Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  How were the ethereal alien effects achieved?

  Paul Glickman had assured me that he could achieve the alien effects in-camera using only the lights. This meant that we didn’t have to do them in post-production, which I found rather appealing. Paul put a special gel over the lights and increased the light so that Richard would be over-exposed and pick up a strong, bright, almost angelic glow. When Tony Lo Bianco was in the same frame as him, Tony was lit normally and Richard was over-lit, so that he would be over-exposed. The color that was added to the lights gave Richard that yellowish, shimmering, unearthly luminosity. So those effects were all done right there on the set and they worked out pretty well.

  What led you to doing some of the special effects shots at Pinewood Studios in England?

  In those days, it was much less expensive to shoot in England. You could probably shoot there for about, I don’t know, a fifth of what it would cost to shoot in Hollywood. I also liked England. I had enjoyed living over there and being with Bernard Hermann during the scoring of It’s Alive. I had gotten friendly with Benny’s friends and that gave me another good reason to visit London. I thought I could combine the shooting with having a nice trip — along with the added bonus of saving a lot of money. So, I went to Pinewood and worked with some of the same special effects technicians who had worked on several classic movies of the past, going back as far as Alexander Korda’s The Thief of Baghdad. One gentleman there was Les Bowie, a legendary special effects guy from the British cinema. [6] All of these guys were pretty old and they were a delight to work with. It was a lot of fun being with them. I always like to work with experienced old timers who have enjoyed a rich history in the motion picture business. You always end up learning a great deal from them. I had loved working with the great George Folsey, Sr. on Bone, and here I was with all these other great artists at Pinewood, getting the opportunity to watch them work and listening to all their stories. The only problem with Pinewood was that the soundstage was not heated and everybody was working with overcoats on. We were all freezing to death and that wasn’t particularly pleasant, I must say, but everything else was wonderful. The British crew even voted to give me an extra thirty minutes of overtime. In the English cinema, the crew has to vote as to whether or not they will work an extra thirty minutes for you. If one person on the crew doesn’t agree — just one — then you can’t have the overtime. Fortunately, everybody agreed and I got the extra thirty minutes. [Pause] Whatever that meant anyway.

  God Told Me To is augmented with stock footage, is it not?

  Yeah. It features in the flashback sequence where Sylvia Sydney tells the Detective the story about when she was kidnapped as a young woman by the aliens and brought onboard their spaceship to be inseminated. Unfortunately, I had bought some stock footage that turned out to be from a British science fiction television series called Space: 1999. [7] It had starred Martin Landau, but I had never seen nor even heard about the existence of this show. All I knew is that I had found some suitable stock footage of a spaceship and was able to incorporate it into the footage I’d shot at Pinewood. I simply didn’t have the money to go ahead and create new flying spaceships for that sequence. However, I didn’t realize just how many people were going to recognize that damn thing from the TV show. Space: 1999 wasn’t that popular in America, but just about everybody who sees God Told Me To brings up that spaceship’s appearance. Actually, it doesn’t really bother me that much. In fact, it wouldn’t have made much difference whether I’d bought pre-existing stock footage or hired some special effects house to create new shots. Either way, you would not be fully realizing the scene yourself, you’d be farming it out to somebody else. When their work is completed, they hand it over and you then edit those effects shots into your movie. This is exactly what happens on most science fiction films. The director doesn’t actually direct the scenes involving a lot of visual effects. They are mostly done by Industrial Light & Magic, or some other outfit, who literally create the sequence for you. That means that some of the key stuff in the movie is not done — and, occasionally, not even supervised — by the director. As I always say, I like to do everything myself. I wasn’t capable of spending the money to create a flying spaceship scene, so instead I just bought one. If I had paid for George Lucas’s company to devise those effects shots for me, it still wouldn’t bear any closer relationship to my work — and perhaps my ideas — than what we currently have in the picture.

  During the final confrontation, Bernard offers to bear Peter’s child in order to create another god-like hybrid. Do you think that was a fairly radical concept for 1970s horror and science fiction cinema?

  I imagine so. I had not heard of anything remotely like that before in movies. But you must understand that I’m not an avid reader of science fiction novels, so there might have already been a lot of books written which had a similar concept to God Told Me To. I do find it interesting that Robin Wood, amongst other critics, felt that the whole picture had some kind of homosexual theme. In his analysis, Wood felt that the central idea of God Told Me To was concerned with the rise of homosexuality and how it will overtake society. I’m often amused by the different analyses people have of the movies I’ve made, some of which I understand and some of which I have difficulty comprehending myself. In general, the whole idea of the mating between the Detective and the alien came from the fact that Richard Lynch literally had this big crevice in his chest that looked like a vagina. That was it, really. I saw that and said, “Well, here’s something new we can do.” It’s fascinating how certain ideas can emerge out of the making of a film that you might not have considered or planned before you started shooting. We’d already established that the alien was the product of a virgin birth. That tied in directly with the religious concept of a virgin birth, and the fact that the alien’s sexual identity was indeterminable. So, these new additions to the story followed in good logic.

