RAZOR DAYS Countdown Begins

As of this very moment, 10:30 am on Wednesday, we have less than 48 hours until the start of production on Razor Days, our sixth feature and completely different from anything we’ve done or tried to do before. Straight, vicious drama with elements of horror.

The cast: Amy Lynn Best (and producer), Debbie Rochon, Bette Cassett (ThinkGeek's Zombie Girl), David Marancik (The Sadist), Alyssa Herron (Splatter Movie) and Jeff Monahan (John Sayles' Lone Star). Photographed by Bart Mastronardi (Vindication). Sound by Rich Conant (The Absence of Light). Special Effects by Scott Conner (Grace, The Deadliest Warrior), Jerry Gergely (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Babylon 5) and Gino Crognale (Predators, The Mist). Assistant Director and Publicity Michael Varrati (Ultra-Violent Magazine, Demon Divas and the Lanes of Damnation). Produced by Alan Rowe Kelly (I'll Bury You Tomorrow). Executive Producer Bob Kuiper (Sirens of Cinema Magazine). Written and directed by…me.

The first draft of the screenplay was finished back in 2005, but its history extends slightly beyond that.

I was unemployed in 2005, but managing to scrape together a decent almost-living writing for Femme Fatales, Cinefantastique and Draculina. Right before the company's then-owner sold FF and CFQ and screwed all of her writers out of tens of thousands of dollars, collectively, but that’s a different story.

Around this time, Vertigo Comics, thanks to the best-sellers Swamp Thing, Sandman, The Preacher, etc., was at the top of the business and had opened its doors to freelance pitches. I’d written for magazines, movies, radio and newspaper at that point. Ghost-written for novelists here and there. Ghost-edited for many more. But I’d never written for comics and it’s still a dream of mine. And I loved so many of the Vertigo titles—and so many of their authors were personal deities of mine—that I started working on a treatment.

I wanted to do something Hellblazer-ish, something Preacher-ish. Fill an Alan Moore-esque world with Neil Gaiman’s grasp of storytelling and sharpened with Warren Ellis’s gleeful disregard for human safety. I wanted everything to coalesce into something that would blow editor Karen Berger out of her socks.

And it started with a Berni Wrightson cover. Twisted Tales #2 from Pacific Comics. To my knowledge, Berni only did the cover and not the interior. Still, that image haunted and excited me since my then less-distant childhood and opened up a doorway in my head, through which all the other ideas spilled and tripped all over each other.

Razor Days started as an occult mystery about modern-day cannibals—admittedly but only partially inspired by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and 3—and the question: “What happens ten minutes after those movies end? How does the victim cope with the horror and even start to put his or her life together?” Surrounding the question were hard-boiled detectives, women with survivor’s guilt and weapons-carry permits, and a fallen angel who may or may not have been documenting Earth’s history as it happened.

Pretty crowded, yeah.

I finished the treatment, outline and first issue, sent it off to Karen Berger and never, ever heard from her. Which was not a big surprise.

But the central question kept bothering me. How does someone, in real life, get over something like that?

I’ve always been fascinated by the case of Colleen Stan, who was kidnapped by a wacko named Cameron Hooker, and kept in a coffin-like box under his bed, 23 hours a day, for seven years. When she was finally freed, she went on to testify against Hooker (and his wife) and became an abuse counselor. But how did she recover? That’s the part no one ever tells you. What the hell is the aftermath of something like that?

That’s when I started to streamline Razor Days into a screenplay. I jettisoned all the fantastical elements of the script and focused on the survivors. Three women, each of whom had been the victim of horrible events in their past, and how their paths brought them to each other. And how each one had dealt—and continued to deal—with their traumatic memories.

That’s the story I wanted to tell. And the questions I wanted to try and answer.

And in less than 48 hours, that’s the story we’ll start to tell. The answers might not come so easily.

More words about the RAZOR DAYS shoot, Thursday past.

Thursday, November 11, Happy Cloud Pictures shot a very tiny piece of what will be our sixth feature film. Those of you who have been along the HCP ride, with its odd twists and unexpected stops for maintenance and to transfer passengers, know how long this journey has been. We don’t choose our productions lightly and don’t leap blindly into the movie chasm, so we haven’t made anything we were ashamed of in thirteen years. But this new film is different, because it’s been alive almost as long as the company. (Almost. HCP formed in 1997 and we didn’t conceive the first draft of Razor Days until 2002, but it’s been alive, in one form or another, all of this time.) And now we’re finally in a position to make it.

I don’t want to give away too many details at the moment—yesterday I presented the story of its life in fairy-tale form—but I do want to say again that this is a different animal for us. We’re trying something different: a horror movie.

I’ve been saying for years that I don’t feel like we’ve really made a horror movie yet. We’ve done hybrids— comedy/horror, science fiction/horror, something-slash-horror. Razor Days is as much a thriller as it is a horror film, truth be told, but it’s still horror at the base. Horrific things happen and not all of them of the “ooh, cool effect!” variety. So I hope you’ll all bear with both my excitement and anxiety, since this was such a long time coming.

After a few months of wrangling and ironing out legal details, HCP formed a partnership with RAK Media, the publisher of Sirens of Cinema, to make Razor Days our first feature. There are grand plans for it, but it has to be made first. That first “production” step was taken on the aforementioned Thursday.

