay the rent on time. And she doesn’t have underwear.
OLDER ACTRESS THREE: How do you know that?
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: I read the script.
OLDER ACTRESS TWO: That’s why Woody Allen only lets his actors see their own pages.
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: I was promised a body double.
OLDER ACTRESS THREE: Really?
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: Yes, to do the scenes where I have dialogue.
DIRECTOR: If you could just direct your attention to me, the guy in the leather chaps with the whip and the twirling moustache.
OLDER ACTRESS TWO: Tea, got it. Why not coffee? Americans love coffee.
DIRECTOR: You’re not American.
OLDER ACTRESS TWO: I am so. Do you know the iconic roles I’ve played?
DIRECTOR: Some franchise that ripped off GREMLINS. Right! I’m doing you a favour.
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: I don’t need to work. Where I come from they have pensions that weren’t stolen by bankers. And we’re not afraid of Hugo Chavez. [Note: the film was premiered in Toronto in 2012]
DIRECTOR: Do you know the pressure I’m under?
OLDER ACTRESS TWO: You should have chosen a different career. Weren’t you in the music business?
DIRECTOR: My wife wants to share a scene with you three. You’re icons.
OLDER ACTRESS TWO: I said that.
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: So you’ve contrived a scene where we are three modern day witches, like the characters out of HOCUS POCUS, only I have a longer career than Kathy Najimy.
OLDER ACTRESS THREE: You do not?
OLDER ACTRESS ONE: It remains to be seen.
OLDER ACTRESS TWO: I understand. We are here to confer on your little film a degree of respectability.
DIRECTOR: Yes.
OLDER ACTRESS THREE: Pity. I was looking forward to the nude scene.
# # #
WHITE HAIRED GUY: I’m so glad to be cast as an academic who is interested in the Salem Witch Trials.
DIRECTOR: Great.
WHITE HAIRED GUY: So why don’t I know much about it?
DIRECTOR: You work in a wax museum.
WHITE HAIRED GUY: Like Ripley’s Believe it or Not?
DIRECTOR: No, like something from a Universal movie of the 1930s.
WHITE HAIRED GUY: Your film features lots of references to old black and white movies.
DIRECTOR: Yes.
WHITE HAIRED GUY: The main character’s bedroom has a print of a still from a Georges Melies film, with the rocket in the moon’s eye.
DIRECTOR: Yeah. Cool isn’t it?
WHITE HAIRED GUY: There are black and white horror films on TV, without adverts I might add.
DIRECTOR: Yes, they rock.
WHITE HAIRED GUY: What’s the connection with the Salem witch trials?
DIRECTOR: Well, duh? They’re old. The Salem Witch Trials took place in the 17th Century so they’re old too. It is stuff that’s old.
WHITE HAIRED GUY: I see. This scene where I realise that Heidi Le Roc is Adelaid Hawthorne and related to Jonathan Hawthorne, the guy who burnt the witches in the 17th Century.
DIRECTOR: Yes?
WHITE HAIRED GUY: Don’t you think he would have been quicker on the uptake? I mean, they have the same surname. And why is there a family tree that explicitly links them on line?
DIRECTOR: Don’t you know the pressure I’m under?
WHITE HAIRED GUY: Why does he ask for Adelaid Hawthorne over the phone? Why does he allow himself to be hit over the head with a frying pan? Couldn’t you give me a more imaginative death scene, goddamn it?
DIRECTOR: What can I say? I like EATING RAOUL. Paul Bartel made films with his wife too.
# # #
AFRICAN-AMERICAN GUY: The big finale. It’s Saturday night. We’ve reopened an old theatre for a band [The Lords] nobody has heard of. Only women show up. They don’t even sit together. There is no band. The curtains open. There is a bunch of naked women on stage. Heidi or Adelaid or whatever her name is stands in the circle. Then she ends up on stage. She gives birth to some kind of spawn. Wrinkled. Tentacled. Not sure what. There’s blood between her legs. Earlier there were women with pale faces standing in the corner of the kitchen in Heidi’s apartment. The door to flat five in the building opens to reveal a palace. Heidi goes to a church and a priest forces her to do something unmentionable. Does this film make any sense? How can you get a deep grinding sound from a bow with a single string?
DIRECTOR: No pressure!
