Feed is one of the most disgusting and disturbing narrative films ever made. There are no knives, no rape and no blood. Feed is a unique serial killer film in that it takes a real phenomenon and transposes it into a Se7en-like atmosphere. Patrick Thompson plays Australian Interpol agent Philipp Jackson, a specialized law officer that tracks illegal and disgusting acts from the internet. He is now tracking Michael Carter [played by Alex O'Loughlin] who is broadcasting his feeder/gainer relationship live over the internet. Carter's fetish is to masturbate while feeding fast food hamburgers to his 600 pound willing partner Deidre [played by Gabby Millgate]. Daily internet updates on Carter's website FeederX.com detail Deidre's weight, measurements and vitals. Jackson breaks protocol by traveling to Toledo Ohio to stop Carter.
It is hard for me to recommend Feed but for any fan of extreme Asian horror and if you like be sickened while enlightenment shines in, Feed may be the film for you. It will be released on DVD late this year.
I got a chance to talk with Feed director Brett Leonard while he was in post-production on his new picture. Leonard is best known as the director of The Lawnmower Man. Since he made his breakthrough with that film in 1992, Leonard has directed mostly high concept horror and action pictures such as Virtuosity, Hideaway and two IMAX films. His previous picture was an adaptation of the Marvel Comic character, Man-Thing.
Check out the official website for Feed
Daniel Robert Epstein: Hey Brett, listening to your voice, I didn't realize you were American.
Brett Leonard: I'm from the States originally. I've lived in Australia for a few years and I'm actually in London right now finishing up the new Highlander movie called Highlander: The Source. I've been away from Australia for about a year now because I was in Lithuania shooting Highlander right after I finished Feed. Now I'm doing post production in London.
DRE: Where in the States are you from?
BL: I grew up in Toledo, Ohio. You can't get more American than that.
DRE: [laughs] Well now I know why you set Feed in Toledo, Ohio.
BL: [laughs] Yes you do. To start the interview, Feed is really my movie about America in some ways. The whole movie is a metaphor for America.
DRE: Do you mean the consumer aspect?
BL: The consumer aspect and consumption. The whole idea that consumption is evolution and that Western culture is evolution for the rest of the world when possibly it's not [laughs]. The arrogance of that and the celebrity culture and the beauty culture and all those things which come primarily out of American Western culture and those are obviously sub-themes and sub-metaphors in the film. But one of the reasons I wanted to make this film was because it did encompass these sub-themes within a very interesting and very disturbing psychological thriller format.
DRE: Feed is one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. Certainly one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen with a plot.
BL: That makes me very happy [laughs].
DRE: It seems like you must have been in a very aggressive mode of existence to make Feed.
BL: It's funny because I wasn't. When you make a thriller that has disturbing aspects, it becomes very much an alternate universe of storytelling that you go into. All of us that were involved in the film were very clear on what we wanted to make, why we were making it and what the themes were beyond the prurient shock aspects of the story. One of the reasons I made it was because the torture room horror genre is so popular now with films like Saw, Saw II and Hostel. I wanted to make a film that was ostensibly in that genre but not really. That means it wouldn't focus on just physical violence as its mode of disturbing, it would basically disturb people with sociological buttons that aren't usually pushed. I call it image crime because in Western culture, it's image crime to put a naked 600 pound woman in the middle of most of the frames of the movie [laughs].
I was basically trying to turn the torture room horror genre on its head and say, "Here's something that is even more disturbing than just the grisly aspect of modern horror." This version of horror is funny because there are people that love the film and people that hate the film. The people that hate the film are so incensed by the fact that it was even made. To me that is a complete victory because it's exactly what I wanted to do. You can show people being mowed down by guns and sawed apart and dismembered, but you definitely can't show sexuality in the context of somebody who weighs 600 pounds. That's much, much more disturbing. So the question I'm asking in my film is "Why is that more disturbing? What are the aspects of our culture that make that more disturbing than people being killed?" So I wasn't really in an aggressive state of mind. I was in a very focused state of mind about the movie I wanted to make and why I wanted to make it.
