Sneak preview of Chemical Wedding film in New York

Director and co-screenwriter Julian Doyle will be in NY to attend a sneak showing of the film, and to answer questions at the end of the film.

The showing will be held at Two Boots Pioneer Theatre for a midnight screening, 12:00 for 12:15 start on Sunday 15th June (technically morning of Monday 16th June)

The Two Boots Pioneer Theater is located at:
155 East 3rd Street (between Avenues A and B) - New York, New York
(212) 591-0434
http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/

advance tickets: click by showtime or call (800) 595 4849 (service charges apply)
Click here for a map

Subways and buses:
- F or V train to Lower East Side / Second Avenue. Exit toward 1st Avenue. Walk north (away from Houston) to 3rd street, then east just past Avenue A to 155 East 3rd.
- 9 or 21 bus to Houston Street and Avenue A. Walk north to 3rd Street. Turn east and go a few doors down to 155 East 3rd.
- 14A bus to 3rd street and Avenue A.
The 8 and 15 buses also come relatively close, as do these trains: 6 (Bleecker Street station), B and D (Grand Street), JMZ (Delancey / Essex), and L (1st Ave).

Click here for the location of the nearest parking lot

Tickets: $10.00, $6.50 members. indicated.

Chemical Wedding book now on sale

Jack Parsons was a brilliant chemist, member of Cal Tech propulsion unit that invented of the rocket fuel used for the US space flight to the moon. He was also a fanatical believer in the Magyck of Aleister Crowley the aging occultist who considered himself ‘The Beast’ incarnate.

In 1947 Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard were performing Crowley’s mystic rituals in a house in Pasadena, California. Parsons wrote excitedly to his occult leader, Crowley: “I have had the most devastating experience of my life. I have been in direct touch with One who is most Holy and Beautiful as mentioned in your ‘Book of the Law’. First instructions were received through Lafayette Ron Hubbard the seer. I have followed them to the letter. There was a desire for incarnation. I am to act as an instructor, guardian, guide for nine months; then it will be loosed on the world…”

Crowley wrote despairingly to a disciple about Parsons: “It appears that he has given away both his girl and his money to this writer of science fiction and is now invoking my ritual to produce a MOONCHILD. I am fairly frantic…”

Nine months later while being visited by two students from Cambridge, Aleister Crowley died of cardiac degeneration. Missing from his personal possessions was his magical diaries and his pocket-watch. His funeral took place in the Chapel of the Brighton Crematorium. The final rites were performed by the novelist Louis Marlowe reading extracts from Crowley’s ‘Book of the Law’. The Brighton Echo denounced the whole ceremony as a Black Mass.

In 1952 Jack Parsons was blown up in his laboratory in Pasadena. L. Ron Hubbard died on his yacht as leader of the Church of Scientology. But did the issue end with these three deaths? Would Crowley, as he claimed, ever return from death to rule the world? Why did US astronauts name a crater on the moon after Jack Parsons? Is L. Ron Hubbard really dead? What had been generated by the ceremony in California that seemed to signal Crowley’s demise? And what happened to the missing pocket-watch?

Unanswered questions till, late in the twentieth century, Dr. Joshua Mathers brought a ’state of the art ‘Interactive Suit’ from Cal Tech California to Cambridge in England to begin an experiment that, unknown to mankind, changed the course of our planet.

ISBN: 978-1906510-909

Read the Press Release - (Adobe Acrobat Reader Required)

Read the advance information on this book - (Adobe Acrobat Reader Required)

You can buy the book from Amazon.com by clicking below:

Chemcial Wedding Reviews

It’s highly entertaining, schlocky stuff with the bits of pop science thrown in (”I feel like Schroedinger’s Cat” etc) giving it even more of a b-movie feel. It might not be quite enough to forgive Bruce for ‘Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter’ but it does make you wonder if there’s anything the singer, jet pilot and champion fencer can’t do.
- Trevor Baker, Rocksound.

Click the ‘read more’ link below to read more reviews

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Chemical Wedding Soundtrack Out Now

Warner music Entertainment release the Chemical Wedding Soundtrack album in the UK today, Monday 26th May.

