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WIDTH=217  Mike Flores
THE REDOUBTABLE MICHAEL FLORES
Sherri Jensen		 
Sherri Jensen is a contributing writer to British based REEL SCREEN magazine and web site. This interview, with Michael Flores a Chicago based playwright who is directing the movie adaptation of his show BETTIE PAGE UNCENSORED is unedited. The version to appear in REEL SCREEN I have no idea how much will remain, but Mr. Flores and Ms. Jensen have given us permission to run the entire interview. Because this is the unedited interview, there are no introductory notes or accompanying article. One thing is for sure. If the mention of his name in Chicago causes the theatre crowd to split into haters and celebrators, he is about to toss a verbal hand grenade into fandom, theatre and film. Internationally. And maybe it's time someone did.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Can you hear me?
 
FLORES: Yes. Clear as a bell. I have call waiting, so if you hear a loud click it just means another call is coming in and going into my voice mail. I'm not hanging up.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Well, I have a wide range of questions to ask you. Some of them I have problems with. Some of them aren't going to be easy.
 
FLORES: I still won't hang up.
 
Ms. JENSEN: (Laughter) All right. Let's begin with fandom. You have been running the Psychotronic Film Society, a b movie film zine and club for over 13 years.
 
FLORES: Yes.
 
Ms. JENSEN: How did that start?
 
FLORES: As a kid I watched George Ellis in Atlanta, Georgia, play Bestoink Dooley. Bestoink was a TV horror host on late night television. From George Ellis many of my future projects would originate, although I didn't notice at the time the impact he was having.
 
Ms. JENSEN: A horror movie host?
 
FLORES: Yes. He also ran the FESTIVAL THEATER which became the FILM FORUM THEATER. He showed the Andy Warhol films, the real ones. CHELSEA GIRLS, BLOW JOB, MY HUSTLER.
 
Ms. JENSEN: How did you get in?
 
FLORES: I had gone to the theater with a girlfriend who was being auditioned for a part in Russ Meyer's MUD HONEY. I met Russ for the first time, and he thought she was baby sitting me!
 
Ms. JENSEN: How old were you?
 
FLORES: I'm not sure. In those days I lied about my age to hang out with the hippies. I'm thinking this was 1965. I was within weeks of losing my virginity.
 
Ms. JENSEN: 11!
 
FLORES: I told her I was 17. But at this theatre I discovered 20th century art, and met two beautiful and kind women who worked there and began dating me, if you could call what hippies did dating. Carol and Linda. Linda was a Playboy Bunny and Carol could have done a Russ Meyer film! I went with Carol to a love in at Piedmont Park, and the pill was just out, there was no women's liberation. It was the free love era. George Ellis when we first met asked me what magazine I was reading. It was EVERGREEN, the intellectual hippie mag. Well, in the deep south there weren't too many hippies, so we all had to stay together. Go into the wrong part of town and you could end up beaten up and with a hair cut. In 1965 and 1966, long hair on a man was a shock. I looked like a head of broccoli. Skinny as hell. Long, beyond afro hair cut. The theatre also had live performance theatre late at night. I saw Kenneth Angers' film SCORPIO RISING. I mean with pop corn and candy! Russ Meyer and I would meet years later at a party that drew over 1300 people and he and I were judges at a CLEAVAGE contest! At Chicago's LIMELIGHT. I told him the story, confessed my age at the time and he bought me a drink. Beefeaters on the rocks. He said I was a hell of a guy then so I must have had one hell of a life, put his arm around me and we drank. That was a cool moment. The film society threw a Birthday party for him a few years ago and over 500 people showed up. Roger Ebert introduced him. My life was touched forever by Atlanta's horror movie host! Even the PLAYBOY theme recurs.
 
Ms. JENSEN: How so?
 
FLORES: Well, I lost my virginity to a woman that was in PLAYBOY several years later and-
 
Ms. JENSEN: All right. I get it. We don't have to go any further down that road.
 
FLORES: Hey how many guys lose their virginity to a future PLAYBOY centerfold?
 
Ms. JENSEN: I'm not sure there is any research on that! I'll look into it. You mentioned Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert at one of your events. What are some of your favorite psychotronic film society moments?
 
