So for people who aren't aware yet,
what are you all about?
On a quantum scale, I’m about 100 billion molecules. Metaphysically,
I’m occasionally vibrating in synch with the universe, enough so to
remain a solid form, if not a spiritual being. Philosophically, I’m
ethically flexible and a Coen Brothers fan. Artistically, I suppose,
ultimately, that I’m a to-the-bone horror fan that desperately wants
to see the genre elevated beyond it’s “just above porn” status that
it’s been mired in since the ‘70s. I’m a proponent of independent
filmmaking and have this credo to extend to the community: “As long
as you accept the fact that there is no money to be made with this
industry and that you’re going to die in poverty, you should feel
comfortable to make any damn film that you want.” Don’t worry about
what the big boys are doing. They figured out that they can make
money by shooting the same movie over and over again. Maybe the
money is appealing but artistically, you’d be committing painful
suicide. My partner, Amy Lynn Best, and I have been trying to live
up to this credo over the past ten years through our company, Happy
Cloud Pictures. Our movies probably don’t appeal to everyone but
we’re usually satisfied with the end product.
And are you a big fan of the grindhouse genre?
I am, actually. Because the grindhouse people were trying something
new with each movie, disguising a lot of meat under the trappings of
sex and violence. As long as they got in the requisite amounts of
nudity and blood, they could tell any story they wanted. Which is
how you wound up with such disturbing fare as The Candy Snatchers
and Last House on the Left and The Big Doll House playing right
alongside Jaws and All the President’s Men.
Have you been a
proponent of bringing grindhouse films into the
mainstream?
I am and I’m not. By their very nature, Grindhouse
movies aren’t for the mainstream audiences. They’ll
always be best-appreciated by niche groups and film
fans. The folks keeping the Disaster Movie people in
business aren’t going to dig the subtle joys of The
Losers or Switchblade Sisters. That’s why DVD seems to
be the great equalizer. If the movies are made
available, the fans will seek them out. But I don’t
think the majority of filmgoers are movie fans. They go
“to be entertained” and nothing else. And while
grindhouse movies were designed to be entertaining
period, the filmmakers creating them would inevitably
mix in their own politics, philosophy, etc., and subvert
the primary directive. Despite the visceral elements,
most grindhouse movies have something going on
intellectually under the surface, which makes them
unique. I don’t think modern mainstream audiences would
pick up on them. Which is why I think these off-beat
movies will always be on the fringe no matter how many
times you slap “Quentin Tarantino Presents” on the
covers. |
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Do you think the whole library of
cinema from the decade should be embraced or remain an underground
secret for movie lovers?
It’s the “you can lead a horse to water” thing. You can only expose
people to what they want to be exposed to. You can bring out the
entire ‘70s library and if it doesn’t sell in the first weekend,
Best Buy will yank it off the shelf. And the average consumer is
still going to choose the brand new special edition complete season
of Gossip Girl over a transfer of The Glory Stompers. Whether I
think it should be different or not, these movies will always be a
fringe secret. Which is what gives the rest of us our air of smug
superiority when we stand in line for tickets behind the grandmas
taking their charges to see the next Adam Sandler movie.
What are some of your favorite titles from the genre?
I like most of Jack Hill’s ouvre, The Big Doll House and The Big
Bird Cage standing out for me off the top of my head. I’ll sit down
and watch just about anything, though, and I don’t often rewatch
movies unless something special really clicks with me or if I feel
like I missed something the first time. I used to work two fantastic
video stores in Pittsburgh – Classic Video and Incredibly Strange
Video – and got the majority of my education from those two
establishments, so I burned through a lot of movie history from
silents up through whatever had just come out the previous Tuesday.
I have favorites from every era but I didn’t turn my nose up at a
lot.
Tell us about Happy
Cloud Pictures.
Happy Cloud Pictures was founded by myself, Amy Lynn
Best and Bill Homan back in 1997 for the express purpose
of producing a 16mm zombie movie called The Resurrection
Game. I had just graduated from Pittsburgh
Filmmakers/Point Park University, Bill was a make-up art
graduate of the Art Institute, we figured we should make
a movie. We’d never given it any more thought than that
(and in a lot of ways, that’s all the thought we give
any of our movies). Amy says that we operate under the
bumble-bee principal: it is aerodynamically impossible
for a bumblebee to fly; but since the bumblebee doesn’t
know this, it flies anyway. That’s how we make movies.
