STUART GORDON
THE ORGANIC EXPERIENCE

by Michael Flores

Stuart Gordon is known to Psychotronic fans for the classic Re-Animator films, but here in Chicago he is also famous for plays that changed the way theatre was done. The plays he was involved with in the 1970's and 1980's -- Warp!, Sexual Perversity In Chicago, Bleacher Bums, ER, Bloody Bess -- had a profound impact on me and helped inspire me to do theatre. His theatre group, The Organic Theatre, became one of the hottest in the city . 

Today, most of the genre Gordon originated has degenerated in Chicago, as theatre groups rip off writers to do umpteen different versions of everything from Scooby-Doo to Xena to even Tod Browning, to the delight of critics, unable to distinguish the stolen from the original creations that the Organic pioneered. 

His new film Dagon is based on an H.P. Lovecraft story. I had a chance to speak to one of my heroes about acting, critics, and the days when the Organic was despised by critics for their original vision. If you have any actor friends, this is a must read -- forward this to them. I got to speak to him at the Chicago Fantastic Film Festival. 

FLORES - Have you been reading any of David Mamet's writings on acting? 

GORDON - No. I've read his stuff on directing. What's he saying? 

FLORES - He has some very radical ideas. At total odds with theatre schools and methods. In fact, if you follow his advice, you can even work around the director, making the question of a good or bad director irrelevant! 

GORDON - David gave some great advice when we were working on Sexual Perversity In Chicago that I repeat to actors to this day. My wife had asked him to explain what was going on in a scene. He said, "Don't worry. Those are just the words. What's going on there can be anything you want it to be." That is the most liberating thing you can say to an actor. 

FLORES - For actors out of theatre school, it is also frightening. Some actors fight freedom and choice. 

GORDON - I had a great time working with him. I learned a lot. He said so many interesting things. Mike, at one point he wanted to put the actors on stools with black turtlenecks on and let them do the show like that! I said no, I think we better have interaction and blocking. But he was always willing to go one step further. 

FLORES - There was one person who helped me when I started doing theatre. That was set designer and film art designer Rick Paul [he, along with the cameraman, was responsible for that stunning shot in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer of the videocam murder]. 

GORDON - Rick Paul is great. The Organic used him many times. He did some of the best sets in Chicago theatre ever. He was our resident designer for years. He could do tons of work with very little money. He's a hero. Great guy, too. Just telling me he helped you says a lot about you. Rick Paul is the best. 

FLORES - What are the similarities to working in theatre and film? 

GORDON - Film is like a long tech week. Every single scene you have to work until you've got it. 

FLORES - Do you still like working in theatre? 

GORDON - I like doing both. I did a play in LA a couple of years ago called Quaballah: or Scary Jewish Stories. We had demons, a werewolf, and a severed speaking head! It was scary and funny and ran for six months. Avery Schrieber was in it. The biggest difference is audience feedback. If you are doing an original show, you can keep changing it during the run to make every scene work. When you shoot a film you don't really know how the audience will react. Then there is also that theatre is actually much harder than making movies. You can't yell "cut" in a play. You saw our shows. . . 

FLORES - Most of which had explosions, special effects --

GORDON - . . . In film you can make sure everything is in its place. When you shoot a movie, a sequence over a minute is rare. With special effects there is a long setup time. In theatre you have to concentrate and keep going for an hour, two hours. Both are fun and rewarding. 

FLORES - How do you like living in LA? 

GORDON - LA takes some getting used to after being in Chicago. LA is spread out. You drive everywhere, so you are alone a lot. One of the great things about Chicago is that it's the only city in America that you can have ensembles. Groups of actors who work on play after play. The Lookingglass, Steppenwolf, you can't do that in other cities. It was difficult for us to form a group in the beginning -- 

FLORES - The Organic? What are you talking about? 

GORDON - Oh, we had a period when people weren't begging to join. Our reviews were often mixed or really bad. 

FLORES - The Organic? 

GORDON - Oh, yes. Not just bad. Personally bad. Actors might work through rehearsals, hear praise from the opening night audience, but a bad review could shake them up. Mike, the worst reviews I ever had were for ER. 

FLORES - (silence) 

GORDON - We were clobbered by the press. I was concerned that it was going to die. We didn't get grant money in those days. We had to come up with ideas to make people come out. We were in a bad neighborhood, and it was hard to get people to come. We'd have meetings to come up with ideas that would work. We also had to reach specific audiences. 

FLORES - Right. I use a formula called STASM. 

GORDON - What's that? 

