The Independent Film Corner: Hal Masonberg interview

Hal Masonberg is a director, who directed the film “The Plague” back in 2006 which Clive Barker executive produced. He was then later thrown off the project during post-production of the film when the the production company didn’t like his cut of the film and instead the company decided to re-cut the film from scratch to the point where Masonberg’s vision and story for the film was destroyed as the film became one of those senseless horror films. Today, Hal Masonberg is here to talk about his petition to have his cut of the film released on DVD and the reasons behind wanted his version of the film to be seen by the general public.

1) Tell me about yourself and why you got into directing?

I’d always wanted to make films. Ever since I was a kid. Even before I knew what a “director” was, I knew I wanted to be the guy who made that thing I was watching. While most of my friends wanted to be this actor or that character, I wanted to be the guy who told the story they were in.

I was lucky enough to grow up going to films all through the late 60’s and into the 70’s so I was exposed to some pretty amazing storytelling techniques, styles, structure… I saw 2001 in its initial release and it changed my life. I was mesmerized, my imagination stirred, my mind reeling, my senses tingling… I couldn’t wait to see it again. And I was the kid who went back over and over again to any film I liked. Oftentimes alone, sometimes with friends. And since this was before video existed, I would go to rep houses to see classic films, which were also on TV regularly so I grew up with the whole gamut of movies made since the dawn of film. I couldn’t get enough!

When college rolled around, I knew that’s what I wanted to study. I went to Sweden to study film and theater. I have always had a great love of foreign films, especially as American cinema became less daring and more predictable, it was films from other countries that did for me what the films of the 70’s and earlier had done.

Then I moved to Seattle, worked for the Seattle International Film Festival for 3 years, and then came to L.A. to try to and break into the film biz. Of course, that was before I realized “the biz” was just that: folks more attracted and excited by the business end of things, than actual lovers of film. With some exceptions, of course.

2) Before I get to your petition and the problems that surround your film, tell my readers about your film "The Plague"?

THE PLAGUE was a script written by my writing partner at the time, Teal Minton, and myself. It was written for me to direct. The reason we chose to make a horror film was simply because both of us had loved horror when we were younger, but felt the genre had gone in a very different direction over the last 15-20 years and was no longer turning out the kinds of horror films we wanted to see. Or, at least, very rarely. Both Teal and I admired how the horror films we grew up watching almost always dealt with existing social fears. The communist scare in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS; a woman’s sacrificial role in society in ROSEMARY’S BABY; a parent’s horror at witnessing what their child is going through and feeling helpless to understand it, no less do anything about it in THE EXORCIST. These films used the genre to explore through metaphor and analogy. And the fears they tapped into were very primal. And those fears were based in character, in humanity. And this is what we wanted to explore. For us, the theme was children and violence in society. While we were shopping the script around, Columbine happened. It was horrifying and exactly what we had written about. Not directly, but thematically.

The other thing about THE PLAGUE was that we wanted to take the genre and not go where people expected it to go. We wanted to engage our audience as participants, not just during the film, but afterwards as well. We wanted to allow our audience to walk away with different opinions as to what the film was about and how it ended, what it meant, what they felt. We wanted to ask questions, not answer them. We wanted to leave that up to the audience. We felt they were smart enough.

We also didn’t want it to be a slasher film. We insisted most of the physical violence happen off-screen where the imagination could raise it to new heights.

3) What was it like to work with James Van Der Beek and Dee Wallace?

I will confess that I had never seen James in anything before. I had never watched Dawson’s Creek, hadn’t seen VARSITY BLUES… I think James’ performance in the Writers and Director’s Cut of THE PLAGUE is really strong. I think folks who were apprehensive about “Dawson” in a horror film would be really thrilled to see him here. I think it would have been a great boost to his career had his performance been seen. However, in the producers’ cut–which is the only cut currently available—I think his performance has been seriously compromised through editing choices I would not, personally, have made.

Which brings us to Dee. Dee Wallace is one of the most committed, wonderful actresses I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. And the heartfelt, powerhouse performance she gave in THE PLAGUE is mostly on the cutting room floor. And what IS in the film is not put together in a way that I think even comes close to doing justice to the authenticity of her acting and her extraordinary ability to engage with other actors. However, in the Writers & Director’s cut, I believe her performance soars! It’s a whole different performance, a whole different film.

4) Why did you want to make this film an adult oriented horror film?

I think I answered a lot of that above, but I’ll add to it that Teal and I simply wanted to make a horror film that we, as adults, would go see ourselves. We both felt pretty certain that we weren’t the only adults out there who appreciated smart horror with rich characters and were having a hard time finding it in an age when most horror films are geared toward teens and young adults and are a bit more focused on quick scares mixed with great makeup and effects. All good things, to be sure, but not what we were looking for and certainly not what we were interested in making. The sad part of this tale, of course, is that seems to be exactly what the producers ended up trying to turn this film into! One of Clive’s producers said to me as he started re-cutting the film after having me removed, “We’re cutting down the characters and turning this into a killer-kid film.” That’s verbatim.

