SFIFF Interview: Joshua Grannell

Joshua Grannell is the writer and director of All About Evil which had its world premier on Saturday, May 1st at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Grannel is best known as his female alter-ego, Peaches Christ. As Peaches, Joshua hosts the Midnight Mass series of late show screenings of cult and classic horror films at the Bridge Theatre in San Francisco. Grannell has directed a series of short films starring Peaches and appeared in Gus Van Sant’s film, Milk. All About Evil marks Grannell’s feeature-length filmmaking debut.

Shortly after the world premier of All About Evil, Joshua sat down with FlickSided to talk about his film:

Flicksided: Most people here in the [San Francisco] Bay Area know you as Peaches Christ, not Joshua Grannell. How did Peaches come to be?

Joshua Grannell: I was making my senior thesis film at Penn State University back in 1995 — I graduated in ’96, but you take the whole year to make your film — and I had co written a movie called “Jizz Mopper: A Love Story” with my friend, Hal. I was directing the movie and there was a part for a drag queen character in this, sort of, porn emporium. She was the manager of this porn world.

Oh, a little aside about that: everyone was kinda like “That doesn’t make any sense! Why would there be a drag queen running this place? I don’t get it.” And when we found our location in Harrisburg, PA where we shot, the person running the porn emporium was a drag queen! It was kind of amazing, because we had a reference right there in the store.

Anyway, the actor we had hired to play the part was a flake and kind of just didn’t show up and the administration was going to dissolve a certain number of projects, so, sort of out of desperation — and also probably a secret desire to do it all along — I stepped in to play the drag queen part. We changed her name from CoCo to Peaches. So Peaches was born in an underground film.

Which is appropriate considering who she became later on.

Very. And it’s ironic to me that now, at 36 years old, I’m doing the same thing all over again, just it’s a different size. But really it’s the same thing. Peaches was not the lead in that student film, she was sort of a costar. It’s funny.

Before we get into your film, I did want to talk for just a minute about drag, and its place within gay culture and culture as a whole.

Drag comes in SO many different forms and everyone who does drag has their own relationship with it. I think it’s importance as far as being part of a culture is often underestimated. It is sort of, I think, an art form that embraces vaudeville and comedy and costume and fashion and community theatre and, of course, film.

Drag is often dismissed as something silly, but for its fans and the people who create it and enjoy it, it’s taken quite seriously. And there’s all different ranges of it from female impersonation to sort of what I do. I’ve always viewed Peaches as a separate character from myself. Certainly parts of my personality are in the character, but I created her to be something so “otherworldly” in way that she could not exist in the real world. It just wouldn’t be practical. But then there’s drag queens where the wig and the costume is just an extension of who they are every day.

Also, you mentioned culture in general, and it’s part of gay culture definitely, but it also had it’s place — and this is what I love — in midnight movie culture and the culture of B-film and cult movies. So I was just turned on to things like John Waters and Divine at a very early age and around the same time fell in love with The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Which obviously isn’t just a “gay” thing…

Right. And there’s Ed Wood. So for me, I almost feel like I fit — and Peaches fits — into that world best. And in some ways I’m sometimes considered an outsider from the more mainstream gay culture because of her affiliations with horror and gore and movies. So I was really first sucked into the world of drag through Divine.

Because of your involvement in Midnight Mass and the no-budget shorts you’ve made in the past, it’s obvious that you’re a huge fan of film. How did you first get into film and, more specifically, underground or cult film.

It’s that cliched story where I was such an artsy kid that I would wrangle the neighborhood kids and grab a video camera to film stories and put on theatrical productions. I just escaped through movies. Ever since I was first introduced to them, it was an obsession. I was absolutely obsessed with movies and that never, ever changed. It’s always been a part of who I am. As I grew up I was able to love things like Steven Spielberg and also, at the same time, love the early works of John Waters or David Lynch. I love all kinds of short films and underground movies, but I also love Hollywood blockbusters. I just love good movies. It’s just always been a big part of who I am, both as Joshua and as Peaches.

With Peaches I was able to build a whole brand around this drag character’s affinity for movies.

Ok, now, finally, let’s get to All About Evil. It premiered last Saturday at the Castro Theatre here in San Francisco. How would you describe the film to someone who has never heard of it.

I would say that it’s a black comedy set in the world of an old, classic horror movie. I think a lot of people see it as a horror movie first, but I don’t. I never really did. It doesn’t have a modern horror movie feel. I love the old horror movies from the 50s and 60s and I was trying to do my own version of one of those movies, but of course make it contemporary and funny. So at it’s core it’s about a dark sense of humor and, of course, a real love of old horror movies.

All About Evil premiered as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. How did that fall together?

The festival did ask for a screener, and of course we were thinking about the world premier in relation to San Francisco. It’s such a San Franciscan film, and I’m such a San Franciscan artist — and I’m proud to be, I want to be and I love that it is part of my brand — and it was important to me to make the film in San Francisco. So, it only made sense to premier the movie in San Francisco.

