by CMAC

I was kind of obsessed with Winona Ryder in my teens. Typical kid stuff, you know — carving her name into my chest with shards of broken glass, rummaging through her trash looking for used feminine hygiene products, drawing up plans for a mask made of her skin. And no movie encapsulated her Winonessence like Heathers. Ryder’s character Veronica Sawyer was Helen of Troy to all the pre-Columbine, trench-coated social miscreants with The Anarchist’s Cookbook under their bed (like me); to say nothing of the movie itself, a brilliantly-written, pitch-perfect indictment of all that was false and lame about the 80’s high school experience: the cliques, the moralistic authority figures, the bad socially-redeeming pop songs. I’m proud to say that Heathers was one of two VHS tapes I completely ruined in the early 90’s due to overuse (the other being Bob Vosse’s space-porn opus Sex Wars).

So you can imagine my nipple-betwinglin’ delight when I heard that Heathers scribe Daniel Waters was re-teaming with my muse for Sex and Death 101 (also starring Simon Baker and Patton Oswalt), a dark sex comedy very much in the spirit of Heathers, but all grown up. Waters not only wrote, but also directed Sex and Death 101; and it’s been getting strong reviews from people like AICN’s Harry Knowles and Cinematical’s Scott Weinberg. I was lucky enough to get some time alone with Waters (thanks to my bump key!) and talk about sex, death, whip-smart wisecracking teenage cinema, and oiled-up Greco-Roman wrestling (omitted from the text below).

FULL INTERVIEW AFTER BUMP

Writer/director Daniel Waters, in an interesting hat

Sex and Death 101 is about what now?

It’s got one of them there deceptively simple premises: Man gets e-mailed a mysterious List of every woman he’s ever had sex with, but it goes on to include every woman he EVER WILL have sex with… 101 names in all. Think about the premise for five minutes and you can see why this List would be the greatest thing in the world (just think how much money you’d save knowing right away) AND the worst thing in the world.

So there’s not any um, you know… necrophilia in it?

Of course there’s necrophilia in the film, at least in a dabbly way…what kind of dark satirist do you think I am? More than once actually… the second time is my favorite moment to watch with an audience, because even the most bad-ass, I-knew-Bruce-Willis-was-dead-at-the-start cinephiles have no idea it’s coming.

Do you prefer wearing the writer’s hat or the director’s hat? Or would you rather wear some third hat, like a pith helmet?

I’m a writer like tigers are tigers. I like the own schedule thing, I like the constant naps, I like taking my time…I’m someone who writes e-mails out by hand and sometimes does multiple drafts. Directing is a full-on white water rafting adventure way out of my comfort zone, but I enjoy it. I’m always fighting the clock, racking up constant lunch penalties, but unlike a lot of other writer-becoming-directors, I make sure the movie looks great. The editing room is another safe haven, it’s as much writing as directing once you get in there.

Here’s what I’ll say, if someone says directing is easy (“Hire a good D.P.” “just ask the A.D. what you need”), they’re doing something wrong… and if someone says directing is not fun, they’re also doing something wrong.

Simon Baker, your leading male acting person in Sex and Death 101, is quite talented and INCREDIBLY handsome — those chiseled features, those beguiling hypnotist’s eyes, those taut muscular buttocks — but he’s also Australian, which as everyone knows means he’s genetically predisposed to getting piss-drunk then running around waving a machete. Was there any of that sort of behavior on set?

When you’re getting to play with a different woman on the set everyday, off-screen debauchery is gilding the lily. What I will say is if you’re making an adult sex farce, always cast Australians. I’ve got a bunch of them in the movie, notably the Aussie pop star, Sophie Monk. Sexuality and nudity is as simple as eating a peanut butter sandwich to these people. No American hang-ups… What was tough were the scenes where Simon gets put in the friend zone and can’t just start fucking… Good thing he had a director was that an expert in such matters.

Is it true Winona Ryder shows her bo-jigglies in Sex and Death 101?

Filming “the love scene” was, to put it mildly, memorable. Winona insisted on rehearsing topless and the set was not as closed as it should have been (“Why are there two boom operators on the set?”)…she kept making Mrs. Roper-style jokes about not having sex for a while. They don’t teach you on “Project Greenlight” how to chuckle at an unclothed actress’s witticisms while maintaining eye contact. Almost had to have the prop guy make me a neck brace.

As for the finished film…apparently, using NASA equipment, there’s a way to get a freeze frame of bonafide skin, but anybody expecting Monster’s Ball will be severely disappointed.