DRE: I just thought that this is what happens after you work with [President and CEO of Marvel Studios] Avi Arad.
BL: [laughs] Sounds like you understand Avi Arad. I got to answer yes to that. [laughs] It was in essence an antidote to my experience making Man-Thing. I'm proud of the execution of that movie in terms of its design and its visual atmosphere but the creative process was completely controlled by Marvel. They came up with a story that was dumbed down to such a degree that I couldn't really do much beyond that which made it a curious experience. Ultimately I'm not happy with the movie and when you're the director, you're the one that gets both the glory and the blame. So I do take that responsibility but ultimately in corporatized American filmmaking where you have a giant corporation like Marvel Comics controlling things, it ultimately isn't your picture.
DRE: When Eli Roth was promoting Hostel he said that he was inspired by a website where someone allowed themselves to be killed and their family would be paid. But with Feed there are websites doing what happens in the film everyday.
BL: That's correct. The most disturbing aspect of making Feed was the research. When I found out how many proclivities could be found on the internet and how extreme those things went on an everyday basis that truly was more disturbing than what I thought we were actually creating. I thought we were going into a more stylized realm but the truth is we weren't [laughs].
DRE: What was the most disturbing thing in your research?
BL: I think the cannibalism stuff was probably the most disturbing. I found out that there are 400 registered German cannibals and that there were special websites with recipes for cooking the long pig [human flesh]. There are very poetic, lyrical websites waxing poetic about cannibalism that were probably the most disturbing. The feeder gainer thing itself in its more extreme forms is one of the more disgusting things you can look at and yet it also made me question my own aesthetic, saying "Why is this disturbing?" because by in large, both people are consenting adults.
DRE: The look of Feed was just as nauseating as the content of the film.
BL: Yes, it was designed to be. I shot it on HD and I was going for very garish, oversaturated colors, utilizing chroma aspects of HD to depict this almost hyper-real internet world. It is definitely a video style that does represent and reflect the content.
DRE: For a filmmaker that's directed some very mainstream films starring Oscar winners and done an IMAX kids film, this seems like a very strange project.
BL: It's not. I've definitely done disturbing work before and I don't really have one mode as a filmmaker. I think I'm one of those who want to touch on all the genres. I've primarily been in horror and science fiction. Both IMAX films I did, were made as children's films but very imaginative children's films. It does reflect having been away from America for three years in Australia and watching American culture from afar. I was disturbed by American culture more than I have been in the past and the film is an extreme treatise on American culture for me. Using hyperbole and extreme themes is something that I enjoy in film. I enjoy some directors that do that like David Cronenberg and David Lynch. They've always had interesting intellectual conceit and concepts in their films. Feed is its own complete unique film because it isn't just in the mode of the torture horror that's been out there and yet it's also not just a traditional genre film. That's why I was drawn to it. I have always enjoyed filmmakers like Sidney Lumet who are able to go from genre to genre so you're not looking at the same story every time out. That keeps me interested.
DRE: Besides the feeding aspect, the cop's girlfriend is in a polygamist relationship.
BL: The relationship between the thin, beautiful girl and the cop is supposed to be more disturbing than the feeder/gainer relationship until you find out what the feeder is really doing. The idea is that there's no such thing as a normal relationship in modern culture. People are playing at normal relationships. In the ranks of 20-somethings there's very little normal relationship in relation to what people would think there was in the 50's. There are a lot of things that are twisted around in the context of modern relationships. That relationship is very indicative of a lot of people I knew in Australia where one or both partners were bisexual. There was a lot of playing around with polygamy and other aspects of fetish sexuality and that's considered cool now in 20-something culture. Though I'm not making a judgment about it ultimately the cop's relationship is almost as violent and destructive as the feeder to the gainer.
DRE: Right after I watched Feed, I watched the episode of Masters of Horror that Takashi Miike directed. Those two films are an interesting contrast. Miike knows how to disturb people but Feed seems almost out of the realm of what the Asian filmmakers could do because they perceive their consumer aspect in a much different way.
