![\"communi\"](\"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/communi.jpg\" "\\"Communion")
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To many, writer-director Philippe Mora<\/a>\u2019s name is often linked such exploitation films as the horror opuses The Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf and The Howling III: The Marsupials. The link became even more prominent with Not Quite Hollywood!, the rousing 2009 \u00a0documentary about the Australian \u201cB\u201d and \u201cC\u201d movie industry in the 1970s and 1980s.\u00a0 Clips were showcased of the two films, while Mora spoke about their production, as well as his work on Mad Dog Morgan with Dennis Hopper<\/a>.<\/p>\n As it turns out, however, the Paris-born, Australia-raised Mora is more than an exploitation director. Much more. He has a background in painting, and has worked regularly as a newspaper columnist, cartoonist, investigative journalist, magazine publisher and documentary filmmaker. In many ways, Mora is something of a Renaissance man, delving into all sorts of ways to express himself when his artistic juices start flowing.<\/p>\n In the late 1960s, Mora had met novelist Whitley Streiber in London when he was studying at film school. They caught up with each other again in the 1980s in New York City after Streiber had become a successful writer, penning such books as The Hunger and Wolfen, which were turned into movies.<\/p>\n \u201cHe told me about his strange experiences and asked me not to laugh at him,\u201d recalls Mora, 61, from his West Hollywood home, which once belonged to Cary Grant. \u201cHe asked me not to laugh at his story. And he told me he ought to get a psychiatrist, and I told him he should get a publisher as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Streiber explained to Mora that in December 1985, he was had been abducted from an upstate New York cabin by aliens. The beings performed medical experiments on him, and Streiber later recounted his harrowing experiences under hypnosis with the help of a psychiatrist.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought he was disturbed at first, but it was clear he was sincere. Since I wasn\u2019t there (when the supposed abductions took place) I couldn\u2019t say if they took place or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Streiber had decided to write a book about these abductions called Communion. Mora read the galleys and decided he wanted to make the film. But the movie studios wanted to either fictionalize the story or make it an all-out horror movie. So the director and author got independent partners to bring Communion to the screen on their own, without studio interference.<\/p>\n At first, Mora had a problem casting his lead. \u201cWriters don\u2019t do anything,\u201d notes Mora. \u201cWatching writers write and think can be awfully boring. But Christopher Walken<\/a> has such an interesting face. It all reminded me of Samuel Fuller\u2019s remark that the greatest landscape is the human face.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could buy him (Walken) as a writer. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want Whitley to say it wasn\u2019t like that. Sure, there was stuff that turned out to be notorious like the \u2018anal probe\u2019 and \u2018little blue midgets.\u2019 \u00a0I wanted a checklist to make sure he (Streiber) was OK with it.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t say it was tough to make,\u201d says Mora about Communion\u2019s production. \u201cWalken was fantastic to work with. It was great having an actor like that. It was like I was the pilot with an incredible plane and I could go anywhere I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n Did Walken believe in Streiber\u2019s abduction claims?<\/p>\n \u201cChris didn\u2019t believe in any of it, but he thought it was possible,\u201d says Mora. \u201cI took him to a meeting where he met abductees. And he met Whitley quite a few times and did quite a bit of research.\u201d<\/p>\n The 1989 film, which features an appropriately eerie score from Mora\u2019s friend Eric Clapton, was made in Southern California on a shooting schedule that lasted about six weeks. \u201cThe fact we made it pre-CGI turned out to be a blessing,\u201d Mora says. \u201cWe had to do all the effects in the camera. And it has a certain atmosphere that makes it feel photo realistic. I wanted to make it creepy, or question mark creepy like, so you say, \u2018What\u2019s going on?\u2019 When an alien sticks his head out, it creeps people out. That is like a childhood scary thing. And I do remember having similar visions from my childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n Mora, who provides a fresh commentary for a new DVD release of Communion <\/a>that\u2019s loaded with extras, also spent some time at the cabin in upstate New York where the alien abduction was said to have occurred.<\/p>\n \u201cI had some vivid nightmares there, with lights and alien faces,\u201d says Mora. \u201cWhitley claims these were actual events I experienced, not just nightmares.