Killer Film recently caught up with Bill Moseley and we chatted about all things Repo! A Genetic Opera which comes out on November 7^th. This is part one of two.

Jon: Thanks for taking time, I know your really busy, to talk with us at Killer Film.

Bill: Yeah, that’s fine. Let’s fire away then.

Jon: When I spoke to Darren Lynn Bousman (reread that here) about Repo!, he said it was a constant uphill battle in convincing the studio and actors about the film. What was it that got you involved?

Bill: I first heard of Repo! a couple of years ago actually when I went to see Repo! when it was a little stage show on Hollywood Boulevard. It was a little store front theater, maybe three, three to four years ago. A friend of mine took me to see this cool play and thought it was fantastic. I didn’t mean Darren, that I recall but I was certainly impressed with the play, I thought I was a lot of fun. Then a couple of years ago I was at a horror convention, I think it was the Fangoria convention up in San Jose, and I was doing a Q and A in a section of a ballroom that had moving walls that created different sections. In the little room next to mine, after I did the Q and A, I heard Darren, who was also there talking to people in his Q and A talking about what I thought was Repo! and he was describing it. Again I was hearing this through a partition and I thought, man I’ve seen that before! As it turned out it was Repo! the show I had seen on Hollywood Boulevard and that Darren was planning on doing it after he finished Saw IV.

I talked to him and said I’d seen that show and boy, if you’re going to do that, to keep me in mind. Then flash forward and I got a call from him saying he’s ready to do Repo! and wanted me to meet with him, and the two creators Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich at the very cool Roosevelt hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. I met with them and we are seemed to relatively like each other. But the big question was that if I could sing. They gave me a song to prepare and I’ve been taking singing lessons for the last fifteen years and so the answer to that question was yes, I can sing. I was able to take that song to my singing teacher and we worked on it so that I could get the notes and get the dramatic presentation to it. I showed up to the studio one night and sang for the assembled director, creators, and the music people of Repo! and did a good enough job so they hired me.

Jon: So conventions aren’t all that bad! You got to meet future collaborators…

Bill: Those conventions are really cool. First of all, you get to meet the fans. Horror fans are the coolest fans of all and there they can meet their favorite movie stars and as I say “kick our tires”. They get to find out if someone is an asshole or not, or someone is cool, so that’s fun. Also, it’s fun to hang out with my “monsters” as I call them, because I am a horror fan. Well, I call them that because I love my fellow “monsters” because we’re trying to get the same job. It’s like a convention for dentists; we all talk shop, who’s doing what, who’s directing and hiring, sometimes there are directors or young filmmakers that want to make it someday, with maybe a cool script, you know there’s a lot of fun stuff that goes one there.

Jon: Yeah I just went to my first convention, Texas Frightmare this past February.

Bill: That’s a good one man, Lloyd Cryer. I remember doing the first two of those. Actually I think the first one was in Grapevine, Texas, with Sid Haig, Tom Savini, Ed Neal, the original hitchhiker from Texas Chain Saw, it cool. It’s just cool to be sitting there and across from you there’s Pinhead, there’s Gunnar Hanson, Leatherface, the hitchhiker, Ken Foree from Dawn of the Dead, you think ‘wow, man’ that’s Ashley Lawrence from Hellraiser, it’s cool. You just look around and think it’s cool.

Jon: Tell us about your character, Luigi Largo?

Bill: Luigi Largo is one of the three children of Largo, played by Paul Sorvino, the founder of an organ company called GeneCo. GeneCo. has risen, uh, in the future there’s been a massive epidemic of organ failures and there a company that has found a way to I guess clone organs somehow, I guess they’re kinda artificial or maybe cloned. What we do is sell organs to people who need them. We provide very liberal credit arrangements. The only problem is that if you can’t make your payments, we send the Repo Man to repossess their organs. So if you got a heart and aren’t making your payments, thanks to an act by Congress, the Repo Man can take the heart back even if it kills you and it’s not a crime. (laughs) The crime is not paying back the money you owe.

Of course it’s very topical these days. Congress hasn’t made it legal yet but that might be coming soon.