The odds are always stacked against us and yet we
somehow always manage to complete what we set out to do.
Since The Resurrection Game, we’ve gone completely
digital and shot our first feature on hi-def this past
summer. We tend to be one step behind technology and
industry standards but, again, we understand that we
can’t make money in this industry climate. So we make
the movies we want to make.
Have you distributed
horror films mainly, or more diverse titles?
To paraphrase former president Bill Clinton, it all
depends on your definition of “horror”. I’m not sure if
we’ve made a horror movie yet. We take horror trappings
and use them to make something else. The Resurrection
Game is more of a hard boiled mystery that happens to
have zombies. Severe Injuries, which was the first movie
we made for a distributor (in this case, Sub Rosa
Studios) was a comedy pretending to be a slasher; A
Feast of Flesh (aka Abattoir) was made for Bloody Earth
Films distribution and was supposed to be our sell-out
vampire movie and ended up being more of a
women-empowerment drama. Splatter Movie: The Director’s
Cut is an odd duck in and of itself. Again, it’s
ostensibly a slasher movie, but is also presented as a
mock documentary Spinal Tap meets REC sort of thing that
goes into David Lynch territory at the end. It’s
probably our strangest movie. |
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The new one, Coventry Lanes, is a
throwback to the ‘80s horror comedies like Sorority Babes in the
Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. So far, we haven’t managed to make a
straightforward horror movie. Maybe our shorts qualify, but even
those are something else at the same time. Again, the nice thing
about having no illusions of marketing, you don’t have to tailor you
movies to fit into someone else’s box. And if you stick around long
enough, you develop enough of a following that, eventually, you’ll
make your money back selling your movies yourself. The internet is a
wonderful thing.
Have you worked with Debbie Rochon before "Feast of Flesh"?
Virtually every movie we’ve ever made has featured Debbie in at
least a cameo. Debbie Rochon and stuntwoman Jasi Lanier were our
first industry friends and helped us immeasurably to get us to where
we are today. Debbie is a fantastic actress and one of our closest
friends, in and out of the industry. She’s always generous with her
time and we try to give her roles that she hasn’t played before, at
least not in the same way as we’re asking her to. She took time out
from co-hosting the first B-Movie Film Festival in Syracuse, NY to
shoot her cameo in The Resurrection Game. She’s come back for Were-Grrl,
Severe Injuries, A Feast of Flesh and has one of the most memorable
scenes in Splatter Movie: The Director’s Cut. We used to joke that,
sometime in the future, we’ll actually shoot with her for more than
a couple of hours. And on Coventry Lanes, we had her for three days.
When you work with someone on and off for ten years, they become
part of your family.
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There was
considerable controversy upon the press reviews for
"Feast of Flesh," would you be willing to talk about
that?
Another neat thing about longevity is that you attract
people who are, shall we say, on the obsessive side.
Again, ten years, you get notice, positive and negative.
We have our share of both fans and detractors, and the
latter love to see us fall on our face. If we don’t on
our own, they’re right there at our side to fling banana
peels in our path. Remember what I said about the
internet being a wonderful thing? It also seems to
manufacture these types of destructive, anti-social
creatures. Right around the time we were finishing A
Feast of Flesh, we started getting these bizarre,
confrontational emails from the same person pretending
to be multiple people (but making the same grammatical
and spelling errors—don’t try to bluff someone who’s
worked as an editor and proof reader for over a decade!)
slamming us, slamming our friends—not constructive
criticism, just being out-and-out nasty. One “review”
slammed us for being a bunch of “college kids pretending
to be vampire hunters”. What pissed him further off was
everyone in our cast, being over 30, took it as a
compliment and sent him thank-you comments on his
Myspace.One of my
Sirens of Cinema writers, William Wright, also writes
for Film Threat, a site I’ve contributed to for a good
number of years as well. |
He liked A Feast of Flesh and decided
to write a very nice review for a different publication, but it
wound up on FT. Our stalker jumped all over it, calling him a
“yellow journalist” (which is completely incorrect; if anything, he
should have accused William of being a sycophant), etc. and
proceeded to not only tear the review apart line by line, which had
to have taken a couple of hours, but also spent oodles of time
defaming William all over the net with inspired postings. One he did
was a lengthy poem, the first letters of each line spelling out
“WILLIAM WRIGHT LIES FOR A LIVING”. Which is not only untrue (no one
ever pays William to lie about how awesome I am; he does it for the
love of the lie) but an insane waste of time to compose, I’d think.
