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Jawara Duncan—Making movies and telling stories

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

It’s time for another look at the cast of Trash Film Orgy’s upcoming horror spectacular, Planet of the Vampire Women. A couple of months ago, Slammed & Damned spoke with the lovely lunatic Liesel Hanson. Today, the subject is Jawara Duncan, master of stage, screen and video games—yes, Jawara is the living definition of Renaissance man. And as you’ll see, Jawara is not only well rounded, he’s also freakin’ nuts!

Hey man, thanks for taking the time to chat. Let’s begin at the beginning. From where do you hail, sir?

I was born in Vallejo, California, and have lived Northern California all my life.

Sweet. Have you always been a performer?

I was always a bit of a ham, but I didn’t really get serious about performing until junior year in high school.

I talked to Liesel [Hanson] a while ago and got her story, but how did you get involved with those psychos at Trash Film Orgy?

Went to some midnight movies, auditioned for Monster From Bikini Beach, started doing stage and lobby shows, and the rest is prologue.

Nice. So you’re starring in TFO’s latest flick, Planet of the Vampire Women, and that’s cool. How is it going? Is it a fun shoot?

It’s fucking awesome! I’m making a movie with a bunch of my friends and getting covered in gore every other night.

Hey, you can’t beat that! What character are you playing in the movie? I’m guessing you’re not a vampire woman.

I play Val Falco, a space marine turned police officer. He’s a badass that don’t take no guff from criminals, monsters or blood-sucking vampire bitches.

Yow! Okay, sounds like you really are enjoying yourself. I hear you’re involved in the brutal world of…improv comedy. Tell us a little about the amusingly named ICUP.

ICUP is a group that myself, Stephanie Hyden and Josh Dietz started almost two years ago. We blend sketch and improv in a live show that’s laughtastic.

Where do you see yourself in five years, Jawara? Are you working toward any specific goals?

Making movies and telling stories. As long as I’m involved in theater and/or film, I’m happy. I would like to have the resources to tell my own stories eventually, but until then any job on a movie set will do—depending on the movie.

What do you like to do when you’re not acting or making people laugh?

I play indoor soccer, I like to party, I’m a member of the local safety club and I’ll play the shit out of some video games.

You do it all! So what’s next for you, man?

ICUP is an ongoing thing, but after this movie is wrapped I go back to looking for the next project. Plus TFO is always there in the summer.

[Laughs] Yeah, I think I saw that on a flyer somewhere. “Trash Film Orgy: The Ultimate Summer Camp.”

~Theron Neel

Tags: horror, ICUP, Interviews, Jawara Duncan, Josh Dietz, Liesel Hanson, Planet of the Vampire Women, Slammed & Damned, Stephanie Hyden, Theron Neel, Trash Film Orgy
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Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #4

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Our time with filmmaker Rolfe Kanefsky is drawing to a close. In this, the penultimate installment of our interview, we dig a little deeper into the business end of the movies. You’ll read real-life horror stories about making horror movies and you’ll find out about Rolfe’s serendipitous brush with the fetish community. Never one to hold back, Rolfe continues to tell us about the behind-the-scenes world of movie making as he details his journey through the veldt of the Hollywood jungle. Find the previous installments HERE, HERE and HERE.

Right after The Hazing, you made a picture called Corpses, and I gather it was a challenging experience.

There was a producer at York Entertainment named Scott, who had been trying to get me to direct something for them for a while. He was a fan of my first flick, There’s Nothing Out There. After I finished The Hazing, he approached me again. I had heard some horror stories about working for York, a very low-budget film company who had produced such films as Scarecrow with Tiffany Shepis, Alien 51 with Heidi Fleiss, Scarecrow Gone Wild, etc. Anyway, they were interested in making a film entitled Corpses. They had a poster but not script, although they did have a concept.

[Laughs] Classic!

They wanted it originally to be Final Destination with zombies. I wrote a treatment which was rejected. They did not know what they wanted the story to be but kept turning everything down. They finally hired a new development person who came up with the concept of a mortician who invents a serum that can bring the dead back to life but only for an hour at a time, creating a type of junkie zombie. Tanya York, the president of the company, finally agreed to that concept just before she got on a plane for the holidays. So, days before Christmas in 2003, they signed a deal with me to write and direct that storyline, and they wanted the script within the week.

So, I had between Christmas and New Years’ to create a screenplay based on that concept. Now, the idea immediately hit me as Re-Animator meets Dead & Buried with a touch of Phantasm thrown in. The development people at York didn’t know any of those films.

Uh oh.

I thought the idea was basically a black comedy with zombies. And my five-day script reflected that. By the way, I wrote and directed Corpses before Shaun of the Dead hit America. Looking back, I realize that is what I was sort of trying to do, but for a budget of about five cents, in what was the worst production I’ve ever been a part of.

To tell you the truth, I only decided to take the job because I was about to produce my own movie with Gabriella Hall and thought that I could use the Corpses production to help prep my own film, since they were around the same budget and shooting schedule. I was hoping to find some good actors and crew people while doing Corpses who I could then hire for Jacqueline Hyde.

Good thinking.

I found a few, including a great script supervisor, Esther Goodstein, who would become my producing partner very soon after. Also, Eva Derrik, who plays a prostitute in Corpses, actually auditioned for me on Jacqueline Hyde and I thought she’d be good for both. In Corpses, she gets her chest punched through by a zombie, and in Hyde, her chest is sucked dry by the title character. So, by casting the same actress, I could do a chest mold once and use it twice. Thinking like a producer. Also, the inflating chest of Melinda Bonini in Corpses was a similar stunt to the expanding chest gags in Jacqueline Hyde.

But all of my “producer thoughts” went out the window when Corpses became the nightmare movie of my career. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong and then some.

After I wrote my draft of Corpses, I was sure that they were going to turn it down. York didn’t make comedy horror films, and I assumed they would read it and say no thanks. But, a lot of people at the company liked the script and the humor. They just asked me to tone it down for Tanya because they wanted to trick her so she wouldn’t realize it was a comedy. I didn’t tone it down but she liked the script anyway. You see, Tanya York never reads scripts. She prefers to sit in on a table read, where actors read the whole script out loud to see how it plays.

After Tanya heard the script read, she approved it with only minor notes because she was more concerned about other things at the time. Everyone was quitting her company. Scott, the producer who brought me in, decided to retire. The development guy quit, as did much of the marketing department. It was a weird time. For a short period, I thought this was going to work to my advantage since nobody was really paying attention. Unfortunately, that was short lived when a new producer, Mark Headley, was brought on to oversee the movie. If I knew then what was going to happen, I would have quit as well.

At least you had a good cast on that film—Jeff Fahey, Tiffany Shepis, Robert Donavan.

That was the only reason I didn’t walk. I wrote the script with Tiffany in mind, and since she had done Scarecrow before, Tanya approved of her. Robert Donavan was my first choice, but they wouldn’t let me cast him until the guy they wanted asked for too much money a few days before the start of production. Luckily, Robert was still available and said yes. And Jeff Fahey was a lucky break.

You see, York’s films were not SAG [Screen Actors Guild] at the time. So, they were interested in stunt casting—finding people in the news and see if they wanted to be actors. This is how Heidi Fleiss wound up in Alien 51. I was given a list of “names” to consider for Corpses. People like Pete Rose, Monica Lewinsky, Wolfgang Puck—

Oh my god!

I’m not kidding! But there were two real actors on the list: Gary Busey and Jeff Fahey. I had heard so many stories about crazy Gary Busey that I immediately went for Fahey. He liked the humor of the script and wind up being a pleasure to work with. He was only on the film for four days but is still one of the leads and in the entire film from beginning to end. I found his character in Grindhouse years later to be kind of similar to this role.

Robert Donavan, zombie maker! I give the actors all the credit in the world for getting through the making of Corpses in one piece and giving any kind of decent performance. I wish I could have done a commentary track with Tiffany on that film because the stories are amazing and endless. I could literally write a book about the making or, rather, “The Unmaking of Corpses” one day and you probably wouldn’t believe it.

So, let’s just say between the money stolen on the production, the filming in a real working funeral home that smelled like rotten fish, the nonexistent budgets for every department, the expiring permits that cost us scenes, the narcoleptic sound department, the secret second unit shoot that I wasn’t supposed to know about, Tiffany’s pregnancy and broken ribs, the director of photography’s wife having a baby in the middle of production, the five-second short ends of 35mm that I was forced to film with, the lack of having any film for the camera at times, our crew and cast getting lost because nobody knew where we were filming the first week of the shoot, the scooter with the flat tire, the make-up department that insulted some of the cast so they would storm off the set crying, not having any duplicate clothes for the actors when this is a blood and guts zombie movie, the lack of catering, and not being able to shoot about 25 pages of the script due to all these problems and much more, it is amazing that Corpses is a movie in any definition of the term.

That sounds like the worst shoot in history.

To sum up, the finished version of Corpses was not the film that I was trying to make. It is a weird zombie comedy that works better if you’re drunk or stoned. If Corpses had been my first film as a director, I probably would have quit the movie business.

But on the plus side, I know that I will never, never have such a bad experience again. There is no way anything can top Corpses. I have had some bad times since then, but none compare to the behind-the-scenes horror that went on with that production. And I did meet Esther Goodstein [and] got to work with some of my friends and a very cool Jeff Fahey. So, it was a learning experience that I never have to repeat. That said, I don’t disown the film. For what it is and for what I had to go through to get what it is, I can still appreciate it on its own messed-up terms. Tiffany and Esther are also kind of proud of the film in a way. It is funny if you have the right sense of humor and are not expecting anything close to a good, scary zombie film. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to making a Troma-like film. ‘Nuff said.

Indeed. You followed Corpses with Jacqueline Hyde, which is kind of a cross between Basic Instinct and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Yes. Like I said, I had planned to make Jacqueline Hyde before Corpses came around. We pushed Hyde back slightly to do it. I wrote the script for Gabriella Hall to star in and produce. Given Gabriella’s soft-core reputation, I felt the film needed to be sexy in an erotic thriller way, but I did not want it to be a “Skinemax” type of film. In my mind, it was a cross between Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Jekyll and Hyde—a female take on the classic story about a woman trying to find herself emotionally and sexually. There are a lot of serious issues in Jacqueline Hyde as well as comedy, horror, suspense and weirdness. It was shot in 12 days for about $75,000 and was my first HD movie. We used the Sony 900 camera. Again, for that time and budget, I am pretty pleased with the final result and delighted that it was released by Warner Brothers Home Video.

It’s a pretty cool little flick. This was the first picture for Pixie Flicks Entertainment with Gabriella Hall. Was this a step toward career transition for her, to behind the camera?

That was part of the plan. I had worked with Gabriella a lot back in the days of Alain Siritzky. She was in my Rod Steele 0014, my Alien Files and a few others. We became good friends on those films and she was always willing to do whatever I wanted. Years later, we had both reached a point that we were frustrated with bad producers or bad productions and wanted to try producing ourselves. Gabriella thought she could raise the money, so I wrote four treatments. Gabriella liked Jacqueline Hyde the best and I turned that one into a script.

It was supposed to be a co-production between Pixie Flicks—Gabriella’s company—and Valkhn Films—my company. But three days before production, Gabriella’s investor threatened to pull out unless Pixie Flicks was the sole production company for the film. He didn’t want any partners. Looking back now, I think this may have all been a scheme from the beginning, but I trusted Gabriella.

Famous last Hollywood words.

And at this point, I wanted to make the movie, so I agreed. I wrote, directed and produced the film with her, deferring my entire salary since I mistakenly thought I was co-owner of the property. I even put in $3,000 of my own money to secure a location that we needed for the film, and my father, who edited the film, deferred most of the post-production services.

We thought at the time that this was going to be the beginning of a long-time partnership. Gabriella wanted to get into producing and we were hoping to do a slate of pictures together if Jacqueline Hyde was successful.

It was kind of fun seeing Gabriella playing against type, as the “plain Jane” character.

I wanted to give Gabriella a good role to show her range. After all those soft-core parts, I felt I owed it to her. She gained weight and was allowed to look frumpy for a change. But being an actor and producer is a lot of work and she got so caught up in the producing side that the acting side suffered a bit. She told me after that she should never have acted and produced the film at the same time. It was too much for her. Esther helped out a lot and received a much deserved associate producer credit. Just watch David Mamet’s State and Main for a good definition of an associate producer. But seriously, Esther did deserve the credit and a whole lot more.

I realized that Esther, with a bit of training, could and would make a good producer, and [she] has produced my last four films. From script supervisor on Corpses to associate producer on Jacqueline Hyde to producer on Nightmare Man, Pretty Cool Too and One in the Gun.

That’s a nice climb. Jacqueline Hyde really has an early ‘70s feel to it, especially the score and effects.

Yes, I wanted to go back to the Hammer films a bit. Obviously, Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde is the closet to what I was making. The score, again composed wonderfully by my regular collaborator Christoper Farrell, had a very strong Jerry Goldsmith flavor. Basic Instinct, Psycho II and Mephisto Waltz were all used in my original temp track. In fact, I was cutting a trailer for Jacqueline Hyde using Jerry Goldsmith music the day he died. His influence on my pictures is so strong that I put a little dedication to him at the end of the credits.