FLORES: A luncheon for CLIVE BARKER at the Palmer House here in town. JOHN CLEESE attending an event. DEL CLOSE, comedy guru doing stand up before the screenings. PENN AND TELLER hosting a Halloween Party for us at EXCALIBUR.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Hold it. Stop. Now this are not the blokes who usually attend fan events. I don't understand why these events werenÕt being covered by the fan press. I have never heard anything like this anywhere on earth.
 
FLORES: I really don't have much contact with fandom. We meet in bars, so you have to be 21 or older to attend our programs. I doubt if any of the people I mentioned would hang out at a comic book convention. That causes a lot of rumors about me in fandom.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Exactly. After REEL SCREEN did the first interview with you I got many of them in emails and letters. Trouble was, not one had an actual fact. All of them were along the lines of Ō I heard through a friendĶ type stories which a journalist would never use. But aren't these stories spread because you donÕt go to conventions and film festivals? Your a mystery figure almost.
 
FLORES: Oh who cares? I will be going out to promote the film, hopefully we'll sell enough to bring along Sarah Masters, who plays Bettie Page. So I'll go to the cons. But I will party in the bars.
 
Ms. JENSEN: It doesn't seem fair that your group has done so much and ended up being gossiped about.
 
FLORES: Look. It comes with the territory. They can't get in. They're under age. If you can't get into an event it takes on a much bigger deal than it should be. You can always go to the website at www.psychotronic.com to find out what I like. Read Brian Thomas' film and dvd reviews. I don't go to cons because they bore me. If your not looking for things to buy there is very little reason to go to one. People go to my events because they are events. They go because a CLIVE BARKER will be there. They don't go for a dealers room, because there isn't one.
 
Ms. JENSEN: I think it will only excite people about what film fandom could be if you go to the conventions. The really almost violent emails I got were from people in Chicago's theatre community. Again, rumor after rumor, none of which I could find the source for. I want you to tell me, as if I were an actress starting out in theatre in Chicago the no holds barred truth about theatre.
 
FLORES: Why? No one reading this will care.
 
Ms. JENSEN: I want to hear what you say that is infuriating people out there. To the point of really malicious gossip.
 
FLORES: Well. OK. But civilians don't really care about this kind of stuff.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Civilians?
 
FLORES: The audience.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Well then, my editor can always cut it. What is Chicago Theatre.
 
FLORES: Chicago Theatre is community theatre. Most theaters do not look at new productions the way I do. I create plays, to be made into movies. They are projects and I think of them as properties. Others rehearse for weeks. The show runs 4 to 6 weeks. They never are heard from again. In book publishing this would be called a vanity press. They pay to put it up, the actors aren't paid, the shows are really a second, part time job.
 
Ms. JENSEN: The actors aren't paid in small Chicago theatre?
 
FLORES: They aren't paid in medium size theatre either. Our actors get dough after the rent is paid, we have a doctor and a psychologist available to the cast.
 
Ms. JENSEN: A doctor?
 
FLORES: I He makes house calls.
 
Ms. JENSEN: I think I'm beginning to see where some jealousy might come from. Go on. The actors aren't paid and the shows are short lived.
 
FLORES: Because people want to think of what they do as art, almost 90% of the shows on here have no ads, posters, flyers, nothing. Their entire campaign is to hope the critics come, give them a good review and get a couple of weeks of sales after that. The rest of the time they paper the audience with friends of friends, it is a strange charade.
 
Ms. JENSEN: What does that mean? Paper?
 