BL: I think the stylistic aspects of things probably are influenced by more Asian neo-horror because it does have this other-worldliness to the Western mind. By making Feed in Australia and making an alternate version of my hometown, Toledo, Ohio [laughs] it captures that otherworldly, disorienting point of view. I was definitely influenced by that. Asian filmmakers wouldn't understand that aspect of it at all. I think obesity is the plague of America and in Western culture in general, so there's a very topical aspect to that. There are increasingly more and more shows about people that are incredibly large or incredibly thin. This whole body image thing has reached its nadir and Feed is a reflection of it. It's been in my face because whenever a celebrity has a baby and she gains 50 pounds, that's good for ten magazine covers. That's ridiculous. The whole focus on body image is such an extreme obsession has created greater obsessive behavior in relation to it.
DRE: How difficult was it to get Feed made?
BL: It wasn't really that hard to get together because I did it for a very, very low budget. It looks like it's a bigger film than it is. I made this film with about 15 people on the crew, most of whom were not seasoned professionals although my cinematographer and myself were. Because of my track record it was easy to make a film at this level that had the pitch of Super Size Me crossed with Se7en. The concept of Hostel or Saw would have been difficult to sell 20 years ago. It would have been relegated to the fringes of extreme pornographic film and yet now that's mainstream. The sexuality of Feed probably tips the theme towards something more disturbing because whenever you deal with psychosexual behavior in relation to something disturbing, that's something in Western culture that pushes people's buttons. Also there were documentaries out there about this very thing right as we were pitching Feed so it was looked at as a film that was breaking something that wasn't out in mainstream culture.
DRE: What can you tell me about the Highlander movie?
BL: I was a fan of the first film and that's why I made this one. I was approached by the producers to come in and reinvigorate the series. They don't think that anybody's been real happy with the sequels, especially the last one. I came in to make a much more visually grand. It's darker than some of the other movies but I think the fans will like that. Three of the people in the movie were on the TV series, Adrian Paul, Peter Wingfield and Jim Byrnes have continuing characters so it is like the film of the TV series. It is really very different from the tone of the series and the other films. We really wanted to answer certain questions and reinvigorate other ones. This one has a greater, larger visual style that harkens back to the first film.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
It is hard for me to recommend Feed but for any fan of extreme Asian horror and if you like be sickened while enlightenment shines in, Feed may be the film for you. It will be released on DVD late this year.
I got a chance to talk with Feed director Brett Leonard while he was in post-production on his new picture. Leonard is best known as the director of The Lawnmower Man. Since he made his breakthrough with that film in 1992, Leonard has directed mostly high concept horror and action pictures such as Virtuosity, Hideaway and two IMAX films. His previous picture was an adaptation of the Marvel Comic character, Man-Thing.
Check out the official website for Feed
Daniel Robert Epstein: Hey Brett, listening to your voice, I didn't realize you were American.
Brett Leonard: I'm from the States originally. I've lived in Australia for a few years and I'm actually in London right now finishing up the new Highlander movie called Highlander: The Source. I've been away from Australia for about a year now because I was in Lithuania shooting Highlander right after I finished Feed. Now I'm doing post production in London.
DRE: Where in the States are you from?
BL: I grew up in Toledo, Ohio. You can't get more American than that.
DRE: [laughs] Well now I know why you set Feed in Toledo, Ohio.
BL: [laughs] Yes you do. To start the interview, Feed is really my movie about America in some ways. The whole movie is a metaphor for America.
DRE: Do you mean the consumer aspect?
BL: The consumer aspect and consumption. The whole idea that consumption is evolution and that Western culture is evolution for the rest of the world when possibly it's not [laughs]. The arrogance of that and the celebrity culture and the beauty culture and all those things which come primarily out of American Western culture and those are obviously sub-themes and sub-metaphors in the film. But one of the reasons I wanted to make this film was because it did encompass these sub-themes within a very interesting and very disturbing psychological thriller format.
DRE: Feed is one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. Certainly one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen with a plot.
BL: That makes me very happy [laughs].
