Bitch Slap Cast Interview
Hi, how are you? So you’re going to Comic-Con tomorrow?
Erin: Yes, we’ll start the festivities at 9 a.m. tomorrow, hit the ground running and won’t stop until late Friday night.
Are you screening Bitch Slap there?
Erin: We’re not screening the film there because it’s still in post-production. There was an extensive amount of green-screen work, so that’s going to take another couple of months to finish. We’re looking at a December release date or at least completion date. So at Comic-Con, we’ll have the trailer which can be seen on the website, bitchslapmovie.com, as well as a lot of swag we’ll be passing out throughout the two days.
Cool. I wish I was going. Sounds like it’s going to be a blast.
Julia: Yeah, I’m just so excited to get there and meet people and promote the movie, because it’s really unique, fun, and smart.
When I first heard about this movie, I thought, well, what the heck is this about, with a name like Bitch Slap. But I’ve checked out the site and trailer, and it looks awesome. Can you tell me a little bit about the film?
Erin: Bitch Slap revolves around three women from very different backgrounds who come together for one day to find $200 million in diamonds hidden in the desert. Throughout that day, allegiances are formed and broken, clues are revealed, and a colorful cast of characters joins them in the desert. One by one, each woman discovers something a ldark about herself and the girls that she is with.
Julia: And throughout the movie, there are flashbacks, and you discover how and why these girls all came to be together in the desert. It’s a really exciting, twisty-turny kind of movie.
I love the flashback theme. So maybe what you see at the beginning is totally different from what you’ll see at the end.
Erin: Absolutely. One of the wonderful things about our characters is that we were able to explore who this person really is, and how much we’re willing to reveal at the beginning of this film. The character of Hel gets to make a 180 degree arc. At the beginning, she’s a corporate powerhouse, the brains behind the operation. She’s cool as a cucumber, never loses herself, and is completely emotionless. But by the end, because of the events and what you find out about her, she ends up a broken, sobbing mess. That’s an exciting journey for any actor to be able to take.
America: I think that’s so true for all of our characters. They take their journeys and get to explore different aspects of themselves. Coming into it, you’d think they would be cartoonish and superficial or one dimensional, but they’re absolutely not. On top of that, the movie is just a really fun adventure. Each scene is its own fun vignette, and just as entertaining as the larger piece. There’s no room for boredom in this movie.
Julia: Watching the trailer, we just laugh at ourselves so much. We got the cast and crew laughing so many times. We do talk about serious things, and there’s a lot of violence and bad language, but at the end of the day, the movie isn’t meant to be taken seriously.
Tell me about the characters.
Erin: I look at them as the brain, the brawn and the bait. Hel is the brain, Camero is the brawn, and Trixie is the bait. The characters were so easy to dive into and develop because they’re so different. There was never that thing of, well, we’re similar in this regard or that regard. Never once did Hel say or do something that would be in Camero’s character, and Trixie never said or did anything that would be in Hel’s character, except when it was specifically written that way.
I love that the narrator quotes T.S. Elliot and Buddha and Dostoevsky. You don’t expect that with a movie named Bitch Slap.
Julia: That’s what I was saying about it being smart. It’s not like any other movie. It’s not a typical Grindhouse movie. It’s completely different than that genre, because this one makes you think. I was really drawn to it because I’m a strong, independent woman, and I loved playing Trixie because even though she’s conceived as sweet and innocent and a whiner and complainer, in reality she’s really a strong woman. That’s what I hope I brought out in her.
I wondered if it had kind of a Grindhouse / Robert Rodriguez feel to it.
Erin: Absolutely. In fact, that’s what Rick Jacobson, the director, and Eric Gruendemann, the writer and producer, were going for. These men have worked in film and television for years, and they wanted to create a film that was the kind of movie that they wanted to see. They love action movies, they love to see really strong, bad-ass women dressed in skimpy clothing, but also strong and empowered.
Both Rick and Eric are married to incredibly sexy, strong, powerful and intelligent women, so their wives came out in these characters. I think they took the grindhouse genre and really put a brain to it. This is the thinking man’s exploitation film. You’re going to see all the cleavage and guns and blood and explosions and fast cars that you’d normally expect from a trashy, low budget B-movie. But you’re also going to have a story that makes sense, characters that are full and whole, and a plot that’s entertaining. Those three elements are usually lacking in your typical grindhouse, B-movie.
I read the movie’s summary, and it says it harks back to movies like Drag Strip Girl and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Clearly, I’ve been missing out, because I haven’t seen those. I’ll have to Netflix them and get caught up.
Julia: No, actually all you have to see is Bitch Slap.
Erin: Yeah, that’s all you need to see and you’ll get all that.
