Interview With Luke Y. Thompson, Actor and Writer
Luke Y. Thompson is a man of many talents. If you live in Southern California, you might recognize his name from his articles in the LA and OC Weekly. If you’re a fan of indie cinema, you might have seen him in several films, most notably Mad Cowgirl (read our review) and the upcoming Wicked Lake. If you’re a visitor to blogs, you might read his LYTrules.com blog. Besides being a reporter, film critic, writer and actor, he’s also developing several scripts. And, of course, he’s a big fan of horror movies…
Luke recently interviewed our own Fatally Yours for a piece in OC Weekly and after hearing all his “horror” stories, wanted to turn the tables and interview him! Fatally Yours talked to Luke about his different careers as film critic, writer and actor, as well as discovering his love of pro wrestling, his friendship with May director Lucky McKee and a surprise gift he received from Clive Barker’s own home…
Fatally Yours: Luke, you’re a multi-talented individual. What made you chose to be a writer, reporter, actor, film critic and screenwriter? Which career did you chose first and how did the others follow?
Luke Y. Thompson: From a very young age, my goal was to be a movie director. It’s cliché among my generation, but Star Wars was probably the inspiration for that – not so much the movie, but the toys. I grew up in Ireland, and it would usually take the movies about a year to cross over from the U.S., so I’d often get the toys first, and come up with a story in my imagination that would frequently be more elaborate than what the movies would turn out to be. And unlike later toy lines, Star Wars figures and vehicles weren’t so easily delineated into stereotypical good and evil – there were a lot of random aliens, robots, and such so I didn’t feel as bound by the assigned roles.
I never specifically set out to be a writer, but I’ve always been one, writing poems and stories as a kid (I didn’t have TV until my parents divorced). When I was ten I had a poem of mine published in a children’s book in Ireland, which brought momentary fame, though I was disappointed at the time that no money came my way! As soon as I learned proper screenwriting format, scripts were the most natural progression.
As for film criticism – it seems strange by today’s standards, but I grew up in a culture that did not revolve around movies at all! So I was kind of the “movie guy” – my mother’s family, who are from England, would always ask my advice on what films are good since they knew I was into it and they didn’t go to the movies that often. In later years they’d still want my take on big events like Star Wars Episode I, so I started writing for my friend Jaye (Luckett, who does Lucky McKee’s movie scores now)’s ‘zine in the days before blogs really took off, photocopying stuff by me and my friends into pamphlets, and I would do the movie reviews (I had previously done some on USC student radio).
Eventually I decided to branch off from Jaye and do my own ‘zine, because I was getting to be a bit of a control freak about it. Then while I was between jobs, having recently quit working for a shady Internet toy company, I saw an ad in New Times Los Angeles saying “Film critic wanted!” The ad specifically noted that they were looking for someone who could appreciate commercial blockbusters as well as art films, and I thought that was made for me. I mailed in my zines and four months or so later, I was one of two people they hired. I planned on being a critic just for a while, to establish my name as a writer, but it kept going; I never intended on being a reporter, and I’m not sure I really am one now, but I’m trying. As for being an actor, I’ve always loved to act whenever I could. It wasn’t something that you got a lot of respect for in Ireland, but it was always fun, though I think I hit a new level when I took some improv classes at USC that really taught me about being “in the moment.”
FY: Let’s talk about your journalistic career…What formal training did you receive that allowed you to write for both the LA and OC Weekly?
LYT: None whatsoever, which I think is pretty funny. When I first pitched a cover story at New Times LA after being there a while as a critic, I asked every veteran reporter there for advice, and every single one of them simply said, “Ahhh, you’ll do fine.”
FY: Working for an established print publication has afforded you many opportunities to interview interesting people. What have been your worst and best interviews?
