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Friday, December 09, 2005
"Homecoming"
Screenwriter Sam Hamm (Batman, Batman Returns) appeared at San Francisco State University for a screening of the film he wrote and Joe Dante (Gremlins, Twilight Zone Movie) directed for Showtime’s Masters of Horror series, “Homecoming.” The interview was conducted by SFSU screenwriting teacher Joseph McBride.
Before the film Hamm made sure the audience knew that this film was “an EC comics updated for the 21st Century” and “a scurrilous little agit-prop comedy.” Hamm and Dante were given two million dollars, ten days to shoot and complete creative control. They felt this short film would become “the movie too extreme for Showtime” and get rejected but instead the producers were fine with it and aired it when Showtime was having a free preview weekend for certain cable and satellite subscribers. It has since becoming a hot topic on political websites and blogs.
Based on the short story “Death and Sufferage” by Dale Bailey, the film features soldiers killed in an unnamed war coming back to life as zombies. They’re not here to eat brains, instead they won’t rest until they vote against the politicians who put them to war and had them die “for a lie” as one of the zombies say. A Republican spin-master is at the center of the film trying to fight the zombies not with fire or chainsaws but with defamation on cable news. The film spends most of its time spewing venom in the direction of high profile neo-conservatives personalities. It features the most twisted take on Ann Coulter since Howard Chaykin’s Challengers of the Unknown mini-series but the funniest moments go to Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager) as a Karl Rove clone who at first relishes at the idea of a soldiers that “takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”
Hamm said the film isn’t intended to change minds but is instead inspired by right-wing talk radio that makes evangelicals out of those with already sympathetic political persuasions. Hamm and Dante wanted to see something like that for liberals so they made a low-budget monster movie that doesn’t use subtext or is an allegory or about the current administration’s destructive foreign policy but is instead very upfront about its politics and its message. Hamm said they were going for a film that is “macabre, funny and political” and they succeeded with all three.
Hamm took questions from the audiences. He talked about how he’s trying to get Anchor Bay, who have the DVD rights to the Masters of Horror series, to speed up their release of this DVD set so more people can see this episode.
I asked about writing the screenplay to Watchmen and someone else asked a follow up on it (the book is being taught on campus). Hamm said that he wrote it for Joel Silver and then let it go as Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown did their draft. He said the hardest part about writing the script was that whenever he consulted the comics he would find a new theme or visual motif running through the film. Eventually he had to lock the comics in a drawer so he could finish the script. He heard Richard Gere wanted to play Dr. Manhattan and David Bowie wanted to play Rorschach but as you can see the film never happened. Hamm does think it’ll be made into a film someday.
When asked if M.A.N.T.I.S. is coming out on DVD Hamm said he didn’t know. He created the show with Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert but was really screwed by FOX when the show was aired. The show was conceived as a “Blaxploitation superhero” but when pilot got picked up they were told the show needed to be “more white.” Most of the supporting cast was fired for white actors to step in and Hamm, Tapert and Raimi left the show. Hamm claims to not have seen most of the episodes of M.A.N.T.I.S.
Hamm said he and Dante are working on the second season of Masters of Horror where they are going to try and top themselves but don’t feel they’ll go the agit-prop route again. “Homecoming” airs three times this weekend, find out what times here.
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