For October, I’m going to share some anecdotes that aren’t too well known from my various movies, all of which can be seen for free at bit.ly/kkftubi and are very appropriate to Halloween watching.
QUICK JUMP LINKS
Hunting Humans
I was 28 years old when I wrote “Hunting Humans”. I had about $7,000 in cash from selling comics on eBay as well as about $4k I could charge on a credit card. We were shooting on 16mm film, so that wasn’t going to get us very far. I owned a comic store that barely made ends meet.
I made the decision to move out of my apartment and sleep on a futon in the back of my store in order to raise the few thousand dollars more that I needed to be able to get the movie in the can. (but that wouldn’t be enough money to develop the film or transfer it to video for editing)
Sleeping on a futon sucks. Waking up to a store that was open wasn’t fun. I’d peer out the back window to see if my employee had any customers. If not, I’d sneak out and go get a shower at my parents’ or my girlfriend’s parents’ house. If we had customers, I had to wait until they left to make my getaway.
The nights on that futon were long. I had no TV there, but I had internet--well, what there was to have in 1999. And plenty of time to consider whether I was wasting a lot of money on something that would be terrible or maybe never get finished. It was going to be a $24,000 gamble for a guy with no savings of any kind.
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Fear of Clowns
I get asked a lot--why is your clown shirtless in “Fear of Clowns”? Sometimes it’s just a curious fan, other times it’s someone who clearly finds the choice ridiculous. I’m not even saying they’re wrong.
Thing is, I’m not now nor have I ever been afraid of clowns. Sure, the clown doll in Poltergeist is freaky. Sure, Pennywise is awesomely creepy. However, in real life they don’t bother me at all.
I wrote a script where the first real good look you get a Shivers reads like this:
"The clown stands there revealed in the light. Like Lynn's worst nightmare, like the clown in the painting Tuck pointed out, the one that Lynn paints often, the one from her dream.
His pupil-less eyes, however, are black as night. The soulless eyes of a shark."
Weird, right? No mention of shirtless in those ugly sentences. (hey, it was a long time ago) Those who saw the promo video we shot to raise money for the film might also notice that the Shivers we used then--friend Dennis Long(pictured above)--had a full clown costume on.
That’s because I hadn’t intended to make him shirtless, but we cast Mark Lassise in the role and the dude was pretty buff. My personal perspective was...I wouldn’t be afraid of this clown if I saw him. But if I saw this clown with no shirt, I’d be like...that dude will break me in half...
So I remember getting my brain trust together and asking them what they thought. Nobody was super against it. I think a couple people thought it a bit odd, but nobody could tell me it wouldn’t work. I also knew it would definitely set us apart. At the time there was pretty much only It and Killjoy as far as other horror clowns went, and both of them had shirts.
That’s why, as far as I know, Shivers the Clown was the only shirtless clown to exist until Rob Zombie put a couple into his movie 31. (and he put a clown in there with a spiked bat for a weapon, which I had in Fear of Clowns 2. Great minds think alike, or is he stealing from me lol?)
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Hunting Humans
Lead actor Rick Ganz’s life was very complicated at the start of our shoot on “Hunting Humans”. He was at the beginning of a divorce, so was moving out of he and his wife’s apartment during the first week of shooting.
On day one we went to shoot at his parents’ house in Severna Park but a transformer blew out in the neighborhood--just my luck. We had to wait a couple of hours for the power to come back on, but then Rick got a call that his dad had had a heart attack that day and was just now coming home from the hospital so we’d have to clear out of our location. What we had shot was all we were going to get there.
Yes, welcome to Day Ones of most shoots. We had no backup location so we decided to head to Rick’s apartment that he was moving out of to try to fake that as the interior of the house we just shot in. Carpets and wall paints didn’t match but I tried to use a few tricks to make the audience not notice. (like, bridging a cut from the first house to a dark room in the apartment where the light comes on. It’s enough distraction that I don’t think the audience catches on)
Rick’s soon-to-be-ex-wife showed up in the middle of shooting and demanded to know what we were all doing there. (just as we were about to shoot the naked-girl-in-the-shower scene) It wasn’t fun, and it’s a credit to Rick at all that he acted so well in the middle of all that personal turmoil.
We only missed one scene that day. I got four hours of sleep that night before I was back up and at it the next morning.
It took me a while to learn that you should schedule Day Ones very lightly and try to make them easy--they can derail your momentum and morale if things go wrong and you fall behind that early.
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Fear of Clowns 2
To continue with Day One stories, I bring you Fear of Clowns 2. Let me start by saying that I aimed pretty high on this movie. Our budget was still low, but it was the largest budget I ever worked with. I wasn’t happy with the way the first movie had turned out other than the last 25 minutes. I would put a lot more action and murder in this movie.
Day One had us illegally breaking into Six Flags America through a hole in the fence I’d found when location scouting out there. I wasn’t going to get to close to the actual rides--I really just needed the clowns in the same shot as some of those big coasters.
But I knew we’d be dodging security to do it, with a minimal cast of the clowns plus Johnny Alonso, and a minimal crew. However, all of the issues about trespassing faded into the background when it turned out that Mark couldn’t keep the sclera contacts in his eyes. (a sclera lens is a lens that covers the entire eye, not just the pupil) These were a new pair I’d gotten him, since the pair from the original FOC were like 3 years old by this time. Something about the new pair bothered his eyes and made them water, and that water would smear his clown makeup. After a while he was able to get one lens in and keep it, but his other eye was bloodshot and watery, and he couldn’t put the lens back in.
It got to the point where I had to just say screw it--he’s got the one black eye and we’ll have to shoot around it. Nowadays I could CGI the eye in without too much hassle, but back then, nope. We were shooting a lot of profile and from-behind shots of the clown.
The rest of that day went bad. We fell behind. I was embarrassed to have to duck for cover whenever security drove by, because this was my first time working with Alonso, who has worked on real productions like One Tree Hill and Dawson’s Creek, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have to duck for cover when security drives by on One Tree Hill and Dawson’s Creek.
We ran out of time and had some scenes to pickup, which is a terrible way to start the shoot. The one moment I remember more vividly than any that day is when we got dinner, and I took mine and went away from everybody. I stared at that schedule and my shot list, and tried to figure out how I was going to make it all work.
Disguising despair with confidence is a valuable talent to learn as a no-budget director. I got pretty good at it.
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Bounty
Man, are there a lot of stories to tell from this movie. By far the most insane shoot I’ve ever attempted, which is why there are so many great stories. We were stopped by cops pretty much every night, sometimes more than once.
I guess that happens when you strap guns and badges on people and have them run around the streets of Glen Burnie and Baltimore without permits or permission of any kind. (well, other than the sidewalk permit I’d gotten by lying and saying we were shooting a documentary on homeless people called “Under An Open Sky”)
Sidebar: Yes, I broke a lot of laws and lied a lot to get things done. However, this is not me saying that YOU should do that, because you’re probably not as good at it as I am and you’ll get caught.
Anyway, it all started when I wrote a found-footage film based on my love of Cops and Dog The Bounty Hunter. I wrote it specifically for Tom Proctor, who I’d worked with on FOC2, and he tells the funny story in the Making Of about how I suckered him in by sending him only the first 25 pages.
After I’d finished the script and was starting preproduction, I knew we’d have some big hurdles ahead of us. First, it was a smaller budget than any movie I’d worked on previously. The distribution landscape had changed--nobody was paying advances anymore since Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were on their way to non-existence.
I had to figure out how to outfit a trio of guys so they were believable as bounty hunters--guns, vests, badges, all the equipment, an office--and then send them out into the streets of Glen Burnie and Baltimore without getting us all arrested or killed. I talked with two cop buddies who both said almost exactly the same thing: “If you get arrested, I don’t know you.” (so don’t name drop them) They added: “You’re probably going to get shot though.”
I’ll tell you how both those things almost happened in one of the later posts. Either way, I look back at the balls of doing what we did...not sure I have those balls any more. (figuratively)
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Fear of Clowns 2
I have literally NEVER told this story publicly. It’s slightly embarrassing but I hope we’re all removed enough from it that nobody’s too bothered. We are coming to the end on this shoot. We have the big showdown where Shivers get shot and possibly killed by Detective Peters, who is mortally wounded. He’s got Shivers’ axe stuck in his side.
Lynn is supposed to run over to him where he’s bleeding out. She tries to comfort him. He tries to explain why he did what he did. (I’m not spoiling that even though the movie is over 15 years old) Then, as he’s about to die, he asks her to kiss him. That was the scene. His last wish is a kiss from the woman who he’s had a thing for for years.
And a day or two before that scene, Frank got a cold sore on his lip.
Calm down. Yeah, we all hate cold sores. I’ve had them. You’ve probably had them. WebMD estimates 90% of people get at least one cold sore in their life.
So obviously Jackie’s leery of kissing him, because as we all know, cold sores are contagious. Frank doesn’t want to do it either, because he doesn’t want to give it to her any more than she wants it.
Here I am, writer guy, trying to figure out something I can live with if he doesn’t get that kiss. In my mind, it was the perfect way for him to go out. A little sad, a little happy.
In the end, I decided to get the kiss anyway except their lips would never touch. It’s very dark and I had D.P. David Mun take the right angle so you can’t see it. It’s not quite as touching as it would be if you saw it, but I think it works okay.
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Let’s talk nudity, shall we?
I’ve had nudity in all seven of my films. (partial male and female nudity in my first film, a variety of female nudity in the rest) Not only is it basically a tradition in horror movies--when they say you need the three B’s in a movie, they mean Blood, Boobs and Beasts--but when I was starting out it was basically required by the distributors. Nowadays it’s not required, and I even question it in my head. Back then horror movies were a guaranteed place to see some sex and nudity, but now you can get that by turning on your computer and directing it to millions of web sites. At least, that’s what I hear, insert winky face emogee.
So now it’s really ONLY tradition that has me doing it, but I find--and man, do I feel old saying this--that sometimes nudity gets in the way of the story I’m trying to tell. It always feel shoehorned in when I’m writing.
But hey, maybe you’re a filmmaker who doesn’t feel that way and I have no problem with that. I still like seeing boobs in movies(sue me), so the more the merrier. My only advice would be this: When you’re shooting nudity, make it the first scene you shoot with the actor who gets naked.
Doesn’t have to be day one, but let’s say you’ve cast actress Gertrude to get naked in a scene. You shoot ten pages with Gertude, and then move to the nudity. The actress decides she no longer wants to do nudity. You are stuck with either recasting and reshooting, or removing nudity from your movie.
If you shoot the nudity first, it either happens or you immediately fire the actor/actress and make those scenes pickups while you recast.
This has never happened to me, but I was always aware it COULD. That’s why on Hunting Humans we shot the shower scene on day one. On Fear of Clowns we shot the scene where actress Lauren Pellegrino gets naked and murdered as her first scene. THEN we shot the rest of the stuff.
And hey, while I’m handing out advice, this seems pretty obvious but I know a handful of filmmaker friends who this became an issue for: Before you shoot a single frame on any actor/actress(nudity or not), get them to sign the release. Don’t wait until after you’ve shot their scene. You’ll forget or they could then refuse and try to renegotiate their contract.
Every day we shoot with a new actor/actress, my production manager Zig gets a release signed. Every. Time.
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Music
I count myself lucky in many ways but none moreso than the music I’ve been able to get into my films.
I think it’s gotten better over the years, but music in movies is still under-appreciated. I’m a massive fan of orchestral music, which is why I’ve always sought it out.
For instance, on my first film I put out on the internet newsgroups that I was looking for someone who could do orchestral stuff for my movie. The crazy part is some of the submissions I got. Some of these guys are BIG names in video game music now. Jesper Kyd sent me a demo CD. Kevin Riepl sent me a CD, and I even licensed one of his songs for the title music of HH(but we ended up not using it).
A guy named Evan Evans sent me a demo CD, and he had legit feature film credits to his name. When I heard the stuff I was blown away but my first thought was...I can’t afford this guy. And even if we could somehow come to an agreement, how can I show him this no-budget movie after he’s scored real films with actors like Eric Roberts, John Ritter, Michael Rooker and Judge Reinhold in them?
Advice alert! Always ask if someone’s interested, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. All they can say is no. I almost never asked Tom Proctor to come on to Fear of Clowns 2 because I thought it was so beneath him that he wouldn’t be interested. If I hadn’t asked, I never would have made a great friend or created Bounty, etc.
Anyway, I hired Evan Evans for HH and as you can hear, he knocked it out of the park. Dude is a musical genius, literally. (he’s the son of the legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans -- who was an 8-time Grammy Award recipient, 31-time Grammy Award nominee and recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievment Award--and is the youngest to ever win the Disney Creativity Challenge Award for "Best Original Composition" at 11 years old)
After that I hired Chad Seiter, on a recommendation from Kevin Riepl, who went on to score three of my movies(FOC1&2 and GOH) as well as help on sound design for Bounty. The picture above is me with Jacky Reres and Chad from 2007 when I went out to L.A. to loop some audio for Jacky.
Then on the Terrortory movies I hired the talented UK composer Terence Jones for the orchestral stuff, while using a variety of others for the synth-based segments. Daniel Deluxe, a Copenhagen-based phenom, scored Smiling Jack, while Ben Moseley--whose online moniker is The Bishop of Battle, and if you know, you know--did the other synth segments.
Lastly I was very excited to get some 80’s sounding synth music into the Terrortory movies from some amazing talent. The end-credit music for the first movie is by Foret De Vin(called “Hold the Night”), while the second movie features a great song(“Plastic Hearts”) by FAVORIT89 during a dance sequence, and an end-song by fellow Finns The Freeweights called “Everybody Wants My Name”. Honestly, seeing the resurgence of synth music the last few years has been a bright spot for me, and going through it all to find music for the films was something I looked forward to.
All of the musicians I’ve named helped make my movies infinitely better than they would have been otherwise.
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Bounty
I mentioned arrests and nearly getting killed, so here’s some details.
The first day Tom Proctor got into town, I had a busy day planned even though it wasn’t technically a shooting day. We got his hair dyed at some salon that messed it up and made it stygian black instead of just darkening it.
Then I had him get dressed up in the bounty-hunter outfit and we headed into Baltimore. I wanted to show him some of the street locations I planned to shoot in, as well as get some B-roll I could use if I needed it. (and also see just how dark the in-car scenes would be, even though I’d done some tests)
He’s driving in Baltimore, I’m in the passenger seat filming him. He doesn’t know Baltimore, and makes a turn where he’s not supposed to, and cop lights immediately light up behind us.
Now understand...Tom is fully outfitted. Badge, vest, gun strapped on his vest. Internally I’m freaking a little bit. We gonna get arrested before we’ve even started?
The cop takes it all in as he comes up, gets Tom’s license and says he’ll be back in a second. He comes back a few minutes later and asks, “So who you looking for?” I realize he thinks Tom is really a bounty hunter.
I say, “We’re shooting a documentary, just getting some random footage, but he’s not from around here which is why he turned where he wasn’t supposed to.” The cop nods and says, “Well, if you go down this street and make a right on (some street I don’t remember), there’s definitely some wanted people down there.”
He let us off with a warning, never asking whether we had a permit for the gun. This would become par for the course. What I learned: If you want to carry a gun without a concealed-carry permit, get yourself a bounty hunter badge and gear. Problem solved.
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We got stopped over and over during the actual shoot. It got to the point that two counties asked us to call ahead and tell them where we were shooting so they knew that the calls that were coming in were about us. They never arrested us or even threatened it, which was crazy. We only got kicked out of one location, because it was private property and the residents had complained. (we waited an hour and went back anyway to get the shot)
At another location in Glen Burnie, a cop told us that drug dealers had called them to complain because we were messing with their business. Apparently three armed men that look like police is a deterrent to selling weed.
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The time we almost got shot was in Baltimore near what we called “Murder Alley”. We had been informed early in the shoot that we shouldn’t shoot in this area because there had been a murder there a few weeks before. This is an area with a blue-light camera on nearly every streetlight, crumbling buildings, and rats the size of dogs.
We shot there anyway. (I DID call the number they told me to call to let them know we’d be shooting there, every time)
This is the scene in Bounty where everyone gets chased into an alley, and Tom’s character drops to a knee and starts shooting at the crowd who is chasing them. (we used a blank-firing gun whose barrel was plugged, so there was no chance anybody would get hurt)
I am the main camera guy, and I’m chasing Neil Conway and Demetrius Parker. I’m pretending that my leg is hurt, cuz we were just in a car accident. (I actually put a piece of glass in my shoe so I couldn’t run normally)
We do one take and it’s not bad. We set up for a second take, and I’m chasing them, and I see at the end of the alley we’re running toward...a minivan? It pulls up in front of us and the side door slides open, and there’s a guy in plain clothes with a badge hanging on his chest, and he’s got a submachine gun pointing at Demetrius.
In retrospect I can see how this looked to that cop. Black man in mask chasing a white dude who looks like an accountant.
I yell “NO NO NO, IT’S A MOVIE!”
The guy doesn’t shoot, and I talk to him. He apparently didn’t get the call from the lieutenant who would let the various departments know what was going on. He and his guys heard the shots from the first take and rolled down to see what was up.
That was the scariest moment on any shoot I’ve been on, I think
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Terrortory
This was a weird happenstance. It was 2014 and I got a message from FX guru Mark Wenger asking if I’d be interested in doing a segment for a horror anthology. He sent me details, which he allowed me to post here:
“In the Frederick/Hagerstown area of Maryland there is a small stretch of wooded land (approx 10 acres) upon which there have been reports of paranormal activity, sightings, strange lights, disappearances, and deaths. These accounts span a history of more than one-hundred years. From a scorned husband stalking and subsequently butchering his wife and her lover as they stole away on a secret lovers' camping tryst, to cyptozological creatures being encountered, the area has become known as the "Maryland Bermuda Triangle." To some more cheeky horror/paranormal buffs, it has become known as the "TerrorTory" of Maryland.
We are inviting a few local filmmakers to create their own unique story and short film about the "TerrorTory," to be included in this horror anthology. The short films will be connected and encompassed by another short subplot. Everyone must abide by the same rules which are listed below. The sky is the limit, other than budget. Let your imagination fly. The only restriction is that each short film must tell a unique story. Theme/content cannot overlap. Only one slasher, supernatural, otherworldly etc."