LYT: The best interview ever for me was The Rock, who hasn’t yet done horror, but maybe one day! I was a huge fan of his from the moment he first raised an eyebrow in a wrestling ring, so I had a much better frame of reference than every other journalist. In the horror genre, the experience of a lifetime was going to Clive Barker’s house and seeing some work-in-progress paintings from Abarat, which at the time was planned on being a big franchise for Disney, of all places. The interview was to plug the release of the Tortured Souls action figures from McFarlane Toys, but we talked about everything – at one point he asked if I’d seen the director’s cut of Lord of Illusions, and when I said I hadn’t, he ran downstairs and came back up with a DVD of it signed “To Luke, best wishes, Clive Barker.” You can’t ask for a better fan experience than that, though I recently “debated” Tobin Bell over the phone on the plot technicalities of the Saw movies, which was pretty amazing.
The worst – and I hate to say it, because I love his movies – was Rob Zombie. He just wasn’t into being interviewed and gave one-word answers.
FY: It seems that nowadays everyone’s got a movie review blog. Do you think this has affected the careers of film critics? Has the abundance of movie bloggers affected you personally?
LYT: It definitely has. Film critics are increasingly being considered irrelevant, as the primary target demographic, teens, would rather get a recommendation from some other teen’s blog than from an old man. Newspapers in general are suffering from the web, and one of the first jobs to get downsized is that of the movie critic. Being a good full-time critic is a full-time job, but even the critics who have jobs are generally asked to do other duties as well. I think every single one of us dreams of having a job where we just see every movie that opens, write about them all, and that’s the job, period. Okay, maybe not all, but unlike some, I even kind of enjoy going to see something I’m fairly sure I’ll hate. Sometimes I’m wrong – the Garfield movie, for example, was actually quite fun, all because of Bill Murray.
I’ve been affected personally in that for a couple of years, I was barely scraping by on freelance review payouts, and when I got this job at OC, it was notably not primarily a critic job – the critic stuff I do is more of a bonus now.
FY: In regards to writing, what were your influences and who were your heroes growing up?
LYT: Joe Bob Briggs was my hero as far as criticism. As a kid, I always watched movie review shows, but I’d get mad because the critics would always hate the movies I liked, like Labyrinth, Big Trouble in Little China…anything fantasy based. When I discovered Joe Bob, it was a revelation, like someone could actually write smartly about this stuff even if he had to adopt a redneck persona to do it. I first learned about John Woo from Joe Bob. And some would say I have a redneck persona too!
As a screenwriter, I’m still most inspired by the great children’s books: Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, the original Oz books…you get the sense reading those that there are no creative holds barred and anything can happen. I find lots of Alan Moore’s comics inspirational as far as taking that creative child spirit and adding adult twists.
FY: Who are your influences now?
LYT: My favorite film writers, whom I read every day, are guys like Dave White and Jeffrey Wells, people who are unashamed to throw their personalities out there and back the stuff they like no matter how unpopular such a stance may be. For me, a good personality that comes through is what I enjoy the most in non-fiction writing – I’d rather read Harry Knowles, whose spelling and grammar leave much to be desired, than someone like Anthony Lane, whose sentence structure is impeccable, but he doesn’t seem to actually like movies very much. I also thoroughly enjoy right-wing religious critics like the fellows at Movieguide.org. – they’re certainly passionate!
I don’t know if any of those are “influences” per se, but there’s a certain spark to all of them that I try to have too. It’s a little tougher in straight journalism, because the goal there is to keep yourself out of the story.
FY: As for your acting, can you tell us about the roles you’ve played to date in horror films?
LYT: I haven’t actually done a whole lot of straight horror. In The Lost and Masters of Horror: Sick Girl (read our review), I was basically an extra, and was entirely cut out of the latter when a close-up was used instead of the wide shot I was in. I’ve probably worked with Kevin Ford more than any other director, and his movies are mainly indie dramas, though they feature a lot of horror names like Angela Bettis, Lucky McKee, and all the rest of our circle of friends. There was a time when nearly that whole crew lived in the same Hollywood apartment complex, and you’d go over to visit one, and there’d be a party or something, and then Kevin might spontaneously decide to start shooting something, and before you knew it he’d be editing the footage into a feature, having come up with a secret storyline you were totally unaware of.