But also — I’ve got to be honest — we were rejected from Sundance. I thought we had a real shot of playing in the midnight program there — I’ve seen some of the films that have played that program so I thought we really, really had a shot.

Some of those films are actually playing alongside All About Evil here at SFIFF in their Late Show program.

Yes, and not to say anything bad about any of those other films at all, I just thought we had a shot.

I now — after going through this last weekend — have a ton of gratitude for having been rejected from Sundance, because I don’t know that our world premier would have felt as special anywhere except San Francisco. I was overwhelmed by the response to everything. I just don’t see us getting that in Utah.

So, at the time I was disappointed, not grossly disappointed, actually I think our movie needs to struggle. I think my stuff has always benefitted from that struggle to bring it to people and then have them discover it and experience it. I don’t think we would have benefitted from being an overnight success. That’s not who we are and I don’t think that’s really who we want to be. The premier on Saturday just reassured me that this is where we needed to be.

This is your first time directing a feature film, so it’s your first time working with a significant budget, professional actors, etc. What were some of the challenges associated with that experience?

I think the best way to describe it is that it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but also the most fulfilling, fun and wonderful thing I’ve ever done.

It was a dream come true, but the dream, at times, became a nightmare. I don’t know how to describe it, except as indescribable. As a director, you feel the weight of the world resting on your shoulders. It’s not one show that we’re gonna perform at Midnight Mass and if it bombs, it bombs. Sure we’ve spent time and energy on it, but everyone will recover and we’ll do another show. With a movie, I felt this tremendous amount of pressure to deliver something that was both true to the spirit of the world that I come from, but also engaging enough and entertaining enough that it could crossover and work for people who weren’t familiar with our culture or background.

It was tremendously stressful and difficult, yes. It was also hugely satisfying and wonderful and fun and outrageous. I think, too, the marrying of the sort of bohemian underground drag world of creative collaborators and artists that I come from, with the more industry-related world of filmmaking and actors, a cinematographer and editor, was actually a beautiful marriage. I think everyone benefitted.

Peaches was actually a character in All About Evil. How did having her in the film affect production?

When we were in preproduction, one of my producers said to me, “These are the rules for independent filmmaking, and making a film with your budget, that you are breaking: you’re not supposed to have special effects, you want talking heads sitting in a room, but you have elaborate gags and effects; you’re not supposed to have children, there’s a whole scene with children; and you are definitely not supposed to have the director act in the move, let alone do so in drag.”

So we actually mapped out what the potential challenges were going to be in relation to Peaches being part of the movie, and me, as Joshua, directing the movie. And we worked around them as best we could. To say it was easy would be a lie. It was definitely challenging and difficult. I actually didn’t like the Peaches days as much as the other days; I found it to be- I think everyone found it to be a challenge.

I’ve just got this picture in my head of this crazy drag queen in high heels running back and forth from the set where she’s acting to the director’s chair looking at monitors to check out the shots. It seems like it could have been total chaos…

Ok, this is the way it looked:

On the Peaches days — and there were like eight of them out of the twenty-five shooting days, so it was kind of a substantial amount — I would show up in “face”. Which meant the other actors would get to show up freshly showered, then we’d do a rehearsal, then they’d go into the hair and makeup trailer. But because I was the director, I could not afford to do that, and no one else could do my makeup. So I would actually, often times, get home later that anyone else would. I’d lay down for what basically amounted to a nap. Then I’d have to wake up three hours earlier than the call time to put on my face.

We had a plan, and it was designed to be- I did not want Peaches and her presence in the film to ever interfere with production. So I was willing to get up early to put on my face, and my costume designer and I had it down to science how to get me in and out of that costume as quickly as possible. So there was a plan, and it worked. It was tiring, but it worked.

Cassandra Peterson plays Steven’s mom. There’s one scene in particular where she is in her son’s room and there is an Elvira poster on his wall. For any viewers who are familiar with cult film, and know that Cassandra is Elvira, it’s a pretty surreal moment.

It’s funny. Many people think I wrote the movie with Cassandra in mind, but I didn’t. I actually wrote the movie from a very pure fantasy place, because I really didn’t know that it would ever get financed. I didn’t know if we’d make the movie for five dollars or five million dollars — we ended up making it for a number in between those, of course.

So, when I was writing the movie I didn’t do it with any actors in mind. It wasn’t until I finished and started putting it all together to shoot — in that time I had befriended Cassandra through doing some midnight mass shows with her. I had gotten to know her and see her as this wonderful, nurturing mother to a teenage daughter. And I just love her, she’s one of my favorite people in the world. So I now have this woman who had created this wonderful character, and who is a mother who I appreciate so much.

So it wasn’t until I was casting that Cassandra became part of the equation. And I was really impressed with her talent as an actress and her ability to transcend this iconic character that she is so known for.

I think people who aren’t in on the “joke” can just watch her as the mom character in your film without feeling like she’s out of place.

Yeah, she’s wonderful.

And I should say, that when I cast her, I did go back and intentionally add in things like the Elvira poster.

There are other specific scenes and shots in your movie that play direct homage to other films. Were those also added in as you shot?