To announce officially, Razor Days stars Debbie Rochon, Amy Lynn Best, David Marancik (The Sadist), Jeff Monahan (Lone Star) and Alan Rowe Kelly (A Far Cry from Home), with Michael Varrati, Gwendolyn and fan-favorite Bill Homan making special appearances (as well as many of our HCP family members). Alan is also taking on a goodly portion of produce-orial duties. Robert Kuiper is the exec producer. Special Make-up designed by Gino Crognale (Sorority Row, Hostel III). Special props were created by Chris Pezzano. Cinematography would be conjured from the magical realm of electromagnetism by Dominick Sivilli (The Tell-Tale Heart) and Bart Mastronardi (Vindication). The bulk of filming will take place in the Spring of 2011.

But we all really wanted to get started sooner. So we got together and worked something out.

Two years ago, I covered George A. Romero Presents Deadtime Stories for Fangoria. Jeff Monahan wrote the three stories told in that upcoming anthology and directed one of the segments. He cast Amy in a cameo for the last story and we hung out on the set for the majority of that particularly shoot. Which took place in the historic Laurel Caverns outside of Uniontown, PA. Thirteen-plus stories down and dozens of miles long, the caverns are a natural cave formation open to the public nine months of the year. Located at the bottom of a very steep mountain road, wintertime is treacherous in that area.

But the location is beautiful inside and out and I fell in love with the idea of shooting something there, and hey, our Razor Days script requires a cave setting! So what the heck, right?

We got the ball rolling back in July. First we needed to obtain permission. Then we had to make sure the partnership was in place, legally, so we could transfer our production insurance. Then came all the team building—assembling the right people with the right skills for the right time period, then figuring out how to get them down here and then what to do with them once they arrived. All the stuff I hate to deal with. Fortunately, Amy’s really good at all this stuff. So even though she’s one of the film’s stars, she undertook most of the pre-production duties.

All the big-picture stuff fell into place rather quickly, but the details started to dissolve. Our previous insurance company had restructured during the whole “economic clusterfuck” period, so we had to scramble to find new coverage. Fortunately, Alan was able to provide that solution after weeks of false starts. (This wasn’t an option—not only did we need to provide the cavern’s administrators with proof of coverage but we weren’t about to haul a dozen or so people 100 feet into the bowels of the Earth without making sure they’d be taken care of should a vicious cave troll eat their foot during filming!) But even with Alan’s guidance, we were still racing the clock and the calendar. The caverns are closed during the week after Labor Day, then close completely the weekend after Thanksgiving due to mountain snow causing untold amounts of potential death. The closer we got to Thanksgiving, the more we risked inclement weather, postponement of production and loss of mojo.

So I lit incense to Cinemagog, the God of Fillmmaking, and left out a dollar bill as an offering to Ifirs, the God of Executive Producing, in the hopes of getting these guys on our side. I also shouted to the heavens that I was not, nor could I possibly be confused with, Terry Gilliam, so they if they could see their way towards laying off, we’d be grateful.

The overall plan was to shoot as many of the little cave flashbacks as possible in as short a time as was feasible, then cobble together the footage for an extended trailer. It wasn’t a “film shoot” per ce as it was a trial run for the new family. Having met David Marancik and Dominick Sivilli socially, I’d never worked with them before. Alan had done some voice over work for me and sat for an interview for the Res. Game DVD, but we hadn’t done a project together. Heck, we’ve known Debbie for over a decade and shot five movies with her but for never more than a day or two at a time! So this was gonna be something new.

Fortunately, everyone likes everybody (and David). Plus, I had on hand the additional wonderful person of Michael Varrati, Razor Days’ publicist and HCP’s therapeutic counselor. He’s gotten through many a stressful convention and I felt confident he’d keep me from leaping off a ledge during filming.

So I don’t know if it was the incense, the begging, combined positive karma or if the universe was just in a particularly good mood last week, but the one-day shoot came off without a hitch and barely over budget! Alan, Dom and David were not killed in a horrible moose-crossing accident on their way from NY to PA. The Pittsburgh Airport did not give Debbie Ebola, the insurance company didn’t try to stick us for a dollar-per-dollar policy, the caverns did not fall in, explode or mysteriously move (though our GPS refused to actually get us there!) prior to our arrival (nor while we were there). In fact there was only one isolated bit of idiocy and that was on my end.

In the summer, I decided that HCP should upgrade its lighting kit. Perusing the wonderful digital garage sale that is Ebay, I came across a gorgeous little three-lamp halogen kit for a decent price. Ordered it, received it, looked at it, oohed, ahhed, and put the damn thing away. Without ever checking to see if the lamps had bulbs in them.

And, of course, they’re the kinds of bulbs made by Madagascan children, rolled on the thighs of plump Cuban women and only during the third full moon of the year and are not, therefore, available at Wal-Mart.

I don’t embarrass easily.

You know those dreams you have where you’re speaking in public and you realize you’re naked?

I get applause in those dreams.

But hanging out with a professional director of photography doing an equipment check and realizing that you didn’t—not once in three months—make sure you had light bulbs for your light kit—it’s a painful moment.

