Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Sept 28, 2015 10:53:49 GMT -6
Q&A: Director Mark Hartley on His Cannon Films Documentary “ELECTRIC BOOGALOO,” Part One
www.fangoria.com/new/qa-director-mark-hartley-on-his-cannon-films-documentary-electric-boogaloo-part-one/
If you’re a fan of ’80s exploitation cinema (and who among us isn’t?), you’re at least familiar with and very likely a fan of the output of Cannon Films. The new documentary ELECTRIC BOOGALOO tells the story of the maverick studio, and director Mark Hartley—who previously chronicled Ozploitation in NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD and Filipino fare in MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED!—spoke to FANGORIA about his latest celebration of excessive cinema.
ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, subtitled THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF CANNON FILMS, plays select Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas tonight and hits DVD and digital HD next Tuesday, September 29 from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. It follows Cannon from its early-’70s days through its purchase in 1979 by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (pictured above), who cranked out a remarkable assortment of movies, from grindhouse actioners (often starring Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson) to art-house fare (by the likes of Franco Zeffirelli and Jean-Luc Godard) and everything in between, before the company collapsed a decade later.
Although Golan and Globus themselves declined to participate, Hartley tracked down over 100 filmmakers (including Tobe Hooper, who made three fright films for the company), actors and others to tell Cannon’s story, their on-camera interviews liberally “illustrated” with clips from their many, varied features. Fango sat down with Hartley following ELECTRIC BOOGALOO’s opening-night screening as part of the Film Comment Selects series earlier this year at New York City’s Lincoln Center.
ELECTRICBOOGALOOHARTPT1-1FANGORIA: Considering that ELECTRIC BOOGALOO is a story of one company and two individuals as opposed to an entire culture, as in NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD and MACHETE MAIDENS, did that affect your approach to the project?
MARK HARTLEY: That’s a good question. I should say that ELECTRIC BOOGALOO is rather different from the documentary I initially researched and thought I was going to make. Originally, I did hope it was going to be focused on Menahem and Yoram—a much more personal story, certainly, than NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD or MACHETE MAIDENS, which were both studies of national cinema, in a way. When we discovered that we couldn’t get Menahem and Yoram, things had to change a little bit, and it became the story of the whole history of Cannon Films, rather than their personal journey with the company. We talk about the initial, pre-Golan-and-Globus Cannon, and go into their time in Israel and then focus a lot on Cannon’s output. What interweaves through that, hopefully, is the personal story of Menahem and Yoram, told through the 100 or so interviewees who had first-hand experiences with them.
The other difference between this documentary and the other two is that there was great input from certain outsiders in both of them. In NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, it was Quentin Tarantino, and in MACHETE MAIDENS it was John Landis. Here, there are no outsiders involved at all; everyone we spoke to was someone who had been in the Cannon trenches.
FANG: Have you always been a fan of Cannon Films? Does this movie represent the culmination of a longtime ambition?
HARTLEY: Well, I don’t want to upset Cannon people by seeming at all like this is not a long-term dream come true, but the honest fact is that I was more of a fan of Michael Winner [the director who made a pair of DEATH WISH sequels and other movies for the company]. I read his autobiography WINNER TAKES ALL, and he had great Cannon anecdotes, and that’s what triggered me to think that there was a good story to be told there. I’d also read HOLLYWOOD A GO-GO, the Andrew Yule book about Cannon, which was a bit of a hatchet job, and that may have been part of the reason why Menahem and Yoram were so gun-shy about this documentary. Obviously, they were trying to protect their legacy, and the only real published work on Cannon was so negative, and here was this filmmaker from Australia who had no connection with Cannon wanting to tell their story. Obviously, it was a lot of trust to place in me, and they didn’t feel they could do that. And so they just decided to back their own documentary [THE GO-GO BOYS, directed by Hilla Medalia; see story here].
FANG: That said, many of your interviewees don’t have the kindest things to say about them…
HARTLEY: Well, in a way, [their absence] helped us. With quite a few people, their first question was, “Are Menahem and Yoram involved?” Sometimes it was good that we said no, and sometimes it was bad that we said no. A lot of the Israeli-based filmmakers, I think, realized that Yoram still does control the industry there, and if he wasn’t sanctioning this project, they weren’t going to be involved. But a lot of the Americans were happy that Menahem and Yoram weren’t going to be part of it, because they felt they could be honest.
