Q&A du C-U: Jason Butler
“Butler Did It … Again?”
An interview with Jason Butler of WEREWOLF CEMETERY
by Jason Pankoke
I’ve known Jason Butler for a damn long time, considering the turnover rate of young creative types in Champaign-Urbana as they regularly come and go to seek fame, fortune, or whatever fancy tugs them around this great wide world. For the past three-quarters of a decade, I’ve seen JB hold steady on C-U soil, ping-ponging between multiple jobs and a return to higher education, all the while acting on his heart’s desire to make movies.
Compared to where he’s come from since the 1997 Freaky Film Festival, at which his student-y shorts TACO HELL and PUSHER played, one wonders if the recent rash of successively ambitious long-form movies is a sign. After the night-in-the-college-life dark comedy THE TEETH OF THE BOTTLE (2002) and the sci-fi spoofery (with musical numbers!) of THORAXX II (2003), will he and BrainSmart Productions be ready and willing to take a giant step forward once he finishes WEREWOLF CEMETERY, his current dose of monsterific mayhem?
JB is certainly lower-profile than other area personalities into “the film thing,” and his efforts possibly less-viewed than other area projects, but in certain quarters everybody knows his name well enough that a simple “Hey, JB!” is as good a greeting as any. Maybe that’s indicative of the goofball BrainSmart charm – all the people up there on the screen, playing strange characters and doing even stranger things, you might actually pass by on the street or drink with at a bar. In fact, you probably do.
And now, with Episode 2 of WEREWOLF CEMETERY ready to premiere this weekend at Mike ‘n’ Molly’s in downtown Champaign, we finally kick off the “original feature content” quotient of C-U Blogfidential by accomplishing a feat that’s been in mind since before the dawn of MICRO-FILM:
I interview The Man.
Read on, MacDuff…
Jason Pankoke: Before we talk about WEREWOLF CEMETERY and the debut of Episode 2, I wanted to lay down one extremely burning question that I had, just to get it out of the way – how does it feel to be the first-ever interviewee for C-U Blogfidential?
Jason Butler: Well, from 9 to 1 today, I was editing a nursing seminar video at my job, then I spent about six hours on the opening credits and opening score for the Episode 1 DVD, then a few hours on the transformation scene for Episode 2, then a little while pacing and stressing out, which I came down from by cleaning up the sawdust from a prop-building session in my living room, then some more time on the score….
So, I guess it’s pretty relaxing to just be doing an interview, even if it is a monumental and record-setting one. Also, I just opened a beer, so I really can’t complain.
JP: Well, that makes one of us. I knew that I wasn’t going into this interview particularly prepared … that little red coaster next to me looks awfully forlorn without a bottle sitting on top of it. I’ll have to work on that.
You’ve mentioned the Episode 1 DVD to me before. Why did you decide to issue E1 on disc so soon, versus waiting until the saga was finished, and how much different is this edit of E1 compared to what you guys unleashed at Mike ‘n’ Molly’s back in the fall?
JB: Well, a lot of people have been asking me about DVDs. They either want to watch it again, or missed it the first time, or want to send it to somebody. If it’s something I can do to keep people happy, then I try to do it. Everybody in this movie has been working really hard for free, so the least I can do is provide them with the end result of all that effort. Of course, I said I’d have the discs months ago but you know how it goes, especially when we’ve been working on parts 2, 3, and 4 at the same time.
There’s also something to be said for just finalizing part 1 and deciding I’m not going to work on it any more, for the sake of my increasingly fragile psyche. You’ll notice some changes, mainly the addition of more music, which we didn’t have at the time to put in for the premiere [back in October]. Also, we went through and overdubbed every line of dialogue in the thing, and I put in actual credits and fixed up some of the visual effects. Plus, we recorded the DVD commentary the other night, in case you wanted to listen to us gossip and talk about food, or more or less ignore the fact that we were doing a commentary track.
JP: Wow, I didn’t realize that WEREWOLF CEMETERY graduated to “quadrilogy” status. Impressive!
JB: Yeah, I don’t talk about the four-part status all that much without being prompted … mostly, I just really don’t like the word “quadrilogy.”
JP: Do you have original music recorded for the series, or are you using previously recorded material by composers and bands?
JB: We have all original music recorded for this one. Steve Ucherek from The Living Blue, who also stars in the movies, has done a couple songs including a truly bad-ass closing number which I’m calling our “theme.” Hopefully, he’s okay with that. [I also picked up] some music creation software and bought the extension pack with all the instruments because I really wanted an orchestral score for this one, since we’re harkening back to the black-and-white serials and horror movies of yore (kind of). An all-rock soundtrack just seemed inappropriate.
