ROB ZOMBIE: New Studio Album Due In March

MoviesOnline recently conducted an interview with musician/filmmaker Rob Zombie. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Q: Do you find there has been a lot of resistance to your filmmaking career because of your musical background? I mean, sometimes filmmakers look down their noses at people who have been in other fields who suddenly feel that they can make a movie...

Rob Zombie: "Yeah, I know what you're saying. I think that it was the case definitely with the first film ('House of 1000 Corpses'),and maybe even with the second film ['The Devil's Rejects'] until people actually SAW the second film. But the response to 'Devil's Rejects' has been so positive, that vibe has now gone away. People responded to the creative aspects of 'Rejects' so strongly, that any kind of studio executive or even other filmmakers don't feel that I'm just 'dabbling' in their world."

Q: That's good. It IS an outstanding film. I felt that it was a lot more confident. you know what you want to show, how you want to tell your story.

Rob Zombie: "Yeah, I mean you can equate this stuff to anything else. Hopefully you get better each time you do it. You need the experience of doing it. The first film..it is what it is, the the second film improves on that. And I hope to make the third film far superior to the second one."

Q: A lot of studios these days are releasing remakes, like "The Fog" for example. All these PG-13 rated, watered down for the kids, full-of-these-theme-park-scares kind of films.

Rob Zombie: "My opinion on this is influenced by the fact that I never go see these movies. To me, they're the equivalent of old teen thrillers that should be starring Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. That's what these films seem like to me. They're just not that violent or that vicious or that horrible or that intense. They're horror movies for the Hilary Duff generation. They don't want to be offensive, they just want everybody to be good-looking. The scenes are mostly a loud noise where somebody jumps out. That's not scary, that's startling. Somebody said with 'Devil's Rejects', 'It wasn't scary, I didn't jump once.' What's with equating jumping to being scared? So, I don't see those movies. They don't interest me. They're Disney horror."

Q: Off topic now, I read in a previous interview that you were near the tail end of your music career and wanted to focus on movies. Is there any truth to that?

Rob Zombie: "Well, at that point in time with that interview, I had worked on 'Rejects' nonstop for almost a year, so that was all I could see. I'm actually just finishing up an album that should be out around March, and then I'll probably start another movie. For the moment, I'm still flip flopping between the two.

Q: That's good news.

Rob Zombie: "It's difficult to do both, but I continue to try."

Read the entire interview at MoviesOnline.ca.