I also thought that going back to that simple animation for the “freak-out drug scenes” was kind of cool. Very old fashioned, cheesy but fun. I wanted the whole film to have that throwback feel in a contemporary yet gothic setting.

The house that serves as the movie’s main set is amazing.

Esther Goodstein found the house on Craigslist. It was located in Redondo Beach in California and owned by two magicians. They had never allowed a film crew to shoot there before but liked us. As soon as I saw the house, I knew it was perfect and rewrote the script to accommodate the location. I even incorporated some of the gags in the house. The spider that drops down and the shaking doll in the glass case were actual scares that they built into the house for guests. I immediately put them into the script.

One review for the movie said I shot it like “house porn,” which is true. The house becomes a main character in the piece. It is haunting Jacqueline as much as what she is doing to herself. We could only afford to film in and around the house for four days but made every moment count. It was more than we were supposed to pay for a location but since I was a producer, I was able to spend the money where I thought it mattered. That’s one of the good things about having control over your own projects. You get to put the money into the right places that makes the film better. This was not always the case in some of my previous productions—i.e., Corpses.

This was your first film with Blythe Metz, right? She’s wonderfully over the top as Jacqueline, yet she never goes too far. That’s a tricky balance to maintain.

Blythe was actually the first actress to audition for the film. We cast the film ourselves, using nowcasting.com. Blythe came in and gave a great audition. Nobody was ever better. She was okay with doing nudity, although she had never done it before, as long as she was sure that we were not making a Cinemax type of film. I showed her Tomorrow By Midnight and discussed all the nudity in detail. She agreed, and I never had any problems with her on or off the set.

I think Blythe’s performance is really good, especially those scenes of her talking to Gabriella through the mirror reflections. It’s a very strong performance and very different from what I would later have her do in Nightmare Man.

No kidding!

Both of these characters are a kind of heightened reality that is hard to pull off. Nobody does crazy like Blythe. She just goes for it!

Which is so important when doing crazy!

I hope one day people give Jacqueline Hyde another look because when it came out, it was quickly dismissed because of Gabriella Hall’s reputation. People were expecting it to be another soft-core romp and it really isn’t. Others were expecting a real blood and guts horror movie and it isn’t that either. It’s a psychological thriller with some sex and violence.

It’s funny, but the film was really well received in Europe. It premiered at the 23^rd Brussels Film Festival and the audience, even with subtitles, cheered and loved it. They were actually surprised that it was an American film because it felt very European to them. In fact, getting into that festival changed Gabriella’s life. She met a man at the closing party and fell in love. She then moved to Europe to marry him and disappeared.

I haven’t heard from her since and unfortunately never received one penny from the finished film. I know the film made money, but since it was her company that owned it, I kind of got hung out to dry. Another lesson learned in the film business: Be careful who you trust. But, at least, in this case, I am very happy with the final film and it proved that I could produce my own films, so after Corpses it gave me the confidence to go on and eventually make Nightmare Man.

Then it was definitely worthwhile if for no other reason. Now, there’s a gag in the flick that involves breasts that grow on command. Is that where the idea for your short film Mood Boobs was born?

The birth of Mood Boobs is actually a very weird story. When we were finishing up Jacqueline Hyde, I cut a trailer to help sell the movie, and in that trailer was the quick gag where she makes her breasts grow on command. The trailer was posted on some websites and I received an email from a guy who could not stop raving about the effect.

I quickly found out that there is a fetish where people love watching boobs grow. I’m talking about inflating breasts where the shirt gets tight, buttons pop off, blouses rip, etc. It’s not about showing naked breasts; it’s the actual growing act itself that does it for them. Now, this may sound weird but when you think about it, it is amazing how many movies and television shows have done this gag. Up The Sandbox with Barbra Streisand; Death Becomes Her with Meryl Streep; Dude, Where’s My Car with Jennifer Garner; Terminator 3; Jennifer Aniston in Bruce Almighty—the list does go on and on. Repossessed, Ally McBeal, Caroline in the City, Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold, Village of Giants.

Shaina Fewell is in a mood Anyway, he contacted me and wanted to know how much it would cost to produce a feature or short dealing with growing boobs. I said for a professionally produced 10- to 15-minute short, about $6,000. He then spent almost a year trying to find partners to get the money. He hired me to write a script and paid in cash, so I sat down and knocked off Mood Boobs.

In my mind, it was a PG-13 type comedy that could also poke fun of shows like Nip/Tuck and the obsession men and women have with big breasts. Well, he loved the script and spent the next five months saving up money so I could make it.

Boobs have historically been a great motivator.

This guy turned out to be one of the best producers I’ve ever had. He gave me all the money in advance and left me alone to make the short. I put my team together, and Tiffany Shepis and one of Tiffany’s best friends, Shaina Fewell, agreed to star in it. We shot it in my apartment in a weekend and a few months later had a cute 18-minute short film to sell online.

We started a website and sold copies for $23.00. And guess what? We sold out! One thousand copies made and sold. It made back all of its money and actually some profit as well. He was an honest, straight-forward producer who financed Mood Boobs just because he wanted to see it.

It was a great little venture and proved that money can be made on the internet. I still get emails from people wanting to see a Mood Boobs 2.

I’m sure you do.

We did use the rig that was created for Jacqueline Hyde and invented some other ones for all the gags. It was a simple but tricky shoot that is greatly helped by two talented actresses and my cat, Cali, who almost steals the movie.

I guess that depends on the audience [laughs]. Is it still available through your website?

No, Mood Boobs is officially out of print. We had a website, www.moodboobs.com, which I think is still up and running—but not for long, unless we do make a sequel. You never know. The power to control another person’s body with a snap of your fingers has a lot of potential. Who knows? Maybe there’s a feature-length comedy in this idea. I know there are a few websites and fansites who would love to see it.

I’m sure there are.

As long as men and women are obsessed with breasts, there’s definitely a market out there for something like this. And this is another lesson in the film business. You never know what projects are going to be remembered and [be] successful. Every movie is a gamble. Did I think There’s Nothing Out There was going to be cult movie 20 years later? No. Did I think Tomorrow By Midnight would remain unreleased 10 years later? No. Did I think anyone would ever see Mood Boobs? No. The film business is a crap shoot, and much of the time you have no control over where your film will wind up. So, try to enjoy the ride because the end result is anybody’s guess.

~Theron Neel

Tags: Blythe Metz, Corpses, Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky, Esther Goodstein, Gabriella Hall, horror, Interviews, Jacqueline Hyde, Jeff Fahey, Mood Boobs, Robert Donavan, Rolfe Kanefsky, Shaina Fewell, Slammed & Damned, The Hazing, Theron Neel, Tiffany Shepis
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Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #3

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

In the latest chapter of my continuing interview with Rolfe Kanefsky, the writer/director of such indie horror favorites as Nightmare Man, we discuss his detour into the teen comedy genre and the history and production of The Hazing—as well as all the behind-the-scenes maneuvering it takes to get anything made in Hollywood. And, oh, did I mention Tiffany Shepis? I really think this ongoing feature is a “must read” for anyone thinking about a film career. Please check out parts one and two as well.

You followed up Tomorrow By Midnight with a movie in new genre for you: the teen comedy. But Pretty Cool is actually that beloved subgenre of teen comedy in which the lead character accidentally receives psychic powers. I haven’t seen it, but I’m guessing it’s in the tradition of Zapped!, the ‘80s Scott Baio comedy?

Yes, Zapped! was a big inspiration to Pretty Cool as well as Chevy Chase’s Modern Problems. My flick is about a nerdy high school senior named Howard Duckell—cue in-joke to Howard the Duck—who is literally zapped with the power of mind control. He can make anyone do whatever he wants by just thinking about it. And being a horny teen-age virgin, he and his nerdy best friend, Chuck, have fun with the power. I even used some sound effects from Zapped! in the finished film. Growing up in the ‘80s, I was always a fan of the teen sex comedy, like Porky’s, Private School, Screwballs, H.O.T.S., The Party Animal, etc.

I have fond memories of H.O.T.S. and Private School myself, especially Lisa London and Betsy Russell.

I had actually wanted to make a teen comedy like this five years earlier called Hormones…The Movie! We did a poster for it with Julie Strain and Brinke Stevens, but the money fell through. You see, before American Pie, nobody would take a chance on that kind of throwback comedy. After American Pie, it became a lot easier and that’s how Pretty Cool was finally born.

Tell me, Rolfe, did your lead character’s extrasensory gift cause him to learn life lessons, but not before a bit of inappropriate fun?

Oh, yes. Pretty Cool follows the mold pretty tightly. I once heard that there were only three real storylines to a teen comedy: (1) the nerds against the establishment—Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds; (2) the love story where a guy is trying to meet the perfect girl only to find that his best female friend is actually the one he truly loves—The Sure Thing, Overnight Delivery, Love Potion #9; and (3) the teen who tries to be cool by being someone else [and] finds out that he should just learn to be himself—Meatballs Part II, The Nutty Professor, Pretty Cool.

So, Howard Duckell does go through that life lesson. The power starts off as fun, but he soon realizes that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. In Pretty Cool, he models himself after Tom Cruise, which made way for me to send up a lot of Tom Cruise movies, like Risky Business, Mission: Impossible and The Color of Money. Those parodies were a lot of fun to shoot. We built almost an exact duplicate of the living room set from Risky Business, when Tom Cruise first meets Rebecca De Mornay. Luckily, once again, I found a great cast of hot young comedians to star in the movie. It was a very likable cast and actually kind of a wholesome movie in a way. I filmed Pretty Cool back in 2000 when the “shock humor” of There’s Something About Mary and [the] American Pie movies were very popular. But I really wanted to do a throwback to the sweeter sex comedies of the ‘80s—there’s a nice message at the end and a lot of old-fashioned slapstick. My opening sequence is a cross between Risky Business and Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr., so I was sort of trying something new and old at the same time. Later, there is also a spoof of the “Werewolves of London” pool table scene from The Color of Money crossed with the classic Peter Sellers pool table scene from A Shot in the Dark.

So, how did Pretty Cool come about? Was a producer looking for a teen comedy and you said “Hey I can do that”?

Okay, the history of Pretty Cool is a little strange. After Tomorrow By Midnight, I was a little upset. I had made a film that I thought would open some doors and put me on the Hollywood map, but it never sold. The following year, Alain Siritzky was about to produce another “soft erotic series” and he wanted one film to be in the vein of American Pie. I knew I could write it but had no interest in directing it after Midnight. When I handed in the first draft, Alain thought it was very funny and I should direct it. I said I was only interested if I could turn it into a real teen comedy and not a soft-core movie. I wanted the same guy, Jerry Whitworth, who cast Tomorrow By Midnight to find my actors and I wanted to shoot on 35mm. Amazingly enough, [Alain] agreed to my demands, so I agreed to it.

I had to do a “page one” rewrite—basically a whole new script—because a late-night cable movie has a very different structure from a mainstream teen comedy. I wanted it to be “R” rated, so there was some skin but not too much. However, Alain was financing Pretty Cool with the investors’ money for an erotic series, so he demanded that I shoot two versions of Pretty Cool—one with enough sex scenes to satisfy his buyers. This made finding the cast very difficult and trying to balance what I wanted versus what he wanted. Pretty Cool turned out exactly how I hoped and I’m very proud of that film, as are the actors, but it was very touch and go at times.

Once again, the politics rise up to screw with you.

Unfortunately, Alain couldn’t sell it for years. His buyers wanted a more extreme version, and I had to fight for five years to stop Alain from releasing the different cut of the film that he insisted on having made. Finally, I was able to convince MTI Video, a Florida-based company who had just released The Hazing and did really well with it, to release my version of Pretty Cool. They did in 2005, with not much attention or fanfare. Some stores took it and some didn’t. There were no names in the movie, so Blockbuster didn’t pick it up. I was happy that, at least, it was released—unlike Tomorrow By Midnight—but disappointed that it didn’t do better. At that point, I assumed that the Pretty Cool story was over.

Well, it’s available on Netflix and it did well enough to inspire a sequel a few years later—

Well, that leads into funny story number two. Six months later, we met with the heads of MTI at the American Film Market and asked how Pretty Cool did. They said it was strange. They didn’t sell a lot of units, but the units that were out there were doing incredibly well. Renting like an “A” list title or a National Lampoon title. Nobody understood why. There was very little advertising, but the fact was that people were renting it because of word of mouth. It worked exactly as I had hoped. My target audience picked up on what I was doing and really enjoyed the movie. So, it kept renting and renting. There still wasn’t a lot of profit but these facts were enough to convince Alain Siritzky to produce a sequel in the hopes that the name value would catch on.

So in November, Alain announced Pretty Cool 2 in the trades and I was writing the script while we were holding auditions, which was weird. I wrote the whole script in the evenings in about nine nights in between seeing lots of actors. Pretty Cool Too as it was finally titled is not a typical sequel. There are no returning characters from the first film but it is in the same universe—hence the “Too.” It’s kind of an I Dream of Jeannie but inside a cell phone instead of a lamp. The plot is bare but mainly there to set up a lot of comedy set pieces, this time inspired by The Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera, Danny Kayes’ The Court Jester and Abbott and Costello routines. Of course, it also has nudity, a satire on reality shows and a commentary about the evils of technology, and morals that beauty is only skin deep. I went with the second plot device for Pretty Cool Too—boy discovers that best female friend is actually the girl for him and his fantasy girls are just that: fantasies.