The CD, which is an eclectic musical cocktail, includes tracks from Iron Maiden and Bruce Dickinson, the original film score, dialogue excerpts and epic classical pieces.  It is structured so as to tell the story of the film from diabolical beginning to demonic end.

The original score was written by Bruce Dickinson, Dave Howman, Andre Jaquemin, and Rod Melvin, and can be bought from Play.com, What Records and all good record shops.

The full musical track listing runs :-

1. CHEMICAL WEDDING - BRUCE DICKINSON
2. MEET THE WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD - GEOFF BRETON & SEAN REA
3. HUSH, HUSH, HUSH, HERE COMES THE BOGEY MAN (Remastered) - HENRY HALL
4. YOUNG SYMONDS & YOUNG ALEX MEET CROWLEY - GEOFF BRETON, SEAN REA & JOHN SHRAPNEL
5. 50 YEARS I KEPT HIS WATCH - PAUL MCDOWELL
6. THE SUIT REVEALED (Score)
7. THE EVIL THAT MEN DO LIVES ON - THOMAS NELSTROP
8. MATHERS’ DREAM (Score)
9. SEXUAL MAGIC - SIMON CALLOW & JUD CHARLTON
10. AN ENCOUNTER WITH HIM - SIMON CALLOW & JUD CHARLTON
11. LIA MEETS MATHERS (Score)
12. SYMONDS INTRODUCES DR OLIVER HADDO - PAUL MCDOWELL
13. MESSIAH : PART 2 “HALLELUJAH” - HANDEL
14. HADDO’S LECTURE - SIMON CALLOW
15. SYMPHONY NO.40 IN G MINOR K550 : I MOLTO ALLEGRO - MOZART
16. HADDO’S EXPLANATION - SIMON CALLOW, RICHARD FRANKLIN & ROBERT ASHBY
17. THOSE COCKLESS WONDERS - SIMON CALLOW & LUCY CUDDEN
18. WHO IS IT YOU THINK I AM - SIMON CALLOW & JUD CHARLTON
19. CAN I PLAY WITH MADNESS - IRON MAIDEN
20. PROFESSOR IN SUIT THE JOURNEY - KAL WEBBER, JUD CHARLTON, TERRENCE BAYLER & JAMIE LISA JACQUEMIN
21. EVERY MAN & WOMAN IS A STAR  - SIMON CALLOW
22. FANLIGHT FANNY - GEORGE FORMBY
23. HADDO VISITS THE MYSTIC SHOP - SIMON CALLOW & LILLY DUMONT
24. THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE — JUD CHARLTON & LUCY CUDDEN
25. SIP THE WINE - THE CEREMONY — NATASHA FORD
26. SPARE SOME CHANGE — KARE SILVERSTEN
27. THE WICKER MAN - IRON MAIDEN
28. SEPERATION BY SKIN (Alchemical Mix) - EARTH LAB
29. SHE’S THINKING OF ME - SIMON CALLOW & JUD CHARLTON
30. PRODUCING A MOONCHILD — MIKE SHANNON & PAUL MCDOWELL
31. BEHOLD THE PLACE I HAVE LED YOU - SIMON CALLOW
32. HYPNOTIZING BRENT - PAUL MCDOWELL, TERRENCE BAYLER & KAL WEBER
33. THE CURIOUS CAT COMES WILLINGLY - SIMON CALLOW
34. HE WAS NEVER A CARPENTER - PAUL MCDOWELL & KAL WEBER
35. MATHERS ENTERS THE SUIT - PAUL MCDOWELL & KAL WEBER
36. TIME AFTER ALL IS ONLY RELATIVE - SIMON CALLOW
37. WHERE’S THE DOOR - KAL WEBER & JAMIE LISA JACQUEMIN
38. HOLY UNION - SIMON CALLOW
39. THE LAST FIGHT (Score)
40. PRÉLUDE À L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE - DEBUSSY
41. FELT OUT OF PLACE - MIKE SHANNON & PAUL MCDOWELL
42. MAN OF SORROWS - BRUCE DICKINSON

