Schmollywood Babylon

The Castle of Venngarn

I grew up outside Sigtuna, in Venngarn – a religious community focused on fighting alcohol and drug addiction. My mother worked there and I spent 5-6 years on the grounds before we finally moved away. Nowadays I can’t go near it. It’s a haunted place for me – of bad memories. But I must admit it also helped me fall in love even more in the macabre, the forbidden.

In a place with mostly people who had deep personal problems the safety and atmosphere never felt safe. You didn’t know who to trust, which by itself is a dangerous starting point for a young mind. I suffer from depression from time to time – and I think this is mostly because of Venngarn. I met too much shit there – including the religion itself.

I remember once (I don’t remember if I’ve mention this before) who me and Caroline, my best friend at the time, were playing in her home – and suddenly a man appeared in the doorway telling us that he would “take us to heaven to meet Jesus”. Scary shit. We ran out, to the house next door, to our mothers. I don’t remember what happen to this man, but if I can remember it correctly I never saw him again.

Living in an environment like this also meant you had to disappear; you had to find places where no adult could find you. The main building in this community was called “the main building” by everyone and was a big white building, maybe 4-5 floors. In the basement there was old cells from when the place was an asylum – so there was still beds there where you could tie up unruly patients. There was also a lovely attic that went all around the this huge building – small spaces, like crawlspaces almost, packed with old furniture, bags, carpets and other stuff that people left there and never cared for again. It was an adventure crawling around there, finding new hidden doors and discovering places our parents never saw. I wish I could go to that place again. Maybe one day.

But the best part with Venngarn was the castle. The first version of the castle was built in the 15^th century, but then of course – through renovations and added floors – it looks like it does in the photo down below. It was open daily and me and my friends used this place as a playground. My mother also worked there from time to time and yeah, I felt it was MY castle somehow. There was rumors about a hidden entrance, a tunnel leading from the castle to somewhere nearby – an escape route from times when life wasn’t as easy as today. Behind the castle was a labyrinth and a magnificent allée – which just added to the magical atmosphere. Somewhere around there was also an area with gigantic plants (we call them Munkkåpor in Sweden, but I can’t find any name for it in English), high enough to also become an amazing labyrinth for us.

The castle itself was mysterious. Except the constant rumors of the hidden tunnel, there was a blood on the floor – that couldn’t be removed. It’s still there. Something that added even more is the fake windows – originally they was created because it was too expensive to build windows, but for a childs imagination they of course hide something. Maybe a dead body? A skeleton. Or a mysterious room.

Just in Dario Argento’s Deep Red. I think Venngarn’s Castle affected me more than I ever imagined. It just satisfied by lust for gothic environments, mysteries, antiques, the past. Just the stories of a murder taking room there, and the blood on the floor, made me happy – not because of the murder itself of course, but the concept and the mystery around it.

I just wish the rest of my time there could have been more memorable.

 

Beyond the door, in that childhood kitchen of the past...

Being raised in a family of substance abuse isn't the easiest thing. But the thing is that this is stuff that comes to you much later in life. What happens in childhood stays in childhood. It's when you're on your way to adulthood that the gates are open and the flood of memories come. 

During two years I went to a therapist, for several reasons - growing up in an alcholic family was the least of them. This therapist believed in some of several psychodynamic theories - not the famous Freudian, but I can't remember the exact one. But much of our talk revolved around the past, childhood, and the years up to what was "now". But I won't bore you with that.

One of my strongest memories ever - even stronger than the black & white horror movies I've mention before in my ramblings to search for the cause of my interesting in horror, the trashy, the macabre, the dark - was the nights when my parents was drinking.

They probably did that a lot, but the thing I remember the most is how I yelled after my mother. I wanted to say good night. She opened the door and gave me a good night kiss, stinking of wine. Red wine. Then she left the room and I'd listen to the party going on a few meters away. 

It's something about what was beyond that door. The noises. The smells. The voices. Sometimes it went quite, sometimes I could hear them start the kitchen fan to smoke. Like a secret, adult world. Not a good world by any means, but enough to keep me my interest. What lies beyond that door but a forbidden world...

Whenever I watch Italian genre movies, giallos, I feel like I'm directly inside those parties, smelling the wine, inhaling the smoke. Hearing the muffled music like it was right outside the door. And I like it. 

I didn't drink red wine until I was 25 years old. I couldn't stand the smell. My parents are well-behaved, sober and nice now - so don't worry.

But you know, that's life. No one is perfect. I'm not the one to judge.

