And welcome to another edition of The Movie Crypt. I'm Adam Green. I'm Joe Lynch. We are recording this episode on Monday, May 19th, 2025, and it's going to release like... Pretty soon. Yeah. I'm liking this, that we're a little more current again with our recording and when we release. By now, hopefully you have heard that Yorkethon 9, our ninth annual benefit. for Savey Orky Rescue is coming up July 25th through 27th.
Really quick, if you're new to the podcast, this is our ninth year doing this. Now, it used to be a 48-hour live marathon until we got too old to do it. So now it's a... 24 hour marathon broken up, but it feels like 48 hours. It's quality over quantity. Exactly. Yes. That's the way we can say it. So it starts on Friday night, July 25th. And then we're going to do 10 hours on Saturday, the 26th and Sunday, the 27th. It's all live. Amazing guests, a live script reading.
that we're going to be announcing hopefully soon what the script is and in the past we've been so lucky like uh chris's first draft of uh the goonies and that original drafted back to the future uh the unproduced friday the 13th 3d that never got made the romero mummy yes the romero mummy and all kinds of great stuff
This year, we really have a banger for you and you're not going to want to miss it. But there's live comedy, live music, all kinds of things. And most importantly, it's all to raise money for Save Yorkie Rescue. Every single penny raised goes to saving dogs. At this point, we've raised just under $300,000 and saved countless dogs. So be sure and tune in. In terms of where to watch Yorkie-thon.
Usually the Arescope site last year was also simulcast onto YouTube. And we might even have more outlets this time. But it's the same show no matter where you watch it. But, oh, and don't forget Arwen's silent auction. Ever since Yorkie Thumbnail.
eight ended arwen has been roaming the hollywood hills collecting all kinds of great donations from her industry friends so you'll find all kinds of great signed stuff original movie memorabilia Record labels usually send us stuff and you can bid or buy stuff in our one silent auction again Every penny going to save your key rescue and that is all my housekeeping
Thank you very much. You're welcome. So we're very excited about this next guest to sit and talk with us in the studio since our good friend Phil Blankenship over at the New Beverly reached out to me and said, hey, do you want to do a Q&A? I'm like, well, hey, any chance that I get to do a Q&A at the New Beverly and maybe get some free tickets out of it? Yes, I will always say yes. But he was also like, but...
Have you seen the trailer and then sent this trailer over for a what I like to call a spaghetti core throwback shot on 16 millimeter projected in 35 millimeter and truth be told for the past. months now my wife and I have been watching a western every weekend and we've watched everything from John Ford to Corbucci and beyond and this film was the it felt like the encapsulation of what my
brain kind of processes every time I sit there and watch one of these Westerns because you got everything from Bud Bedeker to obviously John Ford and you have Sergio Corbucci. But with the same kind of... gumption and low-budget spirit, that micro-budget spirit that you saw in El Mariachi or The First Evil Dead. So we were thrilled. I was like, well, he's coming in to do the Q&A. We might as well have him on the Movie Crypt. Please welcome...
The director of also Exposure and Erasure, his new film, They Call Her Death. Goddamn, that's good. We have writer, director, cinematographer, editor, composer. Props. Props. Probably did catering. Filmmaker, Austin Snell. Yay! Hi, guys. Thank you. Did I miss anything? Oh, geez. No, that's very comprehensive. Well, in terms of how many hats...
not just 10-gallon hats that you have to wear. Sure. You were the almost one-man band. While I was watching it, I kept thinking of the times when El Mariachi first came out. And, you know, the... sales point to that when that came out was like this movie was made by one dude with a couple friends but like for seven thousand dollars on film back in the day and now what they didn't tell you at the time
when that movie played at Sundance was that, yes, he shot it for $7,000 and he donated blood and other body fluids to get that money. But when they showed it, they showed it on VHS. It wasn't a finished, like mixed. It wasn't the version that everyone. now sees when they go back to watching it on mariachi because that version that was acquired by sony was cleaned up new mix new you know new color and everything so no one really got to see the version that he presented for the first time at
Sundance. And, you know, watching what you were able to accomplish with a $40,000 budget shot on film, like... you can't not appreciate the amount of work and craft that goes into something like this. And having done two features before this, to dive into something that is so reliant on the audience's, I guess, awareness of the language. What was, just for me, just as a fan, what was it about...
making something like Spaghetti Western or Revenge-O-Matic that appealed to you after having made two other films and then say, and I'm going to shoot it on film. Well... First of all, just to address the fact that, you know, the whole one man show of the thing. I mean, I had a ton of help. I've been working with a core group of guys making films since high school. Like a lot of these people I work with are it's friends. It's just me and my friends.
So Adam Jeffers, the producer, also did a lot of the visual effects work. Jake Jackson did the practical effects stuff. So it is, you know, I'm doing a lot, but I have a big team behind me. And really when it comes to... making that type of a film, making like the revenge, you know, story type films. I just love the ride so much and particularly the communal experience of like getting a room to like hate a villain so much and then just seeing them.
get their comeuppance is gratifying. Yeah. And, and repeatedly. Um, but I think what really kind of, uh, inspired that was seeing, uh, the big gun down in a, in a very full theater. Yeah. And kind of feeling the room rise and fall with hatred towards, um, Thomas million. And I was just like, wow, that is just so much fun. And I was watching a lot of Westerns at the time. And I had already kind of made up in my mind that like the next film I do, I want to do on actual celluloid.
