Repo! Rocks
I'm weirdly picky about movies unlike music. I'm a complete whore about music and I tend to like everything. Movies I get a bit strange in my tastes but I'm a huge fan of horror and musicals and I love anything that's considered a camp or cult movie. Hence when I heard Repo! The Genetic Opera was finally being made into a movie from its original stage production I was terribly excited. I mean, it's a goth opera, that fucking shit is made for my tastes.
Yesterday, I went to go see it at The Tivoli where the director, Darren Bousman, actor Bill Moseley who plays Luigi Largo, and writer for the original play and the movie script as well as the actor who plays Graverobber up in my icon, Terrance Zdunich, was there. They did a really great Q&A then requested that everyone there talk about Repo! in an attempt to get more screenings of the movie across the country.
For those who aren't aware, Repo! The Genetic Opera is now available for purchase on dvd and if you like what you see in this post I would rent it on Netflix or Blockbuster but if you really like it, please buy it. A lot of what they said in the Q&A was about how they want to make a sequel and want it to get more widespread screenings but they can't do that if they can't prove there is an actual fanbase for this movie. Soooo, if you like it, prove it with your meager money.
The basic plot of Repo! follows the life of seventeen year old Shilo Wallace who has been a shut in since she was born because of a severe blood disease and she's being treated by her overprotective doctor father, Nathan Wallace. As any teenager would, Shilo rebels and goes to see the outside world, twisted as it is, and as she does she discovers some dark secrets in her family. They are intrinsically linked to the Largos who, headed by Rotti Largo, own the most powerful and influential company in the world, GeneCo.
In the future, there was a horrible plague and people were dying of organ failures left and right. Rotti came up with the system where his company offer organs to sick people to save them, and you pay for them on plans, like you would with a car, which makes it so all the dying people are able to live. However, as his company grows in power he gets a bill passed that makes it legal for organ repossession. Which means that if you don't pay off your organ in a timely manner or you miss payments they send a Repo Man after you to get that organ back so they can sell it to someone else. All GeneCo organs are also marked with nifty bar codes from the company too.
Somehow in the midst of all this, surgeries become trendy and a fashion statement believe it or not. This leads to more business for GeneCo and the creation of an expensive drug called Zydrate which numbs the pain from all the surgeries. Zydrate being expensive and in demand there is soon a street version offered by people called Graverobbers who are named this way because they remove used Zydrate from the bodies of people killed by the Repo Man and resell it on the street.
Nathan is secretly a Repo Man for GeneCo and he's tortured by what he's become since his beloved wife, Marni's, death. Marni died in childbirth with Shilo and he had the chance to save one but not them both and he chose Shilo. Here's the thing, her death was caused by a dose of the medicine that Nathan gave her to cure her blood disease that she was suffering from. The same one that Shilo has. Nathan is tormented by the fact he killed his wife whom he loved immensely and that he couldn't save her. Though things aren't exactly as Nathan believes. You see, Marni used to date Rotti and she was going to marry him but she fled on the day of their wedding and ran to Nathan.
This made Rotti more than a little upset. He pretended otherwise but when Marni became ill during her pregnancy, he took his chance to get revenge and poisoned Nathan's medicine for Marni. So it wasn't Nathan who killed her but Rotti. However, Rotti gets his revenge since Marni is dead, her punishment for leaving him, and Nathan is tortured by it believing it's his fault, his punishment for taking Marni from Rotti.
Another person linked to their past is Blind Mag who is a hugely popular singer played by Sarah Brightman and she works for GeneCo very much against her will. She was Marni's best friend and back in the days when Marni was with Rotti, he seemingly gregariously offered to help Mag regain her eyesite with a fancy operation giving her robotic eyes. Little did Mag know that she would be signing her life away and basically put herself into a lifetime of servitude to GeneCo and Rotti. She has no idea that her godchild, Shilo, didn't die with Marni.
