Gene Gregorits: Hello, Joseph?

Joseph De Leo: Yeah.

GG: Guess what?

JDL: What?

GG: I’m shitfaced.

JDL: Well, that won’t be good for the interview.

GG: No. Never is. But they’re all done du-drunk. So-

JDL: They are?

GG: Always.

JDL: Are people that boring?

GG: Nah. I’m just a very insecure chap. I get the impression that making Fish and Chicks was a complete nightmare. But every independent film is a nightmare. Even the shitty ones, meaning most of them, in other words. What sets your nightmare apart from what you know of the average independent film nightmare?

JDL: I have no idea. Because I just did this one. I’ve been doing little things since high school. They’re all badly written and shitty. But this one was just brutal. The whole thing I was trying to do was to at least make it look like a film. That was the objective to begin with. I wound up writing, and acting for a while. It got to a point where I realized that there were too many actors in Toronto. I said "fuck this", and I tried writing. I wound up learning the structure and started writing. Anyway, with this film, for the first time I didn’t use friends. I went out in Toronto and checked out a theatre district office, which was a lot of sub actors who were looking for work. None of them were paid. It took me half a year to write Fish and Chicks. I was writing it in my then-fiancée’s basement.

GG: Hahaha.

JDL: Yeah, yeah. I wrote it there.

GG: So you did marry the girl.

JDL: Yeah, we’re married now.

GG: There’s a lot of turmoil and rage in your film, directed against the female.

JDL: Heh, heh, heh.

GG: Why would you write a film like that when things were going pretty well for you, when you had a girl?

JDL: I don’t know.

GG: It would make a lot more sense for you to have written Fish and Chicks when you were with a person who you despised, hated, and loathed.

JDL: No, it wasn’t like that. That’s the funny thing. She knew from the beginning that I was creatively inclined in writing. As a matter of fact, to get her on a date, she had to read something I wrote. That was a feature which has been sitting on a shelf for two years now. That’s called Crooked Eight Ball, and it’s about a struggling screenwriter. The clichéd thing of the screenwriter who is down to his last five minutes to produce a premise to salvage his career. Somewhere in the script, he ends up getting abducted in a cab by a prostitute, only to discover that the cab driver is a terrorist hiding out. This was way before 9/11.

GG: I see.

JDL: I’ve always written dark stuff anyway. It has nothing to do with my life.

GG: Why write dark stuff?

JDL: I just like it. To me, there should be something psychotic in it, that’s what people really want to express. My objective with Fish and Chicks was to create a character who is not likable and make him likable. I like dark comedy especially, just because it’s real. If you’re laughing at that, you’re laughing at something that’s actually happening. I didn’t want to make something fake. If it’s gonna be real, and still be funny and have all the other elements, I figured, "why not give it the extra edge?" And that’s what, to me, made it dark.

GG: Yeah, and just say "fuck you" to the whole system of pandering bullshit.

JDL: Exactly.

GG: What about the misogynistic element of it? Do you think there is a certain risk you are facing of people reacting to the film as something that is misogynistic?

JDL: Yes. On many levels. But I can’t think about that. All in all, when I really look at it, I don’t pay attention to that. And I never will.

GG: Basically the function of a true artist. Not only to express, but to express without feeling responsible for anything!

JDL: Yeah. I was told by an old professor, after he read Crooked Eight Ball, in class, he turned to me and asked me, "how are you going to explain this stuff to your critics?" There was a lot of shit in Crooked Eight Ball that was kind of risqué. Not PC in other words. I told him that I didn’t care what they thought. I told him that I thought, in the end it’s press anyway so they’ll want to see it regardless.

GG: You had no one looking over your shoulder on Fish and Chicks?

JDL: No. Everybody around me who went through the process of creating it did not once ever pick at any of those elements unless I brought it up.

GG: The dialogue is just so explicit and rude. Enough to make women cringe!

JDL: Yeah, that just gives it intrigue. Are they going to talk about it afterwards? Sure. That’s the beautiful part.

GG: I pointed out Kevin Smith in my review of the film.

JDL: Yeah I know. (laughs)

GG: I look at your film kind of like what Kevin Smith should be, but isn’t.

JDL: Oh man, you gave me such a fat head. Listen to this. I’m a working stiff. I came home from work, saw that, and-

GG: What do you think of Kevin Smith?