Overall, it did wind up selling better than Pretty Cool I. But neither film really made much money. One day, I hope to make Pretty Cool III, which will probably be titled Time Twister because I actually have a good script to that one that stands by itself. It’s not a soft-core movie that was redesigned or a sequel that was put together in less than a month. I recommend listening to the commentary track on Pretty Cool Too, because I really explain how the film was made and why its existence is killing the industry for people hoping to actually make a living in the film business.

Neither Pretty Cool or Pretty Cool Too are masterpieces, but I do think they capture a sort of ‘80s-flavored comedy that rarely exists anymore, so I’m proud of them despite their faults and budget restraints. If you’re looking for a silly, sexy teen comedy, you could do a lot worse than the Pretty Cools.

Hey, at least they were actually produced, right? That’s always a win. Now following Pretty Cool, you made your way back to what you’re best known for: horror. I hear it took several years to get The Hazing off the ground.

Yes, The Hazing has a long history, unlike Pretty Cool Too. I wrote The Hazing a good eight years before it was actually produced and came up with the idea years before that. When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1994, I met a producer by the name of Joseph Wolf. He produced a few horror films that you might have heard of, namely Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hell Night. I had written a script in college called The Host that I was trying to do as my follow-up to There’s Nothing Out There. The script got to Mr. Wolf and he optioned it for one dollar. He then proceeded to develop it and put together a great package for myself to direct it at a budget of $10,000,000. I was very excited, but unfortunately, the horror market was pretty dead back then. This was before Scream brought it back. So, he couldn’t raise the money, but I met with him a few times and realized that nobody had done a sequel to Hell Night. So, I pitched it and wrote a three-page treatment entitled Hell Night 2: The Hazing. It also never got produced, but a few years later, I started working for Alain Siritzky.

Since Alain was running his company a lot like the early days of Roger Corman, I thought maybe I could convince him to make two movies on the same set. This is something that Corman is famous for.

Right, right. He did that with The Raven and The Terror, among others, I think.

There’s a story that there was a standing set in a studio and the guy who owned it told Corman that they were going to tear it down in a week. Corman asked them to wait a few days and he would have a script that could be shot on that set in a weekend. The guy bet he couldn’t do it. Corman did and that’s how Little Shop of Horrors was made.

Knowing this, I tried to do the same thing with Alain. He was about to shoot another one of his erotic series, so I suggested we shoot two films on the same set. One could be erotic and one could be horror because now, in 1997 after Scream, horror was back. I pitched Alain The Hazing and he agreed and hired me to write the script based on my initial treatment for Joe Wolf. So, I got rid of the Hell Night 2 part and just called it The Hazing. I got rid of any real connection to the original Linda Blair film and started writing the script.

Hazing? What hazing? Oh, THAT hazing! Now, the problem was that everyone was telling me to do something like Scream or to remake There’s Nothing Out There. However, I didn’t want to make a rip-off of a film that sort of ripped me off or remake a film that I had already done. So, I came up with the idea of doing The Breakfast Club as a horror film.

I wrote the script in a few weeks, we built the set, auditioned actors and even shot some second-unit footage on Hollywood Blvd. during the Halloween parade. Alain produced the erotic script that I wrote entitled Restless Souls, but when it came time to make The Hazing, Alain couldn’t get enough interest from foreign buyers so the money didn’t come through and Alain tore down the sets without making my movie.

So, the script sat there collecting dust for a few years, before Alain met a new producer named Tom Seidman. Tom was looking to produce an expensive science fiction script he had and wanted to find a producing partner to split the cost. Alain was not interested but gave Tom The Hazing script instead, saying that he was about to make it and would Tom be interested in getting involved. Tom read the script and loved it. He came on board.

The problem was that Alain really didn’t have any plans to make The Hazing, nor did he have the money at the time. So, Alain told Tom that if he wanted to run with it, he could. And that’s what happened. I teamed up with Tom and he was able to raise the money through relatives and friends. So, The Hazing was finally produced in 2003, about nine years after I came up with the concept.

It’s a very fun movie, reminiscent of the horror flicks of the ‘80s. Obviously funding was a problem, but was the retro vibe part of the reason it was hard to get made?

Not really. One of the problems was that some investors though the budget would be too high for all the effects in the movie. They thought it would cost millions just for the CGI. I wanted to do almost everything live on set and knew it wouldn’t cost that much, but they didn’t believe me. Also, after Scream, slasher films were popular and The Hazing was most definitely a supernatural flick along the lines of The Evil Dead and Night of the Demons. Again, I argued that it was just a matter of time. Back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, everything was slasher films until Wes Craven came along with A Nightmare on Elm Street, which every major company rejected. So, I said to look at the history. After Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, it was time for supernatural again. Then Final Destination came and proved me right once more. After that, it was easier to get The Hazing produced.

So, lessons to learn: horror is cyclical, and there’s a herd mentality at play in Hollywood.

As a note to aspiring filmmakers, I highly suggest watching a wonderful documentary about the Richard Rush film The Stunt Man. It’s called The Sinister Saga of Making The Stunt Man. It will teach you a hell of a lot about the film industry and the business side that goes on. Watch the movie and then the two-hour documentary. It will teach you more than film class could. Hollywood always says they are looking for something fresh and original, but they will never produce it until someone else makes it, proving it to be viable first. This happens time and again. Once it’s already been done, they are happy to do it again, but nobody wants to take that first chance.

This is why most famous and successful horror films start as independent features. A studio would be too scared to make something that is really disturbing and can offend the audience. And I’m talking after the ‘70s. In the ‘70s, Hollywood didn’t know what to do so they let filmmakers take control, which is why we have The Exorcist and Jaws.

Absolutely. [Editor’s note: For more on this, read Peter Biskind’s excellent Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.]

Producers took over in the 80’s and horror films lost their edge except for when it came to the independents. It is still where most of the interesting films are made because they are not trying to appeal to every demographic at the same time.

[Laughs] But what are independents these days? Sorry, that’s a whole other conversation. Anyway, you were lucky enough to get the amazing Brad Dourif to play a key role in The Hazing. How did you manage that?

Brad Dourif was a lucky miracle. I always had him at the top of my list to play Professor Kapps. Luckily, after a few casting sessions, Tom hired two very good, successful casting agents to find the rest of the cast. They knew Brad Dourif’s manager and gave him the script with an offer. Brad read it and agreed to do the role. He was available and had an open window to fit it in. He had just wrapped years of shooting Lord of the Rings and was about to start HBO’s Deadwood series. We got him in between those projects. So, that’s what I call a miracle. Brad has always said that he’s a whore when it comes to working and will do anything. But, he really liked the script and got into the spirit of the whole movie.

From watching the behind-the-scenes footage, I gather he’s a true collaborator—not at all a lazy, “where’s my mark?” kind of actor.

Exactly! Brad was a collaborator. In the original script, Professor Kapps is the villain. It was a pretty straight-forward role. My interest was with playing with the stereotypes of all the college kids. But Brad had a lot of ideas, and I incorporated many of them into the script. He really was into tarot cards and Jung’s theory. I worked some of that into the story with the alchemist background.

Brad was also a great team player. He rehearsed with the actors and helped Tiffany Shepis with the British accent that he decided to do in The Hazing. He had learned it for Lord of the Rings and, with the mustache that he grew for his upcoming Deadwood series, thought it would be a good idea. I agreed, but had concerns since he possesses two of the college students in the course of the story. Would they be able to pull off the accent? Brad was willing to work with them both and put all of their possessed lines on audio tape for them to study and learn since they only had two weeks to perfect it before we began shooting. Brad came over to Tiffany’s house to work with her. She was in awe of him, and I think working with Brad is still one of the reasons that The Hazing is her favorite film to date. Although, her latest film, The Violent Kind, just got selected into the midnight section of Sundance 2010, so her list of personal favorites could soon be changing.

Yes, now that you mention it, The Hazing was your first major project with the wonderful Tiffany Shepis—the Dietrich to your von Sternberg, if I may. How did you meet her?

Tiffany and I met at the American Film Market in 2000. I was walking around, like I do every year, and Tiffany had just started her own distribution company called Prescription Films. Tiffany had come from Troma and learned a lot from Lloyd Kaufman, so she had a bunch of beautiful girls running around the lobby of the hotel wearing tight clothes and lab coats that advertised “Prescription Films.” This was pure Troma-inspired marketing. I was curious and went to her room to see what they were doing. At the time, I was actually trying to raise money for The Hazing. So, I talked to Tiffany and gave her the script. She read it and loved it. Tiffany was and still is an actress first and foremost. She tried to raise money because she really wanted to play the role of Marsha.

Unfortunately as I said, money for that kind of horror film was hard to come by. But I stayed in touch with Tiffany and later that year when I went to Cannes with Tomrrow By Midnight, Tiffany was there as well with her company and we hung out. I tagged along because wherever Tiffany is, there is sure to be good times ahead.

So I’ve heard.

I actually tried to work with her a few times before The Hazing. She was supposed to be in Pretty Cool but a photo shoot for Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor got in the way. Another time, she got sick. So, we were friendly, but it didn’t seem like we were ever going to work together…until The Hazing became a reality. I immediately thought Tiffany would be great for the role of Marsha, and she came in to audition seven times. Tom, the producer, liked her but wasn’t sure so we kept bringing her back again and again. I remember her agents told her not to come anymore, but she knew me and really wanted the role so she fought hard for it and won! It was the first real role where she could prove herself as an actress and not just as a hottie. I was very happy and proud to have been able to give her that opportunity.

There are a lot of good actresses out there who have yet to be given the chance to prove what they can really do. The rushed schedule and lack of funds for many of these low-budget movies does not allow an actress to show her skills. They get one take, have no rehearsal and are forced to work with filmmakers that sadly just aren’t that talented sometimes, and then they get blamed for being a bad actor. I felt Tiffany was one of those undiscovered talents that just needed the right vehicle to show what she could do.

She’s definitely one of the most underrated actresses out there. She can do so much with so much with so little. What is it that draws you two together? Do y’all share a similar sensibility regarding film?

Tiffany and I share a mutual respect for each others’ talent, a similar sense of humor and just really get along well together. Tiffany grew up in New Rochelle. I grew up in Westchester. These places in New York are very close to each other. I worked with Troma and, years later, so did Tiffany. So, even though our backgrounds are different, they are also very much the same.

I was making movies when I was 16 and so was Tiffany. We grew up loving horror and cheesy horror films. If it wasn’t for the age difference, Tiffany and I probably would have been making films together when we were teenagers.

The funny thing is, if you see Tomorrow By Midnight, the character of Tori is really Tiffany Shepis, but I made it before I met or even knew who Tiffany was. I have always been attracted to tomboy characters: spunky, independent women who light up a room. Tiffany is all that and a whole lot more.

I knew it! I meant to ask you if you wrote Tori with Tiffany in mind.

We became good friends on The Hazing. She fit perfectly into the mold of my favorite female character, so it was only natural that Tiffany became my muse over time. I wrote Corpses with her in mind to play Rhonda and, of course, Mia in Nightmare Man. Tiffany’s first role after she had her baby, Mia, was Nightmare Man—I named the character after her baby; she did not name Mia after the role. But obviously, we’ve been very close over the years and have worked together seven times so far.

We have almost never had a fight on or off a film set, which, considering the pressure and working conditions that we’ve both had to deal with, is pretty amazing. I have a lot of unproduced scripts that were written with Tiffany in mind. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make some of them someday. If it takes too long, then I guess Tiffany’s daughter will just have to star in them instead.

You and Tiffany started a production company not long ago, right?

Yes and no. We tried to with my producing partner, Esther Goodstein. I thought the three of us could get a slate of low-budget horror and comedy flicks off the ground. Tiffany was supposed to direct one that I wrote entitled The Devil’s Pies. The response was great, but we have not been able to secure the funding. We came close many times, but it keeps slipping through the cracks. Our company was called ScreamWorks, but with no capital, it never really launched. A lot of people seem to think it’s a good idea, but we can’t find the money, so at this point it is just that: a good idea with a smart business package behind it. Scripts are written, budgets have been made. Shooting schedules have been created. Bios, reviews and proof of our track record is all in place. Artwork was also created. Now, we just need to find the money man or woman. Still looking. Any suggestions are always welcomed.

Yes, lack of funding seems to be the major problem for you and every other indie filmmaker these days.

The only thing that we did film was introductions and wrap-arounds for a series/anthology movie called Once Upon A Horror, hosted by Tiffany as a sexy Elvira-type of character. It’s pretty funny, but we haven’t been able to film any of the four stories yet. There’s been a lot of talk over the years about it. Maybe one day it will finally happen. It’s got a real Tales From the Crypt vibe with definite “R” levels of sex and violence. But until then, Tiffany has kept very, very busy and I have been able to make a few more films as well with my producing partner, Esther. Esther and I met on Corpses, but that’s another story.