Annie started screwing around with this software one night and churned out some great songs which you’ll hear, and I did a couple although mine are all off-rhythm and out of key. We also had contributions for part 1 from Jim Mefford and the Duke of Uke himself, Dave King, and I’m trying to get some other people to throw in songs for part 2.
JP: Sound always seems to be a big task for indie filmmakers, whether it’s the music score or sound effects or re-recording the dialogue. How tricky was it to match the new dialogue track to the footage? I’m guessing that you didn’t rent out a full-blown studio to help get the job done….
JB: The main complaints about our other movies were, “It moves too slow” and “The sound sucks.” I think WEREWOLF CEMETERY is cut a lot better and has a better flow to it, though I won’t really know until an audience sees it. Maybe I should pass out those cards.
Over the course of this epic, we’ve gradually slowed down and started paying more attention, working with lighting more and trying to give actors time to get things just right, so sound is next on the list. Our stop-gap measure until then is overdubbing whatever dialogue we can. Our studio consists of my computer, our camera, and a microphone duct-taped onto a tripod … I don’t have my house sound-proofed, though I’m looking into that. (Don’t tell Annie.)
JP: Who has been involved in the bells and whistles for the Episode 1 DVD?
JB: The commentary is by me, Mark Peaslee (camera), Annie Fitzgerald (“Nancy”), Steve Ucherek (“Ichabob”), Lacie Ucherek (“Chachi” in Episode 2), Thomas Schrepfer (assistant editor and general go-to guy), Bradley Ledbetter (our favorite werewolf – he tears my head off), Scott Crawford (“Agent Mantis” in E2), Barney Joyce (“Agent Sparrow” in E2), Erik Martin (“Dennis MacArthur”), Jim Mefford and Michelle Jones (our special effects geniuses), and two 30-packs. Seems like maybe a couple other people [were there] but I don’t remember. I got the dogs a sitter because the THORAXX II commentary was mostly them barking.
The cover for this one will be done by Peaslee. He showed me the latest version and it’s pretty freakin’ awesome. We’re also trying to get an interview with Charlie Rose to put on the disc, but it may have to wait until next time.
JP: Great. So now, since you’ve started introducing the gang, maybe it’s time to get everyone up to speed on what goes on in WEREWOLF CEMETERY.
JB: Episode 1 follows Ichabob of Ditchtown (Steve Ucherek), a young gravedigger’s apprentice (or grave nurse, in Ditchtown parlance) who is tired of his depressing life in the gravedigger village under the cruel tutelage of Master Retchford (Scott Kimble). When his chance arrives, he flees to the big city of Amnesia Falls, along the way meeting up with a sleazy Army recruiter (Erik Martin) and the mayor’s daughters (Ann Fitzgerald and Liz Biondi), all of whom have an unfortunate run-in with a werewolf in the titular cemetery.
In Episode 2, Ichabob tries to start a new life for himself by getting a real job. Being the naïve but idealistic young grave nurse that he is, he gets suckered into joining a scurvy crew of werewolf hunters in the employ of Extermocorp. They march off to the woods to do battle, not knowing that the wolves are a little more organized than usual. In other words, E2 is where the shit hits the proverbial fan.
JP: I’m always amazed at the sheer number of people that you have in your movies. I joked in the last issue of MICRO-FILM that you drew your talent from “Towniewood,” which was my oblique term for, simply, “people in the neighborhood.” Why do you think they are attracted to your projects, time and again?
JB: I try to make it as easy and attractive as possible to film with us. Everyone is really busy so I try to know everyone’s schedule and work around that. If there’s a brand of cheap beer they prefer, we try to get that. If someone has to be done by five, we do their lines first. Once you have those practicalities out of the way, it’s usually about the most fun you can have, in my opinion. Sitting in the woods with a case of beer and a video camera, it’s like the jokes are built right in. Or, if you have a big crowd scene, just set it at Mike ‘n’ Molly’s, since all of Champaign’s best actors will be there anyway.
Of course it gets stressful, too, but when that happens, people tend to quit joking around, buckle down, and get the scene done. Those times are actually nice to reflect on and realize that at the heart of all the hanging out and drinking, everyone just wants to make a movie.
JP: Who appears in WEREWOLF CEMETERY for the first time in Episode 2?