I’ve also been lucky, I guess, that the documentaries I’ve made have tackled subject matter that hadn’t been explored to a large degree, so for a lot of the interviewees, it was the first time they’d been able to share these stories. It’s not like they’ve been telling these tales at dinner parties for the last 30 years. For a lot of them, too, it was their start in the industry, so there’s a bit of nostalgia about it as well.
FANG: Was there anyone you really wanted to get but couldn’t land?
HARTLEY: Of course; I mean, anyone who’s missing from the documentary is someone we asked, and for some reason, they either weren’t available or just didn’t want to do it. When you see it, the people who are missing are very obvious—but I think people should be grateful for the 100 or so we did get!
FANG: How did you prepare for all those interviews?
HARTLEY: I spent six months researching ELECTRIC BOOGALOO—really intensive research. That involved watching all the films, and reading everything I could on Cannon. I ended up with a 100-and-something-page script document that told the whole Cannon story, and from that I came up with my questions. And it’s a shame—because I wanted to rely on people who had worked for Cannon to tell the story, and not on a narrator, there are some films I love more than they’re represented in the documentary. What’s in there is based on the information we got from the interviewees, the stories they wanted to tell, and we couldn’t find anyone to talk about some of them. For example, we found it very difficult to get anyone to discuss 52 PICK-UP, which is why that one isn’t in there. But I think we cover pretty much all the fan favorites, and possibly a few films that people will now seek out. The big surprise for everyone is probably all the stories about GOING BANANAS, or MY AFRICAN ADVENTURE, BEN, BONZO AND BIG BAD JOE…choose your title.
FANG: When you were watching all the films, were there any surprises—any that were better than you expected or recalled?
HARTLEY: Yeah, there certainly were. THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN, particularly, holds up very well—much better than most teen movies from around that time, because now, when you watch it, it seems a lot more honest than most of them. That’s one of the jewels in the crown. I also really love a Robert Mitchum film from around the same period, THE AMBASSADOR, which is the first, very strange Israeli version of 52 PICK-UP. It’s based on [Elmore Leonard’s] book, but transplanted to Israel. I think that’s J. Lee Thompson’s best film for Cannon, actually.
TO BE CONTINUED
Q&A: Director Mark Hartley on His Cannon Films Documentary “ELECTRIC BOOGALOO,” Part Two
www.fangoria.com/new/qa-director-mark-hartley-on-his-cannon-films-documentary-electric-boogaloo-part-two/
The wild, untold story of Cannon Films (as the subtitle puts it) is recounted in hugely entertaining fashion in ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, out tomorrow on DVD and digital HD. Below, we continue our interview with director Mark Hartley (see part one here).
Released by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, which is also issuing a 10-disc set of notable Cannon movies, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO charts the rise and fall of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and the company they took over in 1979. A flood of films, largely exploitationers in the action, horror and comedy genres but also including prestige fare from legendary international directors, followed before the Israeli cousins’ reckless overambition led to Cannon’s demise in 1989. Amidst over 100 onscreen interviews and copious clips, the documentary offers peeks at projects that existed only in Golan and Globus’ minds…
FANGORIA: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO’s graphics include posters for any number of Cannon projects that never came to fruition; you could probably make a whole documentary just about those.
MARK HARTLEY: You could, but you wouldn’t have any film footage from them, so it would be a lot of talking heads! But yeah, there were a lot of films that got away. When we spoke with the two guys [Roy Langsdon and John Platt] who wrote the lambada movie THE FORBIDDEN DANCE for Menahem’s subsequent 21st Century Film Corporation, they told us that they opened Variety one day and saw an ad for KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS II, starring and directed by William Shatner, which they had writers’ credits on—and they had never even heard of the project.
FANG: Although you didn’t get Golan and Globus, you did land Christopher Pearce, one of the key Cannon executives.
HARTLEY: It’s interesting; because we didn’t have Menahem and Yoram, we needed someone who was part of Cannon’s inner sanctum, and Christopher Pearce was second in control there. A researcher called Rosemary Long spent endless time ringing pretty much every single Christopher Pearce in the phone book, from Australia. That was the other thing: All the preproduction and preparation on this film happened in Australia, which is quite incredible in itself.
