KELLI MARONEY RETROCRUSH INTERVIEWS THE STAR OF
NIGHT OF THE COMET AND CHOPPING MALL
Were you in the drama club or a cheerleader in high school?
Nope,
we didn’t have a drama club and I thought cheerleaders were stupid. I
was younger than everyone else in the first place. I was basically
trying to get out of there so that I could do what I wanted to do. My
father died and I felt all grown up so I kind of went on with my
life. I wouldn’t say I belong to any group. I wasn’t a stoner. I
wasn’t a cheerleader. We didn’t have a drama club. I got super good
grades and I slept.
Did you have any reservations about The Night of the Comet
script?
The script itself reads funnier than
it played because when you’re actually playing it you realize the
gravity of the situation. When you’re reading it…it’s hilarious. A
couple of scenes were laugh out loud. We always stayed focused that
this was a real situation. As a matter of fact if something got too
funny one of our producers Andy Lane would come up and say, "Okay,
that was funny you guys. Now shoot a serious one too." He’d
say it to the director not to the actors.
Night of the Comet is a difficult genre because you were
shooting sci-fi which is serious, but yet there’s a comedic aspect
too.
Thom told me that he wrote it in
about two hours. He was being encouraged in that he needed to work of
course as we all do. The last thing these people did was
Valleygirl. He had just done Sole Survivor which was a
very serious movie. Then he had some documentaries in his background.
He thought of the dumbest thing he could.
He talked to his daughters’ friends.
He said, "What would you do if it was the end of the world and you
are the only ones left?" They said, "We’d go and get guns and it
would be cool because everything would be free." He wrote down every
dumb thing they said. He went home and wrote a thing in two hours
called, "Teenage Comet Zombies" and it changed very little.
Perhaps that’s what makes it entertaining.
That’s a real strong part of Thom’s
personality is to see the irony in people that they don’t see in
themselves. He thought, "These kids are clueless." My character
really presents that side of Thom.
The scene where your stepmom slaps you in the movie is crazy.
I did that stunt myself. The roll
over the couch.
The guys you encounter at the mall are effeminate or gayish. Was
your fight with them territorial?
Well, they were stock boys and had
always been treated subhuman and then all of a sudden this is their
store. They were turning zombies. They were just doing it slowly.
That’s a pretty intense scene. Was that at night?
Everything was at night. We were
permanently screwed up. Sometimes we’d turn around and work first
thing in the morning. Like all that stuff we shot downtown that had
to be over the weekend when there was nobody there.
Was the cops sequence challenging to film?
No, not at all, those aren’t my
legs. Andy Lane had a girlfriend and they put her hands and legs in
after we wrapped. Those might have been my legs. I can’t remember. A
lot of times they’ll be showing my hands and those are her hands.
They’d already wrapped me, but they needed the hands.
There was some improvisation to the movie.
A lot of it was. I think as a whole
ensemble with cast and crew and everything we really didn’t know how
it was going to play either. I think there’s that element of it and
that’s why it endured because it’s about the people not the special
effects.
The movie has funny one liners and mis-interpretations such as
when Kathy is talking about cancer.
He goes, "You have cancer?" and
Kathy goes, "No, I am a Cancer." That may come from Thom trying to
communicate with his daughter who was a little girl at the time. She
wasn’t even a teenager yet. Also, what I didn’t notice right off the
bat is she’s playing him the whole time. She’s stalling for time. A
lot of that is intentional. Kathy and I never discussed how we were
playing anything. We had great chemistry together.
Many people watched it on cable and developed a big crush on you.
Like Wayne Crawford said, "We have
something for everybody in this movie." It was Thom’s second film
that wasn’t a documentary. It was low budget. We made the whole thing
for $500,000 dollars.
What an incredible job to do
that.
You’d never know it. Every penny of
it is on the screen. He did a nice job.
You should be proud of yourself for Night of the Comet.
I am. To this day people know me as
the cheerleader with the Uzi or the little girl with the big gun.
Actually, it’s not an Uzi. It’s a Mach 10. They misfire so often that
we added that line because it was driving us nuts. I think Thom came
up to us and said, "We’re going to have a scene where you’re blowing
stuff up." Just say, "This is the problem with these things. Daddy
would have gotten us Uzis."
My friend Steve noticed right away that the gun jammed.