  Speaking with you, I get the strong sense that such serendipitous events as this have played a considerable part in your filmmaking process.

  That’s the mystical quality of making movies, particularly when you don’t have the authority of a studio behind or above you. If you are not required to seek approval for every single event or idea that occurs, you can go out there and watch as your film starts to magically come to life. These fortunate things that happen can sometimes be incorporated into the picture, but only if you have the freedom to do so. You don’t want to be writing a memo or placing a phone call to the studio every time an interesting idea comes to you; or you want to get an extra shot of a car driving along, or a sunset, or a dog barking, whatever it is, and you are required to get permission from somebody. That just makes the whole process tedious and restrictive.

  In the movie, Peter often seems to experience great emotional conflicts between his lifestyle and his faith, would you agree?

  He has conflicts, guilt, shame, but he doesn’t hide his faith. His girlfriend, played by Deborah Raffin, knows that he is a devout Catholic and she asks him in an early scene, “Where is all the pleasure that this faith is supposed to give you?” He is conning her into thinking that he is going to get a divorce from his wife, but he has no intention of getting a divorce because that would be against his faith. Peter is so devoutly wrapped up in his beliefs he feels a powerful attraction to the religious aspects of his life. But, of course, it’s not that exactly. It’s actually the fact that he’s not quite human, that he’s partially alien, which makes him different from everybody else. It isn’t God that he’s close to, that he’s continually drawn to; it’s this alien force. It’s confusing him and he comes to deal with it later on in the picture.

  Yes, the final revelation is that Peter — like Bernard — is an alien hybrid himself.

  Yeah, and that also ties-in with elements of the superhero story. For example, Superman is an alien who was raised by human parents, but he is clearly not of this world. Like Peter, Superman has to deal with the fact that he is very different from
other people. Consider if a being such as Superman actually existed and had grown up from childhood in America possessing super-strength, x-ray vision and the ability to fly and leap tall buildings in a single bound. He would be growing up in a largely Christian society where he would be exposed to the story of Jesus Christ. Superman may then very well come to the conclusion that he himself must be God. I mean, he has all these superior powers that other human beings do not have and that must mean he is the embodiment of God like Jesus Christ. So, it seems pretty logical that Superman might mistake himself for God as he has been following the mythology of Christianity. Now, when I used the word ‘mythology,’ I’m not discounting Christianity as being fictitious. I simply have no idea what the true facts of existence are, or what the true facts of God are, or the true facts of the true religion, if there is such a thing. I tend to think that there is no orthodoxy. Nobody can speak for God. Nobody knows what God wants or what the truth of creation is. Yet some people have an effrontery to put themselves in the position where they will tell you what God wants, and what God demands of you, and what you have to do in order to please God. Every society seems to have this religious aspect to it and some are even dominated by it. Everybody is so worried about what God wants that they make a miserable life for themselves. But in keeping with the mythology, if I may use that word again, that we have of Jesus being born of normal people but having God-like qualities, I thought the Superman analogy was fitting. If anybody who had superpowers grew up in that environment, they would inevitably come to the conclusion that they must be divine. That’s exactly what happens with this alien. Bernard truly believes he is God and makes other people believe that he is God, but he’s not. He’s just an alien. [Pause] If the word “just” can actually be applied to something as unique as an alien.

  After the untimely death of Bernard Herrmann, where did your search for a composer then take you? It’s been reported that Miklós Rózsa was your next choice but that he refused the job by quipping, “God told me not to.”

  It wasn’t Miklós Rózsa who said that; it was actually Sam Arkoff. When I tried to get Sam to distribute the picture he said, “God told me not to do it,” which I thought was cute. [Laughs] I don’t believe I contacted Miklós Rózsa until I made my next film, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, as I thought that was a more appropriate project for him. I would’ve loved to have had Rózsa score God Told Me To, but Bernard Hermann had an agent over in England, who was a very nice lady, and she also represented an English composer named Frank Cordell. She said, “I’m so desperately sorry that we’ve lost Benny, but if you need somebody else to take over you should consider Frank Cordell. He is a wonderful composer and I think he’d love to do your film.” Frank had earned an Academy Award nomination for his score for Cromwell. I had actually heard the music for Cromwell and liked it very much. I thought Frank could do a good job and he did. I remember telling him that I wanted a “Herrmann-esque” score. I also told him about Benny recording the music for It’s Alive in Cripplegate Church. Frank then recorded the music to God Told Me To there also, as the acoustics in that church are simply wonderful.

  How did New World Pictures acquire God Told Me To?

  Actually, I didn’t have very much to do with that. It was Mr. Scherick and Mr. Blatt who were looking for distribution for the movie. Of course, at the time, New World Pictures was Roger Corman’s company, but Roger had absolutely nothing to do with the making of God Told Me To. It was a finished film and he merely bought it for domestic release — and paid quite a lot of money, too. Roger was famous for acquiring movies for next to nothing, but in this case he did pay quite a hefty sum. It was probably one of his highest acquisition payments ever, but then he took God Told Me To and made a miserable job of distributing it. Roger just didn’t understand the movie. We later opened the film in a couple of cities with a very unpleasant ad campaign which basically said, “The leaders of all organized religions have forbidden their constituents to see this movie,” and all that stuff. It was an incredibly negative campaign. I didn’t really understand what Roger expected to get from it. They should have sold God Told Me To as a scary movie and a thriller, but instead they sold it as some kind of picture that was going to offend everybody.

