Director Waters puts 'House' on market

Mark Waters, director of what may be the first cinematic incest comedy, "The House of Yes," is weird. Or at least that's what his mom thinks.

INTERVIEW
	Mark Waters Opens Dec. 18 at the Michigan Theater Director, "The House of Yes"

"I showed this movie to my mother and my aunts, who are 60 years old and live in Indiana, and I was very amused at how much they liked it. As my mom put it, 'Well, you know, there's not too much cussing in it or anything. Sure, it's weird, but you're weird - and it's funny.' That's my mom, though, who's a little biased."

Whether it's his mom or the critics and audiences of last year's Sundance Film Festival doing the talking, 33-year-old Mark Waters has been listening to praise for his controversial directorial debut for nearly a year, praise that at first caught the modest director off-guard.

"It's hard to have perspective on the work you're doing and say after all this work I'm doing, does it suck. When I got the call from Sundance that said that the movie was the only entry that had a consensus from the programming committee and they all loved it, I was like, huh, maybe it doesn't suck."

But the story of "The House of Yes" begins long before Waters was brushing shoulders with Bob Redford and the assorted independent elite of Park City, Utah.

Mark Waters made a controversial splash at Sundance last year with his incest- and Kennedy-obsession-fueled "The House of Yes."

A playwright and stage director by trade, Waters' Sundance aspirations of making it as a film director were only cemented when he saw Wendy MacLeod's hilarious and eccentric play, "The House of Yes." Inspired by his desire to adapt the play, Waters attended the American Film Institute's film school.

Waters, as a director, was attracted to the story of one strange household as it struggles comedically through one stormy Thanksgiving weekend because of its ability to be produced on a relatively small scale, with just five actors, a few sets and a few million dollars. But Waters vowed to think big even as his financial backers were thinking small.

"Even though it had an economy of means, it wouldn't be a small movie. A lot of first time features were almost apologetic for not being entertaining because they would use their budgets and say 'Sorry, we really couldn't do much.' I wanted to not have that. With 'House,' it had so many things going on that I found appealing and it worked on so many levels, even when it was a play - as a great black comedy, as a greek tragedy with serious dramatic overtones, and as a kind of suspense thriller."

More than anything, however, "House" is a comedy, with Josh Hamilton and Tori Spelling (that's right Tori Spelling) in support and with Parker Posey overacting delightfully as a melodramatic, insane woman obsessed with Jackie-O, who happens to have an illicit attraction to her twin brother and a penchant for bodily harm.

Sure, this doesn't sound much like the subject matter of a mainstream comedy, a problem that never dawned on the liberal-minded Waters while making the movie.

"It's funny that people bring this up a lot. I think that from living in San Francisco for five years, nobody there would say, 'Oh, this is controversial.' There, it's just like 'Oh yeah, sure. Kennedy obsession, incest, fine, whatever.'"

Kennedy obsession and incest are just two of the many themes dealt with in "House"'s rather short 90-minute span. This no-holds-barred, nearly all-inclusive subject matter within the span of the film stems from the film's fast-paced, wordy dialogue.

The shotgun script, adapted for the screen by Waters, contributes to the melodramatic, stage feeling that Waters was attempting to create. The dialogue also rings of old screwball comedies, a resemblance that was not achieved by accident.

"In preparing for this movie, when I was working with the actors in particular, I showed them Howard Hawks movies and Billy Wilder movies and said we're not going to be doing this kind of more modern method-based style of acting where people sit back and take long pauses," said Waters. "Instead, I wanted them to be really picking up on their cues and completely going for this dynamic, ballistic ping-pong with the dialogue."

The fast-paced table tennis match of words is mastered by the versatile Parker Posey in the film, allowing for a kind of whacked-out, sped-up, '90s version of "The Philadelphia Story," another sophisticated comedy featuring a dysfunctional family and a cavernous mansion. Only in this version, Posey stars as both the conniving Cary Grant and the lovestruck Katharine Hepburn. Waters also likens Posey to those cinema gods and goddesses of old.

"The reason I cast Parker Posey is because I felt she had a kind of movie star presence that was like older movie stars. I like to think of her being a young Kate Hepburn crossed with a young Audrey Hepburn. If Kate were around today, she probably would've been cast in this role by me."

All right, Mark. But would Kate have agreed to star in a film with such questionable morals? Waters believes that in today's climate of everything-on-the-table Jerry Springers and Oprahs, "we've even reached the point as a society where people like me can do an irreverent, kind of comedic take on incest, not that sincere, overly precious movie-of-the-week type of film."

A movie of the week "The House of Yes" definitely is not - not with a title that bizarre, even if a Spelling is involved. Where did the play acquire such a peculiar name that is never fully explained in the film?

"Wendy MacLeod was visiting this family and she remembered being very impressed and also disturbed and seduced by their extreme glamour, wit and wealth," explained Waters. "Then she went into the bathroom of the house and somebody had written on the wall, 'We are living in a house of yes.' This just got her mind going and made her think of Edgar Allen Poe and pornography and the freedom of the upper classes and gave her this queasy but interesting feeling that spawned the play."

Waters interprets the title in a slightly different way.

"For me, it means a place without boundaries, a place where porousness develops between people so that they flow into each other in ways they wouldn't do outside of the house. I think it is really because of the insularity of the family, where they never leave their hometown and they tend to just sleep with each other."

Waters, unlike his characters, has left his hometown in rural Indiana, to build upon his groundbreaking footing upon Hollywood soil. But is Hollywood ready for Mark Waters and his arsenal of taboos? Why does Hollywood need another independent director willing to be brutally frank? Mark Waters - justify your existence!

"Why not is the proper answer - why shouldn't I exist? I'll just say that I'll always try to do something that's a little out there and a little bit weird, something you haven't seen before - and that can't be a bad thing."

So in the end, being weird with "The House of Yes" just may give Mark Waters longevity in the fickle film industry. Incest, Kennedy obsession, murder - a weird comedy only a mother could love.

Parker Posey is Kennedy wannabe Jackie-O in "The House of Yes."

12-10-97