Dom rolled with it. Gave me a hug. Told me it would be okay. Realized that he had no way home without the other two. Told me it would be okay again. Thanks to Bill Homan and his 500 watt lighting kit, it was. But tell that to a drunk and sobbing me, crafting a noose out of old 16mm short ends!

Fortunately, the run-up to that was both relaxing and productive. After working part of the day and all of us rehearsing for the rest of Tuesday, Debbie, Amy and Michael sat down with their laptops and commenced a marathon Facebook chat, ending up with 200 posts on one thread. And if that isn’t a record… really, it should be. Meanwhile, I edited, chimed in when I had something incredibly witty to say, and endured Glee. Amy and Michael wanted to watch it, Debbie went to her happy place to avoid it; I wound up watching it. And paying attention to it. It was their “It Gets Better” episode. Meanwhile, we were all be-dogged by a quartet of canines confused by the company.

Wednesday night, prior to the humiliation brought about by lack of bulbs, Alan, David and Dom managed to reach Waynesburg unscathed and we had a production meeting over a Bob Evans dinner that was slightly less bland than not eating at all. It was then that I realized that we were lacking in specific set dressing. The cave is meant to be a cannibal lair. I had no bones. By which, I mean, external bones (x-rays have revealed me to be vertebrate, thank you).

Bill Homan to the rescue again. “How many do you need?” he asked. Which is not the first time such an ominous question was proffered to a ridiculous question. “A few,” I said. “A handful.”

“I don’t have hands,” he said. “I have legs and skulls and ribs and—”

The next morning, there was a large box waiting for me outside his house, filled to the brim with what used to be inside a small herd of Bambis. Like the cannibals in my story, however, Bill eats everything he kills, so he’s given a carnivore pass. Unlike the office bozos I’ve worked with in the past that just like to “kill stuff”.

Convinced I had left nothing else behind or unchecked, we led the caravan to the caverns. Michael and I sat in the backseat of the car, encumbered by heavy equipment, while Amy and Debbie drove in the front, less encumbered but laden with coffee. If any of you out there have ever met Amy or Debbie, you know that coffee is consumed by the oceanfuls. A week later and my house still smells like the inside of Juan Valdez’s bladder.

One grievous mistake made that cannot be solely attributed to me was the notion that we would accomplish more with a smallish crew. This was meant to be a fast, one-day shoot. Get in, get out. It was a paid shoot, all professional and everything, and we were hesitant to go too crazy over what would amount to about four minutes of footage and an ersatz trailer. So we’d all slap on our multiple hats and schlep cable, whip up craft services, provide make-up, “Hollywood” bounce boards and flags, whatever. Just the seven of us.

Do you know how long a walk 100 near-vertical feet is? You do? Are you over 30? You’re not? Then shut up, Mr. 127 Days. I’m still amazed that we met neither death-by-exhaustion nor a Minotaur during our frequent treks up and down that cavernous mountain. Because, of course, the room that wound up as everyone’s favorite was one of the furthest down from the visitor’s center and homebase. Glorious, grand, proof-of-God’s majesty, yeah, yeah, yeah. Still a long, steep fucking walk! And we all discovered our inner Indian (Cheroke, Ute or Algonquin—your preference) by getting lost at least once and following the light-kit wheel-tracks to freedom and sunlight again. Made us all feel smart and survivorish. 

 Photo by Amy Lynn Best

The temperature that deep in Laurel Caverns is about 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit year round. Which is fine in August. Coming in from 60 degrees outside to a ten-degree drop, stripping to the waist (in David’s case) or tied into limb-sleep stress positions (in Debbie’s case), and staying there for six hours well…Hey, Neil Marshall—you know what I’m talking about, right? Holla!

Anyway…

The benefit of shooting only flashbacks is that you can cheat a lot of things. Hairstyles don’t have to match precisely if there are other scenes between the shots you’re getting. The make-up can change. You can dictate the amount of time the characters are spending even if the script doesn’t spell it all out. The drawback is actually trying to figure all of that out and explaining it to everyone else when the script doesn’t spell it all out.

Actually, that was the biggest drawback of all, for me, at least: directing. I’ve joked in the past that actors are little more than “walking props”. I’ve often called the “noise bags” to the set when I’m ready to roll. And I’ve gone on and on how I much I dislike the actual production part of filmmaking. Let me write it, let me edit it, and tell me how all that middle stuff went. You know, for my blog.

But here we were, half-a-mile down in the belly of the Earth, the stars hoisting and toting along with the grips (which, that day, included Walt and Ian, two of the Caverns’ caretakers; the wonderful Doreen, who facilitated all of our desires, wisely stayed in the visitor’s center where it was saner—uh, warmer). Everyone was enduring the same chill, the same dirty conditions (the bowels of the Earth are just filthy!). And they kept asking me questions—endless questions—simply because I was the so-called director!

Now, since we started, Amy and I have always operated as a team. We’re like a married version of the Coen Brothers. Generally, even when I’m listed as “director”, Amy will work with the actors and I’ll work with the camera department. I’m just not an emotionally-giving guy. “I wrote the damned thing! It’s right there! What more do you need? Just do that!”

That’s not the best tactic, apparently.