You can buy the Chemical Wedding soundtrack from Amazon.com by clicking the link below:

Bruce in Cannes

Click the link below to watch a video of Bruce arriving in Cannes taken from BBC:

Bruce Arriving in Cannes

Metal god, actor, novelist, swordsman, pilot, DJ - and now screenwriter. IRON MAIDEN’s Bruce Dickinson is a man of many parts, and this weekend he showed up in Cannes to show off a new film called Chemical Wedding. Dickinson, a registered commercial airline pilot, flew himself to the south of France, along with a bunch of journalists, fans, and suitably attired hangers-on (they carried tote bags bearing the legend “Bruce Air Flight 666″).

There’s something very Iron Maiden about Wedding, dabbling as it does in the occult world of early-20th-century mystic Aleister Crowley, finding several excuses to liberate young women from their clothes, and incorporating dialogue that sounds as if it was lifted from the Number of the Beast’s lyric sheet. It would all be too ridiculous if Dickinson were not such a nice, unassuming chap - the 49-year-old product of a minor public school with a penchant for satanic imagery. When Dickinson sits down with Chemical Wedding director Julian Doyle (a veteran of Iron Maiden videos and Terry Gilliam’s editing room) the pair clearly get on like a house on fire. Dickinson says Chemical Wedding has been in the works for 15 years, having passed through a number of producers; in the end, he got the thing off the ground himself.

“I started getting into Aleister Crowley when I was 15,” he says. “He was the first rock star.” He adds that Chemical Wedding is “Withnail & I meets The Wicker Man”, which must have sounded good in those pitch meetings.

Without Dickinson, Chemical Wedding would have remained one of the submerged nine-tenths of gunk films clogging up the Cannes film market. Hampered by ropey performances, it never reaches the levels of weirdness and humour it is aiming at. But Dickinson, game as ever, can’t resist a final, harmless blasphemy: “We bring Crowley back for three days. Like Christ. Only better.” Get your devil-horn salute ready now.”

Q&A with Bruce Dickinson

LONDON (Billboard), by Paul Sexton - Bruce Dickinson made his live debut with Iron Maiden at the end of 1981. He had viewed the group’s early emergence from a ringside seat as lead singer with Samson, another of the bands in what the rock press dubbed “the new wave of British heavy metal.”

Since then, he has been not only Iron Maiden’s definitive lead singer, but an author, sportsman, a solo artist for five years in the 1990s, a radio DJ and a pilot. Before the May 12 release of “Somewhere Back in Time,” a compilation of the band’s ’80s hits, and in the middle of the most successful global tour of the band’s career, which launched February 1 in Mumbai, India, he sat down with Billboard to discuss his, and Maiden’s, life and times.

Q: When you joined Maiden, how aware had you been of the band?

Bruce Dickinson: We effectively grew up together, musically, because I was in Samson, and all the bands were aware of everybody else, we all gigged together. It’s fair to say Maiden had this momentum about them. It was like standing in front of a truck. They had that energy before they got the deal (with label EMI).

Q: But that took quite a while to build, didn’t it?

Dickinson: It did, but a lot of that was Steve (Harris, bassist and founding member) trying to get the personnel right, trying to get the commitment from people. Once the deal was signed, the press leapt all over it. “Running Free” came out, and it cunningly snuck in under the radar of all the punk stuff. They must have had to restrain Steve, because he absolutely hated punk. The first album (”Iron Maiden,” 1980) went to No. 4, which was an astonishing feat for a band like that.

Q: What were the circumstances of you replacing Paul Di’anno as lead singer?

Dickinson: Things with Paul hadn’t been going terribly well, and they’d made the decision to get rid of him. So they came and took a peek at me. Clive (Burr, Maiden’s then-drummer) had been in Samson for three years, and (the album) “Killers” was being made at Zomba Studios (in northwest London), which back then was Morgan Studios.

We were in Morgan, and Maiden were in the (studio) opposite. So we used to go to the pub and have a few beers and chat. I went over and listened to the Maiden record and Clive would come over and listen to ours.

Q: Had you looked across at the band and thought, “I could do that?”

