Ripped!

I doubt the thought ever crossed Buddy Holly's mind that rock & roll music might be considered an art form. Nor to Elvis Presley, who modestly told the secretary at Sun Records that he didn't sound like any other singer. Or the Beatles. The spirit of rock & roll was that it was home brewed, bubbled with energy and the folks dancing got all shook up.

Ripped! is what they used to call a jukebox movie. It started with Bill Haley and the Comets in Rock Around the Clock, has thirty-one Elvis variations, has a Herman's Hermits version, a very trippy Monkees movie and was raised to what might be called an art form by Richard Lester and the Beatles. But I don't think the thought ever crossed their minds. What I see in A Hard Day's Night and Help! are the unscripted and charming personalities of John, Paul, George and Ringo, not to mention their music. The films themselves have all the attributes of the band: spontaneity, an openness to improvisation and a feel for the audience that neither preaches nor panders. You wish you were in the movie yourself. That's the flavor we went for in Ripped!

We cast a "band" of personalities--Quentin McCuiston (Norman), the charmer; Alexander Cook (Reg), the cute one; Andrew Ash (Andy), the goofy one; and John Graham (Colin), the wise one. We even put them all in the same house, like the Monkees or the Beatles in Help!. It ended up being ground zero for a film crew's summer of love, no less indulgent and certainly just as trippy. I don't think anyone wanted it to stop. This cast and crew were not hardened, industry-connected impresarios. We were a mix of modest film/theatre professionals and young energetic newcomers. About as regular folk as it gets with lights, boom ops and jibs. The technology has changed, but Ripped! is still a garage movie. Its real spirit is in the people making and performing it--a groovy collection of fun-loving creative people.

I suppose the best example of it is the "Beam Trip Sequence." It's inspired by Roger Corman's The Trip, the Monkees' Head and Yellow Submarine. The Planet Hormone culture is based on the cult of Isis from the era of Ptolemaic Egypt. The deity was a mother figure who is "...all that is and then shall ever be." We shot 50 scenes for that song. To say it was all in my head would be disingenuous. There was a lot of improvisation from the cast--the props were in a box and everyone simply chose one. The result was like a waking dream where you recede through the ages back to the beginning of time. I guess that could sound suspiciously like an art statement, but believe me; the thought never crossed our minds.

It was a hard month's shoot and we worked like dogs, but in the end, without pretense, we just hope it makes you feel alright...