Oh g is, folks, it's showtime.
People pay good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater.
They want cold.
Sodas from a pop popcorn, and no monsters in the Protection Booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring, got it off?
Mm hm, you're a man homed bias semens and you need to understand. Hey, you will tell you're capable of or you're gonna end up right back here or worse dead.
He's dead.
I'm scared.
I what is that I don't want?
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with Jeff Daniel Phillips. He is mostly known as being an actor, but he's also a writer and director as well, talking about his second feature film, Kursed and Baja, which came out this year. It is currently touring around and will be appearing on DVD and Blu Ray from Anchor Bay later this month. Thank you so much for listening,
and I hope you enjoyed the interview. Thanks so much for coming on to the show. I really appreciate it.
And yeah, I want to know a little bit more about you. From what I understand, you grew up in Chicago. Is that where you got your love up performing? It's funny you say that. So I am in Chicago.
We're promoting this live screening we're doing tonight at the Datas Theater. It's an old vaudeville theater. It's built in nineteen eighteen. Anyway, we're here and I got to go on WGN in Chicago in the studio for it was a morning show. It was a place that Boso Circus was done, and I win as a kid. So it was such a surreal thing to be on the same stage that they shot Boso. You could see the backgrounds in some of the areas and here I am as
like a seven year old. That antidote where you show me the kid at seven, and I'll show you the adult. Here I am going to see a clown on camera, and now I am the clown on camera. So there you go.
It was fun.
So that was my first experience in being on a set, my first experience in seeing cameras and how it worked, and I know it planted a seed in my head. As far as theater goes, I didn't do a lot. I was more of an athlete. So I was a goalie basketball player. So I guess that's where my stage experience was in the beginning. It didn't start intill college.
Actually, did I read right that you studied an.
I did study in Italy. It was in an art school for a year, and then I went back for another half of the year.
Yeah.
And then actually I had a partial art scholarship at USC which I went I finished to have an art degree and a film degree.
There were you learning more behind the camera stuff rather than in front of the camera stuff.
Yeah, so interesting enough. When you went to film school back then, you didn't have to have acting experience and you're trying to learn how to be a director, which I thought was very strange, Like, how am I going to direct an actor if I don't have any experience or don't understand what they're going through. So I went to Hollywood and there was a studio called the Loft Studio. Peggy Fury and Bill Traylor and all these alumni came out of there, and I studied there, and that's where
it started. I became part of the theater group and I did that for the next decade. Then La Underground Theater scenes.
So when did you move into like movies, TV commercials.
I woul audition while I was studying, and I guess I got my sag card on a horror film. It was called to Die for two, so they had one line. But then immediately after I was up for this movie Sneakers, and I had this small bit. But I went into the audition and here I am in this audition room and I look across from me, and here i am a real film school mirror and I'm sitting across from m m At Wallash and I'm like, oh my god.
It was just dumbfounded. And this guy's just trying to look at his lines going in and he could care less. And I just got to tell you, I'm a big fan of you, mister Wallace. It so that's how it started. And then when I got the gig, they brought me to the makeup trailer and I'm sitting in the chair and they go, we want to introduce you to one of the other actors. I'm sitting next to Ben Kingsley. They're putting on a ponytop. Then they brought me a set and I got to see Robert Redford shooting in
one set. It brought me to mindset. I'm working with Sydney pot, Dan Ackroyd, and David Stratzer. It just it was mind blowing. This was one of my first gigs and I spent three nights with these guys doing these night shoots and they couldn't have been nicer. And yeah, it was a great way to introduce me to the whole scene. And yeah, of course I've never had that big of a star line up since, but it was great.
They were very supportive. Was Convict? Was that your first feature that you directed?
Yes, I did this movie Convict. It was called Odisse. It was based on the Odyssey. But I didn't have the most supportive producers in that situation. I had a great cast, I pulled in a lot of favors, but they didn't quite understand the film that they signed on too, so it ended up not being a very great situation. And so after that, I took a break for a while, almost like a decade of doing anything like this again.
Now it's time. I just have to ask who's taller, you or Kevin Durant.
I'd say Kevin Durant's about an inch taller, about thirty pounds more muscle and better looking too, I'm sure, but hopefully trying to bring me down in this interview.
Just I have to say, I am admiring your hat so much. I love spend Gooli.
Yeah, so I grew up. Spent Gooli was my horror show host and now I'm friends with him, and I was just he just had an encore performance of him. I was on the show driving a hearse with him in it, and yeah, he's such a great guy and he's a Chicago icon. And that's what I grew up watching those spent Gooolie and creature features and that's where my love for the B movie came from, watching those as kids and the creatures and all that kind of
practical sex and whatnot. So yes, s BEng Gooli is a big hero mine and a great.
Guying a practical effects. I'm so curious. How long does it take you to get into the Herman Monster makeup or the Goico Caveman makeup? Mostly I'm familiar with seeing you behind a layers of other stuff.