The Heart of a Movie

From the beginning horror was, for me, based on expectations. My mother, who’s always been terrible afraid of genre cinema, told me early one about her watching The Exorcist in the cinema – and she hated it, it was the most frightening she’s ever seen. She felt the same thing about The Shining – and she still today have problems watching both Max Von Sydow and Jack Nicholson in other movies.

Somewhere along the way I took the time to watch these films and kinda… well, I didn’t like them. It was like my mom hyped them so much they didn’t work anymore. Nowadays I like The Exorcist, it’s a fine horror-drama, and my dislike for The Shining has diminished over the year. Still doesn’t think it’s the best horror movie ever made. I appreciated it more after watching Room 237 a couple of months ago, because it made me understand that it at least triggered something in the audience, a wish to see something more interesting beyond “Heeeeere's Johnny”.

While I can appreciate the classic horror movies I somehow feels more drawn to the exploitation part of the industry, movies with beauty marks – who’s not so damn perfect. But I think I’ve discussed that before. It’s not that interesting, really. It’s just a matter of taste. I personally think deep down that my taste in the trashier aspects of the movie biz is connected to my family. We’re far from a perfect family; it’s been quite rough to be honest. We’ve never been on the top, never. We’ve always been slumming around way below the typical bourgeois, close to the working class – not but all the way there. We’ve always had our dreams.

My father was a musician for many years, together with his job at a newspaper. He’s buddy with some of the finer rockers and blues artists in Sweden, played with Eric Clapton in the sixties and have the most versatile taste in music I’ve ever encountered. My mother is an ex-alcoholic who’s always been dreaming about being on stage, something she’s been doing ever since I was born and even before, but very low-key - far from the brightest limelight.

I think they’re happy, which is what matters in the end. But I also think their choices have affected me. I love to write, to act, make contacts, talk in front of audiences… I’ve done most things you can imagine, but never dared to step out and do it fulltime. It’s just not for me. I don’t aim after perfection, just like the movies I watch. I just don’t wanna be bored.

Movies that bores me, that doesn’t surprise me, is something I can’t watch. When it comes to Friday the 13^th and other slashers it’s more about something safe, something you can rely one. And I need that in my life. But them being low-budget, and every other movie who never reached the heights of being a Hollywood blockbuster, attracts me. The beauty marks make me happy. They makes me understand that we’re just humans, these movies are made of humans and not machines.

That’s the heart of a movie; when you can see the fingerprint of the filmmakers.

I've entered level insanity in the holy religion of geekdom...

...by finally owning a piece of the main cabin used in the original Friday the 13th from 1980! Yeah I know, it's just another pointless thing to place on some shelf to collect dust... but this IS the closest I'll ever get to be near that damn camp and the franchise itself!

That's all!

I was quite a conservative little bitch as a child

I was quite a conservative little bitch as a child. Very precocious. Yeah, believe it or not! Slowly this wall of stupidity got lost and I become more or less the opposite when it comes to entertainment. Everything goes, as long no one gets hurt. I guess some of this behavior comes from my slightly Christian upbringing. My mom had some problems with drinking and somehow she found Jesus and dragged me along to meetings and shit like that.

She’s always been something of an overprotecting mother, which can be good and it can be bad. I think in this case it was mostly good, because we lived a chaotic life and well, life wasn’t nice to any of us. When she found Jesus I pretended to find him to (I was maybe 7 years old here…) just to make my mother feel better, but I’m a born skeptic and probably have too much of my father’s politics in me (very left-wing) to accept religion or every other kind of mumbo jumbo.

What this meant for me was a sudden overprotection from dangerous TV, music and everything else that makes life worth living. I have a very vivid memory from my early teens and I spent a weekend at a Christian camp, you know – reading bible, praying, games and fun – everything the church could do to try to keep the teens in their spider web. I was reading in my room, Whitley Strieber’s Wolfen. My fascination for horror literature was booming and I’ve already ready every novel by Stephen King I could find. Of course Wolfen (or “Varulvarna”, the Swedish title) teased me with its nice cover and intriguing concept. When I was laying there on the bed one of the pastors came in, a tall man – very manipulative personality – and he asked me “Do you think that’s a good read?”. I answered “Yes, it’s about werewolves”. End of discussion.

Later in the evening there was a prayer circle (yeah, all this seems so SILLY afterwards – like a sect, which it almost was) and suddenly this pastor got a vision, a message from GOD! “Someone” was reading dangerous, unhealthy literature at the camp and god recommended this “someone” to quit that. Facepalm. Really. I remember how I at that moment decided to never, NEVER, let me be controlled by religious hypocrites again.