Anyway, we got Christopher Pearce, and I kept hoping it was the real guy, not some nutjob who was happy to turn up for an interview, no matter whether he was the right Christopher Pearce or not. And it turned out he was the correct one, and the reason why that was so amazing is that we had heard from a lot of people that Christopher Pearce was dead. From what I understand, even his ex-wives thought he was deceased. So when we did subsequent interviews and people asked, “Oh, who have you been speaking to?” and we mentioned Christopher Pearce, a lot of them made us pull out photo proof that he was still alive! That was quite a get for us.
FANG: Had he intentionally tried to lead people to believe he was dead?
HARTLEY: I think he just vanished to Florida, and once you vanish to Florida, you know, most people assume you’re dead anyway!
FANG: You’ve seen the Golan/Globus-sanctioned documentary THE GO-GO BOYS, I assume…
HARTLEY: I have seen THE GO-GO BOYS; I waited until we’d totally finished our film before I saw it. I didn’t want it to influence us at all, or make me want to change things or not include footage because they’d used it. I just wanted ELECTRIC BOOGALOO to be the film I wanted to make. And it’s interesting that we do share a fair amount of archive material, but it seems like it’s under a different set of circumstances.
FANG: Was there anything archival that you weren’t allowed to use?
HARTLEY: There was lots of it; we could hardly get any Israeli footage of Menahem and Yoram pre-Cannon, because Yoram controlled it all, and we weren’t allowed to use it. So certainly, there was a lot of material we couldn’t get our hands on, which does feature in THE GO-GO BOYS. But we unearthed a lot of American footage they hadn’t. It’s funny; people talk about THE GO-GO BOYS being “the official Cannon documentary,” and it’s actually not. In a way, that’s the unauthorized one, because MGM owns the Cannon name, the logo and the footage, and we licensed all that from MGM. So ours is the legitimate, sanctioned Cannon documentary—just not sanctioned by the Go-Go Boys. It’s sanctioned by the people who own Cannon. We cleared every bit of footage in it.
FANG: Was there anything contentious that got cut from the documentary?
HARTLEY: The stuff that was cut out was nothing overly controversial; it was just trimmed for time. I mean, the movie runs 104 minutes, and that’s longer than my other documentaries; I couldn’t push it any further. It’s funny—there’s been some backlash against ELECTRIC BOOGALOO from huge Cannon fans, who feel it’s…not unfair to Cannon, but not reverent enough. I believe it’s fair to the true story of Cannon, and certainly, when you’ve got 100 people who worked there telling the story, who are you going to believe?
People also ask, “Why isn’t it longer?” We’re used to seeing these documentaries on movies now, like the FRIDAY THE 13TH one [CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES], which run four hours. But they’re employing fair use; they don’t have to pay for every second of footage. And when you’re paying for every second of footage, it’s very hard to get producers to let you make a 104-minute film. But yeah, everyone goes, “Well, why isn’t BLOODSPORT in it?” Well, it’s in the deleted scenes, along with STREET SMART and other movies.
FANG: That was one thing I missed in the film—the fact that for all Golan and Globus’ reputation as schlockmeisters, Cannon movies like STREET SMART, and also OPERATION THUNDERBOLT and RUNAWAY TRAIN, got Oscar nominations. Was that something you ever wanted to address?
HARTLEY: Well, the problem with RUNAWAY TRAIN was, [director] Andrei Konchalovsky was going to be involved, but… ELECTRIC BOOGALOO went through a very long process. It was originally going to get financed a few years ago, and the money fell apart at the last minute. At that point, I had Konchalovsky on board, I had Michael Winner on board, I had Sylvia Kristel on board. In the meantime, [Hartley’s 2014 release] PATRICK: EVIL AWAKENS got going, and then RatPac Documentary Films came in and replaced that financing for ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, so we actually have RatPac to thank for getting it made.
But in the meantime, unfortunately, Konchalovsky’s daughter had been in a horrible car crash, and he was basically in a vigil at her bedside, so we couldn’t get him anymore. And Michael Winner had died, which was the most tragic thing for me about this project—that I didn’t get to talk to him. Winner was going to be, in a way, the whole narrative drive for ELECTRIC BOOGALOO; he was going to be the Tarantino or the Landis. And Sylvia Kristel passed away as well.
