Paul Kyriazi Interview
Hello Paul, thank you for taking time to answer some questions,
I just watched forbidden power, can you tell me how you came up with the idea?
Well Jeff, I’ve always liked stories where a regular man becomes empowered and then watch what he does with those powers. I remember the second
Star Trek episode Where No Man Has Gone Before where Gary Lockwood becomes empowered. Then there is The Twilight Zoneepisode Mr. Dingle the Strong empowered by aliens.
Another Zone episode called Prime Mover had Buddy Ebsen with telekinetic power that his friend exploits for gambling.
More recently; the movie Wolf where the easy going Jack Nicholson gets empowered by a wolf bite,
Limitless; Bradley Cooper empowered by drugs and LUCY where Scarlett Johanson is also empowered by drugs.
I really like those stories, but they were not entirerly satisfying to me. I couldn’t totally relate to those characters, so I wanted to do something as realistic as I could, givin the fact that the empowerment would have to be ‘unusual’. As Alfred Hitchcock said, “The hard thing in a screenplay is having to avoid the cliche.”
So, I didn’t want to empower my hero by drugs, animal bite or electrical shock.
I remembered in my life, and in the lives of some friends, being ‘empowered‘ by a newly met woman and then getting adicted to her.
So that thought brought me to the idea of ‘sexually transmitted power. Then of course I had to come up with the idea of how the woman got her power in the first place.
Once I figured that out, I was off and running with the story about a guy off and running after the woman to find out the secret of her power.
What made you get back in the directors chair for this movie after a absence from making movies?
After directing Omega Cop, the old downtown action theaters were being replaced by muti-plexes. Drive-in theaters were being closed down as well.
Those theaters were the bread and butter for independent movies. In fact, While making Omega Cop, Jaws opened and that started the nation-wide releases of big movies.
That too, left little room for lower budgeted action movies.
When I couldn’t get another movie financed, I turned three of my scripts into novels and then recorded them as full-cast audio books with movie stars that I had grown up watching, such as Rod Taylor, Robet Culp, David Hedison and 15 more. I was in heaven doing that for a number of years.
Recently, digital film-making started which meant cheaper budgets for movies. And then the big factor happened just a year ago;
Amazon started letting producers upload their own movies into their site.
I had my audio-books on Amazon for years with proceeds going directly into my bank.
In the past, I and other film-makers, would give our movies to distributors and never see a dime back. This even happened to big stars who produced movies such as Sean Connery.
And if James Bond can’t get what’s promised him, I would not be able to.
So those factors, and the fact that I was very passionate about the story of Forbidden Power. It was first a novella that I wrote, and then my screenplay.
So, I decided to finance the movie myself, film in 6K digital and ‘distribute it’via Amazon.
Of course, it was still risking during production were many things can go wrong and you run out of money. But I had incredible good luck with casting, the crew and the weather.
As far as risk goes, I always remember Edward G. Robinson in The Cincinnati Kid,after winning a large poker hand, saying,
“That’s what it call comes down to; Doing the wrong thing at the right time. Like life.”
For me, it was the wrong thing to risk so much on a movie, but the right time to do it.
With the way the movie ended. It is very open for a sequel, will there be one?
I already have the script written and it’s now just a matter of how fast the fan base will build for the first one to justify a sequel.
However, at some point I will be sure to make a seguel.
Do you have any idea where you want to take this universe you have created, is there an end goal?
As you saw in the first movie, there is an expanding group of people with a secret plan. So the stories that can come from this are limitless, if you’ll forgive the pun.
I also feel it would make a good TV series or mini-series.
I shall be sure to keep an eye out for any future projects, thank you for your time.
Nice talking with you, Jeff.
