Interviews by Staci Layne Wilson

Check out our interview with the masterminds behind Repo! The Genetic Opera. This is part two of our uncut, in-depth interview with creators Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich, plus star Alexa Vega, conducted by Staci Layne Wilson before she saw the film in its entirety. Please read her review of the film here.

= = =

While the movie itself takes on some serious social, political and business issues, Repo! The Genetic Opera, a rock'n roll horror opera, really is meant to be fun and easily digestible.

Hopefully more digestible than star Alexa Vega's prop-pills and fizzy water for a certain scene in the movie, which shows Shilo downing her medication. "I swear I was either burping or farting mint for a week," the actress giggles immodestly, "We have this thing where I take pills, because I supposedly have this rare blood disease. There were mints that they would pour in my hands and then they put Alka-Seltzer in the water. And the director, Darren Bousman, wanted me to do these takes [over and over again], where I drink these pills and down the whole thing of water."

But if you think Bousman left all the gaseous games to his stars, you'd be wrong. There was always some kind of a distinct odor on the set last year in Toronto, and not all of it minty-fresh. In a scene cowriter and costar Zdunich and Vega share, his character, Grave Robber, is operating a dead body as a battering ram to escape from peril. "We use body, a disgusting, stinky, rotting corpse to knock down a wall. It really did stink."

Vega laughs at the memory. "I tried to think of what crew members they got tired of, chopped up, and put in this thing. Because they really have this kind of like… stink when you walked on set. All these bodies were piled up and once you break through the wall, it's just like bodies and bodies and more bodies. You are just kind of like, 'What is that smell?' It was either that, or Darren [Bousman] farting on set, which happened often."

Audiences will be saying 'What's that sound?' when Repo! The Genetic Opera is released in theaters nationwide in 2008.

= = =

Staci Layne Wilson: What's one of the more surreal moments in reality than happened while you guys were making this movie?

Terrance Zdunich: It was kind of surreal to be sitting at the piano in the lounge over there in that kind of mini mezzanine stage, and you had Paul Sorvino sitting on a chair in between Ogre and Bill Moseley and they all had their sheet music. Smith was playing piano, and they're working out the three-part harmonies, or whatever.  It was really surreal, and they were cracking jokes and doing their things and then, of course, you add Paris in the mix, and they're like literally facing each other like in a semi circle, singing, mi-mi-mi. It was kind of like, “How did we get here? This is so cool.”

Darren Smith: That's so cool because we did our first read through right here at this table, and I just remember going around the room and there is Paris over there and Paul and this is just bizarre. Hey, speaking of bizarre...

[pauses as Alexa Vega enters the recording studio]

Zdunich: Oh my goodness! I didn't know you'd be coming.

Alexa Vega: Hey, how are you doing?

Smith: Did we say, Alexa is our favorite of the bunch? They're all our favorites.

Vega: Oh, it's so good to see you. You know, I talk about you all the time. We don't talk about Darren, because Darren is creepy.

Vega: How are you? Awesome hair.

Wilson: Good, thanks.

Zdunich: [to Wilson] Yeah, our hair doesn't match any more. I'm so sorry.  Although I've got to say it was like a bittersweet thing because when I first went up to Toronto, and I knew we were going to make the movie, the first thing they did was come to my hotel room, and they put in these extensions. I was like “cool” for about a day because they were just like clumps of wax. And I couldn't really comb my hair, and I knew they weren't coming off until the very end. I was like very near to the end, and I'm like, “I can't wait to get these out!” They're like coming out bit by bit, and my hair hurts!

Smith: I think we finally figured out that he was a cross between Cyndi Lauper and Betsey Johnson.

Zdunich: An evil cross. But when they came out, I was kind of like sitting there getting choked up because I'm like, “Well, fuck. Now it's over. The hair is coming out.”

Vega: I think movies are always bittersweet though. I mean, no matter what, no matter how annoying some of the costumes can be, and like how some of your costars aren't always the greatest to work with, it's always so bittersweet because there are so many good moments while you're filming that you just don't want to leave. We were lucky to have a good cast that bonded really well.

Wilson: I noticed on the set you and Bill [Moseley] were just talking by craft services and laughing together over your food choices.

Vega: Yeah, that's like my spot. Right there. Craft services, always. I like special mixtures.

Smith: They all were talking and looking like they really liked each other. They were acting like they liked each other.

Vega: Yeah, we're really good actors!

Wilson: I know. But there was, like, a very easy-going vibe on the set. Because I visit an awful lot of sets and you can kind of just walk in and get a feel for how things are going. You guys were towards the end there, and there were still a few smiles. It was a good mood.

