I'm not sure there's much I can say by way of an introduction to this interview since the two people I converse with only have three feature credits between them. Two years ago, not long after seeing THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE at Fantastic Fest 2009, I got the chance to speak to its very personable writer-director Tom Six. I make no apologies about how much fun I had with THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, but more importantly, I believe that actor Dieter Laser's Dr. Heiter is one of the greatest screen villains in the last 10 years, easily.
But it was clear from the early teaser trailers for THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 that Six was not just upping the game in terms of violence, perversion and other forms of depravity, but that he was also making a film with a vastly different tone. On that front, he succeeds, with a stark black-and-white movie starring one of the sickest and strangest-looking human beings the big screen has ever seen, a man-child named Martin, played by British newcomer Laurence R. Harvey (not to be confused with the late star of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE; believe me, you won't get confused).
In many U.S. cities (including Chicago), the film opens at midnight shows this weekend. In Chicago, I'll be playing host for a prize-filled Friday midnight screening at the Music Box Theatre, the same Chicago venue where the original HUMAN CENTIPEDE repeatedly sold out for months on end. Barf bags will be included in the goodie bags for the first 100 attendees, so get there early.
Much like the first film, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 will be divisive among both horror fans and ans of the original movie, and I think that's a good thing. As a bonus for me (and you), the day before my interview with Six last week, I was talk Harvey would be joining us on the call, which made me very excited since we don't really hear Martin's voice in the film at all, and I was truly curious what this creature sounded like. Turns out, he has a pleasant, soothing voice and is a big fan of extreme cinema, as you'll read. Please enjoy my talk with Tom Six and Laurence R. Harvey, and beware of spoilers scattered like so much fecal matter throughout the interview…
Laurence Harvey: Hello, Steve?
Capone: Yes, hi.
LH: Hi, this is Laurence. They are just going to put Tom on another line in the next room.
Tom Six: Hello, Steve. This is Tom.
Capone: Hi, Tom. How are you?
TS: Very well thank you. You too?
Capone: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if you recall, we spoke a couple of years ago right after Fantastic Fest.
TS: Ah, great.
Capone: It's good to talk to you again, and Laurence, it’s good to actually hear your voice.
[Everyone Laughs]
Capone: Laurence, where did you come from? And Tom, how did you find this wonderful man?
TS: Wonderful man, he is, and a brilliant actor as well. I did the casting in London, and I wanted a character that was completely the opposite from Dr. Heiter, who was long and thin. I wanted a small and fat character, so I saw about eight actors and I was very disappointed until the moment when Laurence entered the room, and he had an amazing presence, and his eyes are incredible. And we put a camera on him., and he has such an amazing screen presence, and then I let him play some scenes, because looks alone aren’t enough. Yeah he played the character of Martin so convincingly, and then I wanted to see what he was up for, and in the end I asked him to play a rape scene for me, then he grabbed a chair, and he raped it and I thought, “My God, this is my man.” So yeah, Laurence is a genius actor, because not many actors can fill a whole feature film without speaking.
LH: Where I came from, I studied fine arts and got into performance art quite early on. Since 1990, I’ve just been involved in the performance art scene in the UK, the live art scene. I’ve been performing for gallery audiences and stuff until the mid-'90s, when an artist I had worked with in performance art, he was doing characters for like Saturday morning shows, so I got into children’s TV.
[Everyone Laughs]
Capone: That makes me feel so much better.
LH: I did a character called “Little Green Man,” which kind of took off. Then I got an agent who does film and adverts, so I did adverts around Europe, and I did a series of adverts in America, and everyone said, “This is going to take off,” but they never got shown. Basically, I did some short films, but kept all of the TV and film stuff off IMDB before the release of this film, because we wanted to keep some of the mystery about who I was and let people react to Martin as they find him.
Capone: And how do you rape a chair exactly? Or will that be on the DVD?