Roman (read our review) is an interesting case – Lucky had promised me a role in that ten years prior to it actually getting made, and I shot scenes as a French waiter, who was based on an Algerian guy we used to know at USC. Unfortunately the lighting in the scene wasn’t right, and when the time came to do reshoots, I had been hospitalized with appendicitis. To make it up to me, I was recast as a cashier who sells Roman some porn – a role originally written for an old lady – and we shot that up by Lucky’s old house. Unfortunately, that footage got technically corrupted somehow and it couldn’t be used either! Fate was not in favor of me doing that film, I guess. You can glimpse me briefly on the DVD extras.
Mad Cowgirl (review)was the second movie I made for Greg Hatanaka, and I got to be assistant director too – the first was Until the Night, which is more dark drama than horror. We had the damnedest time finding extras on Mad Cowgirl who’d work for free, so a lot of the time I’d slap on a new outfit and play a new character. About four of them made the final cut – I’m a voice-over on the Pastor Dylan Show, a bartender, a congregant in the front pew of Dylan’s church, the 3-D theater usher with a Chinese accent (no-one ever knows that’s me unless I tell them), and most notably Big Brother Cheng, the last of the Ten Tigers, who ultimately turns out to be a hallucination representing someone else entirely. Scenes you didn’t see of me included roles as a folk singer, a bondage freak in a leather mask who gets sodomized by a nun, and a right-wing talk show host in a bad wig.
Big Brother Cheng was originally called Lenny and had a much larger part in the script, but once we got Walter as Pastor Dylan, a lot of Lenny’s stuff was given to Dylan, which was absolutely the right decision, because audiences would much rather see Walter than me. At the moment, anyway.
I also have a cameo in Sean Cain’s upcoming Naked Beneath the Water (coming to DVD and HD-DVD in February), which is about a reality show in which serial killers compete. None of this was known to me when I shot it – the scene I’m in, I play a heckler who is part of a crowd that’s shown up to see one of the killers named The Shaver. Everyone else is cheering him, but I basically cut a wrestling promo on the guy, getting all hyped up and spittle-flecked. I got to keep the rainbow-hair for that one. I met Sean through Jesse Hlubik, who you may know from Lucky’s Masters of Horror episode, and he’s in Naked as well, playing a fireman.
Then of course there’s Wicked Lake upcoming, as well as a couple of other possibilities in ’08 that it’d be premature to talk about just yet.
FY: Do you think your writing experience is a blessing or a curse when you approach someone else’s script from an acting point of view?
LYT: I don’t think of it either way, but then I’m used to working with people like Kevin [Ford], who often has no script at all, or Greg [Hatanaka], who throws the script out the window when he’s in the moment, and just calls out verbal directions. On Mad Cowgirl, there were one or two lines that I felt read awkwardly, and I suggested alternatives, which was cool, but the lines never even made it into the film anyway – I think the entirety of Big Brother Cheng’s dialogue was improvised on the spot by Greg and/or me. With someone like Lucky [McKee], the script is always golden. And even if it isn’t – I view my role as an actor as being a tool for the director to use. It’s all about whether he or she likes the outcome, not so much whether I do. Thankfully, I can usually keep us both happy. I’m usually just so glad to be cast that I don’t care if the script is or isn’t great; I have fun regardless. I played an evil white guy in some Chinese movie that shot over here, and I still have no idea what the story is – the director didn’t speak English.
FY: Working with people like Lucky McKee, Angela Bettis, James Duval, Chris Sivertson, Gregory Hatanaka, etc. you must have had some pretty amazing experiences. Can you share a favorite moment of yours from one of the shoots you’ve worked on?
LYT: They’re all great people to work with, that’s for sure. But for sheer enjoyment, one of the bets moments ever was the first day of shooting on Mad Cowgirl – which at the time was called No Regrets – where we rented out a small theater and were shooting some of the crazy TV shows Therese (Sarah Lassez) was supposed to watch later in the movie. One of these was a show based on the old KDOC program “Hot Seat with Wally George,” that I had loved in college. Wally was this crazy right-winger with a bad wig who’d yell at his guests and accuse them of being gay. But on this shoot, I got to not only play the part of Wally, but also to debate one of his real-life regular guests, a former porn star named Bill Margold. A few days prior, I had gotten to go to Bill’s house and watch old tapes of him with the real Wally, so we got the patter down, and I got to rip one of his toy teddy bears to pieces. You can see some of that in the DVD extras.
