A few months back, I interviewed cult movie legend Asbestos Felt, star of KILLING SPREE, for a documentary I was making. I didn't end up using the interview in the film due to time restrictions, but I've edited it down into a form I can publish here. So here we go with Part 1 of the interview!
Hi there.
Hi! This is Asbestos Felt, and I've been in a few movies. I've done some extra work in a couple movies that were fun - INVASION USA with Chuck Norris, and HAPPY NEW YEAR with Peter Falk. But the first movie I did with Tim Ritter was TRUTH OR DARE: A CRITICAL MADNESS, and I was cast as a psychopath originally, but reduced to an imbecile, and they took my lines away from me, and I basically I just sat there in a mental ward with a hand grenade in my mouth and waited til my head exploded. And then my next movie was KILLING SPREE, which I was the star of, and the other movie that I did was CREEP, which I actually played the same character as I played in KILLING SPREE. And so those are the movies that I've been in!
What was the atmosphere amongst the cast and crew making KILLING SPREE? Were you guys aware that what you were making wasn't high art?
Uh, well, (laughs) I don't know if that was really a consideration at the time, I mean it was more or less just a really fun thing to do. We had a group of people who had all come together that Tim Ritter had compiled, and some of us were friends, some of us knew each other, and others we didn't know at all, and we all just kind of jived together and just had kind of a really crazy, interesting time doing this whole thing. You know, it was very chaotic, with people running all around, and just a lot of strange things happening, so I don't know if there was a feeling of high art being made, but it was more or less just a fun project.
Yeah, there really is that sense of anarchic energy in there... Um, we sort of have to draw attention to the point that the, uh, critical consensus is not an overly positive one...
Oh, well, you know, it is what it is! It was shot on 16mm film - I know there's an issue over the quality. I have a feeling that when they did the film to video transfer, they didn't do a very good job. I don't know what else could be said about that - I don't know how many generations it went down on videotape before it actually got edited, I have no idea about the editing process - but you know, 16mm's a little bit grainier than 35, so you're starting off with a lesser film, but the audio was horrible. You know, we had an audio man who didn't really wanna be an audio man - he just really wanted to eat. So, basically, in some of the scenes, the boom microphone was held - well, the living room, the place that we shot, was two stories high. And they would stick the boom microphone up from the second floor. So the microphone was not even close to any of the action. It was this big echo chamber. So the audio was a whole 'nother issue. Unfortunately, I had no control over that. I had put in my two cents worth, but no one seemed to really care!
Yeah. I think with fans of the film, the key driving factor for them is your performance, because it's pretty insane. Which seems to contradict your natural laid-back sort of self. Do you have any problems with people not being able to divorce you from your character?
Well...first of all - I am usually pretty laid back, but I do get keyed up too, so you know, I can go one direction or the other. So doing that whole role was just to go over the top. It was just over the top on everything. I was reading one of the reviews a while ago, and it said "Asbestos Felt makes William Shatner look like an underactor." And I thought that was a great compliment. (laughs) Just cause, you know, to be compared with William Shatner was a whole nother thing, so just being mentioned in the same sentence was kinda funny to me. But we just went and tried to be as outrageous as possible. And really, probably the biggest, most outrageous part was when I ripped the old lady's jaw off with the claw hammer. When we were shooting that, the original take didn't work. And so I was holding the hammer into the latex and pulling her mouth off, but the latex wasn't snapping. It was kind of like this big rubber band, and the director was saying "oh that's cool" - I said, "what do you mean? That didn't even work!" So I tried to convince him to do another shot, I said "look, this is the money shot, it's like a porno, that wasn't it!" You know, you need the money shot! So we did it again, and then it worked. And while that was going on, everybody's chanting "go Asbestos, go Asbestos!" So I ended up chewing her nose off, which wasn't actually seen in the movie. But it was just kind of like some over the top frenzy was going on, so that was a lot of fun. Every day was different on that movie, I mean I was covered with different concoctions of blood that they decided to mix up, sometimes I didn't even know what it was half the time. I ripped the intestines out of the TV repairman...I had to wipe it on my face. I was like, "god, this really smells...so familiar," so I went and asked Joel, the special effects guy. He goes, "oh that was what we had for dessert!" Some sort of cinnamon apple cobbler mixed with the blood goo, I was like "God!" (laughs) So that was an interesting thing. But every day they had to hose me down. I mean, I was just covered in that stuff every day. So they'd have to hose me down and then they had to go dry my clothes off, because we only basically had one outfit to work with.