Jon: Like you’ve said the film has Paul Sorvino, Anthony Head, and Paris Hilton. There’s a pretty eccentric group of actors, actresses and musicians, how was being on set and working with them?

Bill: It was a ball! I was pretty comfortable with my character and to give you a quick thumbnail of him, Luigi is the oldest of the three children, I think I’m the heir apparent and dad’s been coughing lately so I might succeed him. He thinks we all useless trash and we’re very rich and can do whatever we want. I’m just very angry all the time, very intolerant, very frustrated, and I just lash out on everybody. I stab people, I throw them under trucks, and because we’re apart of the most powerful family on earth, dad just writes a check and everything is cool. So that’s who I am, I’m pissed and again I play Paris’ brother and Ogre’s from Skinny Puppy.

In terms of being on set with that type of group, it was really a lot of fun. What I think made it a lot of fun was that it wasn’t a clash of titanic egos, which could’ve happened I suppose, we were all just in love with the story we were telling, we loved the music, there’s was comradely, and there wasn’t a weak link in the cast. We all contributed an equal amount of talent and experience. Also, we loved Darren Bousman, the director. He had such a strong passionate vision of what he wanted Repo! to be that we just fell in love with his enthusiasm and we all worked very hard to see his vision come true.

Jon: Yeah, when I interviewed him, he seemed very naturalistically passionate about the film. It got me excited and I think it’s gathered steam and people are now excited to see it when it comes out in limited release November 7^th.

Bill: Yeah! It’s too bad, I’m looking at this other Twisted Pictures film, and Lions Gate helped Twisted Pictures do Repo! and I’m looking at the landscape of their poster child for the horror business, Saw V. Just looking at the amount of money they put behind Saw V, it opened somewhere in 3,000 theaters. They plugged the heck out of it and my golly! it made it’s $30 million bucks and I only wished there was that type of enthusiasm and money behind Repo! I think we’re opening in only 7 theaters, as opposed to 3,049 or whatever it was. There hasn’t been much of an advertising budget for us; I think we’re considered the awkward step-child. In all fairness to any company, in any publicity department or marketing department, to sell a horror opera to the general public is close to impossible.

I don’t think there is any easy way to do it, so that’s why we’ve just been banging the drum. The marketing has been pretty much just on our shoulders and we’re trying to be as loud (laughs) and wide as possible by sending out MySpace stuff, website stuff, going out through the different media, and November 6^th is our big red carpet premiere in Las Vegas of all places. It opens in seven cities and each theater in those seven cities, but after that Darren and some of his buddies are literally towing a print of Repo! in a van and driving it to another seven cities. Of course all that information and where it is opening is on the website.

Jon: That brings up an interesting point because Bousman brought up that Hollywood does not reward uniqueness and the film is vastly unique. As I seen the trailer, I couldn’t think of anything prior that I might have seen that could be related and that’s awesome. But you guys are taking this grassroots approach to letting us know that this film exists and how do you feel that? You and Bousman are very passionate about it, how do you think the general public is going to respond to it?

Bill: I think there are going to be ones that love it or hate it. I doubt very much that there will be those in between. Whatever website you read, I hope there’s a lot more A’s than F’s, but they’re won’t be B’s, C’s, and D’s. Either you love it or you hate it, ten stars or one star. I think that’s great. I remember Rob (Zombie) saying I hope I get either ten stars or one star. He rather have people hate the movie than people giving it a C, saying it was okay, it wasn’t great, it wasn’t bad. To him that was a kiss of death and the same for Repo!

In part two of the interview, we discuss some final thoughts on Repo!, but also we talk about Rob Zombie, the Oscars, his new films opening next year, and Omaha? Huh? Check back in part two of my interview with Bill Moseley, only on Killer Film!

Tags: Anthony Head, Bill Moseley, Darren Lynn Bousman, Dawn of the Dead, Fangoria, Hellraiser, Ken Foree, Paris Hitlon, Paul Sorvino, Repo, rob zombie, Saw IV, Saw V, Skinny Puppy, Texas Chain Saw Massare, texas frightmare