JDL: When I first saw Clerks I didn’t think anything of it. It was before I really started paying attention to films at all. I became obsessed with movies….it wasn’t until tenth grade. I started writing around the age of 19. It was an obsession to direct though. I thought that the only way I could do something decent, that I would actually approve of, that was actually good, was if I wrote it myself. I still didn’t even know if I could write.

GG: What was Fish and Chicks shot on?

JDL: Mini-DV.

GG: It has the appearance of a typical video film at first, in my opinion, but then the performances take it over, beyond that. You had really good actors. Were they previously trained, and if not, how did you coach them?

JDL: I think that all of them were. I’d never met these guys. I got them through the Theatre Ontario thing. Including the women. I had a big audition at a university. The only thing I had in common with these guys, and the reason I think we worked so well together, was we all took the same acting class, by this guy named Tony Pierce. I would like to say that I had more of a hand in molding them, but I didn’t really. I’m the type of guy that, when I write it on the page, that is the way it is. I’m gonna have you take after take after take, but I’m never going to tell you if you’re doing good or bad.

GG: You just wait until you get what you want.

JDL: It drives ’em nuts, but it works! It works, all the time. You yell CUT and there’s always one actor who looks at you with a really goofy look on their face, looking for approval with a smile.

GG: Hitchcock said all actors were sheep.

JDL: I went by that long before I made this film. I thought about that. But then I started to think, "maybe I shouldn’t think that way."

GG: Getting back to the hardcore male point of view of the film…what inspired you to write that specific story?

JDL: It wasn’t coming from me. It came from a group of people that I know. Fishing was a big thing for me at the time. I was obsessed with it. Lord knows why. Filmmaker/ fisherman? Forget it. But I did that for a year. The two guys I was hanging out with at the time...the persona that they had, and the way that they treated their ladies-which were mutual friends of my wife-it was pretty close to what you’re seeing in my film. Except I took it a step further and made them completely sick…to the point where people are really going to hate them. And yeah, I did worry about how women would feel about it. I assumed that any woman who is head of a festival, who sees this movie, is going to hate me, and just not pick it. It made sense that any homosexual who saw this film would want to kill me. Definitely hate it. I am not trying to shit on anybody, and I’m not trying to insult anyone with it. I just wrote a story about a group of people. And they just happen to be this way.

GG: Hahahaha! Exactly.

JDL: That’s how they were. But not to the point of murder though. That’s a different thing.

GG: That made me think…if you’re going to take it that far, why not go to the next level? Why torture people if you’re not going to kill them?

JDL: Well, it’s more the fantasy of what they would like to have done.

GG: What’s your next project?

JDL: I am bouncing between two right now. The next one is a ten minute short, probably the only thing I can afford. Because my wife said so.

GG: (laughing)

JDL: I know.

GG: That last statement would contradict everything anyone who saw Fish & Chicks would assume about you.

JDL: I am the complete opposite of what I wrote. The attitude of it though? Being mean? That’s a part of me, sure. That’s there. At the right time. This new film is interesting. I went to Italy last summer. I went to see family, with a cheap Hi8 and I shot a lot of stock footage. I decided to come back and do something with my brother-in-law. It’s a ten minute short called Shotgun. The story revolves around a guy who is sitting in a Cadillac, with a henchman looking over him, making sure he gets to his destination. On the way there, he is reflecting back upon all of his past actions, which got him there, into that car, and where he is going. The overlaying story is that he, as a gangster perhaps, has murdered somebody, and now he has to go see the boss. When you get to the ending, it’s actually something else. He’s being driven to a church because he knocked up some guy’s girl.

GG: Another riff on a similar theme. Women. Playing on the entire war of the sexes, once again.

JDL: Yeah. I love that. It’s very interesting to me.

GG: Everyone falls into that trap. Especially guys. But they never actually try to figure it out. They keep getting duped. You go through years of that, and there you are one day, sitting in a fucking boat, talking about sex and drinking cheap beer.

JDL: Yeah. And the only reason for that is because they never figure it out. The comparisons between behaviors, and whatever.

GG: It takes a lot of courage to even think about it though. A lot of guys prefer not to think about it, because it is something much bigger than them. And it’ll always win.

JDL: Yeah.

GG: What are some of your favorite films?

JDL: The first one that comes to mind is Search and Destroy.

GG: A film?

JDL: Yeah. You’ve never heard of it have you?

GG: I’ve only heard the Stooges song.

