2022.08.01 - MovieMaker Podcast - Interview with Slash

Excerpts from the MovieMaker website:
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Slash’s Love of Old-School Horror Led Him to Executive Produce and Score The Breach

Early in The Breach, the new horror film from Rodrigo Gudiño, a body turns up on the Porcupine River and a driving, powerful riff kicks in: It’s the sound of the film’s executive producer and composer making his presence known. Before he was Slash, the legendary guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, he was Saul Hudson, a kid who loved horror.

“I’ve been hustling, you know, trying to produce movies, since the last one that I did, which was all the way back in 2013,” Slash says in the latest episode of the MovieMaker podcast.

The Breach stars Emily Alatalo, Natalie Brown, Allan Hawco and Mary Antonini. Based on the book by Nick Cutter and adapted by Ian Weir, the story begins when the mutilated body of a physicist washes up on the shores of the river. Police chief John Hawkins (Hawco) must work with his ex-girlfriend Meg Fulbright (Alatalo) to make sense of the secrets that lie within the walls of the physicist’s eerie home, which is haunted by something sinister.

Gudiño pulled Slash onto the project knowing he was a fan of horror.

“I’m an old-school sort of horror fan,” Slash says. “We’ve been using Lovecraftian kind of references on this, but it definitely has sort of a slow burn, sort of 70s aesthetic, and there was a suspense thing because you really don’t know what the fuck is going on until the last act. It’s the kind of thing where, for me, it’s more cerebral than it is just everything, you know, spilled out onto the screen. He knows my style, so he knew I would dig it.”

In the past, the rock star has scored films including 2013’s Nothing Left to Fear, 2011’s This Is Not a Movie. He also contributed music to Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 crime drama Jackie Brown. Slash worked with composer Aybars Altay to score The Breach.

“We went back and forth taking this particular melody that I had and making it really ominous and heavy for the intro. But then for the other parts throughout the movie that I did, everything just seemed to work on acoustic — very sparse and sort of naked,” he said.

Slash doesn’t let his reputation as a hard rock guitarist pigeonhole him into a certain genre when it comes to film scores.

“Being that I’m a guitar player and sort of recognized for doing sort of loud, boisterous, hard rock stuff, that does not hardly ever apply when I’m writing something for a movie,” he said. “Usually, every script I’ve written sort of pulls me in another direction. That being said, you can have a rock song in a movie, and that’s great. But as far as the actual score is concerned, it can be something that’s super, super light, or it can be a lot of you know, stand-up bass and cello.”

He says when it comes to scoring a movie, the key is to “follow your gut instinct.”

“I can’t be bothered with whatever people’s expectations are. I mean, the variables in that alone would make you crazy, if you start thinking really about what other people’s expectations are going to be,” he said. “You just have to sort of just follow your gut instinct, and then once you’ve established that, you can think, Now, is that going to make sense to anybody else listening, or not? But even then, I don’t really — I just do what I think is going to work and what sounds good to me, and then just go from there. I always have done.”

https://www.moviemaker.com/slash-horror-movie-the-breach-executive-producer-score/

More excerpts:
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Slash Tells Us Why There Will Never Be a Guns N Roses Movie

When will Guns N Roses get the Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman treatment? Slash, the band’s iconic lead guitarist, says the answer is simple: never.

Slash, born Saul Hudson, spoke with MovieMaker recently about the horror film The Breach, which he executive produced and scored. He said Guns N Roses has been approached about a movie, and that he was also approached about telling his own story after he published his 2007 memoir Slash: The Autobiography. But the answer has always been no thanks.

“Yeah. That’s, that’s a that’s a funny one. People come to make the Guns N Roses movie. And then I have people coming to me about doing a movie — I think it was after I wrote my book. It’s just not something that — collectively we’re sort of just not interested. And I can’t imagine trying to find some actors that can portray the band properly. I mean, rock’n’roll movies suffer from being just super, super corny and unrealistic anyway, as a whole. There’s very few really good rock ‘n’ roll movies. So I would hate to sell us out ourselves out with some sort of script that’s supposed to depict our history. I don’t see it happening.”

Same goes for a solo Slash movie? “No, I definitely don’t want to do that,” he says.

In the episode, he tells us about his work on The Breach, directed by his longtime friend Rodrigo Gudiño. The film, which just had its world premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival, follows a small-town chief of police (played by Allan Hawco) who is about to move on when a physicist’s very mutilated body turns up on the Porcupine River. That sends him on a quest, alongside his ex-girlfriend Meg Fulbright (Emily Alatalo,) to search for secrets within a physicist’s home, which is haunted by a sinister presence. Based on the book by Nick Cutter and adapted by Ian Weir, it also stars Natalie Brown and Mary Antonini.

The film has a Lovecraftian vibe, which brings things full circle for Slash: He tells us in the interview that his love of horror began in part with H.P. Lovecraft books, as well as the works of Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. Because he spent his early childhood in England, he also grew up with the Hammer horror films of Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Another early influence was his dad’s recording of Orson Welles’ 1938 radio drama War of the Worlds, which was so realistic that it tricked listeners into believing an alien invasion was underway.

Slash’s love of movies comes across in his music — not only in the majestic, cinematic sweep of his playing in songs like “November Rain” and “Estranged,” but also in Guns N Roses’ longtime association with Hollywood. The group’s breakthrough single, “Welcome to the Jungle,” was the main theme of Clint Eastwood’s final Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool, and the video for “You Could Be Mine,” featured in Terminator 2 and guest starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, helped drive anticipation for the sequel to impossible highs. This summer, Guns N Roses again owns multiplexes, thanks to the wall-to-wall G’N’R soundtrack for Thor: Love and Thunder. Slash explains in the interview how that came to be.

He also talks the future of rock ‘n’ roll — and movies, discussing how the advent of streaming has hurt the music business, and could similarly harm films.

“I’m sort of scared to see where that’s going, you know?” he says. “And then we had the pandemic, which took everybody out of theaters and into their homes. I don’t know if they’re ever going to really properly fix that, you know?”

But he adds: “I never get to be too forlorn about it, and go, ‘Oh, it’s so sad what’s happening,’ because things come and go and change, and things turn around and whatnot. You just sort of have to just ride the wave.”

https://www.moviemaker.com/slash-tells-us-why-there-will-never-be-a-guns-n-roses-movie/