Don Coscarelli
IFQ speaks with the director of the legendary Phantasm films and Bubba Ho-Tep. Coscarelli talks about casting, the budget and special DVD features for his latest film Bubba Ho-Tep.
IFQ: Tell me about your background and also did you attend film school?
DC: I was born in Libya. My father was in the Air Force and we relocated to the States– Long Beach, California. I tried UCLA for a year, but I was too eager to make movies. My father funded my first film, and other friends and students helped out. After the film was completed, a Los Angeles Times critic took a liking to it and introduced it to the President of Universal, who wound up buying the film. I thought it was going to be too strange to have any success, but the President of Universal gave money for the film’s completion. Unfortunately, the film fell through, but it was a great education.
IFQ: Obviously The Beastmaster and the Phantasm films were successful in your establishment. What’s going on with Phantasm’s End? Is it the final chapter?
DC: A lot of young people are into Phantasm, and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary wrote the crazy script for Phantasm’s End, that was both wonderful and violent. We haven’t had much luck funding it, but with all these good remakes like Dawn of the Dead, maybe something will happen with it.
IFQ: Let’s dive into Bubba Ho-Tep. The writing and comic timing in the film were excellent. How was it adapting Joe R. Lansdale’s short story into your screenplay?
DC: He’s a demented genius from East Texas. He mixes up genres. I loved his short story so I was very careful with the adaptation. It was an evolving process.
IFQ: The casting must have been fun. Was Ossie Davis always in mind or did a lot of black men audition for the part of J.F.K.?
DC: He was definitely the first choice. He popped into my mind after I saw Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus. He was great in that film and I wanted to use him in Bubba Ho-Tep. His agents didn’t like the script, but I kept calling them every month. Finally, Mick Garris, who had worked with Ossie on Stephen King’s The Stand, hooked him up with the script. Ossie approached the project in such a subtle manner.
IFQ: How about Bruce Campbell?
DC: I wish I knew that he was going to be that good. Bruce and Ossie really got along well. The big thing was to play the comedy and keep the emotion.
IFQ: What kind of budget was involved?
DC: I made it for about as cheap as I could make a film. The budget was under a million dollars. The main things were the mummy effects and Bruce’s old age make-up, which took two and a half hours to apply each day.
IFQ: Bubba Ho-Tep appears to have man-made special effects, which is a refreshing break from the redundant use of CGI in other films.
DC: We had no money for CGI, and I felt that we needed something we could actually grapple with. One of the film’s boosts was the large amount of Bruce Campbell fans, some of whom worked for Sony Image and hooked up the hieroglyphics scenes.
IFQ: That’s awesome. Any special features coming up on the DVD?
DC: The coolest thing I like on the DVD is Bruce Campbell’s Elvis commentary. He does the Elvis voice throughout the entire feature, but during the middle of it he’ll answer the phone or start eating popcorn. Also Joe Lansdale reads chapters from the original story. The film was an independent theatrical release and then MGM took it up for DVD. I really think the greatest success of Bubba Ho-Tep comes from the combination of Bruce Campbell fans and the Phantasm fans. I mean, we had sell-outs, and actually had to turn people away at times.
IFQ: Any new projects coming up, or is “life just food, shit and sex”?
DC: Nothing is coming up right now, but I have my marketing hat on. Number one would be getting the next Phantasm movie made. Joe Lansdale has a lot of work that I would like to adapt again. Bruce really wants to make a sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep, and there’s always that possibility.
by Robert Oppel