In general, it’s a crazy business and you never know where it’s going to lead. Many, many people have come and gone in my life in this industry, but Tiffany and I have a special bond. I believe she feels the same way. It’s a professional chemistry that just works, and our finished films together, especially The Hazing, are proof of that.

~Theron Neel

Tags: '70s, '80s, Brad Dourif, Corpses, Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky, Esther Goodstein, Interviews, Night of the Demons, Nightmare Man, Pretty Cool, Pretty Cool Too, Roger Corman, Rolfe Kanefsky, Slammed & Damned, The Devil's Pies, The Hazing, The Violent Kind, There's Nothing Out There, Theron Neel, Tiffany Shepis, Tomorrow By Midnight, Troma
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Liesel Hanson—Nutball crazy woman

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Liesel Hansen As I mentioned HERE a couple of months ago, those crazies at Trash Film Orgy are in the midst of filming their next feature, Planet of the Vampire Women. As evidenced by the teaser trailer below, this is going to be a very cool flick. I’ve been told by a confidential source that TFO is planning a spring 2010 release date, and I can hardly wait.

In the meantime, I have a little something to make the wait easier. I’ve been talking to some of the stars of Planet of the Vampire Women, and today I have a quick interview with Liesel Hanson, who plays space pirate Ginger Maldonado. As you’ll soon see, Liesel is a bit of a divine lunatic, which is why she fits in so well at TFO. I hope you enjoy our chat as much as I did.

Hi Liesel, thanks for making time to gab with me. I want to start by welcoming you into the Unusual First Names Club. Liesel is a lovely name. Is there a story behind it?

Thanks, Theron! I think your name is pretty sweet too.

Awww, thanks.

My parents named me after a character in The Sound of Music who falls in love with a Nazi. Thanks, mom and dad! I was not a huge fan of the name when I was a kid, but I love it now.

I totally understand what you mean. Let’s get a little background info on you. Where are you from? Have you always been a performer?

I was born in San Francisco but grew up in Sacramento and I have pretty much always been a performer. I haven’t really ever wanted to do anything else with my life, which feels silly to say, but it’s true. I do a lot of different artistic stuff like singing and writing and dancing, but acting has always been number one on my list, so once I can make a living doing it, I’m going to be one hell of a happy lady!

How did you get involved with those maniacs at Trash Film Orgy?

The first time I experienced the awesomeness of TFO was for their screening of Demons in 2004. I’d been hearing about them for a long time but never made it to a show, so when I finally did I was totally blown away. Maybe six months after that, my friend Liz told me they were auditioning for their first movie, Curse of the Golden Skull, so I auditioned and got cast as an evil slumber party girl. After filming, I was so in love with the group that I knew I wanted to stay involved any way I could, so I started volunteering and became part of the stage shows. I’ve managed to do a lot of really cool stuff onstage with them. I was a sexy nurse who got disemboweled for Re-Animator, I was a zombie-killing anime girl for Versus, I got to play this rad disco-version of Lady Macbeth in a musical we did. They’re just the coolest gang of folks I could hope to know; they’ve totally become my second family.

It sounds like TFO has given you the ability to use all of your talents. That’s a valuable opportunity. Do you have a favorite area of performance? The live work, the film work?

I’m not really sure yet, to tell you the truth. I have a lot more experience being onstage. Movie-making is freaking awesome and I’m starting to really love it, but it’s very strange when you’re used to theater. I miss being in front of a live audience after a while.

I hear you’re starring in their latest flick, Planet of the Vampire Women. Can you give me a little dirt on the production? How is it going so far?

Oh my god, I think this movie is going to kick so much ass! Planet of the Vampire Women is definitely a sci-fi movie, but with a lot of extra elements and cool twists involved. It’s basically the story of this female gang of space pirates who are pulling off a huge casino heist, and in an attempt to escape from the police, they hide on the surface of an alien planet. That’s when the shit hits the fan. People start dying, sexy lady vampires start running around. I don’t want to spoiler anything but it’s very fast-paced and action-y all the way through, and I’m really excited. I love the experience of being in the movie, but at the same time I wish it was already done so I could watch the damn thing!

For the most part, filming has been going great … there have been a few setbacks but nothing major. We battled this really intense heat in the warehouse where we’re filming for like a month, everyone got sick. But in general it’s going really smoothly and I’m having an amazing time.

What can you tell me about your character?

My character’s name is Ginger Maldonado. She was a Marine but she got kicked out for insubordination, so she joined up with a pirate crew. She’s the pilot of the ship at the beginning of the movie, but once things start going haywire she basically has to take charge and try to keep everyone alive. She’s really tough and very much of an action hero and also kind of a jerk—kind of the female equivalent to Han Solo but with less of a sense of humor. I get to boss people around a lot and yell and fight and run around. It’s great! She’s really fun to play, because she’s so different from how I actually am. I’m not nearly as tough as she is.

I really loved you in Monster From Bikini Beach. Did you base your character on anyone in particular?

Thank you! Most of the time when I’m doing character research, I’ll wind up with a character that is a composite from a bunch of different sources. But Fanny Jo is pretty much just her own thing. Well okay, I watched a great documentary called Okie Noodling, which is about real-life catfish wranglers, but that was it as far as actual research is concerned. A lot of the character came about from goofing off with Keith Letl while we were supposed to be rehearsing.

Never underestimate the value of goofing off! So, what’s next for you, Liesel? More TFO? I hear that you have a burgeoning career as a video restaurant critic.

Right now, my life is completely about this movie, but once we’re wrapped I’m gonna go back to L.A. and try to find more projects to get involved in. I’ve been working as a background actor, which is fun and pays the bills, but I want to make an actual career out of acting, so I’m preparing myself for a lot of auditioning when I get back in town. The TFO will always have first dibs on me, though. The restaurant thing is a one-off at this point, but if someone wants to pay me lots of money to be a video restaurant critic, I’d be more than happy to oblige them!

One last thing. My sources tell me you are involved with someone called the Thin White Duchess. What is your connection with this elusive woman?

[Laughs] Wow, you really did your research, didn’t you! Thin White Duchess is this alter ego of mine. Should I pretend that there’s no connection between us? Mmm, nah… It’s just this name I use on the internet sometimes. Maybe someday she’ll be more than that, if I ever start a performance art career, but for now she’s just my little tribute to David Bowie, who is one of my all-time favorite musicians/humans. He had an alter ego in the mid ‘70s, the Thin White Duke, who was normal looking but totally bizarre and emotionless, almost robotic. Thin White Duchess is halfway between that character and the Duchess from Alice in Wonderland. I guess what I’m trying to say is that my alter ego is a total nutball crazy woman. Awesome.

That apple didn’t fall far from the tree, my friend…

~Theron Neel

Tags: Curse of the Golden Skull, demons, Interviews, Liesel Hanson, Monster From Bikini Beach, Planet of the Vampire Women, Re-Animator, Slammed & Damned, Theron Neel, Trash Film Orgy, Versus
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Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #2

Monday, November 30th, 2009

There’s Nothing Out There was your calling card in a way. It got you in the door. Once you got in the door, what did you do next? Tomorrow By Midnight came a few years later. What did you do in the meantime?

Well, while we were finishing Nothing, I went back to Hampshire College for a semester and worked for a short period of time at a video store in New York. There’s Nothing Out There opened for a one week run at the 8^th Street Playhouse in New York in January 1992. It was seen by some producers who were trying to complete a family adventure film entitled My Family Treasure. They liked Nothing and I was hired to help finish the film and shoot the New York footage with Dee Wallace, Theodore Bikel and Alex Vincent, the kid from Child’s Play 1 & 2. It was my first 35mm film working with professional actors. A good learning experience. With two movies under my belt, I made the move to Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, the studios weren’t banging down my doors. Studios and agents mostly didn’t quite understand There’s Nothing Out There so the offers for another film didn’t exactly flood in. I found a manager who got me some writing assignments. I was hired to rewrite a script entitled Red Line in 48 hours which was produced starring Chad McQueen (Steve’s son), Michael Madsen, Jan-Michael Vincent, Dom DeLuise, Corey Feldman, Roxanna Zal and Julie Strain. A star-studded B action movie.

That was a killer cast!

Surprisingly, that also didn’t lead to much work—I’m being sarcastic here. After about three years in L.A., I started to get a little worried, so I tried to start a company dedicated to directing and editing scenes for actor’s demo reels with my friend/Nothing star, Mark Collver. He thought he’d be able to bring in the clients.

We made a few videos, but the business never took off. Luckily, it was around the time that I met a French producer named Alain Siritzky, famous for the official Emmanuelle series as well as other late-night Cinemax fare.

The work you did in, for lack of a better term, soft-core not only gave you a chance to hone your craft, it also allowed you to meet some people you’ve continued to work with—some really good actors. I’m referring to Robert Donavan and Gabriella Hall, among others.

Yes, I entered the world of extremely low-budget soft-core comedies in 1996 after meeting Alain Siritzky at the American Film Market in Santa Monica, California. He was about to produce a slate of 14 “soft-erotic” movies based on a famous comic book series created by artist Milo Manara: Click and Butterscotch.

Oh yeah! They’re constantly advertised in Heavy Metal.

I was actually aware of these adult comics and knew that I could make these films. A few years earlier, I had written a teen comedy script called Hormones that was somewhat inspired by elements in these comic books.

Alain had a deal with Roger Corman, and Corman’s people were writing and directing all of these movies. However, Alain was impressed by There’s Nothing Out There and wanted me on board. I felt, like you said, that these could be good small features to hone my craft and I was given a fair amount of freedom as long as I shot these 90-minute films in six days, on budget, and they had the proper amount of required nudity. So, basically, this really was the old Roger Corman training ground. I got to meet and have dinner with Corman, which I remember very well because a movie entitled Scream was about to come out and he was wondering if it would perform at the box office in December. Scream was a project that he had passed on years ago because of the humor. He did these kind of films straight. I had the same response when I was trying to get into Corman years earlier with Nothing as my calling card. Again, it was too humorous for them, which is strange because the original Little Shop of Horrors is one of Corman’s most famous ventures and was very successful. But Hollywood has always been cautious when it comes combining genre.

Good point.

Anyway, working on these series was quite a training ground. I was very involved in the casting because I needed actors who would be comfortable with the nudity but could also be funny. My scripts were very humorous in nature. Rod Steele 0014: You Only Live Until You Die was a James Bond parody and needed talented actors to pull it off. Luckily, I found Robert Donavan, Gabriella Hall and Kira Reed. I worked with all three of these actors many, many times. Gabriella became a good friend and we teamed up years later to produce a movie together called Jacqueline Hyde. I’m sure we’ll talk about that one another time.

Actually, yeah. I do want to get to Jacqueline Hyde.

Rod Steele 0014: You Only Live Until You Die Robert Donavan is one of the true undiscovered talents in Los Angeles. He has been in almost every single one of my movies since. I and everyone I know loves working with Robert.

I also found roles for Craig Peck and Mark Collver from There’s Nothing Out There in some of these flicks. Mark is great in Rod Steele and The Alien Files with Kira Reed. It was an interesting couple of years making these films with Alain, but I am still proud of some of these flicks and surprised how well they hold up. Especially my “R” rated director’s cuts. Some of these films are actually “respected” by bigger people in the industry. I heard David Duchovny enjoyed Alien Files, and John Cork, author of the massive book James Bond: The Legacy as well as the one in charge of all the special edition James Bond MGM DVDs, owns both the “R” and “Unrated” copies of Rod Steele and thought it was the best Bond parody he’s seen.

Wow, that’s a nice acknowledgement. You know, I guess most people don’t realize that there are some really good actors working in that genre, and that many of them just happened to find work there and kept going back to the well—a gig’s a gig for a working actor or director.

Yes, there are good actors in some of these pictures. In the old days of Hollywood, actors, directors, writers had deals with the studios who would develop their talent over time. It wasn’t a “one chance, make it or break it” situation like today. Then, luckily, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, producers like Roger Corman created a training ground situation and discovered some amazing talent. The list of people that he gave careers to is incredible. But by the ‘90s, that had dried up, so almost nobody was helping upcoming filmmakers.

Blonde and Blonder It’s like an actor needs a demo reel to show an agent and producer what he/she can do. But how do you make a reel if you don’t have footage of film/television work to show? It’s like a Catch-22 situation. So, an actor/director/writer needs to take work were they can get it, and a lot of the time this comes from low-budget exploitation films.

I remember when I got involved with Siritzky, a lot of my filmmaker friends thought that it was a bad idea. They said I would get stuck in these kind of films, which some people do. But I was determined to use this as a stepping stone to make other films and genres. They were all stunned that I convinced Siritzky to produce a dark comedy thriller called Tomorrow By Midnight for almost a million-dollar budget, SAG actors, 35mm scope and it was far from a “soft erotic movie.” But I knew Siritzky wanted to branch out as well, so in 1999 I made Tomorrow By Midnight. I also wrote a script at the time called Blonde and Blonder for Alain. That too was produced 10 years later starring Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards.

