Larry Cohen, a Horror Hero For James Wan and Eli Roth, Reveals Why He Doesn’t Watch Scary Movies and Hates … – IndieWire

New Yorks greatest B-movie legend is coming back to the Big Apple. Prolificwriter-director-producer Larry Cohen returns to his native New York this weekend to appear at a retrospective of his New York-set films at the newly-renovated Quad Cinema.

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The writer behind 2002s Phone Booth and director of A Return to Salems Lot, Cohen directed 20 movies and wrote dozens of screenplays for both film and television during his roughly 50 year career. Many of his most well-known films were set in New York.

It was my favorite place to shoot, Cohen said. New York is the worlds greatest backlot.

The retrospective, entitled Larry Cohens New York,will include the Whisper cut of Cohens 1976 horror-thriller God Told Me To, a version that has never been screened in New York before. The other films that will be shown are Black Caesar (1973), Q (1982), Perfect Strangers (1984), Special Effects (1985), The Stuff (1985) and The Ambulance (1990). Cohen will make appearances at five of the seven screenings, and will be joined by actor Eric Bogosian after the screening of Special Effects.

IndieWire recently sat down with the 75-year-old Cohen, whose career is the subject of the upcoming documentary King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen.

Your films are known for their unique blend of genre andsocial commentary. What issues did you most want to tackle?

Quite a lot of my pictures dealt with abortion or peripheral issues of abortion, like Its Alive. Whatever [opinion] you brought into the theater you could take out of the movie to support your view. If you were for abortion, naturally you want to knock off a monster baby, and if you were against abortion, the parents learn to love the child after all. Most of my movies had some kind of issue that was inherent in the story, but The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover was entirely different. It dealt with a lot of political things that are very cogent today with what goes on in the government. It shows that spying on people and tapping their phones and trying to influence elections is nothing new.

How do you feel about Nicolas Winding Refn producing a remake of Maniac Cop, which you wrote in 1988?

I dont know that its being remade. Theres been a lot of talk about it, but as far as Im concerned, they dont have the money. I dont like remakes. It tires me out to see that they keep announcing this and that picture is being remade. I say, Why? It was a good movie. Why cant you come up with some original idea? Why cant you come up with something clever and new and different? Why does everything have to be a sequel or a remake or a comic book?

Which filmmakers do you like today?

I like the ones that like me! James Wan is a big fan of mine. I know Eli Roth very well. James Gunn is a fan and a friend. He wanted to make a remake of Its Alive actually but he couldnt raise enough money to buy the rights. Im sorry today I didnt give them to him. But hes beyond that now.

Have you seen any horror films recently that youve liked?

I must tell you, I never cared that much for horror movies. I made them, but I never was a horror movie fan and I certainly wasnt into torture and amputations and driving spikes into peoples eyes and stuff like that. Most of my movies dont have anything like that. That wasnt my kind of thing.

Speaking of horror, what are your thoughts on the Trump administration?

The Trump administration is a horror show, but having made The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover and done a lot of research, theyre all bad. What could equal Lyndon Johnson getting us into the VietnamWar by faking that Gulf of Tonkin attack that never happened and killing thousands and thousands of people?

How did you you feel about the critical reception of your movies?

There have always been critics that came along and liked the pictures and then there have been critics who just dismissed the pictures because they were low budget. We had one example of Q, when it was reviewed for The New York Times, I hate to say it, but the critic didnt even watch the picture. The projectionist told me she left after five or 10 minutes and then wrote a review dismissing the picture. And the Times was the only review that was negative. I suppose I should have sued them, because they had no right to go out and destroy a picture without even seeing it.

You started out working in TV. What TV shows do you like that are on today?

I watch Homeland, though some seasons have been better than others. I like Better Call Saul and House of Cards. I watched Bloodline too. The thing about miniseries is, when they do it in eight segments, they just stretch it out so much. There are very few stories that need to be told in seven or eight hours.

How has the movie business changed over the course of your career?

Whats happened to the movie business is like a poker game. The stakes are so high that most people cant afford to sit down at the table. So you make a movie, but how are you going to exhibit the movie and get people to see it when a full page ad in the paper costs $40,000 for one day and these big movies are taking double pages and TV spots every five minutes? If you dont compete with that, youre just snowed under.

Do you preferseeing movies in theaters versus at home?

I used to go to the theater every week but lately I havent been able to find anything Id like to see. People used to go to the movies every week because they liked to go to the movies. It was something to do. But today, except for certain audiences, they only go to blockbuster pictures. If the picture didnt cost a couple hundred million to make, nobody seems to want to go to see it.

How much are you writing these days?

I write a lot. I just wrote 17 one-hour shows for a cable series of thrillers and Im hoping that were going to get to make them.

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Your last directing gig was for the show Masters of Horror in 2006. What are your future plans for directing?

If the series gets on cable Ill direct a few of them. Not all of them. Just enough to get me back into the enjoyment of the experience, because I just love working with actors. I really enjoy the experience and enjoy the camaraderie with the crew and cast. A lot of directors I talk to hate actors and they consider them the enemy. Michael Moriarty starred in five of my movies and he was considered to be a difficult actor. All youve got to do is give me an actor who has a reputation of being troubled, and I get along great with them.

The Quad Cinema will host Larry Cohens New York on Saturday, May 6 and Sunday, May 7.

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Larry Cohen, a Horror Hero For James Wan and Eli Roth, Reveals Why He Doesn't Watch Scary Movies and Hates ... - IndieWire

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero