Mother‘s Day is on its way, or at least Darren Lynn Bousman’s MOTHER’S DAY which is scheduled for a 2010 theatrical release. This tale of two women (Jaime King and Rebecca De Mornay) who will do anything for their families looks to be nothing like the 1980’s cult classic. And I recently had the chance to discuss that very subject with Mr. Bousman over the phone while he was on set. He spoke with enthusiasm about his latest, and he also talked about what is coming up next for him, and it is nothing like anything we’ve ever seen before. Here is a little taste of what we chatted about, keep your eyes on the entire interview soon.
But the conversation began with Mother‘s Day and Darren’s initial meeting with the Kaufman brothers (the men behind the original). “I met with Lloyd and Charles Kaufman very early on and we had decided right off the bat that there was no way to really remake the 1980’s Mother’s Day, nor did we really want to. That movie has such a cult following, and that being said, we loved so many things about the film, so we kind of started to deal with… take what he did, the storyline of Mother, Ike and Addley and morph it into, what it would be like today. Like how would this whole movie look if these characters from 1980 lived in today’s world, in today’s economic climate and all of this shit. How would they live and how would they look?”
He also spoke about a rumored remake of the Cronenberg classic SCANNERS, among others, and why they weren’t going to happen. “I always said from day one, I was never going to do a remake, and the reason why I said I was never going to do a remake was, I would never do a remake unless I had the complete support of the original creators. Hence why I was turning down CHILDREN OF THE CORN or SCANNERS or all of these other films, because I was fans of the original and I wanted the people who made the original to want this to happen.” And want it they did, “Lloyd and Charles were really excited about the remake possibilities and they were really excited about our ideas.”
In fact, it seems that Darren himself has just as much excitement for this new Hallmark holiday-themed horror flick as he did his recent genre-bending musical, REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA. “Let me tell you my philosophy on filmmaking… kind of what I’ve been following since I’ve been in Hollywood. If the movie is not worth losing your career over, it’s not worth doing… I could have easily been blackballed from the industry on Repo. I could have lost everything and been sent back on a plane to Kansas City and go back and live on a farm. But I didn’t give a f*ck, I didn’t care because Repo to me meant so much that I would’ve been fine if my career ended the day after Repo was finished. I would’ve been fine with it. Repo meant that much to me. Now Mother’s Day is the same thing…”
He talked a whole lot about Mother’s Day, and even a little about what is to come in the future. This includes no real plans to return to the SAW franchise in the near future. But he will be taking on an entirely different project that seems to be far off from Saw, Repo and Mother’s Day. “My next project that I’m kind of signed on for is something I’m really excited about, this movie called AKULA, which is a submarine heist movie. It takes place in the middle of the ocean, like an OCEAN’S 11, but the anti-Ocean’s 11, on the water. It’s quite a departure from me, it is quite different from anything I’ve done as well. But that is what I’m going to continue to do, completely different movies from each other. Even if that means a romantic comedy… if I ever do a romantic comedy it would be my version of a romantic comedy. You’d better believe it would be different than anything you’ve ever seen…. So I want to keep exploring new things, new genres and just keep making my versions of them.”