I was trying to get “Night of the Clowns” off the ground at that point--a strange movie that would definitely have set a record for the number of clowns in a movie. I told Mark I couldn’t do Terrortory, not only because I didn’t have the time but I didn’t have an idea for a short.
Fast forward about 3 months and I could tell the Clowns feature wasn’t gonna happen. It was getting too big for our budget, and we started waffling on the script because of it. Also, an idea had occurred to me for a short that seemed interesting to me. It was the Smiling Jack segment, and it would be a bit of a departure in that it’s not a straight linear story like I usually write.
It would go back and forth from the present to the past, and the past would start to reveal that what we were seeing in the present wasn’t what it appeared to be.
Anyway, shot and edited that while I waited to see what was happening with the other filmmakers and their segments, but it wasn’t much. For various reasons, people who Mark thought would do a segment didn’t.
Dan Doran, one of Mark’s friends who had also helped come up with the Terrortory concept, had written a script that he was trying to shoot. I went out and helped on day one of “Devil’s Bed”, but there were issues and it was really too ambitious for our budget. (it was set in the 80’s, featured a store robbery, and a lot of dialogue)
I had an idea for another segment, and I also mentioned that I had an idea for the wrap-around segment that would be better than what they had planned. I went out and shot Siren, and not long after that I shot the wrap-around segment.
Mark shot his segment with Dan’s help(and I did some second camera work on one day), and we were still short timewise. Dan had another idea I thought was pretty good called “The Drone Collector”, and I went out and helped him shoot it over a two-day period.
Then I waited a bit for Mark to tell me he had someone for another segment, but it didn’t happen. About that time I’d seen some news articles about clowns hanging out in the woods or in cemeteries, waving at cars at they went by, which was creepy. I thought, “Hey, I’m the clown guy...this’ll be on brand.”
I came up with the Midnight Clown and his rules, which greatly influenced how I expanded the mythos of Terrortory in part two. Up until the Midnight Clown, I’d had no notions about the rules and the boundaries. After that, though, it seemed an interesting angle to take, that it’s possible to beat these things if you simply know “the rules” regarding that monster.
We cast it and went out and shot it. We ran late both nights but got it done, and I was very happy with how it turned out. It’s also the only other found footage thing I’ve ever directed besides Bounty, and I had a lot of internal struggles about shooting it with sub-par video cameras. I knew if we shot it with DSLRs it would look phenomenal, rather than grainy and ugly.
I’m glad I got to revisit the clown with the DSLR camera in Terrortory 2.
In retrospect it’s sort of funny how it went from me shooting one segment to doing about 85% of the movie.
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Fear of Clowns 3(!?!?)
Another story I’ve never written down publicly. I’ve told a very few people, but it’s a funny story. Embarrassing to a couple of people, but whatever.
Mark Lassise, the main man Shivers himself, had moved to Brazil a few years after FOC2. He was the host of a show called An American in Brazil, and I saw an episode. It was pretty entertaining, because Mark is a funny, outgoing dude in real life.
Years later--I don’t know, maybe 2014 or 2015, he hits me up out of the blue. Was I considering FOC3?
I had written the first 15 pages of that script and was pretty happy with the concept of what would happen but after the implosion of the video/dvd market I had no plans to shoot it. I’ll spoil it because it ISN’T going to get shot: A few years after FOC2, Lynn has become a popular artist but she lives like a recluse in a big house with barb wire fence surrounding it. She’s been training in hand to hand combat and guns, getting all Linda Hamilton, because Shivers is still out there. (she thinks, since they never found his body)
Because she doesn’t to go out in public, she’s hired someone with similar looks to be her public face. That’s the person on her art books. That’s the person who does interviews when there are galleries. As far as the world is concerned, this other woman IS Lynn Blodgett, and has been for years.
Lynn’s in her house when an alarm goes off, and long story short, Lynn gets attacked and killed by Shivers. Shivers stands there above her bloody corpse, waiting to be “get better”, but it doesn’t happen. He’s confused, but then the TV--which he’d used as a distraction--starts playing an interview with “Lynn Blodgett”, and Shivers thinks...”I’ve killed the wrong Lynn.” He shifts focus to this new woman, and from there this movie was gonna get a bit crazy. (I even mulled Shivers attacking the funeral of Lynn Blodgett and butchering most of the attendees)
That’s not necessary for this story, but figured you might be curious.
Because Mark says he has a friend who would like to take a whack at a script. They want it to be Fear of Clowns Carnivale, to be shot in Brazil. My immediate thought is, “How does Shivers get to Brazil?”
He asks if I’d be open to basically just being an executive producer and that I’d have final script say when this guy was done. I think about it and tell him--there needs to be upfront money for me and yes, I will have final say on the script, then sure, I’d be okay with it.
Couple months later and the script comes in and...
I don’t remember the name of the guy who wrote it, but it’s bad. Like...Detective Peters is back in it, but he’s in a wheelchair. I think he’s only in the script so someone can push him off of a cruise ship. (not kidding) Then, turns out Shivers isn’t the bad guy in this.
No, there’s some sort of Ringmaster guy who’s doing bad stuff in Brazil, and Shivers makes his way there. Shivers also seems to be pretty talkative in this movie. And he gets a girlfriend and becomes a bit of a hero.
Sort of what Marvel Comics does to all their cool bad guys, they turn them into anti-heroes. The whole thing was preposterous.
I told Mark the script wasn’t good and I didn’t want it happening. No way could I just “fix” it. I mean, consider you’ve seen the first two Friday the 13th movies, and then in the third one, Jason decides to get a girlfriend and fight for good.
Yeah. So anyway, FOC3 is never gonna happen.
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Nudity Part 2
Let’s talk about a strange phenomenon that I call the Model Mayhem effect.
I’ve gotten actresses and models in my movie through a variety of means. Sometimes referrals, sometimes they email me out of the blue, other times I’ve used Model Mayhem. If you don’t know, it’s a site where women and photographers post photos, many of them with nudity.
On “Garden of Hedon”, our original idea was to have a ton of nudity and background sex, because if this is a place where people indulge their hedonisms then that would be something you’d see a lot. Nobody would have any inhibitions here.
From a practical standpoint, it became a nightmare. Extras who said they’d do it just didn’t show up. Others who were only expected to get topless didn’t show up. If you’re not paying people, that’s to be expected, but we WERE paying people. (on average, like $250)
Hell, the strip club scene in the movie was supposed to have four women stripping. EVERY ONE of them didn’t show up that day. Only one called to let us know they couldn’t do it, and that was the morning of the shoot.
There wouldn’t be any nudity in that scene but for a stripper who was at the club and loved horror movies. I told her I’d pay her to stick around for four hours. We’d shoot her out first, then get the rest of the scene.
Fast forward to the first time Richard Cutting’s character Owen walks into a party area of the house. It would be the first scene where the audience sees what goes on in the house, so we wanted it to be chock full of weirdness. The original script had a naked woman bathing in a clawfoot bathtub in the center of the room.
Budget restrained us mightily. And again, not one of the people who said they’d come out to do nudity came out.
The only person who didn’t bail was a girl that Frank Lama(who helped us out quite a few times) had found on Model Mayhem. I’d seen her pictures and she was hot. Clearly had no issue with nudity, judging by all the naked pics on her profile.
She showed up, all right...looking four months pregnant. I didn’t realize we had a problem until Frank came up to me apologizing, and then I saw her. We rolled with it because #1) Without her, there are no boobies in this scene and #2) I’m sure somebody has a fetish for pregnant ladies.
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On Terrortory 2, the Mad Gathering segment, I wanted a witch like in Beastmaster. They were these model women with hideous faces. In my movie I wanted mine to be topless.
Found a woman on Model Mayhem who was interested and fit the bill of hot and willing to bare breasts. Still aware of the GOH thing, I asked her to send me a picture from TODAY. She did, and she still looked good though she was wearing clothes.
I was misled. She took off her shirt, and it was pretty clear that the model mayhem pics were from at least 10 years ago. She’d gained weight and had stretch marks.
Now, I’m not fat shaming or trying to put her down, but if you’re trying to get hired based on your physical appearance, then you need to be honest about your physical appearance. She was cool, and we still used her but I obviously didn’t feature her like I would have if she’d looked like the photos she’d sent us.
I became much more careful after that.
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Hunting Humans & Strange Things
Over the years there have been some strange things that happened during my movies or after they came out. Here’s a few of them.
My first film “Hunting Humans” has a LOT of weirdness going on. Flashback to when I’ve just delivered the movie to composer Evan Evans. The end credits are FULL of fake crew because we had a crew of four and I didn’t want the distributors to low-ball me because they knew it. That fake crew is composed almost entirely of serial killers, real and fictional, as well as a few friends.
I’m talking to Evan on the phone about some of the things I’m hoping the score will accomplish when he hits me with this doozy. He wasn’t going to tell me because he didn’t want to wig me out, but it turns out that his grandparents were actually murdered by the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez.
He didn’t know about it for most of his life, as his parents had told him that they died in a car accident. He told me some of the gruesome details, and I was a little at a loss what to say back to him. He was very cool about it, and said it wouldn’t affect anything as far as his score went. It had happened a long time ago, and it was just a weird coincidence. (and I’m pretty sure Ramirez is one of the fake crew I had put in the end credits)
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In 2008, reporters started contacting me because a story was breaking that a man was caught trying to rape a girl, and inside of his truck was basically a murder kit. And oh yeah, a dvd player with my movie “Hunting Humans” in it. Turns out, this guy had killed people too.
Obviously there were the questions about “Do you think your movie pushed him to murder?” “Do you think it influenced him?” “Do you feel bad about making the movie if it could possibly have an influence on people?”
I also got other questions like, “Do you think Lane is a big fan of your movie, or did it just happen to be the movie in his player?” Given that he’d bought the movie, and also stole one of the place-cards from Blockbuster of it, I’d guess he’s a fan.
But I never knew. Then with the 20th anniversary of my movie coming up, I thought: Know what would be interesting as a bonus feature on a new disc? How about an interview with an actual serial killer who had the movie with him when he went out to kill? (note: He’s not TECHNICALLY a serial killer--only killed two that they could prove, but every law enforcement agency that talked about him stated they were positive there were others out there that they couldn’t prove)
I wrote to the guy. He’s in a prison in PA, so it would be a decent drive but not too bad. He wrote back about a month later, and it’s a WEIRD letter. He doesn’t specifically say no, but he implies maybe I should buy him stuff because OJ got big screen TVs and stuff when he did interviews. Also, he’s not sure if he should do it because he’s not sure his mom would approve of it.
That made me chuckle.
A few years later I got another letter from a prison in Texas. Some guy says he read about my movies in Fangoria, and was I getting ready to shoot another movie? Could I send him some FX shots, and I think he mentioned the bloodier the better. (I probably saw a Dateline or something about him, which is why his name looked familiar)
His name looked familiar, so I looked him up. He spree-killed a bunch of people at a party in Texas.
My wife gets a little weirded out that serial killers write to me, but like I told her: They like me. They’re not gonna come after me.
More recently, a news article came across about a guy named Michael Horvath. I think the trial just ended, but every news article about it says he stalked and killed his co-worker and buried her on his property, and that “he had books and videos on ‘hunting humans’ in his home”. Weird way to phrase that if he didn’t have my movie or the book of that title...however, I haven’t been able to find any detailed information even though I bet it came out at trial.
Here’s the first article I ever saw about it: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cops-man-with-hunting-humans-dvd-charged-with-homicide-kidnapping-co-worker/
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Terrortory and the Kiddie Wagon of Doom
You wanna know just how low budget the first Terrortory movie was? Then behold the glorious story of Stewie and His Kiddie Wagon Of Doom.
As part of the agreement between all the filmmakers, no single part of Terrortory would cost more than $1500. This was mostly to ensure that it would be possible to make our money back at least on this thing, as at that point we really had no idea what it would look like when done.
I had done Smiling Jack and was waiting to hear about the others when I’d had an idea for the Siren segment. I cast Ryan Thomas in the lead role, and Meadow Bosworth as the titular(no pun intended) character.
My crew would be some of my regular friends: Zig, my brother Mike, Stewie, and even Richard Cutting came out to assist(Melissa LaMartina came out on day two to help us). I had rented a slider, and with a slider you need two heavy-duty tripods if you don’t want a ground-level shot. That meant we’d be carrying a decent bit of gear into the woods.
I’m at my house trying to figure out how we’re gonna drag this through the woods because we don’t have enough people to carry it all, and I think it was Cutting who mentioned did I have a wagon? I did not, but you know who did? My kid.
So I borrowed his wagon. It was pretty big and sturdy and looked like we could throw a bunch of stuff on it and wheel it through the woods.
What’s that phrase about the best-laid plans?
Day One is the first half of the script where Ryan’s character is hunting for deer in the woods but finding no signs of wild life. I even dragged a step ladder into the woods so I could get some high-angle shots. (I didn’t own a drone then)
We discover very quickly that the ground is muddy in a lot of places, and there are roots and branches, and sometimes tree trunks blocking portions of the path. The path also goes up and down some steep hills, and even across a stream at one point. Dragging this loaded-down wagon, which we’d relegated to Stewie, was not going well.
About two hours in and one of the axles on the wagon bent(one of the attached pictures shows Richard Cutting trying to figure out if he can unbend it, to no avail). All of a sudden this wagon became a sled, because the wheels would no longer turn. Stewie was trying to drag a couple hundred pounds of equipment through the woods, and while funny for the rest of us, not so funny for Stewie.
I don’t remember what happened to that wagon. Did we drag it out of the woods? I don’t feel like I ever saw it again, but we did not use it on day two, that I can promise you.
Even mentioning it to Stewie today causes him to go into Vevel PTSD. Go ahead, if you see him, ask him about his wagon.
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Halloween: The Greatest Holiday of All
This is a departure from my usual posts for two reasons. First, I’m running out of posts. Those of you that thought I’d pre-composed 31 of them have a much higher opinion of me than they should; I’m typically only one or two ahead of what I post at any time. Second, it’s the season for what I’m about to post and I don’t know how long it will take Amazon to ship them if you want one.
Anyway, in 2014 I had the notion that I should put together a book on Halloween like I would want to buy. Full of nostalgic pictures of costumes and candy and ads, and anything else interesting about the holiday. I’ve bought dozens of books on Halloween, and many of them are good, but none of them are exactly the book I wanted.
Why not just make it myself?
It took me about two years of researching, getting permission on pictures, and then color-correcting and cropping the pictures, and finally learning a new program(Adobe InDesign) to create it but I did. I got an awesome cover from the always-reliable Erik Ashley and uploaded it to Amazon.
It’s a big book, magazine-sized but almost 200 pages and it’s full color. It covers a wide range of vintage things from the aforementioned candy and costumes and ads as well as urban legends, vintage photos and postcards--which I hadn’t known much about before I started the book.
Sure, I only make about $6 per book sold on a cover price around $34.95, but it was never about the money. Working on that book kept me in the Halloween spirit the whole time, and I learned a ton that I didn’t know about the holiday. There’s a lot of fascinating anecdotes and traditions I was ignorant of, and I included it in the book. (and I even discovered some shockingly-racist candy that I included pictures of)
Check it out if you’re interested. There’s a couple of sample pages so you can get an idea of what’s inside, and a link below to Amazon.
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Tough love time
You wrote your script. It's genius. Your girlfriend/wife loves it. Your friends pretend to. You cast it with actors who love it.
You make your movie. You think it's pretty good. You submit it to festivals. Nobody wants it. (well, okay, maybe one of those pretentious artsy festivals plays it)
You submit it to distributors. Silence. Finally you put it up on Youtube, where it gathers 128 views over a year.
What went wrong? Why doesn't anybody want to watch your movie?
It's really pretty apparent, isn't it? You've made a movie that isn't interesting to anybody but you.
So many no-budget filmmaker acquaintances have done this that it's painful for me to watch. I've tried to help them out. I've told them they've got a problem, but the problem is that they mistakenly think their passion for the material will be universal.
They think if they make a movie that's important to them, it will be important to everybody. It won't. It doesn't matter if the movie's about heartbreak or racism or some other "important" topic, because in general people don't really give a shit.
It's about concept, first and foremost. It has never been more important to make your concept rock solid, because there’s so much content out there right now fighting for eyeballs that odds are great that your film is going to disappear into the ether.
Half of you, right now, are thinking, "Fuck this guy--this is the kind of shit that results in the Roland Emmerich movies that suck balls." I'm not saying you're wrong. It's also the kind of shit that results in The Matrix, Jurassic Park, The Thing, Saw, and many other good movies.
When you're at our budget level, what you need is EYES. Eyes that want to watch your movie. Whether you're putting your movie for free on Youtube or putting it up on Amazon, or getting it to a small distributor, the more people that want to watch your movie, the more successful you'll be.
That all starts with your concept.
Objectively, the first thing I always do when I'm brewing an idea for a script is try to see the trailer in my head. If I can see that, and it looks interesting, then I know I'm on to something. You HAVE to be able to see it objectively though.
You can also try to pitch it to an honest friend. This is the friend who tells you when you look fat in that outfit. The one who's not afraid to tell you that you have a booger hanging from your nose. The one who calls you out for being a dick when the rest of your friends go quiet.
If your friend is genuinely interested in the story you're telling, if they ask you questions during the pitch and seem involved, then you've got something. However, if they do a lot of nodding and give you a bunch of "uh huh"s, then you don't.
I'm lucky enough that my interest is in horror films, one of the easiest genres to market to. But that still doesn't give me license to go pedestrian with my ideas. If someone asks me what my next movie is about and I say, "These kids go to a cabin in the woods and start dying off", I can already see their eyes glazing over.
Believe me, I know it's a hard thing to figure out. The first movie I ever got serious about trying to get off the ground was this mediocre slasher flick called "The Lucky Ones". Then I tried to get another movie made that was the basic slacker-with-a-gun movie that was popular in the 90's.
It wasn't until I came up with the idea for "Hunting Humans" that I could tell I was on to something. Everybody I talked to about that idea was REAAAAAL curious about hearing more. Most of them told me, "I'd watch that", which was not something I'd ever heard.
So get serious about your concept before you start writing that script. Make sure your concept is strong enough. The worst thing you can do is invest all that time and energy into a sub-par concept, because it'll sour you to making movies.
That doesn’t mean you have to make a meaningless Roland Emmerich film though. Once you’ve got the concept, find a character and a struggle that you can invest yourself in, and put them into that concept.