FLORES: It's what you do to fill unsold seats, or put in pals when a critic comes. I have never done it. I'd rather sell the ticket or work on trying to the next time. Now our critic's can dish out the most hurtful, spiteful, as tough as New York rhetoric. But the other side of reviewing that New York does Chicago hasn't been able to do since Irv Kupcinet in the 1950's and 1960's. Unless your with the state or school sponsored foundations, or have east or west coast approval. A New York critic might sit there and say "damn that actor is good" and set up an interview and feature spread. They launch careers. They praise talent. Del Close, another one of my mentors, told me that doesn't happen here until you leave. Once your praised outside of here then it is less risky for our locals to praise you. That keeps us community theatre. You look at old Kup columns and they are incredible. He championed- probably ended too, many careers. But if he believed in you he stood by you week in and week out. We don't have one writer like that here. We have those celebrity writers who live on SHOWBIZ WIRE, THE ENQUIRER and all that so we can read the same stories about Puff Daddy that we already saw in the Enquirer three weeks ago, in PEOPLE the week after that, and on the entertainment news show early evening had on last night. Nothing local. That makes us community theatre. Part of the problem is we don't really have many critics. I dare anyone in the Chicago theatre reviewing community to come up with a book of reviews and interviews and sell it. Show me there is a market for your writing. I have 140,000 to 200,000 readers a month. I have people who come see my work no matter what the critics say. A book of their columns- they aren't columns. They are notes. What most Chicago writers do is give notes. They do no critical analysis. So your left with a constant state of one-up-manship in the negative category. Roger Ebert is a critic. There is no Roger Ebert of Chicago theatre. As you can tell, I am not in this as a vanity production. I could care less what the critic has said most times. I depend on my feet, fax machine, website, parties, the whole shebang! Part of the problem is that editors no longer tell columnists to do books anymore. Anyone the Tribune hires should at least do a book every few years. If they aren't that good, why hire them?
 
Ms. JENSEN: Hold on Mike. I have to turn the tape over. OK, go on.
 
FLORES: The other part of the problem is that the big papers here don't hire out of town as they did in the old days. When the youth movement showed it was a viable consumer group, most newspapers let their entertainment sections go to hell. The editors quit reading them. People from underground newspapers started getting the jobs. They have no national connections, the way an entertainment writer of the 60's would, they thrive on what the new buzz is. It is commendable to discover any talent, don't get me wrong. It takes great courage to risk being attacked if someone you picked doesn't become more successful. But a writer at a major newspaper should not feel they are "underground" or "non-corporate". They are either kidding themselves or they are in the wrong job. I had an interesting problem come up doing psychotronic events. I had been covered by this paper one month, and the next month we came up with an event even bigger. A reporter spoke to me. But there was nothing in the paper. Her editor, a local underground free paper editor, told her that the paper had a policy of not covering people who had recently been in the paper, even if it were a different event. This is socialist thinking. Everyone has to be on the same level. One person can't do or get more than another. At one point Ziegfield had three shows up on Broadway. Can you imagine an editor telling the writer back then, we can only write up one Ziegfeld show?
 
Ms. JENSEN: No I can't.
 
FLORES: Then the writer gets hired to work at one of the big papers, and that attitude has already taken hold. Kup had time to plug the nightclub acts wherever they were playing, same show as the week before or not. That is lost. Theatre is isolated in Chicago. Debates rage in the press about napster and music and copyrights on the internet, most Chicago theatre groups don't get permission or the rights to do others shows. As a writer that to me is shocking. More shocking than what I say. No pay. Nothing. Why aren't people mad at the fact that we are so close to being more than community theatre? And so far? Trying to please critics is an academic, at best exercise. It can lead to thinking along the lines of hey, they liked a play about a guy dying of aids, lets do one. They liked a play about a TV sitcom, let's do one. Let's do Brecht and this and that. There are groups here still doing HAIR for Christ sake. Cutting out the nudity and calling themselves revolutionaries for doing it. GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS! We are so isolated, theatre is so isolated, and I haven't even told you the worse thing happening here.
 
Ms. JENSEN: I'm ready.
 
FLORES: Many days I pick up the Tribune and I see page after page of traveling theatre shows, the a list theaters and local groups who are all state sponsored , and I look and I look for the theatre page. The reviews. They arenÕt there.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Where are they?
 
FLORES: More often than not, across from the obituary page!
 
Ms. JENSEN: Oh lord.
 
FLORES: Why shouldn't it be there? Someone is saving every film ever made. Who is saving our plays? We have removed ourselves to the temple of the reviewers- what relevance do we have to anyone else? Why should anyone care WHEN WE DON'T DO PLAYS FOR AUDIENCES? We only do them for our pals and critics. It's a damn shame. We could be so much more. Hell, if I could get theatre groups to start thinking of their new plays as properties I would consider that a great victory! One thing is for sure. I'm not leaving. I will bring the press here and so the theatre community had best just get used to me. It is too much to hope that they will take advantage of this attention. And I think I'm about to get lot's of attention.
 