A lot of them were written in.

But some of the homages changed once we were done with the casting. For example, what was once an homage to The Brood, Poltergeist,Village of the Damned and The Bad Seed ended up becoming an homage to The Shining. Because, when I saw a bunch of blonde twins — the twins were always written to be blonde; they were always meant to be Village of the Damned — but when you’re in LA auditioning for blonde twins, you get Hugh Hefner’s girls. You get something completely different from what I was looking for, which was creepy, thin, gaunt twins. I saw literally twenty sets of blonde twins, and I was so…

Tired of fake boobs?

Yes! Oh my god, we saw a lot of fake boobs.

Anyway, these brunettes came in, and had timed their breathing for the audition. They had not only ready their lines, but they had read the sides and really figured out what these characters were. They were robots.

After Jade and Nikita [Ramsey] played that scene, I was like, “That’s it. You don’t need to bring anyone else in.” We had totally shifted gears.

So back to your question, what was once an homage to one thing became a nod to something else.

There’s also the scene where ***spoiler deleted***

Whoa! Total spoiler.

Oh shit, sorry. I’ll delete that.

We can call it the “rooftop finale.” It’s totally meant to be King Kong meets Rocky Horror meets, like, everything. When I was writing it, I was like, “of course it needs to end on the roof! That’s where all great Hollywood cliched endings take place.”

For someone like myself, and yourself obviously, and I think most of the people who were at the Castro on Saturday — we are “film people.” So these moments work so well for us in that way, but I had to step back and ask myself, “would this movie work for the casual viewer?” I think it does, but is that something you worried about too?

Well what we’ve been doing is test screenings for audiences who are specifically made up of casual movie goers. For those screenings we didn’t want cult film fans. It means the world to me to entertain my core audience, but for people like my relatives, who don’t get anything that I do, to be able to watch this and laugh, is incredible. I love that.

I don’t make any bones about it, I want to be a crowd pleaser. I want a broad audience to enjoy this movie. Will we have walk outs during this movie? Yes. If those walkouts happen during certain parts of the movie, I’m fine with that. I actually like that.

There was a scene in the movie — I got to watch part of it from the back — I’ll just say this, after the guillotine scene was fully realized, there were fourteen walkouts. We were counting.

The thing is — I hope he won’t get upset with me for saying this — Darren Stein, one of the producers, invited his older aunt and uncle, and they got up and left. Darren was worried about my feelings afterwards, but I said, “No! That’s fabulous. We want people to get up and leave. At that scene. It’s supposed to piss off parents.”

I don’t think we’ll ever make a movie for everyone, but I think this delivers on what we set out to do.

And hopefully if you don’t get the homages, if you don’t get that Cassandra Peterson is Elvira, the movie will stand on it’s own.

You’ve had your world premier. What’s next for All About Evil?

It was just announced that we’re going to be in the Los Angeles Film Festival in June. It was also just announced that we’re going to be in the Provincetown International Film Festival in June too, which I’m so fucking excited to go to. Everyone — Cassandra, John Waters — everyone loves that film festival and I’ve never been to Provincetown and I’ve always wanted to go.

After those film festivals, All About Evil begins its event-based theatrical run. We’ve worked out a deal with Landmark Theatres to play in about twenty different markets across the country. We’re going to do live midnight screenings a la Peaches. It’s very important to me that it rolls out in the way that I feel best suits this movie.

It will of course be made available for Video On-Demand and DVD, so it will be accessible to fans everywhere.

But I really want the theatricals to be “theatrical.” And I want some control over that, and I want to maintain rights to the film. So, I won’t sell it to a distributor, because it will take away my ability to do these kind of live shows. I want to be able to take it on the road.

So for the time being, we’ll be distributing it ourselves, at least for domestic theatrical screenings.

It sounds like, for a while at least, you’re very occupied with All About Evil, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask what’s next. Is there a project in the works?

There is. There’s actually two things that I’m playing with. I’ve started to outline in my head, and even started writing one of them.

There’s the idea to do a Peaches feature. Which I view as being very far removed from what we’ve done with All About Evil and it’s more about our no-budget short films. We could give Peaches a budget and finally do this full-on romp through the wild world that is Peaches Christ.

The other is part of this “Trilogy of Evil” that I’ve kind of constructed in my head. I don’t see All About Evil lending itself to a sequel. I do, however, think I could use the same themes to make this trilogy. So I have, in my head, two more movies that are similar in spirit and in tone. Tone was very important to me this time around and I’d like to do another movie in the same spirit. But I don’t want to talk about what it’s about! (laughs)

I will say, it is also very, very, very San Franciscan. Maybe even more specifically San Franciscan than All About Evil is.

For more information about All About Evil, visit the film’s official website, http://www.allaboutevilthemovie.com/.
For information about Peaches Christ visit http://www.peacheschrist.com/.

For screening times for All About Evil at the Los Angeles Film Festival, go to http://www.lafilmfest.com/2010/.
For screening times for All About Evil at the Provincetown International Film Festival, go to http://www.ptownfilmfest.org/.