One of the more prolific writers in the UK indie scene, writer Chris Regan has amassed a nice selection of credits as a screenwriter mainly working on action or thriller works. Now, in honor of the release of his latest film Paintball Massacre, I talk with him about his beginnings as a writer, some of his early works and making the film itself.
Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. First off, where did you get the urge to get into writing? Were you always into writing growing up?
Chris Regan: Yes, I used to read all the time, I was really into Clive Barker and William Gibson so I started out writing short stories and had a go at a couple of novels. When I was a teenager my interests moved more towards film and it was around the time people like Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith were releasing their first films so I was also familiar with how those films came about. It suddenly seemed like filmmaking was a thing people could choose to do, which hadn’t occurred to me before. I learned screenwriting format from a copy of the True Romance script that was given away free with a movie magazine, although it would be many years and many abandoned screenplays later before I had anything produced.
Me: Were you always into genre films growing up? What films specifically got you into watching horror or other genre movies?
CR: Yes, I blame my dad. He showed me Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein when I was a kid and I loved it, and then from there, I watched all the classic Universal monsters, the Roger Corman Poe adaptations, a bunch of Hammer horrors, John Carpenter movies, all that stuff. I generally enjoy films of all genres but horror has always been my favorite. I carried my Clive Barker obsession over into films as well and loved Hellraiser and Nightbreed. I think partly I was fascinated with Barker because on one hand he came from Liverpool, which wasn’t all that far from where I grew up so what he’d done seemed somehow achievable, and yet at the same time his work was so otherworldly and strange that I could never imagine being able to write anything like it. I was into Romero as well, I remember watching Dawn of the Dead and the same day I happened to visit our local shopping mall at a very busy time and suddenly that film made sense on a different level, which was a real revelation for me.
Me: Is there any specific type of genre you prefer writing? Is there any style or format you find easier to get into even without a preference?
CR: I love writing horror although Paintball Massacre is the first horror feature I’ve worked on, before this I’ve mostly written action and crime films. The thing I love about such clearly defined genres as action and horror are that the audience has so many expectations from the genre that it can be fun to find ways to subvert those expectations. I also think there’s more room to explore ideas in genre films than people think. Overall though I’m pretty comfortable writing in any genre as long as I can find something about the stories and characters that are interesting.
Me: When writing a new project, what’s the one fall-back tactic that you’re always able to draw inspiration from?
CR: I usually look for a moment or a character that I can relate to or that will somehow set the tone of the film and it’s not usually the main character or even a big moment. Often, it’s not even something that will make it to the final cut of the film, but if I start with that one scene it helps me find my way into the narrative and then I’ll work back from there. In Paintball Massacre there’s a character called Sara who is the typical slasher-movie stoner character because there has to be one, it’s a rule. I wanted to give her this profound revelation about what’s happening to them that she arrives at through her obsession with Star Trek movies. I had a monologue from an abandoned script about Star Trek 5 that I always liked because when you describe the plot of Star Trek 5 to someone it sounds like it couldn’t possibly be a real film. I reworked that monologue to fit the situation and it set the tone of the film so the rest of it flowed from that moment. In the end, we replaced Star Trek with something more appropriate to the ages of the characters that worked even better. It will seem ridiculous when you see the scene in the film because it seems like such a throwaway comedic moment, but that monologue was the moment that connected me to the characters and helped me figure out the tone of the whole piece.
Me: Your first script, for ‘Ten Dead Men,’ came from a story by Ross Boyask and P.I. Hobden. How did you get attached to that project? Was adapting a story from others a greater challenge than you expected?
CR: Ten Dead Men was a strange one because the writing process was a bit more organic than I’m used to now. I’d worked with Ross and Phil on a webcomic and we’d discussed a couple of film projects before we settled on Ten Dead Men. There was no budget and we shot on weekends in and around Brighton, where we all lived at the time. It’s a revenge story, very similar to Point Blank, and I wrote a basic script around the structure of this guy killing the men who wronged him but once we started shooting the actual circumstances would change from week to week depending on who was available and what we had access to. I remember one meeting that ended with Phil explaining they’d sourced a helicopter and possibly a naval warship so I’d need to write those in. The ship and the chopper didn’t work out in the end but we did wreck a few cars and there are some insane stunts in the film. When the shooting was finished I then wrote another draft to pull all these random action set-pieces together and we brought in Doug Bradley from Hellraiser to narrate it in the style of a fairy tale. It’s a raw, rough, mess of a film but I’m still really proud of that one. So, Ross and Phil’s story credits are more to do with the circumstances there but generally, I’ve always written from someone else’s story. The biggest challenge is when the producer or director has a scene that they want you to include for whatever reason that doesn’t fit into the story. I’ve learned to pick my battles as a writer though and sometimes it’s easier to include something throwaway that you may not agree with if it means you can fight for the more important moments.