LH: I keep pestering Tom, he should put it on the DVD. [Laughs] Well what it was was at the casting… first of all, Tom talked through the whole film scene by scene and then was giving me a few bits from it, including one bit where Martin’s mother rips up his book, and then Martin takes a crowbar to her and goes a bit far. The thing is at the moment, because I had to move out of London a few years ago and I put my self in storage in London; I was expecting to move into another house within like four months kind of thing, but that all fell through. So I ended up stranded with my parents with all of my stuff in storage in London. So I then returned to this small town outside of Manchester,it’s not at all a kind of urban area. And when you live with your parents, obviously they treat you as a child. So when Tom was telling me about Martin I could really kind of relate to him.
Also, because I’m really into extreme cinema, be it arthouse stuff or be it horror. I love Japanese "pink" films and "pinky violence" stuff. So I just kind of imagined my mum finding my Japanese stash and throwing it out, and I would consider it justifiable homicide to cave her head in with crowbar and I really kind of went for it in the audition. So then Tom and Ilnoa [Six, Tom's sister and co-producer] were a bit shellshocked by my attacking my mum like that, and then Tom kind of said, “We’d be interested to see if you could do this scene, the rape scene,” and I thought, “Well, I’m not going to get this, so I might as well really go for it.”
In performance art, one of the workshop things you do is you use different objects in ways that are not usually used, like you try to wear them or whatever. So I needed something that was about the right height for a centipede’s backside, so I just flipped a chair over knowing that it was about the right height once you got the back up and the edge of the back and the edge of the seat on the floor, so you’ve got this little triangle thing, and the legs all would be something to hold onto and grip while thrusting.
Capone: Unfortunately, I can envision that.
[Everyone Laughs]
Capone: A lot of people who saw it at Fantastic Fest were saying that this was your comment on the fanbase of the first film, and also maybe a comment on the detractors of the first film. Was that the intention?
TS: Yeah, when I was writing the first script, I always knew that I wanted the basic idea of the film to be more phychological. In part two, I wanted to go full force, because Part 1 is psychological, and I wanted the audience to get used to this idea first, and I knew that audiences would like to see more in Part 2. What happens is because there was a big hype in the world, they expected to see much more than in Part 1, and everybody on the internet was writing, “We want to see shit flying. We want to have blood and everything,” and I really used that in Part 2. I said, “You want it all? I’m going to give it all to you.” And I do that in such a fashion that is really like over the top and it’s also a comment on all of the death threats I got. I got so many on Facebook and I said in the media, “Guys, it’s only a movie. It’s make believe. Don’t take it so seriously.” And that’s why I used the second one and do it like ten times worse, but in an over-the-top way and really I wanted to have these elements in Part 2.
LH: Yeah, it’s not attacking the socially inept overweight fans. The film’s not saying they're all Martins. When the tabloids come out with this kind of fantasy figure of the person that copies a film, they never have been violent before, but suddenly they see a violent film and then go out and commit violence. It is a fantasy. That doesn’t happen in life. People who are predisposed to violence are going to commit violence at some stage anyway, whether it’s because of the Bible or the Koran or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE that inspires the way they do it.
If somebody’s got a gun and they're going to shoot somebody, the fact that they hold it like Chow Yun Fat does in THE KILLER is neither here nor there. The event is still the same; somebody still gets shot. I like how Tom kind of satirizes that and says, “If a fan is going to copy a violent horror film, surely there are easier films to copy. There are easier ways of killing somebody or torturing them then actually trying to make a human centipede. It’s such an over-the-top idea that Tom really kind of sent it into fantasy excess by the end.
Capone: Tom, you mentioned that you wanted Martin to physically look different than the doctor. The doctor certainly loved the sound of his own voice, and we don’t even get to hear Martin's voice very much. Why did you sort of go that silent route?
TS: Yeah, absolutely. All of those elements really helped the personality of Martin, and the original intent I had in the script was to have Martin saying sentences that he copies from Dr. Heiter, like “Feed her” and stuff, but when we did the audition with Laurence…
LH: I forgot to say anything. [laughs]
TS: Yeah, he forgot to say his lines and he was just looking at the camera, and I thought, “It’s much scarier if the person doesn’t talk at all,” and that makes the whole film much more uncomfortable to watch, and that really helps with the contrast as well. Dr. Heiter had a lot of power, and Martin has no power at all; he’s just living in his own world and creating his fantasy. And the black and white stuff, I used the clinical colors in Part 1 and the steady-camera work, and in Part 2, I used a completely different look. I wanted it dirty, dark; it’s all hand held, and the black and white really helps that story, helped the story of Martin. And I did a little not to SCHINDLER’S LIST, eh?