This same fellow then proceeded to destroy my and Amy’s Wikipedia
entries (which we didn’t create and weren’t aware of until after
he’d attacked them), then started calling my house at odd hours,
which prompted us to file criminal charges against him. Just as we
did, though, he vanished as quickly as he appeared. I’m hoping that
he found, if not peace, then good medication.
The moral of all of this, though: no matter what you do, not
everyone is going to like you. By the same token, this industry is
very, very small. Hollywood doesn’t know that any of us exist. With
that in mind, nothing anyone can do will ruin you. No one can ever
ensure that you’ll “never eat lunch in this town again” because,
quite frankly, you’re not all that important in the first place.
Make your movies and ignore all the nonsense, back-stabbing,
black-balling, etc. No one can make you quit but you.
How long have you been involved in filmmaking?
I’ve been attempting to make movies since around the 3rd grade.
“Professionally”, more or less, for about ten years. I sold my
senior thesis film to Salt City Video (aka Sub Rosa, aka SRS Cinema)
for an international anthology six months after I graduated, which
launched me into the world of indie horror. If you take that as the
starting point of my professional career, then we’ve just passed
eleven years. What anniversary is that? Lead?
Who are some of your cinematic influences?
Oddly enough, Amy and I and my usual DP, Jeff Waltrowski,
communicate in movie terms. I’ll tell Jeff I want an “Alien 3” and
he’ll give me the shot I want. As far as specific influences, it’s
hard to say. I love movies more than just about everything else and
I devour them. I very rarely can “watch” a movie. I’m always
dissecting them—story, character, acting, lighting, sound, etc., so
I steal shots that I like from movies I don’t. The one thing I try
to concentrate on, though, is the script. Since the script is done,
at first, with just me—Amy helps me hone each subsequent draft, but
the first is just me and the laptop—I try to take the time to craft
the story and character in a way that horror fans might not be used
to. That’s why I’ll graft a film noir story onto a zombie trope, or
spend a little more time figuring out who the characters are and
where they’re going and who they become. That’s also why our movies
tend to be a bit more on the bloodless side, because I cram the gore
in as an afterthought. Not always a good thing, I guess. So with
that in mind, I worship at the altars of William Goldman, The Coen
Brothers and John Sayles as screenwriters. The directors I love are
folks like John Huston, Howard Hawks and Stuart Gordon. My favorite
indies, though, are Scooter McCrae, Eric Thornett, Alan Rowe Kelly,
Eric Stanze and the Wicked Pixel clan, Thomas Seymour and the Hale
Manor Collective—I know I’m missing a ton, but these guys, off the
top of my head, are the ones whose movies I look forward to.
How and why did you originally start working for Subversive
Cinema?
Because I needed the money. That’s pretty much it. I knew Norm Hill
through Alex Afterman at Heretic Films, and I was already working
for Heretic as a publicist at the time. I liked Norm and his
partner, Herb Quick, I liked their movies, and I liked making money
as a publicist. I don’t know if I did either companies any good
during my tenure there, though. As I said, the market is very tough
right now. DVD companies are folding or scaling back left and right.
But I loved my time at both of those places, as well as my time with
Severin and Sub Rosa. Now I concentrate on promoting us (and even
then, I’ve been delegating those duties to William Wright).
Have any of your films been met with controversy?
I don’t think any of our films have been met with controversy,
really. If you look at our company in the great scheme of things,
we’re really not much a part of the great scheme of things. We have
wackos every now and then accusing us of being this or that. Our
movies get as much praise as they do condemnation. Everybody likes
different things. To some folks, A Feast of Flesh is refreshing and
a neat take on vampires. To others, it’s a hack job filled with
“college kids”. It’s all a matter of taste. Again, as far as making
an impact on the culture, we have our niche audience, but we’re
hardly household names even in our own households! What we do have
is a reputation for being honest, upstanding people who will back
our friends to the hilt and make our sets as accommodating as
possible for the people who work for and with us. We have a
reputation for finishing the movies we start and usually ending up
with a product that’s fun and a little different from other things.
