This is the transcribed text of the downloadable video interview
with director Nico B. of the Rozz Williams film, PIG.
Click here if you'd like to watch the video interview.
HIP: I wanted to ask you about the film PIG. Besides being banned In Europe, the idea for this film, whose was it entirely?
Well, entirely, I can say it was Rozz (Williams). Rozz had written the original story and I worked two months with him on the script, so we kind of did it together, a collaboration; him talking about what he wanted in the movie, and me writing the script actuallyand I inlcuded some scenes which weren't in his original idea.
HIP: Did Rozz have Premature Ejaculation on his mind
when he was recording the soundtrack for the movie?No. This was going to be a separate project for him. It was actually originally going to be called "1334". That was the name he wanted to use for the sound track, instead of Rozz Williams, instead of Premature Ejaculation, but suddenly he died. After the film was finished, he didn't make the sound track, he left me a lot of tapes, and I just had the tapes. Chuck Collision who he (Rozz) worked with in Premature Ejaculation, actually edited all the tapes together for the sound track to the movie.
HIP: This movie took a while to finish?Yes. We started in January, 1998. It took only three months after we were done. Everything. Script, film, and everything. But it took him half a year to work on the sound track, then he died. Then it took me half a year to get Chuck Collision...to contact him and get him to do the sound track. So over all, it took me one and a half years.
HIP: The film was officially premiered in Hollywood with Sex, Death, and Eyeliner?
Well, it just played at The Egyptian Theatre, you're right. But it actually Premiered at Coven 13 on January 3rd, 1999.
HIP: Are you going to work on another movie, this time with famed director Alejandro Jodorowsky?
I hope so (laughter). Well actually, I'm going to direct a movie and I asked him to play a wise man in this film I'm working on. I asked him and he said yes.
HIP: You and
Kenneth Anger have something to do with The Museum of
Death?.Well he invited me to a party at The Museum of Death when it opened. He said," Well, do you wanna bring your camera?" So I brought my 16mm camera. He said shoot this, this, and this, so I was thinking he was going to direct me. We were planning to do this five-minute short: a Kenneth Anger film. So I'll be working on this, his obsession with death.
HIP: Rozz had a lot of problems with his addictions?...
Well, I hung out with him like the last 1 years of his life, nearly daily, and he had no addiction. So I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, he liked to drink and party, but he didn't take any drugs, at all, these years.
HIP: You kept his (collage) book when he passed away. were all his
belongings, possessions seized by the sheriff's dept?
His family got all of belongings and I got a few personal things I worked on with him and, when he died, the only thing they ( police) took actually with them the same moment when they took Rozz away in an ambulance, they took his friend "Andreas" who was a skeleton of 100 years old and that's the only thing they seized, as evidence.
HIP: I'm wondering what conclusion they came up with?
I think none. They buried him ("Andreas") again. (laughter) Personally, he (Rozz) died in April, and in June I was thinking I didn't want him to be forgotten for all the art he did, because a lot of people never saw his art; his collages, his paintings. We'd been working together and doing some exhibitions in Hollywood...and he started painting actually before he died. We were actually working on the book as well at the same time. So when he died months later, I was thinking I wanted to show this to people, so I was working on this book and I took a year to get a complete picture of his work actually, including his music of course.
We also had a door which is in the movie, and if the the audience
is ever going to see the movie, there's this door and it took us like three
days to make it. He was telling me what to put on it. It's a big collage.
It's a life-size door which he made into an art piece, but he put it in
storage and didn't pay his bills in time, which happened before with him. That door, and a lot of his other personal belongings just disappeared.
HIP: I wonder if anyone's got a hold of these things.
Some guy probably got a hold of it and said, "What's this door ?" and threw it away, I guess. It's probably worth $2000 dollars at an exhibition now.
HIP: This is the cover for the book...(images shown on screen)
Yes, this is "Self Portrait with Eggs". It's also called "Walking Away From A Dying World", this is a beautiful collage he made, I think around 1996.
HIP: People had this personification of Rozz, everybody saw him as a deified person. Did he ever come across to you that way?
What's a deified person?
HIP: One who's worthy of respect. Some people would actually say, "Look, I've stolen Rozz's beer!".
(laughter) Well, some people are obsessed I guess. I'm sure Rozz had his idols too, but he was a very special person, and very talented, in many ways.
HIP: Someone told me that Gitane Demone described Rozz as an angel.
Well, he's an angel now. I think he was the devil sometimes. (laughter) When he was having fun, you know, he'd go all the way. He was a great humorous person as well.
HIP: Is everything now about Rozz, everything that he accomplished up until the point of the film, is that everything that we would've expected of him, you think?
No, he wanted to do a lot more. I mean, like I told you earlier, we were working on this art exhibition and I was buying him some canvases to start painting, and he started doing that, so he really wanted to do that. Beside that, he just had a new band and actually the producer of the first Christian Death album was gonna produce his new album and it was gonna be his rock come-back I guess, and he had twelve songs listed up to be recorded. The record company was pretty frustrated because it took a long time for him to get going I guess, and he kind of lost his band to Gitane. At that time he was kind of frustrated, things were not really doing too well musically, so he was thinking in having more fun to do art actually at that time. Well, but how are you going to live from art?
HIP: I heard a lot about other band members and friends meeting the same fate as him. I'm wondering...
Well, there was one, but I guess it's kind of stupid. That guy had some problems of his own himself. It's very sad that it happened. One of Rozz's best friends, Erik Christides, he died three or four months before Rozz commited suicide and Rozz was still, around that time, still very upset with it.
HIP: Most of the bands who were influenced by Rozz, I guess they span
from Nine Inch Nails to...Well, definitely Marilyn Manson. Rozz told me once that he got a letter from him, what was his real name?
HIP: Brian? Brian Warner?
Brian, right. I know he was a fan of Rozz when he was young. Actually I saw him recently at the Museum of Death, he kind of let me know that he knew about Rozz, you know. His whole image, if you look at it, is an extension of what Rozz was doing at that time like ten, twenty years before.
HIP: I've heard the same thing from Patrick Mata of Kommunity FK.
Well, Patrick was around the same time when Rozz started. He had his band, and Rozz had his band.
HIP: Tell me about that night that you got the message from Rozz about him meeting his demise.
Well, it's hard to talk about it, but he actually left a message the day before he died on my answering machine like in the middle of the night, but sadly I was already sleeping. I think he called like four o'clock at night. He just left a message that he was very depressed and he needed to talk with somebody. He actually talked with another friend of his, and he was telling her that he was planning to commit suicide and he was getting scared. Well, she actually talked him out of it, she thought so. The next day I was planning to see a movie with him at two o'clock in the afternoon. He didn't mention anything about suicide to me on the message, but he sounded desperate. I was getting worried because I was calling him and nobody was picking up the phone, and I called like ten times. Then his roommate came home at five o'clock and he heard all the messages on the answering machine, and he started wondering what was going on because he knew he was going to this movie with me, so he was like, "What's going on?". Then he found out that Rozz's room was locked. He broke the door open and he found him.
Click on image above to order the film, PIG.
Interview with Rozz Williams & Shadow Project
Brendan Mullen L.A. Weekly article about the release
Original photos of Rozz Williams with Christian Death
under our "Photos" section
under our "Interviews" section
party for the Nico B book on Rozz's art,
here.