It didn’t take long until I left the church – and soon after my mother and her husband did the same. I have a very healthy relationship with mom and I’m a stout atheist, so don’t worry about being a loon or something. But it’s a part of my youth I’m not proud or happy of. And it nearly destroyed me. Somehow these tales of morality affected me. I remember how Neil, a British friend I had in Sigtuna, had a lot of really awesome horror movies – one of them was Bert I. Gordon’s Empire of Ants. Maybe I was like… 8 or 9 years old and even if I thought was really damn awesome, I asked Neil to turn it off. I shouldn’t watch this kind of movies. I also remember how I discovered some friends who brought with them a horror movie to school and was watching it in one of the classrooms… and I told the teacher! Terrible, awful. STUPID little kid.  

I think I just was jealous,  because I couldn’t watch the same stuff at home. So silly. You can understand now why I never liked my childhood?

In the end my personal freedom, my choices regarding culture, has always been so much more important than what anyone else says. I would never let a fairy tale god decide what movies I should watch, and especially if that fairy tale god “uses” someone else, a common human, to decide for me.

Like my friend Joachim always says: We must be grateful for Christianity, because without them there wouldn’t all those dark, brooding, Satanic horror films of the 70’s exist. I can give them that, thanks for scaring the shit out of me and every other generation who can discover the truth about Rosemary’s baby, who the sentinel is, what Father Karras did that faithful evening, the career of young Damien and that it’s dangerous for devil worshippers to go out in the rain. 

But that's the only thing I'll give them. Except a "FUCK YOU". 

The problem with Movie Geeks and Homophobia

To be a movie geek is simple. It can be simple, at least. You just have to put your hands up over your eyes and stay neutral. Neutrality is the thing that keeps geekness weak, easy to make fun off. A sad state of human behaviour. Movie geeks aren't alone in this of course, but it's extra simple to say "It's just movies, it's just entertainment. I don't want to have anything to do with my favourite stars personal opinions".

Well, buddy. Let me tell you a secret. Every time you write a supportive review of a Chuck Norris movie, every time you Tweet how cool Steven Seagal is when he breaks arms... every time you hail Takashi Kitano as a fantastic actor and director, every time you do that you support their fascist, homophobic ideas. 

Because I guess you know that Chuck Norris actually thinks that Obama supports gays and lesbians and in the American boy scouts is a conspiracy against Americans? (link)

I guess you know how Steven Seagal gets money from super-homophobe Putin to sell guns - and thereby also support the new anti-gay laws in Russia? (link, link - but there's so much to read about it, Harvey Fierstein have put everything in small, easy to read text here)

Is there any questions about Kitano claiming that gay marriage leads to incest and people getting married to animals? (link - and yes, Kitano have tried to excuse his behaviour with saying it's "all a joke", but really... I don't believe a word of that)

In all these cases people who I've counted as (internet) friends have stepped up and told me that I MUST keep the personal opinions of these actors from what they're doing on the screen. I've been petted on the head, like someone who have no idea what I'm talking about, many, many times.

So how do you support their homophobia, their fight against human rights? Well, you're giving them money. Which might be their only reason for working nowadays anyway. You also normalize their personas by being non-critical to what they use their fame for.

Yes, their fame. Their... fame among movie geeks. About fancy critics. There's not reason for these people to stay quite when they have fame to spread their opinions. I'm sure many of my favourite actors and filmmakers have ideas and opinions I hate. But they keep them to themselves.

They don't use their fame to attack minorities, to spread hate and stupidity. They keep their idiotic ideas to themselves, because deep inside they understand that pink money is also money. I can respect that, as long as I never will hear them call gays paedophiles, or support insane Russian dictators or claim that the "homosexual agenda" is used by the government to control the society.

The sad thing is when I write about this, when I bring up the subject of what kind of moral movie geeks have... the only ones protesting is the heterosexuals. Because they have no idea what I'm talking about... and they don't have to care.

They're not in danger. They're safe.

Of course these are - in my network - quite few. I have a tendency to stop having contact with them. I don't need them as friends. Because they don't understand and will never learn, which sounds harsh. But living as an open man since my late teens has made me very aware of how people react and develope. And when it comes to stop adoring their own homophobic action star it seems impossible to make them understand. 

Let me tell you this: if Ian McKellen (bad example, I know - but I don't know any openly gay action star) contacted media to tell everyone that straight people are going to hell, are paedophiles or just being disgusting human beings - I, for one, would support those being attacked - the straights - from these moronic opinions. I would stop buying his movies, I wouldn't give him media attention, he would be a persona non grata in my geek life.