Which right there, though, that's a bold choice because it's like I definitely want to shoot on film. And you're going to kind of keep it in the family with your group and you're going to make something. And then you pick a period piece, which right there, I mean, the costumes, the sets, like that's not like shooting in.
your apartment somewhere or like in your friend's backyard necessarily like that right there is it's tough because you've now added scale to something but you already know you're going to keep this thing as manageable as possible I think that like Trying to go for scale when you don't really have necessarily the resources to go for scale, I think kind of adds a level of like, you don't know if this movie is going to kind of go off the rails at any point. And that chaos kind of translates.
to the movie itself, I think, and why movies like El Mariachi are so exciting because you can feel, you know, that kind of rickety slapdash nature to it and leaning into that. kind of seemed like an antidote to, you know, a lot of it. I love like Marvel stuff, you know, but there's a lack of this type of indie filmmaking happening now. Cause I think a lot of.
you know, with digital cinematography, you can make a movie that looks very expensive for not a lot of money. And I kind of wanted to go the other way, you know, and make something that like clearly... You can see the seams and how it was made, but that's the trauma. Part of it, yeah. But I've been shooting on film since I was in high school. I just hadn't done a feature. It was always kind of in the back of my mind that like, oh.
I someday I'm going to switch to film and never go back because that's been the dream for a long time. And this just felt like the right time kind of post pandemic. I got pretty sick with COVID and I was just. wanting to make another film, but I knew that if I'm going to make another one, I should really just kind of go all in, really go for it. What stock did you shoot on? All of them.
all of them and and you know that was is that budgetary were you shooting on uh short ends or i didn't go that far um i did buy some some uh at one point it was just hard to get a factory fresh film. Um, and I bought some, like some film that some DPs had had stored, you know, in their homes, but I didn't do short ends or recans. Um, as long as I was sinking this much money into it.
I was like, I don't know if I really want to risk recants, you know, something that could potentially look too rough even by the standards that I was going for. With a lot of the style of the film, because, you know... I love spaghetti Westerns. I love, you know, just Westerns in general. And, you know, to when you're working in the language of Westerns, especially in that Leone, Corbucci, the Italian. when they were essentially taking...
Everything that Hawks and Ford and Baedeker did and then made it their own. And then you have filmmakers who were kind of taking that version and bringing it back to America in a way. You know, it does far transcend. A lot of snap zooms and that very familiar sound effect. That used to be my text. That used to be my text in conference calls. You'd hear like...
people would be like, what the fuck was that? But it's those things that like immediately, like whenever I was in that conference call, I guarantee someone thought of like, Ooh, good, bad and the ugly. You know, when you would hear that sound effect. It kind of goes further than that, though. And when watching the movie...
I kept thinking, you know, it was a bold choice to take this and put it into a period Western because you could have taken that revenge-o-matic formula and done it modern, right? There was a version of that.
What were some of the films that you were specifically thinking about when you were... crafting this you know at from the script stage to the whether you were storyboarding or making animatics or even just kind of like coming up with stuff down to the costumes you know because um oh there was this one
Burt Lancaster Western that we watched a couple months ago that used day for night so perfectly, like, it really enhanced all the nighttime scenes. Well, nighttime scenes. But you use it in a way that is... It feels like a stylistic choice. But from a filmmaking standpoint, I'm going, now there's someone who knew that they couldn't set up lights anywhere.
And if you're going to have all these walk and talk night scenes, you can't be putting up 1Ks all over the place because A, that's expensive. B, it really cuts down on how much time that you can actually have at night. So like, what were some of the films that were directly influencing you? I'm thinking about this for later when we do our new Beverly screen.
Yeah, what were some of those movies? Well, real quick, I'm curious what that Burt Lancaster western was. I have to look it up on my letterbox now. Was it Lawman? No, no, no, no. I'm a big Lawman fan. I actually have a 16 millimeter print of that. I watch it all the time. Do you have a lot of 16 millimeter prints? Yeah, I collect 16 prints. I don't have a ton. I think I maybe just have about like 60 features, but that's one of them.
As far as what influenced this film, we all love Lucio Fulci, and I am a big fan of his westerns as well. Particularly four of the apocalypse was on my mind a lot when I was making this. Oh, wow. Okay. And you know that scene where the guy's tied to the tree and flayed? Yeah. That was the kind of initial inspiration for the interrogation scene. You mean the nutsack massacre? Yeah, yeah. We're just going to go there?
No spoilers. This is a Western with balls. Yeah, it's out there. How many people reached out from Kansas City, from the Screenland Armor? Did you play it there? That's where we had our local premiere.
And how many people, when it got announced that we were doing the new Beverly screening, were like, oh, don't forget that scene. And I'm like, what is that scene? Then you watch the movie, you go, oh, I know what scene that is. Times have definitely changed, but as somebody who has... shown balls in three films and paid the price for it and had to deal with so much bullshit over it have you had any problems so far no none
And there is a level of fun interjected into all the violence in this that I think kind of softens all the edges of it. Same. but yeah, it doesn't seem to, well, it didn't matter that now things have definitely changed. We're having a renaissance of like male nudity and stuff. I feel like it needs to be there. Like why was there always? Cause I know when Jack Valenti talked about it in an interview,
People were directly asking, like, what is it about male genitalia that has always been chafing the MPAA? And they said it was... Underwear that's too tight or if you're not wearing underwear at all, if you're sweating, if it's hot out, you can get shaved pretty quick. Carol Clover, who wrote Men, Women and Chainsaws, also talked about this. It is about the penetration and how the male genitalia, at least on cinema.
had been portrayed as a phallic weapon. Sure. That it's stabbing you. So that's what kind of threw them off a little bit. But I'm like... Flaccid penises are fine as well. They're not going to maybe slap you around a little bit. But that was always the rule. If it was flaccid, it wasn't considered pornographic. Right.
