Cinema Retro London
correspondent Mark Mawston recently covered the London tribute to John Landis'
classic horror flick An American Werewolf in London. (Click
here to read). Mark also got an advance look at the forthcoming documentary
Beware the Moon which will be the centerpiece of the forthcoming Blu-ray
special DVD edition. He recently sat down with the man behind the project, Paul
Davis for an inside look at how he overcame great odds to make his tribute to American
Werewolf a reality.
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Hair of the werewolf that bit him: John Landis at a recent London tribute to his classic horror film. (Photo: Mark Mawston. All rights reserved.)
Mark Mawston: Paul, it's wonderful that
something made by a fan for a fan has made it onto such an A list title. Why
did you decide to target AWIL? Was it out of love or that fact that you
simply thought there was a more comprehensive story to be told?
Paul Davis: An American Werewolf in
London was the first monster movie I ever saw. I must've been about 3
years-old when I watched it. I was a big fan of Michael Jackson and had ‘The
Making of Thriller’ on video, and through that I learned about Werewolf,
John Landis, Rick Baker etc. Because it showed you the ins and outs of
creating a film, and more importantly a monster, I was able to grasp at an
early age that movies were works of fiction. So from then on I could watch
anything and pretty much did. Fast forward some twenty odd years later and I
found myself writing a 25th Anniversary retrospective article on the film and
it just struck me that, while there are so many documentaries out there for
classic horror movies, this had nothing! I spoke to my partner Romy Alford and
she agreed to produce it with me, and I then got in touch with an
acquaintance who I knew was nifty behind a camera and was also an
editor, Anthony Bueno. So that's kind of where it came from. The three of
us just went out there and did it.
MM: John Landis said he couldn't believe
you'd pursued this without any real backing from him or Universal. Yet, he was
so pleased with what you'd compiled he decided to back you and pushed the
powers that be. That's a rare thing these days, but do you think it helped that
John was such a fan boy himself?Â
PD: The great thing about John is that
he is incredibly encouraging toward toward young filmmakers to just
go out there and make their movies - after all he did the same thing when
he was 21 with his first film Schlock. It must have been very weird
for him to have this kid from England making a movie about one of
his fondest films, and at the same time worrying because while John does
nurture new talent, he knew that it was going to be a large task for us to get
anywhere with the finished product. The film is owned by Universal and the
chances of a non entity making something and being taken seriously by a major
motion picture studio, as you said, rarely happens. There's a lot of risk
involved and a lot of strenuous legal work to clear before anything can
see the light of day. As soon as John knew that we were taking the
project very seriously and we had secured interviews with a lot of
cast and crew, that's when he really went to bat for us, and it literally
would not have seen the light of day were it not for John's bullying of
Universal to release it.Â
The folks at Cult Trailers have a wealth of irresistible trailers from our favorite films of the 1960s and 1970s. Click here to watch the original trailer for The Pink Panther starring Peter Sellers, David Niven and Capucine.Â