Speaking of Hardware‘s birth, you once said that in the end it was a terrible accident. What did you mean by that?

Well, like all movies, we end up making the movies we have to make. What I mean is that I don’t think we set out to make this film. Maybe it was a lucky accident. I worked hard for many years to make something. Hardware was not the first script to come out, but it was the first commercial script. I tried for years, in fact, to make a more serious science fiction film. And then, after it was rejected many, many times, I listened to the advice of the producers. And they all said the same thing, that I had to put a monster in the story. And in the end I did what they said, listened to their advice and killed all the cast members and turned it into a crazy action movie. But for years it was initially developed as an art film. It was closer to Richard Fleischer’s 2022: Survivors, which I saw when I was about 12, or a movie about how terrible it was to live in the future.

Is it true that part of the film is based on your dreams?

Yes, the first three or four minutes of Hardware are based on my dreams, one of the same dream cycle.I have been dreaming about the walking man for a long time, and in that particular dream he is walking around in his hat and coat in the wasteland, looking for something, but I don’t know what. Then, right in the middle of the dream, he starts digging in the sand and suddenly unearths this metal skull, with eyes like camera lenses. I don’t know what happened next, but the first few minutes of Hardware were definitely a dream.

As for, however, The Island of Dr. Moreau, you worked on the screenplay with Michael Herr. How did that work out?

He is a very good screenwriter, the greatest I have ever worked with. He took my script and in a very short time made it much, much better. It was my first time working with another screenwriter. I’ve always been reluctant to allow someone else to rewrite the script.So they gave me the best. And Michael is incredible, really. And one of my biggest regrets is that after this film he didn’t make any more. This was perhaps the last time Hollywood worked with Michael. He reclined in the northern part of New York State.

È true that you are working on rewriting a new draft?

Yes, this year I wrote a new draft of the script for the first time in 25 years. It was planned for a graphic novel. There was a plan by the French production company Humanoids to release a version in the form of a graphic novel of The Island of Dr. Moreau. I know they wanted to adapt it again for a movie. But now CBS has announced that they are doing it as well. So, now more than one production company wants to make The Island of Dr. Moreau. They have to work it out. There is competition. Because CBS has now announced it as a TV series.

In 2006 you co-wrote the screenplay for The Abandoned. A good film, perhaps a bit underrated. What did you think of it?

It was a crazy project. Because when I arrived it had started as a Canadian film. Nacho Cerdà had rewritten it in Spanish. Then he posted the setting in Russia. They were shooting in Bulgaria with Spanish understanders and a Czechoslovakian lead. When I got to the set no one understood what was going on. There were so many languages that someone had to come in to write the dialogue in English. I became part of the while they were shooting it.

Are you satisfied with the outcome of the film?

I think the film holds up, it is coherent. Which amazes me because when we started it was in pieces and trying to give the film logic was complicated. I created a character from scratch who is not present in the film. The protagonist’s daughter, who never appears, is only present on her cell phone in the narrative. And this is a detail invented at the script stage.

You are also among the credits for Stefano Bessoni’s Imago Mortis.

I wrote a draft and then no one got back to me. A few years later, I learned that the script had been used to make a film in Italy.

So you only wrote the first draft?

Yes, I wrote the first draft and then they disappeared. The film was made without anyone telling me that they were making a film for us.

Did you see it then?

Yes, and unfortunately I did not like it.

You took part in the anthology The Theatre Bizarre, and your episode is the best, in my humble opinion. But it hasn’t had much of a following. Why do you think that is?

It was a real shame. I think The Theatre Bizarre started this trend by showing people that it was a feasible thing to take a group of directors and give them $20,000 each. Our budget was only $20,000. This way you were getting a film practically for free. Unfortunately for us, however, The Theatre Bizarre was stolen by distributors. W2 Media, which had the project, stole the film. It didn’t pay anybody a dime. And then a lawsuit broke out between the producers and the distributors to get it back. It took maybe a year before they got rid of the rights and got the film back. And that destroyed the project. We were not able to capitalize on anything because of this year-long hiatus in the distribution process. It’s too bad, because it’s a very good film. The producer was super nice. We worked hard on this film; we had a very low budget. This allowed us to see the lives of all the directors involved. Everyone shot in their own apartment. You see Tom Savini’s apartment, Buddy Giovinazzo’s apartment in Berlin, the place where I live, in France. You get to see the homes of the different directors and, most importantly, the crazy lifestyle we have.

A few years ago there was a project, Vacation, with Bruce Campbell. It was almost ready to go. Where is it at now? Completely abandoned?

It was dropped when Bruce practically burned the news. And he got a contract for an American TV series. Which was better than our project and we couldn’t keep him. And then the script was so controversial. I deliberately wrote the most offensive part, the most blatant. It’s a black romantic comedy about the clash of civilizations, about two American tourists versus Islam. A Jewish American stockbroker and his lap dancer girlfriend are marooned in an era of Islamic fundamentalism after the destruction of America. I wanted two characters who represent everything Islam hates about America. He is Jewish, she is a businesswoman, working in the sex industry. It was a clash between them and the fundamentalists. But it was played as a black comedy. A romantic black comedy. It’s abandoned for now. I still like the script because it is very mean and brazen. It makes me laugh bitterly when I read it. But if we did it now it wouldn’t be so controversial. I wanted to make this film right after 9/11, when the clash of civilizations was about to start. I think if we had made it back then, people would have wanted to kill us because it’s about a lot of things you’re not allowed to talk about. From the rich Jew to female circumcision. There’s pretty much every single fucking topic in this movie that you’re not allowed to get close to.

Your next work as a director will be Color out of Space. Many films are based on Lovecraft’s stories. But often these films fail to bring to the screen the power of his writing, of his words. How will you approach the story?

There have been many adaptations of this tale, but for some reason people are afraid to take Lovecraft seriously. So most of the versions were designed for comedy. For some strange reason, almost all of Lovecraft’s films are slightly exaggerated, slightly ridiculous. Lovecraft himself used to say that all his work is about the same theme, which is cosmic terror and the insignificance of man in the cosmos. So I ask myself, “how would Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman or Andrej Tarkovsky deal with this material, instead of Charles Band? Can we turn it around in a way that emphasizes the theme of cosmicism and that of man’s existential insignificance in the universe?

Is the script ready?

Yes, we are very satisfied with the script.

When will you start filming?

The plan is to shoot next spring or summer. It is all set in the forest, on a farm, so it has to be outdoors.