Dickinson: Oh, I did that the first time I saw Maiden play, in Camden (north London) at the Music Machine. It was like a four-act bill, we were supposed to be headlining and Maiden were third on the bill. They turned up and it was clearly their audience. Everybody left as soon as they’d finished.

I stood at the back watching and thought, “Christ, this is a great band. Imagine what I could do if I was singing with that band.”

Q: It seems as though Maiden developed a common cause because the band members were, and still are, outsiders.

Dickinson: We are still outsiders. We always will be, because that’s our essential nature. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go to vacuous showbiz parties. It’d be a nightmare. It’s just not what we’re about. The show’s the thing. Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.

Q: How did you develop your personal stagecraft?

Dickinson: It’s one thing to project a confident air to the back of a club. It’s another to do the same thing in a theatre, then an arena, and it’s quite another thing to do it in a festival. Before the days of camera and side screens, you were just a little speck. It was a rapid learning curve.

My aim as a frontman is always to try and shrink the venue, if you can, to turn that football stadium into the world’s smallest club. At least you have to try. The essence of the Maiden experience is that we want to include everybody in it.

Q: When “The Number of the Beast” hit No. 1 on the U.K. charts in April 1982, it knocked Barbra Streisand’s “Love Songs” off the top. It was almost anti-establishment.

Dickinson: Yes, we had a bit of a history of that. With “Bring Your Daughter … to the Slaughter” (in January 1991) we did a service to the nation by knocking Sir Cliff (Richard) off the Christmas No. 1. I’m still waiting for my (royal honor as a) C.B.E. for that.

Q: You personally have always taken on challenges, whether it’s fencing, broadcasting, being an author or being a pilot.

Dickinson: That’s because I just have an insatiable curiosity about the nature of things, and I think the best way to find out about something is to try and do it. Flying wasn’t on a list. It would be awfully good from the point of view of people writing about us if there was a plan, but there isn’t.

The movie we’re just doing (”Chemical Wedding”) stems from conversations in the pub with Julian Doyle (Dickinson’s co-writer on the film and its director) 15 years ago. As it happens, we’re now having the most successful tour in the band’s history, the band is a global phenomenon, and in the same year, we get to release a feature film, followed shortly afterwards by another feature film with a documentary, DVD, all the rest of it. … It looks like a plan. It’s not. It’s totally random.

Q: So you’re probably not very good at sitting around daydreaming.

Dickinson: I’m very good at daydreaming. Ask any of my schoolteachers.

Q: In the period when you were out of the band (1993-98), did your solo work fulfill you?

Dickinson: The reason I left Maiden was that I genuinely didn’t know if I was getting that buzz anymore from doing new stuff. Nothing bad happened, there were no disagreements. The machine ran like clockwork, and that’s when I started to get really antsy.

Also, the cult status of the band meant that whatever you did, people would go, in a patronizing fashion, “Oh, nice effort.” I didn’t think they’d have any problem finding another singer, but their subsequent career path hit a few oily patches on the road.

My own career fell off a cliff, and I decided I’d have one go at completely reinventing (myself), so everybody thought I’d gone raving mad, and I came up with an album called “Skunkworks” (1996). It got great reviews, but the record company wasn’t sure.

Then I did a record called “The Chemical Wedding” (1998), which was digging really deep into territory I’d never been to before, but keeping a rock sensibility.

I think it’s fair to say it was a fairly groundbreaking album, did really well sales-wise and I could see myself having a successful global cottage industry as an artist. Clearly it was never going to rival Maiden. But at the same time, looking at Maiden, it was obvious something was going to crack.

Q: How did you develop as an artist during those solo years?

Dickinson: I was a much deeper musician by the time I got to “Chemical Wedding” than I ever was during the latter two or three albums with Maiden. I was much more serious about it. Roy Z, who was my producer and collaborator, said, “You’ve got to go back. You’ve done it, you’ve changed yourself around, it’s worked. But the world needs Iron Maiden.”