FLORES - It's an old OSS formula from World War II that I learned of from Paul Lineberger (known as Cordwainer Smith to science-fiction fans) that stands for Subject matter, Time frame, Audience, Subject matter and Mission. I don't write a script or start a process without being able to answer those five topics. 

GORDON - Very good. Very good. Wow. You'll appreciate this. When we did ER, each critic tried to outdo the other in attacking ER. The attacks became very personal. It was a low point in my life. My wife Carol was having a child on opening night- so it was the only opening night I ever missed. I bought the papers the next day and threw them away. I thought the Organic might be done. But I learned an important lesson. When we did previews, we had gone to hospitals to get them to the show. The doctors and nurses and technicians. They loved the play. They thought it was real. The audience we had targeted didn't even read reviews. They brought their friends and told their friends and we ran for three years. It paid off all our debts. Then a funny thing began to happen. It was kind of like [the Communist paper] Pravda. As the show ran longer, the reviews and comments by the press began to change. A critic that had panned the play would do an article and refer to it with glowing praise! Sometimes the critic would come back and review it with no reference to the earlier review. On at least one occasion, a critic that panned us gave us a great review -- and I knew he didn't even come back to the show. To paraphrase David Merrick, anybody can take great reviews and make a hit. Take mixed or bad reviews and have a play run for months and you have accomplished something. That is what makes you a professional in this business. From the earliest days I became so used to the reviews that I would tell the actors from the start we were there to prove the critics wrong. But I didn't realize the full power of word of mouth until ER. 

FLORES - In the last five years my shows have run from thirty weeks to a year and a half. I sent out a press release saying that theatres had to break from the suffocating hold of the critics to learn basic marketing. The local theatre paper responded with a series on the "role of the critic". I mean, this series was like six or seven chapters long. There were groups trying to raise money or find money, they would call and ask me about their panels, but when I said what I felt about marketing there was no call back. The sad fact is the groups that get grant money and rich parents' funding hire a public relations person right after the grant person. The groups with little to no money are the ones who, by playing this extended college game, get screwed. 

GORDON - We didn't get grant money when we started. So we had to try and find the audience. We came here from Madison, Wisconsin. We had to survive on ticket sales. We did three episodes of the science-fiction play Warp! If it hadn't worked, there wouldn't be a second. We aimed our campaign at the young. Our ticket price was the same as the movies. And we'd include in the flyers "pay what you can", so we got a lot of hippies. We considered the movies our competition. Joe Montegna was driving to the theatre one night past Wrigley Field and saw all those people waiting to see a team that hadn't won a pennant in 40 years. Joe said if we could get a fraction of those people to come see our play, we'd have a hit. We were always thinking about this. That was hoe Bleacher Bums came about.

FLORES - Of all the plays I've seen of yours, and I've actually seen more of yours than anyone else in town, the lesbian pirate play Bloody Bess is the one I think would be perfect for movies. Lesbians! Lesbian pirates! Brilliant! 

GORDON - I think you're right. What is frustrating about Bloody Bess is that every time it gets close to being made, a really bad pirate movie will come out. Studio and marketing people are like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, they can only see back. Before Star Wars, the prevailing Hollywood wisdom was science-fiction movies were death. Then came the idea that no one wanted to see films about times before they were born. Titanic came along and sank that one. They want there to be rules because Hollywood is a business. They don't figure on creativity. It took fifteen years for Dagon to get made! 

FLORES - Fifteen years!

GORDON - It took Clint Eastwood eight years to get Unforgiven made! And that's Clint Eastwood. It takes forever. You're asking people to plunk down a million dollars, several million dollars. Dagon meetings would usually end when I said this is about people turning into fish. I had people say they would back the movie if it was about werewolves, and I'd try to tell them they were missing the point. Let's give people something different from werewolves. So you keep working on other projects until this one opens up. So a deal was set up with a Spanish company, and we re-set the movie in Spain. He had been given authority to pick projects out. That's how movies get made. A lot of getting movies made is getting to know people. 

FLORES - How did you get into the Lovecraft stories? 

GORDON - I loved his stories as a kid. I'd find them in collections of short stories. Then the Arkham series would come out when I was in college. Lovecraft is still great reading. Listen, we are going to have to do this again. 

FLORES - Thanks! 

Well, dear reader, at this point I was on my second free drink of the afternoon, of 5.9% Polish beer. You see, the day before I was one of the only people ordering beer at this convention -- and tipping. This would begin a day of well-intentioned "gifts" and being rescued in a Rolls-Royce by the Unknown Millionaire and Sean. More on that escapade follows the Ingrid Pitt interview!

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