Right. You just can't have an erection. Yeah. That's no good. And my apologies, it wasn't Burt Lancaster. It was Charlton Heston, and it was The Big Country. Oh, The Big Country. Yeah, yeah. Because there's that fight scene that they have outside that is done day for night.
In most cases, I'm not a big fan of Day for Night, but that was one of the first times that I went like, fuck yeah, that made sense. Well, it's exactly like you said. Yeah, it's kind of a stylistic choice. When it's a stylistic choice. Sure, but it's also... born out of necessity because everything that was filmed in that uh western town was done in only two days holy shit um because that's all i could afford wait how many days did you have all together
Oh, I have no idea. There were days that were intensely fast like that, where it's like, you know, we have two days to film here. It's all we can afford. Let's pack, you know, 30 pages of script into two days. And then there are days that are like... Some of the sets were built in my one-car garage. And obviously then, like, we can take as long as we want, you know. The inside of Molly Prey's house is in my one-car garage. Oh, my God. So that was also, you know.
with practical blood in that scene, we could fuck the place up and it's fine. Whereas like that cow town or the mansion at the end of the film. Yeah. Those are. museum spaces. Like when we weren't filming in there, they're charging admission for people to take tours. No blood, no blood. Couldn't even have drinking water in some of those places. And this is in the middle of summer.
So, yeah, a lot of the choices, you know, yes, stylistic, but also kind of born out of what we had to do. I had that happen to me on Suitable Flesh where we got this old house for one of the main characters' houses. And they said, like, it's a historical monument and everything. And I had said to the location manager from the beginning, I'm like...
has everyone read the script? Because there is a pretty gnarly a sex scene and then be a beheading. They're like, Oh yeah, it's totally fine. You're talking about the father's house. Yes.
This is such a fun movie, by the way. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Well, like then you would appreciate the moment when we're like, all right, everybody, we're going to, you know, we're cutting off Bruce Davidson's head. And he was like, Ooh, he was so excited because he's like cradling his head and everything. And then. somebody swoops in and goes, you can't squirt blood in here. I'm like...
then why the fuck are we even here? That was the whole point. And this is just coming up now? It was coming up as the effects guy is rigging the head and the neck to be squirted. Oh my God, what a nightmare. And we're putting, and like everybody, all hands on deck.
putting tarps up everywhere. And I mean, ultimately we did it and we might've gotten a little bit of blood in places that hopefully they didn't find. It gets places, you know, it's still in the ceiling of my garage. What's funny though, is like you were saying before. about that necessity these are things that we never we always try to anticipate
When it comes to, all right, I feel like I've gotten all my ducks in the row. We've checked with the location manager. We've checked with the various departments. And then someone throws you for a loop and you go, well, that screws up all of my original intentions. how I was going to shoot something. And really the great litmus test on how you can be a good filmmaker on the spot is how do you pivot?
How do you go? Because the way that I was originally going to shoot that scene got completely changed when I was like, I can't. get any low angles because I know I'm going to have blood squirting all over the place. So I had to change my, my visual strategy. And, um, you know, I'm sure that's happened many times on this where it's like that mansion shoot out at the end is a,
Great example. Aside from the fact that we couldn't shoot blood, the layout, when I was standing there, all my storyboards, I'd kind of, I've been in the space before, I storyboarded it out. And then I was standing there, kind of looking at, there's this main hallway. that runs down the middle of the house and then two doors on either side that go to the other rooms. And I had just, frankly, my mistake misremembered like how far you could see.
through those doors. Basically all of my shots were not going to work just based on the geography of the house. We had four hours at that location to film a whole like shootout action scene. So then I just pivoted to, well, we're going to do this like I did in high school with my friends. Just one. one action move at a time. And we're just going to build a new fight. Sometimes you have to do that because otherwise, you know, especially when it goes like...
Oh, well, we're going to have other units or you can pick up that over there. We have two cameras. We can split one off. And then your brain splits off in a way where it's hard for you to be able to, especially when you're editing as well. that's one of the advantages that we've all had as editors too. It's like, you know exactly what you need. Yes. But the second that you step away from that main unit and know exactly what's going through the camera that, you know, the ins and outs, it can get.
incredibly frustrating, incredibly confusing. I had that happen once on a bigger film where we're like, oh yeah, we have an extra camera. You can just split off. And I knew exactly what shots that camera needed to go get. And then when it came back, none of it was what I needed. And how are you going to marry that now? Exactly. You know, so to be able to do it, if you have the gumption to be able to say like.
One step at a time. Let's just go from one camera. Did you have two cameras rolling? Only in Cowtown. I had my second unit. I only had in Cowtown, and that was my friend Allison Lloyd. And she is a very skilled 16 millimeter cinematographer as well. So we knew we only had those two days. So I didn't have so much of a plan for her so much as like, can you just shoot? kind of tone stuff for me, things to kind of just beef up the environment. I referenced, you know, just like...
you know, in Dawn of the Dead, there's just these shots of the outside of the mall of just like a fence. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, adds atmosphere. And I was like, I'm too busy to capture a lot of the character of this place. So like, I just need you to go out. and get that stuff. But that was the only time we had a second camera rolling aside from maybe a couple effects shots that we couldn't do a second time. I did love how for those day for night shots, just by adding the moon.