And I thought, “It does.” Then we had a meeting, myself and Steve. He was a bit leery at first. His main thing was wanting to know, if I came back, that I wasn’t going to leave again. I said, “Quite the contrary — if we glue it all back together again, we could do stuff that’s better than we ever thought possible. It could be bigger than we ever dreamed of.”

And that’s pretty much the way it’s turned out. It’s a really exciting place to be at the moment.

Q: So how would you compare Maiden now with the group of, say, 25 years ago?

Dickinson: The way we play the songs now is in many ways more powerful, it’s more under control. It’s not like somebody running so fast that their legs are running away underneath them, which is kind of what it was like in the ’80s. This is a mature runner now who knows the pace and has always got something in the tank for the sprint when it’s appropriate. We’ve reached that sweet spot.

Chemical Wedding Review by LASHTAL.COM

LASHTAL.COM (The Home of Aleister Crowley Society) has reviewed Chemical Wedding on Monday, May 5th, 2008. The website gave it a positive review as you can read it yourself by clicking the link below. (more…)

Chemical Wedding UK cinema dates

SHOWCASE Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dudley, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newham, Nottingham, Paisley, Peterborough, Reading, Teeside and Walsall
www.showcasecinemas.co.uk / 0871 220 1000

Apollo Regent Street (London) - www.apollocinemas.co.uk / 0871 220 6000

Click the link below to view the official film poster.

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Bruce Dickinson To Self-Publish ‘Chemical Wedding’ Book.

Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson and film director Julian Doyle have opted to self-publish the book tie-in for their forthcoming Chemical Wedding motion picture.

Written by Bruce Dickinson, front man of the legendary Iron Maiden, and Julian Doyle (Time Bandits, Life of Brian), Chemical Wedding is an occult thriller starring Simon Callow inspired by the life of the infamous Edwardian mystic, Aleister Crowley. It will go on general release in cinemas on the 23rd May.

The film tie-in will be self-published by Dickinson and Doyle under the Matador self-publishing imprint to coincide with the film’s release.

Dickinson, who has a small cameo role in the film, has stated that “On several levels, I think it will be nice for them [Iron Maiden fans] to see somebody from Maiden doing something else that gets the band’s name out there and also potentially gets a bit of respect for heavy metal and all the rest of it…. But, in addition, I think they’ll just enjoy it. It’s a rollicking good story.”

Synopsis

At Cambridge University a groundbreaking experiment integrates the human brain with a super-computer using a state-of-the art ‘interactive suit’. One of the Cambridge boffins is an obsessive follower of the turn-of- the-century occult leader, Aleister Crowley, and has reduced Crowley’s rituals to a series of equations and entered them in to the system. Bumbling academic, Professor Haddo (Simon Callow) is the willing volunteer, desperate to get inside the mind of the long-dead Crowley. The computer feeds directly into Haddo’s brain, transforming him from a shy and stuttering academic into the charismatic but sexually depraved Crowley who wreaks havoc around the Cambridge campus. Haddo believes himself to be the reincarnation of Crowley and as he plays out Crowley’s rituals, his associates realise he has knowledge that only the real Crowley could have. Could this be Aleister Crowley reincarnated, and if so, how do they send him back to the hell from which he came?

Matador

Matador is a leading UK-based self-publishing services provider offering a flexible, high quality service to authors wanting to self-publish. Recommended in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2008, we set high standards in the content, production and marketing of self-published books. We pride ourselves on offering a quality service to authors, who include David Hewson (Saved), Caro Fraser (Breath of Corruption) and Polly Courtney (Golden Handcuffs). The company selectively helps authors self-publish about 150 new titles a year.

Matador – serious about self-publishing

http://www.troubador.co.uk/matador

World premiere of Chemical Wedding in London

If you want to check out the world premiere of Chemical Wedding, then get yourself along to SCI-FI LONDON on Sunday 4th May.

Bruce will also be appearing after the film to do a Question & Answer session, along with writer/director Julian Doyle and star Simon Callow.

Tickets are available via http://www.apollocinemas.co.uk or from 0207 451 9944

Find out more at the Sci-Fi London and Chemical Wedding websites.

Chemical Wedding will be on general release at the end of May - we’ll bring your details of when and where nearer the time.