When Rotti discovers that he has only a short time left to live is when the opera reaches it's peak and focus. He believes, quite rightly, his three children aren't suited or deserving of his great fortune and he doesn't want to leave it to them. Rotti wants to teach them a lesson for being so self indulgent and spoiled, to show them who their father actually is rather than the person who gave into them all their lives. Despite killing her, he has a twisted love still for Marni and he contacts Shilo, luring her outside where she meets Graverobber, by saying that he has the cure for her blood disease. This is a last act of revenge so he can reveal to Shilo that her father is actually the Repo Man, a legal assassin, and to tell her something about the severe blood disease that's kept her isolated for years which is quite shocking and I won't reveal. If Shilo performs well then Rotti is going to sign over GeneCo to her and that is the driving force behind the storyline.
As you can see, the story is fairly complex and it's such a fucking opera. I love it. Here are two of my favorite songs from the movie. The first is Chase The Morning sung by Sarah Brightman and Alexa Vega. This occurs during the scene where Blind Mag comes to visit Shilo at her house and she finds out about Mag's relationship with her mother and Mag tries to warn Shilo not to follow her mistakes by mindlessly doing what others tell you to do.
The second is Gold sung by Paul Sorvino and this is the best expository song, I think. Rotti explains about how gold aka money makes the world go round and how he doesn't want to give his inheritance over to his spoiled children. I love this song because it's deliciously dramatic. Especially how Paul Sorvino plays it.
Lastly here is a video clip of the song Zydrate Anatomy which is sung by Terrance Zdunich, Paris Hilton, and Alexa Vega. I hope this rambling makes anyone who hasn't heard of or seen Repo! to give it a chance because it really deserves it. The movie rocks despite what any snotty reviewers might say. Here ends my really long fangirling.
ETA: Darren and Terrence had such a horrible time pitching this movie to studios they actually made a short film version of it to show what it would look like and I got to see a bit of this at the screening last night. It was so fucking awesome, people. He showed the short film version of Zydrate Anatomy which had Shawnee Smith aka Amanda from Darren's Saw films as an alternate version of Amber Sweet. He says he's not sure it will ever see the light of day because of how many people they would have to pay if it was released, even on a dvd as an extra. But he did say that they might, if there's enough support for the original dvd, release a director's cut of the movie that has all the songs that was in the stage production but had to be cut for final version of the film.
Yesterday, I went to go see it at The Tivoli where the director, Darren Bousman, actor Bill Moseley who plays Luigi Largo, and writer for the original play and the movie script as well as the actor who plays Graverobber up in my icon, Terrance Zdunich, was there. They did a really great Q&A then requested that everyone there talk about Repo! in an attempt to get more screenings of the movie across the country.
For those who aren't aware, Repo! The Genetic Opera is now available for purchase on dvd and if you like what you see in this post I would rent it on Netflix or Blockbuster but if you really like it, please buy it. A lot of what they said in the Q&A was about how they want to make a sequel and want it to get more widespread screenings but they can't do that if they can't prove there is an actual fanbase for this movie. Soooo, if you like it, prove it with your meager money.
The basic plot of Repo! follows the life of seventeen year old Shilo Wallace who has been a shut in since she was born because of a severe blood disease and she's being treated by her overprotective doctor father, Nathan Wallace. As any teenager would, Shilo rebels and goes to see the outside world, twisted as it is, and as she does she discovers some dark secrets in her family. They are intrinsically linked to the Largos who, headed by Rotti Largo, own the most powerful and influential company in the world, GeneCo.
In the future, there was a horrible plague and people were dying of organ failures left and right. Rotti came up with the system where his company offer organs to sick people to save them, and you pay for them on plans, like you would with a car, which makes it so all the dying people are able to live. However, as his company grows in power he gets a bill passed that makes it legal for organ repossession. Which means that if you don't pay off your organ in a timely manner or you miss payments they send a Repo Man after you to get that organ back so they can sell it to someone else. All GeneCo organs are also marked with nifty bar codes from the company too.