Yes. Like in the background, it went so far like because there are certain times that you see day for night. People just go like, oh, it's just like overly tinted, you know, like overcast day or something like that. Look at the opening of. Jaws. Like, people still today accept it as night. I mean, if you're a filmmaker, obviously, you're like, oh, this is done right. Yes. When there's already something inherently phony about it.
So we're like, well, let's just lean into that further. Let's make the moon a little bigger than it should be. Let's put some stars in the sky that weren't there and let's just make it look cool. Also, any nighttime scene. it wouldn't look like that in real life. You wouldn't see anything. Right. So you have to have lights. It's just.
how far do you go with it? But when you're talking about a Western and big wide shots, trying to light that effectively at night, I mean, that would be your whole budget right there. Sure. Yeah. And again, two days. So like... Am I going to spend like five hours of that, like setting up all this outdoor lighting or are we just going to do it? You know? Um, and I love the kind of surreal look of.
of those night scenes. Cause again, they look phony. We lean into it. It's, it's kind of, it's the era that, that this movie is clearly homaging too. So, and like, do you know the, the skies in the Japanese movie house? Yeah. Like there's a lot of like clearly like studio kind of fake sky work going on. And that's just kind of enchanting in a way that I think lends well to a kind of a more supernatural story like this too.
One of the things that I also appreciate, and I think this comes from my love for music videos in the 90s, was where filmmakers were using flare-outs. And other like like there's the moment when the sheriff is fighting and you can see the flicker in the frame. Yeah. Those are things that sometimes you don't necessarily count on until you see the dailies and go, oh, fuck, we flared out, you know. Right. Or there's.
a flicker but then the smart editors or at least if you have a story that allows for that kind of um Surrealism, if you will. But was that something that you found when you were starting to edit? Found in the edit, for sure. I love that stuff. Good, because I was really on the fence about it. I don't love... uh, the kind of, uh, affectation of like the film damage when it's overdone or used like kind of, uh, inappropriately. And when I decided to run with it was when we,
because she has these dream sequences of the Reaper character. And there were a couple that happened naturally that were just so cool that I was like, well, I think this should be a motif now, but really only when she's dreaming. And that shot you're talking about during the fight where there's a bit of jitter, that was really just like, ah.
I need this moment. I'm just going to let that little camera malfunction slide. But you earned it because you had that stuff in there before. If that was the first time that we had seen any of that, people would go like, that's a fuck up. The first few frames of the movie make... set it up where you could there's there's no rule against it i think even just like the opening logos and all that stuff like you get you get what it is so i i don't think
I can see where you would have been like, I don't know. Do we want to do this? Do we not? But it didn't. Not for a second was I like, oh, and there's the intentional film damage or skip or something like that. Like it was. part of it from the get-go that it's in the storytelling it reflects her state of mind uh more than just like an aesthetic like slapped in thing with molly your your lead
you know, the movie kind of lives or dies on her and her emotional journey. I'm glad that you brought up Fulci because the second that she took off the mask and had the white eyes, I'm like, yeah, there's the beyond. Yeah, absolutely. Where is that? Is that someone that you worked with? before sherry is a uh grade school teacher uh what yeah um and so most of the actors in this film are part of the topeka kansas civic theater community um and you know
I've been filming stuff with a lot of them for a long time. They know Austin's making another movie. A lot of them will come hang out and work for free and just have a good time. So I've built all my movies kind of on the backs of... the hard work and volunteered labor of this group of community theater actors. So when it came time to cast Molly, a couple of the actors who I already had cast, Devin, who plays the bounty hunter,
And Dana, who's like a lifelong friend who plays the deputy. He's great. He'll be there at the new movie. They presented Sherry to me as an option. kind of with the idea of we think Sherry could pull off the transformation of kind of Sarah plain and tall into a psychopath. Uh, and she was game and yeah, we,
We filmed over the course of two and a half years, by the way. Wow. Just on weekends and whenever we could. On top of just doing a great job in the film, I feel like the hardest part for all the actors was just... you know, every couple months or weeks, you have to get back into the mindset of this. And she was fantastic at that. And also, you know, kept her hair the same for two and a half years and all this stuff. And she was a game. She was awesome.
I love sharing. It's really important, though, what you're talking about, because we stress this all the time when we're talking about short films. If you're like, I just want to make something, I'm tired of waiting for somebody to give me permission. if especially if you're the one writing it
figure out what resources you have. Like, what locations could I get? Who's the ensemble that I can count on that's going to be there for me? As opposed to writing something that's so beyond your means where there is no way.
of trying to put it together yourself. You're going to, you're going to be reliant on a financier or somebody saying, yeah, we believe in this and we're going to green light it. But the fact that you already have this stable of actors and people that you knew of that you'd worked with before and you could write something knowing.
I know I can get this thing done on my terms and not have to wait for years for something that might never happen at all. Yeah. It's really smart. Yeah. I mean it on my terms is kind of the only way I know how to work. Cause like getting, you know, into the industry. I'm doing air quotes for the listeners right now with my fingers. Getting into the industry just was never on the radar. It was just, I want to make this film. How can I make this film? What happens after that is never really...
a thought that occurs to me all that much. And I think that also just comes from the fact that the real joy for me is in production and filming stuff. And honestly, I could have filmed this movie for the rest of my life. I had a great time. So, like, it's just the default for me. And the idea of anyone else kind of having their hand on the wheel is just so foreign because I'm a nobody from...
