Talking Têtes

Auteur and cinematic rebel, Langzaam Vervagen, is back with his latest offering, Mail My Pussy to Jesus. Our film correspondent, Terence Gunboat, met with him to discuss the controversies surrounding his work, the pressures of indie stardom and what it was like working with Concrete Octopus’ very own Edgar Roseveare.

Langzaam Vervagen and his creative partner in crime, the ever inscrutable Art Hurr, have carved out a niche for themselves in independent cinema that it is fair to say neither truly deserve to inhabit. That neither man asked for the privilege of becoming the figurehead of the new cinematic avant-garde is, I think, entirely indicative of their DIY approach to film-making—they are, at least in this respect, true artists of the highest calibre, only concerned with manifesting their unique vision of cinema, good taste be damned.

Controversial is the word that most readily springs to mind when discussing these behemoths of underground cinema—who, other than the most tasteless of transgressors would think to pen, produce and direct a sequel to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, after all? Five years ago, Langzaam and Art did precisely this, cementing their reputations as cultural mavericks—Bakunins of the new cinematic frontier.

I caught up with Langzaam at the Forza wine-bar above the National Theatre to discuss his and Art's latest offering; Mail My Pussy to Jesus. A spin-off of the alarmingly popular John Christ series—itself a pseudo-sequel to their cinematic debut, The Passion of the Christ 2: Once More With Passion—Mail My Pussy to Jesus is, according to its creators, a quiet reflection on the role of religion in exploring contemporary notions of sexuality.

Langzaam Vervagen: We wanted to discuss the ways in which a person's faith—their beliefs, ideology, morality et cetera—were reflected in their sexuality—their proclivities both public and private, their fetishes and kinks, and so on.

Terence Gunboat: In the film, it seems as though Samantha Engelstadt's character, Holly Cummerbund, isn't merely influenced by her religion. From what I've seen—at the test screenings yesterday evening, for example—she seems to actively fetishise her Christianity.

LV: Well, yes, of course, Holly absolutely wants to fuck the tits off Jesus—who wouldn't, you know? But at its core, it's an exploration of what that really means—why does she want to fuck his tits off? Where has this primal impulse to fuck his tits off come from and how does it co-exist with her faith? How does she cope with the cognitive dissonance of wanting to be a good Christian—remaining chaste, not giving into temptation et cetera—whilst simultaneously wanting to fuck the tits off her lord and saviour?

TG: Some critics have called the film "pornographic smut of the lowest order"—how do you deal with that kind of criticism?

LV: Who said that?

TG: I think it was Robert Davies.

LV: Who?

TG: He writes for the Guardian?

LV: Hack.

TG: Pardon?

LV: Clearly a hack—only hacks write for the Guardian these days. No, I don't tend to pay attention to criticism from people I don't respect—what's the point if they don't understand your work to begin with?

TG: You feel he may have misinterpreted the film?

LV: Definitely.

TG: Are there any critics whose opinions you do respect?

LV: That depends.

TG: And how about your creative partner, Art?

LV: What about him?

TG: There was some controversy last year at the premiere of John Christ 3: Revenge of the Quakers, wasn't there?

LV: Perhaps.

TG: I seem to remember he broke a critic's jaw.

LV: That's been widely misreported.

TG: So he didn't punch a man in the face for saying his performance was "as wooden as Pinocchio's arsehole"?

LV: Correct.

TG: Correct as in he didn’t punch him?

LV: Correct as in that's not the reason he punched him. It was actually a matter of honour—Art believed this critic had insulted his wife.

TG: I wasn't aware that Art Hurr was married.

LV: He isn't, but his character is—Art takes his method acting extremely seriously, as you know. He calls it "Gestalt Recursive Universal Manifestation"—it means to fully immerse oneself in one's character, to inhabit them without boundaries, to eat and breathe and fuck and shit and piss as they would. He believes that to really get to the core of a character, you must become them, mind body and soul.

TG: Correct me if I'm wrong—

LV: I will.

TG: —but doesn't Art Hurr reprise his role as Methodist Spiderman in that film?

LV: That's right.

TG: On the subject of Art and his acting methods, he’s developed quite the reputation in the industry, hasn’t he?

LV: Well deserved, in my opinion—the man’s a bona fide genius. I remember thinking that from the moment we started working together—this man’s a bona fide genius.

TG: You’re referring to your first project here, correct? The unauthorised stage adaptation of J R R Tolkien’s The Silmarillion?

LV: Unauthorised only in the sense that we didn’t have permission from Tolkien’s estate to make it. I seem to recall they took umbrage with some of the amendments I made to the story—I think it was Morgoth’s magic cod-piece that tipped them over the edge in the end.

TG: And what was Art’s approach? Had he settled on method acting, or was he still developing his technique?