So it was a very conscious decision to make it over the top then.
Oh yeah, it was kind of treated as - and maybe this is just my aspect of it, but I looked at it as kind of a spoof of horror films. I don't know what Ritter thought, but...
Yeah, it sort of teeters in parts between being a spoof and trying to be serious...
Well, there were a lotta places where they didn't even have any lines written for me, and I would throw in these kind of stupid comments whenever, like you know that line where I'm holding the screwdriver over the guy's head, and I said "you screw my wife, I screwdrive your head!" And then I say "I'm gonna package you up, sucker, and send you out special delivery!" - that was stuff that just came out. There were a number of lines like that, that I would throw in there just to break it up a bit, and they were all a little comedic, uh, so...you know. (laughs)
So there was a degree of improvisation in there?
Oh, yeah there was. I didn't have total free rein, but I could just pretty much say whatever. And I did stick to his script, I just added to it.
When I talked to you earlier you mentioned that the cult following of the film has re-formed itself a few times over the past 20 years - could you talk about that?
Right. Well, after it first came out, you know, I really didn't know exactly where it was gonna go to. And it was released on VHS tape and - you know, we had a big premiere, which I had arranged with a local club, and nothing really happened with it. You know, you just hear like, "well, there's something going", you know, trying to find distributors, all that sorta stuff. It wasn't until a few years later that you'd see the reviews popping up - I read a few reviews that came out right away, and some were good, some were bad, but usually they just said that I acted like an insane nut or whatever. Other people always thought that Asbestos Felt sounded like a good porn name - which I agree - but it just started gaining this bit of a following. And of course the biggest following is in New Zealand, which just blows my mind. It all started out with a girl who had sent me an email, and it said "Are you the real Asbestos Felt or just a huge fan like I am?" And I wrote back, "well, I am the real Asbestos Felt," and she said, "well, prove it!" and so... There's one scene in the movie where they made me wear these tiny black bikini underwear...you remember that? Yeah. So do I. I try not to, but...uh, I protested on that one. I said "I'm not doing that," and they're like, "oh come on, it'll be great," and they finally convinced me and I said "oh, OK, whatever." So I just happened to have that pair of underwear still, so...I took pictures of it, and sent it back to the girls, and they were finally convinced that I was the real one. So that's how it all kind of started. But um, then we emailed back and forth a bunch of times, and I sent them some autographed pictures. That was years ago. And it just kinda grew, and in the last year maybe, it's just gotten this whole thing going, so it really is a mind-blower.
Yeah, there was an explosion last year, the Facebook thing, a lot of people trying to get you down here.
Yeah, I'd love to come to New Zealand, so if they could take up a collection for me that'd be great. (laughs)
I think people would be willing to, as well!
(laughs) You know, I don't know how much it costs - two grand or something, put in some money, I'll pay for part of it too. I've always wanted to go to New Zealand anyway.
Yeah. Um, just because you brought it up, the name Asbestos Felt - where does that originate from?
Where does that originate from? Ohhhh. Uhhhhhh...there is a story, but I'm not going to divulge my story at this point. Yeah, people are always asking if that's my real name or not.
Yeah, I would have guessed that.
Well, they ask if it's my real name, they say "how'd you get that?". I say "well, my parents did a lot of LSD back in the sixties. Or whatever - back in the day, or something or whatever, I don't know. But that's how I'm listed in the phone book. (laughs)
Stay tuned for more Felty goodness!
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