Ah yes, that’s a somewhat infamous flick in its own right. Tomorrow By Midnight is an amazing film, man. It was quite a change from There’s Nothing Out There, in technique and subject matter. It looks wonderful, where There’s Nothing Out There looks like a grindhouse flick. Is that totally attributable to a bigger budget?

Well, I made Tomorrow 10 years after I made Nothing. I was a more experienced filmmaker by then and Tomorrow was a much more personal film. It was really my first attempt at drama, but I had a very professional cast and crew. We held over 45 days of auditions to find that cast. We shot for 18 days, so it was actually a shorter schedule than Nothing and it was much smaller in scope. Mainly one location and six actors. I called it “Breakfast Club with guns” or “Clerks meets Dog Day Afternoon.”

Tomorrow By Midnight Some of the stories came from my days of working in that videos store back in New York. I wanted Tomorrow to have a very slick, polished look but wanted to avoid that whole shaky camera Homicide technique that was very popular at the time. I storyboarded most of the action in the film and had a good rehearsal period—video storyboarding again.

It was a smooth shoot where everything went right until the very end of the production when we were shooting the exteriors. It rained hard for two out of three of the nights with Carol Kane and we didn’t have insurance to wait and shoot on another day. We had to deal with the weather. It was very cold and wet. But the real problem was that in the movie, my characters talk about all the Hollywood films watering down the street to create that Miami Vice blue wet look. And with all the real rain we got, it started to look like I was doing the same thing.

So, I had to avoid showing the ground and kept a lot of the ending exteriors in tight close-ups so I wouldn’t be guilty of doing what I was making fun of.

Your cast was, again, composed of unknowns for the most part, but everyone gives a wonderful performance, and Alexis Arquette especially. I love his opening “killer” movie title bit.

Alexis Arquette and Carol Kane were the only two actors who didn’t audition for the movie. I knew Alexis’ work and was delighted when he read the script and agreed to do it. The opening “killer” movie title bit was fun to write. Actually, the whole script wrote very easily because a lot of the dialogue and conversation came from my own life and knowledge of movies. I wrote the screenplay in about two weeks. It was almost like a play, and we stuck to the script very closely. Everybody really enjoyed the dialogue. Actually, Alexis added the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! line himself into the list of “Killer” titles. He asked if he could and I said “sure.”

You mentioned When A Stranger Calls earlier. How did it feel to work with Carol Kane? She’s pretty much a legend.

Yes, Carol Kane was great. I loved the idea of going with a female hostage negotiator. I didn’t want there to really be any villains in the movie. It’s a tragedy that just can’t be stopped, but everyone is trying to do the right thing. I wanted a strong but motherly kind of character for Carol Kane. We worked on it a bit and I loved being able to tie in Dog Day Afternoon. Carol Kane’s first name in Tomorrow By Midnight is Jen, which is also her name as the hostage in Dog Day Afternoon. So, I threw in the idea that she is playing the same character and after her experience in the bank in Dog Day, she became a hostage negotiator to help others in similar situations. It’s an in-joke, but I thought it was kind of cool.

Oh yeah, that’s right. I always forget she was in that. When I think of her early work, I think of The Last Detail.

We did have a little talk about Scream and she said that Fred Walton, writer/director of When A Stranger Calls, was also a little annoyed by the “borrowing” of ideas for Scream. I am also a big fan of When A Stranger Call Back. Carol Kane told me that Fred Walton actually has a great script for a third sequel, but they could never get the money raised. Too bad, because I’d love to see it. I think Fred Walton is a very underrated filmmaker.

My first thought about Tomorrow By Midnight is that it’s a sort of love letter to people that really know film.

Someone who didn’t like Tomorrow once described it as being trapped in Rolfe Kanefsky’s brain for an hour and a half. That’s pretty accurate. Yes, I do think that Tomorrow would appeal to film majors in NYU and USC. I worked hard to make their conversations believable and argued with the producers at times. They wanted the references to films to be a bit more mainstream to make sure everyone got it. I said that film majors are going to knock mainstream and talk about the little hard to find titles—the “discovery” movies that other people might not know about. Hence, the “Hitchcock/DePalma” discussion and the “Friday the 13th/Pulp Fiction” talk. It was fun to be able to bring up a lot of my issues about film and filmmakers. It’s all opinion but interwoven with a lot of film fact. I had a lot to say with Tomorrow but wanted to keep it entertaining so it would also work as a comedy and thriller at the same time. The crew had a great time shooting Tom’s “Roger Corman: Hero or Hack” monologue because most of the crew was from Corman and we were actually shooting in his downtown studios. Tomorrow By Midnight was one of the last films to be shot at “the lumber yard” [Corman’s legendary studio in Venice, CA, which was previously a lumber yard]. Unfortunately, much of Tom’s speech got cut because Siritzky was afraid it would offend Corman. It’s still in the deleted /extended scenes on that DVD I made.

Right, right.

Overall, Tomorrow is a love letter to movies but it is also an analysis of my hopes, dreams and regrets. For me, there is a deeper meaning to the movie. One of the lines that got cut is when Kira asks the real film buff, Tom, “Isn’t it strange, watching life rather than living it?” That was said to me in college and, unfortunately, I find the statement very truthful and sometimes depressing.

When I think of you, I don’t think “political filmmaker,” but you aimed at and hit a lot of targets with this film. What inspired you to write this script?

Well, the idea for the script came out of frustration. I was with two filmmaker friends in a video store and we were complaining about how hard it is to raise money to make a film. We joked about taking a video store hostage to get the attention because even if we went to jail, when we got out, producers might want to give us money to make our story into a film. That was the germ of the idea.

Then Alain Siritzky came to me with an idea of shooting a film on video to make it look like found footage. This was actually before The Blair Witch Project. I pitched him my “Video Store” idea—VIDEO STORE…The Movie was the original title of the film. He liked it and paid me a little bit of money to write it. The entire film was to only be seen through the point of views of different surveillance cameras in and outside the store and then through the news reporters’ cameras when they arrive on the scene.

So, I sat down to write the script as a Clerks type of comedy but quickly realized that, unless all the dialogue was brilliant, two hours of just watching film students hang out and talk films in a video store might get very boring to anyone not obsessed with films. So, I decided that Tomorrow had to be about something more, and the issue of violence in movies versus violence in real life could be interesting.

I wrote this in 1997. Alain read it and didn’t want to make it. He thought it was just another typical hostage movie and he wasn’t interested. So, the project sat on a shelf for a few years. I was about to try to buy it back and make it myself when some other French producers came to Alain Siritzky looking to do a project. Alain gave them a few of my scripts and one person really responded to Tomorrow By Midnight, so suddenly the project was up and running again.

Such is the movie biz, eh?

On a personal side, a lot of the script came from issues in my professional life. After Scream and Kevin Williamson’s success, I didn’t know what to do. I had a similar voice but didn’t want people thinking that I was ripping him off. So, I tried to address the situation in Tomorrow by taking the whole movie reference dialogue a step further. I wanted to ask the audience, “Why do people speak through movies rather than speak to each other?” Take the whole self-reference idea to another level. That is a major theme in the movie.

Unfortunately, three months after we finished shooting the film, Columbine happened and our reps and PR people got very scared of the movie. They were afraid we were glamorizing kids with guns, when actually the movie was addressing that very issue. It became a hot topic and nobody wanted to get near the movie. This is why it was—and still to this day in the U.S.—never released. It is available is some places in Europe under the titles Midnight 5 and After Midnight.

You referenced A Clockwork Orange throughout the flick—one of my favorite movies, by the way. I’m sure this is a stupid question, but are you a big Kubrick fan?

Yes, I think every filmmaker has to respect the masters, and there’s no denying that Kubrick made some brilliant films. I knew from the beginning that this whole hostage situation had to begin with them trying to rent out A Clockwork Orange. If you’re dealing with issues about violence in today’s society, Clockwork Orange is the go-to movie. Again, I had a little fight with the producers about this because they thought the film was too old and the young audience wouldn’t know what it was. I argued and won. Three days before we began shooting, Kubrick died, so all of his films came back in a big way. It was sad but making this movie was a nice tribute to his memory and I’m proud of that.

On the DVD, you included an alternate ending for Tomorrow By Midnight. I really loved it, and it featured Lloyd Kaufman and Kira Reed. Why did you cut it?

Unfortunately, since almost nobody has seen this film because it is still not released, it tricky to talk about the ending. But a short answer to this question is that when we screened the film for a PR company, they felt that the film would be more powerful if we ended where the film ends now. The final scene they argued was anti-climatic. I felt that the original ending would let the audience take a breath so they could start discussing the film when they left the theaters. So, we compromised. I ended the film where they wanted it to end and then you hear the last scene during the end credit scroll.

I’m still on the fence. I agree it is a powerful way to end the movie, but I really like that last scene. At least on my homemade DVD, you can see the original ending. One day soon, I hope the film is really released so everybody can see it. It is still one of the films—if not the one film—I am most proud to have made in my career thus far.

No doubt. While watching it, I got an almost palpable feeling that the maker of this flick just flat-out loves movies, and that you made it for movie lovers. It made me feel like a member of a club.

Thanks. Obviously, I do love movies and watch way too many of them. My movie collection now is over 8,400. I have dedicated my entire life to making movies, for better or worse. I think it good to be passionate about something and I chose movies. I made Tomorrow just after turning 30 and felt very good to be making this film at that time in my life. It’s an important film for me and I hope others can appreciate it as well, when they can find it.

Oh, and speaking of members of a club, you and Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith all appeared out of nowhere around the same time [the early ‘90s], and you actually name-check them both in Tomorrow By Midnight. Do you consider yourself part of that early indie scene? Was their work—or that scene’s overall vibe—important to you at that time?

Well, I am a fan of both of them and have enjoyed most of their films. Their impact on the film business at that time is undeniable. Everyone was trying to make movies with that kind of dialogue. Once again, that was always my style as well. I love films from the ‘40s with Cary Grant. Still make all my actors watch His Girl Friday. Loved Danny Kaye flicks. So that screwball, fast-talking attitude is a part of me and my work. I was never trying to copy Tarantino or Kevin Smith, but you could not make a contemporary film about film majors and not have their names come up and their influence on the business.

A few years after I made the film, I went to a DVD signing of Dogma that Kevin Smith was attending and waited on line for over three hours to get it signed and see if he would check out a copy of Tomorrow By Midnight, which I brought with me. When I reached him, I said, “Hi, I’m Rolfe Kanefsky…” and he stopped me cold by saying—true story—“Wait. I know you. You directed a film called There’s Nothing Out There. I saw it when I was working in a video store in New Jersey. You know, I think Scream ripped you off, man.”

That is awesome!

I was floored and very impressed. He did take a copy of Tomorrow, but I don’t think he ever watched it. Over the years, I have heard from reliable sources that Tarantino also knows and enjoyed There’s Nothing Out There.

I bet he has. He’s seen everything.

And I just ran into Eli Roth, who knew the film and saw it when he was a student at NYU. So, I guess in an “under the radar” kind of way, I was part of that indie scene. I just never got the release or exposure that some of these other guys received. I’m always amazed when people tell me that they’ve seen my early work because many of these films, Tomorrow especially, are near impossible to find. I really hope one day that changes.

I hope so too, because it’s a very good film. By the way, I notice that you have a poster for Bloodsucking Freaks in the video store in Tomorrow By Midnight. Would care to elaborate its significance? You were born into cult film royalty, were you not?

Many of the trailers and posters in the store have some kind of connection. The video store is loaded with films from Roger Corman, Full Moon and Troma. Trailers for Troma’s War and The Killer Eye play in the background. The poster for Tromeo and Juliet shows a young Tamara Craig Thomas [who plays Kira in Tomorrow By Midnight]. Tromeo was her first film. Brad Rushing was the director of photography on Full Moon’s Shrieker. That poster is also seen in the store. The theme song to Emmanuelle In Space plays in the background in the adult section of the store. And yes, Bloodsucking Freaks was edited by my father, Victor Kanefsky, who has many varied credits. In the cult horror world, he worked on Just Before Dawn, Blood Bath, Ganja & Hess and of course my flicks, There’s Nothing Out There, Jacqueline Hyde and Nightmare Man. He also edited Tomorrow By Midnight.

So, that comment of watching Tomorrow By Midnight is like being trapped in Rolfe Kanefsky’s head for 90 minutes is pretty accurate. I just hope people enjoy their visit.

~Theron Neel

Tags: A Clockwork Orange, Alexis Arquette, Blonde and Blonder, Bloodsucking Freaks, Carol Kane, Clerks, Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky, Eli Roth, Gabrielle Hall, Ganja & Hess, Interviews, Jacqueline Hyde, Kevin Smith, Kira Reed, Lloyd Kaufman, Nightmare Man, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Donavan, Rod Steele 0014: You Only Live Until You Die, Roger Corman, Rolfe Kanefsky, Slammed & Damned, Stanley Kubrick, There's Nothing Out There, Theron Neel, Tomorrow By Midnight, Troma, Tromeo and Juliet, Victor Kanefsky
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Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #1

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

There’s Nothing Out There looks like a pretty complicated film for a first-time director. What had you done to prepare yourself for the scope of a full-length feature?