Lawrence, Kansas, you know, and it's a joy to work that way. I'm always fascinated with the art of the SnapZoom. And because you could, you could literally do any moment. It's like, Adam, just talking about like, you know, me eating prawns, you know, it can be like prawns, you know, like there's, you have to find the right beats.
to have that accentuation when you were making your your previous films did you have any need to employ that kind of language or was this because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but I think sometimes filmmakers and I've done this before myself where we grow up loving
Fulci and Sam Raimi or you know Spielberg or whatever and when you get to like secretly in your head go like oh here's my Spielberg shot you know that maybe you and your DP are the only ones sitting there behind the video you know village going to you like giggling and stuff, but sometimes it's not used in the proper way. So when you, cause the other thing too, that, and.
with the other films with Exposure and Erasure, you shot those digitally, correct? Yeah, and Erasure is really more just, it's not a student film because I wasn't a student, but that's kind of what I equate it to. It was really just me learning on the job. Exposure, I would consider my first real movie, just insofar as it sold. So They Call Her Death was, in my mind, the second.
And there was a lot of lessons from exposure applied to that. And exposure is also this kind of like throwback film. It's not a Western, but it's like an 80s Cabin in the Woods rubber suit monster film. So that has its own language.
You know, you shoot that a certain way. So, you know, when it comes to like snap zooms and the type of action shooting that's in They Call Her Death. Because there's, of course, there's the moments when she like finally has a six shooter and just, you know, pulls it towards the camera. Of course, you want to sit there and go. Yeah, sure. And you were upping as well, right? Yeah. Did you ever go...
No, I would do it in my head anytime that I was opting. I would just sit there and I've had to cut it out of the soundtrack because you would hear in the background. Oh, that's adorable. But it helps. It really does. A lot of those snap zooms would happen kind of as inspiration in the moment. Because like you said, I was operating the camera. And the camera was a 60s era.
rig too it's an eclair npr oh great camera with the stock 12 120 zoom on those are heavy though right about 30 pounds a lot of handheld in this not a ton really uh but some yeah and it's a little heavy um
I actually have an essential tremor. I shake a little bit all the time. So it's great to have a heavy camera for me because if I have like a lightweight digital camera, it's steady. But yeah, the weight helps. And a lot of those snap zooms I would do just kind of in the moment, you know, you're looking through the.
through the lens, and you're like, oh, no, it feels right in this moment. And, you know, that zoom lens was just our secret weapon in so many instances. It was also a bit of a cumbersome thing, too, because it's soft. So like if you get below like a F5, it's getting soft. And sometimes that's just all we could do. But, you know, when used effectively, that snap, you know, it's magic. And it's just immediately.
translates what type of film it is to the viewer. Even like in the trailer, you know, without giving too much away, there's the one like slower zoom when, you know, somebody is running out of the house and then it lands on her. And immediately, I think that's one of the first shots that I remember from the trailer, you immediately know, ah, okay, I know what kind of movie this is. Sure. Did you feel like with the discipline of film?
Considering, and we talk about this all the time, that magical yet stress-inducing sound of... Yeah, yeah. How did you adjust your directing style to that, knowing that you had... This wasn't a, let it roll, just keep rolling. You had to get the vital bits, I'm sure, or maybe that changed your take ratio. How did you adjust as much as you could to that different discipline?
Well, it didn't sting quite so much from, I mean, yeah, that sound running through the camera, it sounds like money on fire, you know? And because it was a two and a half year shoot. largely self-financed by me and my wife, who's sitting right here, and Adam Jeffers, the time kind of took the sting out of the cost. And I learned pretty quick that...
Even though we're trying to keep the budget low, I couldn't put that pressure on the actors. Because I remember on day one, we were filming a scene, and there was a bit of dialogue that had to happen. between an actor Sam Toddy and Patrick Poe, who plays Thomas Prey. And they came out, they started running the dialogue, and they were like speeding through it.
Like, they were going so fast. Because they were thinking out of... Well, because I had... It was my fault. I kind of put on them, like, this is expensive. We can't do, like... If we go beyond, like, take three, we're...
that's going to hurt. Um, so they came out ready to like, we're going to help Austin out and we're going to just, you know, we're going to plow through this dialogue like real fast. And I was like, okay, that's not the lesson to take away from this. Let's slow it down. It's not his girl Friday. Yeah. They space it out a bit. Exactly. So, um,
It was not super stressful. Because again, like I said, I would film this for the rest of my life. And I wanted to get what I wanted to get. And if that meant... eight takes and like, I'm paying for eight takes. And that also meant if we got it in one and it was maybe slightly imperfect, that lends to the type of movie we're making. So we'll just, we'll proceed. Yeah. I rolled the dice a lot on that.
I think it was the second short film I ever made or maybe it was like the third or at least the second like Halloween short. We shot on film and we had to shoot on short ends. along lines what you're saying about your actors like in the beginning coming out and like going as fast as like because the same thing i'm like guys we only have so much film but the way we did it was this is so stupid i had to um with the script I had to decide beforehand what
shot what line would be a close-up what would be a two-shot will be a wide shot and then that's how we shot it where we would just shoot the sentence like that line cut and then because there was no there just wasn't enough film and so imagine being an actor having to do that. You're just going to say the one thing and then, all right, stop, stop. But every time you heard that it was like, Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. It goes to stop. Um, somehow it's.
somewhat watchable but like you that's not how you do it and like how do you give a performance when you're just doing one sentence at a time and then just breaking it up like that just and you might be able to finish the movie that way but like Those are going to be some strange performances. There's an inauthenticity to it because, and it happens all the time. We watch movies and we go, that person's not in the moment.
