In 1973, writer/director Robin Hardy teamed with Christopher Lee to create the cult classic "The Wicker Man." His companion piece to that film, "The Wicker Tree," has finally hit theaters 39 years later. In it, young gospel singer Beth and her cowboy love interest Steve leave Texas to preach door-to-door in Scotland. After being rejected, they are welcomed with joy and enthusiasm to Tressock, the border estate of Sir Lachlan Morrison. They assume their hosts simply want to hear more about Jesus. How innocent and wrong they are.
I had the wonderful opportunity to talk with Mr. Hardy in great detail about both "The Wicker Man" and "The Wicker Tree."
Most people would see your filmography and wonder what you've been doing in between projects. You did "The Wicker Man" in 1973, "The Fantasist" in 1986, and "The Wicker Tree" in 2010. I want to give you the opportunity to tell them what you've been doing.
Moviemaking isn't my be-all and end-all. I was trained as an artist in Paris. I've always been involved in drawing and painting. I've written more than five novels. Five have been published. I've done lots of journalism. I've done quite a lot for The New York Times. I've done a great deal of television.
Quite a long period of my life I spent making at least 1,000 commercials. I was one of the most successful commercial directors in the 1960s and 1970s. I won the prize for the best television commercial series in the USA and at the same time I won a prize at the New York international Film Festival for a television film at the beginning of the 1960s. That launched me as a highly successful and very well paid commercial director. I made far more money doing that than I would ever in a lifetime making features. That was a very difficult bandwagon to get off from a financial point of view. I've gone back to it a number of times.
I don't regard making features as a special activity. [It's] certainly no more special that writing an article or a series of articles. It's just one other creative thing I do. I happen to be in a phase at the moment where I want to finish this trilogy, which "The Wicker Tree" is the second film. I'm already working on the third film, "The Wrath of the Gods." I just came back from one of the principal locations. I've been working on that. I've had a pretty full life.
What will "The Wrath of the Gods" be about?
Like the title of the last episode in Wagner's "Ring" cycle, it's based on the Norse sagas and their stories of the Nordic gods. My film concerns an American film company that decides to take over a small country and turn it into a wonderful theme park. It's tongue and cheek, as you can imagine. It's quite dramatic and based on the Norse saga which was actually the religion of all the Scandinavian, German, Dutch, Austrian, and Swiss countries. It was a widely held religion and very close to the Celtic religion of the English, Welsh Irish, and Scotts.
This final film gives the gods themselves some comeuppance. They've had sacrifices made to them in the first two films. In the last film, the gods can expect to get less gentle treatment and they get angry. The last act of Wagner's "Ring" is what we'll use musically in part. Like "The Wicker Tree," it will have all kinds of different music in it. The beginning and the end will have a sort of Wagnerian feel.
For more articles by Eric Shirey, check out:
'The Wicker Tree' as Polarizing as 'The Wicker Man'Christopher Lee Returns for 'The Wicker Tree'
'The Woman in Black' Wins With Old-School Terror
Eric Shirey is the founder and former editor of Rondo Award nominated movie news websites MovieGeekFeed.com and TheSpectralRealm.com. His work has been featured on Yahoo!, DC Comics, StarWars.com, and other entertainment websites. Eric has interviewed and worked with actors like Harrison Ford, Brooke Shields, Gerard Butler, Brendan Fraser, Selena Gomez, and many more.
Check out coverage of the 84th Academy Awards on Yahoo! Movies
1 comment