Simon Baker in Sex and Death 101 Courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment

After unleashing the brilliant, homicidal high school humor of Heathers onto stunned audiences in 1989, writer Daniel Waters had trouble recreating the dark magic of his legendary first screenplay. His follow-up script, the Andrew Dice Clay vehicle The Adventures of Ford Fairlaine, was only eclipsed in both critical and commercial failure by his next writing project: the universally derided Hudson Hawk. Waters went on to write the sequel to Tim Burton's Batman, Batman Returns, in 1992, but by 1993, after he wrote the Wesley Snipes/Sly Stallone sci-fi action epic Demolition Man, he disappeared into obscurity, a rising young star who managed to squander all of his early promise in only five years.

Now this self-professed recluse has resurfaced to direct his second picture — an offbeat sexual farce called Sex and Death 101, which he also wrote. The story deals with a soon-to-be-married bachelor named Roderick Blank, whose life is upended by an email containing the names of everyone he will have sex with. Problem is, the list doesn’t end with the name of his betrothed. After calling off his wedding to investigate the origins of the mysterious email, Blank finds himself falling for a dangerous femme fatale played by Winona Ryder, and has a great deal of sex along the way.

Daniel Waters emerged from his cave long enough to talk about why he initially thought Winona Ryder wasn't pretty enough to be cast in Heathers, why he advocates drinking on set and how he resembles Edith Bunker.

Warning: There are some ending spoilers.

"Exhaustion. It sounds like what it is," says Winona's character in the movie. How exhausted were you at the end of this project since you were both writer and director?
Very exhausted. Writing is a pleasure for me. I mean, I take a very long time to write all my scripts, but I do it at my own pace. I have a unique system of naps that I take between work sessions. And then it's very warm and comfy, and the editing room is also a warm and comfy cave. But when I'm directing I feel like the cave man is going to go out that one time a year and go kill a wooly mammoth with a spear. I've learned to enjoy myself doing it but I'm never relaxed. It's just not my comfort zone. And it's amazing just on the smallest molecular level how things can get lost in translation going from your mind to somebody else who's on your wavelength almost completely. It feels like you're making the movie brick by brick as a director, [so] definitely exhaustion comes in.

You have described your sensibility as Luis Buñuel-meets-Caddyshack. Can you expand on that?
I see too many movies. Last year I saw 311 first run films in the theater. And I rate them in order, too. Not including repertory films — that puts me over 400. I don't want to step on the same landmine that another movie stepped on, and so I end up creating my own mixture of tones. It's a very cracked sensibility.

NEXT: Simon Baker as the perfect ladies' man...

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