JB: Barney Joyce makes his first appearance as Agent Sparrow, as does Scott Crawford as Agent Mantis. Lacie Ucherek shows up as Chachi, as well as myself as Dixon and Luke Walker as Stiletto, all werewolf hunters you’ll grow to know and love. (Okay, we were all in part 1 as gravediggers, but these are our real characters.) Other new faces in the werewolf-hunting crew are Mark Schroder as Titus, Jairus MacLeary as Sarge, Noel McCullough as Snuff, Dave Domal as Datsun, my brother Jeff Butler as Tank, and dozens of other people. Some of them just came to the shoot at Mike ‘n’ Molly’s and I never got their names. Mike Clayton has a brilliant turn as Ted Blitzkrieg, the spokesman for Extermocorp, and by popular demand, Bill Turner makes an appearance as the old woodsman Skald Wolfcap. He only shows up for a minute, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if he came back for Episode 3. Just a hunch.
Man, there are a lot of people in this movie. That’s something else we might take care of in part 3.
JP: How so, like adding even more characters or dramatically reducing the roster, due to carnage and mayhem?
JB: Oh, carnage, mayhem, maybe a little betrayal … you know, the classics.
JP: Speaking of classics, why werewolves? You spoofed the Fifties sci-fi age with THORAXX II, and other local film groups have had their hands full lately with mummies – for whatever reasons – but you opted to side with lycanthropy this time. Dracula and zombies (and dead pets, per Stephen King) are associated way more often with cemeteries.
JB: Our original idea was zombie werewolves, thus, the WEREWOLF CEMETERY title. Actually, I think this whole mess started with a title. [In the original story] the townsfolk are used to zombies and werewolves individually, but when they start cross-breeding, there’s trouble. That got too complicated, so we [went with] werewolves that come back to life and go on the offensive after having been written off as dead. We leave the cemetery pretty quickly [in Episode 1], but it was such an audacious title we couldn’t get rid of it. Plus, it ties into the gravediggers, who play a very important role here.
Once we’d decided to go with werewolves, we started looking at the old movies. It’s almost a cliché that a gravedigger is the first person to get killed in those films. We decided it was time for the gravediggers to get their comeuppance and made the main character a gravedigger – or, gravesmith, shovel hustler, or coffin jockey, if you want to use the parlance of the films.
One thing that was appealing about the werewolf was this idea that they know what’s going to happen (or at least, the audience knows) and there’s nothing much they can do about it. Zombies don’t come back, vampires are generally into the whole thing, dead pets … well, that’s just silly. Mummies are usually just rich old assholes. But the werewolf is a pretty tragic figure which attracted me.
It kind of snuck up on me in the writing and hopefully it’ll sneak up on the audience, too. In my perfect world, people will show up to see some blood and base smart-assed humor, and walk off at the end of it kind of dwelling on the characters and how things might’ve turned out differently, or wondering what’s going to happen next.
Clearly, I need another beer, because I’m getting all serious on you. Let me make it clear that despite all my unwarranted lofty ideals of story, there will still be plenty of drunks with guns, just for insurance. Drunks with guns … now, that is some reliable, timeless humor.
JP: Unlike with prior films, you’ve actually created a “world” in which your characters exist, not just one-off scenarios strung together, unless you count the house party at the end of THE TEETH OF THE BOTTLE. The thing I keep drifting back to is the whole gravedigger culture. How long did it take you to develop all the elements that went into the WEREWOLF CEMETERY script?
You may crack open another beer before continuing.
JB: (Cracks open beer) Consider it done.
Peaslee and I spent many shifts at our old Sweet Betsy’s job throwing around ideas. Then, he would get busy or something and I would go slice meat. That’s where most of the ideas of the gravediggers gestated. (In my mind, not in the meat slicer.) There’s nothing like a repetitive task when you’re hung over and hopped on good coffee to really send you off into any escapist world possible. Lucky for me, I actually had a focus and got a script out of it.
It was pretty obvious once we decided to have a town of gravediggers that it would be a morbid and depressing place. I just ran with that and made it the whole heart and fiber of everything out of the gravediggers’ mouths. The split between the miserable, death-obsessed gravediggers and the wannabe upper-crust townsfolk was pretty obvious, and makes Ichabob’s plight a little more touching – Dickensian, I’ve been told. And with part 2, we add our shady government agents and the ubiquitous well-armed alcoholics, who pretty much define themselves. The tension between all these factions makes the story pretty easy to write in many ways, and then you put a certain conflict like a war with an army of monsters in there. Well, suddenly, your little movie is a four-hour miniseries.