It jammed a million times. We blew
so many takes with the gun jamming we thought we’d lose our mind.
Do you still have the cheerleader outfit?
I still have the cheerleader outfit
and the shoes and yes they still fit. Every single time I date
somebody that will come up eventually. No pun intended. They’re
always embarrassed to ask me as well they should be. I say I still
have my cheerleader outfit and they go, "Can I see it?" It’s hanging
in my closet. It’s in the back. We had two because we were running
around getting dirty and stuff. Thom’s daughter took the other one.
She used to wear it every year for Halloween.
You could sell it on Ebay as an original prop from a movie.
Well, it would never fit anybody
else.
Did you play Tempest on Night of the Comet?
To this day I don’t know how to play
videogames. Kathy didn’t either.
It was somebody else playing it?
She faked it. They got her reactions
because they wanted it to look like she was having sex.
Was there anything in the movie that was challenging to film?
We
had a hard time when we were chained up. That started to get real
claustrophobic.
Was that you in the trunk of the car?
That’s me. It has to be me. They
showed me in a close-up looking dead and then me opening my eyes.
That was nice and we’re excited to see you didn’t die.
Mary Woronov’s
character is kind of a good person.
It deepened her character. She’s the
nicest, kindest person in real life. It’s great working with her
because she’s a person where you look in her eyes and she’s an ocean
of compassion.
She’s been in a lot of movies: Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul.
She and Robert Beltran did Eating
Raoul together way before they ended up in Comet. Then she
ended up in Chopping Mall.
Do you think that ditzy, hot teen or have fun shopping valleygirl
still exists in the world?
No, I don’t know. With everything
that is going on in the world as a people we’re not as feisty as we
used to be. It’s so overwhelming I think a lot of people give up and
not think about it which is a bummer.
If a comet did come through killing everyone which other person
would you want to survive?
I can’t pick my dog huh?
Sure, you can. What type of dog is she?
She’s half Rottweiler and half Black
Labrador.
What’s your dog’s name?
Sasha Louise Simon
It’s all about the dog.
I suppose if I were married I’d say
my husband. I’m divorced so fuck em.
I read that they used the lone Mercedes imagery that was in
Comet in 28 Days Later.
When something hits it sort of
becomes iconoclastic. People use stuff without realizing that they’re
using it. That’s when you know you’ve really touched a nerve. They
hold us responsible in Fast Times for inventing the world,
"TOTALLY"
I still use that.
I TOTALLY use it. I don’t think we
invented it. I think that was around a long time before. I don’t know
this, but could that be the first time anyone said it throughout a
movie? When we did the Vanity Fair thing the blurb was, "We invented
the word TOTALLY." I don’t think we did. We definitely brought the
word "DUDE" into serious play.
Fast Times influenced all teenagers when it came out. It
was all about surfing, lightening the hair, and Vans.
I think when Cameron did Fast
Times he went undercover I’m sure it was the 1970’s. The movie
came out in 1982. That was one movie where I had never heard a
California accent before. So, I got out here and it was the same
thing in Comet. We were watching the real high school girls.
Everyone said, "Don’t try to look like these girls because they’re so
made up." They look like they’re 35. We can’t do it. I was listening
to them talk and I couldn’t believe it. So, when I had my speech I
just talked like them. The real cheerleaders were watching me and
they were furious. They said, "We do not talk like that. I’m so sure
we talk like that."
You had a good time on the set of
Fast Times at Ridgemont High?
We had a great time. I had the sense
that this was going to be something special. It was also my first
time to California and my first time on a famous movie lot. It could
just as easily have been all that excitement. I certainly didn’t
expect to be talking about it 25 years later.
Did you hang out with many of the people from the set of Fast
Times?
We were together forever and ever
because it took a long time to shoot it seemed to me. Yeah, I would
have to say that we did. Um, Sean had this thing. I got to know Sean
a little bit because he would have to come in early in the morning to
get his surfer hair on. He didn’t walk around like that the whole
time. I would have to come in early because I couldn’t drive so the
teamsters had to pick me up in the morning. He would be aloof from
the rest of us. He had, "Spicoli" on his trailer door. He wouldn’t
answer you unless you called him "Spicoli".
He stayed in character.
