Grotesque filmmaker Rob Zombie and black-hearted Batman-villain impersonator Dick Cheney don’t have much in common. One delights in overseeing acts of cruelty and murder inflicted upon innocents; the other only does that in movies. But they’ve both recently made me chuckle and roll my eyes at them when comments they made years ago resurfaced and contradicted their current practices.
We previously talked about Cheney’s 1994 comments, where he said invading Baghdad during the Gulf War would have resulted in a “quagmire,” and that taking Saddam out of power wasn’t worth risking American soldiers’ lives. Plenty of people agree with that and wish he’d maintained that position, obviously.
And now check out what Rob Zombie — director of the recent hit “Halloween” — had to say in 2002 about the trend of remaking old horror films:
I feel it’s the worst thing any filmmaker can do. I actually got a call from my agent and they asked me if I wanted to be involved with the remake of [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre]. I said no [swear word] way! Those movies are perfect — you’re only going to make yourself look like an [swear word] by remaking them. Go remake something that’s a piece of [swear word] and make it good. Like with my movie [“House of 1000 Corpses”] I have elements of “Chainsaw” in it because I love that movie so much, but I wouldn’t dare want to “remake” it. It’s like a band trying to be another band. You can sound like The Beatles, but you can’t be The Beatles.
[Source; see the original interview here.]
What changed between then and now? Well, either he believes 1978’s “Halloween” was a piece of [swear word] that needed improving (doubtful), or else someone backed a big dump truck full of money up to his house (probable).
All of this got me thinking: Have I ever publicly said something that now, years later, my actions would seem to contradict? And lo and behold, I found this in an old school newspaper article:
I think it would be wrong to mock someone for behaving contrary to what he said years earlier, no matter how much you don’t like that person, or think he’s a bad leader or a bad filmmaker. Can’t a person change his mind? I think we should play fair, and that we should also have respect for vice presidents, regardless of who they are.
Needless to say, I am really, really embarrassed now.