JP: With the length of WEREWOLF CEMETERY creeping up as it obviously did, are there any characters or storylines that will be cut out, or did you decide “screw it” and throw everything into the brew?
JB: There are bits and pieces that got left behind, just because they didn’t fit in so well after looking at a finished scene. There is a whole subplot where Sarge and Agent Sparrow were college roommates, but Sarge doesn’t remember because Extermocorp has wiped his memory clean – stuff like that. It’s kind of entertaining, but not so useful and appropriate in the end. Part of the reason for making it a serial was to keep some of the important scenes that would have gotten cut. The scene with Ichabob and the expatriate gravediggers at the end of part 1 doesn’t add so much to the plot, but it helps establish Ichabob as someone who doesn’t give up easily, someone with principles despite his nightmarish upbringing, and gives him a kind of character arc for part 1.
JP: I meant to ask you specifically about casting Steve Ucherek as your lead. I thought he did a pretty decent job in Episode 1 as the “country boy” innocent. Um, what’s it like to direct a local rock star?
JB: Working with Steve has been a blast from the first day of THORAXX II. He’s always up for whatever bullshit I make him do over and over again, whether it’s some gravedigger nonsense I give him to recite, or spewing up a mixture of fake blood, chocolate milk, Alka Seltzer, and Busch Light. It was after his performance in T-II, where he was just hilarious and dead-on, that we cast him as the lead in this one. We’re pretty much a performance-based meritocracy [and] in some cases, like with Erik Martin as the Army recruiter or Luke Walker as Stiletto, they did such a winning job that we wrote them into a lot more scenes.
Above all else, Steve’s just fucking adorable on screen. That’s one of the most common raves I’ve gotten about Episode 1. Steve as Ichabob just has a ton of heart and he’s totally consistent in all of his scenes; when we get the whole thing done, take a look at the Ditchtown scenes in part 1 and his scenes in part 4 and he’s virtually the same character despite everything he’s been through.
It’s always been understood that the band comes first, but he’s worked with us patiently through reshoots and late nights; plus, he’s recorded songs for us and let us work on their videos. So, I guess directing him is like working with a hard-working motherfucker who sometimes I remember is in a nationally-recognized band [and] there’s no other person who could play Ichabob right. Even you, Malkovich! You listening?!
JP: (A beat, then) I’m not sure Malkovich heard you. Maybe he’ll have time to negotiate a cameo after RIPLEY’S GAME lets out at Ebertfest. If Nicholson and Christina Ricci can be in werewolf movies, why not Malkovich?
JB: I was joking with someone about that the other night. He asked me if I would be able to look Malkovich in the eyes and say, “John, you’re fucking this whole thing up. Get focused. Now.” I think I’d have to say that even if he was doing a great job.
One of my great regrets in life is from Ebertfest last year. I saw Jason Patric (AFTER DARK, MY SWEET) eating risotto out at a restaurant and only later that night did I realize I had missed my chance to say, “Michael … you’re eating maggots.” I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive myself for that.
JP: Even in a more amiable fan setting like the Fangoria show we were at last month … I didn’t come close to George A. Romero (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), but Tom Savini (DAWN OF THE DEAD ’79) was running all over the place, Lloyd Kaufman (THE TOXIC AVENGER) held court just down the aisle from our table, and I was mere paces away from Stuart Gordon (THE RE-ANIMATOR) and Mick Garris (THE STAND) at points, and I never got the nerve to actually go up to them and say, “Hey,” if nothing more cheesy. At least I talked Mark Borchardt and his entourage into visiting our table, but that was easy since he remembers me from the AMERICAN MOVIE screenings at Ebertfest and the Art Theatre.
So, even though you’re still a ways away from wrapping up WEREWOLF CEMETERY, have you and Peaslee had any thoughts on what comes next?
JB: It’s pretty up in the air and we’ve thrown ideas around, but haven’t really talked seriously about any one project. We’ve done a couple of videos now for The Living Blue and we’re pretty excited about them, and we’d like to do some more for other local bands … the scope is small enough that if we can’t get a shoot together for [something big like] WEREWOLF CEMETERY, we can fit in a video shoot and it’s a relatively quick edit. Plus, as Peaslee likes to point out, they already know their lines.
We’re still learning a lot and the next step, I think, is to do something smaller where we can actually focus on training ourselves with location sound, lighting, and other things that apparently are important. Also, it would be nice to do a project we can wrap up in months rather than years, and something where we can really give actors time on the set to work on different ideas, rather than have to hurry because everyone’s cold and the sun is coming up.