  Where did the film open?

  New World originally opened the picture in Texas for some unknown reason. I mean, why they opened it somewhere in the Bible Belt I do not know. The people down in Texas are more religious than, for example, the people in New York or Chicago, where you might get a more liberal audience. When they opened it in Texas, God Told Me To didn’t do well and Roger immediately called this meeting. I went in to see him, and this was the one and only time I met with Roger on this picture. When I got there, Roger told me that he wanted to change the title of the movie. He said, “God Told Me To is not a good title. We have to come up with a new one.” I said, “Okay, why don’t we call the picture Alien? I mean, this guy is an alien from another planet, so I think that title will work.” Roger said, “No, you can’t call a movie Alien because everybody is going to think it’s about wetbacks sneaking over from Mexico.” I said, “Roger, I think Alien is a great title,” but he wouldn’t listen. We ended up calling it Demon and, of course, just a couple of years later, Ridley Scott’s Alien was released and quickly became one of the most recognizable and seminal titles in the history of horror and science fiction. So, I guess Roger was wrong about that one, wasn’t he? [Chuckles] You know, as far as I was concerned, he was wrong about everything. Roger really messed up the release of the picture, but eventually we did open at the Cinerama Theatre on Broadway at a first-run theater. So, the movie did play theatrically and it did get its shot. Unfortunately, it just didn’t have the right ad campaign or the right TV spot either. The TV spot was certainly not very good. Oddly enough, it was edited by Joe Dante who, at the time, was working for Roger in the trailer department at New World. Joe actually cut the trailer, and, in fact, that’s how I first met him.

  Some believe that God Told Me To is in the public domain. Is it?

  No, it isn’t, but you’re right, a lot of people think it is. There has been a considerable amount of confusion about this, but the copyright has been renewed and we do have a secure copyright on the picture. However, we did have a problem with a chain of drugstores here in the United States that were distributing a low-budget version of the picture on DVD without licensing it. Some company had mistakenly sold them the idea that God Told Me To was a public domain film, and so we had to take legal action against them. The drugstore then ceased distributing the film, but what happened next was they sent me all their copies of the movie. I mean, literally thousands of DVDs arrived at my house! My entire basement is filled with DVDs of God Told Me To which the drugstore chain decided to send to me because they didn’t know what else to do with them. Now, on every occasion I attend a screening or something, I try to give out as many free copies as possible so I can get them out of my house.

  Is it true that Gaspar Noé [8] met with you in 2010 in order to discuss the possibility of his doing a remake?

  Yes, that’s true. Gaspar Noé was in New York and he called me up and asked if he could come see me. We met in a little coffee shop up on the West Side and talked for about an hour and a half. Noé claimed that he was trying to get the money from some company in France. It might have been Wild Bunch. Then, he left, and I’ve never heard from him again. He hadn’t written a script or anything, but based on what he said, I was just going to supply him with the rights to God Told Me To and then he was going to make his own movie. I did see a number of the films that Noé has made. He gave me a few copies of his work to look at and I did watch them.

  What did you think of them?

  I don’t know. Frankly, I thought his movies were a little vulgar and sexually explicit. Apparently, Gaspar Noé has a big following so I should be honored that he wants to remake God Told Me To. I’ve seen blurbs that have been in certain columns announcing that he wanted to do the picture
. But, as I say, I never heard from him again after that one meeting and nothing has ever come of it.

  God Told Me To appears to be one of your most under-appreciated works. Personally, I think it stands as one of the great horror films of the 1970s.

  A lot of people say that God Told Me To is their personal favorite out of all my films. Oliver Stone once approached me and told me that it was one of his favorite movies. In fact, I get more requests from film festivals all over the world for that picture than any other film I’ve made. Recently, we ran it at the Vienna Film Festival, where I ran fifteen of my pictures, and of all the movies that were shown the poorest audience reaction was to God Told Me To. The audience was offended by the picture. In Vienna, people are intensely religious, and I think that film upset their religious sensibilities. Everything else went over great, but that particular movie did not. The response was very mixed, and I felt that I’d offended people by my apparent dismissal of religion and, yeah, okay, maybe so. God Told Me To is very much like Bone in that what you bring to the theater when you come in involves what you take out of the picture when you leave. Your feelings about racism are revealed when you see Bone and your feelings about religion are revealed when you see God Told Me To. You know, our perceptions of art are always colored by our own beliefs and it’s the same with all art, be it movies, novels, paintings, whatever. Let’s say you visit a gallery or a museum to look at some paintings: depending on whom you are, what your upbringing is, and what your faith happens to be, all of those things are going to greatly affect and determine how you respond to the paintings that you see. Some people will see obscenity in those paintings; others will see value and humanity and will view them as great works of art. That’s both fascinating and frustrating at the same time, but then all people are different.