\u201d<\/p>\n Mora had an interest in UFOs before he even met Streiber. \u201cWhen I lived in London, I got something called Flying Saucer Review. I had also gone through the files through the Freedom of Information Act.\u201d<\/p>\n The director has written about the subject in his column for the Sydney Morning Herald. \u201cSome people believe that the whole thing was a psychological warfare project (conceived by the U.S. government) to freak the Russians out. There\u2019s lots of literature on this. The government took the subject very seriously and periodically they will again. But until the proverbial flying saucer lands on the White House lawn, many will remain skeptical.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a fascinating phenomenon, whether it\u2019s psychological or real,\u201d says Mora about the reports of UFO sightings. \u201cIn a court of law, eyewitnesses are essential and people have been executed based on eyewitness accounts. On that basis, they (UFOs) exist. If you use the standards of the courts, they\u2019re real, but that\u2019s not good enough for science. If there\u2019s one account of the millions that\u2019s true\u2014if one is real\u2014then it happened. So, you know, what can I say? The statistic probability is that they exist, based on eyewitness accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n The way to handle Streiber\u2019s story, Mora believes, was to present it objectively. \u201cThe movie is agnostic,\u201d he says, referring to its stand on the existence of life on other planets.<\/p>\n Philippe Mora Communion Director<\/p><\/div>\n Mora started making movies when he was 15 years old. In 1969, when he was 20, he directed an underground film called Trouble in Megalopolis featuring feminist author Germaine Greer. He went on to co-direct Swastika in 1973, a documentary on the Nazis that featured never-seen home movies of Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun, which was banned in Germany for decades and played at the 2009 Biberach Film Festival. He even worked for a time with Peter Sellers<\/a> on a film in which the late British comic actor was to play Adolph Hitler at the age of 80.<\/p>\n Working with Sellers was an experience Mora will likely never forget, especially since the director\u2014a movie enthusiast who published the film magazine Cinema Papers for years\u2014claims Dr. Strangelove is his favorite film of all time.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring our first meeting, he came dressed as Hitler!\u201d recalls Mora, whose mother was an artist and whose father founded Australia\u2019s Museum of Modern Art. \u201cAfter two weeks, the producer asks \u2018How\u2019s it going?\u2019 I said, \u2018He\u2019s dressed as Hitler.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cSellers was an incredible person. He wasn\u2019t trying to do a gimmick. He would start talking back to you in your own voice. He was just so studied and he would talk to people in my voice. He would answer the phone and speak back to them in their own voice. It was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Mora gained acclaim for his 1975 documentary Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, an entertaining look at the Great Depression that features amazing film clips, period songs and newsreel footage. At that time, Australia was getting lots of attention in the film world, with its young film industry gaining popularity and directors such as Peter Weir<\/a> (Picnic at Hanging Rock), Donald Crombie (Caddie), Bruce Beresford<\/a> (Don\u2019s Party), Fred Schepisi <\/a>(The Devil\u2019s Playgrund) and Roger Donaldson<\/a> (Sleeping Dogs) finding international notice.<\/p>\n It was Mora, however, who became the first Australian filmmaker to get a movie released in American theaters when his western Mad Dog Morgan, starring Dennis Hopper, got to these shores in 1976. \u201cIt\u2019s funny, but I introduced Hopper to Christopher Walken, and later the two have that great scene together in True Romance,\u201d says Mora. \u201cThey were similar in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n For the title character, Mora first considered Martin Sheen, then Stacy Keach. The filmmaker settled on Hopper after producer Jeremy Thomas met him in Taos, New Mexico, where he was living and edited The Last Movie, his trippy, disastrous 1971 followup to Easy Rider.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cDennis said making the film (Mad Dog Morgan) was one the best film experiences he ever had. At that time he was unemployable in Hollywood, because he told Lew Wasserman (head of Universal) to go f**k himself after The Last Movie. You can\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n <\/strong>\u201cWe rang his agent up from Melbourne. When he heard we wanted to hire Dennis, his hand almost came through the phone like a Tim Burton movie.