And the entirety of Wicked Lake was amazing. But it’s too early to get TOO detailed there…let’s just say that the role called for me to stare at breasts quite a bit.
FY: Can you tell us more about Wicked Lake and about your character?
LYT: The film is about four lovely ladies who go on vacation to a lake cabin and get pursued by unsavory characters who do bad things…but at the stroke of midnight, something happens to turn the tables. That’s what I’ve read on all the horror sites, anyway, and it’s true…what they haven’t necessarily said is that all the girls get naked, and there’s lots of brutal violence. There’s one particular act of violence that actually made me wince just to read it in the script, and that’s saying something. We have a great cast, mostly unknowns, but they’ll be known soon enough, I’d say. This really is a big chunk of red meat for the hardcore horror fans, and I hope they like it. I think they will.
My character is a redneck named Half-Idiot, who drools a lot and is fairly, shall we say, uninhibited socially. But deep down I think he’s the nicest guy in the movie. Crude, but well-meaning. And all the drool is 100% mine – other cast members refused to eat lunch near me sometimes. Lucky’s dad Mike plays my dad onscreen.
FY: In the current crop of remakes and PG-13 horror films, do you think original and R-rated horror films have a chance? What do you think about the box office failure of Grindhouse (read our review) and other original, hard R horror films?
LYT: I don’t want to get into this question too much since I’m working on an article on this very topic, featuring your bad self among others. But I will say that I think focusing on the rating is silly. I don’t think anyone ever says “Hey honey, let’s go see a PG-13 movie tonight!” Rating is one of the last factors in deciding what to see. And there are plenty of great movies both R and PG-13. Most of the profits nowadays come from the DVD anyway, and no-one stops kids from seeing R-rated DVDs – even if one set of parents does, those at a friend’s house won’t.
The failure of Grindhouse was a huge shame, but it was selling a particular kind of nostalgia to kids who never experienced the original thing. I’m fortunate enough to have seen some of the Grindhouse Releasing double features in L.A., but some kid in Ohio or wherever who’s never been to one of those is more likely to just be annoyed by the scratchy print.
The biggest issue I have with remakes right now is that I think the Friday the 13th series should be allowed to get to part 13 before you reboot. If you count Freddy VS. Jason, it’s only two movies away. Don’t fuck it up now. My dad always used to claim I’d make part 13 one day, and my idea for it was to have Jason stalking the survivors of a nuclear war – by the end there’s no one left on earth for him to kill. If the producers of the series are reading this, I’d still like to write that. And buy some of my other scripts too, dammit! Roger Corman bought one back in the day, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for you. Getting scripts to the right people is still a bitch and a half. I have several available.
FY: What should horror audiences be looking forward to in the year 2008?
LYT: WICKED LAKE! Also Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train, Eli Roth’s Cell, Darren Lynn Bousman’s crazy-looking musical [Repo: The Genetic Opera]…and I’m not sure if this has been announced anywhere else yet, but it’s no secret – Lucky McKee is the director of the full-length behind-the-scenes documentary for the Wicked Lake DVD, and let’s just say it isn’t going to be your standard run-of-the-mill doc. I’m looking forward to it every bit as much as Wicked itself. The strike may screw up a lot of stuff, though – truly indie horror may be the only option!
FY: What are your plans and what are you looking forward to in 2008?
LYT: For myself, there are a couple things on the horizon, that I hope maybe I can come back and talk to you about sometime next year…at the very least you should see a new Hatanaka movie. I’ve also been kicking around some ideas for something to write and direct myself – one horror, the other not. But I’m all talk at this point. I need to kick my ass into gear on that.
Or someone rich should give me money.
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