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Rose McGowan On Working With Tarantino and Rodriguez in 'Grindhouse' |
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Thursday, 05 April 2007 |
By Christina Radish
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Rose McGowan at the premiere of "Grindhouse" held at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, Calif. on March 26, 2007. |
Two of the most renowned filmmakers go back to back with the Dimension Films double feature, Grindhouse. Packed to the gills with guns and guts, the unprecedented project from longtime collaborators Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill), is inspired by, and pays homage to, the independent exploitation horror classics (known as grindhouse films) of the sixties and seventies.
A heart-pounding trip to a town ravaged by a mysterious plague, Rodriguez’s Planet Terror is a retro-futuristic vision of horror that’s been weathered, stripped and aged to perfection, while Tarantino’s Death Proof is a white knuckle ride behind the wheel of a psycho serial killer’s roving, revving, racing death machine. These two shockingly bold full-length features are presented together on a drive-in style double bill, replete with fake trailer, missing reels and plenty of exploitative mayhem.
With roles in both films, 33-year-old former Charmed star Rose McGowan spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about the opportunity to work with both filmmakers.
MediaBlvd Magazine> Having acted in both segments, what were the differences between the directing styles of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez?
Rose McGowan> There’s a huge difference between Quentin and anybody, really. I don’t think there’s another like him. I had to audition twice for Death Proof, and convinced Quentin that I should have blonde hair because I look very exotic as Cherry in Planet Terror and I wanted a 180. Quentin has a controlled insanity on his sets. There is a lot of music and it’s boisterous, but still very much in control. Robert’s sets are extremely quiet. I’d never worked on such a quiet set. On the Charmed set, the prop guy would shoot spitballs at my head while I was working. I would go to Robert’s set at night, and he would have so much going on. While he’s shooting, he’s editing in his head, and then, he goes watches the playback and edits part of it right there because he goes and edits at night. Everybody was extremely respectful. I would start feeling bad if I laughed. So then, when I went on Quentin’s set, I laughed and immediately stuck my hand over my mouth. He said, “What are you doing?,” and I thought, “Oh, my God, I’ve become so programmed, I’m flinching because I laughed. Oh, dear.”
MediaBlvd> With Quentin on the Planet Terror set, did you interact with him, subliminally thinking, “Put me in your movie, too”?
Rose> No, never. Quentin likes me and my acting, so to speak. I would not ever presume to go up to anybody and ever say anything like that. In fact, I made it a huge point to never talk about it. He wasn’t even doing auditions back then. I think he was still finishing the script.
MediaBlvd> What was it like shooting the final season of Charmed while you were filming Grindhouse?
Rose> Massive exhaustion. I started Planet Terror at 104 pounds, and I went down to about 98.5. On a small person, three pounds is like 10 pounds, on a bigger person. Everybody thought I was trying to be like Nicole Richie, or something. I thought it was hideous. I don’t think that look is pretty. It was just complete exhaustion. Sunday morning at 7:00 am, I would wrap on Grindhouse in Texas, and then I would fly to L.A. and work until 11:00 pm on Charmed to make it up. Then, I would go back at 5:00 am, and work until about 10:00 pm. On Thursdays, on Charmed, I’d get off at 3:00, fly to Texas, and go back to the all-night schedule. And then, I was doing all the physicality as well. I stopped traveling about four more months after that. I was just like, “Dang, I hope I pull this movie off.” And, considering what was going on, I’m pretty proud of it.
MediaBlvd> How was it to play a go-go dancer whose leg was ripped from her body during a roadside attack, only to be replaced later with a machine gun, in Planet Terror? What were you really wearing?
Rose> I was wearing a really heavy, grey cast with LED lights, and it wasn’t the most high-tech thing because when Robert wrote it, the technology wasn’t there to do it, which I think is pretty amazing. He never assumed that people wouldn’t be able to do it, he just made them step up and create it. So, it was quite uncomfortable. There was a little ball bearing on the heel because, if you were resting on the end of a machine gun leg or a hospital table leg, it would be very small, round and tippy. My toes pointed in the air, my heel was on the ground and, on the other side, I had a four-inch high-heel boot. If you’re going to save the world with a machine gun leg, make sure you wear a high heel, at least on one foot. But, I’m not the complaining sort. I’m Irish. I just pull up my boot straps and soldier on. I had to go as fast as everybody else, do everything that everybody else did, and they got to wear boots and tennis shoes. It wasn’t like, “Wait for me, I can’t run up this hill!” I ran up the hill, and just fell back down. But, then I would go back up. At night, I would take off all the body make-up, and it looked like someone took a baseball bat to me. It was very sexy.
 MediaBlvd> What about the scene where you’re flying through the air? Did they just strap you into something and catapult you?
Rose> No, they didn’t, although that would be cool. A lot of people don’t like wirework. I love it. I think it’s the closest you can get to flying. And, that was a really tall wall that I had to jump over. There was only one time it missed and the system didn’t pull me up high enough. I had the grey cast, and I just got it up in time because it would have smashed everything on the wall and I wouldn’t have cleared it. It was a pulley system, but I had to run from behind that wall to get enough force to take off. And, they greased me down, so that I didn’t catch on fire. There’s a companion book that goes with the movie, where I land on the other side and I’m sliding across asphalt, and even though I lost skin in the process, I did have a huge smile on my face. I thought it was just hilarious.
MediaBlvd> What was it like working with Kurt Russell for Death Proof?
