Your new film Bleed with
Me premiered only recently. A few words about that movie?
It starts off with a girl named Laura whose day starts off on a very
bad note. She is obviously haunted by ghosts of her past, and after a
very emotional phonecall from her drunk, out-her-mind mother she goes
off to work as a barmaid. As the bar closes she encounters a very
unsympathetic man and she nearly ends up getting raped. Now you might
think this would be more than enough for one day, but as she is going
home she catches a taxi and the chauffeur of that taxi is about to present her to something much worse than anything else the day has
brought her.
People seem to enjoy it. In general it has a very mellow athmosphere interrupted by disturbing happenings, so I was very curious if those
quiet passages would hold up aswell, but we seemed to be able
to
grab a great tension even if it seemed like a quiet passage that
apparently had people on the edge of their seats. And that was exactly
what we were going for, you know, getting some psychological horror
into the picture as well - so I'd say it was a success on the film
festivals who've shown it so far.
Your
performance in Bleed with
Me is totally (and fittingly) creepy. What do you draw on to bring a disturbing
character like the one in the film to life? Thanks ... I
guess ... It helps it you're a real-life psycho like myself! Haha ... no seriously, it's a good question. I guess each actor
develops his own methods and expressions when they go along. I didn't
really have any real-life experiences to draw from for that particular
role, haha ...
In Bleed
with Me, you don't only play the lead, you have also produced the
film. What got you interested in the project in the first place, and how
did the whole thing come together?
For starters I was only involved as an actor, but due to some
production problems and myself gaining more and more experience in
the field of production (behind the cameras), I offered them help to
finish the film, so in reality I was only a producer on the
post-production part of the film.
Did you have any kind of creative influence on Bleed
with Me? Like said, the producer thing didn't kick
in until long after the
film was filmed, but yes, the director Emil Ishii and myself had long
talks about what you could do here and there, and he was very open to
suggestions.
Your latest film
as a director was Invasion of Privacy, the first segment of Horror
Vault 2. A few words about your segment?
Well I tend to take everyday things and see if I can tell a story
around them. Usually things I find interesting of course. My segment in
The Horror Vault 2 is named
Invasion of Privacy and it's based
on
the idea on how to you could abuse the surveillance society to its
fullest extent. Actually the main idea struck me when I saw the music
video for the Nine Inch Nails song Survivalism (and funnily
enough
it also ended up participating in the film competition later held by
that very group - see below), and it brought back memories to the old Sharon
Stone/William Baldwin film Sliver that also has some of the
same
elements. I guess you can easily say there is quite a few nods to the
Jim Carry flick The Truman Show in it as welI, I found it quite
interesting to work with.
Also I wanted to point a finger at some of those ridiculous reality TV
shows around - I mean, I've never understood why people would
volunteer to them, most of them are terrible! But at least these people
chose the humiliations themselves, the girls in my story don't. In
fact, they don't even know they're being watched.
The first Horror Vault contains a segment named
Mental
Distortion
about a young man who wakes up on the floor of his apartment and have
no memory of what he is doing there. He finds his girlfriend drowned
in the bathroom and tries to revive her, but it is too late. This
is a story I read about in the media that actually happened a few
years back. When it obviously doesn't end there, but I'm not gonna
reveal anything else, you'll have to see it instead, hehe ...
As far as I
know, Invasion of Privacy (or parts thereof) were also entered in Nine Inch Nails' Ghost-film festival. Which parts, and
in which way did that version differ from the finished product in Horror
Vault 2?
Well what participated in the contest was only a combined storyline of
some of the things going on in the film, of course with the Ghosts music
as background. I thought it made for a nice little story of its own, of course without the punchline and initial start scenes that
are in Horror Vault 2. It is more a situation taken out of a whole, I guess
you could say.
I've been a Nine Inch Nails fan for years and when I heard they were
doing this competition, I just knew I had to participate.