And while the two of us had discussed the scenes ahead of time and the best way to play them, I was still, for all intents and purposes, directing the scenes. So I had to have answers. Which meant I had to know how to communicate those answers. “Act more!” would be unacceptable. 

 Photo by Amy Lynn Best

I was grateful that the first few shots we were doing were cutaways—close-ups of eyes, shoulders, props, things that formerly resided inside deer. All I had to do was say, “Great”, when Dominick asked me how I liked the framing. While he did that, Alan worked make-up and Amy did both producing and Best Boy work for Dom, I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

Like I said: there was to be no cheating on this one. I couldn’t rely on Amy taking the reins with the actors as she did on Splatter Movie because she was going to need directing as well. I couldn’t fake my way through a scene with an Irish accent, joking and calling out “Gimme an Alien 3,” as I did on A Feast of Flesh. If everyone else was going to treat this like a hardcore professional film, I would have to as well. (This is not to belittle anyone else’s contribution to previous HCP films, nor to belittle the films themselves. We’ve never made anything I was anything less than sinfully proud of. This is all meant to bespeak of my attitude towards things. I rely on others to do excellent jobs. But now I had to leave the dugout, to use a barely-understood sports term.)

 

Photo by Amy Lynn Best

  

After the first couple of shots, we broke to set up for an elaborate take. We realized that something had been left behind “upstairs” and Amy took it upon herself to go running. “Direct your actors,” she told me and gave me a big smile. It was as much a pep talk as it was a suggestion. If you’ve been together with someone for sixteen years, you don’t need an “atta boy” every couple of minutes. But a well-timed one is always welcome.

There has only ever been one other moment in my life when the meaning of the word “directing” actually dawned on me, and that was a small test shoot in a hotel room after a convention, for a movie that never came together. But I had three professional actors before me who all needed to know specific things for the scene. Their questions crystallized the concept of “motivation” for me. The word wasn’t just a tired punchline. It wasn’t a prompt for the comeback “to get through the scene so we can go home”. “Motivation” is a single-word short-hand for “what is happening and what are we doing at this moment in time?” It also implies “what came before?” And I needed to have those answers. 

Suddenly, I had them.

Everyone down in that cavern was a friend of mine; some for a very long time and some I’d only gotten close to recently. Half-a-mile beneath the surface of the Earth was a safe place then, because there was a common goal ahead of us. But if I was going to say that, for all intents and purposes, that I was the captain of this particular subterranean ship, then goddamn it, I’d better captain.

I forced myself to forget my own anxieties. I called upon what I knew of these people as both people and artists. I told them what I wanted. 

 

Frame Grab - photography Dominick Sivilli

The first couple of times, I botched it. I’m not always the clearest of communicators, so it took me a few tries to find the right expressions to convey what was in my head. I had to dictate how these people felt. It’s not enough to say “Okay, you’re scared because this guy is doing this.” Of course you are. But scared how? For life and limb? To what degree? Terror or hysteria? And what else? Grief and shock? “You’re happy”. Yeah? Happy how?

Directing isn’t a con game. Friedkin can get away with shooting off a gun mid-take to get a reaction and Norman Taurog can threaten to shoot Jackie Cooper’s dog but that’s all smoke. That isn’t building a scene, that’s manipulation. That’s control, not shared art. If I wanted David to convey happiness, I couldn’t just buy him a puppy. 

 Frame Grab - photography Dominick Sivilli

Filmmaking isn’t like sex, as Peter Bogdanovich once said, because you never get to see anyone doing it, therefore you don’t know if you’re doing it right. It’s like sex because it’s different every single time. Even if you stick to the same positions, rhythm and timing, it’s still different because of chemistry, temperature and all other stimuli, internal and external. And you never really learn how to make a movie. You only learn how to make the movie you’re making. I still have some learning to come, but like a good joint, I knew right away when it hit me. Like any metaphor I’ve ever met, I found the right mix.

At least I think so. The footage looks gorgeous. We captured some amazing performances surrounded by gorgeous, natural surroundings (like in our other movies, this setting is going to be a character as well), production value you just can’t buy. And as exhausted as well all were at the end of the night, we were still friends. We’d gone through and come out the other side without egos taking the trip.

I could make the snide remark that Debbie and David had subjected us all to Tommy Wiseau’s monstrosity, The Room, the night before and if we’d left the lens cap on the camera we’d still have made a better movie than that—not to mention that if we can endure that hideousness as a family, we could survive anything.

But I won’t.

I’m just going to finish the edit of the teaser, start showing it around, get the damned thing some attention. Then in the Spring, we’ll return to work and wrap with something I have no doubt will be very special, a story worth telling. 

And I’ll remember the bulbs next time. And hopefully the bones.

The birth of RAZOR DAYS - a fairy story about survival horror.

Back in 2002, while working at Incredibly Strange Video in Dormont, I happened to have on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As it ended, I thought to myself, “Marilyn Burns’s character is going to need so much therapy.” Then came the little post-script title about how no evidence was ever found after a massive police search of the area. My wheels started turning. While no scholar of the slasher genre, I’d seen enough of them to wonder about those surviving “final girls”, what their lives would be like from that point on.