Yeah, and everyone else was like,
"What is wrong with that freak?" The hair and makeup lady said, "He’s
a sweet guy. He’s working on his part." I could respect that. He’d be
putting his hair on and they’d be getting me ready. We wouldn’t talk
too much, but in a way we formed a weird bond that way.
What about Chopping Mall?
What
about it?
I was listening to the director
Jim
Wynorski's commentary and he stated the catering wasn’t too good.
Nope, Possum Patties and Weasel
Strips. We had this one dessert this time. You know how when they
give you a pill when you’re in the hospital, a mini dentist cup. One
time they had that for dessert and there was whip cream in it. I
thought, "Maybe there’s a little cookie in it." So I ate it and
that’s all it was, a cup of whip cream. They were called Cajun Joes
or something like that. You couldn’t tell what it was half of the
time.
It’s like when people eat deep fried squirrel.
We could have eaten it. We just
don’t know. Barbara Crampton and I sat there and did a commentary too
and Wynorski cut us out of it he decided to hog the whole show I
guess. He had Barbara and me down there and we commented through the
whole movie.
Were you all together or was it a separate commentary?
No, we were all together. I was
there. He didn’t use it. He might have done two. Who knows? He might
have said, "These people are going to listen to the girls and not me
so let’s do another one."
They were talking about the scene in the pet store and how he
didn’t like the scorpions.
What happened was he has this thing
where he won’t ever ask an actor to do anything he wouldn’t do
himself. So when it came to the scorpions the bug wranglers dropped
it on his crotch. He was like, "Okay, we don’t use the scorpion."
It sounded like even after all these years it scared him.
I think it bothered him more than it
did me. I trusted the bug wranglers. The secret to getting around me
in any situation is if you can make me laugh. He said, "This is
Dolores and she’s been in the business for over 20 years. She’s
worked with all the greats." I thought of it as Dolores on me.
There were snakes too?
There were snakes on my legs. I
wasn’t scared of the snakes though. I already had a Boa Constrictor
on me in the film I did called Zero Boys. It’s not in the
movie, but it was freezing outside and that Boa Constrictor was warm.
So, I lost my fear of snakes. That’s not to say that if a snake came
popping out at me if I was hiking I wouldn’t be scared to death
because I would. If someone comes up to me and they’re a bug or snake
handler I maybe foolish, but I trust them to know what they’re doing.
The bugs and the snakes are their living. They’re not going to let
anything happen to them. That was an easy thing for them because if I
moved a muscle the robot would hear me.
Those robots were constructed pretty well.
Robert Short made them. He’s a
genius. He did Daryl Hannah’s tail in Splash. You’ll notice
that at the beginning of the movie there’s an aerial shot of the
Beverly Center and then a cut to the Galleria. The reason for that is
we were going to use the Beverly Center, but when they got the robots
and they were all designed. They got them into the Beverly Center and
the robots wouldn’t fit on the escalator. So, how scary would that
be? Where’s the robot? I left him cooling his heels on the second
floor. It was a serious problem for about 5 minutes. One thing I
learned about working for Roger and Julie Corman and Jim Wynorski is
if there’s a problem no matter how dire if you blink once or twice
they’ll have figured a solution.
It sounded like you filmed quickly and it was a tight budget.
We were fast. The ideal thing is get
it right the first take, shoot one for safety, and move on.
They were saying they don’t make movies like that anymore because
a lot of it goes directly to DVD.
Night of the Comment and
Terminator came out at the same time. Siskel and Ebert said they
enjoyed Night of the Comet more than The Terminator.
Was it hard to get into character when they said, "The Robots are
after you. Run!"
The hard thing about running in a
movie, now that I tell you this I’ll ruin it for you. Watch the actor
because you have to look like you’re running for your life and yet if
a camera is on a dolly which means its coming on a track. The camera
cannot move as fast as you can. You gotta make it look like you’re
running for your life and you’re not covering too much ground. That’s
the toughest thing. Fortunately, for me I had already learned that on
The Zero Boys because I was driving the cameramen nuts. They’d
say, "Run for your life" and I’d run for my life. They’d say,
"Unfortunately, it’s not on film so nobody will ever see it." You do
not frustrate a cameraman on a low budget movie. You don’t do it.
You want to keep friends.
If you want to keep your life.