Unfortunately I was way too busy to come up with something completely
new, and as I was editing the Invasion-segment at the time it struck
me that parts of it would actually stand alone nicely with the music
as background, so that's what happened. Horror
Vault 2 was another film you also produced. How did that film get
off the ground, and how much input did you have on the segments you did
not direct? Well I picked and chose among the segments and
found the ones I
thought suited the collection the best. Myself I only directed that
one segment, Invasion of Privacy.
Will there ever be more Horror
Vault-movies, and if yes, will you direct segments of those as
well? Yeah there will be a third installment aswell at some
point, as it was
meant as a sort of trilogy thing. Some time in 2010 I guess. If I'll
direct something for it myself is yet unknown as I currently have two
feature films I wanna finish first, but we'll see. I probably won't be
able to keep my fingers out of it ;-)
Kim Sønderholm in
The Grey Gold |
Are there any other films you did since our last
interview (click here!) that you'd
like to talk about? Well yes there's been a couple, but at
this time I'd rather not say
too much. I believe the producers would like a little control in what
is being said, but I've been doing some roles in various films, The
Grey Gold (working title) by Shaky Gonzalez, He Brings
Death by
Jeff Bolin, Twisted Trash by Russ Diaper, Through
Darkness by
David Sakurai/Daniell Edwards, Zombie Ed by Ren Blood, plus of
course
I'm currently struggling to have my two feature films Tour De
Force
and Little Big Boy shot by the end of the year and hopefully
done
and ready for the release during the spring of 2010. Your/your films' websites, MySpaces, whatever else? Well
for those of you who are on facebook I'd recommend you sign up
for my group Kim Sønderholm's Rumor Control which is not an
egomanical fanpage by myself about myself, but sort of an update page
of what's going on. It's spam free so you don't have to worry about
getting 10 mails a day, I'm only gonna send out updates when I feel ithey're relevant.
Other than that there is my homepage www.sonderholm.net which is also
a good way of finding more info and updates.
Especially
in the films you also have a hand in production (Bleed
with Me, but also Craig
and the Horror
Vault-movies), you tend to play dark, psychotic characters. Why
are you drawn to this kind of role? It's always more fun to
play a villain, it's really as simple as that.
I wish I could give you a more psychological explanation but as a
private person I'm a really nice guy, haha! Is there any role you
would just be dying to play (no matter how improbable)? Haha
...
I think I've played a fair amount of improbable roles, actually ... but being the bad guy is almost the most fun, you can do
anything without having to worry about having the audience's sympathy.
Also anti-heroes are good too, but clean cut heroes sounds abit boring
to me ... Of
late, you have acted predominantly in horror thrillers. Is horror a genre
especially dear to you? It's quite important for me to
mention that I'm not just about
horror, though. I like films of all sorts and as an actor I've done
pretty much all genres - comedy and drama as well. Next up is gonna be
a thriller and after that possibly a drama, so I'm trying to broaden
myself as much as possible, but it's no secret I have a secret crush
on horror and action as those were the sort of films I grew up with
and made me love film in the first place.
Any future projects you'd like to talk
about?
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Yes, well my plans are to have my two new features
Tour De Force and
Little Big Boy shot by the end of the year and hopefully finished by spring of 2010. My production company
Cetus Productions is also
working on a thriller of the supernatural sort called Silverthread.
I'm not quite up to speed about the progress right now as I'm
primarily a consultant on it for the time being, but it should be
finished some time in 2010 too.
Then I'm already developing my fourth feature film in my head, but I'm
gonna wait going any further on it till Tour de Force and Little Big
Boy are completely finished. But it's gonna be a pretty cool thriller
about a man looking for his lost sister.
And then ofcourse, there are a bunch of project where I'm involved as
an actor only, but I'm gonna hesitate mentioning them too much as
I'm sure the producers of those films would like to control what info
is going out ;-)
Anything else you are
just dying to tell us and I have simply forgotten to ask? Can't
think of anything ... Thank you for the interview!
You're most welcome :-)
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