Horror movies &stuff Interviews "The Ocean" Director Dante Tomaselli We recently got the opportunity, and pleasure to talk with Dante Tomaselli, Director of the upcoming horror movie "The Ocean", which stars Dee Wallace, and Dominique Swain, among others. The film deals with sinister and supernatural riptides that terrorize a small coastal community. In this interview, Dante reveals more about the films characters, why Felissa Rose was taken off the project, and addresses the rumor of Lindsay Lohan's appearance in the movie. MR. H:When did you first get the idea for "The Ocean", to make a movie about killer tidal waves terrorizing a small community of people? Dante:I've always been afraid of drowning. And I've had re-occurring nightmares where the ocean waves swallow me up. I was a daredevil when I was younger; I used to go into the ocean when the waves were at their biggest, their most dangerous and get knocked around. I loved riding in the waves with my boggie board. When there was a storm coming I'd get right in there. It was almost suicidal, the conditions were so risky and the riptides almost killed me many times. Weirdly, I felt exhilarated, the happiest ever. I guess it's the same rush car racers have. It's very primal. When I was in high school, in my creative writing class, I had an excellent teacher named Mr. Soriano, he was very dramatic and would close all the blinds and turn off the lights and have us write whatever popped into our minds. I loved it. Stream-of-consciousness writing. He was a very hip teacher. I used to go into a trance and write about a boy named Gus who drowned in the ocean. The words and images were just pouring out of me. That's how it felt when I conjured the original draft of the screenplay. MR. H:The premise for this movie isn't the type or sort of premise for your typical every day, run of the mill horror picture. Moving ahead with this film, were you concerned at all about some members of the general horror audience not really being able to "get it" so to speak? Or not being willing to embrace something new? Dante:I do think it's universally something people are ready for. Of course there will always be pundits and I'm a very polarizing filmmaker but...the polar opposites...the hate and love for my films...sometimes that's the ingredients for a storm...that scenario...those opposing forces colliding. The Ocean has the force of a tsunami wave in my world, in my mind. It's been building, growing. I think, overall...people are sick of all the remakes, which for the most part are out-of-hand. Most hardcore horror fans at this point have been exposed to Italian horror movies, visual horror movies...and the general public definitely embrace a new horror film every now and then. It has to be genuinely scary and have a good story. I hope The Ocean will deliver. I usually come up with a tagline before I make a film, I guess because I was an Advertising major in college, but I came up with the tagline...A New Wave in Terror...It's a metaphor. The Ocean, the movie, the message, is new, surprising...an unexpected tidal wave on the horizon...building, growing, curling...It has to come out. Truth rising to the surface. There's a heavy emotional pull to the main characters in The Ocean, I think. That's what I'm pushing for. This is a family in extreme pain. Dee Wallace will play a medium haunted by visions of the apocalypse. She's estranged from her daughter...a lot of guilt there. A damaged bond. When her daughter's husband and son mysteriously drown in the ocean, mother and daughter reunite. What went on in this family? What secrets are hidden? Family secrets...hypocrisy and betrayal, those are always my themes, in all my movies, for some reason. In The Ocean, childhood trauma is at the core and what's happening can be interpreted as either supernatural or psychological. There are paranoid undercurrents of global warming...nature revolting...terrorist plagues. In the film there is an Ebola-like virus on the loose. There's also a warning...a Biblical message from an apparitional, bloodstained nun. She warns, 'It is foretold. A plague shall spread. And the waters shall be blood red.' I really want to push the envelope in every way. Mainly, the film should be emotional, exciting, provocative, interesting and scary. MR. H:There are a lot of tropical island locations you could've chosen for the shoot. Beyond the obvious reasons, why did Puerto Rico stand out so perfectly above all of the others? Dante:It's in the Bermuda Triangle...The Devil's Triangle. I like to shoot in places where there are reverberations of death and evil. The main location, the mansion/lighthouse on jagged cliffs...overlooking the crashing sea is very Gothic. Kind of 60's, early 70's horror. This film should have a heightened