In 2002, the endless cycle of remakes hadn’t yet reached the theaters, so there hadn’t been a major Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chain Saw “type” of movie released for a while. The indie scene was filled to the brim then—and will always be—with survival horror, homages and rip-offs of the original films. In fact, later that day I watched Carnage Road, which featured a character named “Quiltface” for his impressive mask made of multiple skinned faces. The idea that there are psychotic cannibals out there, hoping to catch, kill and eat us, was always a fascinating little terror of mine. It had grown stronger in recent months as Amy and I scouted out rural farmland for our new home. Passing one back-woods house with a gaping hole in the side, while the proud owner sat on the porch skinning…something (all I remember are clumps of blood and fur as we increased speed), I turned to Amy, indicating the “For Sale” sign on the trailer next to the lot. “If I’m going to be murdered in my sleep,” I told her, “I definitely don’t want to be raped and murdered.” So we kept looking.

 

Then I rediscovered this Berni Wrightson comic cover and things started to gel in my head. 

  Survival horror always reached an end, either with triumph, rescue, succumbing to madness, or that final surprising resurrection—that dead hand springing back to life and grabbing the final girl just as the credits rolled to the sound of her echoing scream, betraying everything she’d gone through. What these types of horror movies never addressed were the scars left behind.

The first reaction to that consideration is, of course, “Who wants to see a crying victim in therapy for two hours, telling the story to her shrink?” So skip that part too. What happens after? After the survival, after the therapy, after the investigations and allegations and accusations. One person out of four survived a camping trip. Could they be to blame? Isn’t that more plausible than Leatherface and his family? Police find no evidence—how the hell hard were they looking? Or are they in on it too? (Something that was addressed in the inevitable Texas Chain Saw remake.) But most importantly, all that convolution aside, how do you put your life back together after something like that?

Having lived in the world, journeyed out amongst other people, I have met survivors of rape and molestation. I have met people who have survived moments of horrible and random violence. I’m not referring to brutal abductions or even war flashbacks. Comparatively small things like a mugging, a bar fight, or even the prolonged illness of a friend or relative, leaves behind its echo. Even if these folks seem, outwardly, to have completely recovered, the violence is still there in scarred-over memory. And it comes out. Usually rarely, but those wounds open, sometimes with a minutia of prompting. So if its particularly shattering, how do you put yourself back together?

After a couple of turns with this germ of an idea—first as a short story and then a comic book—I found the meat of this story I wanted to tell, and the first thing to go was that image of the head hunter from Wrightson’s painting. As much as I would have loved to tell that story, it wasn’t the story that wanted to be told.

The story that became Razor Days was much more intimate and introspective. But very violent. It’s about a trio of final girls and what they decide to do after the credits have rolled.

So here we are eight years later, and I’m finally getting the chance to turn this script into a movie. There were multiple fits and starts over the years, including a nasty little few weeks where we had the film ripped away from us in pre-production by a dishonest producer who promised the world then took it all away. That was a carpet-yank moment for us because this wasn’t just a movie we could make on weekends in our backyards. It required a realism that our other movies did not. It wasn’t a ____-horror movie, either. It wasn’t a comedy-horror like Severe Injuries or a semi-futuristic zombie fantasy like The Resurrection Game. We couldn’t invent our own worlds here. Razor Days required solid ground beneath our feet. Which requires money. So we put it on the back burner, turned the fire low and let it simmer.

In the meantime, Amy and I worked on the script, refined it and brought it down closer to eye-level, working out how even the most fantastic elements could have a light shone on them and still feel solid. While we’re used to not giving up—the Happy Cloud motto is “The bumblebee doesn’t know that its physically impossible for it to fly”—we had two others in our court who never gave up either: Debbie Rochon and Alan Rowe Kelly. The pair of them mentioned that movie to anyone who would listen. Then, one day, the right listener came along.

Bob Kuiper, my long-time friend and publisher of Sirens of Cinema, who has displayed more faith in me than what is surely rational, was someone I’d worked with for over five years, but had never met. Circumstances kept us from seeing each other in person. Some of this problem was caused by distance—he in Indiana, we in the nowhere-zone of PA—and was compounded by other things, chiefly bad timing. He’d been burned by partnerships before—had a movie or two collapse around him—as had we, so our initial conversations about producing a film together required a lot of circling and dancing, resembling many of the knife fights from West Side Story minus the snapping.

Then, by chance, the planets aligned and the three of us finally met, face-to-face and over beer, at Horrorhound, Indy. We discuss plans for the future and we hint that we’d love to make Razor Days. There is much nodding and smiling and great plans for the upcoming empire.

And who is one of the first people we introduce Mr. Bob to? Alan Rowe Kelly.

What’s the first thing he says to us? “What’s going on with Razor Days? I love that script!”

It was an unscripted, unpaid for moment. But it was enough proof for me that the universe isn’t constantly out to get me. Because by the end of that weekend, Bob had provided the green-light for this movie to be made. The first project for the partnership of RAK Media and Happy Cloud Pictures will be something completely different from anything we’ve attempted before.