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It's Not All Bad
The Part of Indie Filmmaking Nobody Talks About
There are a lot of reasons to not make a no-budget movie: Burning money that you’ll probably never see back. Wasting a lot of time on something that you may never finish. Stressing yourself out over the millions of things you have to get accomplished with little money. The impending disappointment of never getting your actual vision onto the screen.
There’s one reason TO make that no-budget movie, though, that I don’t hear talked about that often and it is this: The friendships you will make.
I am not an overly social guy. (I hear some of you laughing at this understatement) I’ve never had a ton of real friends, the kind you’d take a bullet for.
But going to make a no-budget movie is a lot like going to war. (I’d add, “I imagine”, but I’ve played plenty of Battlefield games on the Xbox so I think I know what I’m talking about when I say I know what it’s like going to war. Also, that was a joke for those who need this addendum.)
The people who are willing to come out and help you without much recompense are your brothers and sisters. Blood, sweat, and tears are shed by all who try to do this, and that mixture forms a bond between you.
I’ve gained incredible friendships with people involved in my films. I still stay in touch with many of them, and if I’m in their area(or vice versa), we try to get together and hang out, laugh about the good old days and find out what each other are really up to. (since we all have these fake social media accounts where we pretend everything is Uh-MAY-Zing)
I know I talk a lot of doom-and-gloom about making no-budget movies--I’m trying to weed out the wanna-be’s for their own good--but if you’re serious about doing one, know that you will make lifelong friends, and that is something that’s not talked about too often.
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Reviews
Ohhhhhh man, the thing you never really thought about before you made movies was the reviews you’d get. Then, after you get them, you cannot believe the range of creativity some of these reviewers have to describe how bad your movie is.
It all comes with the territory. I’ve never been too fazed by them. The only ones that bother me are the ones that have factual errors in them, as if they didn’t really watch the movie.
When my first movie came out, I got incredibly lucky on many of the reviews. Here’s a sampling:
Then I got some other highly negative ones. Film Threat’s Mike Watt said it “should give any fledgling filmmaker hope for the future – if this digi-video train wreck can be released with a shoddy story, terrible no-name acting, and crummy direction, so can yours.”
Funny aside, I met Mike a couple of years later at a convention, and found him to be a friendly nice guy. When he found out who I was, he apologized for the review but I told him no big deal.
I also got emails from random strangers about my flicks. Here’s one for HH, exactly as I received it:
“JESUS CHRIST STOP MAKING MOVIES NOW!!!!! I just SUFFERED through "Hunting Humans". I've seen Mexican wrestling movies that were more coherent and interesting. Hell's pecker son, what a self indulgent piece of crap. How about A HERO WE CAN CARE ABOUT? When the main character of your movie makes you want to WRETCH you are screwed from the get-go.
Did some one watch American Psycho and think that they could top it? You missed the cleaver dialog, the likable villain, a clever plot line, and great catch phrases. "No hot cocoa tonight"? What were you thinking.
Please for god's sake, go rent "May" and learn a thing or two, (but for the sake of fuck, don't try to imitate it.
God I wish you could get you money back on terrible movie rentals, fucking Redneck Zombies was better.
P.S. Rick Ganz is a wanker.”
Now, do I want to tell this guy that we shot our movie before American Psycho? Do I want to tell him the word is actually clever, not cleaver, or was he making a pun? Do I want to tell him that this whole letter is crap except for that last part about Ganz, which is spot on? (JK, who loves ya, Rico Suave?)
Sure, but I don’t reply to most of them. Sometimes I do, but even when I reply I stay diplomatic. Thanks for checking it out, sorry you didn’t like it. Here’s an email about FOC:
“i finally watched fear of clowns i dont mean to critize but i thought the film was terrible it must just be me being use to horror films but i dint find the clown scary at all i think having a horror film your main killer needs to look scary i hate to say it but clownhouse kick its ass the clowns in clownhouse looked scary ....but being a low budget horror film i must say i have seen worse .......i actually showed this dvd to director james wan director of saw ( he is a friend of mine )....he agreed with me on this saying that the clown killer just didnt look scary but anyway i just thought id email you and let ya know what i thought”
Do I think this guy actually knows James Wan and forced him to sit through Fear of Clowns? God, I hope so, but I doubt it.
I’ve been attacked on web site likes imdb(where I was called an “assrod”, among other things) and a podcast called “Night of the Living Podcast”(I think they called me an “asshat”, so I’m not sure but ass appears to be the goto description of me), which I’m thinking about writing an entire post about. It’s cool now, we actually became friendly and I was a guest on their show twice. I enjoy their podcast a lot.
What’s my point, you might be wondering? Ignore the reviews, good and bad. You can read them, but don’t let them phase or affect you. There may be some truth in both kinds of reviews, but that truth is probably more about the eye of the beholder.
Your film isn’t going to be for everyone. You can’t control how people react to what you do. Try to do the best work you can do, and the most important part is that YOU have to be happy with it. If you’re not happy with your end product, at least to some degree, then you’ll be done making movies pretty quickly.
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With Teeth
In 2009 I started a script about vampires. The second script I had ever written(probably 1994-ish) was about vampires, but it wasn’t great. Not bad, but definitely a bit amateur and it didn’t have the biggest hook to it.
Since then I hadn’t attempted a vampire anything because if I can’t add something new, I’m usually reluctant to retread old material. Vampires have been done to death, right?
But I had a concept that was interesting to me, and I wrote the script. It was pretty straight action horror, but I could see the trailer in my head and I knew it would work if I could get it shot.
I wrote it for actors I had worked with: Johnny Alonso, Richard Cutting, and Adam Ciesielski.
I tried to make it happen. The big problem is that the last third of the movie takes place in sewers, the kind you see in Angel or the remake of the Blob. Sewers like those, however, don’t exist in the U.S.
Europe apparently has a lot of them, and Angel and The Blob both used sets that were built for them. To build those kind of sets would be impossible on our kind of budget, so I set the script aside.
Then in 2019 I thought, “Man, it would suck if I died and nobody got to even check out this story.” I had the thought that maybe I’d turn it into a novella, so I spent the next year doing that. I had my man Erik Ashley work up another amazing cover--seriously, if you need an amazing graphic, you should contact him at https://www.erikashley.com--and I put it out in May of 2021.
You can get it on Amazon, but mind you, it’s not for those with delicate sensibilities. If sexual situations and cursing bother you, skip it. This review on Amazon nails it perfectly--this guy is obviously my target audience: “The cover is perfect for this fun, gross, horny vampire-ish tale! It's totally influenced by the sexy-scary VHS movies we all walked by at the video store and were intrigued and creeped out by.
With Teeth answers the question all of us (it's all of us, right? Right?) have wondered about vampires and BJs, and takes it up several inches- er... notches. Sleazy, gross, a great one-sitting creepshow.”
https://www.amazon.com/Teeth-Kevin-Kangas/dp/B095NZ2Z8R
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The Original Ending of “Fear of Clowns”
(note: I didn’t realize that some of these takes didn’t have reference audio, so they’re silent--these are straight from my original import, without the audio synced)
I have discussed this with some people before, and possibly on the commentary track for FOC, but the version of the movie that people know is radically different from the script.
I made a long version of this post, describing the differences, but god is it even more boring than the first 12 hours of the movie so I decided to spare you the details.
The main difference is that there were TWO people trying to get Shivers to kill Lynn but for two different reasons. Why it didn’t actually work was a combination of two things: WAY too convoluted, and once Shivers got arrested at the end of the movie, nobody wanted to watch another 15 minutes of movie--especially since there’s some hefty exposition in there.
I was aware when I wrote it that that might be a problem, but I figured I’d be able to find my way through it in the edit room.
I was wrong.
Anyway, there exists a cut of the deleted ending. I’m not posting it here. If I ever make an FOC Blu Ray, I’ll put it on there for the first time ever(it was missing shots and was basically terrible). Instead you can see a few videos from the night we shot it, and this little nugget of fun:
The climactic ending involved actor Andrew jumping on the hood of Jacky’s car with a knife in his hand. Jacky reverses the car fast and he falls off. After a moment he gets to his feet, and Jacky drives into him, throwing him back to the ground where he’s presumably either dead or at least knocked out long enough for the cops to get there.
Well, Andrew’s not a stunt guy so he wants nothing to do with that shot. (I don’t blame him) One of our only real crew members on the shoot, Steve Carson, was looking to do stunt work and said he’d double for Andrew, no problem.
That night he got sick and didn’t show up though, and the show must go on. I was the only other person willing to do the stunt, so I did. But I don’t half-ass anything, and I didn’t have a fake knife. So I got on the car with a real butcher knife, and then I fall off the car as she backs up. (keeping my face hidden, because I’m not Andrew)
As you can see in one of the clips I posted, Mun was a little leery of me doing the shot with the knife in my hand. In hindsight, it does seem incredibly stupid even in the interest of realism, but that was me in my twenties. Do whatever it takes to get the shot.
Okay, that was me in the thirties and forties also.
Also for those wondering, this is unedited, not color corrected stuff. You can even see the boom mic in a couple of shots, but that’s because we knew part of the frame would be masked out to make the picture closer to cinema aspect, rather than the 4:3 you get on a Panasonic DVX100.
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Writing
I’ve always been more of a writer than a director. I became a director out of necessity, as it seemed the only realistic way to see my scripts made into movies, not being in L.A. or New York.
I started writing when I was around twelve years old. I started my first book back then, but it was terrible and I threw it away. (I sorta wish I still had it so I could look at it and cringe, like I do with the short stories I wrote back then.)
All I did in school was write short stories and draw doodles, as many of my friends from middle school to high school can attest. In college I sent some stories to magazines, trying to get published, but I never did. Those stories weren’t very good, other than having strong premises. They were populated with cardboard characters. (anecdotal anecdote: I sent a couple of queries to a magazine I liked called Cemetery Dance, and got a couple of nice rejections whereas I mostly got form-letter rejections. That guy who sent the rejections was Richard Chizmar, owner of Cemetery Dance, now a big-time writer who sometimes collaborates with Stephen King. I actually had a chance to finally meet him this past weekend at a signing with Ronald Malfi and Brian Keene. Really IS a small world...)
A couple of years back I started writing short stories again. My original love. I finished an intensely-personal one and about a week later saw an anthology book looking for stories that sounded perfect for this story. I hadn’t submitted a short story anywhere in 30 years, but I went ahead and did it anyway.
A few weeks later I got an acceptance letter for “The Devil You Know”, a book of stories featuring Old Scratch himself. It was surreal that after years of trying as a twenty-something to get published, I did it on the first try at nearly fifty years old.
The book’s out now, and you can snag a copy on Amazon and probably other places where books are sold. (do those exist any more?)
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-You-Know-R-Carter/dp/0578675331
I may do a new book with some other short stories I’ve written since then, and I’ll probably include this story there. Last year I finished a Halloween story I’m very proud of that takes place in my old neighborhood on Mago Vista. It features a lot of people I grew up with--I changed their names very slightly, but not so much that they won’t recognize themselves. It’s too long for most anthology books, so probably won’t see print before I put it in my book.(though some people who will remain nameless think I should try to get a publisher)
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Premieres
The whole reason to make a movie, really.
I kid, but movie premieres can be a lot of fun. A lot of stress, too, but a lot of fun.
My first film(“Hunting Humans”) premiered at the United Artists Snowden River theater. We could only afford a showing on a Saturday morning at 11am, but we got a decent crowd. Seeing the movie up on the big screen, just like movies I’ve loved, is a thrill that never goes away.
Two funny memories from it. I was sitting next to Rick Ganz, the star of the movie, and it came to the part where he’s naked, and there was laughter from the audience. Rick leans over, smirking, and says, “Great, that got a bigger laugh than the pickle line.”
It wasn’t actually true, but it was funny. That’s one of the things you learn when you make movies: You really never know how an audience is going to react to things in your film. Something you thought was funny might get no laughs, while something serious has people in stitches.
The other funny thing is that my parents were there, and besides the fact that I could hear my mom tsk-tsking whenever there was a bad word, I asked my dad afterward what he thought of the movie. He nodded, looked a little bit surprised, and he said, “It looked like a real movie.”
High praise.
We had our premiere for “Fear of Clowns” at the prestigious Senator. It cost me a fortune(around $6K), but since it sat around 800 people I thought we ought to be able to break even if we could sell around 400 tickets. Also, they threw in popcorn and sodas for free with that price.
Well, I didn’t break even but the night was a lot of fun and it was a good-sized crowd(somewhere around 300). We had the afterparty at Gardel’s, which was a club owned by Johnny Alonso’s family. An amazing time all around.
“Fear of Clowns 2” was also at the Senator, and was even more fun. I think the movie was more entertaining for people, plus taking a limo ride with the legendary Tom Proctor was an experience I’ll never forget. I lost money on this premiere also, but didn’t mind. We again had the afterparty at Gardel’s, and once again no matter how much I drank, it was hard to get drunk. Too much adrenaline, I guess.
I tried something new(and cheaper) for “Bounty”--we got the Charles theater in Baltimore. It wasn’t the best theater in the world, but it was cheap, and right across the street was a place that would let us do the afterparty(we were told John Waters hung out there a lot). I think I about broke even on this premiere, but the afterparty was mad fun. I have pictures I’ve never shown ANYBODY from that afterparty...
On “Garden of Hedon” we tried the Landmark in Baltimore. We had a good crowd, and the afterparty was across the street, where Click on This, an internet show, interviewed a bunch of us. I think this interview is still out there somewhere.
For “Terrortory”, I decided to take a trip back to the Senator, as they were under new management, and had quoted an okay price. Unfortunately it rained that night, so a lot of people who were originally going to show up didn’t. I didn’t blame them, because who wants to drive into Baltimore near rush hour WITHOUT rain, much less when it’s pouring? It was an okay-sized crowd, but people seemed to have fun. The afterparty however was at some weird dive bar with no parking, so pretty sparse.
“Terrortory 2” we made a return to the Landmark, and we had a nice crowd. However, later Landmark lied about our attendance and underpaid me, so that’s the last time we show anything there. Too bad, because I really like the bar across the street that we had the afterparty at. (same place we used for GOH)
Where will I have the next premiere, assuming I make another movie? No idea...
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Film Festivals
I learned very fast that film festivals are, in general, a gigantic waste of time and money for filmmakers. You pay money for the chance to get into one, and then the festival makes even more money charging tickets for people to come see YOUR movie. So you could spend $500-$1500 in entry fees and press kits alone, all for the pleasure of letting other people make money from your flick.
You get nothing but maybe a little bit of publicity and a chance to put a laurel on your poster.
Now, sure, there are a couple of big festivals where your movie has a chance to get picked up by a distributor, but you’re not going to get into one of those with a microbudget movie.
(I sense someone out there going “Hey, what about Primer? Or El Mariachi? Or Clerks?” You might be able to name about 20 microbudget movies in the last 30 years that succeeded in this, out of about a million microbudget movies made, so your odds are better if you just go play the lottery)
I didn’t know all of this when I started. I made “Hunting Humans” and submitted it to a festival, and weirdly enough, never even knew we got in until I saw a press release saying we’d won “Best Screenplay” and been nominated for a couple of other awards. I was thrilled.
I submitted to a couple more festivals and got into another one called the Backeast Film Festival to be held in New Jersey, a state I had never been to. (and once I’d been there, I never wanted to go back)
If you want the details of the disaster that was this festival, you can read them on my old Hunting Humans blog here:
https://huntinghumanssaga.blogspot.com/2010/05/
(scroll down to the Monday May 10th entry, as that’s the first part of the film festival recap)
As you’ll see, it was quite the experience. After that I mostly ignored festivals unless they reached out to me, which happened more times than I expected. That’s how we entered the Terror Film Festival for “Garden of Hedon”. That festival was a lot more fun, not only because we were nominated for seven awards(winning four, including Best Picture), but because Philly is not a hellhole like Jersey.
So if you’re a low-budget filmmaker, I’d advise saving the money you’d waste on a film festival unless you’ve REALLY got something, or you know someone in the festival.
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Personal Highlights
Over the 20+ years I’ve been making films, there have been many personal highlights.
As I’ve mentioned before, winning a Best Screenplay award for “Hunting Humans” was a well-needed boost to my ego. That was followed up by one of the best things that ever happened to me: I got a four(out of four) star review from legendary reviewer Joe Bob Briggs. For those that don’t know, he hosted a couple of hit shows where he would intro horror movies, and then at the commercial breaks, would talk about them in detail. What went into making them, how the filmmakers did what they did. I used to watch this show ALL the time in college, thinking about whether I could make a horror movie.
So to put it in perpsective, imagine someone you admire on TV. Someone with a great personality that you’d love to hang out with, but you know it could never happen because that person is famous. Then imagine that person becomes aware of something you’ve done, and he publicly says, “Check out this person and his work”. Imposter syndrome has always loomed large in my mind, but the moment I read that Joe Bob review, it disappeared for a while. If Joe Bob thought that what I did was good, then maybe I WAS good.
You can read the review here: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2002/10/23/Joe-Bobs-Drive-In-Hunting-Humans/68221035370800/
The movie coming out and showing up on the shelves of Blockbuster was another high point, as well as being in stores physically. Showing up on the FYE massive posters that they hung in each store for their Halloween promotion that showcased big horror movies as well as my very little horror movie. (picture above) Having copies sent to me of the magazines we were advertised in at the huge AFM and MIFED events.
More high points came during “Fear of Clowns”. Getting that first call from Lionsgate. On release day, seeing literally 10-40 copies of it on EACH Blockbuster and Hollywood Video alongside movies with massive budgets. Watching it make over $1.5 MILLION dollars in rentals alone in the first six weeks of release. Seeing the trailer for it on some releases of the Saw 2 DVD. Being asked to write a four-page article for Fangoria Magazine, a magazine I worshipped as a kid. (and frequently had to steal cuz they wouldn’t sell it to me)
FOC2 - Working with Tom Proctor and my returning cast and crew was a highlight here. Finishing the movie and feeling like I’d really stepped it up a notch from the first movie.
Bounty - The day we wrapped, knowing that we had done the near-impossible, not getting killed or arrested. Knowing Tom believed in me enough to put his time and money into the project is something I can never repay.