DRE: It seems like you must have been in a very aggressive mode of existence to make Feed.
BL: It's funny because I wasn't. When you make a thriller that has disturbing aspects, it becomes very much an alternate universe of storytelling that you go into. All of us that were involved in the film were very clear on what we wanted to make, why we were making it and what the themes were beyond the prurient shock aspects of the story. One of the reasons I made it was because the torture room horror genre is so popular now with films like Saw, Saw II and Hostel. I wanted to make a film that was ostensibly in that genre but not really. That means it wouldn't focus on just physical violence as its mode of disturbing, it would basically disturb people with sociological buttons that aren't usually pushed. I call it image crime because in Western culture, it's image crime to put a naked 600 pound woman in the middle of most of the frames of the movie [laughs].
I was basically trying to turn the torture room horror genre on its head and say, "Here's something that is even more disturbing than just the grisly aspect of modern horror." This version of horror is funny because there are people that love the film and people that hate the film. The people that hate the film are so incensed by the fact that it was even made. To me that is a complete victory because it's exactly what I wanted to do. You can show people being mowed down by guns and sawed apart and dismembered, but you definitely can't show sexuality in the context of somebody who weighs 600 pounds. That's much, much more disturbing. So the question I'm asking in my film is "Why is that more disturbing? What are the aspects of our culture that make that more disturbing than people being killed?" So I wasn't really in an aggressive state of mind. I was in a very focused state of mind about the movie I wanted to make and why I wanted to make it.
DRE: I just thought that this is what happens after you work with [President and CEO of Marvel Studios] Avi Arad.
BL: [laughs] Sounds like you understand Avi Arad. I got to answer yes to that. [laughs] It was in essence an antidote to my experience making Man-Thing. I'm proud of the execution of that movie in terms of its design and its visual atmosphere but the creative process was completely controlled by Marvel. They came up with a story that was dumbed down to such a degree that I couldn't really do much beyond that which made it a curious experience. Ultimately I'm not happy with the movie and when you're the director, you're the one that gets both the glory and the blame. So I do take that responsibility but ultimately in corporatized American filmmaking where you have a giant corporation like Marvel Comics controlling things, it ultimately isn't your picture.
DRE: When Eli Roth was promoting Hostel he said that he was inspired by a website where someone allowed themselves to be killed and their family would be paid. But with Feed there are websites doing what happens in the film everyday.
BL: That's correct. The most disturbing aspect of making Feed was the research. When I found out how many proclivities could be found on the internet and how extreme those things went on an everyday basis that truly was more disturbing than what I thought we were actually creating. I thought we were going into a more stylized realm but the truth is we weren't [laughs].
DRE: What was the most disturbing thing in your research?
BL: I think the cannibalism stuff was probably the most disturbing. I found out that there are 400 registered German cannibals and that there were special websites with recipes for cooking the long pig [human flesh]. There are very poetic, lyrical websites waxing poetic about cannibalism that were probably the most disturbing. The feeder gainer thing itself in its more extreme forms is one of the more disgusting things you can look at and yet it also made me question my own aesthetic, saying "Why is this disturbing?" because by in large, both people are consenting adults.
DRE: The look of Feed was just as nauseating as the content of the film.
BL: Yes, it was designed to be. I shot it on HD and I was going for very garish, oversaturated colors, utilizing chroma aspects of HD to depict this almost hyper-real internet world. It is definitely a video style that does represent and reflect the content.
DRE: For a filmmaker that's directed some very mainstream films starring Oscar winners and done an IMAX kids film, this seems like a very strange project.
BL: It's not. I've definitely done disturbing work before and I don't really have one mode as a filmmaker. I think I'm one of those who want to touch on all the genres. I've primarily been in horror and science fiction. Both IMAX films I did, were made as children's films but very imaginative children's films. It does reflect having been away from America for three years in Australia and watching American culture from afar. I was disturbed by American culture more than I have been in the past and the film is an extreme treatise on American culture for me. Using hyperbole and extreme themes is something that I enjoy in film. I enjoy some directors that do that like David Cronenberg and David Lynch. They've always had interesting intellectual conceit and concepts in their films. Feed is its own complete unique film because it isn't just in the mode of the torture horror that's been out there and yet it's also not just a traditional genre film. That's why I was drawn to it. I have always enjoyed filmmakers like Sidney Lumet who are able to go from genre to genre so you're not looking at the same story every time out. That keeps me interested.