After all the struggling and fighting and the inherent madness of the indie film industry, after all the back-stabbing, the trash-talk, the horrific allegations and the depressing dissolution of long-time friendships, we were reminded that sometimes, this business doesn’t completely suck. There are wonderful people out there. They’re tough to spot through the guarded gauze of cynicism and self-defense, but they’re there, and they’re willing to expose themselves to your dreams and desires. And the only price is: you have to live up to their trust.

Because betrayal is a violent act as well. It can leave scars just as deep and leave damage behind. Now all of a sudden, you’re on the other side. You’re not the survivor or the altruistic hero. You’re standing on the precipice of villainy. You want to be the villain of your own life story—act selfishly, lie, cheat, and fuck your way to the top. It’s actually faster—an express elevator to success.

I’m happy that, after all this time, we took the stairs and had good friends to walk with.

The ALL ABOUT EVIL Precision Screenings - Part 1

Originally, this was meant to be the second part of the “I Love New York in June (July and August) – How ‘bout you?” article, but this past weekend changed my mindset. Last Friday, Amy and I both left work early to get on the road to Maryland in order to catch our second showing of Joshua Grannell’s All About Evil! The Peaches Christ Experience in 4-D. Having caught the premiere in NY at the beginning of the month, we were excited to catch it again with a new variety of friends and venues. The movie is that good and, plus, it has come to symbolize what we’ve started to think of as our summer of “Hell no! We’re not old!”

For those out of the know, Joshua Grannell is better known as the supremely fabulous Peaches Christ, host of the San Francisco horror show, Midnight Mass. Peaches isn’t another Elvira horror host follow-up, though, don’t make that mistake. Peaches Christ is part showgirl, part lounge singer, and all spectacular. Think a glamorous Dame Edna taking over Bette Midler’s Vegas show to show B-movies. A rabid horror fanatic, particularly of the H.G. Lewis and Ted V. Mikels oeuvre, Grannell wrote and directed All About Evil as an homage not only to those gleefully gory movies, but to the phenomenon of cult filmmaking itself. (You can read my review of All About Evil HERE for a plot synopsis.) And the “4-D Experience” is not only an offshoot of Midnight Mass, but a tribute to the lost art of showmanship, ala William Castle or the Ray Dennis Steckler spook shows. All of this is coated with ample coats of glittery fabulousity.

I had first heard of the film around the time of its completion, via an anecdote by Alan Rowe Kelly. Alan’s film, The Blood Shed, was in post-production and while we were discussing its virtues, he mentioned casually that he’d recently spoken to an LA filmmaker who had completed a completely different project under the same title. Alan had dropped Mr. Grannell a line and the two discussed whose film should undergo title surgery for the sake of audience, distributors and over-all artistic piece-of-mind. Ultimately, Josh stepped back and found the much more appropriate Betty Davis-esque play on words and the two artists remained friends to this very writing.

All About Evil proved to be a far more fitting title as the movies created by its main character, Deborah Tennis (Deb-or-ah Te-nees) have fantastic punned titles as well—The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, Gore and Peace, The Maiming of the Shrew, The Slasher in the Rye—serving the camp of the entire film. (Alan’s The Blood Shed isn’t campy so much as it is deliriously deranged and if you haven’t seen that one yet either, your priorities are obviously in need of reordering.) As Josh’s movie began to gain steam, I remained peripherally aware of it until it was thrust right beneath my nose when one of our best friends, Ultra-Violent Magazine journalist Michael Varrati, signed on as All About Evil’s “Tour de Fierce” co-ordinator (or similar such title; as in all things indie, it’s hard to tell from the multiplying hats who is doing what job). All About Evil was set to have a year-long nationwide tour followed by a similar jaunt to the U.K. Through sheer chutzpah and the contributions from a few very loyal followers, this little independent slasher comedy riding the modest recognition wave of its creator’s drag diva alter-ego was going global.

When a low-budget movie gets a legitimate DVD release, that alone is cause for confetti and parades. Something like this was just one small step down from a full-on geekgasm. I don’t want to give the impression that something like this is unprecedented, but the likes sure as hell haven’t been witnessed in my neck of the woods in recent memory!

Following very successful screenings in Los Angeles, Seattle and Austin, Texas, the first sorta-close premiere came our way via the Landmark’s Sunshine Theater in Tribeca, NY, at the end of July.

Now, long trips are not on our list of phobias, but having already driven from Waynesburg to NY twice this summer, we sought alternative modes of transportation. Flying was out for obvious reasons. Amtrak wasn’t particularly attractive since the trip would take five or so hour longer than driving. Finally, we came upon the Megabus—round trip tickets from Pittsburgh to NY for less than we would spend in gas and hotel. Deal! And to make things more challenging on ourselves, we would make the trip there and back in just 24 hours. Okay, that part wasn’t as well thought-out, but we just didn’t care to spend extra on a hotel and we weren’t about to infringe again on the couches or floors of our many hospitable friends. We could sleep on the bus, read, work (Megabus offers Wi-Fi!), whatever, and not have to worry about crazed morning drivers trying to kill us across three states.