Somehow in the midst of all this, surgeries become trendy and a fashion statement believe it or not. This leads to more business for GeneCo and the creation of an expensive drug called Zydrate which numbs the pain from all the surgeries. Zydrate being expensive and in demand there is soon a street version offered by people called Graverobbers who are named this way because they remove used Zydrate from the bodies of people killed by the Repo Man and resell it on the street.
Nathan is secretly a Repo Man for GeneCo and he's tortured by what he's become since his beloved wife, Marni's, death. Marni died in childbirth with Shilo and he had the chance to save one but not them both and he chose Shilo. Here's the thing, her death was caused by a dose of the medicine that Nathan gave her to cure her blood disease that she was suffering from. The same one that Shilo has. Nathan is tormented by the fact he killed his wife whom he loved immensely and that he couldn't save her. Though things aren't exactly as Nathan believes. You see, Marni used to date Rotti and she was going to marry him but she fled on the day of their wedding and ran to Nathan.
This made Rotti more than a little upset. He pretended otherwise but when Marni became ill during her pregnancy, he took his chance to get revenge and poisoned Nathan's medicine for Marni. So it wasn't Nathan who killed her but Rotti. However, Rotti gets his revenge since Marni is dead, her punishment for leaving him, and Nathan is tortured by it believing it's his fault, his punishment for taking Marni from Rotti.
Another person linked to their past is Blind Mag who is a hugely popular singer played by Sarah Brightman and she works for GeneCo very much against her will. She was Marni's best friend and back in the days when Marni was with Rotti, he seemingly gregariously offered to help Mag regain her eyesite with a fancy operation giving her robotic eyes. Little did Mag know that she would be signing her life away and basically put herself into a lifetime of servitude to GeneCo and Rotti. She has no idea that her godchild, Shilo, didn't die with Marni.
When Rotti discovers that he has only a short time left to live is when the opera reaches it's peak and focus. He believes, quite rightly, his three children aren't suited or deserving of his great fortune and he doesn't want to leave it to them. Rotti wants to teach them a lesson for being so self indulgent and spoiled, to show them who their father actually is rather than the person who gave into them all their lives. Despite killing her, he has a twisted love still for Marni and he contacts Shilo, luring her outside where she meets Graverobber, by saying that he has the cure for her blood disease. This is a last act of revenge so he can reveal to Shilo that her father is actually the Repo Man, a legal assassin, and to tell her something about the severe blood disease that's kept her isolated for years which is quite shocking and I won't reveal. If Shilo performs well then Rotti is going to sign over GeneCo to her and that is the driving force behind the storyline.
As you can see, the story is fairly complex and it's such a fucking opera. I love it. Here are two of my favorite songs from the movie. The first is Chase The Morning sung by Sarah Brightman and Alexa Vega. This occurs during the scene where Blind Mag comes to visit Shilo at her house and she finds out about Mag's relationship with her mother and Mag tries to warn Shilo not to follow her mistakes by mindlessly doing what others tell you to do.
The second is Gold sung by Paul Sorvino and this is the best expository song, I think. Rotti explains about how gold aka money makes the world go round and how he doesn't want to give his inheritance over to his spoiled children. I love this song because it's deliciously dramatic. Especially how Paul Sorvino plays it.
Lastly here is a video clip of the song Zydrate Anatomy which is sung by Terrance Zdunich, Paris Hilton, and Alexa Vega. I hope this rambling makes anyone who hasn't heard of or seen Repo! to give it a chance because it really deserves it. The movie rocks despite what any snotty reviewers might say. Here ends my really long fangirling.
Click to viewETA: Darren and Terrence had such a horrible time pitching this movie to studios they actually made a short film version of it to show what it would look like and I got to see a bit of this at the screening last night. It was so fucking awesome, people. He showed the short film version of Zydrate Anatomy which had Shawnee Smith aka Amanda from Darren's Saw films as an alternate version of Amber Sweet. He says he's not sure it will ever see the light of day because of how many people they would have to pay if it was released, even on a dvd as an extra. But he did say that they might, if there's enough support for the original dvd, release a director's cut of the movie that has all the songs that was in the stage production but had to be cut for final version of the film.