Theatre of pain

Audacious horror musical REPO! The Genetic Opera makes its world premiere at Fantasia

SLICE OF LIFE: Nivek Ogre and Anthony Head

by MALCOLM FRASER

On the phone from L.A., director Darren Lynn Bousman and screenwriter/actor/composer Terrance Zdunich can’t stop talking about how bizarre their new film is. I don’t quite have the heart to break it to them that in the context of Fantasia, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi/horror musical about a human-organ repo man is only a half-notch stranger than business as usual.

But to be fair, by any normal standards the film is pretty far left of the dial—plus it’s genuinely original, wildly ambitious and great fun to boot. And you really couldn’t imagine a better venue for the premiere of REPO! The Genetic Opera.

Anthony Stewart Head, who some will remember as Rupert Giles from the Buffy series, stars as repo man Nathan, who seizes organs from those unfortunate enough to find themselves in debt to mega-corporation GeneCo. Though he slices guts out of still-squirming humans for a living (all the while breaking into song), he does have his sensitive side, taking care of his sickly daughter Shilo (Alexa Vega of the Spy Kids franchise).

Meanwhile, Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino), the nefarious head of GeneCo, faces the headache of determining which one of his offspring will inherit his empire. In a feat of so-crazy-it-works casting, his feuding progeny are a knife-wielding psychopath (horror-flick veteran Bill Moseley), a human-skin-masked dandy (Skinny Puppy’s Nivek Ogre), and a plastic-surgery-obsessed diva (tabloid phenomenon Paris Hilton).

OPERATIC ORIGINS

Performed entirely in song, the audaciously unique film is a labour of love for co-writers/composers Zdunich and Darren Smith as well as director Bousman, noted to date as the man behind the three sequels to Saw. Interestingly enough, the epic concept had quite modest beginnings, in a stage show devised by Zdunich and Smith. “The genesis of it was around 2000,” Zdunich recalls. “We were doing these things called ‘10-minute operas’ at coffeehouses and little clubs around L.A.”

“It was more along the lines of performance art. Darren Smith was basically a one-man band, and I was a narrator. One of the pieces was about a grave robber who would observe different people coming in and out of a cemetery; one of the characters he met was an organ repo man. For some reason, that really resonated with audiences. So we decided to push the story in that direction.”

“I came to Los Angeles to make musicals, believe it or not,” says Bousman, who, after seeing a performance, collaborated with the authors to mount a full-length stage spectacular. “After Saw II came out and made a lot of money, [the studio] said, ‘Okay, Darren, you can do whatever you want to, what do you want to do?’ and I said, ‘Make a rock opera.’ They laughed at me and said, ‘Forget it.’”

After two more cash-raking Saw sequels resulted in similar conversations, the team shot a short film as a demo, which finally succeeded in raising the funds for the feature. Zdunich and Smith found themselves once again retooling their idea.

“Everyone’s heard the horror stories about how Hollywood treats writers,” Zdunich recalls, “so we were hoping to be involved, but expecting to be shuffled off to the side. But what we wrote was so bizarre and unique that there aren’t really experts in it… it ended up that we were involved way past the point we wanted to be,” he laughs.

SPECIAL TIMES

The creators’ vision assured that the results would be novel, but it’s the inspired cast, led by the flamboyant Head, that makes REPO! truly successful. “I cut my teeth on musicals when I got out of drama school, and I’ve done them here and there,” he recalls on the phone from a TV shoot in his native England. “One of my favourite experiences was Rocky Horror, where I got to play Frank N. Furter. And I didn’t think I was gonna get to do anything like that again.”

By all accounts, the film was a special experience for the cast and crew. “I love it,” says Head simply when asked to describe the result. “It’s got a real flow to it, a real fluidity. And I can absolutely assure you that you’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We wanted to do something that really challenged us,” recalls Zdunich, who’ll attend the premiere along with Bousman, Vega and Moseley. “The sheer audacity of attempting so strange, and so difficult—just to see that come to fruition, I’m proud of that in itself… it’s not for everyone, but for the people it is for, it’ll be very special.”

Repo! the Genetic Opera screens Friday,
July 18 at the hall theatre
(1455 de maisonneuve w.), 9:45 p.m.