Garden of Hedon - The high point on this was finishing it without dying. Probably the hardest movie I ever shot, due to insane locations, massive camera problems, a huge cast, massive sound problems, and other issues I won’t go into...yet. Another high point was winning four awards at the Terror Film Festival in Philadelphia, and being there to accept the awards. (video was shown in yesterday’s post)
Terrortory - Wasn’t expecting a lot of high points when I first went into this movie, but we got some HIGH high points. Some include watching it climb the horror charts on Amazon where it peaked at #6, beating titles like Interview With A Vampire(picture below). We also received the Amazon Star Award, meaning we were one of the top 100 titles PERIOD, including TV shows. Given that there was way more than 10,000 titles at the time, that was impressive. Amazon also gave us a monetary bonus, which was nice.
Terrortory 2 - The high point on this came when I’d finished the edit and had all the music in. I felt like I had progressed the Terrortory story quite a bit, and put forth some of my best filmmaking at this point. Other high points are that people still hit us up looking for the third film.
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Press
Been in a lot of newspapers and other media over the years. At first, it was pretty weird. I’m not a guy who’s ever liked the spotlight shined on me, mostly because a lot of the stuff I did back then was best done in the shadows.
But once I started putting out movies, it was a necessity to do these interviews, as you need to get the word out about your films.
I did some rather awkward(I thought) interviews for “Hunting Humans”, mostly at the comic store I owned back then. For some reason the interviewers always found it fascinating to talk about my store in the articles, which I was okay with. (because hey, free advertising, right?)
On Fear of Clowns we actually had one reporter named Wendi Winters come out during our shoot at a scene we were filming in a gallery. We were running short on extras, so she agreed to help us out and be an extra. The downside was that her article called the movie “Fear The Clown” and misspelled some actors’ names. (I photopaint-corrected them for our press releases) A sad and macabre footnote to this story was that she was one of the five reporters horrendously murdered by an irate reader of The Capital newspaper years later.
I did a wide variety of interviews for newspapers(even one from Kansas City), as well as magazines like Fangoria and Moviemaker--two magazines I’d been reading for years. I did some television interviews, which I was REAL nervous to do. I’m a behind-the-camera kind of guy, which was why it’s great to have Johnny Alonso in your movie--every time there was a request for a TV interview, I could count on Johnny to take it so I wouldn’t have to. Besides, he’s got a much better gift of gab than I do.
If you want to see fat me doing a Fox-45 morning interview from “Fear of Clowns”, you can see that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BWFtdfVR1g
I also did interviews for radio stations like 98 Rock, 105.7(remember when that was a station? Called Live 105.7 back then) and a few others.
Nowadays it’s all podcasts and online web site interviews, which is much easier for me.
But I’d be lying if I said that the thrill of seeing my name in print is equal to the thrill of being on another web site. Maybe it’s because I’m old and things I can touch and get at a store seem more "real" to me...
I know...weak post, but I’m running out of material. However, tomorrow’s post which won’t show up til tomorrow night, goes into some DIRT...(if I finish it in time)
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The Fights(Part I)
I don’t know if anybody’s reading these anymore. They’re probably bored, and have given up so that means it’s now safe to talk about the fights on set. You know, the dirt.
The thing is, fights happen on sets all the time. Tension is high, egos are fragile, and people have different ideas of how things should be done. After the movie’s been shot, though, most of that is water under the bridge.
On “Hunting Humans” most of the disagreements happened between me and the D.P.(Director of Photography) David Gil. I hadn’t known him ahead of time; I’d literally hired him off of his demo reel that he’d mailed to me, and we’d had a few conversations in emails and maybe one phone call.
There were two times we went at it a bit during the shoot that I remember. The first was when we were shooting at my brother’s house and I wanted to get the shot where he walks out and gets clubbed in the face, which I’d envisioned as being a pretty startling shot. Well, Gil claimed he didn’t have the lens to get the shot I wanted, which I knew was incorrect.
We argued, and I finally said, “Give me the camera and I’ll get the shot.” Well, it was his camera and asking to touch a D.P.’s camera if you’re not his camera operator is like asking another man if you can kiss his woman. He bristled and then somehow got the shots I wanted.
The other time was the night we shot Rick’s naked scene. It’s all from behind, which is a good thing because Rick had taped an athletic cup over his junk with a LOT of tape. For some reason Gil didn’t want to shoot this scene, something I’m still a little confused about to this day. There was a bit of a disagreement, though it wasn’t as heated as the other, and the end result was that I got to shoot that shot.
I have no hard feelings for Gil at all. Frankly, his experience at shooting saved me quite a few times on the film, and HH wouldn’t have been half as good if I’d shot it all myself.
On “Fear of Clowns” there were a couple of minor hubbubs. At some point in the middle of the shoot, I guess Rick and Dave Mun(our new D.P.) had some drinks after a night of shooting, and next thing I know, Dave is coming to me to ask if I’m unhappy with his work so far.
I’m confused. I have no idea what he’s talking about, as I’m happy with what I’ve been seeing. Apparently Rick had had a few too many drinks and had said something about me being upset over the footage, which was completely made up. I had some words with Rick about that.
Then there were some issues with Frank, because he had a BIG part in this movie. A lot of lines. But he was splitting his time between this movie and another movie, and he was driving back and forth across the bridge to shoot, so he was dead tired when he hit my set. That lead to him blowing his lines a lot of the time, which wasted precious takes.
“Fear of Clowns 2” had some more dust-ups with Frank, this time as producer. We were shooting in his town. I thought we’d gotten permission to shoot at all the places we had planned, but that turned out to be incorrect. We got shut down by the police at one point. Also, we were shooting at his house, but he was in the middle of a divorce so his wife would stop by and want to show off the house since they were selling it.
This obviously caused issues because a major scene takes place there, and also it was where the crew was sleeping each night.
Then a big piss-me-off moment was the day I showed up in the morning to find out that the restaurant I thought we were shooting in hadn’t given us permission. Frank says to me, “We’ve got a problem, but I’ve got a solution.” That solution was another restaurant I’d never seen that also had major road construction going on right next door. My shooting script went out the window and I had to figure out how to shoot it and get useable audio. (which was even more nerve-wracking than normal because we had like 20 extras so I’m having to figure it all out with a large audience)
I don’t have any hard feelings toward Frank now, and FOC2 would never have happened without him(and he’s helped me out on subsequent movies since). As it is, I think it’s the best performance he’s ever produced, and I’m still intensely proud of that movie.
On “Bounty”, there was really only two little fracases that I remember. The first was the night we were supposed to shoot at an apartment complex that Bill Stull had gotten us access to. However, on the night of the shoot there was an issue with the apartment we were supposed to shoot in, which resulted in a nearly two hour delay. Neil Conway, who played Ernie Litwak in the movie, came up to me at one point and got pretty irate about the delay.
I told him there wasn’t anything I could do about it and we’d get the scene shot as soon as we could. Later on he apologized for his irritability, but I get it. Sitting around for hours isn’t fun, especially when you’re fending off police and drug dealers. (this was the location where the drug dealers called the police on US) Again, Neil is awesome and I worked with him again in the “Pumpkin Trail” segment for Terrortory 2.
Another night we were rehearsing a scene at my comic store(yes, that store existed for 17 years) and Tom was having a hard time getting a line right. He had the words, but he couldn’t quite get the meaning behind what he was saying, so it wasn’t coming out right. Neil tried to help him, and Tom got pretty angry and yelled at him.
It was all squashed a little while later when Tom apologized. He was under a ton of stress, as producer and star, plus as I mentioned, he’d been hit by a car two weeks earlier and was still on major drugs, which had to be impacting how well he could perform.
I’d go into “Garden of Hedon”, but that’s where there were some big fights so I guess we’ll do a part two...
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The Fights(Part II)
“Garden of Hedon”, the toughest shoot I was ever on. There are details of why it went bad in the Making Of that you can see on the blu ray. Things like the camera we were using crapping out when we were on location at the Cloisters castle, which cost us more money because we had to rent it for another night. Things like setup on our crane taking way longer than I’d scheduled. Things like some of the things we envisioned not being workable once we started shooting, which necessitated us to switch things up in the middle of the shoot.
But the fights!
There were three big blowups on this one.
The first was due to the camera malfunction on the first night at the Cloisters castle. It was a set I had to pay to rent, and the Red One camera kept crapping out and not recording to the hard drive. We could record to cards, but we only had about four of them, and you could only record about 15 minutes of footage per card. Dumping the cards took about an hour per card, so it wasn’t feasible to keep shooting and try to dump at the same time. (we tried)
We gave up that night after getting what we could, and Jared called the guy he was renting the camera from. The guy acted like there was no problem with the camera, and he was gonna come pick it up the next night. He wanted the rest of the money for the rental, and Jared told him no way, and the guy sort of indicated he was gonna come demand it.
I won’t build it up any more, but the guy showed up and I was ready to fight. But we worked it out amicably, and Jared got another Red One and it worked well.
The next fight needs some quick background: I had co-written this script with a friend of mine, Luke, and he was also helping to produce it. He’d gotten us the money and many of the locations we’d be using, including his mother’s house.
It was a few days into the grueling shoot when we were at that house. I was sleep exhausted and irritable. We had so much to get done on so little time.
We’re shooting on an upper level, though no actors are on that level. The camera is aimed down toward the first floor, but apparently there was something valuable up on that second floor and Luke didn’t want anybody up there other than me and Jared, the D.P.
Well, someone else briefly went up there to consult with Jared, and Luke went ballistic. Jared returned his ire in kind. I tried to defuse it because I just wanted to get the shot and move on. Well, those two kept going at it, and Luke wouldn’t listen to me. I finally came as close as I’ve ever come to quitting--and there was a lot of people on set, but at that moment they’d all disappeared somewhere else.
“You want to direct this f**king movie?” I yelled and threw the shooting script down.
I vividly remember that moment, because if Luke had said anything other than “No”, I would have been out in my car and on the way home, ready to drop into bed and sleep for days. The moment seemed to stretch, and he relented. I was a bit disappointed, but we moved on and made our day.
Then another day, we’re shooting at Luke’s house(he enjoys telling this story to people). I pull up into his court and park pretty much straight in front of his house. I get out, ready to try to make our day again, and he comes out and says, “Move your car.” I’m like, “Why?” He’s says, “My neighbor will be pissed and may come over and say something to me.”
I say, “Who cares?” and his retort is, “I don’t want to talk to my neighbor, or have anything to do with him.”
From my point of view, still sleep-deprived and short tempered, it’s ridiculous. Number one: Nothing illegal about parking where I parked. Number two: You want to inconvenience me on the off chance your neighbor may come over and say something about a car parked in front of Luke’s house?
I got in Luke’s face and argued for about 60 seconds, very heated. I can tell you that Zig thought there would be a fist fight, because he was the behind-the-scenes camera guy, and he’s disappeared. This would have been awesome BTS footage if he’d gotten it. But finally I got back in my car and literally pulled right onto Luke’s lawn, which I knew he’d hate. He was smart enough not to say anything to me about it, because I DID move the car.
I think that’s pretty much it, though there’s one other fight that I still can’t talk about. I know, why did I mention it if I can’t talk about it?
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Foreign Editions
Something that I never expected in a million years is that I’d make movies that would play outside of the United States. I certainly never envisioned anyone wanting to fully dub my movies into another language.
And man, I wasn’t prepared to hear some of the voice talents they applied to my characters...
We made the deal with MTI Home Video for domestic rights to “Hunting Humans”, which meant they covered the United States and English-speaking Canada. I made another deal with a company called IFM for all other rights. They would attempt to license it to individual countries.
It wasn’t as lucrative as the U.S. deal--and part of that is because I think the company was probably stealing from me by under-reporting revenue and possibly not even putting some countries on the report. I mean, what’s the chances I’m going to know they licensed it to free-TV in Yugoslavia if they don’t tell me?
Either way, by the end of it I think HH had been licensed to 30-some countries. Many of those weren’t physical releases, just for free and pay TV outlets. The physical releases I’ve tried to track down and buy, but I don’t think I got them all. You can see the pic above of what I did manage to find, plus another of a copy I've never been able to get--it looks like got Screech to play Aric Blue for the cover.
Also of note, after the original HH license expired with MTI, it was picked up by a couple of other distributors who then put out a nearly identical version of the movie, package and all. You’d have to look close to see that it was actually Trinity and then some other one I don’t remember, and then the movie was eventually packaged into a four-movie disc that’s shown in one of the pics.
On “Fear of Clowns”, Lionsgate took domestic and Canadian rights. My producer’s reps on this one didn’t handle foreign at all, but they said if we were approached, they could help with the terms. I was busy prepping FOC2 so didn’t have a ton of time, but an Italian distributor actually reached out to us about licensing it, and they offered very good terms I thought.
I took it to my rep, and they said, “Yeah, it’s not bad, but let us see if we can get you $5K more”. They only got me $3K more, but that was nice. I never did any other foreign deals on FOC--nobody reached out to me and I got too busy with other things to pursue it.
I will say that I enjoy the menu to the Italian version of FOC more than the Lionsgate one, which is very goofy. And that song you hear playing is by Unfaith, and is featured in the movie. Awesome song from a great band that never actually put an album.
So here you have some actual video that I just recorded from my computer monitor--it’s not great--so you could have a listen to some of the dubbed talents...
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How Making Movies(And Getting Older) Ruined Movies For Me
A lot of people razz me over how few movies I tend to enjoy nowadays. It’s not nearly as bad as they make it out to be, but they certainly have a point in that my tolerance for lazy writing is pretty much nil now.
This post is going to be all over the place, because the reasons are pretty broad.
When I first considered making movies, I was young and my movie palette was very forgiving. I liked what I liked, and compared to now, I hadn’t seen that many movies. Then I started making movies and learning the processes, and all of a sudden I understood what went into doing pretty much everything in film.
As a result of making no budget flicks, I learned how to shoot on multiple cameras. I learned all the audio ins and out, the difference in microphones as well as how foley and looping(ADR) worked. I learned how to edit, not just the mechanics, but the principles involved. I learned how to create and composite effects. There’s not a lot I don’t know about making a movie, and can do most of the jobs involved to at least a competent degree. (What can’t I do? Act, create practical special effects, or create music, though I did some of the “music” for Bounty--it was more sound design than what I’d traditionally call music)
I don’t say any of that to brag but to point out that, like sausages, perhaps it’s better that you don’t know how movies are made. Now that I know how things are done, I tend to spot when those things are done in a subpar manner. I can’t tell you how many times I notice bad looping(when the actor’s lips don’t match their words), bad foley(sound effects laid in after the fact) and poor edits.
Not to mention the prevalence nowadays of things happening because “the script needs it to happen”, rather than by working harder to make them happen naturally.
All that tends to make me more jaded than your average moviegoer, and is one of the reasons I’m so critical of my own flicks--I see everywhere that I failed.
In addition, the older you get, the more you’ve seen. It’s hard to surprise me nowadays. All of this culminates in me not being overly impressed with most movies I see.
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Off With Johnny Alonso’s Head
Many time I’ve done stupid things in order to “get the shot”, but looking back at this stunt has be begging the question, “What were we all thinking?”
This was for “Fear of Clowns 2”, and I’m going to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it. (Hey, you’ve had like 16 years to watch it...) Johnny’s character is running away from our heroes, because he knows that if they’re around, then so is Shivers. It’s not safe to be there, so he beats feet.
Unfortunately, Shivers steps out from behind the building Johnny’s running toward, and he beheads Alonso.
I think our FX guy Doug came up with the original idea for how to accomplish this. We would rig up a fake neck/head to mount on Johnny’s shoulders, and Johnny’s head would be tucked chin-to-chest so the camera wouldn’t see it from behind.
Now, here’s the crazy part. Mark, who plays Shivers, would be swinging the axe at the fake head in order to knock it off, thus looking like a real beheading. While it was the non-hero axe, made of wood, it would still very much do damage, because Mark is basically swinging a baseball bat at full speed, and Johnny’s real head is only about six inches below the fake one. If Mark swung low, he’d be swinging this right into Johnny’s face.
And the weird part is, everybody was okay with this plan. Johnny trusted Mark(?!?!?!) to not hit him in the face. We did three different takes, and to Mark’s credit, he hit that fake head every time. (he used to play baseball and football, so was pretty coordinated)
We talk about it a bit in the Making of FOC2, but I just stumbled on this video that I don’t think I ever saw(and it definitely has never been seen by the public before). It’s from the reverse angle of all my other footage--I think Steve Pattee shot it, hiding out on the side of the building we were shooting toward. Good thing he didn’t get spotted by the camera or we’d have had to murder him.
But hey, here it is--see if you’d run at Mark and let him swing that at you...
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This isn’t an anecdote so much as an overdue note, but this was the first post I wrote, knowing it would be the last I’d post.
I’ve made seven feature films mainly on the force of my will and how stubborn I am. I wouldn’t take no’s and failures as anything but temporary setbacks, and believe me, I got many of them.
BUT--
I’m as solitary a person as you’ll ever find, but I could never have actually made these movies without the help of a TON of people who did it for reasons that are definitely not for the money. One of the most important pieces of advice I ever heard was “Surround yourself by people more talented than yourself, and let them make you look better.” Well, that’s not too hard to find in my case and I did it as often as I could.
This is a big thank you to everybody who had ANYTHING to do with helping me make the movie. Actors. People that let us shoot in their homes. Crew. Extras. People who made or brought us food. Maybe you lent me a prop, or even just a word of advice. Maybe you just came out to a premiere to support us. Maybe you lent me a Viper. Maybe you watched a rough cut of the movie and gave me notes. No act of kindness that came my way is too small to mention.
I am forever grateful to all of you for at least believing in me enough that you lent me some of your goodwill whether physical or otherwise. Thank you.
I’m a Virgo so it probably won’t surprise you that I’m detail oriented and very focused, so many times I’d just roll into the next scene, and when the shoot was over I plowed into foley(I’ve done all my own) and editing(I’ve edited every feature under the pseudonym Harvey Glatman). And I forgot to thank a lot of people most of the time.
If you know someone who helped me out in any way, feel free to copy and paste and send this to them, because I’m talking to them and would be happy to know they finally got their overdue thank you.
I am grateful to every one of you. Now I’m going back to being the insensitive monster I usually am.
And hope you had a Happy Halloween everyone!
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Hunting Humans
I was 28 years old when I wrote “Hunting Humans”. I had about $7,000 in cash from selling comics on eBay as well as about $4k I could charge on a credit card. We were shooting on 16mm film, so that wasn’t going to get us very far. I owned a comic store that barely made ends meet.