They're thinking about lunch or they're thinking about making their day or or something else is going on when they're not like present. And especially with a movie like this, where. I think sometimes performances that are not in the moment in modern films or at least modern films in the moment can get away with that. Whereas. Period films are deliberately there to take a snapshot of our history. And if you have anyone who is inauthentic in that moment, it feels like community theater. Sure.
And I did have a bit of cushion in that regard in that this is not a historical document, you know, because it's kind of, as you had mentioned before, like... spaghetti westerns were taking American westerns and kind of like reworking them and turning them into something a little more like comic book-y and elemental. And if I'm going to then regurgitate that...
Like, we're pretty far from what history is now. This is a living comic book. It's a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. Right. So I was not necessarily concerned with, like, I wanted good performances. I wanted effective performances, and I wanted... fun performances but like in terms of some sort of historical snapshot like that was never much of a concern aside from that we mentioned one real civil war battle and that's really the only moment that like
grounds it in any sort of reality. Takes it into history. Yeah, yeah. I want to go all the way back to when you were a kid and you were, you know, maybe like... thinking about being in film or, or working in film, what were some of, cause I love how much your influences are on your sleeve in this film.
But sometimes when you talk to somebody and go like, oh, what were the movies that inspired you? And they're like, when Harry met Sally. And you're like, oh, that's an interesting choice. But not totally fair. What were some of the movies when you were a kid that... got your flame stoked when it came to filmmaking, not just film appreciation? I always mention the original Evil Dead.
We just watched that again. It's pretty apparent in particularly this film and also in exposure. And was that before you even knew what filmmaking was? No, this is more... That was the first movie that... turned me on to the idea that you and your friends could go to a cabin in the woods and make a movie and it could be enjoyable. Whereas before that, movie making was like, that's this kind of...
expensive thing that I'll never be able to touch. For years, there was the image of like the director on the boom. and they got the tipped hat and they have a megaphone megaphone and everything. And it felt so unattainable. Yeah. And it wasn't until. you know, Evil Dead or Richard Linklater with Slacker or El Mariachi where, or like Jim Jarmusch where you'd go, like, so really you just need to be clever enough to find where you can get that camera.
get a bunch of friends, be able to find something that you can shoot without blowing your bank, you know, and just do it. And that was so inspiring to so many people, us included. I can go even further back, though, because I can pinpoint the moment where I was like, oh, human hands make movies intentionally.
Well, no, human hands do this. They hold their viewfinder up, and they look cool in front of cameras and stuff like that. It was watching Temple of Doom as a real little kid, and it's the mine cart. When you can tell they're kind of miniatures. Even more simplified than that, just that like, oh, this didn't actually happen. Like, this is... Like Indiana Jones isn't real.
And that like someone, I'm talking, I'm like six years old. Pull the guy's heart out before that didn't tip you off. For whatever reason, no. I was just, you know, just in the adventure at that point. But I was like, that's what happens when you don't file your taxes. I was like, no one could have just stumbled upon this happening.
and filmed it like this you know uh and that was like a you know a light bulb moment for a very very very young version of me and then yeah evil dead was this like eye-opening thing of like oh you don't have to have studio money or all that to make something that's exciting and fun. When we make movies, I think one of the unfortunate repercussions and consequences of making movies is that Some of our favorite films that might have inspired us as kids, even as adults.
it's harder to appreciate them from an objective standpoint because all you're doing is you're going, well, look how many days they had or, oh, I can see the seams or the wires and stuff like that. Some movies I can still be able to step back and enjoy from an objective standpoint. Now that you're three films deep and obviously constantly working behind the camera.
What are some of those movies that still inspire you that haven't been tainted by the fact that you're going like 120 days to shoot one fucking scene, which happens. We all get kind of. jaded and cynical a little bit over like you know movie magic like the thing that we were watching um the quiet man last night
the John Ford Western. And there's a bunch of punches that John Wayne has. And I'm sitting there going, if this was a two take Jake kind of situation, I guarantee they would not have, that was probably 10 takes to finally get those moments. right you know um and that's time and time is money and it's like a miracle sometimes when you have like a gag go off we all hope for that moment we're like all right everybody we're getting it in one
And then it doesn't happen. And you're like, are we going to try to get it in two? And then by the fourth, when you're like, I just need something. I always, when I'm on set, I'm like this, no, we're going to do this as a one-er. I'll hear my first AD say, all right, so we're going to do a one-er with coverage. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, probably. Yeah. One-er with coverage. Let's do it.
But are there any movies that still make you feel not so picky about the filmmaking process? Boy, that's tricky. Because, you know... I like watching it from the perspective of how they do that. Really? It hasn't ruined it for you? No, because it's just a whole other way of appreciating it. When you kind of know how the sausage is made, you can...