I have a pet project that’s a BrainSmart take on a political thriller; the original idea started small-scale but already in my mind I’m adding locations and make-up effects, things like that. Monsters are fun and I certainly feel no shame in running with that for a while, but people have told me they’d like to see something more based in reality, something more along the lines of THE TEETH OF THE BOTTLE.
So, that’s a thought. We talk sometimes about knocking off a documentary which could be interesting, and of course I have plenty of ideas for a robot from space or a Godzilla kind of thing. But first, I have to sit here for a while and Photoshop all these fucking fishing lines out of this effects shot.
JP: At least you now have the desktop technology with which to do so. Just imagine how much better the hopping fast-food bag in TACO HELL could have been had the strings not been so obviously attached.
Speaking of the old school, circa 1997 B.B.S. (Before BrainSmart), you apparently discovered a strange little celluloid mix-up….
JB: I had my very first film in a film festival around here, a Super-8 thing I did when I was about 17. This festival was years ago and I didn’t have any money to make a copy of the film, but I was going to be there anyway so I gave them the original. I shouldn’t have been too surprised recently when I went to take a look at the film after [all these] years and discovered they’d given me someone else’s original film. It was on my reel with my name written on it, it was just the wrong film. [The filmmaker had] never gotten a hold of me, so I guess it’s up to me to track him down and try to swap our films. Hopefully, he’s still around.
[ELECTRIC FLESH] was claymation, too. He must have put an awful lot of time into it.
JP: I think that Eric Brummer went into porn not long after Freaky Films ’97. Good luck locating him via whatever “porn name” he goes by in that business.
JB: From claymation to porn. There’s gotta be a joke there someplace.
JP: So, we’re on the topic of local film shows, which brings us right back to WEREWOLF CEMETERY and the premiere of Episode 2. Want to tell us where and when this goes down, and also what all you’ll be showing?
JB: Okay, April 23 and 24 at Mike ‘n’ Molly’s, 105 N. Market Street in Champaign – that’s our premiere. If the weather’s nice, it’ll be in the beer garden which is the best place I can imagine for showing local stuff.
At 10 p.m., we’ll show WEREWOLF CEMETERY part 1. This will be the “remastered” version as we discussed earlier.
At 11:30 p.m. will be THE ADVENTURES OF THE SCREAMING APE. I wanted to hearken back a little to THORAXX II or something looser and faster, just for kicks and maybe also for a little ego boost, to remind myself that it doesn’t always take us years to finish something. Also, I liked the idea of having two concurrent serials, WEREWOLF CEMETERY of course being the main one, but the SCREAMING APE thing as sort of an extra feature, the short film before the main feature.
Anyway, the thing’s about a guy who gets stung by a radioactive gypsy and is endowed with a magical ape suit that appears when he gets an erection, giving him the power to turn invisible as long as he’s screaming at the top of his lungs. So, yes, it addresses a lot of timely issues.
After that, we’ll show a video we just did for the song “Serrated Friend” by our buddies, The Living Blue. And I’ll tell you, for a four-minute thing, we put a fuckload of time and money and energy into it.
At midnight or so, we’ll show WEREWOLF CEMETERY part 2. If the weather holds up, it should be a pretty great night. We have a lot of stuff to show, obviously. And there will be beer there. And you’ll probably get to see me walking into walls and stuff like that since I probably will not have slept. After the THORAXX II premiere, Annie found me sleeping standing up in the corner of our bathroom, so hopefully nothing that scary will happen, but we’ll see.
Oh, yeah, and also, it’s only two bucks for, like, four hours of entertainment. Don’t say I never hooked you up.
F I V E & O U T
Tell us, JB:
• What you’ve made:
ADVENTURES OF THE SCREAMING APE 1 (serial)
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT PROJECT
DARTH VADOR IN STAR WARS
THE FUCKING TERRIFIC JOURNEY (incomplete)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAD MAN
NO TOMORROW (music video – The Living Blue)
ROCK PAPER VICTORY (incomplete)
SERRATED FRIEND (music video – The Living Blue)
THE TEETH OF THE BOTTLE (feature)
TEX-MEXED
THORAXX
THORAXX II: THE BREEDING (feature)
VIVA LA TERRA DEL GATO
WEREWOLF CEMETERY 1 (serial)
WEREWOLF CEMETERY 2 (serial)
THE WINKERPICKLE – THE DANCE
THE WINKERPICKLE – THE GIMP
THE WINKERPICKLE – THE GIFT
YOU’RE SPECIAL
• Which do you like best – film, video, or digital:
Uh, I’ve never used film, really, aside from Super-8 and that was a long time ago. I’ve been sort of thinking about trying to do a 16mm feature next, but we’ll just see where I’m at when that happens. We could certainly use a couple more “training pictures,” which is more or less how I look at everything.