The folks that hate us, however, generally speaking, hate me
personally, because I take great pride in being an asshole. I’m a
charming asshole, but an asshole nonetheless. Amy, on the other
hand, is universally beloved. That usually makes me look like more
of an asshole, because I can often be found just to her left.
Some people like us, some don’t. No one has picketed a showing of
one of our movies. Nobody has booed us or thrown things at us. I
wish if someone didn’t like something, though, they’d just tell me
to my face instead of hiding behind screen names. I send thank you
notes to as many reviewers as I can, good reviews or bad, just
because they took the time to watch one of our movies and write
about them. Even if the review consists of merely clever insults. I
never get a response back from the negative reviewers, though. And
I’m not attacking them—“thanks for checking out the movie. Sorry you
didn’t like it but I appreciate your time” is usually the gist of
it. Wouldn’t you answer something like that? I would. (Instead, they
hide behind their handles and churn out the “this person is fat,
this person is ugly, I want to call the producers and demand my
money and time back”. Well, chances are, you got the movie for free
as a screener and if you had the time back, what would you do with
it? Waste it on some other movie you wouldn’t like so you can write
a clever review. I will tell you what I told one guy at a convention
who said the same thing: “I want my 80 minutes back.” “No, they’re
mine now. I added them to the end of my life so I can dance on your
grave.”)
The grindhouse era originally began because of hard financial
times, with the ensuing economic problems, do you think theater
owners will reach a point where they'll begin to screen stag films
and anything else?
Sadly, I don’t think we’re going to have independent theater owners
for much longer. At the very least, they’re going to become even
more scarce than they already are. Grindhouse owners were competing
with television the onset of the new “blockbuster”, as well as the
encroachment of the googleplex theaters thanks to new loopholes in
the antitrust laws that allowed studios to buy theater chains. As a
result, the grindhouses had to find ways to get the patrons in and
stay open. Nowadays, they’re competing with big budget movies, the
googleplexes, Blue-Ray DVDs, the internet, On-Demand cable, video
games, portable electronic devices—there’s too much competition. If
people can watch Spider Man 3 on their iPhones while they sit in
traffic, how long before they stop going to the movies entirely? If
the studios are sucking up every nickel they can with their chain
theaters, how can the art houses even survive? I think we’re moving
into the realm of the virtual theater. Websites that offer movies
that are made exclusively for their downloading customers, or are
only available for a limited time through those sites. That’s where
the film fans are going to be going in the future. Hell, even our
movies are being pirated—including ones that we’ve only given to
cast and crew. Anything can be found if you look hard enough for it.
I don’t see much future in the little, grungy and hip houses
showing, in my hey-day, The Killer, Akira, Laputa, Hard Boiled, The
Beyond, etc.
What are your
thoughts on DIY filmmaking? Do you think it turns
filmmaking into a mundane act, or improves on films in
general?
Regardless of my thoughts, we won’t be stopping the
YouTubers any time soon. When you can use your cell
phone to record your good friend slipping on a
skateboard and make it available to millions of viewers
five minutes later, why should you bother with lighting,
sound, actors or script, right? The same goes for people
who buy an off-the-shelf camcorder (now available in
Hi-Def, for crying out loud!) and call themselves
filmmakers. This sort of thing will always be around.
And the genuine indies, who have studied filmmaking,
will have to compete for time and space and have to
justify themselves and prove that they’re not backyard
auteur with a million hits on their video of a drunken
cat. Real filmmakers had to compete with Super-8 dads,
once upon a time; then they had to compete with the VHS
and DV revolutions.
At the same time, it’s
pretty exciting. I taught a class at the Douglas School
of Education in Monessan (home of the Tom Savini School
of Make-Up and Special Effects) last spring and my
students were uploading movies to YouTube minutes after
they finished rendering. |
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They got instant feedback, positive
and negative (and the ever-popular “tht sux” which passes for
criticism these days). That’s something I never had as a student. I
could lace up a flatbed editor and show what I’d just finished
editing, but the days of digital editing were still years away.
That’s what I think is exciting about the DIY movement. I believe
that the talented will always stand above the kids fooling around,
but, then again, I have to believe that, don’t I?