I made the decision to move out of my apartment and sleep on a futon in the back of my store in order to raise the few thousand dollars more that I needed to be able to get the movie in the can. (but that wouldn’t be enough money to develop the film or transfer it to video for editing)
Sleeping on a futon sucks. Waking up to a store that was open wasn’t fun. I’d peer out the back window to see if my employee had any customers. If not, I’d sneak out and go get a shower at my parents’ or my girlfriend’s parents’ house. If we had customers, I had to wait until they left to make my getaway.
The nights on that futon were long. I had no TV there, but I had internet--well, what there was to have in 1999. And plenty of time to consider whether I was wasting a lot of money on something that would be terrible or maybe never get finished. It was going to be a $24,000 gamble for a guy with no savings of any kind.
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Fear of Clowns
I get asked a lot--why is your clown shirtless in “Fear of Clowns”? Sometimes it’s just a curious fan, other times it’s someone who clearly finds the choice ridiculous. I’m not even saying they’re wrong.
Thing is, I’m not now nor have I ever been afraid of clowns. Sure, the clown doll in Poltergeist is freaky. Sure, Pennywise is awesomely creepy. However, in real life they don’t bother me at all.
I wrote a script where the first real good look you get a Shivers reads like this:
"The clown stands there revealed in the light. Like Lynn's worst nightmare, like the clown in the painting Tuck pointed out, the one that Lynn paints often, the one from her dream.
His pupil-less eyes, however, are black as night. The soulless eyes of a shark."
Weird, right? No mention of shirtless in those ugly sentences. (hey, it was a long time ago) Those who saw the promo video we shot to raise money for the film might also notice that the Shivers we used then--friend Dennis Long(pictured above)--had a full clown costume on.
That’s because I hadn’t intended to make him shirtless, but we cast Mark Lassise in the role and the dude was pretty buff. My personal perspective was...I wouldn’t be afraid of this clown if I saw him. But if I saw this clown with no shirt, I’d be like...that dude will break me in half...
So I remember getting my brain trust together and asking them what they thought. Nobody was super against it. I think a couple people thought it a bit odd, but nobody could tell me it wouldn’t work. I also knew it would definitely set us apart. At the time there was pretty much only It and Killjoy as far as other horror clowns went, and both of them had shirts.
That’s why, as far as I know, Shivers the Clown was the only shirtless clown to exist until Rob Zombie put a couple into his movie 31. (and he put a clown in there with a spiked bat for a weapon, which I had in Fear of Clowns 2. Great minds think alike, or is he stealing from me lol?)
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Hunting Humans
Lead actor Rick Ganz’s life was very complicated at the start of our shoot on “Hunting Humans”. He was at the beginning of a divorce, so was moving out of he and his wife’s apartment during the first week of shooting.
On day one we went to shoot at his parents’ house in Severna Park but a transformer blew out in the neighborhood--just my luck. We had to wait a couple of hours for the power to come back on, but then Rick got a call that his dad had had a heart attack that day and was just now coming home from the hospital so we’d have to clear out of our location. What we had shot was all we were going to get there.
Yes, welcome to Day Ones of most shoots. We had no backup location so we decided to head to Rick’s apartment that he was moving out of to try to fake that as the interior of the house we just shot in. Carpets and wall paints didn’t match but I tried to use a few tricks to make the audience not notice. (like, bridging a cut from the first house to a dark room in the apartment where the light comes on. It’s enough distraction that I don’t think the audience catches on)
Rick’s soon-to-be-ex-wife showed up in the middle of shooting and demanded to know what we were all doing there. (just as we were about to shoot the naked-girl-in-the-shower scene) It wasn’t fun, and it’s a credit to Rick at all that he acted so well in the middle of all that personal turmoil.
We only missed one scene that day. I got four hours of sleep that night before I was back up and at it the next morning.
It took me a while to learn that you should schedule Day Ones very lightly and try to make them easy--they can derail your momentum and morale if things go wrong and you fall behind that early.
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Fear of Clowns 2
To continue with Day One stories, I bring you Fear of Clowns 2. Let me start by saying that I aimed pretty high on this movie. Our budget was still low, but it was the largest budget I ever worked with. I wasn’t happy with the way the first movie had turned out other than the last 25 minutes. I would put a lot more action and murder in this movie.
Day One had us illegally breaking into Six Flags America through a hole in the fence I’d found when location scouting out there. I wasn’t going to get to close to the actual rides--I really just needed the clowns in the same shot as some of those big coasters.
But I knew we’d be dodging security to do it, with a minimal cast of the clowns plus Johnny Alonso, and a minimal crew. However, all of the issues about trespassing faded into the background when it turned out that Mark couldn’t keep the sclera contacts in his eyes. (a sclera lens is a lens that covers the entire eye, not just the pupil) These were a new pair I’d gotten him, since the pair from the original FOC were like 3 years old by this time. Something about the new pair bothered his eyes and made them water, and that water would smear his clown makeup. After a while he was able to get one lens in and keep it, but his other eye was bloodshot and watery, and he couldn’t put the lens back in.
It got to the point where I had to just say screw it--he’s got the one black eye and we’ll have to shoot around it. Nowadays I could CGI the eye in without too much hassle, but back then, nope. We were shooting a lot of profile and from-behind shots of the clown.
The rest of that day went bad. We fell behind. I was embarrassed to have to duck for cover whenever security drove by, because this was my first time working with Alonso, who has worked on real productions like One Tree Hill and Dawson’s Creek, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have to duck for cover when security drives by on One Tree Hill and Dawson’s Creek.
We ran out of time and had some scenes to pickup, which is a terrible way to start the shoot. The one moment I remember more vividly than any that day is when we got dinner, and I took mine and went away from everybody. I stared at that schedule and my shot list, and tried to figure out how I was going to make it all work.
Disguising despair with confidence is a valuable talent to learn as a no-budget director. I got pretty good at it.
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Bounty
Man, are there a lot of stories to tell from this movie. By far the most insane shoot I’ve ever attempted, which is why there are so many great stories. We were stopped by cops pretty much every night, sometimes more than once.
I guess that happens when you strap guns and badges on people and have them run around the streets of Glen Burnie and Baltimore without permits or permission of any kind. (well, other than the sidewalk permit I’d gotten by lying and saying we were shooting a documentary on homeless people called “Under An Open Sky”)
Sidebar: Yes, I broke a lot of laws and lied a lot to get things done. However, this is not me saying that YOU should do that, because you’re probably not as good at it as I am and you’ll get caught.
Anyway, it all started when I wrote a found-footage film based on my love of Cops and Dog The Bounty Hunter. I wrote it specifically for Tom Proctor, who I’d worked with on FOC2, and he tells the funny story in the Making Of about how I suckered him in by sending him only the first 25 pages.
After I’d finished the script and was starting preproduction, I knew we’d have some big hurdles ahead of us. First, it was a smaller budget than any movie I’d worked on previously. The distribution landscape had changed--nobody was paying advances anymore since Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were on their way to non-existence.
I had to figure out how to outfit a trio of guys so they were believable as bounty hunters--guns, vests, badges, all the equipment, an office--and then send them out into the streets of Glen Burnie and Baltimore without getting us all arrested or killed. I talked with two cop buddies who both said almost exactly the same thing: “If you get arrested, I don’t know you.” (so don’t name drop them) They added: “You’re probably going to get shot though.”
I’ll tell you how both those things almost happened in one of the later posts. Either way, I look back at the balls of doing what we did...not sure I have those balls any more. (figuratively)
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Fear of Clowns 2
I have literally NEVER told this story publicly. It’s slightly embarrassing but I hope we’re all removed enough from it that nobody’s too bothered. We are coming to the end on this shoot. We have the big showdown where Shivers get shot and possibly killed by Detective Peters, who is mortally wounded. He’s got Shivers’ axe stuck in his side.
Lynn is supposed to run over to him where he’s bleeding out. She tries to comfort him. He tries to explain why he did what he did. (I’m not spoiling that even though the movie is over 15 years old) Then, as he’s about to die, he asks her to kiss him. That was the scene. His last wish is a kiss from the woman who he’s had a thing for for years.
And a day or two before that scene, Frank got a cold sore on his lip.
Calm down. Yeah, we all hate cold sores. I’ve had them. You’ve probably had them. WebMD estimates 90% of people get at least one cold sore in their life.
So obviously Jackie’s leery of kissing him, because as we all know, cold sores are contagious. Frank doesn’t want to do it either, because he doesn’t want to give it to her any more than she wants it.
Here I am, writer guy, trying to figure out something I can live with if he doesn’t get that kiss. In my mind, it was the perfect way for him to go out. A little sad, a little happy.
In the end, I decided to get the kiss anyway except their lips would never touch. It’s very dark and I had D.P. David Mun take the right angle so you can’t see it. It’s not quite as touching as it would be if you saw it, but I think it works okay.
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Let’s talk nudity, shall we?
I’ve had nudity in all seven of my films. (partial male and female nudity in my first film, a variety of female nudity in the rest) Not only is it basically a tradition in horror movies--when they say you need the three B’s in a movie, they mean Blood, Boobs and Beasts--but when I was starting out it was basically required by the distributors. Nowadays it’s not required, and I even question it in my head. Back then horror movies were a guaranteed place to see some sex and nudity, but now you can get that by turning on your computer and directing it to millions of web sites. At least, that’s what I hear, insert winky face emogee.
So now it’s really ONLY tradition that has me doing it, but I find--and man, do I feel old saying this--that sometimes nudity gets in the way of the story I’m trying to tell. It always feel shoehorned in when I’m writing.
But hey, maybe you’re a filmmaker who doesn’t feel that way and I have no problem with that. I still like seeing boobs in movies(sue me), so the more the merrier. My only advice would be this: When you’re shooting nudity, make it the first scene you shoot with the actor who gets naked.
Doesn’t have to be day one, but let’s say you’ve cast actress Gertrude to get naked in a scene. You shoot ten pages with Gertude, and then move to the nudity. The actress decides she no longer wants to do nudity. You are stuck with either recasting and reshooting, or removing nudity from your movie.
If you shoot the nudity first, it either happens or you immediately fire the actor/actress and make those scenes pickups while you recast.
This has never happened to me, but I was always aware it COULD. That’s why on Hunting Humans we shot the shower scene on day one. On Fear of Clowns we shot the scene where actress Lauren Pellegrino gets naked and murdered as her first scene. THEN we shot the rest of the stuff.
And hey, while I’m handing out advice, this seems pretty obvious but I know a handful of filmmaker friends who this became an issue for: Before you shoot a single frame on any actor/actress(nudity or not), get them to sign the release. Don’t wait until after you’ve shot their scene. You’ll forget or they could then refuse and try to renegotiate their contract.
Every day we shoot with a new actor/actress, my production manager Zig gets a release signed. Every. Time.
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Music
I count myself lucky in many ways but none moreso than the music I’ve been able to get into my films.
I think it’s gotten better over the years, but music in movies is still under-appreciated. I’m a massive fan of orchestral music, which is why I’ve always sought it out.
For instance, on my first film I put out on the internet newsgroups that I was looking for someone who could do orchestral stuff for my movie. The crazy part is some of the submissions I got. Some of these guys are BIG names in video game music now. Jesper Kyd sent me a demo CD. Kevin Riepl sent me a CD, and I even licensed one of his songs for the title music of HH(but we ended up not using it).
A guy named Evan Evans sent me a demo CD, and he had legit feature film credits to his name. When I heard the stuff I was blown away but my first thought was...I can’t afford this guy. And even if we could somehow come to an agreement, how can I show him this no-budget movie after he’s scored real films with actors like Eric Roberts, John Ritter, Michael Rooker and Judge Reinhold in them?
Advice alert! Always ask if someone’s interested, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. All they can say is no. I almost never asked Tom Proctor to come on to Fear of Clowns 2 because I thought it was so beneath him that he wouldn’t be interested. If I hadn’t asked, I never would have made a great friend or created Bounty, etc.
Anyway, I hired Evan Evans for HH and as you can hear, he knocked it out of the park. Dude is a musical genius, literally. (he’s the son of the legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans -- who was an 8-time Grammy Award recipient, 31-time Grammy Award nominee and recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievment Award--and is the youngest to ever win the Disney Creativity Challenge Award for "Best Original Composition" at 11 years old)
After that I hired Chad Seiter, on a recommendation from Kevin Riepl, who went on to score three of my movies(FOC1&2 and GOH) as well as help on sound design for Bounty. The picture above is me with Jacky Reres and Chad from 2007 when I went out to L.A. to loop some audio for Jacky.
Then on the Terrortory movies I hired the talented UK composer Terence Jones for the orchestral stuff, while using a variety of others for the synth-based segments. Daniel Deluxe, a Copenhagen-based phenom, scored Smiling Jack, while Ben Moseley--whose online moniker is The Bishop of Battle, and if you know, you know--did the other synth segments.
Lastly I was very excited to get some 80’s sounding synth music into the Terrortory movies from some amazing talent. The end-credit music for the first movie is by Foret De Vin(called “Hold the Night”), while the second movie features a great song(“Plastic Hearts”) by FAVORIT89 during a dance sequence, and an end-song by fellow Finns The Freeweights called “Everybody Wants My Name”. Honestly, seeing the resurgence of synth music the last few years has been a bright spot for me, and going through it all to find music for the films was something I looked forward to.
All of the musicians I’ve named helped make my movies infinitely better than they would have been otherwise.
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Bounty
I mentioned arrests and nearly getting killed, so here’s some details.
The first day Tom Proctor got into town, I had a busy day planned even though it wasn’t technically a shooting day. We got his hair dyed at some salon that messed it up and made it stygian black instead of just darkening it.
Then I had him get dressed up in the bounty-hunter outfit and we headed into Baltimore. I wanted to show him some of the street locations I planned to shoot in, as well as get some B-roll I could use if I needed it. (and also see just how dark the in-car scenes would be, even though I’d done some tests)
He’s driving in Baltimore, I’m in the passenger seat filming him. He doesn’t know Baltimore, and makes a turn where he’s not supposed to, and cop lights immediately light up behind us.
Now understand...Tom is fully outfitted. Badge, vest, gun strapped on his vest. Internally I’m freaking a little bit. We gonna get arrested before we’ve even started?
The cop takes it all in as he comes up, gets Tom’s license and says he’ll be back in a second. He comes back a few minutes later and asks, “So who you looking for?” I realize he thinks Tom is really a bounty hunter.
I say, “We’re shooting a documentary, just getting some random footage, but he’s not from around here which is why he turned where he wasn’t supposed to.” The cop nods and says, “Well, if you go down this street and make a right on (some street I don’t remember), there’s definitely some wanted people down there.”
He let us off with a warning, never asking whether we had a permit for the gun. This would become par for the course. What I learned: If you want to carry a gun without a concealed-carry permit, get yourself a bounty hunter badge and gear. Problem solved.
###
We got stopped over and over during the actual shoot. It got to the point that two counties asked us to call ahead and tell them where we were shooting so they knew that the calls that were coming in were about us. They never arrested us or even threatened it, which was crazy. We only got kicked out of one location, because it was private property and the residents had complained. (we waited an hour and went back anyway to get the shot)
At another location in Glen Burnie, a cop told us that drug dealers had called them to complain because we were messing with their business. Apparently three armed men that look like police is a deterrent to selling weed.
###
The time we almost got shot was in Baltimore near what we called “Murder Alley”. We had been informed early in the shoot that we shouldn’t shoot in this area because there had been a murder there a few weeks before. This is an area with a blue-light camera on nearly every streetlight, crumbling buildings, and rats the size of dogs.
We shot there anyway. (I DID call the number they told me to call to let them know we’d be shooting there, every time)
This is the scene in Bounty where everyone gets chased into an alley, and Tom’s character drops to a knee and starts shooting at the crowd who is chasing them. (we used a blank-firing gun whose barrel was plugged, so there was no chance anybody would get hurt)
I am the main camera guy, and I’m chasing Neil Conway and Demetrius Parker. I’m pretending that my leg is hurt, cuz we were just in a car accident. (I actually put a piece of glass in my shoe so I couldn’t run normally)
We do one take and it’s not bad. We set up for a second take, and I’m chasing them, and I see at the end of the alley we’re running toward...a minivan? It pulls up in front of us and the side door slides open, and there’s a guy in plain clothes with a badge hanging on his chest, and he’s got a submachine gun pointing at Demetrius.
In retrospect I can see how this looked to that cop. Black man in mask chasing a white dude who looks like an accountant.
I yell “NO NO NO, IT’S A MOVIE!”
The guy doesn’t shoot, and I talk to him. He apparently didn’t get the call from the lieutenant who would let the various departments know what was going on. He and his guys heard the shots from the first take and rolled down to see what was up.
That was the scariest moment on any shoot I’ve been on, I think
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Terrortory
This was a weird happenstance. It was 2014 and I got a message from FX guru Mark Wenger asking if I’d be interested in doing a segment for a horror anthology. He sent me details, which he allowed me to post here:
“In the Frederick/Hagerstown area of Maryland there is a small stretch of wooded land (approx 10 acres) upon which there have been reports of paranormal activity, sightings, strange lights, disappearances, and deaths. These accounts span a history of more than one-hundred years. From a scorned husband stalking and subsequently butchering his wife and her lover as they stole away on a secret lovers' camping tryst, to cyptozological creatures being encountered, the area has become known as the "Maryland Bermuda Triangle." To some more cheeky horror/paranormal buffs, it has become known as the "TerrorTory" of Maryland.
We are inviting a few local filmmakers to create their own unique story and short film about the "TerrorTory," to be included in this horror anthology. The short films will be connected and encompassed by another short subplot. Everyone must abide by the same rules which are listed below. The sky is the limit, other than budget. Let your imagination fly. The only restriction is that each short film must tell a unique story. Theme/content cannot overlap. Only one slasher, supernatural, otherworldly etc."
I was trying to get “Night of the Clowns” off the ground at that point--a strange movie that would definitely have set a record for the number of clowns in a movie. I told Mark I couldn’t do Terrortory, not only because I didn’t have the time but I didn’t have an idea for a short.
Fast forward about 3 months and I could tell the Clowns feature wasn’t gonna happen. It was getting too big for our budget, and we started waffling on the script because of it. Also, an idea had occurred to me for a short that seemed interesting to me. It was the Smiling Jack segment, and it would be a bit of a departure in that it’s not a straight linear story like I usually write.
It would go back and forth from the present to the past, and the past would start to reveal that what we were seeing in the present wasn’t what it appeared to be.