Vega: It starts at the top, though, because if you think of sets, you can have some pretty lame producers and directors sometimes that really set the tone for your working space. If they are difficult to work with, it's going to be a rough vibe on set because it puts everybody in that frantic mood trying to please everybody and trying to make them happy, but we were really lucky. We had Dan Heffner, who just kept his cool and kept things together. It's always hard being a producer on set because you have so much pressure on you all the time to make a movie and budget-wise and timing. So there is always going to be a little bit of that strain on things, but they really kept it to where the crew all liked each other and the actors got along with the crew and Darren Bousman made things a lot easier. Darren is really great. He just kept the tone like, “We’re making a cool movie,” not like, “We're making a movie. It has to be perfect! It has to be that.” But, of course, you want a good movie, but you also want to have fun when you're making it. It's a journey for everybody.

Smith: Well, you would be able to attest to this more being experienced as you are in films, but when you keep talking to everyone from the honey wagon person to up to the producers, they had never been in anything with a cooler vibe than this project. Then we talked to some of the suits, the Hollywood business types, and when they were talking and saying what we are doing is revolutionary cinema, that got me excited because these are people who are not used to the hyperbole of this.  They are saying that in all their years of doing movies, this is something truly revolutionary, and it really made me feel like we are doing a crusade. We really are.

Vega: Aside from just the music though, you saw the sets. David Hackl put together the cobblestones the graveyard and all the beautiful colors. It's dark, but in such a good way. It was perfect.

Wilson: Is this kind of like a play in that everyone has scenes together, or do you have more scenes with just a small amount of the cast, a few at a time? How does that work?

Zdunich: I think all the characters do interact at some point, but there are only eight major characters.

Smith: It's an ensemble.

Zdunich:  There are people that interact more together, obviously, like Alexa who interacts with her dad, played by Tony. I guess that this is kind of like the Wizard of Oz sort of journey for Shilo. We've always joked that I'm kind of the Scarecrow to her Dorothy. I'm a very lecherous scarecrow who doesn't have her best interest in mind, necessarily, but the grave robber is the first person she meets when she steps outside for the first time. And, of course, it's the drug dealer who's got to show her the way.

Vega: That's horrible! I step out of my house for the first time, and that's what I get.

Zdunich: It's really great. She's wearing a little school girl outfit and creeping around in the graveyard.

Vega: I saw some of that yesterday. Darren, the director, showed me.

Smith: Staci saw this, but for the record, I didn't show it to her.

Vega: Darren calls me up. He says, “Alexa, can you sign on video chat right now? I really need you.” I said, “Okay, well, I'm about to run out the door, but sure, yeah. I'll tell my mom to wait a minute.” So I go on video chat, and he takes his computer and puts it towards the screen. He goes, “I need you to watch this. And I need you to record something on garage band, and send it to me because I need this right now because I have to show the producers.” I'm like, “Okay,” so he literally has the computer set up against the screen so that I can see what I have to record, and it looked really good against a fuzzy screen. It still looked great.

Zdunich: What was it?

Vega: It was when Paris is doing her little thing in the chair and we are staring at her, and we're… no, staring at each other going, “What is going on?” and then it cuts back to you whistling, and I have to go, “That's Blind Mag's song” because he goes, “You won't know whose song it is unless you say it, so you have to loop in for us.”

Zdunich: He asked me to do that ADR first. It was a point that just wasn't registering when you watched it because in the scene essentially, Amber Sweet is there and Shilo is kind of in this drug den lair of scary people, and I describe the anatomy of how you use the drug and essentially I'm showing Shilo the scene. The scene is called Zydrate Anatomy.

Smith: It's a support network - The Zydrate Anonymous thing which he breaks into. There was a “needle in the bug” thing going on.

Vega: That is one of my favorite songs.

Smith: You've just got to extract the Zydrate.  It's this phosphorescence color, and she’s like, “I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can take this drug and extract it the way it's supposed to be.”

Zdunich: From a dead body, and like jam a needle into this dead woman's nose. But we're in the dark and we are kind of trapped and so the drug will light. I'm trying to convince her by saying, “It's just like sticking a needle in a bug,” because she collects bugs and has a collection in her room. So “a needle in a bug” is a chant in the song.

Wilson: Alexa, I talked to you on all the Spy Kids movies. I did the first Spy Kids junket when I started out…

Smith: So you two grew up together?

Wilson: That's right. We're exactly the same age!

Zdunich: From Pampers to Zydrate.

Smith: To the coffin.

Wilson:  So for people who are used to seeing you in those, and your name is really mostly associated with Spy Kids, I mean, what kind of excitement and exuberance and joy did you have when you read this script and saw how adult and weird and off the wall it was?

