Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on September 28, 2015, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The wild, untold story of Cannon Films (as the subtitle puts it) is recounted in hugely entertaining fashion in Electric Boogaloo. Below, we continue our interview with the documentary’s director Mark Hartley (see part one here).
Released by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, which is also issuing a 10-disc set of notable Cannon movies, Electric Boogaloo charts the rise and fall of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (pictured above) and the company they took over in 1979. A flood of films, largely exploitationers in the action, horror and comedy genres but also including prestige fare from legendary international directors, followed before the Israeli cousins’ reckless overambition led to Cannon’s demise in 1989. Amidst over 100 onscreen interviews and copious clips, the documentary offers peeks at projects that existed only in Golan and Globus’ minds…
Electric Boogaloo’s graphics include posters for any number of Cannon projects that never came to fruition; you could probably make a whole documentary just about those.
You could, but you wouldn’t have any film footage from them, so it would be a lot of talking heads! But yeah, there were a lot of films that got away. When we spoke with the two guys [Roy Langsdon and John Platt] who wrote the lambada movie The Forbidden Dance for Menahem’s subsequent 21st Century Film Corporation, they told us that they opened Variety one day and saw an ad for Kingdom of the Spiders II, starring and directed by William Shatner, which they had writers’ credits on—and they had never even heard of the project.
Although you didn’t get Golan and Globus, you did land Christopher Pearce, one of the key Cannon executives.
It’s interesting; because we didn’t have Menahem and Yoram, we needed someone who was part of Cannon’s inner sanctum, and Christopher Pearce was second in control there. A researcher called Rosemary Long spent endless time ringing pretty much every single Christopher Pearce in the phone book, from Australia. That was the other thing: All the preproduction and preparation on this film happened in Australia, which is quite incredible in itself.
Anyway, we got Christopher Pearce, and I kept hoping it was the real guy, not some nutjob who was happy to turn up for an interview, no matter whether he was the right Christopher Pearce or not. And it turned out he was the correct one, and the reason why that was so amazing is that we had heard from a lot of people that Christopher Pearce was dead. From what I understand, even his ex-wives thought he was deceased. So when we did subsequent interviews and people asked, “Oh, who have you been speaking to?” and we mentioned Christopher Pearce, a lot of them made us pull out photo proof that he was still alive! That was quite a get for us.
Had he intentionally tried to lead people to believe he was dead?
I think he just vanished to Florida, and once you vanish to Florida, you know, most people assume you’re dead anyway!
You’ve seen the Golan/Globus-sanctioned documentary The Go-Go Boys, I assume…
I have seen The Go-Go Boys; I waited until we’d totally finished our film before I saw it. I didn’t want it to influence us at all, or make me want to change things or not include footage because they’d used it. I just wanted Electric Boogaloo to be the film I wanted to make. And it’s interesting that we do share a fair amount of archive material, but it seems like it’s under a different set of circumstances.
Was there anything archival that you weren’t allowed to use?
There was lots of it; we could hardly get any Israeli footage of Menahem and Yoram pre-Cannon, because Yoram controlled it all, and we weren’t allowed to use it. So certainly, there was a lot of material we couldn’t get our hands on, which does feature in The Go-Go Boys. But we unearthed a lot of American footage they hadn’t. It’s funny; people talk about The Go-Go Boys being “the official Cannon documentary,” and it’s actually not. In a way, that’s the unauthorized one, because MGM owns the Cannon name, the logo and the footage, and we licensed all that from MGM. So ours is the legitimate, sanctioned Cannon documentary—just not sanctioned by the Go-Go Boys. It’s sanctioned by the people who own Cannon. We cleared every bit of footage in it.
Was there anything contentious that got cut from Electric Boogaloo?
The stuff that was cut out was nothing overly controversial; it was just trimmed for time. I mean, the movie runs 104 minutes, and that’s longer than my other documentaries; I couldn’t push it any further. It’s funny—there’s been some backlash against Electric Boogaloo from huge Cannon fans, who feel it’s…not unfair to Cannon, but not reverent enough. I believe it’s fair to the true story of Cannon, and certainly, when you’ve got 100 people who worked there telling the story, who are you going to believe?
People also ask, “Why isn’t it longer?” We’re used to seeing these documentaries on movies now, like the Friday the 13th one [Crystal Lake Memories], which run four hours. But they’re employing fair use; they don’t have to pay for every second of footage. And when you’re paying for every second of footage, it’s very hard to get producers to let you make a 104-minute film. But yeah, everyone goes, “Well, why isn’t Bloodsport in it?” Well, it’s in the deleted scenes, along with Street Smart and other movies.
That was one thing I missed in the film—the fact that for all Golan and Globus’ reputation as schlockmeisters, Cannon movies like Street Smart, and also Operation Thunderbolt and Runaway Train, got Oscar nominations. Was that something you ever wanted to address?
Well, the problem with Runaway Train was, [director] Andrei Konchalovsky was going to be involved, but… Electric Boogaloo went through a very long process. It was originally going to get financed a few years ago, and the money fell apart at the last minute. At that point, I had Konchalovsky on board, I had Michael Winner on board, I had Sylvia Kristel on board. In the meantime, [Hartley’s 2014 release] Patrick: Evil Awakens got going, and then RatPac Documentary Films came in and replaced that financing for Electric Boogaloo, so we actually have RatPac to thank for getting it made.
But in the meantime, unfortunately, Konchalovsky’s daughter had been in a horrible car crash, and he was basically in a vigil at her bedside, so we couldn’t get him anymore. And Michael Winner had died, which was the most tragic thing for me about this project—that I didn’t get to talk to him. Winner was going to be, in a way, the whole narrative drive for Electric Boogaloo; he was going to be the Tarantino or the Landis. And Sylvia Kristel passed away as well.
So because we couldn’t get Konchalovsky, and we couldn’t get Jon Voight, Eric Roberts or Rebecca De Mornay, there was no one to talk about Runaway Train. It’s funny that one of the most revered Cannon films doesn’t feature in this documentary nearly as much as other, lesser movies.