Oddly enough, the plan worked just as well in practice as it did in theory. For a big fat change. The only drawbacks were the other people. Amy couldn’t get comfortable in the narrow seats to sleep for any great length and add to that the aforementioned hell of the human race, the trip was a bit more trying than we’d anticipated. The first group of hellions were comprised of a small number of giggly high-schoolers on their way to Penn State for a campus visit and/or orientation. Very loud they were at six in the morning. They were replaced by a pair of what can only be described as “Mexican Yentas”. Two tias who spoke Spanish in an unmistakable Jewish whine—I swear it was like listening to a Telamundo coffee klatch.

The second thing we hadn’t anticipated—or, rather, under-anticipated—was the length of time we’d have to kill once we arrived. All About Evil was a midnight premiere. The Megabus dropped us off at Penn Station a little after 2:30 in the afternoon. Most of go-to New York friends were otherwise occupied so we had a good eight hours or so to travel approximately ten blocks. Even at the peak of rush hour, it doesn’t take eight hours to travel ten city blocks on foot.

After meeting Mr. Varrati and Ryan Neill for lunch in Brooklyn (in the much nicer coffee-house-and-deli section than our previous trip to the auto-parts district), we still faced a good stint of time before us. Oh, if only there was something to do in New York City! (Lament! Woe!)

No matter what part of that magnificent city of millions we happen to find ourselves in, invariably, miracles occur. Call it synchronicity, call it luck, call it fate, lucky shit happens to us in New York. After a lengthy side-trip to Kim’s Video—our first, despite many years of NY visits!—to giggle like nerds at the sight of A Feast of Flesh in the “Sexploitation” section (and to buy a used copy of Samurai Zombie), Amy and I made our way back towards Tribecca for the screening. Lugging around an overnight bag packed with Amy’s own stash of fab, we sought a place to chill and for her to change.

So, of course, we settled on a midtown McDonalds. Not wanting to Morgan Spurlock so late in the evening, we split a single Coke like the big spenders we are, and I chilled and watched Amy transform herself into a goth diva. Not ten minutes into our repose, we were startled by a loud knock on the “restaurant’s” window. There before us were two muscular, shaved-headed gentlemen gesturing at us in excitement. Seeing this, I steeled myself for a righteous mugging by a pair of goth-phobic skinheads right there beneath the Golden Arches.

But the forthcoming ass-kicking never arrived. Instead of vicious nogoodniks, we realized our non-hirsute suitors were none other but Bart Mastronardi and David Marancik (both of the exceptional Vindication—another title to add to your list). We had been set to meet the pair with Alan Rowe Kelly at the theater, but the gods were gracious that evening. Bart and David generously allowed us to invite ourselves to dinner with them. Dinner was held at the extremely posh and lovely Three of Cups, where the owner Santo Fazio, a friend to Bart and David and a co-star of The Sadist (aka Jeremiah Kipp’s Swine) (as well as Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral), treated us like stars. Once Alan arrived, I was briefly overwhelmed by a sense of… what’s the word? Opposite of depression and rage? Happiness! That’s it. And not chemically-induced for a change. Sitting at the table with people I consider not only friends but artists that I respect and admire and, at times, am in complete awe of, I felt like I was part of the independent film community for the first time in years. 

Over the years, the “indie film” world has changed drastically. Some of the filmmakers we started with are no longer working in film, for a variety of reasons. Others are no longer friends. Still others are out-and-out enemies of (who we consider) our people. The disease of ego infected a great deal of us in the mid-2000s. For the better part of five years, many of us teetered on the delusion that we were all on the cusp of breaking through, of leaving “indie” behind to be embraced by the mainstream for our magnificent and unique visions. Little did we know that we weren’t on Hollywood’s radar at all. And lacking this knowledge, we allowed the beast to devour us from inside out. For many, many of us, it wasn’t enough for one to win—the rest had to lose. And the “community” crumbled upon itself. That reality haunted me during my tenure at Sirens of Cinema, particularly during the final issues where fewer of the “staples” of indie cinema appeared. Moving on is fine; forced death march away from the core is devastating.

So toasting to All About Evil with some of the most talented men and women I’ve had the fortune to meet, in a city home to some extraordinary talents (Scooter McCrae, Jim Mickle, Justin Wingenfeld, Lloyd Kaufman), that unfamiliar happiness was nearly impossible to process.

Then came the show. “The Peaches Christ 4-D Experience” starts the minute you receive your tickets. A quartet of velvet-uniformed ushers (including a pair of androgynous twins) hand you Dixie cups emblazoned with the Peaches Christ logo and tell you to hold on to it for a “special toast” later. Mr. Varrati, also encased in the red crushed-velvet suit, manned the merchandise table. Peaches was near the back of the lobby, surrounded by real paparazzi, the camera flashes almost strobing. 

The excited and generously-numbered crowd filled the auditorium and electricity filled the air. Before long, out came Alan in his resplendence to introduce Peaches, referring to her as “The Queen of the Barbary Coast” and “The Most Important Person in the World”. If you think those are large shoes to fill, you should see Peaches’ actual shoes! Suddenly, the lights dimmed, music poured from the speakers and there was Peaches in all her glory. Accompanied by the usherette twins, an alien girl with a green Mohawk, a Yeti-esque werewolf and a bizarre little woman in a Troll mask, Peaches sang “I’m a Gore-Gore Girl” with her monsters mashing beside her in choreographed madness.