So because we couldn’t get Konchalovsky, and we couldn’t get Jon Voight, Eric Roberts or Rebecca De Mornay, there was no one to talk about RUNAWAY TRAIN. It’s funny that one of the most revered Cannon films doesn’t feature in this documentary nearly as much as other, lesser movies.
www.fangoria.com/new/qa-director-mark-hartley-on-his-cannon-films-documentary-electric-boogaloo-part-one/
If you’re a fan of ’80s exploitation cinema (and who among us isn’t?), you’re at least familiar with and very likely a fan of the output of Cannon Films. The new documentary ELECTRIC BOOGALOO tells the story of the maverick studio, and director Mark Hartley—who previously chronicled Ozploitation in NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD and Filipino fare in MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED!—spoke to FANGORIA about his latest celebration of excessive cinema.
ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, subtitled THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF CANNON FILMS, plays select Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas tonight and hits DVD and digital HD next Tuesday, September 29 from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. It follows Cannon from its early-’70s days through its purchase in 1979 by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (pictured above), who cranked out a remarkable assortment of movies, from grindhouse actioners (often starring Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson) to art-house fare (by the likes of Franco Zeffirelli and Jean-Luc Godard) and everything in between, before the company collapsed a decade later.
Although Golan and Globus themselves declined to participate, Hartley tracked down over 100 filmmakers (including Tobe Hooper, who made three fright films for the company), actors and others to tell Cannon’s story, their on-camera interviews liberally “illustrated” with clips from their many, varied features. Fango sat down with Hartley following ELECTRIC BOOGALOO’s opening-night screening as part of the Film Comment Selects series earlier this year at New York City’s Lincoln Center.
ELECTRICBOOGALOOHARTPT1-1FANGORIA: Considering that ELECTRIC BOOGALOO is a story of one company and two individuals as opposed to an entire culture, as in NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD and MACHETE MAIDENS, did that affect your approach to the project?
MARK HARTLEY: That’s a good question. I should say that ELECTRIC BOOGALOO is rather different from the documentary I initially researched and thought I was going to make. Originally, I did hope it was going to be focused on Menahem and Yoram—a much more personal story, certainly, than NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD or MACHETE MAIDENS, which were both studies of national cinema, in a way. When we discovered that we couldn’t get Menahem and Yoram, things had to change a little bit, and it became the story of the whole history of Cannon Films, rather than their personal journey with the company. We talk about the initial, pre-Golan-and-Globus Cannon, and go into their time in Israel and then focus a lot on Cannon’s output. What interweaves through that, hopefully, is the personal story of Menahem and Yoram, told through the 100 or so interviewees who had first-hand experiences with them.
The other difference between this documentary and the other two is that there was great input from certain outsiders in both of them. In NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, it was Quentin Tarantino, and in MACHETE MAIDENS it was John Landis. Here, there are no outsiders involved at all; everyone we spoke to was someone who had been in the Cannon trenches.
FANG: Have you always been a fan of Cannon Films? Does this movie represent the culmination of a longtime ambition?
HARTLEY: Well, I don’t want to upset Cannon people by seeming at all like this is not a long-term dream come true, but the honest fact is that I was more of a fan of Michael Winner [the director who made a pair of DEATH WISH sequels and other movies for the company]. I read his autobiography WINNER TAKES ALL, and he had great Cannon anecdotes, and that’s what triggered me to think that there was a good story to be told there. I’d also read HOLLYWOOD A GO-GO, the Andrew Yule book about Cannon, which was a bit of a hatchet job, and that may have been part of the reason why Menahem and Yoram were so gun-shy about this documentary. Obviously, they were trying to protect their legacy, and the only real published work on Cannon was so negative, and here was this filmmaker from Australia who had no connection with Cannon wanting to tell their story. Obviously, it was a lot of trust to place in me, and they didn’t feel they could do that. And so they just decided to back their own documentary [THE GO-GO BOYS, directed by Hilla Medalia; see story here].
FANG: That said, many of your interviewees don’t have the kindest things to say about them…
HARTLEY: Well, in a way, [their absence] helped us. With quite a few people, their first question was, “Are Menahem and Yoram involved?” Sometimes it was good that we said no, and sometimes it was bad that we said no. A lot of the Israeli-based filmmakers, I think, realized that Yoram still does control the industry there, and if he wasn’t sanctioning this project, they weren’t going to be involved. But a lot of the Americans were happy that Menahem and Yoram weren’t going to be part of it, because they felt they could be honest.