Anyway, shot and edited that while I waited to see what was happening with the other filmmakers and their segments, but it wasn’t much. For various reasons, people who Mark thought would do a segment didn’t.
Dan Doran, one of Mark’s friends who had also helped come up with the Terrortory concept, had written a script that he was trying to shoot. I went out and helped on day one of “Devil’s Bed”, but there were issues and it was really too ambitious for our budget. (it was set in the 80’s, featured a store robbery, and a lot of dialogue)
I had an idea for another segment, and I also mentioned that I had an idea for the wrap-around segment that would be better than what they had planned. I went out and shot Siren, and not long after that I shot the wrap-around segment.
Mark shot his segment with Dan’s help(and I did some second camera work on one day), and we were still short timewise. Dan had another idea I thought was pretty good called “The Drone Collector”, and I went out and helped him shoot it over a two-day period.
Then I waited a bit for Mark to tell me he had someone for another segment, but it didn’t happen. About that time I’d seen some news articles about clowns hanging out in the woods or in cemeteries, waving at cars at they went by, which was creepy. I thought, “Hey, I’m the clown guy...this’ll be on brand.”
I came up with the Midnight Clown and his rules, which greatly influenced how I expanded the mythos of Terrortory in part two. Up until the Midnight Clown, I’d had no notions about the rules and the boundaries. After that, though, it seemed an interesting angle to take, that it’s possible to beat these things if you simply know “the rules” regarding that monster.
We cast it and went out and shot it. We ran late both nights but got it done, and I was very happy with how it turned out. It’s also the only other found footage thing I’ve ever directed besides Bounty, and I had a lot of internal struggles about shooting it with sub-par video cameras. I knew if we shot it with DSLRs it would look phenomenal, rather than grainy and ugly.
I’m glad I got to revisit the clown with the DSLR camera in Terrortory 2.
In retrospect it’s sort of funny how it went from me shooting one segment to doing about 85% of the movie.
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Fear of Clowns 3(!?!?)
Another story I’ve never written down publicly. I’ve told a very few people, but it’s a funny story. Embarrassing to a couple of people, but whatever.
Mark Lassise, the main man Shivers himself, had moved to Brazil a few years after FOC2. He was the host of a show called An American in Brazil, and I saw an episode. It was pretty entertaining, because Mark is a funny, outgoing dude in real life.
Years later--I don’t know, maybe 2014 or 2015, he hits me up out of the blue. Was I considering FOC3?
I had written the first 15 pages of that script and was pretty happy with the concept of what would happen but after the implosion of the video/dvd market I had no plans to shoot it. I’ll spoil it because it ISN’T going to get shot: A few years after FOC2, Lynn has become a popular artist but she lives like a recluse in a big house with barb wire fence surrounding it. She’s been training in hand to hand combat and guns, getting all Linda Hamilton, because Shivers is still out there. (she thinks, since they never found his body)
Because she doesn’t to go out in public, she’s hired someone with similar looks to be her public face. That’s the person on her art books. That’s the person who does interviews when there are galleries. As far as the world is concerned, this other woman IS Lynn Blodgett, and has been for years.
Lynn’s in her house when an alarm goes off, and long story short, Lynn gets attacked and killed by Shivers. Shivers stands there above her bloody corpse, waiting to be “get better”, but it doesn’t happen. He’s confused, but then the TV--which he’d used as a distraction--starts playing an interview with “Lynn Blodgett”, and Shivers thinks...”I’ve killed the wrong Lynn.” He shifts focus to this new woman, and from there this movie was gonna get a bit crazy. (I even mulled Shivers attacking the funeral of Lynn Blodgett and butchering most of the attendees)
That’s not necessary for this story, but figured you might be curious.
Because Mark says he has a friend who would like to take a whack at a script. They want it to be Fear of Clowns Carnivale, to be shot in Brazil. My immediate thought is, “How does Shivers get to Brazil?”
He asks if I’d be open to basically just being an executive producer and that I’d have final script say when this guy was done. I think about it and tell him--there needs to be upfront money for me and yes, I will have final say on the script, then sure, I’d be okay with it.
Couple months later and the script comes in and...
I don’t remember the name of the guy who wrote it, but it’s bad. Like...Detective Peters is back in it, but he’s in a wheelchair. I think he’s only in the script so someone can push him off of a cruise ship. (not kidding) Then, turns out Shivers isn’t the bad guy in this.
No, there’s some sort of Ringmaster guy who’s doing bad stuff in Brazil, and Shivers makes his way there. Shivers also seems to be pretty talkative in this movie. And he gets a girlfriend and becomes a bit of a hero.
Sort of what Marvel Comics does to all their cool bad guys, they turn them into anti-heroes. The whole thing was preposterous.
I told Mark the script wasn’t good and I didn’t want it happening. No way could I just “fix” it. I mean, consider you’ve seen the first two Friday the 13th movies, and then in the third one, Jason decides to get a girlfriend and fight for good.
Yeah. So anyway, FOC3 is never gonna happen.
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Nudity Part 2
Let’s talk about a strange phenomenon that I call the Model Mayhem effect.
I’ve gotten actresses and models in my movie through a variety of means. Sometimes referrals, sometimes they email me out of the blue, other times I’ve used Model Mayhem. If you don’t know, it’s a site where women and photographers post photos, many of them with nudity.
On “Garden of Hedon”, our original idea was to have a ton of nudity and background sex, because if this is a place where people indulge their hedonisms then that would be something you’d see a lot. Nobody would have any inhibitions here.
From a practical standpoint, it became a nightmare. Extras who said they’d do it just didn’t show up. Others who were only expected to get topless didn’t show up. If you’re not paying people, that’s to be expected, but we WERE paying people. (on average, like $250)
Hell, the strip club scene in the movie was supposed to have four women stripping. EVERY ONE of them didn’t show up that day. Only one called to let us know they couldn’t do it, and that was the morning of the shoot.
There wouldn’t be any nudity in that scene but for a stripper who was at the club and loved horror movies. I told her I’d pay her to stick around for four hours. We’d shoot her out first, then get the rest of the scene.
Fast forward to the first time Richard Cutting’s character Owen walks into a party area of the house. It would be the first scene where the audience sees what goes on in the house, so we wanted it to be chock full of weirdness. The original script had a naked woman bathing in a clawfoot bathtub in the center of the room.
Budget restrained us mightily. And again, not one of the people who said they’d come out to do nudity came out.
The only person who didn’t bail was a girl that Frank Lama(who helped us out quite a few times) had found on Model Mayhem. I’d seen her pictures and she was hot. Clearly had no issue with nudity, judging by all the naked pics on her profile.
She showed up, all right...looking four months pregnant. I didn’t realize we had a problem until Frank came up to me apologizing, and then I saw her. We rolled with it because #1) Without her, there are no boobies in this scene and #2) I’m sure somebody has a fetish for pregnant ladies.
###
On Terrortory 2, the Mad Gathering segment, I wanted a witch like in Beastmaster. They were these model women with hideous faces. In my movie I wanted mine to be topless.
Found a woman on Model Mayhem who was interested and fit the bill of hot and willing to bare breasts. Still aware of the GOH thing, I asked her to send me a picture from TODAY. She did, and she still looked good though she was wearing clothes.
I was misled. She took off her shirt, and it was pretty clear that the model mayhem pics were from at least 10 years ago. She’d gained weight and had stretch marks.
Now, I’m not fat shaming or trying to put her down, but if you’re trying to get hired based on your physical appearance, then you need to be honest about your physical appearance. She was cool, and we still used her but I obviously didn’t feature her like I would have if she’d looked like the photos she’d sent us.
I became much more careful after that.
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Hunting Humans & Strange Things
Over the years there have been some strange things that happened during my movies or after they came out. Here’s a few of them.
My first film “Hunting Humans” has a LOT of weirdness going on. Flashback to when I’ve just delivered the movie to composer Evan Evans. The end credits are FULL of fake crew because we had a crew of four and I didn’t want the distributors to low-ball me because they knew it. That fake crew is composed almost entirely of serial killers, real and fictional, as well as a few friends.
I’m talking to Evan on the phone about some of the things I’m hoping the score will accomplish when he hits me with this doozy. He wasn’t going to tell me because he didn’t want to wig me out, but it turns out that his grandparents were actually murdered by the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez.
He didn’t know about it for most of his life, as his parents had told him that they died in a car accident. He told me some of the gruesome details, and I was a little at a loss what to say back to him. He was very cool about it, and said it wouldn’t affect anything as far as his score went. It had happened a long time ago, and it was just a weird coincidence. (and I’m pretty sure Ramirez is one of the fake crew I had put in the end credits)
###
In 2008, reporters started contacting me because a story was breaking that a man was caught trying to rape a girl, and inside of his truck was basically a murder kit. And oh yeah, a dvd player with my movie “Hunting Humans” in it. Turns out, this guy had killed people too.
Obviously there were the questions about “Do you think your movie pushed him to murder?” “Do you think it influenced him?” “Do you feel bad about making the movie if it could possibly have an influence on people?”
I also got other questions like, “Do you think Lane is a big fan of your movie, or did it just happen to be the movie in his player?” Given that he’d bought the movie, and also stole one of the place-cards from Blockbuster of it, I’d guess he’s a fan.
But I never knew. Then with the 20th anniversary of my movie coming up, I thought: Know what would be interesting as a bonus feature on a new disc? How about an interview with an actual serial killer who had the movie with him when he went out to kill? (note: He’s not TECHNICALLY a serial killer--only killed two that they could prove, but every law enforcement agency that talked about him stated they were positive there were others out there that they couldn’t prove)
I wrote to the guy. He’s in a prison in PA, so it would be a decent drive but not too bad. He wrote back about a month later, and it’s a WEIRD letter. He doesn’t specifically say no, but he implies maybe I should buy him stuff because OJ got big screen TVs and stuff when he did interviews. Also, he’s not sure if he should do it because he’s not sure his mom would approve of it.
That made me chuckle.
A few years later I got another letter from a prison in Texas. Some guy says he read about my movies in Fangoria, and was I getting ready to shoot another movie? Could I send him some FX shots, and I think he mentioned the bloodier the better. (I probably saw a Dateline or something about him, which is why his name looked familiar)
His name looked familiar, so I looked him up. He spree-killed a bunch of people at a party in Texas.
My wife gets a little weirded out that serial killers write to me, but like I told her: They like me. They’re not gonna come after me.
More recently, a news article came across about a guy named Michael Horvath. I think the trial just ended, but every news article about it says he stalked and killed his co-worker and buried her on his property, and that “he had books and videos on ‘hunting humans’ in his home”. Weird way to phrase that if he didn’t have my movie or the book of that title...however, I haven’t been able to find any detailed information even though I bet it came out at trial.
Here’s the first article I ever saw about it: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cops-man-with-hunting-humans-dvd-charged-with-homicide-kidnapping-co-worker/
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Terrortory and the Kiddie Wagon of Doom
You wanna know just how low budget the first Terrortory movie was? Then behold the glorious story of Stewie and His Kiddie Wagon Of Doom.
As part of the agreement between all the filmmakers, no single part of Terrortory would cost more than $1500. This was mostly to ensure that it would be possible to make our money back at least on this thing, as at that point we really had no idea what it would look like when done.
I had done Smiling Jack and was waiting to hear about the others when I’d had an idea for the Siren segment. I cast Ryan Thomas in the lead role, and Meadow Bosworth as the titular(no pun intended) character.
My crew would be some of my regular friends: Zig, my brother Mike, Stewie, and even Richard Cutting came out to assist(Melissa LaMartina came out on day two to help us). I had rented a slider, and with a slider you need two heavy-duty tripods if you don’t want a ground-level shot. That meant we’d be carrying a decent bit of gear into the woods.
I’m at my house trying to figure out how we’re gonna drag this through the woods because we don’t have enough people to carry it all, and I think it was Cutting who mentioned did I have a wagon? I did not, but you know who did? My kid.
So I borrowed his wagon. It was pretty big and sturdy and looked like we could throw a bunch of stuff on it and wheel it through the woods.
What’s that phrase about the best-laid plans?
Day One is the first half of the script where Ryan’s character is hunting for deer in the woods but finding no signs of wild life. I even dragged a step ladder into the woods so I could get some high-angle shots. (I didn’t own a drone then)
We discover very quickly that the ground is muddy in a lot of places, and there are roots and branches, and sometimes tree trunks blocking portions of the path. The path also goes up and down some steep hills, and even across a stream at one point. Dragging this loaded-down wagon, which we’d relegated to Stewie, was not going well.
About two hours in and one of the axles on the wagon bent(one of the attached pictures shows Richard Cutting trying to figure out if he can unbend it, to no avail). All of a sudden this wagon became a sled, because the wheels would no longer turn. Stewie was trying to drag a couple hundred pounds of equipment through the woods, and while funny for the rest of us, not so funny for Stewie.
I don’t remember what happened to that wagon. Did we drag it out of the woods? I don’t feel like I ever saw it again, but we did not use it on day two, that I can promise you.
Even mentioning it to Stewie today causes him to go into Vevel PTSD. Go ahead, if you see him, ask him about his wagon.
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Halloween: The Greatest Holiday of All
This is a departure from my usual posts for two reasons. First, I’m running out of posts. Those of you that thought I’d pre-composed 31 of them have a much higher opinion of me than they should; I’m typically only one or two ahead of what I post at any time. Second, it’s the season for what I’m about to post and I don’t know how long it will take Amazon to ship them if you want one.
Anyway, in 2014 I had the notion that I should put together a book on Halloween like I would want to buy. Full of nostalgic pictures of costumes and candy and ads, and anything else interesting about the holiday. I’ve bought dozens of books on Halloween, and many of them are good, but none of them are exactly the book I wanted.
Why not just make it myself?
It took me about two years of researching, getting permission on pictures, and then color-correcting and cropping the pictures, and finally learning a new program(Adobe InDesign) to create it but I did. I got an awesome cover from the always-reliable Erik Ashley and uploaded it to Amazon.
It’s a big book, magazine-sized but almost 200 pages and it’s full color. It covers a wide range of vintage things from the aforementioned candy and costumes and ads as well as urban legends, vintage photos and postcards--which I hadn’t known much about before I started the book.
Sure, I only make about $6 per book sold on a cover price around $34.95, but it was never about the money. Working on that book kept me in the Halloween spirit the whole time, and I learned a ton that I didn’t know about the holiday. There’s a lot of fascinating anecdotes and traditions I was ignorant of, and I included it in the book. (and I even discovered some shockingly-racist candy that I included pictures of)
Check it out if you’re interested. There’s a couple of sample pages so you can get an idea of what’s inside, and a link below to Amazon.
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Tough love time
You wrote your script. It's genius. Your girlfriend/wife loves it. Your friends pretend to. You cast it with actors who love it.
You make your movie. You think it's pretty good. You submit it to festivals. Nobody wants it. (well, okay, maybe one of those pretentious artsy festivals plays it)
You submit it to distributors. Silence. Finally you put it up on Youtube, where it gathers 128 views over a year.
What went wrong? Why doesn't anybody want to watch your movie?
It's really pretty apparent, isn't it? You've made a movie that isn't interesting to anybody but you.
So many no-budget filmmaker acquaintances have done this that it's painful for me to watch. I've tried to help them out. I've told them they've got a problem, but the problem is that they mistakenly think their passion for the material will be universal.
They think if they make a movie that's important to them, it will be important to everybody. It won't. It doesn't matter if the movie's about heartbreak or racism or some other "important" topic, because in general people don't really give a shit.
It's about concept, first and foremost. It has never been more important to make your concept rock solid, because there’s so much content out there right now fighting for eyeballs that odds are great that your film is going to disappear into the ether.
Half of you, right now, are thinking, "Fuck this guy--this is the kind of shit that results in the Roland Emmerich movies that suck balls." I'm not saying you're wrong. It's also the kind of shit that results in The Matrix, Jurassic Park, The Thing, Saw, and many other good movies.
When you're at our budget level, what you need is EYES. Eyes that want to watch your movie. Whether you're putting your movie for free on Youtube or putting it up on Amazon, or getting it to a small distributor, the more people that want to watch your movie, the more successful you'll be.
That all starts with your concept.
Objectively, the first thing I always do when I'm brewing an idea for a script is try to see the trailer in my head. If I can see that, and it looks interesting, then I know I'm on to something. You HAVE to be able to see it objectively though.
You can also try to pitch it to an honest friend. This is the friend who tells you when you look fat in that outfit. The one who's not afraid to tell you that you have a booger hanging from your nose. The one who calls you out for being a dick when the rest of your friends go quiet.
If your friend is genuinely interested in the story you're telling, if they ask you questions during the pitch and seem involved, then you've got something. However, if they do a lot of nodding and give you a bunch of "uh huh"s, then you don't.
I'm lucky enough that my interest is in horror films, one of the easiest genres to market to. But that still doesn't give me license to go pedestrian with my ideas. If someone asks me what my next movie is about and I say, "These kids go to a cabin in the woods and start dying off", I can already see their eyes glazing over.
Believe me, I know it's a hard thing to figure out. The first movie I ever got serious about trying to get off the ground was this mediocre slasher flick called "The Lucky Ones". Then I tried to get another movie made that was the basic slacker-with-a-gun movie that was popular in the 90's.
It wasn't until I came up with the idea for "Hunting Humans" that I could tell I was on to something. Everybody I talked to about that idea was REAAAAAL curious about hearing more. Most of them told me, "I'd watch that", which was not something I'd ever heard.
So get serious about your concept before you start writing that script. Make sure your concept is strong enough. The worst thing you can do is invest all that time and energy into a sub-par concept, because it'll sour you to making movies.
That doesn’t mean you have to make a meaningless Roland Emmerich film though. Once you’ve got the concept, find a character and a struggle that you can invest yourself in, and put them into that concept.
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It's Not All Bad
The Part of Indie Filmmaking Nobody Talks About
There are a lot of reasons to not make a no-budget movie: Burning money that you’ll probably never see back. Wasting a lot of time on something that you may never finish. Stressing yourself out over the millions of things you have to get accomplished with little money. The impending disappointment of never getting your actual vision onto the screen.
There’s one reason TO make that no-budget movie, though, that I don’t hear talked about that often and it is this: The friendships you will make.
I am not an overly social guy. (I hear some of you laughing at this understatement) I’ve never had a ton of real friends, the kind you’d take a bullet for.