America: I have seen a bit of those movies. They’re not easy to find, and Russ Meyer [director, writer and producer of Faster, Pussycat] is really difficult to find. But the thing about Bitch Slap is that it’s a completely new genre. I challenge somebody to give me a definition of where it belongs on the shelf at the video store.
Julie: It’s completely original, from the script to the thoughts to the characters. I don’t think I’ve ever seen three women, our characters, put together in their situation. It really is a one-of-a-kind movie.
Julia: Also, this movie has its own beautiful language that’s so clever, smart and innovative. As actors, we have to study Shakespeare, and you feel like you’re learning a language you don’t use every day. So, relating it to Shakespeare… instead of it being like old English, it’s sort of new English.
One of the things I noticed in watching the trailer is that you’re all in great shape. Did you train for six hours a day for months on end?
Erin: Well, every morning we ate McDonalds.
Julia: That’s true.
Erin: And every day at lunch, they had several different kinds of cake that we’d eat, and for dinner, we’d go out for massive helpings of Indian food. I don’t think we went to the gym once.
America: We were not given any chance to sit down. We were working, we were fighting, we were in rehearsal for choreography… the movie itself is a workout. If anybody wants to know what the Bitch Slap workout is, they just have to watch Bitch Slap.
Julia: Living on set, the food is always unhealthy and your lifestyle is just…when you’re not working, you’re sitting in your trailer. But I think we’re all relatively lucky that we’re young and fit. America is laughing at me.
America: She’s a model! I’m an ex-opera singer. Our histories of weight are different.
Julia: Living on set is definitely kind of a shock, but like they said, we’re working so hard, and you don’t sleep much.
America: And the costumes…it’s like some level of Hell to be given a costume that you have no room to breathe in, not a centimeter. You’re just fighting it so you don’t split your pants, and it does happen. And then there’s the catering, craft service, seven layer cakes…when you’re in your outfit, it’s a constant reminder that maybe one piece of cake, not two.
Erin: You touch on an interesting point, because I think a lot of actors think, oh, when I get that role, then I’ll lose these five pounds or develop my flawless French accent. But somebody else who’s already done that – they’re the ones who will get the role. I don’t buy into the idea that you have to be a size 0 in order to work, because film reflects humanity, and humans come in all shapes and sizes. But the types of roles that we are going to be auditioning for do require us to look a certain way. They’re not just hiring the actor, they’re hiring the actor’s body, especially for something like this where so much of it is on display.
America: And I appreciate that they didn’t go for the waif-types who live off of cigarettes. We all work out and have muscles. Sometimes I’m told I’m too muscular for certain roles, but I don’t go there, because that’s not me. All of us represent a different kind of sexy than what most movies show as sexy. Yeah, the boobs are there and a bit bigger because of the push-up bras and whatnot, but other than that we have voluptuous bodies and we’re not waif-like skinny and unhealthy. We have healthy bodies.
Julia: I’ve been a model since I was 14, and one thing I’ve always disliked about it is the pressure to be a size 0. I was probably a 0 when I was 14, but I’m about a 4 right now and very happy with that. My agent and friends tell me, oh, you should lose weight, and I just don’t believe in that. I believe that women should be curvy, healthy, fit and toned, but women need boobs and hips to look like women. We’re all strong and in shape, and it really portrays a healthy image to young girls. I don’t like when girls look at magazines and see these stick-thin girls and think that’s beautiful. It’s not.
Erin: Men want something they can hold on to.
America: And just one more thing — I’m shorter than Julia, and I’m a size 8. Size 4 works on some women, and size 8 is cool, too. Both of us are our own sizes in our own healthy way.
Did you have to train with the guns and artillery?
America: Absolutely. They specifically trained me and Erin because our characters used it most. Our prop master was very nervous about making sure that: A) it looked real, and B) that we didn’t hurt ourselves. The funny thing is that with these girls, being as tough as they are, there is no proper way to look. Camero is a street fighter, so I just pick up my gun and have my own way. To get into character, we had to unlearn all of the things we learned.
Erin: I’ll talk a little bit about the fight work. Zoe Bell is our stunt coordinator, and when she was 19 years old and living in New Zealand, Eric Gruendemann gave her a job as a stunt woman on Xena: Warrior Princess. She worked her way up and was so talented that she became Lucy Lawless’ stunt double, as well as Uma Thurman‘s stunt double in Kill Bill 1 and 2. She went on to have a leading role in Grindhouse, which Quentin Tarantino wrote for her.