I like surprise celebrity flesh as much as the next person (I cried like Joan of Arc when I saw The Gift), but seriously, as a culture, we’ve got to cut down the “Look! Boobies!” shit. I say close down all celebrity skin websites for five years, lull women into thinking we’re all mature and cool…in no time, Americans will become Australians and exposed breasts will become the new buttcrack. Ever read a European actress boo-hoo about nudity…of course, not…because they are not surrounded by swarms of panting geeks with virtuoso image capturing skills.

Having worked with Winona Ryder in both the Spring of her career (on Heathers) and now in well — I wouldn’t consider it Autumn, because she’s still pretty vital and looks like a million bucks, so it’s more of a late Summer kind of thing; we’ll call it the Labor Day of her career — did you notice an evolution in her actoring abilities?

I don’t think she’s changed at all…which is a problem for some people…the brilliant, mercurial 16 year old mind I came to know in Heathers still pumps madly in her 35 year old body. You go to her house and it’s like Sunset Boulevard directed by John Hughes. Her eccentricities dovetailed into the role of Death Nell perfectly…another actress would have tried to force the ballbusting, femme fatale aspects of a character who puts bad men into comas, but Winona came at it sweetly, unpretentiously, and naturalistically.

What have you been doing to keep yourself busy during the writer’s strike? Any new hobbies, crafts, things of that nature?

No writer actually thought the strike would prevent them from writing. We all spoke in quotations to each other “yeah, um, I’m not going to do any writing, either”….but the fucked up thing is that we DID stop writing and I’ve got NOTHING to show for it, not macramé, not golf, not stamp collecting and not a spec…Three hours of picketing usually lead to four hours of napping…

Does it bother you that Diablo Cody has become a critical darling and boner-fide screenwritin’ celebrity by writing characters who all speak like Heathers?

Well, my head might explode when I see her do Cuba Gooding-style jumping jacks on-stage at the Oscars, but seriously, I wrote Heathers almost twenty years ago…that’s practically public domain for these short-attention span times. It’s like I wrote His Girl Friday. Besides, how appalled can I get when my own flesh-and-blood [Daniel’s brother, director Mark Waters – ed.] did Mean Girls (“Bro, they’re totally different! My three bitches are called The Plastics, not Heathers”)? I’m just happy that my homage-ers are better than Tarantino’s and Spielberg’s. Juno and Mean Girls are pretty terrific, but they make Heathers seem more hardcore than ever. They’re New Order and I’m Joy Division.

Your house is sort of famous, because legendary actor/director/boxed-wine pitchman Orson Welles died in it. Is it true that his ghost sometimes returns to haunt you — and by haunt you I mean drink your booze and eat all the food in the fridge?

When I bought the house, I thought I’d be getting good Citizen Kane vibes, instead I got “overweight, unable to get a movie made” mojo. As far as ghosts are concerned, I’ve never witnessed one, but EVERYONE who stays here has some fucked-up experience. I’d set up a video camera, but I don’t want to find out that the fat wraith humping their leg is really me sleepwalking.

According to Daniel Waters legend, you see pretty much every movie that comes out; be it good, bad or ugly. Apparently it’s an obsession for you, kind of like collecting jars of hobo urine is for me. That being the case, were there any “under the radar” movies that came out in 2007 that everyone needs to see?

I saw 311 first-run movies last year. There’s something liberating about not deciding whether to see a movie, but rather just seeing them all. It does something to your brain, making you have an affection for island-of-misfit-toys movies, everything from the fab family film Bridge to Terebithia to the insane Asian mind-fuck Noriko’s Dinner Table. Sunshine, The Ten, The Brothers Solomon, and that crazy, barely released John Turturro musical were also criminally overlooked.

So what’s next on your plate? Shrimp? HA! Get it? Shrimp? No really, I didn’t mean like a literal plate. I meant what’s next on your plate - ENTERTAINMENT-BUSINESS-wise.

That reminds me, I had an awesome Plate-o-shrimp Repo Man reference in Sex and Death that I had to cut out…So yeah, I’m adapting the 70’s cult novel The Diceman for my moneybags brother and am building a TV series for the Sci-Fi channel that’s a subversive take on the Stranger-in-a-Strange-Land/Mork-and-Mindy genre of super-intelligent, all-powerful aliens coming down to save Earth and instead getting brutally ass-fucked.

Sex and Death 101 opens April 4th, 2008 care of Anchor Bay Entertainment. Check out the trailer here.

• SEX AND DEATH 101 Trailer
• Interview with SEX AND DEATH 101 Director Daniel Waters [repost]
• Daniel Waters begs you to see SEX AND DEATH 101
• Rambo Death Chart
• Yes it was heroin…