Capone: [Laughs] Careful…
TS: Yeah, he did the red dress, and I did the brown diarrhea as an ode.
Capone: Laurence, I'm guessing you know this, but when I saw your name on the screen I did a double take because obviously there was another actor named Laurence Harvey that was quite famous many years ago.
LH: Well, it’s my real name, whereas it wasn’t his. So it’s caused me problems with Actors' Equity. So that’s where there was a middle initial comes from. I really like Laurence Harvey’s stuff, especially THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, and he did a film [WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH, his final film] toward the end of his life where he played a swinging playboy photographer who lures people back to his house and eats them. So yeah, I thought it was nice for Laurence Harvey to be in a horror film.
Capone: We see Martin use an inhaler a lot. I assume he’s asthmatic or something like that, and for a while I thought he might be dying and that this whole experiment was one last rampage before he dies. Explain that choice.
TS: Yeah, absolutely, and his mother threatens to kill him, eh? Dr. Heiter had a lot of power, and I wanted to have a villain who's not actually a villain, but a villain that is so weak. He’s asthmatic. He has to stop all of the time [due to coughing fits]. So as an audience, you watch it and think, “My God, is he dying? We want to see more. We want to see him create the human centipede even.” But imagine the victims, they watch him, and he’s inhaling his asthma inhaler. You can almost laugh at it, but at the same time you feel pity for that guy. I have never seen a horror bad guy using an asthma inhaler.
Capone: You were talking before about the way that the first film quickly instilled itself into pop culture worldwide.
TS: Yeah.
Capone: What were some of the craziest tributes that you saw? I mean merchandise, t-shirts, key chains of the centipede drawing. Then of course, "South Park" did a wonderful episode.
TS: And "Beavis and Butt-head" are too coming up in the new season.
Capone: Are they doing something too?
TS: Yeah, they discuss THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, but it’s incredible, eh?
Capone: But what’s the craziest one that you've seen?
TS: Yeah, I saw so many things. Tattoos, of course, on people’s feet and arms, cat toys.
Capone: I saw those cat toys, yeah.
TS: It’s cool, right? We get sent Barbies, which they stitch out mouths. We get them sent from Amsterdam, or people giving toys to me. It’s one crazy ride and like actors that want to be in the centipede, they sent us emails and they were even willing to eat real shit. Some people are totally crazy.
Capone: I was going to ask about that, were there any famous people that came to you and said, “Hey if you make another one, I want to be in it”? Or maybe they just expressed an admiration for the film?
TS: Yeah, yeah, I spoke to Eli Roth, and he absolutely loved the film and he told us that Quentin Tarantino loved the film. I heard Tom Cruise got a special screening copy for himself from IFC, and there are famous people Twittering about the film. I haven’t been directly contacted by a famous person, because I think they're all a little afraid of me. At the same time, they enjoyed the film, but I think they think, “That must be a nutcase that made that.” In Hollywood yeah, it’s a really big thing for all of those people, yeah.
Capone: So obviously the British classification board gave you more publicity than you probably could have generated on your own. But I’m guessing at the time your reaction wasn’t quite so positive, or was it? Maybe it was.
TS: I had two strong emotions, one was, “Oh no." It’s amazing. Now I’m up there with only 11 films in 99 years. There’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and a Kubrick film…”
Capone: CLOCKWORK ORANGE, sure.
TS: I though this was amazing marketing, because I had promised people that Part 1 would be "My Little Pony” compard to Part 2. When then BBFC report came out, everybody says, “Wow, he isn’t lying.” On the other hand, I got very angry because I thought, “Who are they to judge whether grown ups can see a movie or not?” It’s an organization from the dinosaurs' era, because now you can import films from abroad, you can download films via the internet. It’s not from our time anymore. So our distributor is now going to court to get it unbanned. They're fighting really hard for that.
LH: Yeah, all power to Bounty [Films] and Eureka [Entertainment], they have really been behind the film and are really trying to challenge the BBFC.
