Hysteric Eric chats with JACK STEVENSON!
December 2006

Jack is an American film collector and writer living in Denmark, specializing in illuminating the weird and wonderful corners of the cult film world. In August, he came through the U.S. with several different film clip/lecture shows, two of which I was lucky enough to catch in San Francisco.
I missed his presentation of Haxan, the classic 1922 film better known as Witchcraft Through The Ages, and the subject of his new book.
But I thoroughly enjoyed two nights of programming. “Swinging Scandinavia: How Danish Sex Cinema Conquered The World”, which was clips from sexy eurotrash; and Drug Movies was, well, you know, Reefer Madness and LSD scare films that work in reverse, including clips from a TV movie of the week with Eli (The Ugly) Wallach as the baffled dad. Parents just don’t understand, man.
His other writings include books on B-movies and the movie-going experience, Lars Von Trier and the Dogme 95 film movement, Drugs in Films, and John Waters.
Jack on John Waters: “Waters' cinema was born as a mutant hybrid of two markedly disparate film genres: Exploitation and Underground. To any serious film purist, the differences between the two forms were starkly drawn: The Commercial versus The Personal, Commodity versus Art Object, Job versus Vision, Compromise versus Integrity.
Waters threw all that bullshit out the window and just made the films he had to make, employing the styles and tactics that suited or excited him (and that he could afford) with an aim to grind out something that would get him noticed. He never considered film an ‘artistic expression’even though many of the people he knocked around Baltimore with were boho artists. To him film was more of a physical experience, and even today he usually gauges a film by how he physically reacts to it, as in ‘I laughed out loud’, or ‘...when Forest Gump started running I felt like stabbing the people sitting around me.’"-From book DESPERATE VISIONS

TFO: You’ve corresponded with John Waters for over 25 years. What’s your favorite Waters film, and what do you think of Waters’ recent, more mainstream films?
JS: I still like FEMALE TROUBLE best. I do still like his recent films but they lack the jagged authenticity.

TFO: As a child, what movies did you enjoy? What film twisted you as a child?

JS: I was probably pretty average as a kid – loved THE WIZARD OF OZ best I reckon.

TFO: Pay no mind to the man behind the curtains; that could be read as a metaphor for projectionists…

JS: Yes, and it's also a good metaphor for so many situations in life!

TFO: When did you start writing about film? Why?

JS: I started writing about film in the mid-80’s. I had been writing for about 10 years prior to that but film was a main passion and it could actually get published, as opposed to short stories.

TFO: You were presenting educational/industrial films in hipster clubs in the early 80s. Do you feel your campaign has resulted in more public awareness for said fetish?

JS: I have helped to increase awareness of this lost realm of cinema, but folks like Richard Prelenger, Skip (the AV geek) and a few others are actually higher profile and that’s good – the more the better.

TFO: What’s your favorite genre of industrial/educational films? Or do you judge each upon its unintentional irony and veneer of self-righteous authority?

JS: The driver scare films are nice because they generally use horror movie conventions what with the creepy music and the moralistic melodramatic voice-overs. I also like a relatively obscure sub-genre: refrigerator sales films. Generally it is very diverse genre that embraces much more than obvious camp.

TFO: Well ahead of the curve, when people still wrote letters, you started writing to famous people and infamous convicts, whose responses you published in your magazine Pandemonium. What surprised you about their responses?

JS: The banal things surprised me the most, that they were actually people...

TFO: And how do you explain the appeal of Charles Manson?

JS: Manson was the most mythological of the bad guys.

TFO: Still have the hand-made scorpion Manson sent you?

JS: No, I parted with the Scorpion some years ago.

TFO: What’s your favorite Manson-exploitation movie?

JS: Favorite movie loosely based on his character would be I DRINK YOUR BLOOD.

TFO: Still in contact with anyone from Pandemonium? Any first-hand visits?

JS: No, PANDEMONIUM (1985-1989) seems like another life. I lived in LA in the early 80’s when Bukowski was there but was in Hollywood, he was on the other side of town. I had a correspondence with him at that point but never had a desire to meet him.

TFO: What did you think of the film Gacy? His letters in your zine Pandemonium II creeped me the fuck out, with his “just kidding” references to “playing the skin flute.”

JS: I never saw the Gacy film. I do have 2 Gacy paintings. Both are single skull paintings, "clown skulls." They were very rudimentary works in the Gacy canon. He was inspired by PANDEMONIUM #2 to print his own book of letters that people had written him, and that is far spookier than PANDEMONIUM. The people writing to these guys are much more way-out.

Jack on Freaks: “It was obvious the freaks weren't actors, but ‘real people’ whose earnestness and vulnerability shines through as they grapple with their lines. Viewers saw something genuinely human glimmer through the artifice, instead of the processed corn so often up dished out by thirties' Hollywood. It appears that some of the freaks, especially the pinheads, have been led out in front of the cameras simply to be themselves ... in the same way that underground ‘super stars’ Jack Smith, Taylor Mead and Edie Sedgwick would be led out in front of cameras simply to be themselves.” – from article FREAKS A MOVIE UNDEAD

TFO: You did a fantastic research piece on Freaks. You traded letters with Johnny Eck, right? What kind of a man was he, and how did he feel about life’s treatment of him?

JS: I never actually corresponded with Johnny directly but published letters he wrote to others. But they speak for themselves: he became very embittered in his declining years. A couple years ago Bizarre Magazine from the UK did an update on Johnny - or at least Johnny's legacy - that was quite good.

TFO: And Freaks. Why does it endure?

