Inferno @ MindSay

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita."

"Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost."

-Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

Happy Wintereenmas, everyone.

Interview With A Dragon

"Old Scarface, they call me. Guess it's pretty accurate, but still, you'd think they'd show a little more respect to someone who's repeatedly saved their asses over the past few aeons." He chuckles softly and slugs his ale.

I must say, when I was told to meet the most venerable specimen of Draconis rex, I hardly expected the interview to take place in a tavern, let alone one so shabby as this.

"You were expecting a dragon's lair, full of gold and whatnot, weren't you," he laughs as I tell him. "Never much bothered with all that nonsense- we're supposed to be some kind of peacekeepers, not treasure-hoarders. Not to say I don't have a tidy sum in an account in Innsmouth, that is."

Times most certainly have changed.

"Yeah, not much good comes from sitting on a pile of gems- doesn't accrue any interest, and you're stuck watching over the damned thing just to make sure nobody gets any ideas. Fuckin' inconvenient. I prefer getting out and raising a little hell in my old age." Another laugh. "You wouldn't believe how many adventuring parties I've joined up with who're all trying to get their mitts on my hoard. It's the big thing nowadays, apparently.

"Kids these days! All they want to do is get the best of everything, now, now, now. No patience anymore. Used to be I'd have one apprentice every half millenium. Now they're lining up at my door, all too eager, no-one willing to take the time and make the effort to be a half-decent mage. Sad, really.

"Oh well. Guess the times are changing. I feel sorry for any poor bastard who takes on one of those impatient wanna-bes."

So now that he's given up training acolytes, what had he been up to in recent years?

"Ye gods, what haven't I been up to? Adventuring, mostly. Hearkening back to my younger days. Surprised the blue-eyed hell out of a few kids when they found out their ex-army curmudgeon was a fuckin' dragon. Funny, really. This one group had been going on and on about how easy dragon-slaying was, how stupid we'd all gotten, yadda yadda. I say nothing, keep quiet, and when we were all about to get gutted, bam, back to true form, kick some ass, and turn around to find the rest of the party has quietly shat themselves. Apparently they hadn't figured on me being so damn big. Seems like they'd been going after drakes; never even seen a real dragon before. Gave them more than a little pause, I'll tell you that.

"Spent a little time up north, with those really big orcs up in Svallund. Good bunch, really. Shame they had to retreat so far into the wastes to keep from getting slaved out. Met one- Reig, I think his name was- lost his entire family to slavers. Been leading warbands down south in revenge, and I can't say I blame him. One of these days I want to get some of your University fellas to interview him, get his story out there. Slave trade just ain't right."

December 7: First set report/pics: Argento’s MOTHER

It’s the film every Dario Argento fan has been waiting to see for over 25 years now. And LA TERZA MADRE/THE THIRD MOTHER (a.k.a. MOTHER OF TEARS; see more photos below), the highly anticipated completion of his supernatural trilogy begun by SUSPRIA and continued in INFERNO, finally went before the cameras late October on location in Rome and Turin. Based once more on Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater” legend of three evil mothers, the Medusa Film stars Asia Argento (top photo below) as art restorer Sarah Mandy, who must stop the violent havoc caused when the cruel Mother of Tears is revived by demonic blood sacrifice.

At the Andezeno cemetery location, where the urn containing the Mother of Tears’ ashes is discovered, Dario answers the burning question: Why now, after all these years? “Because my fantasies have never been freer than in the past four years of my thinking about the second sequel,” he says. “I had a great experience on the MASTERS OF HORROR series [for which he helmed the first season’s JENIFER and this year’s PELTS]. They let me do whatever I wanted, and that creative freedom allowed my imagination to bubble over like sparkling champagne. I rediscovered the fury in my soul, the feelings I had as a young man directing SUSPIRIA. That drive, my dreams and a stream of obscene consciousness led me to visualize a modern fairy tale for our confusing times, full of sadomasochistic sex and shocking violence.”

It was also thanks to MASTERS OF HORROR that Dario encountered TOOLBOX MURDERS writers Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch (second photo below, with MOTHER co-star Coralina Cataldi Tassoni at right), whom he brought on to marshal his outrageous ideas into script form. “A friend was assistant editor on the series,” Gierasch recalls, “so I angled a meet with Dario to get some stuff signed. We walked into the editing suite and the first thing Dario said was, ‘I’m trying to find writers for THE THIRD MOTHER—interested?’ ”

Anderson adds, “We couldn’t believe what had just happened. So we returned the next day with a script sample, and before we knew it we were living in Rome visiting locations. ‘You are my slaves—write, write,’ he’d say. It was important to Dario that the script connected to SUSPIRIA and INFERNO in meaningful ways, and we helped him achieve that.”

Asia, who has become a director in her own right, was so impressed by the script she asked her father for a role in it. “I was shattered after working two years nonstop,” she explains. “But there was no way I was going to miss being a part of my family, and Italian horror-movie, history. I don’t believe the script could be any better, going further into dark, surrealistic horror than Dario ever has before. One scene I know will cause major ratings headaches! The expectation for this is enormous, but fans won’t be let down by what is a brilliant and worthy sequel.” Look for a MOTHER lode of further coverage on this site and in FANGORIA’s pages soon. —Alan Jones

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I classify a good rehearsal as one that gets something done. One that everyone takes seriously, even if we are running through the most mundane thing, over and over again. I look at the repetition as a very good thing. Each time we play the songs, something gets fixed in it. Think of it as a self-repairing script that gets run over and over again. We tighten down the screws, we pull in the reigns, we make things different. Part of that, is noticing parts that's outside of your own, and how you interact with it. Improving that interaction, I'm always trying to concentrate on. Each time through a song, whether they know it or not, everyone notices something different. Running through the song for the gajillionth time, helps everything improve (when taken seriously). This makes a very good rehearsal. If that deviates in any way, the fact that you're repeating a task gets no where. Just an observation. Last night's rehearsal, was one that I'd classify as a good rehearsal. Played all of our songs through twice, with the exception of Hotel Coral Essex. Why are we doing this you ask?


April, 22 2005 at The Inferno
Commercial Drive near Oscar Mayer, Madison, WI 53701
Cost:

Benefit and Art Opening for Firecracker Studios With music from Cuts like Drugs, Call Me Lightening, and Solid Gold. Should be an awesome AWESOME show. 21+ word.