But going to make a no-budget movie is a lot like going to war. (I’d add, “I imagine”, but I’ve played plenty of Battlefield games on the Xbox so I think I know what I’m talking about when I say I know what it’s like going to war. Also, that was a joke for those who need this addendum.)
The people who are willing to come out and help you without much recompense are your brothers and sisters. Blood, sweat, and tears are shed by all who try to do this, and that mixture forms a bond between you.
I’ve gained incredible friendships with people involved in my films. I still stay in touch with many of them, and if I’m in their area(or vice versa), we try to get together and hang out, laugh about the good old days and find out what each other are really up to. (since we all have these fake social media accounts where we pretend everything is Uh-MAY-Zing)
I know I talk a lot of doom-and-gloom about making no-budget movies--I’m trying to weed out the wanna-be’s for their own good--but if you’re serious about doing one, know that you will make lifelong friends, and that is something that’s not talked about too often.
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Reviews
Ohhhhhh man, the thing you never really thought about before you made movies was the reviews you’d get. Then, after you get them, you cannot believe the range of creativity some of these reviewers have to describe how bad your movie is.
It all comes with the territory. I’ve never been too fazed by them. The only ones that bother me are the ones that have factual errors in them, as if they didn’t really watch the movie.
When my first movie came out, I got incredibly lucky on many of the reviews. Here’s a sampling:
- “Highly creepy.” --TV GUIDE
- “…an amazing first effort—and a damn fine movie.” --HORRORTALK.COM
- “An extremely well-directed film.” “It doesn’t disappoint.” “4(out of 4) stars.” ---JOE BOB BRIGGS
- “…smarter than your typical serial killer thriller.” --CREATURE CORNER
- “Yet another winner from Redrum Entertainment.” --411MANIA
- “…a very clever thriller.” --SLASHERPOOL.COM
- “…a lean, mean fighting machine-an unpretentious slasher flick that sometimes feels like a deranged version of Mad Magazine's Spy Versus Spy.” --FILM FESTIVAL TODAY
- “…a new cult classic…” --EYECRAVEDVD.COM
- “Kangas has managed to bring life back to the slasher film with this epic pitting two psychos way before Freddy thought to take on Jason.” --B-INDEPENDENT.COM
Then I got some other highly negative ones. Film Threat’s Mike Watt said it “should give any fledgling filmmaker hope for the future – if this digi-video train wreck can be released with a shoddy story, terrible no-name acting, and crummy direction, so can yours.”
Funny aside, I met Mike a couple of years later at a convention, and found him to be a friendly nice guy. When he found out who I was, he apologized for the review but I told him no big deal.
I also got emails from random strangers about my flicks. Here’s one for HH, exactly as I received it:
“JESUS CHRIST STOP MAKING MOVIES NOW!!!!! I just SUFFERED through "Hunting Humans". I've seen Mexican wrestling movies that were more coherent and interesting. Hell's pecker son, what a self indulgent piece of crap. How about A HERO WE CAN CARE ABOUT? When the main character of your movie makes you want to WRETCH you are screwed from the get-go.
Did some one watch American Psycho and think that they could top it? You missed the cleaver dialog, the likable villain, a clever plot line, and great catch phrases. "No hot cocoa tonight"? What were you thinking.
Please for god's sake, go rent "May" and learn a thing or two, (but for the sake of fuck, don't try to imitate it.
God I wish you could get you money back on terrible movie rentals, fucking Redneck Zombies was better.
P.S. Rick Ganz is a wanker.”
Now, do I want to tell this guy that we shot our movie before American Psycho? Do I want to tell him the word is actually clever, not cleaver, or was he making a pun? Do I want to tell him that this whole letter is crap except for that last part about Ganz, which is spot on? (JK, who loves ya, Rico Suave?)
Sure, but I don’t reply to most of them. Sometimes I do, but even when I reply I stay diplomatic. Thanks for checking it out, sorry you didn’t like it. Here’s an email about FOC:
“i finally watched fear of clowns i dont mean to critize but i thought the film was terrible it must just be me being use to horror films but i dint find the clown scary at all i think having a horror film your main killer needs to look scary i hate to say it but clownhouse kick its ass the clowns in clownhouse looked scary ....but being a low budget horror film i must say i have seen worse .......i actually showed this dvd to director james wan director of saw ( he is a friend of mine )....he agreed with me on this saying that the clown killer just didnt look scary but anyway i just thought id email you and let ya know what i thought”
Do I think this guy actually knows James Wan and forced him to sit through Fear of Clowns? God, I hope so, but I doubt it.
I’ve been attacked on web site likes imdb(where I was called an “assrod”, among other things) and a podcast called “Night of the Living Podcast”(I think they called me an “asshat”, so I’m not sure but ass appears to be the goto description of me), which I’m thinking about writing an entire post about. It’s cool now, we actually became friendly and I was a guest on their show twice. I enjoy their podcast a lot.
What’s my point, you might be wondering? Ignore the reviews, good and bad. You can read them, but don’t let them phase or affect you. There may be some truth in both kinds of reviews, but that truth is probably more about the eye of the beholder.
Your film isn’t going to be for everyone. You can’t control how people react to what you do. Try to do the best work you can do, and the most important part is that YOU have to be happy with it. If you’re not happy with your end product, at least to some degree, then you’ll be done making movies pretty quickly.
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With Teeth
In 2009 I started a script about vampires. The second script I had ever written(probably 1994-ish) was about vampires, but it wasn’t great. Not bad, but definitely a bit amateur and it didn’t have the biggest hook to it.
Since then I hadn’t attempted a vampire anything because if I can’t add something new, I’m usually reluctant to retread old material. Vampires have been done to death, right?
But I had a concept that was interesting to me, and I wrote the script. It was pretty straight action horror, but I could see the trailer in my head and I knew it would work if I could get it shot.
I wrote it for actors I had worked with: Johnny Alonso, Richard Cutting, and Adam Ciesielski.
I tried to make it happen. The big problem is that the last third of the movie takes place in sewers, the kind you see in Angel or the remake of the Blob. Sewers like those, however, don’t exist in the U.S.
Europe apparently has a lot of them, and Angel and The Blob both used sets that were built for them. To build those kind of sets would be impossible on our kind of budget, so I set the script aside.
Then in 2019 I thought, “Man, it would suck if I died and nobody got to even check out this story.” I had the thought that maybe I’d turn it into a novella, so I spent the next year doing that. I had my man Erik Ashley work up another amazing cover--seriously, if you need an amazing graphic, you should contact him at https://www.erikashley.com--and I put it out in May of 2021.
You can get it on Amazon, but mind you, it’s not for those with delicate sensibilities. If sexual situations and cursing bother you, skip it. This review on Amazon nails it perfectly--this guy is obviously my target audience: “The cover is perfect for this fun, gross, horny vampire-ish tale! It's totally influenced by the sexy-scary VHS movies we all walked by at the video store and were intrigued and creeped out by.
With Teeth answers the question all of us (it's all of us, right? Right?) have wondered about vampires and BJs, and takes it up several inches- er... notches. Sleazy, gross, a great one-sitting creepshow.”
https://www.amazon.com/Teeth-Kevin-Kangas/dp/B095NZ2Z8R
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The Original Ending of “Fear of Clowns”
(note: I didn’t realize that some of these takes didn’t have reference audio, so they’re silent--these are straight from my original import, without the audio synced)
I have discussed this with some people before, and possibly on the commentary track for FOC, but the version of the movie that people know is radically different from the script.
I made a long version of this post, describing the differences, but god is it even more boring than the first 12 hours of the movie so I decided to spare you the details.
The main difference is that there were TWO people trying to get Shivers to kill Lynn but for two different reasons. Why it didn’t actually work was a combination of two things: WAY too convoluted, and once Shivers got arrested at the end of the movie, nobody wanted to watch another 15 minutes of movie--especially since there’s some hefty exposition in there.
I was aware when I wrote it that that might be a problem, but I figured I’d be able to find my way through it in the edit room.
I was wrong.
Anyway, there exists a cut of the deleted ending. I’m not posting it here. If I ever make an FOC Blu Ray, I’ll put it on there for the first time ever(it was missing shots and was basically terrible). Instead you can see a few videos from the night we shot it, and this little nugget of fun:
The climactic ending involved actor Andrew jumping on the hood of Jacky’s car with a knife in his hand. Jacky reverses the car fast and he falls off. After a moment he gets to his feet, and Jacky drives into him, throwing him back to the ground where he’s presumably either dead or at least knocked out long enough for the cops to get there.
Well, Andrew’s not a stunt guy so he wants nothing to do with that shot. (I don’t blame him) One of our only real crew members on the shoot, Steve Carson, was looking to do stunt work and said he’d double for Andrew, no problem.
That night he got sick and didn’t show up though, and the show must go on. I was the only other person willing to do the stunt, so I did. But I don’t half-ass anything, and I didn’t have a fake knife. So I got on the car with a real butcher knife, and then I fall off the car as she backs up. (keeping my face hidden, because I’m not Andrew)
As you can see in one of the clips I posted, Mun was a little leery of me doing the shot with the knife in my hand. In hindsight, it does seem incredibly stupid even in the interest of realism, but that was me in my twenties. Do whatever it takes to get the shot.
Okay, that was me in the thirties and forties also.
Also for those wondering, this is unedited, not color corrected stuff. You can even see the boom mic in a couple of shots, but that’s because we knew part of the frame would be masked out to make the picture closer to cinema aspect, rather than the 4:3 you get on a Panasonic DVX100.
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Writing
I’ve always been more of a writer than a director. I became a director out of necessity, as it seemed the only realistic way to see my scripts made into movies, not being in L.A. or New York.
I started writing when I was around twelve years old. I started my first book back then, but it was terrible and I threw it away. (I sorta wish I still had it so I could look at it and cringe, like I do with the short stories I wrote back then.)
All I did in school was write short stories and draw doodles, as many of my friends from middle school to high school can attest. In college I sent some stories to magazines, trying to get published, but I never did. Those stories weren’t very good, other than having strong premises. They were populated with cardboard characters. (anecdotal anecdote: I sent a couple of queries to a magazine I liked called Cemetery Dance, and got a couple of nice rejections whereas I mostly got form-letter rejections. That guy who sent the rejections was Richard Chizmar, owner of Cemetery Dance, now a big-time writer who sometimes collaborates with Stephen King. I actually had a chance to finally meet him this past weekend at a signing with Ronald Malfi and Brian Keene. Really IS a small world...)
A couple of years back I started writing short stories again. My original love. I finished an intensely-personal one and about a week later saw an anthology book looking for stories that sounded perfect for this story. I hadn’t submitted a short story anywhere in 30 years, but I went ahead and did it anyway.
A few weeks later I got an acceptance letter for “The Devil You Know”, a book of stories featuring Old Scratch himself. It was surreal that after years of trying as a twenty-something to get published, I did it on the first try at nearly fifty years old.
The book’s out now, and you can snag a copy on Amazon and probably other places where books are sold. (do those exist any more?)
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-You-Know-R-Carter/dp/0578675331
I may do a new book with some other short stories I’ve written since then, and I’ll probably include this story there. Last year I finished a Halloween story I’m very proud of that takes place in my old neighborhood on Mago Vista. It features a lot of people I grew up with--I changed their names very slightly, but not so much that they won’t recognize themselves. It’s too long for most anthology books, so probably won’t see print before I put it in my book.(though some people who will remain nameless think I should try to get a publisher)
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Premieres
The whole reason to make a movie, really.
I kid, but movie premieres can be a lot of fun. A lot of stress, too, but a lot of fun.
My first film(“Hunting Humans”) premiered at the United Artists Snowden River theater. We could only afford a showing on a Saturday morning at 11am, but we got a decent crowd. Seeing the movie up on the big screen, just like movies I’ve loved, is a thrill that never goes away.
Two funny memories from it. I was sitting next to Rick Ganz, the star of the movie, and it came to the part where he’s naked, and there was laughter from the audience. Rick leans over, smirking, and says, “Great, that got a bigger laugh than the pickle line.”
It wasn’t actually true, but it was funny. That’s one of the things you learn when you make movies: You really never know how an audience is going to react to things in your film. Something you thought was funny might get no laughs, while something serious has people in stitches.
The other funny thing is that my parents were there, and besides the fact that I could hear my mom tsk-tsking whenever there was a bad word, I asked my dad afterward what he thought of the movie. He nodded, looked a little bit surprised, and he said, “It looked like a real movie.”
High praise.
We had our premiere for “Fear of Clowns” at the prestigious Senator. It cost me a fortune(around $6K), but since it sat around 800 people I thought we ought to be able to break even if we could sell around 400 tickets. Also, they threw in popcorn and sodas for free with that price.
Well, I didn’t break even but the night was a lot of fun and it was a good-sized crowd(somewhere around 300). We had the afterparty at Gardel’s, which was a club owned by Johnny Alonso’s family. An amazing time all around.
“Fear of Clowns 2” was also at the Senator, and was even more fun. I think the movie was more entertaining for people, plus taking a limo ride with the legendary Tom Proctor was an experience I’ll never forget. I lost money on this premiere also, but didn’t mind. We again had the afterparty at Gardel’s, and once again no matter how much I drank, it was hard to get drunk. Too much adrenaline, I guess.
I tried something new(and cheaper) for “Bounty”--we got the Charles theater in Baltimore. It wasn’t the best theater in the world, but it was cheap, and right across the street was a place that would let us do the afterparty(we were told John Waters hung out there a lot). I think I about broke even on this premiere, but the afterparty was mad fun. I have pictures I’ve never shown ANYBODY from that afterparty...
On “Garden of Hedon” we tried the Landmark in Baltimore. We had a good crowd, and the afterparty was across the street, where Click on This, an internet show, interviewed a bunch of us. I think this interview is still out there somewhere.
For “Terrortory”, I decided to take a trip back to the Senator, as they were under new management, and had quoted an okay price. Unfortunately it rained that night, so a lot of people who were originally going to show up didn’t. I didn’t blame them, because who wants to drive into Baltimore near rush hour WITHOUT rain, much less when it’s pouring? It was an okay-sized crowd, but people seemed to have fun. The afterparty however was at some weird dive bar with no parking, so pretty sparse.
“Terrortory 2” we made a return to the Landmark, and we had a nice crowd. However, later Landmark lied about our attendance and underpaid me, so that’s the last time we show anything there. Too bad, because I really like the bar across the street that we had the afterparty at. (same place we used for GOH)
Where will I have the next premiere, assuming I make another movie? No idea...
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Film Festivals
I learned very fast that film festivals are, in general, a gigantic waste of time and money for filmmakers. You pay money for the chance to get into one, and then the festival makes even more money charging tickets for people to come see YOUR movie. So you could spend $500-$1500 in entry fees and press kits alone, all for the pleasure of letting other people make money from your flick.
You get nothing but maybe a little bit of publicity and a chance to put a laurel on your poster.
Now, sure, there are a couple of big festivals where your movie has a chance to get picked up by a distributor, but you’re not going to get into one of those with a microbudget movie.
(I sense someone out there going “Hey, what about Primer? Or El Mariachi? Or Clerks?” You might be able to name about 20 microbudget movies in the last 30 years that succeeded in this, out of about a million microbudget movies made, so your odds are better if you just go play the lottery)
I didn’t know all of this when I started. I made “Hunting Humans” and submitted it to a festival, and weirdly enough, never even knew we got in until I saw a press release saying we’d won “Best Screenplay” and been nominated for a couple of other awards. I was thrilled.
I submitted to a couple more festivals and got into another one called the Backeast Film Festival to be held in New Jersey, a state I had never been to. (and once I’d been there, I never wanted to go back)
If you want the details of the disaster that was this festival, you can read them on my old Hunting Humans blog here:
https://huntinghumanssaga.blogspot.com/2010/05/
(scroll down to the Monday May 10th entry, as that’s the first part of the film festival recap)
As you’ll see, it was quite the experience. After that I mostly ignored festivals unless they reached out to me, which happened more times than I expected. That’s how we entered the Terror Film Festival for “Garden of Hedon”. That festival was a lot more fun, not only because we were nominated for seven awards(winning four, including Best Picture), but because Philly is not a hellhole like Jersey.
So if you’re a low-budget filmmaker, I’d advise saving the money you’d waste on a film festival unless you’ve REALLY got something, or you know someone in the festival.
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Personal Highlights
Over the 20+ years I’ve been making films, there have been many personal highlights.
As I’ve mentioned before, winning a Best Screenplay award for “Hunting Humans” was a well-needed boost to my ego. That was followed up by one of the best things that ever happened to me: I got a four(out of four) star review from legendary reviewer Joe Bob Briggs. For those that don’t know, he hosted a couple of hit shows where he would intro horror movies, and then at the commercial breaks, would talk about them in detail. What went into making them, how the filmmakers did what they did. I used to watch this show ALL the time in college, thinking about whether I could make a horror movie.
So to put it in perpsective, imagine someone you admire on TV. Someone with a great personality that you’d love to hang out with, but you know it could never happen because that person is famous. Then imagine that person becomes aware of something you’ve done, and he publicly says, “Check out this person and his work”. Imposter syndrome has always loomed large in my mind, but the moment I read that Joe Bob review, it disappeared for a while. If Joe Bob thought that what I did was good, then maybe I WAS good.
You can read the review here: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2002/10/23/Joe-Bobs-Drive-In-Hunting-Humans/68221035370800/
The movie coming out and showing up on the shelves of Blockbuster was another high point, as well as being in stores physically. Showing up on the FYE massive posters that they hung in each store for their Halloween promotion that showcased big horror movies as well as my very little horror movie. (picture above) Having copies sent to me of the magazines we were advertised in at the huge AFM and MIFED events.
More high points came during “Fear of Clowns”. Getting that first call from Lionsgate. On release day, seeing literally 10-40 copies of it on EACH Blockbuster and Hollywood Video alongside movies with massive budgets. Watching it make over $1.5 MILLION dollars in rentals alone in the first six weeks of release. Seeing the trailer for it on some releases of the Saw 2 DVD. Being asked to write a four-page article for Fangoria Magazine, a magazine I worshipped as a kid. (and frequently had to steal cuz they wouldn’t sell it to me)
FOC2 - Working with Tom Proctor and my returning cast and crew was a highlight here. Finishing the movie and feeling like I’d really stepped it up a notch from the first movie.
