Angels and demons are currently on the road for the musical tour of Alleluia! The Devil's Carnival. Featuring live performances coupled with a screening of the sequel to 2012's The Devil's Carnival, the tour will continue tonight at the Revue Cinema in Toronto. For the second part of our exclusive interview, director Darren Lynn Bousman and writer/actor Terrance Zdunich further discuss their unique horror comedy experience, including working with David Hasselhoff and much more.
Director Darren Lynn Bousman on the importance of offering a unique night out to attendees:
Darren Lynn Bousman: In the day and age that we live, we need to incentivize people to leave their house and actually journey out into a movie theater. Someone like me, who has a kid now, has to pay for a babysitter, pay for parking, carve out that time to actually go sit in the theater for a movie that most likely will be on Netflix two months later—it’s harder to convince me to leave the house.
So what we try to do is make our shows interactive and immersive—something that you couldn’t get by downloading the content or you couldn’t see on a computer at home. We tried to break that wall and create an experience that you had to be at, that you want to be at. So we added carnival barkers and burlesque dancers and freak shows and question and answers and costume contests—we made it an event. We realized that whether you liked or did not like the actual movie, people wanted to be at the event because it was something fun, crazy, and weird and goes back to that idea of “what the fuck?” You had to be there for the “what the fuck?” factor.
Bousman and Terrance Zdunich on working with David Hasselhoff, who plays the architect of heaven in Alleluia! The Devil's Carnival:
Darren Lynn Bousman: One of the formulas that make Repo! [The Genetic Opera] and The Devil’s Carnival movies work is the complete “what the fuck?” factor. You look at the cast and you’re like, “Are you fucking kidding me, Paris Hilton and Sarah Brightman?” We wanted the same thing on The Devil’s Carnival as we had on Repo! We wanted someone that could actually sing, that was a good actor, but when you saw them on the credit list, you’re like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I also have to respect the person and like the person. Hasselhoff came to mind because he’s done big, big musical theatre and he’d done huge TV. So we talked to the guy and I immediately fell in love with him—he’s awesome. He’s also one of the funniest dudes I’ve ever met.
He showed up on set and he comes out of his car and he’s wearing a mask of himself. He actually had a David Hasselhoff mask on, and he takes the mask off when he walks in and he goes, “The Hoff has arrived!” And he throws the mask down and I’m thinking, This guy’s my hero.
His character’s called The Designer and basically his role in heaven is designing the aesthetic and look. Everything you see in heaven, he designed. When I was talking to David about it, we both talked about glam rock, we started talking about the early David Bowie’s facial features and makeup. So we wanted to go with an extreme David Bowie-esque makeup. And he has four or five different makeups in the movie—each one is more ridiculous and awesome than the one before it. He comes across as being campy and fun and he completely gets it.
Terrance Zdunich: He was very cool. You never know what you’re going to get when you start working with some of these people that are big names. Sometimes they’re more willing to be wild and sometimes they’re not. But I’m happy to say that David came in and was very cool. He just wanted to do a good job. The vernacular we used in the script, like the music, it’s very much modeled on that 1930s slang and even profanity. So there’s a lot of that in the movie that’s authentic and some of it that we just made up that sounds like it’s coming from that era. A lot of characters speak in that vernacular, including The Designer (played by David Hasselhoff), and he was one of the actors who came to me right away and was just like, “Okay, what the fuck does this mean? What does this word mean?” and then got into it. His character’s a lot of fun, very flamboyant, and a bit of a disciplinarian for being well-manicured and tailored. That’s his job: to keep the appearance of the Kingdom in order.
Zdunich on Paul Sorvino's portrayal of God:
Terrance Zdunich: Paul is pretty much a brief cameo in the first film. He’s a major player in this one and he’s got a couple of songs as well as some very big dramatic scenes. He’s a very fun, very grandiose, and sometimes very comical God.
Zdunich on researching and writing the music for Alleluia! The Devil's Carnival:
Terrance Zdunich: I’m more of a process guy in general when it comes to writing. I like to get in there and do lots of drafts and figure things out in a very slow and deliberate way. The co-composer, Saar Hendelman, and I went through music and history, and the reason we settled on that [1930s] era—besides the fact that it’s brassy and cheeky and makes me think of Disneyland, which I suppose [our] Heaven feels a little like the bright magic kingdom that has a dark underbelly—but in the 1930s you not only had the golden age of Hollywood with its portrayal of everything being perfect and glamorous, but at the same time you had the Great Depression, which was just the opposite. People were starving to death.
So we used that concept of class warfare between the elite’s illusion of perfection and then what’s really happening on the ground, in the dirt, to personify Heaven and Hell. You get that bright, brassy sound with Heaven and then with some of the Hell stuff you get that poor, Dust Bowl, American kind of sound for their music. So there was definitely a lot of research needed to figure out, “What are the components that make something sound like that?” And then once you find that, you start to absorb it, distort it, make it modern, and make it something that I would want to listen to, as opposed to just a cerebral exercise.
Bousman on the familiar faces fans can expect to see in the sequel:
Darren Lynn Bousman: Almost everyone is coming back with the exception of a few from scheduling conflicts. It takes place moments after part one and we did some callbacks to part one that fans are going to like in part two. The Ticket-Keeper (Dayton Callie), The Magician (Bill Moseley), [Nivek] Ogre as The Twin, Briana Evigan [Ms. Merrywood], The Fool played by Mighty Mike [Murga], the band leader (J. LaRose)—pretty much everyone returns in this film.
And you also get to see them in the past. You’ll get to see a bit of the origins of the carnival [members], so you get to see how they’ve changed, as well.
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To learn more or purchase tickets for Alleluia! The Devil's Carnival, visit:
To read Part 1 of our interview with Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich, go to:
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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