Ms. JENSEN: I'd bet the next payroll on it. That brings us to the film, BETTIE PAGE UNCENSORED.
 
FLORES: Finally! Listen, I need to pop a beer. Can we take a break for a second?
 
Ms. JENSEN: Yes.
 
FLORES: Do you know that they have Guiness Draft in bottles in America? I'm getting one out of the fridge.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Guiness draft. In a bottle. In the fridge. There are so many things wrong with that.
 
FLORES: We like our beer cold in the states. I'm telling you it is not a bad beer.
 
Ms. JENSEN: I'm a NEWCASTLE drinker myself. Now, tell me about your lead for BETTIE PAGE UNCENSORED.
 
FLORES: SARAH MASTERS played Bettie for over 20 weeks in the unauthorized show. She has been in a couple of independent films that play the film festivals. She had also done some work at The Annoyance Theatre here in town, whom I respect. Sarah looks so much like Bettie that it hurts. What stunned Bettie fans was that she could also act. They would have been happy with far less, she really pushed the line up. She is also in the new play and movie BURLY- Q! about the burlesque era's end.
 
Ms. JENSEN: How is BURLY-Q! doing?
 
FLORES: It took weeks to get the audience that we had for BETTIE PAGE that we have right out of the opening of BURLY- Q! I am starting to recognize audience members that have been to my shows before. It was crucial to me that we have a project up and on the boards to follow up any hoopla BETTIE gets. Every new live show I do now will be developed into a film. The underground film movement meets Chicago theatre!
 
Ms. JENSEN: So you are thinking several steps ahead. Interesting.
 
FLORES: I worked with Sarah before. And I wanted to work with her again.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Is she your girlfriend?
 
FLORES: No. And it's not bloody likely to happen.
 
Ms. JENSEN: Why?
 
FLORES: Well I'm married and -
 
Ms. JENSEN: Ms. JENSEN
 
FLORES: Well, that's not the reason.
 
Ms. JENSEN: It's not?
 
FLORES: No. It's because she isn't interested. (laughter) We don't really even hang out. After a year of working together and more to come, she is probably sick of me! But like me she has been waiting and working hard for a break, we are still standing and moving forward. That's what matters.
 
Ms. JENSEN: So there are people in the show youÕve worked with before?
 
FLORES: Ronald Meyer played the villain in BETTIE PAGE UNCENSORED and is a good guy in BURLY- Q! He's got a great voice and presence on stage. We'll see how that translates to film, he looked fine on the PLAYBOY SEXCETERA show. We aren't just shooting the play, it's about 70% new material, more characters, more women. Bettie fans will be pleased, hopefully so will people who don't know who she is. Of which there are still a lot.
 
Ms. JENSEN: If the film doesnÕt work out?
 
FLORES: It won't matter. I keep at it. I have some certainty with this show because it played for over 40 weeks, which was a luxury from my point of view. I know what audiences responded to. That is the beauty of thinking of this as a property. Some studio wants to throw money at my group to do a 35mm film version, no prob. I want to compete. I know people can stay home and see nudity on HBO, go to concerts, plays, movies, I want theatre to recognize what has happened in the entertainment world and compete with it. Add to it. Fight for it. Show biz.
 
Ms. JENSEN: What could Chicago as a city do to help you achieve a new center for show business?
 
FLORES: We could get one part of town and make it 24 hours for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One area. We could sell beer on Sunday mornings. In Chicago, people getting off work after working the bars all Saturday night can't buy a beer. That is small town. Just one area of the city- have stores that want to be open, restaurants, a different curfew law than the rest of the city has, like Vegas. And let small, non-union theatre groups that can draw audiences and tourists do shows there. The State of Illinois won't let our city gamble, so let's make one area an actual party destination that people will want to come to. love this city. I'm not going away.
 
Copyright (C) 2001 by Sherri Jensen

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