LV: Oh no, he was fully formed by that point—a complete actor, if you will. I remember, we cast him as Fringtomer the Ent. He spent four months buried up to his waist in Epping Forest, scaring the shit out of the Blue tits, but it was worth it. It was like being in the presence of an actual tree, you know? I still have no idea how he got that rustle into his voice—it sounded exactly like a summer breeze playing in the canopy of a sycamore. Uncanny. Terry Bumfist—our make-up artist and professional squeezer at the time—swears he saw a squirrel run up his leg and slip into his arse. Art didn’t blink—it was fucking nuts. We couldn’t pay him enough—no, really, we’d run out of money.

TG: Returning to the new film, were there any particular challenges involved in this project? Anything that you had to do differently from your previous films, for example? Mail My Pussy is certainly a departure from the more action-oriented John Christ series.

LV: Yes, absolutely. For starters, Keanu wasn't thrilled by our decision to render him in CGI using mo-cap.

TG: This is Keanu Reeves we're talking about?

LV: That's Mr. Reeves to you.

TG: So, what prompted the decision? Were there issues with the wardrobe? I know scheduling clashes can sometimes play havoc with how a character is meant to be portrayed on screen.

LV: There always are, where Keanu is concerned, but really, in this instance, it was an artistic decision—there were fears, mostly voiced by myself and Art, that he simply didn't look realistic enough on screen.

TG: So you decided to replace him with a CGI version of himself?

LV: Yes.

TG: What was it like adapting the work of our very own Edgar Roseveare? Were there any difficulties interpreting a novel, rather than working from your own hymn-sheet, if you'll pardon the pun?

LV: Sure, I mean, Edgar is undoubtedly a very talented writer—uses too many words in my opinion, but very talented nonetheless. When Art and I approached him with the idea of turning his book into a film, he was really quite receptive, which surprised us, as we'd heard he was a cantankerous mule and a drug-addled git—which, frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, I can safely say he absolutely is, but not to begin with.

No, things started out great—he loved our ideas for the script and was completely on-board with a lot of our editorial decisions, removing the sub-plot about John the Baptist's waterboarding fetish, for instance—but I think we were about six months into shooting when our professional relationship started to sour.

TG: This is the incident involving the dinosaur, right?

LV: Right.

TG: And what happened exactly? Walk us through the events leading up to the incident.

LV: Well, there was something of a creative disagreement between Art and myself on one side and Edgar on the other. See, in the original novel there are, frankly, an obscene number of references to—how do I put this delicately? Interspecies copulation.

TG: This is the subplot about Mary Magdalene whoring herself out to a velociraptor, correct?

LV: That's right. Now, that's all well and good when it's confined to the page, but some things are best left to the imagination.

TG: What happened?

LV: Edgar disagreed. He was adamant we include at least two scenes of velociraptor-on-woman action, and one scene of man-on-velociraptor—suffice to say, [Jeff] Goldblum was furious. Anyway, things got a little heated—we agreed to include the velociraptor as a character, and to hint at its relationship with Mary, but anything beyond that was off the table. Our producer, Eddie Mercury, had to step in and act as a mediator, but Edgar wasn't happy about the result.

TG: And the incident occurred after that?

LV: Yes. We were in the middle of filming a pivotal scene—a beautiful sequence where Holly realises her ability to simultaneously actualise her femininity and her devout Christianity by stimulating herself with a statuette of Jesus—when Edgar, under the influence of Benzedrine, commandeered the animatronic velociraptor, crashed the set and nearly killed Biltong Jones in the process. I was on set at the time and I'm ashamed to say, we had a bit of a dust-up—after that, Edgar was banned from the set for the remainder of the shoot. It was probably for the best—he came off worse in our fight and this way he could preserve what little dignity he had left.

Edgar Roseveare: Vervagen, you Dutch cunt!

TG: Well, this is awkward. I thought you were in Bermuda, Edgar?

ER: I was, until I heard you were interviewing this stroopwafel-eating ponce.

LV: I've told you before, Edgar, I'm Belgian, not Dutch.

ER: Yeah, well, Belgian this, you Trappist beer-swilling shit!

And so ended my interview with Langzaam Vervagen, the untimely and, frankly, unprofessional conduct of my esteemed colleague, Edgar Roseveare, almost certainly ensuring that this would be the last time the self-proclaimed Belgian Bergman made an appearance within these pages.

As I watched Edgar and Langzaam, rolling on the raw concrete of the National Theatre's rooftop, the angular architecture of the Southbank—redolent of a Ballardian psychogeographical dystopia—in the background, I could not help but wonder what this curious man, with his strange notions of cinema and its role in society portended for the future of western culture.

My questions regarding the ghostly apparition of Wayne Gretzky, the sordid careers of Jarvis Lautrec and Karpal Marik—both wanted for crimes against humanity in several countries—and the creative decision to adopt the Pig-Punk movement as musical banner-bearers of their cinematic art would have to wait—at least until my follow-up interview with the elusive Art Hurr, scheduled for later this summer…

Mail My Pussy to Jesus is scheduled for universal release on the 17th of June 2025.

The next part of Edgar Roseveare's West of the Hollow Sands will be available on the website on Tuesday the 10th—assuming he is out of the hospital by then.