MTV reports that artist Marilyn Manson, while filming the upcoming Columbia/Ghost House Pictures film RISE, found himself…scared? Appearing as a bartender in the recently wrapped Sebastian (GOTHIKA) Gutierrez-scripted and -directed film, the self-proclaimed “Antichrist Superstar” appears opposite actor Michael (THE SHIELD) Chiklis. Playing a vengeful cop searching for those who killed his daughter, Chiklis pays a visit to Manson’s character, in a bar scene which unnerved the musician.
States Manson, “I hadn’t really known too much about [Chiklis] before [the scene], other than he seemed like a real cop and he’s really aggressive. In the scene, I’m a bartender who sort of sells out the character Lucy Liu is playing to him; he believes she was involved with the murder. And so he starts to rough her up a little bit, and he pulls out a gun and I say, ‘Hold on a minute,’ and then he points the gun at me.”
Manson states of the myriad takes required to get the scene, “I believe it was to traumatize me emotionally. Everyone kept coming up to me on the set and saying, ‘Look! Here’s the gun. It’s not loaded. Don’t worry.’ I said, ‘Listen. I’m not concerned about the gun—that guy [Chiklis] could sever my spine with a soft penis.’ He’s really intimidating and so intense. I was scared straight.”
Manson’s experience on the RISE set has apparently done nothing to dissuade him from his interest in filmmaking, however. In addition to the Asia Argento-directed THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS (due out next March), he reveals that his thespian skills will also be utilized in a film entitled KING SHOT. Appearing alongside Nick Nolte, Manson says, “I’ll be playing a 400-year-old prophet who lives in a hole in the ground and eats skinned ostriches and rapes women and has thorns for teeth that come out of his lips. I’m not exaggerating.” Another project, ABELCAIN, a film Manson had hoped to work on with Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowski, has been suspended. A sequel to Jodorowski’s EL TOPO, the postapocalyptic movie was to star Manson as Cain, “who teams up with his long-lost brother Abel to battle an enemy adept at technological witchery so that they can overcome the curse that marks their destiny—or something like that.”
In addition to Manson’s directorial debut PHANTASMAGORIA, “I’ll be overseeing a three-film project based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe,” reveals the artist, “and I’m going to be involved in it as much as I’d like.” While not expounding on exactly which Poe stories will receive the cinematic treatment, Manson states, “My favorites of all time—and this isn’t saying these will be the ones I choose—include ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head.’ I like ‘The Raven,’ because it’s a poem that has been overlooked as a film, and ‘The Black Cat.’
“I would like to pick three different directors,” Manson continues. Citing Gaspar (IRREVERSIBLE) Noé and Park (OLDBOY) Chan-wook as his “favorites,” the artist wants to make the films “all unique.” He concludes, “I’d like to act in one of the three. Acting in other people’s films is very selfless, and I like to be something people use as a tool. I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m willing to grow beards, for chrissakes.”
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