That’s the great thing about doing low budget movies. Everyone’s
passion is out there. We don’t have time for anything. Nothing needs
to wait. Everyone is sort of pissed off that they have to do it or
they’re pissed off that they’re not making any money on it. That’s
why it was such a bad thing with the catering. You’ll hear the
catering come up on Chopping Mall all the time. One of the
first rules of producing a film is that crew is well fed. If they’re
not all hell breaks loose. The crew one time let the air out of
Wynorski’s tires. That’s how much they loved him.
It sounded like the woman in charge of the mall caused problems.
You can’t imagine what we did to
this mall. You see it on film, but what you didn’t see is that
afterwards in about a half an hour we had to have everything back the
way it was. How that crew did it I will never know. We’re in there
destroying the place all night long. In an hour to a half an hour
sometimes it will all have to be the same. What a surreal thing. To
go to the mall afterwards and see it normal. It’s the same mall that
we used in Fast Times.
I like the numbers on the robots in reference to The Man from
Uncle.
It was #1,2 and 3. The one on the
third floor was Clint Eastwood. The one on the first floor was Joe
Friday. The one on the second floor was a ditz. The one on the second
floor cannot get anything together. The one on the third floor is the
one I finally blow up. There’s actually one left.
A sneaky one that got away.
No, I mean in real life. We only
have one left.
They were saying they have no idea where it went.
Rule #1, the rule of Jim Wynorski
club: Don’t believe anything Jim Wynorski tells you. He knows where
it is. He won’t tell me where it is either. That whole thing ran ad
nauseam all spring, summer, and fall of last year. It probably still
is on for all I know and Wynorski and I don’t see a dime off of it.
The movie was originally released under the name Killbots.
What Jim Wynorski is famous for is
he’ll hire people to do something under a semi okay name. We all
signed up, Barbara Crampton and everybody to do a film called
Robots and it was sold to us as having Robert Short, the famous
special effects artist guy is going to do the robots. It’s going to
be a class act. Then it was Killbots and then it was
Chopping Mall and we were like, "Oh my God." He said, "You
wouldn’t have done Chopping Mall right?" I said, "No" He
replied, "That’s why you signed up to do Robots. You think I
was born yesterday?"
Were you there when they blew up the lady’s head?
I was there 24/7. Anytime Wynorski
was there. I was there.
What a grueling shoot that must have been.
It’s like I spent my entire first
six films at night. I was under the impression that people only shot
films at night.
What about your role in Big Bad MommaII with Angie
Dickinson?
Here’s how Jim Wynorski and I ended
up working together and we didn’t realize we were racking up so many
films together. I wanted to originally play one of the daughters. A
lot of the thing was they felt my feel was too contemporary. They’re
into shooting. He calls me up and goes, "How would you like to play
Angie Dickinson’s great, great granddaughter?" I said, "What?" He
said, "We’re going to put age makeup on her and cut to the present."
We’re going to show that she’s an old lady and she’s teaching you
everything she knows. I said, "Great, I get to meet Angie Dickinson
and we’ll do a day of shooting."
Why didn’t they do Big Bad Granddaughter?
I don’t know.
I liked Angie in the first Big Bad Momma.
She was great. I call her a great
broad. There’s nothing she hasn’t seen, heard, and nothing surprises
her. She has a great sense of humor about everything. I call those
ladies broads. They get along with the guys really well. That’s a
great asset in any industry if you can get along with the men. It’s
still heavily dominated by men. If you can speak man somehow and know
where guys are coming from and not make them uncomfortable or give
them a hard time you’ll have an easier time in business than if you
don’t speak man and you make them uncomfortable.
Is there a quality you look for in a guy? You haven’t gone lesbian
have you?
No. Especially in Hollywood guys are
very focused on themselves. Not that I’m not, but to a pathological
degree.
Is it better to date someone out of the business if you can?
I think so. I’ve done that too. I’ve
been engaged to someone who wasn’t in the business. They don’t
understand. So, I don’t know.
You’re still available and open for dating?
Oh yeah!
I’ve heard you’re a Trekkie?
I was in love with Captain Kirk when
I was really little.
All those repeats of the original Star Trek?
Yeah, we used to watch them while we
ate dinner. They were on like at 5 o’clock. That’s how I became a
Trekkie.
When you were growing up whom did you have a retroCRUSH on?