I wish more straight movie geeks could do that to their gay friends. Chuck Norris is not a god. Takeshi Kitano is just a human. Steven Seagal is just a dude with money problems. There's not reason to worship them.

Worship those who do good instead. Those who care. Those who understands that love and respect comes first.

Fred Anderson

Out of Body (Fred Anderson, 2005)

Do you want to feel dirty? Do you want to wash away that fresh summer feeling? Then watch my short film Out of Body, which I know realize is both inspired by William Lustig's Maniac - and probably inspired the Maniac remake ;)

Out of Body (2005) from Anderson & Widegren on Vimeo.

Could this have scared me so much as an infant that it made me what I am today?

The headline says it all. 

My mother sent me this photo a couple of weeks ago. I uploaded it to Facebook today to tell my friends about my fathers grandma, pictured on the photo holding a mini-version of me.

After a few looks I discovered something terrible...add the music from the Psycho shower scene to this photoplay:

THE EYES! THE EYES! AND IT REACHES OUT TO ME AND MY INNOCENT HARDLY DEVELOPED BABY-BRAIN!

Scary. Over and out.

/Fred

1999: The Blur Witch Project and us!

I remember it so well even today. Me, Leo and Micke sat in Micke's basement in his parents house, this was the fall of 1999. Micke had a tape, a bootleg tape of the biggest success in the United States that year. This was more or less before everyone had internet 24/7 so we hadn't heard that much about it.

But Micke claimed it was real. It was the real deal. 

The Blair Witch Project. I was skeptical, of course. Why distribute real footage like a horror movie? Wouldn't the relatives of the victims be against this? I can't even imagine size of the lawsuits. Anyway, we started to watch it. 

And remember, this was on bootleg tape. VHS (for the crappiest quality ever!) and Satan knows what roads that version took before it landed in Micke's lap. That was the scariest shit I ever seen. Really. I'm not ashamed of it. No Sir, but it was fake. Of course. It became even scarier because you couldn't hardly see what was going on, it's late at night, it rained (could be my imagination there): very typical Swedish weather during the fall.

We called it The Blur Witch Project after that, because it was so damn blurry.

That tape spread among us and a couple of months later we decided to make the first parody of The Blair Witch Project EVER. We called it The Ninja Spirit Project and it's about a couple of ninjas getting lost in the forest.

Maybe a year later the New York branch of Entertainment Weekly emailed me (Yeah, I had that!) and asked if they could buy a copy of our parody because they where doing a special about Blair Witch spoofs.

They payed a healthy sum for a tape, DHL came for it and since then it's been quite. I still wonder how they reacted after seeing that tape featuring a couple of very miserable ninjas improvising in fake Japanese for 40 minutes.

Poor them, poor them....

Surviving by daydreaming...

This day gets closer to a dark day for me. I need to stop reading about all the bad stuff in the world, try not to take everything personal. It’s one of those moments when I lean back, close my eyes and dream myself away to a world I really never experienced. But it’s a daydream, so everything is possible.

It’s the 70’s, I’m at the French Riviera somewhere, maybe at a private mansion. I have nice sideburns, groovy glasses, polo shirt together with my stylish suit. It’s a great evening. Beside me is Paul Naschy. He’s a bit drunk, but very friendly. He’s deep into an anecdote of how he once visited a real satanic ritual. More people gather around him as he tells the story with the same passion as usual.

Piano music. Jesus Franco sits down by the piano. He puts the drink on the instrument and lights a cigarette. Starts playing, tunes from the past. Something from Venus in Furs. He’s lost in then notes, and only watches Lina as she stands by him. They exchange secret, horny smiles. Still in love. I light a joint. Walks over to the next room. Jean Rollin is there. He was a bit late, had some troubles at the airport, but now he’s here and he shows us his latest book. Poems.

“Read something!”, I tell him. And he does. In French. I understand nothing, but that’s okay. It’s so awesome. It’s beautiful ‘cause it comes from the mind and mouth of one of the finest artists of France. I’m inhaling the smoke, feeling dizzy, but in that nice way. It’s not uncomfortable.

Fuck yeah. Jack Taylor is in the building! Always a pleasure. His boyfriend is with him, another nice guy. “Is Howard here?” he asks. “Sure, in the garden somewhere…”. He sips on the red wine and heads out in the darkness. The laughter from the group surrounding Naschy gets louder. I need to hear what story he’s telling them now.

It’s a nice evening. Nice being with friends and talented people. I better sign that contract now. Next week we start shooting. I never want to go back to Sweden again. Night is falling. It will be late. I’m looking forward to see the sun rise later on.