I'm in awe of when things work. I get it, but there's times where I would give anything to go back to being eight years old. And just watching TV without thinking about things. And not worrying about anything else. And I think that's one of the... the things that the internet has ruined for a lot of people is that this just came up recently the um
The amount of people that are so obsessed with box office and opening weekend trying to declare something as a hit or a bomb. Did you like it? Did you even have any interest in seeing it? Did you actually go see it? I miss that. And I someday when I am retired from this, I. say this all the time i want to get men in black and not know anything about how movies were made or the industry or any of it so i could just
enjoy it again. That's such a fun movie. I have a weird memory associated with Men in Black. I found a $20 bill on the floor of the mall when I was real young when that came out and I immediately walked into FYE or Suncoast maybe and bought
men in black on VHS. Uh, and it does like this. It's exactly what this $20. When you saw that $20, did you look around? Oh, absolutely not. I just scooped it up and went and bought a movie. Um, As far as like movies, like, you know, kind of magical, like big movies that still work on me in that regard, I still...
love and rewatch Jurassic Park all the time. It's one of the greatest movies ever made. I watched it on the plane to Tokyo again and I was just like, this is just so perfect. Everything about it. Even though continuity in that movie is...
insanely off the wall. Like, cause when you start going frame by frame, you're like, Sam Jackson is looking in the opposite direction. His eye lines all over the place. And then they immediately cut his, it's over his shoulder and it doesn't matter. Cause the movie is so. fucking effective it's so good and the fact that he was making that basically with Schindler's List at the same time he had relinquished post on Jurassic
to be in Poland for Schindler's List. That's madness to have watching edits at night after coming home from shooting what he did in Schindler's List. Okay, all right. Jurassic Park nerds, I have to ask you this. So we were watching it on Friday night, and the movie is nearly perfect. No notes except for one.
And it's the moment in the beginning when the one guy gets sucked into the velociraptor trap. Yeah. And it cuts to his fingers. Right. And it's like, do you guys remember? And it's the only time in a Spielberg movie where they did a step. kind of process for the slow motion. It's the only moment in the movie and in any Spielberg movie where I went, hmm. I don't know what it is. It was like it didn't feel... Didn't bother me. Didn't care. Still don't care. But I attribute that to they didn't...
Like it was Lucas was in post And he's like yeah yeah just slow it down You know like do a post process There were dinosaurs and they hold up today Like the stuff that Stan Winston did fucking unbelievable and for years how everyone's like well yeah it's all computers now like seven shots were all computers the rest of it was practical and that's why the movie I mean even all the newer ones whenever they come out and someone's like oh
I don't know. It was so stupid. I'm like, the dinosaurs look fucking great. They still look good. It sounded awesome. I love the production design of it. Just like the concrete. buildings and how everything looks. The jeeps, like every, the thought that went into all of it's such, it's like, if anything is missing from the new ones, I'm like, give me some fucking concrete buildings that look like they belong in Jurassic Park. Yeah. If there was a real Jurassic Park.
What would you pay to get to go? To Jurassic Park? Yeah. If it was real, because it's probably going to happen in our lifetime. It's so funny that like, you know, the whole message of those movies is like, don't you will die. Don't do it. And everyone is still like, I would still go. Yeah, what did they just bring back? Direwolves or something like that? I think so, yeah. And now they're talking about woolly mammoths and all the other stuff. So it's a matter of time before...
Some super rich person out there is like, make me a T-Rex. And then the person will be like, sir, but the T-Rex, make me a T-Rex. And then, you know, Jurassic Park happens. I think it's what would I give? I would give a documentary a year and a half while other people get eaten and go, I'm good.
Like I'll let other people get fucked up. To see a real dinosaur. Like I think I would just like give up like everything I have. Like whatever I had to do to go see that. I can't even imagine. Thankfully we have those movies. But that's why. All of them that have come I've liked all of them and I don't care what's wrong with them or people that was stupid or why is
Chris Pratt training them. I don't care, man. Is that what you went for, really? Why are you even here? It's loud. It's fun. It's like, okay, I'll stop. I can't wait for the new one. I can't wait either. I'm most excited about that one since the original trilogy. I think Gareth Edwards is just a really good choice for that one. Oh, man. Remember back in the day?
Did you ever see monsters? Yeah. Yeah. Like considering that was another movie made in, you know, pretty much, you know, as skeleton crew as it gets and made it for nothing in his. Flat, and now he's making Jurassic Park movies. And Godzilla, too. They gave me Godzilla. I'm a Godzilla fanatic, so I was pretty thrilled with that one. What did you think of the last one of Zero?
Wait. Oh, minus one? Minus one. That's the best one ever made, I think. Loved it. Yeah, it's incredible. It's so wild. I mean, I've been a lifelong Godzilla obsessive. So, yeah, I see him over there. I never thought I would cry at a Godzilla movie the way I do with that. Yeah. Or that Godzilla fans would be rewarded with such a quality film that also is a Godzilla film. You're just like, holy shit, this is what I always wanted from this. It's so good.
And really, like, as far as CG Godzilla goes, because that's the one thing that I was kind of like, to me, Godzilla's... Part and parcel with rubber suits. But a lot of it was a puppet. Yeah, the close-ups of the mouth and stuff. But as far as CGI goes, I don't think you could do much better than that. No, it was great. It was great. And on the budget, they did, what was it, $16 million or something? $17 million? Wild.
really puts a lot of our huge budget American movies to shame. Thank you. And I'm like, this is going to bring it all back again. This is going to change the game because hopefully studios will recognize. every big summer movie doesn't have to be $300 million. There is that, what they used to call the...
the middle of the road movie that was like 20 to 25. And like, you'd get your like back to the futures and your, you know, your Goonies or whatever it was back in the day where you could do original movies and take that risk, but still make something quality. I'm like this. yes it's an ip it's godzilla it's known around the world it's been around for thousands of years at this point but still like this will show them there is a way to make huge fun
epic movies, and it doesn't always have to be a remake sequel based on an IP at $300 million. Sure. Sometimes you can do it for $16 million with all those things. And win an Oscar. And seeing them all up there and they were, oh man, that was so exciting. Like to see it actually recognized for the achievement that it was. And yeah, anyway. But considering that the director...