TS: It’s really hard. They're working their asses off to get it unbanned, but we used that in American trailer and they were like “May cause harm to viewers.” It’s a really cool line to have on your film, eh?
Capone: Laurence this is your first feature, so this ban must be like a badge of honor for you right out of the gate, especially as a fan of extreme horror.
LH: Oh, absolutely. You talk to somebody that grew up during the Video Nasties campaign of the '80s. All of my friends, their families were getting like VHS players and they were seeing like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE EXORCIST and stuff. We didn’t get one until after the banning of all of these films, so I feel like I missed out on an education in Italian horror and exploitation film. I’ve always been interested in censorship from an academic point of view kind, because of that, and then this just seems to be something out of the blue. It’s not part of an orchestrated campaign. There are no papers saying “Let’s ban this sick film.” It seems to be something the BBFC have taken on their own. If you look at the last film that was banned, the Japanese film GROTESQUE, the write up for that is like a paragraph, and then ours seems to be like a full page in a magazine.
Capone: It’s almost a transcript.
LH: Right. It reads like a review in a feminist journal from the '80s, like not even nowadays. I think most kind of feminists would agree with a kind of post-feminist reading of the film. Or I think there would be different reactions from a feminist’s perspective than just the one that the BBFC has taken, and I think the sexual violence are only two instances of self abuse and the rape scene, and it depends on how you read the rape scene, because I think it’s Martin kind of trying to join in with the centipede as much as a rape. I don’t think Martin sees it as rape, but I think the audience should, because it shouldn’t be enjoyable for the audience; it should be a horrible thing. Martin is meant to be this sympathetic character, but his decisions and what he does are the really appalling things and he only reaches those decisions because he’s not equipped to make the decisions in the first place, you know?
Capone: Some of the things that were detailed in the statement about why it was banned, I didn’t see some of that in the movie. Have things been taken out for the American release? Is that true?
TS: Yeah, IFC is experimenting with two different versions, because there is sexual violence, they have restrictions I think from…
LH: MPAA.
TS: Exactly, so they only cut out a few minutes. That’s the only thing, and there will be also a director’s cut, and I’m very happy with that.
LH: In America, you’ve always got the recourse if it is cut in the cinema, there’s always the unrated version. We don’t have that in the UK. Even if there was a restricted rating, that would be handy, but it’s like you can't do that with a sex film, but you can’t do it with an extreme horror or even extreme art house kind of film. We need to have a debate in the UK about that where you should be able to get THUNDERCRACK! or IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES uncensored through a specialist art house distributor or online through from the cinema store or places like that.
Capone: Tom, dare I ask what you have in store for us for Part 3? THE FINAL SEQUENCE
TS: Oh yes, THE FINAL SEQUENCE. Part 3 is going to begin with the ending of Part 2, like it is with 1 and 2, so that in the end you can literally connect the three films like a centipede, and you'll have four-and-a-half hours of fun. Part 3 is going to have references from one and two, and it’s going to have a completely different angle again on the centipede story, completely as different as 2 was of 1. I won’t spoil what’s happening, but I’ve got something really crazy up my sleeve for the third part.
Capone: Was casting easier for you this time? You had to get about a dozen people for this new film. I know it took a while for the first one, I know you had people back out, and there were people who just couldn’t take it.
TS: Yeah, absolutely. For the second one, it was very easy. The film had already gained cult status, so actors wanted so desperately to be in THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE films. So I cast lots of actors, and when they came in at the auditions in London, they immediately went on their hands and knees and grabbed the butt in front of them and they started acting. I could just sit there behind my desk and look at the acting, so that saved so much therapy and work for them. It was very simple.
Capone: And then life after THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, what are you thinking about after you have completed this trilogy?
TS: I really want to explore the horror genre a little bit more. I think I’ve got some more original ideas. I would never make a film with a guy with an axe or something; I really think I’ve got something cool there. So after Part 3, I’m going to make a film in America, based out of L.A., and it has a very simple idea again, like the centipede idea, and I think it’s really going to be disturbing for people to watch. It has nothing to do with CENTIPEDE, but those are the kinds of films I want to make now, and when I am lacking in ideas for horror films, I go back to dark comedies.