Vega: Well, it was kind of funny because the first time I heard about it was on MySpace. This creepy director would not leave me alone, and he kept writing me all these messages that kept saying, “I want to put you in this movie. I want to put you in this movie.” I am like, “Okay, what weirdo is writing?” So finally, I called my agent, and I'm like, “Is this guy for real? Is this fake? Is this just some guy that is online that is trying to get a hold of me?” She was like, “I will look into it,” and then she said that he directed this other film, Saw. So I called my sister because she was in Saw One. “Okay, McKenzie, who directed Saw One?”  And she said like Leigh Whannell or whatever his name is, I forgot his name. And I was like, “Okay, so definitely Darren Bousman is not the director of Saw.” So he is totally lying, but really he directed Saw II and I didn't know it. But apparently, our agency had turned down the script without me even knowing, saying that it was some stupid, weird movie. And I was like, “Oh, okay,” you know, and I finally looked into what Darren was saying because I heard he actually is a legit director, and it sounded really interesting.  He just so happened to be in New York the same time that I was doing Hairspray which is so opposite of this, but we decided to meet because I wanted to hear more about it because it was really, really different and cool and unique.

I think the first thing you look for scripts as an actress is something different. You don't want the same thing over and over again. That was what was cool about Spy Kids. At the time there was nothing really like Spy Kids, and they're still hasn't really been anything that quite measured up to it. And that's what I like, that they are really unique. So I met with him, and in his Darren way he pitched me the whole story. And you know how Darren has this way of saying things like it's going to be the best thing in the world. I was like, “Yeah, okay, okay.” Then he showed me the little short that they made. I didn't watch that with him. I watched that separate, and as soon as I watched that, I e-mailed Darren and I said, “I have to do this movie.” And then and it's just kind of been a little work in progress seeing what we can do with it or whether we were actually going to do it or not. They said okay, the movie's going to go, and then it's a no-go, and then it's a go. There was just this whole process, but once we finally stepped onto that set it was really cool. It really was.

Smith: I think this could be a real breakout role to for you in terms of the range of what you are capable of doing. It's kind of coming back to like you are doing the sci-fi musical. It's over the top, but at the same time, the best kinds of things are over the top for us. There is this core, once you get into the bizarre world, there's got to be things that makes sense within their own construct. There has to be human emotion and all that kind of stuff. And yes, if you look at the premise of this movie, it is over the top and bizarre, but yet your character is the one that has a huge range in what she is doing, and I have just been really impressed from day one. In fact, they did some interviews for the electronic press kit where she is in character. So she was interviewed as Shilo.

Vega: Actually, that's the first one I've ever done. It was so cool.

Smith: It was so powerful, though. It was amazing.  She just improvised the answers in her role.

Zdunich: In all honesty, they were telling us this idea. And we were like, “That's kind of lame, do we really have to do that?” And then she went first and she was a total trooper about it, and I was just thinking like, “Great,” but then she did it, and she did it so well. It definitely changed now to, “Fuck. I've got to do better,” but it definitely made me go, “This could be really cool,” and everyone did a great job. She almost got emotional about what essentially was an improved interview as this character sitting locked in a room, and it was really cool.

Smith: The character, Shilo, is this teenage girl who basically is in her home.  She can't go out because she's got a blood disease (or so she thinks) and she wants just like any other teenager to get out there and see the world and do things, yet she can't. She's never known her mother.  Her mother died in childbirth. So, the only love that she has ever felt was from her father who is conflicted, unbeknownst to her, but a conflicted Repo Man.

Vega: You know what I really love about Shilo? When you are stuck in your room, you have this emotion that's not really let out. It is so bottled up, and the poor girl is so confused.  You can see it on her face. It’s weird trying to figure out how to play her because she's frustrated, and she's angry. She is so ready to break out of this little room that she's in and see the real world, but at the same time she's a teenage girl, so she has all of that - just wanting and longing to be like this rock star fantasy. I mean, she still has all these feelings, and she wants a normal kind of typical family, but she knows that she'll never have that. So she's really hurt at the same time, and to be able to create something like that was so much fun because I was able to work with Mr. Anthony. He is unbelievable. I mean, this guy is such a rock star. He really is. You'll think that when you see him. That is one bad ass dad, but it was so great to be able to create that with him and through song, which was so different than anything I have ever done before because once you record it in the studio you can't change the way it sounds when you're there. So, if you have an idea like, “Oh, I want to try it this way,” you can't.  All your homework has to be done ahead of time, like before the movie. So that was definitely the most difficult process because you know that whatever you do and whatever they choose is set in stone. There is no going back. What's done is done. So you have to act accordingly.  You can't make a face here and not match with the way you’re mouthing it or the way it's been sung.