She was an incredible asset for us to have, and every weekend America and I would go to her training facility in Venice Beach, and she’d teach us different stunts and punches. There’s a moment in the movie where Camero is on top of my character punching me in the face, and since she’s locked both my hands down I really don’t have any other recourse but to simply bite her in the crotch, so I do. While we wanted to sleep on the weekends, a lot of it was filled with fight choreography and rehearsals.
America: And suffering from crotch bruising, which I never thought I ever would…
Erin: Sorry about that. I have sharp teeth.
Where was most of the filming done?
Julia: We did two weeks on green screen studio, and then four weeks in the Mohave Desert, in a place where you imagine the mob takes their victims.
Is Lucy Lawless in this film?
America: Yes, if I’m suffering through a flu or cold, I just flash back to a scene I had with her, and I’ll snap out of any funk. Lucy Lawless plays Mother Superior, and Renee O’Connor plays Sister Batril. For a brief period of time, Camero finds herself in a convent – for reasons I can’t disclose until you see the movie. So she gets a slap down by Mother Superior and Sister Batril. They gave me their religious bitch slap, and the banter is absolutely brilliant. Lucy gave me some great advice and great little moments of choreography that worked really well. I’ve never seen her get to be funny, so it was really cute, and she seemed to have a lot of fun doing it, too.
Tell me about working with Kevin Sorbo.
Erin: Oh, he is a sexy man, a tall drink of water. And he must be eight feet tall! He’s very easygoing and doesn’t take himself too seriously. And he has this way of looking at every woman as if she’s the only woman on the planet. I can’t disclose the nature of Hel’s relationship with him, but he plays Mr. Phoenix. If you look at the Web site, his is the only character that doesn’t have a bio. It just says classified.
America: One of the most seasoned actors in the film is Michael Hurst, who plays Gage. Julia can talk a little about working with him.
Julia: Working with Michael was an incredible experience. He made me feel so comfortable and confident in my work. We had this scene where I had to seduce him and dance for him, and I thought, oh my god, I’m going to be so nervous. But he made it so easy. Later on, we were talking and he gave me such great advice. He said as an actor, you have a responsibility because people look up to you and live vicariously through you. That really meant something to me, and I think about that whenever I’m working on a project.
America: And he would give 110 percent, even when we were just reacting to him off screen. That’s a gift you give an actor when you do that, and I appreciate it tremendously.
Erin: He was a blessing for us to have. Michael Hurst is the premiere Shakespearean actor of New Zealand, and he was about to start directing an opera in New Zealand. He has an incredible amount of work on his plate, and he doesn’t need this movie. But he read the script and loved it so much that he was willing to fly over to America and work for peanuts a day.
America: That says a lot about the team of people putting this together. He worked with Rick and Eric on Hercules in New Zealand, and he knew that any project they were a part of, that everybody would be well taken care of and respected. The fact that he put his trust and his reputation to come out and spend time away from his family…it’s because of Eric Gruendemann and Rick Jacobson and Brian Peck and everybody involved.
It sounds like a great experience, and I know the trust factor is a huge thing. You want to work with good people who you know will do right by the characters and the story line.
Julia: And especially doing make-out scenes and dancing and those kinds of things. You feel very vulnerable sometimes, and it’s good to be surrounded by people who make you feel comfortable. It could be the difference between having the scene work and be amazing or not quite as good as it could have been.
Erin: We were incredibly fortunate to have one another during this. I think it ended up being the best possible combination, not only for the filming, but also because…here we are. We’re going to Comic-Con, and some actresses can’t even stay in the same hotel as one another. We’re staying in the same hotel room. It really helps that we have such a strong bond and a lot of respect for each other.
I’m so psyched about seeing this film now! Anything else you want to say before I let you go?
Erin: Keep checking the Web site, because there are still more things to come. They’ll have downloads and games and interactive things to do. The Bitch Slap momentum is only going to grow, so be ready for it to hit theaters at the end of the year.
Bitch Slap (2010)
Directed by: Rick Jacobson
Starring: Julia Voth, Erin Cummings, America Olivo, Lucy Lawless, Kevin Sorbo, Renée O’Connor, Michael Hurst, Karen Austin, Debbie Lee Carrington, Minae Noji, Debbie Lee Carrington, Zoë Bell
Screenplay by: Eric Gruendemann
Production Design by: Vali Tirsoaga
Cinematography by: Stuart Asbjornsen
Film Editing by: Joseph McFadden, Corey Yaktus
Costume Design by: Robin Lewis West, Rosalida Medina
Set Decoration by: Jennifer Mueller
Art Direction by: Daniel Cerny
Music by: John R. Graham
MPAA Rating: for Brutal violence, strong sexual content & language throughout, and brief drug use.
Distributed by: IM Global, Epic Slap
Release Date: January 8, 2010