Capone: I’m curious about your writing process, especially with the second script. Did you create the character first and then build the violent acts around him, or did you think up the violent acts first, and then build a character that would commit them?
TS: I had the two elements. The guy copying the first film, and when I was writing the first film, I had so many ideas that I couldn’t put in Part 1, since I really wanted to make it psychological. So every idea that would be too disgusting for Part 1, I shifted over to Part 2. So those ideas merged, and it was very easy for me to write the script of Part 2, because I had the crazy ideas and I had the kind of character already. So yeah, they developed together almost.
Capone: There are a couple of moments where Martin accidentally kills somebody, and he gets upset with himself, because I think he knows he can’t use dead bodies for what he wants, and it bothers him. There is actually a twisted conscience to him.
LH: Yeah, definitely. It’s all about the self, it’s not about empathy with the person who's dead. [Laughs]
Capone: Oh, I get that.
TS: He doesn’t feel empathy for his victims.
LH: But he’s like a child that’s only learning about emotion. We had this discussion about whether he had learning difficulties, and I said I wanted to shy away from the mental health problem side of things, as being kind of inherent within him. In discussion, we said that it’s his upbringing that leads to him being socially and emotionally retarded and that then affecting his schooling and so on. So he becomes locked into this abusive family that limits every aspect of development for him. Even though he is this kind of late 30s, mid-40s middle aged, overweight guy, he's still also a child developmentally-wise.
So when building the character, I kind of looked at, when we were shooting the film, I was staying with a friend who had two one-year-old children, and in the way that they kind of try on emotions and also compete with each other. You're never sure whether it’s a genuine emotion or whether they're putting something on in order to get attention. Also, the emotional responses are inappropriate. For a small, minor thing, they might really wail and bawl at the top of their lungs, whereas an adult would have mild irritation.
So I wanted to keep that about Martin, the fact that he doesn’t really know what to do with emotions, but he knows that he is trying to express something and it is more the frustration with not being able to build the centipede because somebody has died, because he made the wrong cut.
TS: It’s very funny also.
LH: He’s seen Dr. Heiter do it, so he’s come across an unforeseen problem.
Capone: Tom, you mentioned earlier when you first saw Laurence that he had these great eyes. Laurence, have your eyes always looked like that?
LH: Well yeah, it runs in my family.
Capone: They really do kind of…pop.
LH: Obviously, I exaggerate it through facial expressions. But yeah, my dad keeps getting us to the doctor for a thyroid test, it’s always the same.
Capone: I guess that’s what I was asking.
LH: I don’t have a thyroid problem.
Capone: You're just naturally gifted.
TS: Like Peter Lorre, they look the same a little bit.
LH: Yeah.
Capone: Laurence I’m assuming you'd seen the first film before you ever came in for this audition.
LH: Well, I agreed to come in the audition kind of because I got a free film out of it.
TS: Exactly.
LH: I think because Tom was seeing so many people for different parts in the film and also trying to have interviews for crew as well, he arranged a screening for people to get used to the idea, so that even though they may have heard about it on the internet--because it hadn’t been released even in America at that state. It was still going around the festivals. So he had a screening in the center of London, and I saw it there.
I knew about the film beforehand, because it was at Fright Fest, and I keep an eye out for things that are at Fright Fest, because the guys who [program] that usually have a good idea of what’s coming out. It was already on my radar, but I hadn’t seen it until the morning of the day when I went for casting. I saw the film, came out a complete fan, and thought, “I’m never going to get the lead role,” because Dieter [Laser] was such a magnificent lead in the first one, I thought, “Those are big shoes to fill, and I’m not going to get it. I’ll just be the neighbor that pops by for a cup of tea.” But I didn’t realize what happens to the neighbor in the film. It was literally like an hour and a half between the end of the film and going into the casting.
Capone: Alright. Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time to talk, and Laurence, I’m having a very hard time putting the voice with the face.
[Everyone Laughs]
LH: I am a nice person, very empathetic, unlike Martin.
TS: Absolutely, he is. Thank you so much for doing the interview again. I really appreciate it.