JS: FREAKS is utterly unique, trying to be a corny 30’s monster movie and being more like a documentary instead. It will last forever.

TFO: Favorite “bad” actor?

JS: It’s a hard question. I much prefer non-actors who over-act out of a genuine belief in the material.

TFO: As a film collector, exhibitor and writer, you’ve a reputation decidedly as a film purist that detests all things video. Would the witness say that that is a correct statement?

JS: Correct. My stance against video (or today more rightly DVD) basically boils down to the group experience versus the home experience. It's always better to see a film in a dark room with 300 strangers than by yourself in your living room. I hate this "extra material" shit - it's crap: just give me the movie and let me be confused and maybe amazed and walk out of the theater unsettled. I don't want to hear the 2nd-unit cameraman's account of what happened on the set... I like movie theaters. I even like being in a theater if no movie is playing.

TFO: You’re a theatre junkie, just wondered what you thought of the IMAX screens. Ever been to one? Wouldn’t it be great to see Mudhoney, Freaks or Female Trouble on the gigantic screen?

JS: Yes, that would be amazing. But the settings aren't tacky enough to do justice to most films. FEMALE TROUBLE would be better screened on a junky 16mm projector in a girl's detention home or in a subway tunnel. I've always said atmosphere trumps technology.

TFO: How about sites like Youtube, with it’s viewer-created content? Democracy in action, or dumb-asses mugging?

JS: I'm not familiar enough with Youtube yet, but again, it's exhibited on a computer monitor so setting doesn't factor in, its just pure information - and the thrill of surfing, the thrill of exploring a world of weirdos. Something similar happened back in the age of American exploitation when almost ANYBODY could make a gore film and get it played. You just needed some money. Now you don't need nothing to expose others to your obsessions. Generally I think its great but I never surf it.

TFO: You wrote a book about film depiction of drugs. Hollywood has done a terribly unhelpful portrayal of drugs in cinema. Is the mainstream representation of drugs any more realistic, over all, than it was, say, 80 years ago?

JS: Slightly. There is an effort to be less moralistic about it although Hollywood still gets a lot wrong.

TFO: For those unfamiliar with the Dogme 95 movement, can you recommend some films?

JS: Festen, The Idiots are 2 to start with.

TFO: You threw a fish into the audience at a film festival once. Would you like to explain yourself?

JS: There didn’t seem to be anything else I could do.

TFO: Has your taste in film changed noticeably over the past 30 years?

JS: No, I still like the same stuff. I do not love or respect the medium in general, most movies are boring. I’m a hopeless nostalgic.

TFO: You moved to Denmark in 1994 or so, with your Danish wife, right? Was that a big culture shock, or were you already primed from your globetrotting film exhibitions?

JS: Yes. Denmark is in many ways very Americanized, I hardly noticed the difference and I didn’t pay any attention to the fact that folks were speaking another language for 6 years on.

TFO: I have a mental picture of you, correct or not, on a little farm with a straw roof cottage full to the rafters with film reels. Seen any UFOs there?

JS: No – I live in a housing project in a drab ring town of Copenhagen. The grass-roofed cottages are way to expensive. You got the film reels right. Yes, there are UFOs.

Jack on Reptilicus:“Older viewers, however, and the Danish film community at large judge the film to be a horrible disgrace. Denmark had no tradition of Science-fiction filmmaking, let alone the grade-Z variety, and most just didn't get the joke. Here were some of the most beloved and respected Danish actors who should have known better, trapped for eternity in an artless, foolish film that refused to die a dignified death. Deprived of any shred of competent direction or motivation, they were, in the ‘international’ AIP version, even robbed of their own voices thanks to the American-English dubbing. Not until 18 years later when the flower of British drama (John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Helen Mirren) appeared in the American hard-core porno film, CALIGULA, would an entire nation feel so painfully disgraced on the movie screen.” – from article IT CAME FROM BEYOND BELIEF - THE INCREDIBLE B-MOVIES OF SIDNEY PINK IN DENMARK

TFO: I loved the article on Sid Pink, and entertained by the national uproar over Reptilicus! Great stuff! Where do you go in Denmark for your film archival research, and are they accommodating?

JS: For that article I did research in the clippings files of the Danish Film Institute, and that was even before I could read Danish so my wife had translate a ton of texts, poor woman. For most of my books I find the stacks of yellowed newspaper clippings in the DFI files provide the core of every story - not the Net! The Net is indispensable but also, when delving into specialist areas, very much a secondary source.

TFO: You’ve written about Danish erotica, Haxan, Lars Von Trier and the Dogme 95 movement and even Reptilicus! What’s left in Danish cinema for you to investigate?

JS: Good question! I can’t think right now what is interesting that remains to be investigated. I was going to write a book about all the expat American jazz musicians that have made Copenhagen home but dropped the idea when I realized I knew zilch about music.

TFO: You’re on tour across the US right now. Did you bring big heavy film reels with you from Denmark and are lugging them around with you currently?

JS: Yes, I came this time with both 16mm and a 35mm roll of film, and some books – it’s damn heavy. I should just bring a DVD... but then why should anybody come to my show? I will carry the rolls of film until they get stolen or lost or I’m crippled.

TFO: You must enjoy watching audiences’ reactions to the stuff you show them. What kind of reactions do you hope for?

JS: Any reaction is good. I do like to see films in a dark, crowded room. I always watch my shows. I’ve seen these films hundreds of times but always end up staring at the screen with the same idiot absorption.

THE END

-Hysteric Eric Bradner