Episode 37 : Catherine Chevalier

Picture curtesy of Catherine Chevalier. Thanks!

“Rachel, you have said too much already!”

Not really.  Ryan and Jose go through Clive Barker news, and the have a great talk with Catherine Chevalier of Nightbreed and Hellraiser II: Hellbound, what she’s up to now, what she thinks about Nightbreed Cabal Cut and what it was like to work with Clive Barker.  The picture above she scanned for us from her personal collection.   Hit the link for the full show notes.  

See Catherine’s Posture and Movement web site here.  http://www.posture-movement.cmchevalier.co.uk

Clive Barker News:

“ — @RealCliveBarker: The Odyssey II project book with http://t.co/gLOEp6DxSH will be published in September! Read about it here. http://t.co/WRijcHNSVS”

Abarat 3 Paperback http://www.clivebarker.info/bookswip.html#abarat3uspb

Hellraiser Dark Watch http://boom-studios.com/hellraiser-the-dark-watch-01-cover-c.html

www.OccupyMidian.com

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Interview Transcript Transcript Below

CHEVALIER: Well, now we’re here!

DANHAUSER: Yes!

LEITAO: Yes! Wonderful!

(Ryan laughs)

LEITAO: It’s great to be able to talk to you.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: After seeing you in the movies so many time over the years.

CHEVALIER: Right.

LEITAO: Especially, The Cabal Cut—well now we call it The Cabal Cut—but it used to be Clive Barker’s Nightbreed.

CHEVALIER: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: So, Catherine so do we pronounce your last name, Chevalier?

CHEVALIER: SHEH-VAL-YAY.

DANHAUSER: Okay.

LEITAO: Alright. Yeah, because we were about giving it the French punctuation or if it would be anglo-fied. So there you go.

CHEVALIER: Always use the French if you can do it.

DANHAUSER: So Catherine right now you’re teaching posture and movement? Can you tell us about that?

CHEVALIER: Yes. What I’ve been doing most of my life would be acting. I also sang, danced, and was always very aware of the body. Through acting and everything else, now what I’m doing is combining all that I’ve learned through my life and have been incorporating it into what I’m teaching which is a mixture of singing, imagery, and voice work. A little bit of yoga, Pilates, and Franklin method—a guy from the states who’s very much into bone alignment. So, pretty much if you know where you’re bones are and how they work and where they’re connected because we really don’t know where are hip joints are usually. So, pretty much if you know where the bones in your body are and if you work them properly then the muscles and the ligaments start to form well around your bones. So, we’re thinking inside out.

LEITAO: Oh, fascinating.

CHEVALIER: Yes, good stuff. I’ve also been doing a lot of energy work. Which is energy medicine—I don’t know if you’ve heard of EFT?

LEITAO: EFT? I must confess I haven’t.

CHEVALIER: It’s called Emotional Freedom Technique.

LEITAO: Oh, okay.

CHEVALIER: So, it’s pretty much just tapping on certain parts of your body like acupuncture without the needles.

LEITAO: I used to have a book, I think it was called digital puncture or something like that.

CHEVALIER: Right.

LEITAO: But that was for cats and dogs.

CHEVALIER: I suppose you can use tapping on animals too. You can use tapping on anything. And you can realign your energy within your body.

LEITAO: Ah!

CHEVALIER: So, pretty much that’s what I’ve been doing for the past five years, yeah.

LEITAO: First of all, I’d like to say it’s great to talk to you finally.

DANHAUSER: Yeah!

LEITAO: You’ve been in two of the movies that has meant a lot to us as Clive Barker fans, which were Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Clive Barker’s Nightbreed. So if we could direct the conversation towards those movies—

CHEVALIER: Great!

LEITAO: Are you aware of the revival of Nightbreed and the so-called Cabal Cut, which is the director’s cut of Nightbreed, that’s coming out?

CHEVALIER: Yeah, a little bit. I just know they’re trying to get the original version really instead of the one that came out.

LEITAO: Yeah.

CHEVALIER: And the one that shouldn’t have been made, pretty much. That’s what I’ve gathered.

