Sean Plummer \/ HMV.com<\/p>\n
The Reflecting Skin<\/em> is a true cult film. Written and directed by then-new British artist Philip Ridley, now an established playwright and children\u2019s author, it’s a weird mash-up of horror, drama, whodunit, and arthouse about odd goings-on in the American prairies of the 1950s (actually Crossfield, Alberta).<\/p>\n It also features Viggo Mortenson in one of his first starring roles.<\/p>\n The future Aragorn plays Cameron Dove, a soldier slowly dying of radiation sickness who returns to his parents\u2019 home after a stint in the Pacific. Cameron soon takes up with nearby widow Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan) whom his younger brother Seth (Jeremy Cooper) is convinced is actually a vampire draining him of his life force.<\/p>\n It was released (barely) in 1990 after a controversial debut at Cannes that drew rave reviews… and some audience derision. It quickly left theatres, leaving behind a reputation for surreal oddness, including an opening scene involving children blowing up a frog. Since then it has had a spotty history on home media and has rarely been seen the way Ridley wanted people to see it.<\/p>\n But the Internet stoked its reputation through the \u201890s and \u201800s, uniting fans worldwide drawn to this strange kind-of vampire tale. Now, using newly discovered film elements, UK-Canadian film distributor Soda Pictures has cleaned it up and will release The Reflecting Skin<\/em> in Canada on Blu-ray Tuesday (March 15th) with a host of new features.<\/p>\n hmv.com spoke to Ridley about spray-painting wheat, casting Mortenson, and whether or not he will ever make another film.<\/p>\n Congratulations on getting The Reflecting Skin<\/em> out into the world again. How does it feel?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s thrilling to have it back out there again, especially when I thought it would never happen. It was made in \u201889\/\u201890 – the days before digital. It only existed on celluloid. And no one knew where the materials were. It was a surprise to me that [Soda] managed to get the materials together to restore it in the first place. The last time I saw the film projected was at a festival in Italy in about 1999 – and that was one of only four or five prints that at that time were in existence – and that print looked pretty bad. It\u2019s a film about the visual ravishment of cinema; it\u2019s a film about images. So unless you\u2019re seeing the film as you should be seeing it, you\u2019re not getting the full experience.\u201d<\/p>\n The Reflecting Skin<\/em> defies categorization. That said, talk about the influences of horror on the film \u2013 whether it be film, literature or art. \u201cNight of the Hunter by Charles Laughton is a pretty strong influence; the childhood pain and fairy-tale aspect. It\u2019s also heavily influenced by the paintings of Andrew Wyeth who was one of my favourite artists when I was at art school. That was the visual touchstone of the film: somewhere between Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso [the novel] Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and the novels of Philip K. Dick; this whole questioning of what is and isn\u2019t reality. I think they kind of ripple through it. I can see certain horror films in there – Psycho, The Birds, and After Dark is definitely in there. It makes reference to them as well. It\u2019s a very cinematically aware film. There\u2019s an element of meta-cinema to it that it is quoting other films the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n Is it true you personally spray-painted the wheat fields to get the right colour?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely true. A lot of the wheat you see Seth in, like the wheat that surrounds his house, was especially sown for us, because we did a lot of the locations much earlier and we had all these places set up as where we might end up. The land around the house was as you see in the film. All we had to do was cut away the path leading up to the house.<\/p>\n \u201cBut because it wasn\u2019t normally a farmed area, there were bits of green foliage coming through. So the painting of the wheat started when I set up shop, to get rid of the green areas so it all looked completely yellow. Of course now that could be done digitally in post-production. But in those days it had to be done in camera. \u201cWhen [Jeremy is] walking up to Dolphin Blue\u2019s house, the reason he looks so nervous is because the wheat on either side of him is still wet with paint. He had to fit down a very narrow path to not get his clothes covered in yellow paint.\u201d<\/p>\n The Reflecting Skin<\/em> is one of Viggo Mortenson\u2019s first films. Talk about casting and working with him.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMy memory of this is probably wrong, but the way that I remember it is I\u2019d known [casting director] Vicky Thomas for a while so she knew what I was after. Viggo came in initially as someone that I should meet: \u2018He\u2019s an interesting actor, he\u2019s your kind of actor. You should meet him.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cWe sent him some of the scenes, and my memory of it was \u2018this guy is fantastic.\u2019 I knew we were going to get on because I do other things \u2013 write poetry and take photographs – and Viggo does the same thing. I was staying in a hotel in Los Angeles, and Viggo came around to see me. And we got on like a house on fire from the moment he walked in the door. We couldn\u2019t stop talking, we had so much in common. Luckily that\u2019s happened to me three or four times: someone has walked through my door and I know I\u2019m looking at a superstar. It hasn\u2019t happened for them yet, but you know they\u2019ve got something very, very special. The star charisma was just overwhelming. By the time we finished talking, he had to play Cameron.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s one of the more interesting compliments you have received for The Reflecting Skin<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSomeone once told me they\u2019ve watched the film many times, but never the exploding frog scene. They close their eyes when the children start inflating the frog, and they don\u2019t open their eyes \u2018til they know the scene is over. That just terrifies them so much and brings back so many awful, disturbing memories of childhood.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was the reaction when the film premiered at Cannes. Fifty percent of the audience got up and walked out the moment the frog exploded, which is within the first five minutes of the film. Of course what happened was those 50 percent left and said, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve seen this most outrageous opening to this film – three boys kill a frog\u2019 and other people started to come in. So 50 percent left, but we were playing to 200 percent by the time we finished.\u201d<\/p>\n You have only made two films since The Reflecting Skin<\/em> and have mostly worked in theatre the last 25 years. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI still love making film, just very particular films. I always say I\u2019m a very particular tree and I grow a very particular fruit, and it\u2019s not especially mainstream or commercial. They\u2019re not easy money-makers. I like to have a lot of control. I\u2019ve had final cut on the three films that I\u2019ve made to date. I\u2019ve been able to cast them the way I\u2019ve wanted, and with Heartless [2009] I wrote some of the songs for them. So they\u2019re quite private films, like personal artistic projects. I\u2019m not disappointed or downhearted to have made only three films because they\u2019re films I\u2019ve wanted to make.<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose what\u2019s different from some other careers is that I don\u2019t have that interspersed with 10 other films that I didn\u2019t quite want to make. I\u2019d still like to make another film, but I want to make the film that I want to make. So if I write a script I won\u2019t do it unless I can do it the way I think it needs to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\n\u201cAnyway, I ended up liking the way the painted wheat looked more than the real wheat. So as the film went on I was painting more and more. I would turn up on the set about two hours before everyone else with buckets of paint. The two colours I used were cadmium yellow and Indian yellow. And it was acrylic and I\u2019d mix them, and I would spray paint at least the front areas of the wheat fields; at least the bits that would be closest to the camera.<\/p>\n