Director J.L. Vara Talks SOUTH OF HEAVEN

Tell me a bit about yourself.  South of Heaven is your first feature, correct?

I was born in La Grange, Georgia and raised in Weatherford, Texas. South of Heaven is my first feature.

I know you share a producer with All The Boys Love Mandy Lane and The Wackness, what’s your connection to those guys?

I was in the same graduating class at AFI with the core team behind Mandy Lane. Jonathan Levine directed Mandy Lane as well as The Wackness. Brian Udovich produced both. Udovich also produced South of Heaven. Darren Genet (the DP on Mandy Lane) shot SOH and Michelle Bush was the Costume Designer on Mandy and SOH. That’s pretty much the connection. While at AFI I became friendly with Levine and Udovich. They were the all-stars from each of their respective majors. Levine was the best Director from my class and Udovich was the best Producer. They were very supportive during school and still are. Great guys. I visited the set of Mandy in Austin while they were shooting but I don’t have any good stories to tell because on the day I showed up they were actually working. On the night I was there, I remember Genet and Levine were working on a set-up similar to the window shot in Night of the Hunter. Very impressive. Levine, Udovich, Genet, and Jacob Foreman did one helluva job with Mandy. They should be very proud. And very rich.

South of Heaven is one very odd film – in a good way, we love odd films around here – how did you find the finance for something so unusual your first time out?

Pretty standard. I raised a couple of bucks from family and friends. Glenn Abbott (a friend from undergrad) raised even more money from family and friends and Jason Polstein (another friend from undergrad) raised the rest, which was the most, mainly from his father. Looking at the film and thinking back to the beginning that’s really the only way a film like this could have been made. Only family and friends would be stupid enough and/or unconditionally supportive enough to blow their hard earned cash on something like this. In all honesty the budget for South of Heaven was very, very small especially when you consider it was shot on 35mm.

What came first, the story or the visual style?

I wrote the script very fast so it’s hard to remember exactly. When I write I doodle on the side. Sometimes I sketch a character, or a set, or a shot, not unlike storyboarding, and then jot down some dialogue sketches and then start to write the scene, or I write out the action, no dialogue, doodle something and then write it out. Kind of like panels in a comic strip. I do this knowing the beginning and the end. This helps me picture the characters. I know what they’re wearing and whether or not their moustache is an Ambassador or a Fu Manchu. Point is, the egg came first. 

I think the last time I saw somebody attempt anything even close to this was Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy … what were your visual influences?

I still have the ticket stub tee they gave out for the first showing of Dick Tracy back when it opened. I am a big fan of that film and the strip. So I am going to take that as a huge compliment the film doesn’t really deserve. Thanks. In all honesty, I tried not to reference or even think of films that had a real budget because there’s no way I could have come close to achieve what they did. Instead I referenced a lot of Poverty Row style noirs (especially from first time directors): Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, Ray’s They Live By Night, Polonsky’s Force of Evil, Mann’s Raw Deal, Siodmak’s The Killers and Fuller’s Naked Kiss. There’s a scene in South of Heaven involving a baldheaded woman and an ice pick that borrows heavily from Naked Kiss and Lieberman’s Blue Sunshine.  I used DC’s Unknown Soldier and a bit of Django as sources for the Nobody character. For Mad Dog Mantee I used Tex Avery’s wolf character as a visual source and Fred Wilmot (our animator) really brought that style out in the opening credits and especially in the counting sheep vignettes.

When I was writing the script I kept thinking about this review for Kiss Me Deadly I read as a kid. In it I remember Truffaut wrote something about Aldrich being too intense. But that it was a good thing. Since he was a first time director he was naïve and unable to show any restraint. He said the faults made the film even more enjoyable or something like that. I am probably way off from the original review but that’s how I remember it and it kept inspiring me to throw in anything and everything that I liked from other films. Things that seemed odd to me and stuck in my head or in my craw. Having said that, I hadn’t seen Kiss Me Deadly when I read that review and when I eventually did I was a bit disappointed. Not because it’s a bad flick. It’s not. It’s actually great but after reading what Truffaut wrote I was expecting something more insane like, I don’t know… like Elfman’s Forbidden Zone or Jodorowsky’s Sante Sangre. I’ve seen it since, again and again, and I love it, especially the Nat King Cole opening with Cloris Leachman and the Repo Man ending. So to do my part to help keep other kids from being disappointed when they see this I will go on the record as saying, “South of Heaven is more like the Turkish Dick Tracy”. I can stand by that.

The dark noir tone is an interesting contrast to the colorful visuals, did you find it difficult to balance the two elements against each other?  Same question with the extreme violence and sexual content.

Yes. And I am still finding it difficult. I had planned for the violence to be very extreme. Grand Guignol meets Monty Python. I wanted every wound to be a gusher. Blood squirting, shooting, projecting eight feet in the air. Not realistic but cartoony. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your tastes, with our budget we couldn’t pull that off. We only had one costume for most of the actors so we couldn’t stain them. We also didn’t have the time needed between takes to clean up puddles of fake blood. So the violence became more minimal and therefore more real. However thanks to Lino Stavole (the special effects wizard on the film) there is one shot where Mad Dog shoots someone in the head and I got my gusher. Lino did a great job with that one. It’s pretty rad. I’m still shocked at what Lino did in this film. He had nothing. No money. He had one assistant, his pregnant wife Nicolette. He’s amazing.

As far as the contrast between a dark tone and a colorful palette goes; that’s the type of films I like. I like how Suzuki juggles the two in Tokyo Drifter, Kumel in Daughters of Darkness, and in a lot of giallos like Bava’s 5 Dolls for an August Moon and Blood and Black Lace. Those films, especially the giallos have colorful photography, bright costumes, and very lush, almost baroque scores, all the while something sinister lurks beneath the pop art. I like that. Russ Howard (the composer) helped balance the two by referencing several giallo and spaghetti westerns scores for our film. I gave him tracks from Guido and Maurizio De Angelis’ score to Torso, Ferrio’s The Blood Stained Butterfly, and Bixio, Frizzi, and Tempera’s Silver Saddle.  And he came back with a wicked Mancini/Morricone inspired film noir score. Pretty amazing what he did especially when you consider what little he had to work with. This helped add depth to the artificial world.

What’s next for the film?  Do you have distribution in place?  Festival plans?

I know the film plays on the 14th and the 15th at Cinevegas.  The film doesn’t have distribution yet. But we do have representation.  The Collective’s Nate Bolotin understood the film and what we were going for right away and took the film on.  They’ve been very supportive and have been doing a great job. I don’t know what’s next. Udovich and The Collective are in charge of that.