After introducing her back-up slashers, Peaches then intro’d the one and only Deborah Tennis (played in the film by Natasha Lyonne, but on stage before us by Trixxie Carr), who performed the film’s closing song, “Star Quality”, and invited us to join her in the toast. The usherette twins hauled out a Gatorade cooler, only to be interrupted by Peaches who felt the toast would be in “bad taste”. Deborah rushed behind stage as Peaches introduced Martiny, her Midnight Mass co-host, but Miss Teeny did not emerge. Suddenly the screen lit up with security footage: there was Miss Teeny, tied to a chair, about to be slaughtered by Deborah! Deb raised a butcher knife, Peaches screamed, the lights went out!

And that served as the transition into the third part of the show, wherein Peaches “brought things down” and did a Dick Cavettesque intro with special guest Natasha Lyonne (an interview complete with an edited highlight reel of the actress’ career). It’s as if each section of the show was merely a warm-up for what was to come and it built beautifully. Extravagant dance number leading to outrageous meta-fiction followed by a brief Q&A with a cult star familiar to even the most “out of it” attendee. The audience was so hyped that each and every title card (each a tribute to an infamous B (or Z) movie of the past) of All About Evil received applause.

The simplistically-brilliant structure of the “4-D” event struck me as the movie unfolded. All movies, of any budget, are hit or miss according to taste. You can’t say that an independent movie is more of a gamble than a blockbuster any more because crap is crap and gold is gold. You can’t cover one with the other and make it less than what it is. Transformers will always be empty spectacle. Night of the Living Dead will always be effective, low-key chiller. All you can do prior to any screening is hope and pray that the movie will be enjoyable.

What the “4-D Experience” does is amp up the audience. Like any warm-up gig, the songs and dances and clever video all worked to get the audience excited. And an excited audience is always more receptive to the main event. Even if the movie fails to live up to the amping, the amping itself staves off disappointment for that much longer. But Joshua Grannell loves the movies he’s celebrating in All About Evil and loves the spectacle that Peaches Christ brings to screenings of these movies. None of this showmanship is phony. There’s none of that disinterested attitude you receive at radio station press screenings. Peaches Christ opened with a pow and gave you zazz. All those nonsensical vaudeville words took on meaning again. There’s nothing insincere or misdirected about the 4-D experience or All About Evil itself. Josh and the theater already had our money. They could have simply shut off the lights, abused us with ads for Coca-Cola and previews for forthcoming dumb and then big farewell to us with a swift kick in the ass following the end credits. But that’s not what we got. We got a movie and we got a show.

We hung out for a bit afterwards, mercilessly annoying the theater employees who just wanted to go home. Both Peaches and Mike were gracious enough to introduce us to Lyonne, who was as gracious as possible while being extremely exhausted. Finally, it was time for everyone to go their separate ways. Alan intro’d us to a pair of documentarians—Paul and Julie Hunt—who allowed us to join them at a Greek Diner for… what’s the meal between “Midnight Snack” and “Breakfast”? “Mid-Snackfast”? Whatever. I got a milkshake, Amy got something entirely too healthy made predominantly of fruit. Anyway…

Eventually, we made our way back to Penn Station as the sun rose. I do not, under any circumstances, recommend this experience for anyone over the age of “going out into the world, searching for adventure”. Penn Station is a bit of a cesspool at the best of times, but at 4:30 in the morning, it’s a stew of bacteria and human refuse swarming over, around and from displaced travelers and those descended from The Crazies in Escape from New York (no, the appropriatety is not lost on me). Desperate for a slash, as they once said in New Zealand (according to old movies I’ve seen), I used my elbows to nudge open the inexplicably sticky men’s room door. Immediately inside, I was greeted with a sight I’ll never forget. Ever. It trumped even the sparkliest of drag showgirl showmanship.

In the stall immediately facing the door, with the stall door wide open, a man sat on the commode, pants around his ankles and belt around his bicep, shooting the contents of a milky syringe into his black-marked brown arm. In my nearly-forty years of life, this was the closest I’ve ever come to having a Herbert Selby, Jr., moment. The image was but a millisecond on my retinas (as I immediately one-eightied back into the waiting area), but it was a scene that will haunt me forever. This man, dear friends, by simultaneously ingesting and excreting, was the Ultimate Multitasker. And I bow to the wisdom behind his yellow-glazed eyes.

Getting back on the Megabus was less efficient than boarding from PA largely due to the fact that the NY side of Megabus seems to employ a higher degree of crackheads who simply shout: “Everyone to the left!” when what they mean is “Please form an orderly line for the bus to Pittsburgh.” All the “Everyone to the left!” succeeded in doing was encouraging synchronized shuffling, as eighty or so exhausted and miserable people bound for the Land of Sports and Zombies shifted their weight in a unified clump from one ten-foot of sidewalk space to the other.

With another seven-or-so hour trip ahead of us, we settled down in more-or-less comfort and willed ourselves to drift off to sleep. We’d survived our 24-hour military-grade entertainment excursion with Myrmidon proficiency. Take that, rapidly-aging body!

Next up: ALL ABOUT EVIL, PART II: SILVER SPRINGS, MD! (Or, “I love New York in June (July and August) Even Though I’m Not in New York and It’s Almost September… part III