Willeke van Ammelrooy

Willeke van Ammelrooy met Christopher Lee when both were jury members at a film festival in Chicago. She introduced him to her husband, opera singer Marco Bakker and the two hit it off since Lee is a renowned opera lover. Because of the similar look of the two men (tall, gray haired), Willeke thought it would be funny if Lee played Bakker's father in a picture. Flemish writer/director 'Frank van Laecke' was approached to write a script called 'Blooper' and Van Ammelrooy did a re-write around 1988. It concerned an opera singer called Billy Blooper (to be played by Bakker) who learns his father (Lee) is a vampire whose teeth had gone rotten after eating too many sweets. Now whenever he bites anyone, instead of turning into a vampire, they became half human, half chicken. Lee tentatively agreed to appear, and Van Ammelrooy wanted to co-star and direct. Unfortunately for her, the project never got off the ground despite interest from producers Alain Keytsman and Wim Verstappen. The script remains unproduced.

I feel like a director at least as much as I feel like an actress. Directors are often more closely committed to their films than actors, who are just hired to do something and then go on to the next project. As a director one has to fight for one's film, it is one's child after all.