Well, luckily, I became obsessed with films at the age of four when I discovered Abbott and Costello movies. I’ve always loved comedy and was really drawn to their monster movies like [Abbott and Costello] Meet Frankenstein, Meet The Mummy, Meet the Invisible Man, and Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When I was 13, I got my first video camera and began making home movies. My first official short was called Breaking and Entering and was an attempt to do comedy/horror combining my love for slapstick and a slasher film. At 16, I began working as a P.A. (production assistant aka slave) on independent films in New York, which included a slasher flick called Posed For Murder and the infamous Troma’s War. I also decided to make my first full-length feature, a comedy/action/thriller entitled Strength in Numbers. It became a near two-hour epic that took me two years to complete. After that, for my senior project in high school, I decided to write and direct a full-length comedy murder mystery play called Murder In Winter as well as make a movie of it. So, I graduated high school with two feature-length home movies under my belt. I then did a few 8mm shorts at Hampshire College which were both “horror” oriented—one of which plays on the screen at the video store in the opening scene of There’s Nothing Out There. At this point, I felt that I was ready to make my first real feature and luckily my parents agreed. Before graduating high school, I had written There’s Nothing Out There in 1987 as an exercise to see how long it would take me to write a teen exploitation horror flick. I decided to make it a creature film and then thought it would be fun to have the lead character be an expert in horror films, like I was and still am.

You see, when I was 14, I had made up my mind that I wanted to be a director and realized that most first-time directors had started with horror. So, I began renting every horror film on video. The Evil Dead made a big impression on me, so I thought the cabin in the woods concept with a movie buff who warns everyone of the mistakes they make in horror films would be a good idea. I had never seen that done before but had loved the modern funny/scary takes on classic stories, like Fright Night and An American Werewolf In London. So, with that inspiration and my love for Abbott and Costello and Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther movies, I made There’s Nothing Out There in the summer of 1989 with the help of my parents and some private investors. My goal was to satirize the dumb clichés of many horror films, but not insult the genre which I loved. I just wanted to poke fun at all the stupid conventions, like the cat scare, and dumb things that people only do in horror films: stand in front of an open window, drop the knife, wander off into a basement or the woods by themselves, etc. I thought if I made a send-up of those clichés, then filmmakers would have to get smarter and come up with better stories and ways of scaring the audience—stop them from being lazy, in my opinion.

How long did the shoot last?

The shoot was 24 days starting in August. We finished in the beginning of September and the entire film was completed with post production about a year later. Overall, it went pretty smoothly. I was 20 at the time and, along with the lead actor, I was the youngest guy on the set.

As a first-time feature director, what was the one big thing that surprised you, that you weren’t prepared for?

Well, I was pretty well prepared and delighted to have a real crew. With all of my other home movies, I was doing just about everything myself. So, it was much easier since I didn’t have to move lights, operate the camera, hold the boom mic and try to wrangle all my friends to act in my films. Professionals were a pleasure to work with. And I also had a nice three weeks of prep with my cast. I spent a week in rehearsals and made a very detailed shot list. The second week, we went to a dance studio where I staged most of the fight scenes and action, to make sure that nobody would get hurt. The third week, I went to the real location and shot almost the entire film on video. So, I basically video storyboarded the whole film. You can see some of this on the special features of the DVD release.

It was a lot of work, but I got most of what I was aiming for. The biggest problem I had was with one of the actresses who had never been in a film before and a few days into the production, realized that making a movie is hard work. She didn’t understand that films were not usually shot in order and thought we were doing it just to torture her. She wanted out and made everyone’s life on the set very difficult. But, in a way, it helped bond the rest of the cast and crew. Many times you need a villain on the set, which helps everyone else come together when they have a common enemy. She became that villain. Again, on the DVD commentary track, I tell a lot more stories about her. To this day, she’s the only actor I’ve ever really had a problem working with.

There’s Nothing Out There has a couple of classic signs of a low-budget debut: it has an unknown cast and it was shot in basically one setting. All the kids are surprisingly good. Where did you find your cast?

We hired a casting director in New York. A man by the name of Bill Williams. Most of the actresses were models who wanted to act but had no experience. We found the entire cast through those auditions, except for the lead, Craig Peck. I went to high school with Craig, and he was the lead in my Murder In Winter, so I knew he could do it. He auditioned as well and landed the part. I was very happy with the cast, until the one actress began causing problems. But all the rest were real troupers and gave 100%. Unfortunately, only Mark Collver who played Jim went on to a film and television career. I worked with him a few more times in Los Angeles. He’s still a good friend and now a talented novelist as well. Hopefully, his book will be published soon. And for those interested, the lead skinny-dipping punker is a guy named Cy Voris who went on to become a very successful writer, with Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight, Bulletproof Monk and creator of the series Sleeper Cell being just a few of his credits.

When Bonnie Bowers came onscreen, I thought, “I didn’t know Jewel Shepard was in this!” Is it just me, or did you notice the resemblance too?

I know who Jewel Shepard is, and she actually auditioned for me years later on another project, but I never saw Bonnie as Jewel at the time. Didn’t make the connection. Although, I’m sure Jewel would have been a lot easier to work with.

[Laughs] Though most of the flick is set at the house by the pond, you also shot in a high school. How did you swing that?

It was a middle school in Piedmont in upstate New York. School was out of session and it was a half-day shoot. We shot all that stuff plus all of the video store opening on the same day. We got a bunch of extras and a lot of young-looking crew members to be the students. It was a long day but went pretty smoothly…until we wrapped. This was a non-union shoot and the teamsters got wind of the production. I remember the grip truck had to drive around, trying to lose them, before returning to the main house in the woods location so they wouldn’t know where we were shooting and cause problems. Luckily, that was our only run-in with the teamsters.

Yeah, those teamsters deserve a horror flick of their own. By my count, you trashed two cars in There’s Nothing Out There—pretty costly for a first film.

I really enjoyed the car crashes, but both had problems. The first crash, when Sally drives off the road into the woods, we built a big ramp and had a stunt driver do it. The crew decided to make a bet on how far the car would go. This was a bad idea because the stunt driver himself went in on the bet and he won because he hit the ramp going about 20 miles faster than he was supposed to. Jumped the car 44 feet and landed right on one of our cameras! You can see the shot in the movie. The car comes right into the lens before breaking it. That cost us some money.

Yikes!

The second stunt, when the white car flips into the pond, also did not go as planned. A pipe ramp was built with a rig to get the car going fast enough so it would jump and flip around in mid-air before hitting the water. There was no driver for this stunt. Unfortunately, the car was in pretty bad shape and couldn’t get enough speed on the grass and dirt. The car hit the ramp, flipped on its side but didn’t make it to the pond. It was supposed to be the last day of the shoot, so we were all depressed because we knew we had to come back and reshoot the scene with another car, which we did. The second car kind of worked, although it’s pretty easy to tell that it’s a different car. It landed in the edge of the water. We then had to knock it over and push it further into the pond to film it sinking. Luckily, since the film is a horror/comedy, the “transforming car” is accepted as one of the jokes in the film. So, it works despite the mistakes.

Truthfully, I didn’t even notice! What did you learn from your first feature? What did you take away that you were able to apply to your next film, be it technical, political or logistical?

Well, you learn a lot on every film. The main thing it did was prove to me and everyone else that I could make a real movie. Much of what I did on that shoot, I still do today. Rehearsal is key. A good plan and shot list is crucial. Video storyboarding is a great tool. I always try to push the boundaries of the budget and be ambitious. We had steadicam, crane, dollies and handheld on that film. I love moving the camera and really use all the “toys” when I can. I think I’m a very visual filmmaker but also know that the most important element is the performances. If you don’t care about the characters on the screen, it doesn’t matter how slick and beautifully lit your film is.

I also learned to trust my instincts. The famous “boom pole swing” gag came out of a logistical problem. In the script, the character of Nick was supposed to escape the creature by grabbing a chandelier and swinging out of the room. Unfortunately, our location didn’t have a chandelier, so I kept trying to figure out how to do this stunt. I went to a movie one night where they projected the film incorrectly. It was too low and the tops of the set and microphones could be seen in almost every shot. The audience was hysterical. Having seen so many low-budget horror films on video, I was used to crew shadows and mistakes in many of these films so I thought it might be fun to break the fourth wall for a second. Have the character stand up, and when he does, the camera tilts up and reveals the microphone boom pole in the frame. I thought the audience will think it’s a mistake, this being another low-budget film, and then surprise them by having the actor see the pole himself and actually use it to swing out of the room to avoid the creature!

The entire crew was against me on this idea. They said, “This is not a Mel Brooks film. You can’t cross the line and let people know it’s a movie.” I thought it would work and luckily, my father, Victor Kanefsky, who was the main producer and editor, trusted me and let me do it. I know a studio would never have let that gag be shot. But I did it, and it became probably the most famous and talked about moment in the movie.

Yeah, I loved that gag, but I have to admit it did surprise me.

So, ever since then, whenever there is a scene that everyone is worried about, I know that I have to do it because it’s the scene that people are going to respond to and talk about. This has happened time and again. In a film I did called The Hazing, there’s a scene with a giant tongue that everyone thought was going too far and wanted me to cut it. I refused and it too has become one of the best moments in the movie.

Oh yeah, possessed tongue fu! Loved it!

So, as a filmmaker, you have to trust yourself and try to follow your own path. You’ll never get great by always playing it safe.

Well said, man. All right, I hear you have a special re-release of the film planned for next year. What can you share with us about it?

Well, it looks like we’re going to be doing a special 20^th Anniversary release of There’s Nothing Out There with Troma Entertainment. Lloyd Kaufman has always been a fan of Nothing and wanted the film when it was first made. I have stayed in touch with Lloyd all of these years and even put him in cameo roles in some of my later films. So, I think the time is right and they could do a good release, making it more available than it’s ever been. There’s Nothing Out There has always been one of those hard-to-find underground movies and has built up a slight cult following, maybe because of that. So, Troma seems like the perfect fit.

That’s true. I’m sure Lloyd will take care of it.

I hope all the special features from the last release will be on the DVD, including the commentary track with myself, some of the actors and some of the crew. All the deleted/extended scenes, the animated still gallery, the original trailer, the video storyboard comparisons, the audition footage including some body checks, rehearsals, bloopers, animated opening title test, and maybe a new featurette entitled “Fond Remembrances of Nothing – 20 Years Later.” There is also a book I wrote called Making Nothing At the Age of 20. It’s on the website (www.theresnothingoutthere.com). If we can figure out a way to link it with the new DVD, that would be great. It was written to inspire other struggling filmmakers and let them know how I did it. And maybe I’ll record a new commentary track just for the hell of it. We’ll see. But it should be packed with goodies if all goes as planned.

That sounds amazing! Okay, last question. One of the central ideas of the script (one of the characters is a horror fan and constantly warns what will happen based on the horror films he’s seen) was “borrowed” a few years later for the bigger-budget Scream. Any diplomatic thoughts?

Ah, the Scream story. A lot has been said on this topic and, believe it or not, I did not start it. I remember hearing about Scream and thinking that some of it sounds kind of familiar. When the trailer came out, I began getting calls from a lot of friends and people who worked on There’s Nothing Out There who though Scream had copied my movie. When I saw Scream, I enjoyed it a lot. The opening reminded me of When A Stranger Calls or, if you want to go back further, the original Black Christmas. Scream was definitely a much scarier film than Nothing. However, I did think Jamie Kennedy’s portray of “Randy” had some similarities to Craig Peck’s “Mike” in Nothing. I saw the connection but didn’t make much out of it. However, a few years later I found a horror movie review book that reviewed Scream and said, “Didn’t it just rip off a movie called There’s Nothing Out There?” Then I started seeing comments on the internet and realized that other people had made the connection between the two films.

Which movie are we in? Now, there is more to the Scream connection than I want to talk about right now. I do believe and have some pretty good proof that Wes Craven did see Nothing before he made Scream. I do not know if Kevin Williamson ever saw it, but Nothing was playing on cable a lot around the time he was writing Scream. So, it’s a possibility. Over the years, the reputation of Nothing has grown and more people have agreed on the connection, saying that my film may have “inspired” Scream.

But, I am a big fan of Scream, and it proved that I was on the right track. In 1990, when we were trying to sell Nothing and find distribution, the studios couldn’t get a handle on the film. They thought it was too scary to be funny and too funny to be scary. But the public and critics really liked the movie. It played a lot of film festivals and received a lot of rave reviews. It was great but frustrating because nobody would take a chance on releasing this little no-name movie. But I knew right then that if someone came along and made a film like this for enough money with a name actor or two in it, it could make a fortune. Scream proved me right and it also brought back the horror genre, which was great for everyone. And because of the success of Scream, years later I was able to make The Hazing and then Jacqueline Hyde, Nightmare Man, etc.

So, I have no hard feelings towards Scream. I wish we could have seen a bit of Scream’s profits and that There’s Nothing Out There would have been a bigger help to my career as a way into the Hollywood doors, but I was little ahead of my time. So, I keep plugging away, trying to make the best movies I can for as much money as I can get. It’s never been easy, but I still love what I do and hope to keep doing a lot more.