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Mad Dog Morgan stuff has been overemphasized about him (Hopper) drinking. There are thousands of people who did drug and alcohol, particularly in those days, and didn\u2019t end up with 50 film credits. Booze has nothing to do with anything. Give Dennis a bottle of rum and see what he can do; then give Joe Whomever a bottle of rum, and he can\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n The violent western, concerning the mid-19th<\/sup> century Ireland-born outlaw whose criminal acts found favor with the Australian public, helped shine a light on the continent\u2019s burgeoning film industry in general and Mora in particular.\u00a0 And while it only was put on 30 or 40 American screens, it helped Mora become the first Down Under director to get an assignment from an American studio. The project was The Beast Within for MGM, a werewolf saga with ample gore, starring Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch.<\/p>\n Following such offbeat efforts as the superhero musical-satire spoof The Return of Captain Invincible (with songs by Richard O\u2019Brien of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame, featuring Alan Arkin and a singing Christopher Lee) and the conservationist-meets-widow romance A Breed Apart with Rutger Hauer and Kathleen Turner, Mora went back to the fur fold with his Howling opuses, in-name-only sequels to Joe Dante\u2019s 1981 hit.<\/p>\n The connection between Mora\u2019s two Howling movies and the original (or the others, for that matter) are flimsy at best. \u201cYou\u2019re damned if you do and damned if you don\u2019t,\u201d says Mora regarding the sequels\u2019 connection to the original film. \u201cIf you copy the first one, they say \u2018Big deal.\u2019 If you don\u2019t, they say \u2018Why did you do it?\u2019 With The Howling series, every single film is different. I intended 3 to be a parody of the whole genre. I am proud that these films are still actively available and distributed around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Howling projects were done on miniscule budgets. Howling II, in which reporter Annie McEnroe and supernatural expert Christopher Lee join Reb Brown to fight werewolf priestess Sybil Danning in Transylvania, cost $2 million. Howling 3, perhaps the only film ever to be made with marsupial ballerina werewolves and marsupial werewolf nuns, was produced for only $1 million.<\/p>\n Mora relates the movies to artwork: \u201cSome movies are sketches and others are paintings. These two are definitely sketches. But I\u2019ll never forget the making of The Howling II.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was shot in Prague, behind the Iron Curtain,\u201d says Mora.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cPrague was an occupied city at the time. We had KGB spies on the set. When I got out of the city, I was thrilled to see a billboard. That\u2019s how oppressive it was. I\u2019d like to make a movie about the making of that movie.\u201d<\/p>\n Mora\u2019s other efforts have included Precious Find, a sci-fi saga with Rutger Hauer and Joan Chen, Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills, in which Beverly D\u2019Angelo becomes a walking dinosaur, and Burning Down the House, a Hollywood satire. He\u2019s also completed a \u201cdocufiction\u201d about writer-art patron-Alice B. Toklas lover Gertrude Stein, is editing a thriller, and is working on a new personal documentary on the Holocaust. In his, uh, spare time, Mora is planning a feature film on artist Salvador Dali.<\/p>\n So the creative juices continue to flow for the ever-busy Mora, who has pretty much managed to steer clear of Hollywood studio work during his forty years of making films.<\/p>\n Does he feel like he\u2019s missing out, not directing a bigger-budgeted film from a Hollywood major?<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be very difficult for me to do a studio picture,\u201d says Mora. \u201cIt\u2019s all corporate, and there are lots of hands in there. Besides, I could do a independent picture for half the price. (Being independent), it\u2019s always difficult to raise money. But the cost of production is cheaper than ever, and because of digital, it\u2019s getting cheaper and better every day. Getting distribution, of course, is another matter. But I encourage people to go out and make movies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To many, writer-director Philippe Mora\u2019s name is often linked such exploitation films as the horror opuses The Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf and The Howling III: The Marsupials. The link became even more prominent with Not Quite Hollywood!,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":11480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[5595,1670],"coauthors":[1707],"class_list":["post-11425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staff-notes","tag-movie-directors","tag-movie-interviews"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Philippe](\"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Philippe_Mora.jpg\" "\\"Philippe_Mora\\"")