So it's definitely a new process for me, but it’s so good. And I know it's hard for you guys, but I really hope that they do another one because this is a great experience and a good learning experience. I love films, and if you’ve noticed, I kind of have this pattern with what I've done. I like movies that have meanings that aren't just a movie to be a movie to be entertaining, but actually have kind of a message in the end. I think this has a really cool message about plastic surgeries and people being fake and about being real. I think this movie can follow through with all the characters and each character can learn something by the end of the film. It's not just that Shilo has learned something or that Nathan has learned something, but all the characters including Amber, have learned something.

Smith: She sings the song Infected by Your Genetics, and that tells us one of the themes of this movie. It's kind of like this age-old nature versus nurture thing. She feels that she is trapped by her genetics, and trapped by the her past of her father and her mother, and this blood disease that she believes that she has. Yet as all of us have always wondered, can we get beyond what our personal histories are? What things are immutable within our genetic structure and what are not; what can we change? I think all the characters do learn something at the end, and I think we all want to do sequels.

Wilson: It sounds really sweet and lovely. What's one of the most crazy sort of outrageous scenes that you get to take part in that people will just say, “Oh my gosh. Is that really Alexa?”

Vega: One of my favorites which I think was annoying to shoot because it was so sticky, but it was really fun, was when I'm covered in blood, and I’m bald, and I think it just is a shock to everybody. I don't know. I have so many different ideas for what the end of the movie is going to be. We kind of shot it a couple of different ways. So it can go any way, but Shilo wears a wig throughout the whole film, and then she somehow is covered in blood and is bald. I can't give the details of this away, but…

Wilson: How much clothing is involved in that scene?

Vega: You know what's great about this? Shilo doesn't really like to wear clothes! She kind of wears nothing. No, literally by the end of the film, I am in this short little slip. This is so weird because this is so opposite Spy Kids, but Darren called them the "fuck-me boots" because they are these boots with these heels that have lingerie looking bows on them, and they are so kinky, and they're hilarious, but all she was wearing was her slip and her F-me boots. And she is bloody and bald.

Smith: We've been able to explore some of the themes that we love in great science fiction with some of our sexual fantasies.

Zdunich: We had a scene for scene of the cut, but the direction of the scene changed on set. Essentially, there is a scene where Shilo is held captive in this tent by the villain, and the grave robber comes snooping through the tent to pocket things. In the process, he kind of says, “Come with me kid,” and takes her away from the bad guy into even something more lecherous, but we were trying to devise a way for me to get into the tent, and for her to get out. That was fun, and in keeping with the characters. There were guards everywhere, so basically we were working on the scene, but unfortunately it didn't work out. It was better in concept, but basically, she's standing up against the edge of this tent and my hand kind of comes underneath and is reaching for things. And I feel her boots and a kind of pop my head in underneath, and I'm looking up her skirt.

Vega:  In his head comes popping out from underneath while I'm wearing this short little skirt and my f-me boots, and I looked down and it was so funny! It was such a great moment.  The camera angle wasn't really working the way everything was in the room, and it's so hard because so many times when you're shooting a scene, it plays out so different than what you expected.  We were really lucky to have so many great minds working together to where we were able to come up with different concepts that really did work for the film because things written on paper always sound great, but when it comes down to actually doing it, you have to have a lot of people on top of it trying to work it out. I realize that with some of the films that I've done, they say, “Don't worry.  It's going to be great.” It's going to be this, it's going to be that, but it's usually never really quite what you expected.  With Repo, we were really fortunate to have it come to life just the way we imagined it. Normally when you do a film, you read it, and you are like, "Oh this is going to be great!" and then you get there and you're like, "Whoa, this is way different.  It's still cool, but it is way different." With Repo, when you read it, you imagine it. When you go on the set, it's there. I can't explain it, but it just was there.

Smith: I feel that way.  In fact, I'd say it's even better than anything we imagined. And you know, too, we are doing the science fiction film, but we don't have a Minority Report budget to do it. This is a relatively low budget film. So rather than be gadget heavy with all the bells and whistles from the technology, we had to just kind of simplify what is this future is like. This is 2056.  We’re only going 50 years in advance, but how do we take this future within the realm of the budget we have? I think we pulled it off. I think we've done a great job of just getting inside a new and different surrealistic world.

= = =

End part two. Stay tuned part three, when Alexa Vega talks more about love affairs on-set. Exclusive to Horror.com! In the meantime, visit repo-opera.com for new pictures, songs, clips, and message board updates.