I’ve also been lucky, I guess, that the documentaries I’ve made have tackled subject matter that hadn’t been explored to a large degree, so for a lot of the interviewees, it was the first time they’d been able to share these stories. It’s not like they’ve been telling these tales at dinner parties for the last 30 years. For a lot of them, too, it was their start in the industry, so there’s a bit of nostalgia about it as well.
FANG: Was there anyone you really wanted to get but couldn’t land?
HARTLEY: Of course; I mean, anyone who’s missing from the documentary is someone we asked, and for some reason, they either weren’t available or just didn’t want to do it. When you see it, the people who are missing are very obvious—but I think people should be grateful for the 100 or so we did get!
FANG: How did you prepare for all those interviews?
HARTLEY: I spent six months researching ELECTRIC BOOGALOO—really intensive research. That involved watching all the films, and reading everything I could on Cannon. I ended up with a 100-and-something-page script document that told the whole Cannon story, and from that I came up with my questions. And it’s a shame—because I wanted to rely on people who had worked for Cannon to tell the story, and not on a narrator, there are some films I love more than they’re represented in the documentary. What’s in there is based on the information we got from the interviewees, the stories they wanted to tell, and we couldn’t find anyone to talk about some of them. For example, we found it very difficult to get anyone to discuss 52 PICK-UP, which is why that one isn’t in there. But I think we cover pretty much all the fan favorites, and possibly a few films that people will now seek out. The big surprise for everyone is probably all the stories about GOING BANANAS, or MY AFRICAN ADVENTURE, BEN, BONZO AND BIG BAD JOE…choose your title.
FANG: When you were watching all the films, were there any surprises—any that were better than you expected or recalled?
HARTLEY: Yeah, there certainly were. THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN, particularly, holds up very well—much better than most teen movies from around that time, because now, when you watch it, it seems a lot more honest than most of them. That’s one of the jewels in the crown. I also really love a Robert Mitchum film from around the same period, THE AMBASSADOR, which is the first, very strange Israeli version of 52 PICK-UP. It’s based on [Elmore Leonard’s] book, but transplanted to Israel. I think that’s J. Lee Thompson’s best film for Cannon, actually.
TO BE CONTINUED
Q&A: Director Mark Hartley on His Cannon Films Documentary “ELECTRIC BOOGALOO,” Part Two
www.fangoria.com/new/qa-director-mark-hartley-on-his-cannon-films-documentary-electric-boogaloo-part-two/
The wild, untold story of Cannon Films (as the subtitle puts it) is recounted in hugely entertaining fashion in ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, out tomorrow on DVD and digital HD. Below, we continue our interview with director Mark Hartley (see part one here).
Released by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, which is also issuing a 10-disc set of notable Cannon movies, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO charts the rise and fall of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and the company they took over in 1979. A flood of films, largely exploitationers in the action, horror and comedy genres but also including prestige fare from legendary international directors, followed before the Israeli cousins’ reckless overambition led to Cannon’s demise in 1989. Amidst over 100 onscreen interviews and copious clips, the documentary offers peeks at projects that existed only in Golan and Globus’ minds…
FANGORIA: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO’s graphics include posters for any number of Cannon projects that never came to fruition; you could probably make a whole documentary just about those.
MARK HARTLEY: You could, but you wouldn’t have any film footage from them, so it would be a lot of talking heads! But yeah, there were a lot of films that got away. When we spoke with the two guys [Roy Langsdon and John Platt] who wrote the lambada movie THE FORBIDDEN DANCE for Menahem’s subsequent 21st Century Film Corporation, they told us that they opened Variety one day and saw an ad for KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS II, starring and directed by William Shatner, which they had writers’ credits on—and they had never even heard of the project.
FANG: Although you didn’t get Golan and Globus, you did land Christopher Pearce, one of the key Cannon executives.
HARTLEY: It’s interesting; because we didn’t have Menahem and Yoram, we needed someone who was part of Cannon’s inner sanctum, and Christopher Pearce was second in control there. A researcher called Rosemary Long spent endless time ringing pretty much every single Christopher Pearce in the phone book, from Australia. That was the other thing: All the preproduction and preparation on this film happened in Australia, which is quite incredible in itself.