DANHAUSER: What did you think of Nightbreed when you saw it for the first time?

CHEVALIER: I thought it was great. I liked the idea of the creatures being likable.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

CHEVALIER: Which I thought was a great twist on a lot of the so-called horror genre. You know you always think of horror movies where the creepy guys are the bad guys. And killing everything and being bad. So, I really enjoyed being a part of that twist.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, and the upstanding citizen—

LEITAO: The doctor.

DANHAUSER: The psychiatrist, yeah, is really the—

LEITAO: The monster.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, the monster.

CHEVALIER: Yeah. He’s a baddie.

(Jose laughs)

LEITAO: It’s a good baddie cause he’s (David) Cronenberg. He was great in the movie.

CHEVALIER: He was very good, and also extremely nice. I only shared a car back once with him, but he’s a very cool guy. When you’re doing a film like that you’re never all together like that at the same time—

DANHAUSER and LEITAO: Right.

CHEVALIER: So we all had different times on set.

DANHAUSER: You shared a lot of scenes with Anne Bobby, Hugh Ross, and the twins Kim and Nina.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, we shared them, but again if you  notice a lot of the time their shot is shot and then my shot is shot. Then they put it together.

DANHAUSER: Oh, okay. I see.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, pretty much.

LEITAO: Just the magic of movies, I guess.

CHEVALIER: Yes, it is.

LEITAO: For a long time I didn’t know there were two little girls and only when I started looking into The Nightbreed Chronicles and that kind of stuff then I found out that there were actually two twins.

CHEVALIER: Do you know what’s happened to them?

LEITAO: No, not really. I’m not sure if they did anymore acting work to be honest.

CHEVALIER: It’s always kind of neat to find out what happened to these people.

LEITAO: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: In the Cabal Cut they actually have lines.

CHEVALIER: Oh, right!

LEITAO: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, because in the theatrical cut we just see little Babette approaching Laurie and she gives her the vision of what happened to the Nightbreed. But of course in The Cabal Cut there’s that beautiful scene where they actually establish the psychic bond where they communicate with each other.

CHEVALIER: Yeah.

LEITAO: Yeah, that was great.

CHEVALIER: Very cool stuff happening in that film. (laughs)

LEITAO: What was your reaction—all the fans found out about this later—that some of the characters were dubbed—

CHEVALIER: Yeah—

LEITAO: Your character was dubbed. Doug Bradley’s character was dubbed.

CHEVALIER: It was a bit weird because I didn’t know anything about it until I saw it.

LEITAO: Yeah.

CHEVALIER: It was a bit of shock when you’re expecting to hear yourself and you’re hearing this, I don’t know very—German, I don’t even remember. I don’t know, you just feel a little odd that it wasn’t your voice because I thought my voice was pretty good.

LEITAO: Yeah, I’ve seen the Cabal Cut now and I have an opinion that your voice was great. Doug Bradley’s voice was also very good. I think it’s an integral part of the performer’s delivery is his own voice because you take the voice and you take away half of the performance there.

CHEVALIER: Yep. I totally agree with you and it’s a shame that they did that. But um—

DANHAUSER: It seemed to be an effort by the studio to stereotype the characters. Rachel had sort of a gypsy voice, and Lylesburg had a German name so they gave him a German voice.

CHEVALIER: Exactly. I don’t know who’s decision that was, but it was definitely not the right decision.

DANHAUSER: Right, and having those voices made them not necessarily match their names or their dress, made them more human even though they’re Nightbreed.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, yeah.

LEITAO: Anne Bobby had a funny story to tell about the voice that was replacing your own voice. She mentioned there was this commercial for coffee at the time on TV, and it was what she called “the coffee lady”  and it was apparently that lady’s voice that was used to dub your voice. I don’t know the name of the voice actor that was used, but that’s what Anne Bobby said. And that every time she heard Rachel talk in the movie all she could think of was the coffee commercials. (laughs) So that’s a little—

CHEVALIER: Oh.

