Victoria G Interviews Fred Olen Ray

Victoria G: What inspired you to become a director?

Fred Olen Ray: I didn't start out in this business wanting to be a director. I started out wanting to be a makeup artist, and not just ordinary makeup. I wanted to do Horror and special effects inspired makeup. I had made some gorilla suits, and masks, and appliances and things like that, and I actually had done some work in film on projects that required special prosthetics and stuff. I did a TV special for Colico toys called Whiz, the Elf Who Made Christmas Special, where I did sort of a Rockwell Santa Claus and a bunch of elves and stuff and when I did The Alien Dead, one of my very early films, I started out making the masks and stuff, but on that particular movie I had a couple partners and no one wanted to be the director. So, since I was also the cameraman, I said I would do the job and I found out that I liked it. I liked being a director. And it went on from there. When I came to California, I tried makeup effects again and had some success, but I did discover very quickly that you're always between jobs, looking for your next job and I said, you know I better find a job that pays enough money, that you have something in the bank and between jobs, and that was directing. There isn't anything I've learned to do in my whole life that pays as much as being the director of a feature film.

VG: Who are some directors that inspire you?

FOR: I was always inspired by directors who could do something very quickly on a very limited budget, because I figured that would probably be my lot in life. If I ever did make it into this business, I would have to be one of those guys, who could take a small amount of money in a small amount of days, and make a movie that people were willing to buy. So, to that end, I found Roger Corman and other filmmakers like him in the 1950s, who were trying to make drive-in movies in six to ten days, and I always studied their work to see how they set scenes up and how many of them had coverage, how many of them only shot in masters And also what level of success did they have, but initially, I just wanted to make films, being a success wasn't the end result that I was aspiring to.

VG: What is your favorite thing about directing?

FOR: Well, I love having a vision. In films, I love seeing a scene in my mind and then being able to play that scene out. I enjoy working with the composition and I kind of edit in my head so I don't overshoot angles. I shoot just kind of what I think is needed to do the scene the way I want it. So, I'm very limiting to the editors about how much footage they'll get. So, they can almost only cut the scene the way I envisioned it, because I haven't shot a lot of different angles beyond the ones that I wanted. You know, there are some directors who will shoot a scene from every conceivable angle and at that point, it becomes an editor's movie. It's the editor who gets to decide how it goes and I've always thought that directors who feel the need to shoot from every conceivable angle are probably directors who don't actually have a vision of what the finished product will look like or the way they want it to look. They just don't know so they're scared to commit. Kind of like shooting something in a master with a few dolly scenes and not doing any coverage. You have to be pretty confident that this is the way the scene will play, because you'll be stuck with it.

VG: What was the first film you directed?

FOR: The first film that people might consider to be a feature was a black and white movie I made called The Brain Leeches, which was shot sound on film with a news media camera 16 millimeter and it was kind of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and as much as it dealt with them, loss of identity, people losing their identity, and then blindly following a dictatorial sort of political view that makes all their decisions and stuff for them, and therefore is trying to create a happy utopia at the expense of giving up who you are. This was made in about 1977 78, because my son Chris was born in 1977 and he is a baby in that movie, and it was made from very little money. The entire budget was $298, most of which went toward processing the film itself.