Anyway, we got Christopher Pearce, and I kept hoping it was the real guy, not some nutjob who was happy to turn up for an interview, no matter whether he was the right Christopher Pearce or not. And it turned out he was the correct one, and the reason why that was so amazing is that we had heard from a lot of people that Christopher Pearce was dead. From what I understand, even his ex-wives thought he was deceased. So when we did subsequent interviews and people asked, “Oh, who have you been speaking to?” and we mentioned Christopher Pearce, a lot of them made us pull out photo proof that he was still alive! That was quite a get for us.
FANG: Had he intentionally tried to lead people to believe he was dead?
HARTLEY: I think he just vanished to Florida, and once you vanish to Florida, you know, most people assume you’re dead anyway!
FANG: You’ve seen the Golan/Globus-sanctioned documentary THE GO-GO BOYS, I assume…
HARTLEY: I have seen THE GO-GO BOYS; I waited until we’d totally finished our film before I saw it. I didn’t want it to influence us at all, or make me want to change things or not include footage because they’d used it. I just wanted ELECTRIC BOOGALOO to be the film I wanted to make. And it’s interesting that we do share a fair amount of archive material, but it seems like it’s under a different set of circumstances.
FANG: Was there anything archival that you weren’t allowed to use?
HARTLEY: There was lots of it; we could hardly get any Israeli footage of Menahem and Yoram pre-Cannon, because Yoram controlled it all, and we weren’t allowed to use it. So certainly, there was a lot of material we couldn’t get our hands on, which does feature in THE GO-GO BOYS. But we unearthed a lot of American footage they hadn’t. It’s funny; people talk about THE GO-GO BOYS being “the official Cannon documentary,” and it’s actually not. In a way, that’s the unauthorized one, because MGM owns the Cannon name, the logo and the footage, and we licensed all that from MGM. So ours is the legitimate, sanctioned Cannon documentary—just not sanctioned by the Go-Go Boys. It’s sanctioned by the people who own Cannon. We cleared every bit of footage in it.
FANG: Was there anything contentious that got cut from the documentary?
HARTLEY: The stuff that was cut out was nothing overly controversial; it was just trimmed for time. I mean, the movie runs 104 minutes, and that’s longer than my other documentaries; I couldn’t push it any further. It’s funny—there’s been some backlash against ELECTRIC BOOGALOO from huge Cannon fans, who feel it’s…not unfair to Cannon, but not reverent enough. I believe it’s fair to the true story of Cannon, and certainly, when you’ve got 100 people who worked there telling the story, who are you going to believe?
People also ask, “Why isn’t it longer?” We’re used to seeing these documentaries on movies now, like the FRIDAY THE 13TH one [CRYSTAL LAKE MEMORIES], which run four hours. But they’re employing fair use; they don’t have to pay for every second of footage. And when you’re paying for every second of footage, it’s very hard to get producers to let you make a 104-minute film. But yeah, everyone goes, “Well, why isn’t BLOODSPORT in it?” Well, it’s in the deleted scenes, along with STREET SMART and other movies.
FANG: That was one thing I missed in the film—the fact that for all Golan and Globus’ reputation as schlockmeisters, Cannon movies like STREET SMART, and also OPERATION THUNDERBOLT and RUNAWAY TRAIN, got Oscar nominations. Was that something you ever wanted to address?
HARTLEY: Well, the problem with RUNAWAY TRAIN was, [director] Andrei Konchalovsky was going to be involved, but… ELECTRIC BOOGALOO went through a very long process. It was originally going to get financed a few years ago, and the money fell apart at the last minute. At that point, I had Konchalovsky on board, I had Michael Winner on board, I had Sylvia Kristel on board. In the meantime, [Hartley’s 2014 release] PATRICK: EVIL AWAKENS got going, and then RatPac Documentary Films came in and replaced that financing for ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, so we actually have RatPac to thank for getting it made.
But in the meantime, unfortunately, Konchalovsky’s daughter had been in a horrible car crash, and he was basically in a vigil at her bedside, so we couldn’t get him anymore. And Michael Winner had died, which was the most tragic thing for me about this project—that I didn’t get to talk to him. Winner was going to be, in a way, the whole narrative drive for ELECTRIC BOOGALOO; he was going to be the Tarantino or the Landis. And Sylvia Kristel passed away as well.
So because we couldn’t get Konchalovsky, and we couldn’t get Jon Voight, Eric Roberts or Rebecca De Mornay, there was no one to talk about RUNAWAY TRAIN. It’s funny that one of the most revered Cannon films doesn’t feature in this documentary nearly as much as other, lesser movies.