Bounty - The day we wrapped, knowing that we had done the near-impossible, not getting killed or arrested. Knowing Tom believed in me enough to put his time and money into the project is something I can never repay.
Garden of Hedon - The high point on this was finishing it without dying. Probably the hardest movie I ever shot, due to insane locations, massive camera problems, a huge cast, massive sound problems, and other issues I won’t go into...yet. Another high point was winning four awards at the Terror Film Festival in Philadelphia, and being there to accept the awards. (video was shown in yesterday’s post)
Terrortory - Wasn’t expecting a lot of high points when I first went into this movie, but we got some HIGH high points. Some include watching it climb the horror charts on Amazon where it peaked at #6, beating titles like Interview With A Vampire(picture below). We also received the Amazon Star Award, meaning we were one of the top 100 titles PERIOD, including TV shows. Given that there was way more than 10,000 titles at the time, that was impressive. Amazon also gave us a monetary bonus, which was nice.
Terrortory 2 - The high point on this came when I’d finished the edit and had all the music in. I felt like I had progressed the Terrortory story quite a bit, and put forth some of my best filmmaking at this point. Other high points are that people still hit us up looking for the third film.
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Press
Been in a lot of newspapers and other media over the years. At first, it was pretty weird. I’m not a guy who’s ever liked the spotlight shined on me, mostly because a lot of the stuff I did back then was best done in the shadows.
But once I started putting out movies, it was a necessity to do these interviews, as you need to get the word out about your films.
I did some rather awkward(I thought) interviews for “Hunting Humans”, mostly at the comic store I owned back then. For some reason the interviewers always found it fascinating to talk about my store in the articles, which I was okay with. (because hey, free advertising, right?)
On Fear of Clowns we actually had one reporter named Wendi Winters come out during our shoot at a scene we were filming in a gallery. We were running short on extras, so she agreed to help us out and be an extra. The downside was that her article called the movie “Fear The Clown” and misspelled some actors’ names. (I photopaint-corrected them for our press releases) A sad and macabre footnote to this story was that she was one of the five reporters horrendously murdered by an irate reader of The Capital newspaper years later.
I did a wide variety of interviews for newspapers(even one from Kansas City), as well as magazines like Fangoria and Moviemaker--two magazines I’d been reading for years. I did some television interviews, which I was REAL nervous to do. I’m a behind-the-camera kind of guy, which was why it’s great to have Johnny Alonso in your movie--every time there was a request for a TV interview, I could count on Johnny to take it so I wouldn’t have to. Besides, he’s got a much better gift of gab than I do.
If you want to see fat me doing a Fox-45 morning interview from “Fear of Clowns”, you can see that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BWFtdfVR1g
I also did interviews for radio stations like 98 Rock, 105.7(remember when that was a station? Called Live 105.7 back then) and a few others.
Nowadays it’s all podcasts and online web site interviews, which is much easier for me.
But I’d be lying if I said that the thrill of seeing my name in print is equal to the thrill of being on another web site. Maybe it’s because I’m old and things I can touch and get at a store seem more "real" to me...
I know...weak post, but I’m running out of material. However, tomorrow’s post which won’t show up til tomorrow night, goes into some DIRT...(if I finish it in time)
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The Fights(Part I)
I don’t know if anybody’s reading these anymore. They’re probably bored, and have given up so that means it’s now safe to talk about the fights on set. You know, the dirt.
The thing is, fights happen on sets all the time. Tension is high, egos are fragile, and people have different ideas of how things should be done. After the movie’s been shot, though, most of that is water under the bridge.
On “Hunting Humans” most of the disagreements happened between me and the D.P.(Director of Photography) David Gil. I hadn’t known him ahead of time; I’d literally hired him off of his demo reel that he’d mailed to me, and we’d had a few conversations in emails and maybe one phone call.
There were two times we went at it a bit during the shoot that I remember. The first was when we were shooting at my brother’s house and I wanted to get the shot where he walks out and gets clubbed in the face, which I’d envisioned as being a pretty startling shot. Well, Gil claimed he didn’t have the lens to get the shot I wanted, which I knew was incorrect.
We argued, and I finally said, “Give me the camera and I’ll get the shot.” Well, it was his camera and asking to touch a D.P.’s camera if you’re not his camera operator is like asking another man if you can kiss his woman. He bristled and then somehow got the shots I wanted.
The other time was the night we shot Rick’s naked scene. It’s all from behind, which is a good thing because Rick had taped an athletic cup over his junk with a LOT of tape. For some reason Gil didn’t want to shoot this scene, something I’m still a little confused about to this day. There was a bit of a disagreement, though it wasn’t as heated as the other, and the end result was that I got to shoot that shot.
I have no hard feelings for Gil at all. Frankly, his experience at shooting saved me quite a few times on the film, and HH wouldn’t have been half as good if I’d shot it all myself.
On “Fear of Clowns” there were a couple of minor hubbubs. At some point in the middle of the shoot, I guess Rick and Dave Mun(our new D.P.) had some drinks after a night of shooting, and next thing I know, Dave is coming to me to ask if I’m unhappy with his work so far.
I’m confused. I have no idea what he’s talking about, as I’m happy with what I’ve been seeing. Apparently Rick had had a few too many drinks and had said something about me being upset over the footage, which was completely made up. I had some words with Rick about that.
Then there were some issues with Frank, because he had a BIG part in this movie. A lot of lines. But he was splitting his time between this movie and another movie, and he was driving back and forth across the bridge to shoot, so he was dead tired when he hit my set. That lead to him blowing his lines a lot of the time, which wasted precious takes.
“Fear of Clowns 2” had some more dust-ups with Frank, this time as producer. We were shooting in his town. I thought we’d gotten permission to shoot at all the places we had planned, but that turned out to be incorrect. We got shut down by the police at one point. Also, we were shooting at his house, but he was in the middle of a divorce so his wife would stop by and want to show off the house since they were selling it.
This obviously caused issues because a major scene takes place there, and also it was where the crew was sleeping each night.
Then a big piss-me-off moment was the day I showed up in the morning to find out that the restaurant I thought we were shooting in hadn’t given us permission. Frank says to me, “We’ve got a problem, but I’ve got a solution.” That solution was another restaurant I’d never seen that also had major road construction going on right next door. My shooting script went out the window and I had to figure out how to shoot it and get useable audio. (which was even more nerve-wracking than normal because we had like 20 extras so I’m having to figure it all out with a large audience)
I don’t have any hard feelings toward Frank now, and FOC2 would never have happened without him(and he’s helped me out on subsequent movies since). As it is, I think it’s the best performance he’s ever produced, and I’m still intensely proud of that movie.
On “Bounty”, there was really only two little fracases that I remember. The first was the night we were supposed to shoot at an apartment complex that Bill Stull had gotten us access to. However, on the night of the shoot there was an issue with the apartment we were supposed to shoot in, which resulted in a nearly two hour delay. Neil Conway, who played Ernie Litwak in the movie, came up to me at one point and got pretty irate about the delay.
I told him there wasn’t anything I could do about it and we’d get the scene shot as soon as we could. Later on he apologized for his irritability, but I get it. Sitting around for hours isn’t fun, especially when you’re fending off police and drug dealers. (this was the location where the drug dealers called the police on US) Again, Neil is awesome and I worked with him again in the “Pumpkin Trail” segment for Terrortory 2.
Another night we were rehearsing a scene at my comic store(yes, that store existed for 17 years) and Tom was having a hard time getting a line right. He had the words, but he couldn’t quite get the meaning behind what he was saying, so it wasn’t coming out right. Neil tried to help him, and Tom got pretty angry and yelled at him.
It was all squashed a little while later when Tom apologized. He was under a ton of stress, as producer and star, plus as I mentioned, he’d been hit by a car two weeks earlier and was still on major drugs, which had to be impacting how well he could perform.
I’d go into “Garden of Hedon”, but that’s where there were some big fights so I guess we’ll do a part two...
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The Fights(Part II)
“Garden of Hedon”, the toughest shoot I was ever on. There are details of why it went bad in the Making Of that you can see on the blu ray. Things like the camera we were using crapping out when we were on location at the Cloisters castle, which cost us more money because we had to rent it for another night. Things like setup on our crane taking way longer than I’d scheduled. Things like some of the things we envisioned not being workable once we started shooting, which necessitated us to switch things up in the middle of the shoot.
But the fights!
There were three big blowups on this one.
The first was due to the camera malfunction on the first night at the Cloisters castle. It was a set I had to pay to rent, and the Red One camera kept crapping out and not recording to the hard drive. We could record to cards, but we only had about four of them, and you could only record about 15 minutes of footage per card. Dumping the cards took about an hour per card, so it wasn’t feasible to keep shooting and try to dump at the same time. (we tried)
We gave up that night after getting what we could, and Jared called the guy he was renting the camera from. The guy acted like there was no problem with the camera, and he was gonna come pick it up the next night. He wanted the rest of the money for the rental, and Jared told him no way, and the guy sort of indicated he was gonna come demand it.
I won’t build it up any more, but the guy showed up and I was ready to fight. But we worked it out amicably, and Jared got another Red One and it worked well.
The next fight needs some quick background: I had co-written this script with a friend of mine, Luke, and he was also helping to produce it. He’d gotten us the money and many of the locations we’d be using, including his mother’s house.
It was a few days into the grueling shoot when we were at that house. I was sleep exhausted and irritable. We had so much to get done on so little time.
We’re shooting on an upper level, though no actors are on that level. The camera is aimed down toward the first floor, but apparently there was something valuable up on that second floor and Luke didn’t want anybody up there other than me and Jared, the D.P.
Well, someone else briefly went up there to consult with Jared, and Luke went ballistic. Jared returned his ire in kind. I tried to defuse it because I just wanted to get the shot and move on. Well, those two kept going at it, and Luke wouldn’t listen to me. I finally came as close as I’ve ever come to quitting--and there was a lot of people on set, but at that moment they’d all disappeared somewhere else.
“You want to direct this f**king movie?” I yelled and threw the shooting script down.
I vividly remember that moment, because if Luke had said anything other than “No”, I would have been out in my car and on the way home, ready to drop into bed and sleep for days. The moment seemed to stretch, and he relented. I was a bit disappointed, but we moved on and made our day.
Then another day, we’re shooting at Luke’s house(he enjoys telling this story to people). I pull up into his court and park pretty much straight in front of his house. I get out, ready to try to make our day again, and he comes out and says, “Move your car.” I’m like, “Why?” He’s says, “My neighbor will be pissed and may come over and say something to me.”
I say, “Who cares?” and his retort is, “I don’t want to talk to my neighbor, or have anything to do with him.”
From my point of view, still sleep-deprived and short tempered, it’s ridiculous. Number one: Nothing illegal about parking where I parked. Number two: You want to inconvenience me on the off chance your neighbor may come over and say something about a car parked in front of Luke’s house?
I got in Luke’s face and argued for about 60 seconds, very heated. I can tell you that Zig thought there would be a fist fight, because he was the behind-the-scenes camera guy, and he’s disappeared. This would have been awesome BTS footage if he’d gotten it. But finally I got back in my car and literally pulled right onto Luke’s lawn, which I knew he’d hate. He was smart enough not to say anything to me about it, because I DID move the car.
I think that’s pretty much it, though there’s one other fight that I still can’t talk about. I know, why did I mention it if I can’t talk about it?
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Foreign Editions
Something that I never expected in a million years is that I’d make movies that would play outside of the United States. I certainly never envisioned anyone wanting to fully dub my movies into another language.
And man, I wasn’t prepared to hear some of the voice talents they applied to my characters...
We made the deal with MTI Home Video for domestic rights to “Hunting Humans”, which meant they covered the United States and English-speaking Canada. I made another deal with a company called IFM for all other rights. They would attempt to license it to individual countries.
It wasn’t as lucrative as the U.S. deal--and part of that is because I think the company was probably stealing from me by under-reporting revenue and possibly not even putting some countries on the report. I mean, what’s the chances I’m going to know they licensed it to free-TV in Yugoslavia if they don’t tell me?
Either way, by the end of it I think HH had been licensed to 30-some countries. Many of those weren’t physical releases, just for free and pay TV outlets. The physical releases I’ve tried to track down and buy, but I don’t think I got them all. You can see the pic above of what I did manage to find, plus another of a copy I've never been able to get--it looks like got Screech to play Aric Blue for the cover.
Also of note, after the original HH license expired with MTI, it was picked up by a couple of other distributors who then put out a nearly identical version of the movie, package and all. You’d have to look close to see that it was actually Trinity and then some other one I don’t remember, and then the movie was eventually packaged into a four-movie disc that’s shown in one of the pics.
On “Fear of Clowns”, Lionsgate took domestic and Canadian rights. My producer’s reps on this one didn’t handle foreign at all, but they said if we were approached, they could help with the terms. I was busy prepping FOC2 so didn’t have a ton of time, but an Italian distributor actually reached out to us about licensing it, and they offered very good terms I thought.
I took it to my rep, and they said, “Yeah, it’s not bad, but let us see if we can get you $5K more”. They only got me $3K more, but that was nice. I never did any other foreign deals on FOC--nobody reached out to me and I got too busy with other things to pursue it.
I will say that I enjoy the menu to the Italian version of FOC more than the Lionsgate one, which is very goofy. And that song you hear playing is by Unfaith, and is featured in the movie. Awesome song from a great band that never actually put an album.
So here you have some actual video that I just recorded from my computer monitor--it’s not great--so you could have a listen to some of the dubbed talents...
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How Making Movies(And Getting Older) Ruined Movies For Me
A lot of people razz me over how few movies I tend to enjoy nowadays. It’s not nearly as bad as they make it out to be, but they certainly have a point in that my tolerance for lazy writing is pretty much nil now.
This post is going to be all over the place, because the reasons are pretty broad.
When I first considered making movies, I was young and my movie palette was very forgiving. I liked what I liked, and compared to now, I hadn’t seen that many movies. Then I started making movies and learning the processes, and all of a sudden I understood what went into doing pretty much everything in film.
As a result of making no budget flicks, I learned how to shoot on multiple cameras. I learned all the audio ins and out, the difference in microphones as well as how foley and looping(ADR) worked. I learned how to edit, not just the mechanics, but the principles involved. I learned how to create and composite effects. There’s not a lot I don’t know about making a movie, and can do most of the jobs involved to at least a competent degree. (What can’t I do? Act, create practical special effects, or create music, though I did some of the “music” for Bounty--it was more sound design than what I’d traditionally call music)
I don’t say any of that to brag but to point out that, like sausages, perhaps it’s better that you don’t know how movies are made. Now that I know how things are done, I tend to spot when those things are done in a subpar manner. I can’t tell you how many times I notice bad looping(when the actor’s lips don’t match their words), bad foley(sound effects laid in after the fact) and poor edits.
Not to mention the prevalence nowadays of things happening because “the script needs it to happen”, rather than by working harder to make them happen naturally.
All that tends to make me more jaded than your average moviegoer, and is one of the reasons I’m so critical of my own flicks--I see everywhere that I failed.
In addition, the older you get, the more you’ve seen. It’s hard to surprise me nowadays. All of this culminates in me not being overly impressed with most movies I see.
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Off With Johnny Alonso’s Head
Many time I’ve done stupid things in order to “get the shot”, but looking back at this stunt has be begging the question, “What were we all thinking?”
This was for “Fear of Clowns 2”, and I’m going to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it. (Hey, you’ve had like 16 years to watch it...) Johnny’s character is running away from our heroes, because he knows that if they’re around, then so is Shivers. It’s not safe to be there, so he beats feet.
Unfortunately, Shivers steps out from behind the building Johnny’s running toward, and he beheads Alonso.
I think our FX guy Doug came up with the original idea for how to accomplish this. We would rig up a fake neck/head to mount on Johnny’s shoulders, and Johnny’s head would be tucked chin-to-chest so the camera wouldn’t see it from behind.
Now, here’s the crazy part. Mark, who plays Shivers, would be swinging the axe at the fake head in order to knock it off, thus looking like a real beheading. While it was the non-hero axe, made of wood, it would still very much do damage, because Mark is basically swinging a baseball bat at full speed, and Johnny’s real head is only about six inches below the fake one. If Mark swung low, he’d be swinging this right into Johnny’s face.
And the weird part is, everybody was okay with this plan. Johnny trusted Mark(?!?!?!) to not hit him in the face. We did three different takes, and to Mark’s credit, he hit that fake head every time. (he used to play baseball and football, so was pretty coordinated)
We talk about it a bit in the Making of FOC2, but I just stumbled on this video that I don’t think I ever saw(and it definitely has never been seen by the public before). It’s from the reverse angle of all my other footage--I think Steve Pattee shot it, hiding out on the side of the building we were shooting toward. Good thing he didn’t get spotted by the camera or we’d have had to murder him.
But hey, here it is--see if you’d run at Mark and let him swing that at you...
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This isn’t an anecdote so much as an overdue note, but this was the first post I wrote, knowing it would be the last I’d post.
I’ve made seven feature films mainly on the force of my will and how stubborn I am. I wouldn’t take no’s and failures as anything but temporary setbacks, and believe me, I got many of them.
BUT--
I’m as solitary a person as you’ll ever find, but I could never have actually made these movies without the help of a TON of people who did it for reasons that are definitely not for the money. One of the most important pieces of advice I ever heard was “Surround yourself by people more talented than yourself, and let them make you look better.” Well, that’s not too hard to find in my case and I did it as often as I could.
This is a big thank you to everybody who had ANYTHING to do with helping me make the movie. Actors. People that let us shoot in their homes. Crew. Extras. People who made or brought us food. Maybe you lent me a prop, or even just a word of advice. Maybe you just came out to a premiere to support us. Maybe you lent me a Viper. Maybe you watched a rough cut of the movie and gave me notes. No act of kindness that came my way is too small to mention.
I am forever grateful to all of you for at least believing in me enough that you lent me some of your goodwill whether physical or otherwise. Thank you.
I’m a Virgo so it probably won’t surprise you that I’m detail oriented and very focused, so many times I’d just roll into the next scene, and when the shoot was over I plowed into foley(I’ve done all my own) and editing(I’ve edited every feature under the pseudonym Harvey Glatman). And I forgot to thank a lot of people most of the time.
If you know someone who helped me out in any way, feel free to copy and paste and send this to them, because I’m talking to them and would be happy to know they finally got their overdue thank you.
I am grateful to every one of you. Now I’m going back to being the insensitive monster I usually am.
And hope you had a Happy Halloween everyone!