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Artist News
Iggy Pop to horrify (and steal eyes) in Sandman film
By Aly Barchi | Published on Friday 10 October 2014
Enter ‘The Sandman’ (and rockstar) Iggy Pop, who’s going to play a wrinkly serial killer of that alias in a nightmarish new Christmas film of that title. Aaaaand that’s it, I’m never sleeping again.
The planned horror movie, which has its own funding page on Indiegogo, carries the festive/terrifying tagline ‘Christmas is coming, and so is The Sandman’, and will feature a score by Claudio Simonetti of the band Goblin. Shooting is pencilled in for early 2015 in Ontario, Canada, though according to the Indiegogo blurb, some incoming ‘soft monies’ might bring it all forward.
And this is the juicy bit: the film is based – practically blares its billing – on the ‘REAL’ Sandman of ‘original German legend’, who steals the eyes of children who won’t go to sleep (wait a minute… gah!), and then feeds them to his children on the moon. Wait, I’ve changed my mind, I AM now going to go to sleep. Very early. Always.
‘Maestro Of Terror’ Snr Argento says: “Working with Iggy Pop is amazing! Such an interesting and intense personality! I would not even simply say ‘actor,’ that does not cover it. I would rather say ‘a unique presence!’”
Whilst Pop, an avid admirer of Argento, adds (with apt morbidity): “If I could play The Sandman for him it would make my life complete. I hope I have not just written my own epitaph”.
Equally terrifying to all this Sandman talk was Iggy Pop’s appearance on BBC Two’s ‘Newsnight’ last night ahead of his upcoming John Peel Lecture at this year’s Radio Festival, entitled ‘Free Music In A Capitalist Society’.
Actually, it wasn’t that scary. It was kind of interesting. Here’s what he had to say about his chosen topic for his speech: “When I started I was unaware of my fiduciary duty to make money for the record company, I was thinking about other things. Later, a few years in that became a problem because I was a disgrace to the industry. [So] I wanted to talk about the spirit of freedom and the idea of giving freely in a society which is getting dominated by one system, which is beginning to threaten other systems, because ultimately you’ve got to make a quick investment return for somebody that’s sitting somewhere collecting interest. And that’s fine, that’s a good system but maybe it’s a bit too successful sometimes and somebody should beat it back a bit. There are a lot of artists who go through this… in the visual arts world there’s a patronage and a gallery system”.
Asked if that made Apple a patron of U2, given that the tech firm just bunged the band a load of cash to give away their latest album to iTunes users, Pop responded: “That might be a sponsorship. I thought about this the other day and I thought gee, television shows are commonly sponsored by whoever sponsors these ads you see. That’s accepted… and for some reason when that comes over to music it’s a different feel. I’m not sure people are accepting of that”.