Well, that’s definitely the most important thing, my friend…

~Theron Neel

Tags: Abbott and Costello, An American Werewolf in London, Black Christmas, Cy Voris, Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky, DVD, horror, Interviews, Jewel Shepard, Kevin Williamson, Lloyd Kaufman, Pink Panther, Rolfe Kanefsky, Scream, Slammed & Damned, Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight, The Evil Dead, There's Nothing Out There, Theron Neel, Troma, Victor Kanefsky, Wes Craven, When A Stranger Calls
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Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #0

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Filmmaker Rolfe Kanefsky is a survivor. Since making his first feature at 20 years old in 1989, he has worked his way through the labyrinthine mazes of Hollywood, writing and directing 15 of his own films and penning several more for others to lens. Not content with that, he’s recently started producing projects for himself and others.

Not long ago, Rolfe agreed to do an in-depth interview with Slammed & Damned. Though he is known primarily as a horror specialist (The Hazing, Nightmare Man), Rolfe has worked in almost every genre there is. In the course of the interview, we will be covering most everything achieved in this journeyman’s career. We’re still in the process of our chats and, I have to say, Rolfe is being exceptionally candid and expansive in his answers to my questions—more so than I’d expected. In fact, he’s giving me so much good material that I think I’m going to break this chat up in to several pieces, each one covering a separate film. I’ll also be posting reviews of his films as we go.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the first installment of our conversation. In it, we talk about his background and the making of his first movie, There’s Nothing Out There, a low-budget horror comedy that was somewhat ahead of its time. I’m really excited at the chance to pick Rolfe’s brain about his career and filmmaking in general. I hope you check back to read his views on life in the movie biz. This guy has been around the block several times and he’s got lots to say.

~Theron Neel

Tags: Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky, filmmaking, genre, Hollywood, horror, interview, journeyman, low-budget, movie biz, Nightmare Man, Rolfe Kanefsky, Slammed & Damned, The Hazing, There's Nothing Out There, Theron Neel, Updates and Teasers
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Cydne Schulte—Live each day with gratitude

Friday, November 20th, 2009

What does it takes to make a career in Hollywood these days? Cydne Schulte is a woman that seems to have the answer to that question. As the star of Terrence Williams’ rape/revenge flick The Hood Has Eyez, Cydne plays a girl driven to murder, and it’s definitely a role that allows her to stretch her acting muscles. Right after the film’s release, I had the chance to talk with Cyd about performing, passion and women kicking ass.

Thanks for talking with me, Cydne. Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

I grew up in the high mountains in northern New Mexico. I spent most of my time either riding horses or exploring the woods.

Have you always been interested in acting and performing?

Yes, I come from a long line of performers, artists and musicians. It has always been a natural part of life for me. I was on stage as early as four years old.

Is there any one particular moment that made you realize that acting was your destiny?

Sorta. I remember one time when I was very young, maybe five-ish, and we went to see my aunt star as Marguerite in a production of the opera Faust. Her character jumped out of a second-story window in despair, and I was in such shock because I thought it was real. At the end of the show, when everyone was meeting the cast, I went up on the stage and danced around the fabulously built set. I climbed up the stairs, looked though the window and saw a big huge mattress hidden below where you land when you jump out the window. I was so impressed! I remember jumping out the window, landing on the mattress—unscathed—and thinking that I’d found where I belonged. Such magic!

So, when did you make the jump to L.A.?

I didn’t actually move to L.A. until August 2006. But the year previous to that, I had been there at least four times for acting work.

That’s a big move, Cyd. How did you know that you were ready for such a life-changing risk?

My whole life, everybody kept telling me that in order for me to be successful as an actor, I’d have to be based either in L.A. or New York, and since I’m from New Mexico, L.A. seemed most reasonable. So I always knew it was inevitable.

I totally enjoyed your performance in The Hood Has Eyez, Cydne. Terrence Williams [the film’s writer/director] told me he wrote the role of Kimmy especially for you. You get to show quite a bit of range in this flick—it’s quite a showpiece. Is this the most challenging part you’ve got to play in a film?

Thank you, Theron, I really appreciate it. I’ve had to do a lot of challenging roles, but as far as having the opportunity to show my range, The Hood is probably on the top on the list.

How did you first meet Terrence?

A casting call in Backstage West for his film The Curse of La Llorona. We submitted and he called me in to audition for the role of Hana. He cast me as Sonia.

The Hood Has Eyez is a pretty intense flick. Did you have any reservations about taking the role of Kimmy?

The Hood Has Eyez Yes. Some pretty big ones, because the themes of the film are very controversial. As you probably know, Terrence set out with the intention to offend everyone. Well, this is not my style at all. I understand shock value, but I don’t necessarily agree with it. I just wasn’t into some of the actions of my character and of some of the other characters. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be responsible for such senseless violence being put out in the universe. But in the end, I decided that Kimmy was an awesome role and that it was a story worth telling, even if I didn’t agree with the execution of it—no pun intended. Terrence and [producer] Nicole [Williams] were great to work with as well as the rest of the cast and crew.

You’re a smart, strong woman, Cydne. What’s your opinion of movies like I Spit on Your Grave and The Hood Has Eyez:

(a) They Promote Female Empowerment (because, hey, the women kick ass)

(b) They Glorify Violence Against Women

(c) Sheesh, Relax, People, They’re Just Movies

My answer would be (d) all of the above, because there is a new trend in films and society of female power—portraying strong woman kicking ass. Audiences seem to be eating it up and loving it! But, I’ve always felt that violence in films only desensitizes people and gives predators ideas. But in the relevance of entertainment, it’s all just a story and meant only to be that.

You’ve done a lot of work in “genre” movies, including the remake of the J-horror favorite The Eye. Do you enjoy horror movies?

It’s funny, no. I love epic fantasy like The Lord of the Rings.

You have studied with some of the most respected people in the industry, Cydne. How do you approach a role, in general? Do you do a lot of research and preparation?

Well, it is different for every role. But I do like to do research and to be as prepared as possible. For The Hood, I researched the effect of rape. For The Eye, I chose not to see the original because I didn’t want it to affect my performance. But I tend to not like to over-rehearse because I like it raw and real. Usually before I shoot, I meditate, do some emotional preparation and then go for it.

Other than acting, what are your passions? I think I saw bass guitar and dance listed among your many talents.

I am very passionate about all the arts. I paint, dance, play bass, just to list a few.

Ms. Mysterious I am also very passionate about the environment. In fact at this very moment, I am developing, producing and starring in a TV series with Blur To Focus Productions called Eco Warrior. The show is solution-oriented and addresses some of the hottest environmental issues. Because we’re still in development, I can’t divulge too much, but I can say that Eco Warrior is a cutting-edge environmental reality show, featuring celebrity guests and unscripted confrontational journalism, designed to entertain and educate.

Wow, you’re really working! I can tell you’re serious about your craft, but you’re also smart enough to know there’s more to acting than just craft. There’s business (eesh). Whose career do you admire? Is there any one actor whose career path you respect and/or would like to emulate?

Ian McKellen. Hands down. First off, he’s a Shakespearean-trained actor—I highly respect any actor that has the discipline and talent to conquer that. And it seems that anything he touches turns to gold (referring to his acting that is). He is just really passionate and his presence rocks the world! I could only ever hope to be a fraction of what he is. He truly inspires me and motivates me to follow my own passions and always give 110%.

Okay, let’s do a fun question: What you would consider to be your perfect weekend?

[Laughs] Well, to have a perfect weekend would imply that I had a perfect week—and that would consist of a full week of paid acting work! So, the perfect weekend to me would be dressing up in medieval garb and embarking on some adventure, like a scavenger hunt, in the mountains with family and friends.

You’re a rising, hard-working actress. What’s a “normal” day for you?

Well, I wake up and meditate. Then, depending on how late or early I got to sleep, have tea or coffee and figure out my game plan for the day—do any necessary correspondence, e-mails, acting submissions, etc. Then I usually have meetings with producers, directors, editors or whomever I’m working with at the time. Right now, it is my Eco Warrior producing partner Anton Kozikowski [CEO of Blur To Focus Productions]. Then, I do research, write, rehearse, edit or shoot, depending on the current project. That usually goes late. Then, depending on how late that all goes, I do any necessary correspondence, try to read either research or scripts and usually pass out before I’m ready to.

Wow, you do work hard. Thanks so much for talking with me, Cyd. Is there anything you want to touch on that we didn’t cover?

I think we covered a quite a bit, but maybe we could just remind our audience how precious life is and that it is important to live each day with gratitude and approach every situation with enthusiasm!

Well said. Finally, Cydne, I have to ask…what’s a nice, centered girl like you doing in a crazy place like Hollywood?

[Laughs] That’s almost a loaded question! I guess to make it simple, this is where the most opportunities are for an actor/producer like myself.

Living the dream…

~Theron Neel

Tags: Blur To Focus Productions, Cydne Schulte, Eco Warrior, I Spit on Your Grave, Interviews, Slammed & Damned, Terrence Williams, The Curse of La Llorona, The Eye, The Hood Has Eyez, Theron Neel
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Susan Adriensen—Follow the beat of your own drummer

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Susan Adriensen might just be the busiest woman around. Not only is she a writer, producer, director, cinematographer and actor—she also runs a production company and leads Mingle Mangle, a New York collective of horror filmmakers and fans. She recently made her feature debut with Under the Raven’s Wing, a psychological thriller that tells the twisted tale of a troubled girl named Raven and her friends Jessie and Angel. Right after she finished the first cut of her film, I managed to chat with Susan (who was on vacation at the time) about the supernatural, making movies and a parrot named Puppy.

Hi, Susan. Thanks so much for taking time out of your vacation to chat with me. Are you relaxing?

Supposedly, I am 15 miles from the worst weather in the world—Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. We hiked today and the weather was great. Snow all around. It’s hard to believe that I’m 15 miles from the windiest place on earth, but it’s so incredibly beautiful, and the cold keeps me young! We almost had to leave and travel seven hours back home because our parrot got out of her cage. Little brat!

Your parrot? Wow, that sounds like…fun? Well, be careful. Hey, congratulations on Under the Raven’s Wing.

Thanks. I’m excited!

Is this your first film as a writer/director?

It’s my first feature that I wrote and directed. Prior to Under the Raven’s Wing, I wrote, directed and acted in a featurette called Mavi Göz. Mavi göz means “blue eye” in Turkish. The movie is a supernatural drama based on my past paranormal experiences—few, but bizarre nonetheless. I also created a few things in college—mostly god-awful stuff in a rush to get the grade. But one film I did on Super 8 was from the heart—an eight-minute avant-garde film called Illusion of Reality. It’s about a woman’s journey through life … only to ultimately face Death.

So you’ve been involved in the entire filmmaking process for most of your career.

Well, like many indie filmmakers, there are quiet times … and a need to make a living outside of the industry. My “quiet time” lasted six years! I worked as a secretary at a large commercial and industrial real estate company, but I took acting classes in the evening, got involved in other people’s productions and did a lot of imagining. Creative juices were always flowing.

You mentioned paranormal experiences. I’d love to hear about one of your encounters with the supernatural. What’s your best story?

Wow. They’re all so different. Some are sad experiences. Others have absolutely no significance. I guess the most interesting one is the ghost at a relative’s house, as I still continue to hear him shuffle down the hall with his walker at night—but everyone has a ghost story. The most emotional experience was when I visited my brother, who was drinking heavily. Upon leaving and touching him to hug him, I started bawling my eyes out uncontrollably for no reason—out of nowhere. Neither of us knew why. It was weird and embarrassing. A month later, my brother went missing and was found dead. It was if I sensed something.

That is sad. Tell me, Susan, did anything in particular inspire Under the Raven’s Wing?

Oh! So many things inspired me to do Under the Raven’s Wing. I don’t even know where to start. The most important inspirations are my fascination with cults and religious fanatics … and my experience with zealot family and friends. If you recall the scene of Raven’s experience as a six-year-old at a speaking-in-tongues prayer meeting—well, that was me, a terrified little girl trying to sleep amongst raised hands, swaying bodies and babbling chants.

It’s great you’re able to mine your past and transform it into art. Under the Raven’s Wing seems to be full of little details like that one scene you mentioned, and those really seem to add to the realism of the film.

Well, there is much from my imagination, but I think many filmmakers put a bit of themselves into their work. If you look at the scene when Jessie talks about her past, it’s pretty much my life (except for the father with a stroke). Yes, I had nightmares about my mother’s over-reliance on God, and Aunt Catrish [a character in the film] is actually a mix of friends and family I know. I won’t go into detail for those who haven’t seen the movie, but I definitely put myself into Under the Raven’s Wing.

Part of what makes Under the Raven’s Wing work so well is the performances. Where did you find your three lead actresses? They are really great.

Aren’t they wonderful? I was truly blessed! I found Kim Amato (who plays Raven) and Jessica Palette (who plays Jessie) on www.nycasting.com. It’s free for filmmakers. I found Kamilla Sofie Sadekova (who plays Angel) through Back Stage [magazine], and Coy DeLuca (who plays the unseen filmmaker/the Director) actually found me through my Mingle Mangle website. Mingle Mangle: Horror Filmmakers and Fans is a New York City based group I formed in 2004 for networking. So, as for the actors, after I received their headshots and resumes, I held auditions. They were the best for the roles and got the parts!