JDL: (laughs) I read your thing on True Romance.

GG: Yeah, I love that.

JDL: Search and Destroy was made by a director named David Salle. Christopher Walken, John Turturro, Griffin Dunne, Illeanna Douglas, Dennis Hopper.

GG: Whoa!

JDL: It was made on a shoestring budget. Came and went in a flash. It’s a little fucked up, but really good.

GG: I like that about a lot of so-called independent films, the ones that aren’t necessarily good films, but have these totally endearing qualities.

JDL: Oh yeah. But Christopher Walken completely rules this film. I re-watch a lot of films. I like Martin Scorsese. I like his earlier stuff, like Who’s That Knocking At My Door. I love Mean Streets. But I’ve watched them all to death.

TAPE CUTS

JDL: I heard that you refused to comment on Last House on the Left.

GG: I love that movie, actually. That movie fucked up a lot of people back when it came out. It was really dangerously intense.

JDL: There were elements of humor in it that didn’t need to be there.

GG: I always approach that one in terms of the era in which it was made. You have to ignore those comedy bits, because they are ungodly awful. Not just out of context, but really shitty filmmaking, too. I think you have to respect Last House on the basis of the scenes in which it does really work. The forest scenes when the girls are actually raped and murdered. That kind of power is rarely repeated in any film, and that’s probably a good thing.

JDL: Yeah, that stuff is pretty brutal, actually. That footage itself is a little too much. But I think there are more disturbing ones out there than that one. A lot more.

GG: Sure. But Last House has it’s own unique edge.

JDL: My uncle saw it when it came out, and he said it really fucked him up. In that one, you know, from the very beginning, that something is going to happen. Something really bad.

GG: That feeling of dread, yeah. It weighs on you, and builds up until the middle. I think that in a very minor way, the ear slashing scene in Reservoir Dogs establishes the same energy.

JDL: But not in such a controlled manner.

GG: No. And it’s also a cop, and everyone hates cops.

JDL: I just got the Texas Chainsaw Special Edition. Watching that, I began to wonder if these films are even really horror films. When you look at them, Texas Chainsaw was not much of a horror film. It was more of the way he shot it, psychologically.

GG: Well to me, that is horror. That’s what horror movies should always do. The idea of a "horror film", to me, is so subjective. Most horror movies I’ve seen play like teen comedies with blood. I have never been a fan of Friday the 13^th. Most horror movies that come out today, still, are comedies. To be, a real horror movie, the kind I’m interested in, would be something like Miracle Mile, or Henry. I think Henry is one of the greatest horror movies ever made.

JDL: I can’t stand Henry. I fuckin' hate it. That was even more disturbing than Last House.

GG: Yeah! It’s completely real!

JDL: Yeah. I couldn’t take it. I wanted to break the tape. I thought it was brutal.

GG: But at least it’s not just trying to shock you, and make you sick. All that movie wants to do is be honest about what it’s looking at. I think you have to make a distinction between shock-art and a film like Henry, which is nothing but authentic.

JDL: That one’s showing you the real deal. It made me sick.

GG: Sit through it again.

JDL: Oh no. No. The images still play back in my mind. As a matter of fact, the images came back to me today when I was driving home. And I saw it five years ago. Clockwork Orange didn’t do anything for me. This one though, really made me sick.

GG: I don’t like A Clockwork Orange. I think it’s pretentious bullshit and hugely overrated.

JDL: I think it is too. Henry, though, is something that does not leave you after you see it once. You never have to watch it again.

GG: Fuck no! It’s there, man. You never get rid of that one.

JDL: The closest you ever come are these Italian melodramas from the '40s, where they’re screaming and crying. But even that, they don’t show you what this film shows you.

GG: I think your film is far more honest and real than anything Kevin Smith has done. So, I’m a big fan.

JDL: I tried my best. I didn’t think that was going to be the selling point. But your review really put me on a pedestal, I have to say.

GG: Ehhh. Your film is cool, and you’re creating art. That takes more visceral energy than sitting here doing interviews.

JDL: Hey, you want a laugh?

GG: Sure.

JDL: How much do you think it cost me to make this movie?

GG: How the fuck could I have missed that? Okay. Right. How much did it cost you to make Fish & Chicks?

JDL: Five thousand. It would have cost four, but my dog knocked over my friend’s camera, and it had to be fixed.

GG: (laughs)

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