DRE: Besides the feeding aspect, the cop's girlfriend is in a polygamist relationship.
BL: The relationship between the thin, beautiful girl and the cop is supposed to be more disturbing than the feeder/gainer relationship until you find out what the feeder is really doing. The idea is that there's no such thing as a normal relationship in modern culture. People are playing at normal relationships. In the ranks of 20-somethings there's very little normal relationship in relation to what people would think there was in the 50's. There are a lot of things that are twisted around in the context of modern relationships. That relationship is very indicative of a lot of people I knew in Australia where one or both partners were bisexual. There was a lot of playing around with polygamy and other aspects of fetish sexuality and that's considered cool now in 20-something culture. Though I'm not making a judgment about it ultimately the cop's relationship is almost as violent and destructive as the feeder to the gainer.
DRE: Right after I watched Feed, I watched the episode of Masters of Horror that Takashi Miike directed. Those two films are an interesting contrast. Miike knows how to disturb people but Feed seems almost out of the realm of what the Asian filmmakers could do because they perceive their consumer aspect in a much different way.
BL: I think the stylistic aspects of things probably are influenced by more Asian neo-horror because it does have this other-worldliness to the Western mind. By making Feed in Australia and making an alternate version of my hometown, Toledo, Ohio [laughs] it captures that otherworldly, disorienting point of view. I was definitely influenced by that. Asian filmmakers wouldn't understand that aspect of it at all. I think obesity is the plague of America and in Western culture in general, so there's a very topical aspect to that. There are increasingly more and more shows about people that are incredibly large or incredibly thin. This whole body image thing has reached its nadir and Feed is a reflection of it. It's been in my face because whenever a celebrity has a baby and she gains 50 pounds, that's good for ten magazine covers. That's ridiculous. The whole focus on body image is such an extreme obsession has created greater obsessive behavior in relation to it.
DRE: How difficult was it to get Feed made?
BL: It wasn't really that hard to get together because I did it for a very, very low budget. It looks like it's a bigger film than it is. I made this film with about 15 people on the crew, most of whom were not seasoned professionals although my cinematographer and myself were. Because of my track record it was easy to make a film at this level that had the pitch of Super Size Me crossed with Se7en. The concept of Hostel or Saw would have been difficult to sell 20 years ago. It would have been relegated to the fringes of extreme pornographic film and yet now that's mainstream. The sexuality of Feed probably tips the theme towards something more disturbing because whenever you deal with psychosexual behavior in relation to something disturbing, that's something in Western culture that pushes people's buttons. Also there were documentaries out there about this very thing right as we were pitching Feed so it was looked at as a film that was breaking something that wasn't out in mainstream culture.
DRE: What can you tell me about the Highlander movie?
BL: I was a fan of the first film and that's why I made this one. I was approached by the producers to come in and reinvigorate the series. They don't think that anybody's been real happy with the sequels, especially the last one. I came in to make a much more visually grand. It's darker than some of the other movies but I think the fans will like that. Three of the people in the movie were on the TV series, Adrian Paul, Peter Wingfield and Jim Byrnes have continuing characters so it is like the film of the TV series. It is really very different from the tone of the series and the other films. We really wanted to answer certain questions and reinvigorate other ones. This one has a greater, larger visual style that harkens back to the first film.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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http://www.tlavideo.com/details/product_details.cfm?v=1&sn=2992&id=229427
There's a lot of info about the new Highlander movie Brett Leonard directed on Adrian Paul's website, lots of interviews and stuff. They're also doing an auction right now on AP's charity website with props and costumes from the movie and phone calls with AP, etc. Lots of stuff from other sources, like Star Trek and Harry Potter.