[I knew Vincenzo Natali was something special when I saw his brain-melting CUBE ages ago. Talked to him a few weeks ago about his new SF/Horror movie SPLICE, which is now playing just about everywhere. Click here to read the rest of my interview with him at SCI FI Wire.]
Canadian director Vincenzo Natali is himself a gene-spliced hybrid of indie filmmaker and SF auteur, making very big little films for more than a decade.
After years doing storyboards for cartoons, he made his first SF feature, Cube (1997), a Twilight Zone-like riff on Kafka and Sartre about a group of people stuck in a mathematically organized deathtrap that became an instant indie fave. His next SF/comedy feature, Nothing (2003), starring Cube alum Andrew Miller (who co-wrote with Natali) and Stargate: Atlantis’ David Hewlett (who also co-wrote, and who has been in all of Natali’s films), was a mostly two-character comedy about a pair of losers who literally will the rest of the world out of existence. (Please read the rest of my article at SCI FI Wire
Now his major feature Splice, which stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as a pair of genetic engineers working for big pharma doing unorthodox work on the sly, has been picked up by Warners and Dark Castle through the graces of mega-producer Joel Silver and Guillermo del Toro. SCI FI Wire talked to Natali in his hotel room in Boston while the director nabbed a much-needed energy bar from his publicist.
Inside the mind of author Michael Marano 