5) Now, tell me, what happened during post production that caused you to be thrown off of this project?

One of the producers confided in me when we got back to L.A. that someone high up wanted this to be a very different film from the one we made. This was before a single frame had been cut together. My best guess from what I’ve put together is that the production company was telling us what we wanted to hear as filmmakers, and telling Sony Screen Gems what they wanted to hear as the distributor. Now I never met with anyone at Sony throughout this whole process so I don’t blame them at all. But the production company producers told us that we would not be going after a domestic distributor until after we did film festivals to find the proper audience and distributor. And we all agreed that was the best route. We were also told that the film’s financing had come from foreign pre-sales. Well, what I was told only recently was that the film had been financed by Sony from the get-go! Which, of course, is a great thing if everyone’s on the same page.

So back in L.A., I had six weeks to put together a rough cut of the film--an incredibly short time--and I chose to have one of Clive Barker’s producers with me throughout so that Clive’s interests would be engaged. We put together the best cut possible in that short amount of time we were given (I actually even started a week earlier than scheduled just so we could have as much time as humanly possible), and we tried to incorporate many of the notes of the 14 producers on this project as they came to us. The understanding was that we would get it to the best place possible then continue editing together after those six weeks were up to maximize our time. You see, after the director takes his shot at it, the producers then have a go at it. That’s in the contract. Clive’s producers promised that we would be working together on this all the way through and that the film did NOT have to be completed in those 6 weeks. Oddly, the producer who had been in the room with me claimed that he LOVED the cut we’d put together and believed Clive would be thrilled with it. Well, word was that he wasn’t. I tried to talk to Clive, but that never happened. I felt his producers did everything they could to keep us separated.

Simply put, I was told in the most abusive and unprofessional way possible that my services were no longer needed by people I had put my total and complete trust and faith in. I had committed eight years of my life to getting this film made. And now it was on its way to becoming everything I had fought so long and hard to ensure it wasn’t. I was beyond devastated.

My manager called the guy in charge of THE PLAGUE over at Sony Screen Gems and was told that Sony owned the film now and they saw no reason for the writers and director to be involved. I found that pretty shocking. Particularly since they’d never met or spoken with me. All the folks I’d worked with at Sony in the past on other projects had always been great, creative collaborators and really decent people. This was an entirely new attitude toward filmmakers that I’d never seen before. Not at Sony.

6) When did you realize in your own mind that you were losing control of your film?

I could sense something was wrong about halfway through editing. One of Clive’s producers had become very distant, very cold and unfriendly and I knew that wasn’t a good sign. And since I’d already been told that someone high up wanted this to be a different film from the one we had spent 8 years making… I knew there was trouble ahead. I expressed my concern to my agent at the time, but he felt there was nothing to worry about.

7) After you were thrown off the project, when did you decide to fight back and start a petition and the spreading the plague website to get your own cut of the film released?

I decided pretty quickly that I was going to finish the film anyway. I was falling into a deep, deep depression, had a lot of anger and bitterness and sadness… But I had the dailies on DVD (sadly, not the 35mm negative) and knew I could put together the version of the film that I had made. Which, you should know, was going to be quite different from the rough cut we had raced to put together. That was a very incomplete film, in my opinion. I went up to Canada and stayed with my girlfriend at the time and spent those many winter months transferring the footage and starting to edit. Then I came back to L.A., basically created a post-production facility in my living room with my Mac, and lived and breathed THE PLAGUE for the next 8 months or so. After finishing the edit, I learned sound design, visual effects, how to create a strong temp score, etc. And it was the most incredible experience! I mean, I was in heaven. Every performance, every nuance of the film I’d made was right there and it was really coming together. There’s simply no way to know 6 weeks in an editing room what you have on your hands. Especially if you’re working with an editor whose taste and style doesn’t match or enhance your own. It does no justice to the film, the performers, or the audience to race through like that. It’s a lose/lose scenario in my opinion. I learned that, for me, editing is an incredibly intimate experience. It’s not just technical. And I knew from that point on that I never wanted to make another film without submerging myself completely in that part of the journey.

8) How much was Clive Barker actually really involved with the film and your opinion of him?

Though the producers’ cut is called CLIVE BARKER’S THE PLAGUE, the film is not based on any Barker work, nor was it written or directed by him. Clive was not present on set. However, it was his company and his producers that I worked closely with for 3 years and Clive and I met and talked about the film quite a few times throughout the process. He was always friendly and engaging. The sense I got from his producers was that he didn’t know much about what was going on outside of his own personal projects. They would constantly tell me, “Don’t talk to Clive about that. He doesn’t know what’s going on.” To the best of my knowledge, it was Clive’s producers who had me removed from the film --and they claimed to be doing it because Clive didn’t like the direction the film was going. They also claimed it was Clive who didn’t want me present at any screenings or presentations. Of course, this is simply what they told my manager and myself. Who knows the truth? Again, I never got to speak with Clive personally after I was removed from the film. But I always thought it odd that as a director himself and someone who has had films taken away from him (LORD OF ILLUSIONS & NIGHTBREED, if I’m not mistaken), that he would then turn around and take a film away from another director without even so much as having a conversation with that person. It always struck me as odd. And didn’t seem in sync with the man I had met who came across very smart and very supportive.

