‘Passion Play’ Director Mitch Glazer On Rourke, Murray and Megan Fox With Wings

A sensual and mysterious Megan Fox – with wings. That alone should warrant multiple film viewings, but throw in some obsessed Mickey Rourke, sassy Kelly Lynch (love her!) and unsettling Bill Murray and you’ve got the new to DVD/Blu-ray flick “Passion Play” hitting shelves on May 31 from Image Entertainment. Rourke plays a washed-up jazz musician on the run from gangster Murray who happens upon angelic carnival bird woman Fox and sees a way to possibly wash his dirty slate clean. Rife with many twists and turns in a noir world where nothing is as it seems, the film is the directorial debut of “Scrooged” and “The Recruit” screenwriter Mitch Glazer. (Who is also married to the ever-timeless Lynch – lucky dog!) Starpulse got a chance to chat one-on-one with Glazer about his journey getting the film to the screen, securing his eclectic cast and the insight behind having a lead character with wings.

Megan Fox has a very ethereal quality in this film that we haven’t seen from her before – was that a conscious decision on your part during the casting and shooting?
Mitch Glazer: The woman I met was so in character – she’d read the script three or four times – that when we met for lunch it’s a version of what you see on screen. Now I don’t know how much of that is her in real life, but she came so prepared and with such a fully formed take on the character. I mean we’re putting her between Academy Award nominated actors Mickey and Bill and she just killed them and she never broke for the entire shoot.

Can you talk about Megan Fox’s wings for a moment – how did they either help or hinder in terms of making the film?
Mitch Glazer: I always wanted them to be not angelic and not demonic, they were kind of funky and real. We had some practical wings that were made with swan feathers and they were used in a few shots and then the rest were the CG ones. Truthfully it was very ambitious – there were two hundred effects shots and we had a fourteen million dollar budget. Part of the deal was the wings had to be real and it’s a struggle because without the money that you can really throw at CG when you really need it becomes specific and surgical about how you use them. But we had prop wings for Megan to use in scenes that were kind of behind her at times and I thought it was wonderful – it added another dimension to the movie.