Kim’s portrayal of Raven is quite nuanced. Did you work closely with her on crafting the character of Raven?

Kim is very intelligent and has a master’s degree in forensic psychology. She also has some comedic background as well, so she understood the script and what I was looking for. Of course, we had discussions about Raven, but her audition and rehearsal made my mouth drop. I thought, “My Raven’s coming to life!” The biggest thrill for any writer: to see words come to life and—just as you imagined! Actually, her performance was better than I imagined, so I had little to add. Throughout the entire project, we were in close contact via e-mail and phone conversations regarding the many aspects of Raven as she was coming to life. I suggested things. She suggested things. We work well together.

As a director, do you encourage improvisation on set? Is what we see on the screen exactly what was on the page?

About 98% of what you see on the screen is what was on the page. The funny thing is, Under the Raven’s Wing was supposed to be all improvised! But how would I get what I really expected from the actors for the characters and story? I envisioned such details for each character. So I wrote a script. Originally my producer, Brian Jude, who came onboard just from a story outline and a character background, was disappointed upon hearing I was going to write a script instead of having the project improvised, but after he read it, he was like “YES!” And loved it. I was also quite happy and really didn’t want to deviate from my words. I’m not sure the actors ever knew about the improvisation idea. This isn’t to say that I didn’t allow the actors to replace certain words here and there, but all in all, things were true to the script.

You’ve done quite a bit of acting in other people’s projects lately. Is it easy for the director in you to take a backseat while doing acting gigs?

Yeah. I think so, especially if the director is good like Alan Rowe Kelly or Elias (of Biff Juggernaut). Elias saw my potential and directed me well. I respect him for that and for his patience.

We all know indie filmmaking is rough. What are some of the challenges you faced bringing Under the Raven’s Wing to the screen, Susan?

I think whether a movie is indie or big studio, there are tons of challenges. Just because a studio project has money doesn’t mean it’s problem-free. Sometimes the problems are huge and complicated, but the show goes on. For indie films, lack of funding can bring everything to a halt. So in my case, and for other indie filmmakers, the big challenge is usually the lack of funding for the project. However, it causes us to be more creative—a very good thing.

Besides having a low budget and many other challenges, our greatest technical difficulty was editing in different frame rates while preserving each look and…well…each particular frame rate. It made the editing process much more tedious, but I’m happy with the results. It was worth it.

All the different looks you achieved is one of the cooler things about the film. It’s amazing what can be done in post-production these days.

Yes, post-production is amazing, but we also actually used real spy cameras for two spy-shot scenes. The challenge was integrating those cameras, with their native frame rates, as well as the multiple frame rates we used from the main camera, into one movie while preserving the look and feel of each native format. Tedious!

You’ve done a little bit of everything in the entertainment field over the years―TV, improv comedy, acting―but as you mentioned, you’ve had to take boring day jobs in between the glamorous showbiz jobs. What is the worst day job you’ve had?

Ahhh. I love your questions, Theron. They’re always thought-provoking and always making me look into the past. Let’s see, I can’t say that those many day―or evening―jobs outside of the industry were boring or terrible. They got me through my high school and college years and beyond. From working in a “five and dime” type store to fitting shoes on people’s feet in a high-class department store, I never hated the jobs. I had a tough time as a waitress and got demoted back to kitchen, but it still wasn’t the “worst” job. Even working as a secretary for six years wasn’t “terrible.” It was a fast-paced commercial/industrial real estate office, and regardless of the male-dominated higher-ranked staff, I enjoyed the high energy and especially the office’s sense of humor in dealing with the everyday stress. So, as you can see, even though these jobs weren’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, they weren’t so bad.

A serious side I hate to say it, but some of the “jobs from hell” were jobs in the [entertainment] industry, and it wasn’t the work―it was the attitudes. Why the attitudes? They aren’t necessary and are a negative source that deteriorates the whole infrastructure of a company or project! I’m the type of person who gives everyone a chance. In the beginning, everyone has a clean slate with me. I feel attitudes are like brick walls for everyone and stunt progress.

So, to answer your question the best I can about the worst day job I had, well, I’d have to say working as a waitress in an Irish-pub type chain was “the pits.” I got the lousy tables and…I just wasn’t good at it. Another not-so-great job was actually an internship in the industry―television industry to be exact. The regular staff at this large (now worldwide) financial television station was awesome and that’s whom I lunched with and hung out with, but I was interning for a start-up children’s show, and one of the freelance staff members had “the tude.” I began counting the days till the end of my internship. I’d say those were the worst jobs I ever had.

So what’s next for you, Susie? Besides surviving your vacation, that is.

As for what’s next, well, I’m hoping to start pre-production of another script I wrote, Inside Out—think Cronenberg’s Crash with a twist of a woman’s menstrual cramps! The production will need a bigger budget so it may take some time to get off the ground. In the meantime, I may have to do another smaller production. I also have about four acting offers, so I may be busy with those as I plan what I enjoy most—the behind-the-camera roles.

A cosmopolitan side I’ve noticed that, over the past few years, women are becoming a dominant force in the world of horror. What are your thoughts? Are you acquainted with any of the many female horror filmmakers on the scene today?

At the moment, I don’t know many female horror filmmakers. Unfortunately, even my Mingle Mangle group is comprised mostly of male filmmakers in the genre. I used to promote to a female filmmaker group I belonged to and still very few females in the genre―if any―attended our events.

But I am proud to say that of the few female filmmakers we have, they are brilliant. One filmmaker is Jane Rose. Her Lovecraft-ian short flicks have been awesome! Look her up and be on the look out for her. She’s up-and-coming. I am also thankful for those who support female filmmakers in horror, such as you and Slammed & Damned (this interview means a lot to female filmmakers!) as well as Pretty-Scary and the magazine Sirens of Cinema.

I don’t want to blame the male-dominated industry for the lack of female filmmakers…and the lack female horror filmmakers. There’s so much competition that even male filmmakers are competing with their fellow male filmmakers. I think women need to do what they want to do, and filmmaking is difficult to begin with. I have a great man behind me―my husband. If there’s a great man or woman or father or mother behind any filmmaker, male or female, more power to ya! We all need the support. The only thing I advise to each and every filmmaker is to follow the beat of your own drummer! To pay homage is fine. To use certain styles is important. But do it the way your heart and mind guides you. Don’t do it ‘cause your friend is making a movie and now you want to also. A little outside pressure is fine, but don’t let it take away from the creativity and the guidance of your drummer. Don’t mute your muse with what I call “ego clutter.” Good luck! Boys and girls alike!

Okay, final question. I have to ask about your parrots. I know you love them, but you actually take them skiing?

Oh, no! My parrots are being parrot-sat by my mother-in-law and the day after we arrived, the macaw escaped the cage while her food was being put in. I thought there would be no way my mother-in-law could put that big bird back in the cage. So, I started to cry as I paced the floor of our hotel, thinking we’d have to pack up our things and drive seven hours all the way back home and just end our very-needed vacation. Well, sure enough, we guided mum over the phone—and an organic cookie is what lured Puppy (yes, the macaw’s named is Puppy because she acts like a dog) back into her cage. Little brat spoiled bird! Oh, I love her so!

Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me, Susan. Enjoy the rest of your vacation, and tell Puppy the parrot I said hello.

No! Thank you! Your questions have been interesting for me―and Puppy says “sqwaaaak!” and Einstein, the other parrot, says “go poop.” Sorry. She doesn’t say much else. Oh my god. Will you publish that? It’s true though! She says, “Go poop!”

Hey, we’ll publish anything…

~Theron Neel

Tags: Alan Rowe Kelly, horror, indie filmmakers, Interviews, Jane Rose, Jessica Palette, Kamilla Sofie Sadekova, Kim Amato, Mavi Göz, Mingle Mangle, Pretty-Scary, Slammed & Damned, Susan Adriensen, Theron Neel, Under the Raven's Wing
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Shannon Lark—Busy dead girl

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Model, actress, director, gore wrangler―that’s right, I can only be talking about one woman: Shannon Lark. As the brains behind horror collective The Chainsaw Mafia, an activist for women in horror, the first-ever Fangoria Spooksmodel, and former manager and FX whiz for the dance company The Living Dead Girlz, Shannon is definitely becoming a force to be reckoned with. A few months ago, I was lucky enough to have a chat with this beautiful young overachiever about, well, almost everything.

Hi, Shannon. Thanks so much for talking with me. Tell me something. You’re a writer, actor, dancer, director, editor, gore wrangler―when do you find time to sleep? Or do you?

I don’t sleep a lot, actually. It takes a constant driving force for stay on top of everything…and even then I still need help, which I get from my executive assistant, Michelle Fatale.

An artist who does a bunch of different projects definitely needs assistance from others, which is something I’ve needed to teach myself to do―allow others to help.

There are probably more women involved in horror than ever before—not just filmmakers, but there are also female writers and female-centric websites such as Pretty-Scary. Why do you think that is? Why is now the time?

I think there are more women involved in the entire film industry than ever before. It’s a natural state of involvement that was bound to happen. I think in the next 10 years, we are going to see that number double, and I really hope to help make that happen. The more [that] women become involved and give to the genre, the more women will become involved. It’s gonna be like a really cool chick’s club, except without all the sappy crappy movies.

You are a trailblazer! Can you tell me a little about The Chainsaw Mafia and Living Dead Girlz.

The Chainsaw Mafia is my horror production company (soon to be a retail store) and a networking board for horror filmmakers. Membership is free, and we encourage members to post about their productions and try to hook up with other filmmakers.

TCM’s motto is “Bring your daughter to the slaughter,” and while we encourage women to get involved by hosting VISCERA, a film festival for female directors/producers, men are strongly encouraged to be members as well. We will soon be releasing a retail store for horror filmmakers and lovers, selling everything from director’s chairs to special effects to little zombies you can play with. Yay!

The Living Dead Girlz is a zombie dance troupe based in San Francisco. I [used to] manage and create special effects for the troupe, and Amber Steele directs and choreographs. We create shows based around empowering females, and [we] spray blood/brains/intestines on the crowd. We performed the 2007 Fangoria Convention Circuit and are currently booking a tour for 2008. More information will be provided shortly! You can check out our most recent creation, which is a parody of the Shoes video by Kelly. It’s called Brains and is available on YouTube.

You are very much an advocate for women in the world of horror. But you’re also very much a sex symbol. Do you have any trouble reconciling those two parts of yourself?

I used to, but not so much anymore. Before, I knew what I felt comfortable with and what I wanted to see change in the roles of women in my lifetime, but I didn’t exactly know how to demonstrate it. Being a woman makes it confusing as well, because females have a lot of societal pressure, and a good amount of that is displayed through the [horror] genre.

My work through the Living Dead Girlz has helped exponentially with the issue. We are sexy females getting on stage to dance with many different provocative moves and dress, but there is a fine line that a female must walk when they are displaying sexuality in their art.

We don’t have choreography that simply displays sexuality. We aren’t a titty show, and the sexuality we express in our movements [is that of] strong, independent, funny females. We always wrap our stories around a greater purpose that has a much deeper meaning than simply stripping down to our lingerie and conducting a chair dance.

Sex and the display of sexual nature, which is such a natural thing for humans to experience, shouldn’t be seen in a negative light. But I think there is a way to express it that can demand respect and show the infinite beauty of sexuality and humanity, and there is [also] a way to demonstrate it that is demoralizing and inelegant. It really depends on how you do it.

The way you set up your shots, what you wear, the dialogue, the situation, the story―everything determines how that sexuality is going to come through to the audience. I’m just really careful with everything I do.

Good point. Speaking of sexy, I’m going to say it—I voted for you as Miss Horrorfest 2007/2008. There was a bit of a scandal surrounding the contest. Although you didn’t win, many believed you were the true victor. Do you care to comment on it now that it’s behind you?

Ooh! Yay! I would love to! I’m really, really glad I wasn’t chosen, because then I would have to ask them if I could do this interview, and it might have been denied. [Editor’s note: Awww!]

I hold my love for the genre very close to my heart. I will constantly be creating, no matter what. Working for a corporation would have put a huge obstacle in my way. I’ve pushed my career to where it is and feel better to keep creating opportunities for myself, no matter if a company thinks I’m right for a job or not. I wish Mistress Malice (Miss Horrorfest 2008) and Nixon (runner-up) all the best!

~Theron Neel

Tags: Amber Steele, Fangoria, genre, gore, horror, Interviews, Living Dead Girlz, Michelle Fatale, Pretty-Scary, Shannon Lark, Slammed & Damned, Spooksmodel, The Chainsaw Mafia, Theron Neel
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Slammed & Damned: The Modern Day Horror Review

Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Jawara Duncan—Making movies and telling stories

Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #4

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Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #2

Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #1

Doing Time With Rolfe Kanefsky #0

Cydne Schulte—Live each day with gratitude

Susan Adriensen—Follow the beat of your own drummer

Shannon Lark—Busy dead girl

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