DANHAUSER: That’s not Catherine that’s the crazy coffee lady!

LEITAO: (laughs) Yeah.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, yeah. I’m not too sure who did it, but it wasn’t me. (laughs)

LEITAO: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: So you said in a lot of the shots talking with other people were shot separately?

CHEVALIER: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: Did you spend a lot of time working with Doug Bradley, Hugh Ross, or Anne Bobby?

CHEVALIER: Yeah, Anne Bobby I did quite a bit because we had that great scene when she comes to the door where she’s saving my baby, Babette.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

CHEVALIER: So we spent some time shooting that. Yeah, everybody got on really well which is the one thing I remember. I also remember how Clive was very meticulous about everything looking right. And he spent time get everybody in the right zone. No, I enjoyed shooting it, and doing horror films isn’t something you just go out and do. (laughs) So it kind of just happened. But know he was cool.

LEITAO: Okay.

DANHAUSER: Had you met Clive previously? Or was that an audition kind of a thing?

CHEVALIER: No, I didn’t know him personally, but I think I met him when I did the mother in…

LEITAO: Hellbound.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, exactly. I met him briefly for that. But he didn’t actually shoot my scene. There was another guy shooting that.

DANHAUSER: And what was the audition process like for Clive Barker? I know we’re going back twenty-three years ago.

CHEVALIER: I just remember reading with him and it being very relaxed. He’s got a great sense of humor.

(Jose chuckles)

CHEVALIER: I’ve got a picture with Clive Barker which I got out of my scrapbook—as they say.

LEITAO: Yeah?

CHEVALIER: And we’re both smiling.

DANHAUSER: Oh.

CHEVALIER: It’s quite weird because as you know through the film I hardly smile at all.

LEITAO: Yeah.

CHEVALIER: At all. I don’t smile.

DANHAUSER: Oh, right.

CHEVALIER: It was quite fun. It was just a picture I’ve got here. What I might do is scan it and send it to you.

DANHAUSER: That would be great.

CHEVALIER: Yeah.

LEITAO: Oh yeah! We could share that with the people in the Occupy Midian group.

CHEVALIER: Oh yeah!

LEITAO: That’s the group that was created to push for the release of the Cabal Cut. And there’s been restoration work done by the restoration director who’s Russell Cherrington.

CHEVALIER: Right.

LEITAO: I think he’s been working with Doug Bradley to restore his original voice over the voice that was used in the released version. So, hopefully maybe in the future we’ll be able to see restoration being done to restore the proper voices of the characters from The Cabal Cut.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, and maybe mine you mean?

LEITAO: Yeah, yeah.

(Catherine laughs)

LEITAO: Yes, that would be great.

CHEVALIER: That would be good. No, I think I’d be into that. It would be nice to restore it back. Definitely.

LEITAO: Yeah, that’d be awesome. Because now having seen The Cabal Cut there are sections where we can hear your own voice and other sections where we jear the gypsy, Hungary style accent voice. So of course it clashes it a little bit, so eventually they will have to fix that. So, let’s see what happens.

CHEVALIER: Well, yeah if they need me or something I’m sure we can come to some kind of an agreement. I’d love to get my voice back into the movie.

LEITAO: That’d be wonderful.

CHEVALIER: Well, maybe not my voice right this second because I’ve got a little bit of a cold.

(everyone laughs)

CHEVALIER: Maybe it might add something, I don’t know. You never know. (laughs)

LEITAO: That’s wonderful. (pause) So what other projects are you working on right now? You’re doing your yoga, EFT thing, right?

CHEVALIER: Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing. In between I’ve was acting for quite a while. Then had the family, the babies—two boys. Then I got into painting because I’ve always kind of done that.

DANHAUSER: Oh, wow!

CHEVALIER: So yeah, I kind of collaged stuff. Yeah, I think I like all of those things. Someone called me a renaissance woman. I’m just trying to dibble-dabble in everything and enjoying life. Keep it moving and keep it creative. That’s what I say.

LEITAO: Absolutely.

DANHAUSER: Is there a website where we could see your art?