9) Tell me about your petition and the documentary that can be seen on the website at http://www.spreadingtheplague.com/?

After completing my cut, I sent it to the guy in charge of our film over at Screen Gems. He told my manager that he “scanned through it”, wasn’t interested. Since Screen Gems decided to release the producers’ cut, which I assumed was closer to what they had envisioned for the film, I waited a good 8 months or so after the film came out on DVD before I started my campaign. Though it was tough, I didn’t want to hamper the sales of their version as I knew it would directly reflect my chances of getting my cut released later on. Once I put up the web site and “went public”, as it were, I think the sales for their cut of the film actually spiked! I asked some of the actors and crew involved if they were interested in talking about the 2 cuts and they were. So I put together a mini-documentary of sorts (more talking head interviews, really) and put it up on the site and Youtube. I started doing radio shows, being written about on the internet: chat rooms, forums, articles. MovieMaker Magazine asked me to write about my experiences on THE PLAGUE (that article was featured in their Fall 2007 issue). Things really took off. I started a petition to Screen Gems that’s still going strong, recently asked folks to write to Sony Home Entertainment expressing their desire to see the WRITERS & DIRECTOR’S CUT and apparently e-mails have been pouring in… The site’s ever-growing, ever-expanding. You can visit it at http://www.spreadingtheplague.com. There’s always something new there. It’s been very satisfying, not to mention cathartic.

10) Have you had any contact with Sony since their cut of the film has been released?

Only recently, due to the email campaign, I’ve spoken to a couple of folks in the Home Entertainment division and they’ve been very responsive and friendly. I’m hoping that experience continues and we find a way to get this cut of the film out to the public together. I think if nothing else, they’ll make a good chunk of money from it!

My history with Sony goes way back. I worked in the publicity department back in the early nineties, the sound guys over at Sony did the foley work on my short film, MRS. GREER, and I sold my first screenplay to Sony and worked with Chris Lee for over a year (1999-2000). Hell, the first real film set I was ever on was at Sony. Spielberg’s HOOK. Amazing set. I’ve fulfilled several childhood dreams on that lot! And I hope to have a continued relationship with Sony Pictures. And I’d love that relationship to continue with a release of THE PLAGUE: WRITERS & DIRECTOR’S CUT on DVD and Blu-Ray, not to mention more projects in the future. They’re a great company.

Bonus Questions:

11) Tell me what projects you are currently working on besides trying to get your cut of the film released?

I have a new project titled, CLEAN, which is a psychological thriller set mostly in England. I wrote the script myself based on an idea Teal and I had years ago. I’m working with a fabulous producer named Amyra Bunyard and her production company Lock & Loru Productions. We’ll be maintaining creative control throughout so that what happened on THE PLAGUE doesn’t happen on CLEAN.

12) What advice would you give to any director that wants to go out and make his own film?

Make the film you want to make. If the end result you want is for people to see the film you made, the story you want to tell them in the way you want to tell it, never give up creative control. To anyone. Not even your mother! I know it sounds bitter and paranoid, but there are more than enough directors--from the most famous to the entirely unknown--who will tell you the same thing. And when your lawyer or your agent tells you that no director gets final cut, know that he or she is dead wrong. You may not get final cut at a studio, but if maintaining creative control is important to you, there are other ways to get your films made. Stay true to yourself.

Frank Capra’s once gave some advice to a few young, upcoming directors on the Dick Cavett show back in 1972. What he said was this:

“I think it’s up to you younger fellas, right now… If Hollywood is dying it’s because you haven’t got control of your own films yet. And you have to find a way to get control of your films away from those who consider film as some leisure-time investment… It’s gotta come back into the hands of the creative people. And until it does, you’re gonna have people who don’t give a damn whether Hollywood makes it or not.”

Those young directors Mr. Capra shared these words with were Mel Brooks, Peter Bogdanovich and Robert Altman.

That was over 30 years ago. But I think, in many ways, Mr. Capra’s words still have the ring of truth.

I want to thank you for your time and good luck getting your cut of "The Plague" released on DVD, as I'm pulling for you and on your future projects

To sign the petition and check out the documentary on Hal Masonberg’s fight to have version of “The Plague” released. I urge you to check it out at: http://www.speadingtheplague.com/

Please, I urge to sign this petition, Sony is watching. Help Hal Masonberg get his version released to the public.

In the next edition of Ten Questions, I will have the first part of my two-part interview with the head of Shock-O-Rama and Seduction Cinema, Michael Raso.

Until next time, my name is Anthony Thurber and that’s Ten Questions.