New special effects and new visual effects, I'm sure, you know, obviously help the cause. And, you know, to bring it all back around to you, you know, you are a man of many hats. You know, some directors only like to worry about the script or the directing itself. Maybe they'll dabble in the edit, but you've pretty much done, correct me if I'm wrong, almost every job on a set. that you could you know in this capacity what's your favorite oh
That's so hard. I love it all except sound capture. I hate sound capture. Not even the sound guys like sound capture. But when it came to each step in the making of this, I tried to throw myself into it more than I ever had before. And again, I think that's a...
post pandemic thing and like a, just really worried about like, man, we have no idea how much time any of us have left. So, um, I've always not liked writing. It's been a means to an end. You know, I want to make this story. I'm going to have to be the one to write it because no one's going to write it for me. Yeah. This time, instead of treating it like a chore, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna set aside a bit of time every night.
And I'm going to handwrite this script and really get like emotionally invested in what's happening. So I hand wrote the first draft. Then I used a typewriter for the second draft. I was like, I don't want a computer anywhere near me. Like I just, again, threw myself into every component of it so much. So obviously I love shooting it on film. I'm a film shooter. That's a given. So that was a pleasure. And then when it came time to edit, no one's going to.
edit my 16 millimeter footage i spent a lot of money on that i like these shots precious yeah like that's that's mine like and also i just you know i knew what it needed to do i knew how it was going to function um and it was also shot fairly lean so choices were somewhat limited choices were made when I shot it yeah you know
And then I wrote the score for it kind of out of necessity. God, I'm trying to remember which commentary it was. It might have been either Assault on Precinct 13 or the Criterion Halloween. But I remember Carpenter saying... That was his favorite part because it was just him in a room and he was able to steer the tone of the movie. All the hard work was done.
Now it was just him and his Moog and his equalizer, and he was able to really kind of tie it all together with the music. Whereas a lot of times any filmmaker who... Once you lock picture and then it goes to the composer. I mean, this is after, in most cases, like when you're editing, you're using temp score. So the hardest part of that whole thing is to sit there and go like, which Hans Zimmer cue should I use? When you find one that's working, it's...
So exciting because suddenly it feels like a movie. Yeah. But then doesn't it kill you that you can't use that? Of course. And you're trusting someone. so much with something that matters a lot in terms of the tone, you know, and it was just kind of freaky to me that like I could spend all this money and I know the movie so well. Well, I should preface this first with the music was originally going to be all library music.
Cause I was like, I want it to sound like it was recorded. Well, I saw like in the credits, I saw some of them were there's little slivers of like some Kevin McCloy music because I just needed some rising strings that sounded better than what I could pull off. Like something that.
You know, there's little bits. And then, of course, there's the theme song, which was written by a band called Night Powers. But when it came to the score... Wait, over the title sequence? Yeah, and it kind of replays throughout. It was fantastic. I was so thrilled when they let me have it. But...
I was going to use all this library music and I showed the assembly cut to some people and they were like, this music is pulling way in the wrong direction from the images I'm seeing. Like the movie, the music sounds way more expensive than the movie looks. I was like, okay, that's fair.
Now what? What was some of the other, like were you using temp scores from like Morricone and stuff? No, it was like APM library stuff. Oh, wow, okay. That was recorded in the 70s, but it was very Morricone-esque, you know.
And it just didn't have a consistency enough to feel like a movie that had been scored. It just felt like a bunch of needle drops that were all a little too different. So I just took, I think, two and a half weeks and wrote the score myself. Were you trained in music at all? I've been...
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was in like punk bands and stuff in high school and I can play drums and piano and a little bit of guitar and bass. So like enough to be able to craft something. Sure. What were you using software? Just garage band. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Garage band in two and a half weeks.
And now people are like, you should press that score to vinyl. And I'm like, are you serious? I just like, you know, I don't want to say that like I didn't try or like I say I shit it out like it's a bad thing, but like it. came so fast and just out of necessity and i was like oh great it functions that's all it has to do and then have people be like that's one of my favorite things about it i'm like oh really okay well
But again, look at Carpenter. Carpenter did that out of necessity. And then next thing you know, it's like, well, fuck, man. Sometimes those off-the-cuff moves, too, just like, we'll have a... a charm about it just adds to the authorship it you know like I mean ultimately you know yes films are not made in a vacuum and they're not made alone but a
visionary needs to be there you know in one form or another every step of the way even when it comes down to yes you you know did all these different departments but you had people helping you and that was being able to say like look i'm on an eclair and i know that my
f-stop can only go this way sometimes some directors just go why are we shooting you know and the dp hat or the camera operator has to be the one to go well we can't shoot it like this because this that and the other thing you are the dp so you can say to yourself like well what's the better way to problem solve this if I can't shoot it like this or I only have this amount of time or you know all having those limitations and knowing how to solve those problems is half the battle
I wanted to ask, especially on this film, what was, because now you are touring with the film in glorious 35 millimeter. Which is wild. That is crazy to me still. How many places have you shown the film so far on your print? Oh, just the print? Yeah. The print's fairly new, so not many. Denver, Tulsa, and now Los Angeles. And it's going to Seattle.
after that. And yeah, it's been a lot more places than that as a DCP, but The Prince fairly newly struck. And you've seen the movie with a crowd, obviously. What what is one without giving too much away? What is one scene that you feel is your happiest accident? Like where you went like, oh, that fucking worked out. And what's a moment that you sit there and cringe? I know that.
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