CHEVALIER: Well, I had a website and now I don’t because I stopped doing that. But not right this minute. I’ll keep you posted.

DANHAUSER and LEITAO: Okay.

CHEVALIER: I do have a website for my posture/movement, but again I need to put a little bit more love into that website too.

DANHAUSER: We can put that in the notes on our website too so people can find that.

CHEVALIER: Okay, great. That would be good.

LEITAO: What about Hellbound: Hellraiser II? I know you just did a brief shot in that film so was that a day or two of filming?

CHEVALIER: Yeah, I think. If even a day. I think it was quite weird because when I saw it my face was huge on this big screen which I’d never seen. It’s quite scary to see yourself looking down at you.

LEITAO: Yeah! (laughs)

(Ryan laughs)

CHEVALIER: I also just remember sitting on a chair and the camera coming in as close as possible. So it was quite a weird feeling of sitting there and saying your lines and then all of sudden you have a camera that’s in your face.

DANHAUSER: And then having a hand around your mouth.

LEITAO: Oh, yeah.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, and that too. Yeah, exactly. But no, it was fun to do.

LEITAO: It was iconic. To this day on the Nightbreed movie you still have a lot of fans out there—there’s two characters in the fans have really fallen in love with, one is Shuna Sassi—the one with the quills and the other one is Rachel.

CHEVALIER: Oh really! How cool is that. That’s great.

LEITAO: Even when Clive Barker wrote the little backstories for the characters in the book The Nightbreed Chronicles, he had the whole Nightbreed think about Rachel as the only beautiful one among them. So they think she’s a hostage to beauty and symmetry. So there you go.

CHEVALIER: Cool. I like that.

LEITAO: Yeah, that’s really cool. They had you falling in love with a werewolf in the backstory who’s supposed to be Babette’s father.

CHEVALIER: Oh, yeah? That’s quite interesting.

LEITAO: Yeah.

CHEVALIER: Was he cute?

(Ryan laughs)

LEITAO: Well, yes. I guess. You can still see him—

DANHAUSER: I don’t think we’ve seen him as a human but only as the wolf.

CHEVALIER: Yes, but was the wolf cute?

(Ryan laughs)

LEITAO: Oh yes. Absolutely. (laughs)

(laughter continues)

DANHAUSER: His name was Toledo.

CHEVALIER: Toledo. Great. Okay.

LEITAO: So there you go. Well, yeah I hope that you will be able to make to some of the screenings. I think they’re some being made in the United Kingdom right now. There’s one in Melbourne, Australia. There will also be another one at the Darlington, UK Arts Festival on the 8^th of May. So there’s going to be one there.

DANHAUSER: Oh, that’s right.

LEITAO: So, hopefully you’ll be able to make it to one of those screenings. I’m sure you’ll meet a lot of fans if you do.

CHEVALIER: That’d be good too. That’d be good too. It’s always nice.

LEITAO: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: You’ve spoken to Russell (Cherrington) haven’t you?

CHEVALIER: Briefly, by e-mail. He had another showing happening at the end of April.

DANHAUSER: I think when Remmy contacted me at that point it was right when there was going to be a screening. So it was a little late to try and get that arranged.

CHEVALIER: Yeah, yeah, but I’m sure I’ll be talking with them because I think it would be good to keep the voice consistent. If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: Absolutely.

DANHAUSER: We’ll be looking forward to hearing that.

CHEVALIER: Good.

LEITAO: So yeah, that’s great. We’d given up hope finding you for the movie and as a fan of the movie we were always thinking where are these actors now? What are they doing? Where their careers have taken them? We’re glad to have found you and talk to you a little bit. That was great!

CHEVALIER: Well, thank you. It was great talking to you guys. And we’ll try and get my voice back into the film. And get it going.

LEITAO: Alright.

DANHAUSER: Alright.

LEITAO: Keep up the creative stuff and let us know when you get the website up or any project that needs to be announced. We’ll do it.

CHEVALIER: Good. Well, thank you very much.

DANHAUSER: Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate that.