Me: As well, you also directed the two shorts involving ‘Jenny Ringo’ while writing the first one. How did you get attached to those projects?
CR: After a few years of working on other peoples’ projects, I decided I wanted to try making my own. There’s always been a big filmmaking community in Brighton and I knew from Ten Dead Men that I’d be able to find a crew so I made a series of three short films based on an unproduced screenplay I’d written when I was at university. The films were about a witch, Jenny Ringo, who is awful at magic. They were very ambitious because I wanted to try to get everything I’ve ever wanted to do in them so there are musical numbers and practical creature effects and surreal comedy sequences. They were really hard work to make and not everything worked out as well as I hoped but I enjoyed making them and I learned so much about filmmaking, which also informed my writing going forward. I still keep going back to that character, I just published a novel called The Library of Lost Souls, which is another Jenny Ringo adventure.
Me: So, that brings us to your new film 'Paintball Massacre.' How did you approach the story with this one?
CR: I started by thinking about my only experience with paintball and took some inspiration from that. I remember driving to this place in the middle of nowhere with a couple of people who were hungover from the night before and then the genuine concern that we were going to be seriously injured when we read through the disclaimers. Also, the opposing team took paintball way more seriously than we did so some of that conflict made it into the film. I also thought about reunions I’d been to and how everyone kind of slips back into the personas they had when they knew each other before, so I worked that into the story too. It was really important to me that the characters were interesting.
I’ve always felt there are two things 99% of slasher films do wrong and the first is not making us care about the characters. I think in the ‘80s especially there was this idea that the appeal of slasher films was related solely to the kills and how gory and innovative they could be. The side effect of this was that so many writers of slasher films focused on this rather than the characters and in most cases even made the characters deliberately shallow because of this idea that the audience could then take some pleasure in their death. I’ve always thought this was the wrong way of going about it and the best slasher films are always the ones where you care about the characters because then the tension and the violence have so much more impact. I wanted to make sure that the audience cared about all the characters in Paintball Massacre. You don’t have to like them all but they all have their personalities and their struggles that hopefully, the audience can relate to so the inevitable kills have a bit more impact.
The other thing that most slasher films get wrong is not giving them enough story. The structure of most slasher films is odd because the characters don’t generally know what’s going on until two-third of the way through, sometimes even longer. The usual Hero’s Journey structure doesn’t fit because who is the central protagonist of a slasher film? If you look at most of the Friday 13th films, the first three in particular, you can’t say that the camp counselors are the protagonists because they’re not moving the story forward; it’s Jason and his mother who move the story forward in those films because they’re the ones who have had their world disrupted by the arrival of these kids. The problem is that it’s difficult to tell an entertaining story from the point of view of a killer so most of the screen-time is made up of these random scenes with the victims that don’t go anywhere dramatically because the victims aren’t there to move the story forward. My biggest concern was how to keep the story moving whilst not filling the scenes with nothing dialogue that’s only there to pad things out until the next kill.
To address this, I approached it more like an Agatha Christie murder mystery so the characters aren’t just trying to survive, they’re actively trying to figure out what’s happening to them and who is responsible. I went back and read And Then There Were None and what struck me is that this novel from 1939 reads like the prototype for a slasher film. There’s even a moment in that book where a Crazy Ralph type character warns the main characters not to go to the island where they will ultimately be killed. I’m not the first writer to apply a whodunnit structure to a slasher film but I was surprised by the similarities between the genres and deciding on that approach helped with the script.
Me: Was there anything while writing the characters that you were surprised by in telling the story?
CR: There’s a character called Lauren and I wanted her to be the kind of person you would hate to be around in real life but is quite fun to watch. I think she has one of the most interesting story arcs in the film because she’s someone who has worked hard at cruelty as a form of self-preservation, I think probably from necessity. I knew if she was in a scene, I would have her sabotage and undermine the others however she could but I was surprised with the extremes she would go to sometimes.
Me: Lastly, what else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers? Thank you again for your time!
CR: I just published a book called The Library of Lost Souls, about the witch character from the short films I mentioned earlier, Jenny Ringo. It’s set in a university library and something has happened to the students so they’re all walking around with no faces and there is a giant plant and a demon turns up at the end - it’s all the extreme, weird fantasy stuff I’d never be able to do in a film. It’s a comedy horror, but similar to Paintball Massacre I try to keep the horror and comedy separate, so what’s happening is scary but it’s the way the characters react to it that makes it a comedy. It’s available on Amazon right now (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FY19W86) and I’m in the process of writing the next in the series.
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