reality vibe. It should feel like an out-of-body experience. MR. H:How are you measuring "The Ocean" in the long run, do you think it'll be a horror movie to gain a sort of cult following? Dante:Well, all my films have some kind of cult following but I feel The Ocean is the one that will break out. If the production goes as planned, and with the right marketing and distribution, I'm certain it will be my most successful film. I feel it in bones. MR. H:Will "The Ocean" share any similarities with John Carpenter's "The Fog", beyond the obvious fact that both movies are about small coastal communities coming up against supernatural forces? Dante:Yes, absolutely. I love The Fog. It's one of my all time favorites. I saw it in theatres in 1980, when I was 10 years-old. The Ocean can't help but be influenced by The Fog. I love the idea of eerie glowing smoke invading the atmosphere. It just pushes my buttons. Something unknowable that's shape-shifting, all-encompassing and relentless. That's unsettling. MR. H:How long did it take you and Michael Gingold to complete the script for this movie? Dante:Michael Gingold is a class act. One thing I should say, I admire how Michael stays out of all the drama in the horror community. And there's a lot of icky drama. Sometimes it's like being in a slithering snake pit. So many disgusting egos. So many back stabbers. Michael is refreshing. He doesn't have motives. He just focuses on his writing and he does it with integrity. He took my first draft and he fleshed it out, just made it much better. We had some lunch meetings in NYC and discussed the movie. My dialogue tends to be surrealist...and Michael took charge of that, changed most of it and made it more human. It took me about six months to write my draft and a month for Michael to revise it. So about seven months. MR. H:Have you prepared or thought about any special directing style that you want to shoot this movie in to give it a certain effect for audiences? Dante:Visually, I want to give it an epic exuberance...beautiful and majestic...like the ocean. Musically it's complex, a mix of my own electronic music and orchestral compositions by Kenneth Lampl. Scope-wise, I'm going wider than ever...very expansive. The interiors will have a kind of an art-deco Mediterranean gothic feel. As always, each frame should look like a painting, but I want to take that to a whole new level. I'm experimenting with different textures and psychedelic color palettes. This film will be a swirling hallucinogenic nightmare. MR. H:."The Ocean" has not been an easy movie to get off the ground. Tell us about some of the issues that had plagued the film previously. Dante:Well, the evolution is not as long as many think. I mean, many movies take a much longer time to get off the ground. Think of how many films never even get done. I've said it before but when I set out to make a movie, it happens. There is always a delay but it always eventually happens. I don't know why anyone would even doubt it at this point. I'm still in my 30s. I'm not going anywhere yet. Seriously, I don't why I'm held to the same standards as horror filmmakers who are studio financed. I mean think about it, I've created the same amount of films as my contemporaries, who all work on higher budgets. Here I am without any mainstream support, just some positive reviews in Variety Magazine. It's not easy to make one film. Let alone three! I'm not whining, it's just a fact. Anyhow, after I completed Satan's Playground in 2005 I wanted to go into The Ocean pretty quickly. Too quickly. January of 2006 I set up a shoot date with Adrienne Barbeau as the lead. She liked the script and was ready to roll. Well, unfortunately not all the money was in place and I had to cancel the shoot. Some time after that, I thought the money was in place but Adrienne was booked...starring in a play about Judy Garlands. So Margot Kidder got interested and became attached to the lead role, she read the script and said she wanted to do it. For some reason, the new producers didn't agree with casting either Adrienne or Margot for the part. I love both actresses, but I couldn't do anything about it. In order for the film to go forward we all had to agree on casting. Dee Wallace was one name we all agreed on. MR. H:Casting wise, Felissa Rose goes out, and Dominique Swain steps into her role. I personally thought you guys lucked out to get a talented up and comer like her, but what did you think of the move, and what was the full story behind why Felissa couldn't be part of the production any longer? Dante:The producers didn't want her in the part. The president of the company, Jeffrey Erb...he was adamant. I felt bad because Felissa led me to these people but I was already in a contract. I had no idea the production