I watch a lot of DVD commentary tracks – how can you not do that all the time if you’re making no-budget movies – and there are quite a few that are pretty instructive on shooting on film at this budget level. EL MARIACHI of course is the classic. PRIMER is a really good recent one. Any Peter Jackson commentary is pretty good, even if we can’t afford miniature cities at 18 different scales.
If they ever come out with a DVD special edition of DEAD ALIVE, I’ll be at the store that day to buy it. If a movie I idolize comes out with some good behind-the-scenes stuff, I’m all over it. The first two ALIEN movies, Carpenter’s THE THING, and the ‘70s DAWN OF THE DEAD are the ones I always go back to, to figure this stuff out … sometimes, you can parlay their expensive trickery into some cheap-ass trickery. Smoke and mirrors, baby.
Oh, yeah, your question. So, I guess, digital for now. It’s really cheap and the quality of course gets better all the time, though I sure do want to make a Film film while that’s still around.
• Where is your geographical preference – Champaign, Urbana, the UIUC campus, or beyond city limits:
If I’m going to take a relaxing walk I’ll go to Urbana. If I’m going out to hit the sauce I’ll go to Champaign. If I’m going to a library I’ll go to Urbana. If I’m going to a friend’s house it’ll probably be Champaign. I only go to campus to rent movies, or to go to the Y Eatery, though I do like some of the old campus buildings, generally the ones they’re knocking down. We filmed some stuff in a couple of basements on campus and they’re good for decrepit, industrial-looking stuff. Beyond city limits, sure, I like that sometimes. I love Portland and I freaking despise Phoenix. I’m really tired of driving cars so I’m not that into LA and I have never spent more than a couple of hours in New York.
• What is the one movie project that you would like to do someday that nobody will ever see coming:
My No. 1 dream project – and this is if and when I figure out how to make a big-budget, large-scale picture, and someone else pays for it and takes care of things like catering and scheduling and renting period tanks and aircraft – would be a three-hour-or-so version of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Seriously, the most exciting book I think I’ve read, and just powerful. I can see in my mind just how it would be, but I have no idea how to translate that to film. Also, I’d like it to be in Spanish, which I don’t speak, and [I can think of] all kinds of other problems. So, that’s what they call a dream project.
I’d also like to wrestle with the problem of making a live-action version of WATERSHIP DOWN. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible, but a fun sort of brain-teaser.
And, the project that I’m sure somebody will beat me to – a remake of Disney’s THE BLACK HOLE. It would be just like the original, except good. It’d be cool too if Robert Forster and Ernie Borgnine could be in the remake. I’d axe those fucking sappy-ass floating trash-can robots, though … Okay, I guess it was pretty nail-biting when Old Bob went up against Maximillian, but other than that, those robots sucked!
• Apart from your own movies, the one underappreciated gem that you think people should bend over backwards to check out is:
I don’t know, man, ask Ebert. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, I guess. Really, I don’t know that many obscure films. I’ll usually try to watch the classics or foreign stuff, you know, the quality material, the sure thing. Or, more likely, I’ll rent some total garbage which somehow I find instructional. Well, sometimes.
Okay, here’s a gem for you –
“From Full Moon Entertainment, who brought you the PUPPETMASTER films as well as DOLLMAN … comes a new experience in …” Well, I’m not sure. “Gary Busey … is … THE GINGERDEAD MAN.”
This movie was very inspiring in that:
A. There are many, many filmmakers who are far, far worse at it than we are, yet they appear to get paid for it. Or at least they got distribution.
B. If you send Gary Busey a stack of stained bar napkins with the word “script” on the top, he will sign up for your project.
C. Gary Busey is fucking crazy. Watch his behind-the-scenes interviews.
So, yeah. Underappreciated movies? Read MICRO-FILM. I have too much editing to do to watch movies these days, anyhow. I just leave it to the pros.
Interview conducted April 2006 via e-mail.
All WEREWOLF CEMETERY photos
courtesy of Jason Butler/BrainSmart Productions.
Web Source: Jason Butler [brainsmartproductions@yahoo.com]
CUBlog Interview No.1 © 2006 Jason Pankoke