by MATTHEW HAYS

Interviewing Guy Maddin is a lot like watching one of his films. He's odd. He makes little jokes and laughs in a sweet way. Sometimes he says things and you really don't know if he means it ironically or if he's deadly serious.

Like when he confesses that he'd never actually seen the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of Dracula, the ballet he's turned into the critically lauded Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary. "Winnipeg being such a big city and all, I don't get to see everything." Is he slagging the 'Peg or is he serious? Probably serious, seeing as he's made the prairie city his home, despite offers of big bucks to relocate in the U.S. since his spate of prairie gothic films have become darlings of the fest circuit.

In an age of tedious, irony overkill, Maddin still manages to make irony work in his oddball films. He's also a meeting point for high and low culture, having written for highfalutin mags like Film Comment (early this year he gushed over the Mary Tyler Moore Show DVD box set) while also offering up his Osmond fetish. (No, he's not gay, surprisingly.)

Thus the über-ironic culture vulture Maddin seemed a perfect fit to bring the acclaimed Winnipeg ballet Dracula to the screen, something the CBC approached him about last year.

"Actually, I wasn't really prepared when they asked me. I had a dread of all things Dracula. I was a monster movie buff when I was a kid. For some reason, Dracula never appealed to me. I don't think I was ready for its adult themes. It always sort of bored me."

But Maddin did like the idea of taking a contemporary ballet piece and carrying it into the medium of film. He threw himself into the requisite research, reading Bram Stoker's original novel and watching every film version he could get his hands on. His favourite? "Bela Lugosi made one in 1931 that I really envied. There was practically no music in it, so Philip Glass added a score to it. The characters move around extremely slowly, like they're wading through oatmeal that's up to their armpits. It's a nightmare of restraint. I thought this is the real ballet, it's like they're all in a nightmare, moving about to Glass's score. I also really like Carl Dreyer's Vampyr."

Expressionist dancers

Maddin says he had hoped to find some dance films that got at the essence of the art, but no such luck. "I asked all of the dancers exactly what their favourite dance movies were so I could look at them. But they all said unanimously that they didn't like any. They have the same complaints that many viewers do: the camera is too far back, you don't get a sense of the dance up close." You mean none of them cited Grease or Showgirls? "I didn't want to admit that I'd memorized those pictures."

Maddin agreed with the dancers' reservations about dance movies, and in response moved his camera up close and personal to capture the dancers and their expressions. The result is Fritz Lang meets Rudolph Nureyev. As well as capturing their movement in a more intimate manner, it also reveals that the ballet dancers are actually natural born silent movie stars. "Ballet dancers are really great actors - they've been acting since they were four or whenever they started their classes. They act with their finger tips, they act with their feet. Everything they do physically is an extension of what's going on. It's not Method Acting, and I'm glad it's not. It's expressionistic acting, where everything that's on the inside exists on the face and the body. It's an extension of the set and lighting, which are also expressionistic."

Was working with an entire cast of professional dancers difficult for Maddin, given the dancer stereotype as self-centred and prone to hissy fits? "They were all incredibly sweet and tremendously un-Diva like. I was actually kind of disappointed. I wanted to be slapped out by a ballerina on a daily basis. But no such luck. They're all very sweet and cordial."

Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary
opens Friday, July 4, at the Cinéma du Parc

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