What do you think of the current climate of indie filmmakers
striving to re-inventing the grindhouse genre?
Are they? I think every piece of popular culture will have its
worshippers and detractors. The indies who grew up loving the
grindhouse movies would naturally incorporate that into their
movies, the same way as the people in my age group who grew up on
‘80s gore like Re-Animator try to recapture that spirit, etc.
Grindhouse is fresh and new to people who’d never seen that stuff
before. Like telling an old joke to a grade schooler – you’ll always
get a laugh because to them, it’s new! If you’re making a movie that
you believe in and want to make and love making, you’ll end up with
something that, at least, you’ll be proud of. If you’re making
something because you think someone else will like it, you’re
missing the point of indie filmmaking. Particularly now, as I
mentioned, in the age of instant gratification. If you make
something to the best of your ability, you’ll find someone who will
want to buy a copy—to support you, out of curiosity, whatever. You
may never make your money back, but you’ll find a market. But you
have to be sincere about what you’re doing. While the insincere may
turn a profit, they might not be given a second or third chance. Who
can believe in the insincere? (Again, something else I have to
believe is true. I can’t be cynical all the time.)
Do you have any names you think properly pay respect to the
genre?
As obnoxious as he seems, Quentin Tarantino is probably the best
example of the keeper of this culture. He genuinely,
unapologetically loves this stuff.And he gave a lot of other people
permission to love the stuff as well. He made it cool first, and
gave movie geeks a real voice. Robert Rodriguez, too, as obvious as
it seems, is the same way and is really the patron saint of the
indies because he creates everything on his own terms. Good or bad,
this is his movie and he made it with these friends. He opened the
door for a neat-looking indie project called Bitch Slap which comes
out next year. It’s not micro-budget by any means, but it isn’t
blockbuster budget either. I don’t think there’s a way to denigrate
the grindhouse “genre” because all of those movies were made to turn
a buck first. They’re entities unto themselves. But the people I
love and admire most are making their own things out of all of the
stuff they love. My best friend, Jeff Waltrowski, cast Amy and I in
an homage to ‘40s serials that we’ll be shooting at the end of the
year. Eric Thornett made a gothic horror period piece this year.
Thom Seymour made a trio of comedy-horror movies called “Bikini
Bloodbath” then turned around and made a wacked-out comedy called
“London Betty”. Two of the best low-budget movies I’ve seen in a
long time are an action movie called “The Prodigy” and another
comedy called “The Dueling Accountant”. None of these movies are
playing by any kind of rules and don’t necessarily fit in the boxes
the distributors would want to force them into. I think if there’s a
spirit of grindhouse, it was “do your own thing, but keep x, y, and
z there.” Now it’s just being elevated to “do your own thing and
create your audience”. Build it and they will come. That’s the indie
spirit, I think.
What would you say to people who insist the whole grindhouse
genre is trash?
You’re right. And you’re also wrong. Yeah, there are a lot of
terrible movies that have been made. Movies made for no other reason
than to turn a buck. But, on the other hand, there are some
wonderful things out there! And if you’re disregarding these movies
as being all the same, you’re not looking beneath the tits and the
blood. You’re not seeing the underlying themes of most of these
movies. Let me put it to you this way, in geek-speak: Did Indiana
Jones just walk into a drug store to find the Ark of the Covenant?
No. He had to dig for it. And he had to sift through a lot of
garbage to find something worth his while. You have to do the same
thing with movies and if you’re dismissing an entire subgenre of
movies as worthless, you’re going to miss a lot of treasure.
So, where can readers look for you? I know you have a lot of
links to share!
Cripes… www. happycloudpictures. net, www. mike-watt. net, mikewatt.
blogspot. com, myspace. com/randommikewatt, myspace. com/happycloudpictures,
myspace. com/amylynnbest, www. sirensofcinema. com (the best print
magazine you’re currently not reading),www. filmthreat. com,
myspace.com/coventrylanes
And where can readers look for your films? –
Most of the above but primarily www. happycloudpictures. net;
"Severe Injuries" and "A Feast of Flesh" are both available through
Netflix. com. A Feast of Flesh can be ordered through Alternative
Cinema, Amazon, Deep Discount DVD. com, DVDEmpire. com and so many
others. You have no excuse for not owning it.
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