company was so dead set against her in the part. I told her this and she flipped. Plus her husband sent me threatening emails. She could not look beyond the fact that it was business and I had nothing to do with it. Then she started having imaginary conversations with me on the IMDb, claiming I was someone that I wasn't. I never signed onto The Ocean message board. I never would. Felissa latched onto someone she thought was me and then started making false claims that I was talking badly about her. How frustrating...when I never said a single bad thing and only tried to get her the part. MR. H:This rumor had surfaced awhile back and since I'm talking to you now I'd like to get some confirmation on it. Was Lindsay Lohan ever a part of close to being a part of this production at all, as the rumor mill suggested many months ago? Dante:Danny Lopes met her at a club in LA many months back. He was talking to her about it for one night. It was a one night thing. He sent her the script but then he never talked to her again and that was it. I think she was shooting I Know Who Killed Me at the time. MR. H:Vincent Pastore is back in this film, after doing another one of your movies a few years ago "Satan's Playground", as is Ellen Sandweiss. Are both of their roles in this production as vital as they were in "SP"? Dante:Actually you're thinking of Salvatore Paul Piro, he was in Satan's Playground and Desecration. He always plays the Dad. I can see how you might get them confused. They both had parts in The Sopranos. Vincent Pastore played Big Pussy. He's starring in The Ocean, playing Dee Wallace's estranged husband. And Salvatore Piro will have a cameo as a cop. Ellen Sandweiss...she's a great actress and friend and I'd love to give her a much larger part. I'll have to wait for my devil possession movie, SALEM. In that, I plan on featuring Ellen in a bona-fide starring role. One of my upcoming movies will star Ellen Sandweiss, that's for sure. MR. H:Horror films rely on a lot of things but most of all scares, and cool deaths. What kind of scares can we expect from "The Ocean", and as for the deaths in the film...do you have anything spectacularly jaw-dropping lined up? Dante:I really want to deliver the scares. The scare sequences will be tailored for serious impact. I'm a lifelong horror fan. I know what it's like to crave a really frightening movie. I understand and I want to deliver. I don't want to give away too much but there will be demonic possessions...violent ocean drownings...characters caught in riptides...all kinds of supernatural mayhem. Psychic visions. A creepy old-fashioned funhouse sequence. Ouija Board sessions. There's a grisly scene where a surfer is impaled by a flying beach umbrella...crucifixion style. A very surreal death. Also, a boy is smashed onto jagged rocks by crashing waves. The Ocean will have monstrous, apocalyptic waves. We're talking 75-foot swells sometimes. There's nature revolting...the sea turning aggressive...and deadly. And a mysterious Ebola-like virus spreading like The Black Plague...along the coast...with innocent people bleeding from their mouths and eyes...It's a vision of the apocalypse. MR. H:"The Ocean" boasts sinister rip tides as its villain. Do you plan to use a significant amount of fx to make the waves come alive and attack, or will you rely more on just "suggesting" the demise of your characters through the use of certain camera angles, avoiding overusing the visual exploitation aspect? Dante:My second unit Director of Photography, Mike Prickett, specializes in shooting massive wave surfing movies like Step into Liquid, Riding with Giants and Billabong Odyssey. He's a daredevil cinematographer...and he'll shoot all the complicated water sequences. Basically, we'll incorporate all that we need to make the underwater footage as powerful as possible. Whatever it takes. MR. H:Will "The Ocean" be a non-stop terror-filled thrill ride, or a film that works in peaks and valleys, scaring you one minute...and then bringing things to a calm the next? Dante:I'd say like the ocean itself, this film has its ebb and flow, its rhythms. It's an atmospheric horror movie punctuated by gory shocks. Overall, The Ocean is more about creeping terror. The fear grows from the troubled characters who are clearly drowning. The violence in this film is not excessive but when it happens, it's graphic and intense. This is a pure horror movie. MR. H:Should "The Ocean" be a success...any sequels plans in mind as of yet? Dante:I'm a one-movie-at-a-time kind of filmmaker. Only when The Ocean is done, I'll know what comes next. MR. H:How do you hope to get this film released in the long run, theatrical debut, or direct to dvd? Dante:Theatrical. End. 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