Your movie Purge
has only recently been turned into a novel, Outcast - so do let us
know, what are both movie and novel about?
Essentially,
the rediscovery of the meaning of love in a world where such things are
supposed to be forgotten and have become illegal.
Both
the film and the book take place in a parallel universe where people are
created by genetic engineering companies and programmed for roles in life.
To fail to assume the role you’ve been created for is to become a Stray
and be treated worse than a criminal.
That’s
what happens to Layla Thomas when she becomes violently ill and has to
flee from her sister’s upmarket salon on her first day of work as a
BDSM mistress-slave.
How did the
novelisation of Purge
come together in the first place? It
was planned when I realised I would have to make the film on a minuscule
budget. There was no way I could film many of the scenes originally
written in the screenplay. So I decided to make a companion piece in the
form of a novel. So what can you tell
us about Outcast's actual writer Marc Saville, and why him, and
what was your collaboration like? I
had known Marc Saville for many years but under a another name which he
zealously guards. I chose him because back in the 1980’s, I read his
second novel which was a philosophical work with similarities to the kind
of thing Paul Coehlo writes. I liked his style. It’s close to the way I
write. Essentially I just gave him the original screenplay and invited him
to turn it into a novel. How closely does Outcast
stick to Purge's basic
storyline?
It
follows Purge’s basic storyline to the letter but includes quite a few
scenes which were not in the film and delves more deeply into the world
inhabited by BDSM mistress-slave Layla Thomas. We also get to see her
sister’s machinations behind the scenes and learn what happened to her
and why.
We
get a deeper insight to what’s happening politically and sociologically
and how the vigilante webvision program The
Jungle finally opens people’s eyes to the way they’re being
conned by the government and genetic engineering companies and sparks
radical changes to this society. You have told me the book has
scenes which were too expensive or otherwise undoable in the movie - any
examples?
There’s
a chapter where Layla’s sister, Tanya - concerned about Layla’s
situation - calls their
guardians on the vidphone to ask if Layla ever came home drugged and
totally out of it. It becomes clear in the book that their guardians were
complicit in a Government cover-up but had little choice in the matter.
In
another chapter, Tanya goes to see the Minister for Social Planning to try
and get Layla’s Stray listing overturned. We learn he was one of
Tanya’s BDSM clients and that he’d been warned Tanya’s
programming had broken down but had gone on seeing her regardless. He is
in fear of losing his own position and power and this ultimately causes
Tanya’s death.
In
the film, we only saw Tanya being tormented by unseen persons in her salon
and lying dead at the end.
It
was impossible to film the scene where she goes to see the Minister for
Social Planning as it takes place in a huge Nazi-like mausoleum of a
government building. The minister’s office has a banner thirty feet
high. The characters are dwarfed by the architecture. We would have needed
CGI to create this in the film.
Also,
in the film when Layla leaves Harmon Cleves after the hotel room scene,
she stumbles into some alleyway and collapses. In the book, she goes
instead to The Shrine, the huge ANZAC memorial off St. Kilda Road in
Melbourne. But in this parallel universe, the Shrine is disused,
vandalised, and overgrown with weeds. No one can remember what it was
originally for.
That,
too, was outside our budget. It would have involved getting permission
from the State Government which would have to get permission from the
Armed Forces, and making the Shrine up to look abandoned and vandalised
(providing we could get permission to do that) would have cost tens of
thousands of dollars.
There’s
also a chapter where Layla scavenges for food in rubbish bins early in the
morning when garbots (garbage collection robots) are emptying bins and
hosing down the streets.
None
of this was in the film. It was logistically impossible to make something
like an operating garbot on a budget like ours, let alone several, and to
block off a whole city street so they could empty bins and hose it down.
It’s Blade
Runner stuff.
So
for the first time, you can see what the film could have been like if it
had been made on a budget of a few million.
Why
make the film at all if so many scenes had to be dumped because of the
cost and difficulty of shooting them?
Because
there were two ways to make this film: one was the big budget mainstream
way - spend millions to create a world. There’s no way I could have
gotten that kind of money.
The
other way was to do it as a no-budget experimental narrative underground
film which focused more on the ideas than the eye candy.
I
wanted to make a film which wasn’t just a straight-forward narrative
with lots of visual whizz-bang but which used innovative tecchniques to
get around the budget limitations.
Nearly
all of the ideas in the ebook are in the film, they’re just not
elaborated on as much or seen in all their glory as they are in the ebook.
When and where will the book be available to
the general public?
Outcast
is now available for pre-order from Amazon/Kindle.
It’s available in most countries except those under exclusive contract
to Kindle Select.
It
goes on direct sale from December 15, so anyone who pre-orders it now will
have it delivered to their Kindle reader on that date.
It
will also be released to other ebook retailers (i.e. Barnes and Noble,
Kobo, Oyster) via ebook distributor Smashwords. Any future projects in whatever
media you'd like to share?
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I
have another screenplay called Hotel
D’Arc, an arthouse fantasy-action film which mixes live action
with Japanese-style anime. I’ve spent over three years trying to get it
on the road with a decent budget.
Meanwhile,
Marc Saville has turned the screenplay into an ebook called
Nightkill and we plan to release it on Amazon/Kindle early next year. Keep
an eye out for it... this time, you’ll see the big budget version first. Your/your book's/your movie's
website, Facebook, whatever else?
Outcast can be found at
www.amazon.com.au/Outcast-Marc-Saville-ebook/dp/B00PQVW1EG
Purge
can be found at
www.amazon.com/Purge-Sarah-Breen/dp/B00AWE4DNE
Thanks
for the interview!
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