Interviews

Bobbie Weiner, AKA Bloody Mary, is an FX artist with her own line of specialty makeup for literally any kind of transformation. If you're wondering where you might have seen her work, try the Oscar-nominated romace-catastrophe flick Titanic; she was the special effects make-up artist who transformed hundreds of actors into blue-lipped, icicle covered corpses. She also was in charge of the makeup for the horror films Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings and Voodoo.

Bobbie's got a whole lineup of her own FX supplies and original makeup; scary stuff, of course, but also any kind of makeup anyone might need. And you can read the comic she created, Tales of Bloody Mary, in any comic book store. Bobbie shares her recent work with Pretty/Scary's staffer Andrew Shearer...

Jocelin Donahue is a thoughtful actress. Thoughtful films would be her genre: The former NYU Sociology-History undergrad has starred in period pieces like The Burrowers, a horror-western that was as much about settling the wilderness of the West as about what beasts lurk beneath that harsh terrain. She has been in abstracted short films like The Masquerade and Express 831. Sitting with me in a room at the Four Seasons, draped in the catalog-sharp attire that befits her past career as a model, Jocelin tells me she is drawn to acting because she is fascinated by the formation of identity.

We are here because of a film that radiates identity—Ti West’s The House of the Devil, which is storming the festival circuit from Sheffield, UK to Austin, Texas...

By Alan Kelly

Alexandra Sokoloff is a screen-writer well established in California writing novel adaptations (like the thriller Cold Kisses) for various Hollywood studios like Sony, Miramax and Disney. A graduate of UC Berkeley where she majored in theatre and minored in just about everything else. Sokoloff has had three extremely well-received novels published: The Harrowing, The Price and The Unseen and is collaborating on a vampire trilogy with Heather Graham and Deborah Leblanc, which is due out next year...

Elven-y, smart, and talented Brea Grant walked into geek’s lives everywhere as the sexy speedster Daphne on season 3 of the sci-fi TV series Heroes who violently died and broke everyone’s hearts. However, her own take on herself may be very different: "When I’m onscreen all I can think about are how big my nostrils are."

You can catch her in Halloween II right now as Mya, best friend to Scout Taylor-Compton's Lori Strode, and she’s been in the horror flicks Trance, Battle Planet, and Midnight Movie. She’s also (and this is awesome) a Pretty/Scary reader. Brea talks shop with us and lets us in on her genre film career...

Danielle Harris stars in the new Halloween sequel by Rob Zombie. It’s a crap movie, but Danielle Harris, who was brought back into the franchise last year by Zombie for his remake, actually starred in the original Halloween 4 and 5, in which she played Jamie Lloyd, the target of Michael Myer’s wrath. In Zombie’s Halloween II, she reprises her role as Annie Brackett, the ill-fated friend of Lori Strode who bravely takes on nudity in an un-Jamie Lloyd way.

But Danielle Harris is much more than funny anecdotes about how much Donald Pleasance scared her when she was a kid because he was always drunk on the set and wearing a gross fake scar; she’s a clever woman with filmmaking aspirations of her own. She tells Pretty/Scary about how the Halloween franchise is now a part of her life...

-Interview by Nic Brown-

Actress and model Melanie Robel is a self-described, modern day gypsy. Her affinity for travel has served her well, allowing her to take advantage of acting roles where ever the opportunity arises. What kind of roles? She’s played a post-apocalyptic assassin, a monster in a bikini, and an even worse kind of monster: a bitchy, wannabe model!

One thing Melanie doesn’t play at though is her career. She’s not afraid to try challenging new roles. That’s how this young actress has amassed an impressive list of credits in just a few short years! Melanie took a short break from her work to talk to B Movie Man Nic Brown about making movies, her secret vice, and why we might think she’s nerdy, but dedicated to the art of acting!

Juliet Landau is known for being the vile vampiress Drusilla on Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spinoff Angel. But lately she’s been directing a horror-themed music video for Godhead called Hero, directing a documentary about Gary Oldman, and writing two issues of the Angel comic book for IDW that feature her character. Landau has appeared in all kinds of movies, from Tim Burton’s Ed Wood to her most recent appearance in a kid’s movie, but she’s a driving force behind the camera as well as has a very distinct creative vision. Juliet shares her latest projects with us...

Interview by Alan Kelly

Vaudeville, veiled hats, doppelgangers, clowns, macabre, destruction, deformities, ghosts, insane asylums, cut throat razors, creepy dolls, blood baths, Kathy Acker, Sartre, b/w crime photography, oddities, gas masks, medical curiosities, prosthetic limbs, existentialism, surrealism, Bataille, shiny sharp toys, tod browning, cannibalism, serial killers, philia; each word more or less sums up Rachel Kendall’s Sein und Werden (Being and Becoming). Rachel Kendall, the editor of Sein und Werden has agreed to sit down for a few words on the weirdest print/online magazine currently doing the rounds. A magazine that is going from strength to strength...

Actor Anthony Mackie asked his wife to FedEx his dignity back to him. The inexperienced Jordanian crew gave the actors real liquor for a fight scene (which wasn’t discovered until well into the shooting, thanks to the actors). And temperatures soared sometimes above 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite that, and shooting one million feet of film, director Kathryn Bigelow’s new action film The Hurt Locker, out June 26th, 2009 in theaters, is an awesome display of intensity and fireworks (read our review). Director Bigelow (Near Dark, Strange Days) and screenwriter writer Mark Boals talk to Pretty/Scary about working with actor Jeremy Renner on the newest action movie about the Iraq War and the men who diffuse bombs in the streets of Baghdad...

Interview by Andrew Shearer

“If she’s a bitch, I don’t want to know.” That’s what I said to a friend of mine who shot a movie with Ruby LaRocca last summer. Having been a fan of her work for several years, a champion of the goofy erotic spoofs like Sexy Sixth Sense and Erotic Werewolf In London, I couldn’t handle knowing I owned so many DVDs starring some stuck-up diva asshole. As it turned out, not only did she receive high praise from everyone involved with the shoot, but she proved to be much more than just a skilled performer. Not only did she fulfill her obligations as an actor, but she helped the crew pack up the gear and even volunteered to provide transportation at the last minute. With a decade of low-budget film making experience under her belt, it’s no wonder Ruby LaRocca has out-lasted so many of her contemporaries who have vanished. Not just a die-hard, endlessly knowledgeable fan of the horror genre, Ruby is also an enthusiastic and driven student of film and film making in general...