Rose> I actually love Kurt. I told him he should really think about adopting me. I think Kate Hudson has that same kind of long blonde hair that I had in the movie, and I told him, “When you kill me, you need to think about this: you are killing your daughter,” and he was like, “Aw, you’re evil!” Quentin’s film was a 130-page script, so it had to be really condensed because that’s a two-hour movie. I kind of play the girl who’s going into the woods, that everybody’s yelling at, saying, “Don’t go in the woods, dummy! What are you doing, you dumb-ass? You’re going to get killed! What an idiot!” But, in the longer version that will be on DVD and will be used for the international release, it’s a completely different situation. You see why I get in the car with Kurt, and we have a lot more scenes together. His character development is a lot broader, too.
MediaBlvd> The horror genre was dead until Scream came along, and now it has culminated with this. What is it like being part of both of those bookends?
Rose> When I did Scream, it was my second movie. I adore Wes Craven. I still see him from time to time, and I just love him. He’s so gentle and so brilliant. But, it was funny because I don’t like horror films and I had to reference these other directors in the film. I had no clue who I was talking about. I have really bad nightmares, in general, every single night, so I try not to add to the stock of things in my head.
MediaBlvd> So, you didn’t watch any grindhouse movies growing up?
Rose> Certainly not, no. I lived in a commune. We had no TV or films, or anything. But, Quentin did screen a bunch of them for us, before we started the movie. What I thought was fantastic about these guys is the homage they pay to these films. I’ve had people ask, “Are they trying to make bad movies?” They’re not bad movies, and they’re these two brilliant directors. They are real mavericks, within the Hollywood system. Because they’re so at the top of their game, they can really do anything they want. They could sit and shoot paint balls at a wall for three hours and it would get released. What they loved about these other directors was that they were the outcasts. These were not studio system people. And, because they were outcasts, they could do anything. They could kill a kid or kill a dog, and break all the sacred rules of filmmaking. What’s fantastic is that they’re now getting to do it within the studio system. They are doing it on a grand level.
MediaBlvd> Since you finished Charmed, you’ve done some great stuff, like The Black Dahlia. Was doing the role in that, and in Grindhouse, a conscious decision to try and move far from your TV character, or is that just the way things have happened?
Rose> It’s kind of just the way it’s happened. I certainly miss everybody on the show. And, Quentin is a huge fan of the show.
MediaBlvd> Have you missed doing Charmed, or was it time to be over?
Rose> Well, my contract was done, so yes, it was time. I didn’t want to renew my contract. I was on the show for five years, and the girls (Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano) were on for eight. The only reason I was on there for five years is because I re-signed for three more years, after I was on for two. Actually, I was told I’d be there for about a year.
MediaBlvd> What was it like working with Holly and Alyssa?
Rose> Everything has its challenges. They were really close when I went in, but my job isn’t to go in and be friends with people. My job is to actually work.
MediaBlvd> Did the three of you end up being sisterly?
Rose> We definitely became friends, but we were not sisterly. People would ask, “Oh, do you hang out after work?,” and I would say, “I just worked 14 hours a day with them. Do you hang out with people after you work with them for 14 hours? I think not.” I go hang out with my dog, and occasionally see my friends. Holly just e-mailed me yesterday, because I told her she needs
to come and visit me with her new baby. And, last week I had some problem with my computer, so I wrote Alyssa and asked, “Do you ever have this problem on your Mac?” So, we have general exchanges.
MediaBlvd> What is the strangest Charmed fan encounter that you’ve ever had?
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"Grindhouse" co-stars Marley Shelton, Rose McGowan and Rosario Dawson at the Spike TV Scream Awards held at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on October 7, 2006. | Rose> There was a guy from Germany, who gave me a scale model that he built of the Halliwell house, with everything in it. He wandered onto the set to give it to me, and I think the prop department took it.
MediaBlvd> Why does the tattoo on your back look so pale?
Rose> I’m removing it. It’s very painful. I want my back, back! It cost $200 to put on, and $12,000 to take off.
MediaBlvd> Didn’t you just sign on to play Susan Cabot in Black Oasis?
Rose> Yeah. What’s really cool about it is, as she got older, she kind of went crazy and was really obsessed with getting older, so she would just pile on crazy amounts of make-up, like crazy green eye shadow and just lots of pancake. Also, as she got older, she started confusing her real life with these crazy old, fantastical movies, like Wasp Woman, which had all these weird costumes. I’ll get to be playing her in those movies with all those sets. Stephan Elliott, who did The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, wrote and is directing it, so he can handle these crazy sets, and all that stuff. She was about 4'10", and she was always going around in 8-inch heels. She actually became engaged to King Hussein, who then discovered her real name was Harriet Shapiro and she was Jewish, so he couldn’t marry her. She got pregnant, and all her hopes and dreams were pinned on the boy inside of her. She was like, “He’s gonna be really tall,” but he was born with dwarfism. So, then she put him through all this experimental treatments, with shock and hormones, trying to make him taller. He got to be about 5'2". It was a really bizarre relationship. He became obsessed with Bruce Lee, and ended up killing her with nunchukus. It was his way of feeling masculine, since never looked masculine will all of the hormones. He looked kind of feminine and odd. And then, he just went crazy because she was very suffocating. It was an ignominious death.
MediaBlvd> When do you start filming that?
Rose> I’m hoping to start in the next three or four months. The woman who’s producing it, Hillary Short, just did Children of Men. |
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