Yeah, the Herman Monster, I think it was about three hours they got it down to and then an hour to get out, So that was four hours on a makeup chair in and out, and then you'd have to balance on the shoes and then you had this muscle suit that was it was like wearing a wet suit. We'd switch it out half the day because I was just dripping. Why it was very hot. But yeah, so I did that and then the Geico came in probably about two and a half hours. But they've gotten that down.
It depends how much hair they have to be put on my arms and legs or whatnot. But yeah, I think I have a high talentance for being uncomfortable, I'm told.
So, yeah, how did Chris de Baja come about? It's interesting.
So I go to a lot of these horror cons and I was promoting the Monsters. Rob Zombie's The Monsters, and I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and they had
me talk to these young filmmakers. I came in there and I was trying to help them, giving them advice on how to make low budget fil homes, and in doing so, I was just rattling off how you pull it off, make your list of location then and things you have access to, and talking about digital technology and how it's affordable, and doing table reads for my theater days and just giving them all this advice. Anyway, their
enthusiasm was great. It was just contagious. And so I came back to Los Angeles and I spoke to my friend Kent Isaacs, who's a producer, and as I was describing, he goes, why don't we just do it ourselves? And so the two of us sat down and we wrote down a list of locations and things we could pull off. I have a lot of actors from the theater days, also just working for the last three decades, and so we made a list and I crafted the piece or
the film around what we had. And the one place we had was a farm in Mexico and Baja, and I knew I could double that in Los Angeles where I could use a lot of the La actors there so I wouldn't have to travel them down to Mexico. So we went down to Mexico a few of us, and we shot a bunch of stuff exteriors, my character, Kent's character, who was also acting in it, and also doing this sound and doing everything else. So yeah, it
was great. It was a fast and furious thing. And we also had the strike coming up at the end of the summer that we're predicting, so we had five months that we were going to try to make it happen.
How is it directing yourself.
I've been doing this for a while and I do shorts, some music videos. In this situation, it's very doable because our cinematographer, Keith Coleman, he's a busy guy, and in doing so, he would say, hey, I have this weekend available. All right, I have this time available. So we shot at chunks, So we shot a day, we shot a few days. This stamina to try to keep up to do that for three weeks doing all those things, wearing
all those hats and acting is a little overwhelming. But in this situation, as long as you're organized and you're efficient, and you're respectable of people's availability, you could pull it up. And again this comes from that La underground theater. We
would just make it work. We didn't worry about renting theaters or filling the house or having the right pr We would just do site specific pieces and this kind of had that same feel, and that's one of the reasons I brought a lot of the actors involved, like this guy Mark Fight, who have done stuff with for years and it was great. He's here in Chicago, he's going to be speaking tonight, and those are people you want. They're ready to throw down and they're part of your tribe.
How do you even keep track of everything that you've shot and then what you need to shoot?
Still, I usually my head's Smoke's coming out of my head by the end of the day. And you know, there's a couple of situations like you could I shut my lines underneath me as I'm talking, and then I'm looking over here and it's crazy. Again, you just have to do a lot of prep work and you could pull it off.
It sounds like such a difficult situation. What was it like actually making this for you?
It was great, And like I said, there's certain risks you try to We were trying to create a world that was a lot bigger than the budget we had and make it believable. I dig nonlinear storytelling, and I knew I had these film loops from past productions that I knew I was going to use as the main characters,
thinking back and using things in his memory. And yet the biggest test, or the biggest challenge, is just to hold the audience's interest for hour and a half or our twenty minutes, and I think we did.
Who did you work with as a sugarmatographer?
So this guy, Keith Coleman, is used to shooting a lot of lives. He does off road things. He's a very physical guy. And I knew him almost twenty years ago and I would work on sets and behind the camera. So I ran into him in Los Angeles and yeah, I have all the equipment and it's gonna be a rough and ready shoot.
And he was all gained for it.
He owns everything. He has drones, so we went for that look and it's kind of looked that we can only afford. It's one of those things you create something that you're able to pull off. You have all these things access to and in his situation, he had all the cameras and the mounts for the cars and everything else. So he was the perfect guy. And a funny story with him when we were shooting in Mexico. We were doing a drone and this is the kind of guy
is the GPS that it works so great. Down in Mexico, we were in this canyon and his drone went down on the side of the mountain. Keith just jumped out and climbed the mountain to get his drone.
He could hear it beeping.
There gonna be rattlesnakes, whatever comes down. He ends up falling on this barbed wire. We take the barbed wire out of the back of his back and then he keeps shooting the rest of the day and then we sleep outside and some sleeping bags in thirty five degree. Like he's just amazing. So when you get someone like that. He took me out the death belly. He has a four wheel drive, which he has motorcycles.
It was great. He's the perfect guy to have. That sounds like you guys were like a little army going out there.
Yeah yeah, but in already have three or four people, so yes, yeah.
So you get it all done before the strike happens, and then how does the post process go.
Mark Fowen is my editor and I've worked with him now almost two decades and he's just a really creative guy, Emmy Award winning editor. We're in the same wave. We like the same type of movies. He knows the kind of influences that we wanted to do. Nicholas Rogue was a big one. I like how he has a nonlinear
feel and the way the bontage is visual landscape. The two of us would work on it and rework it and we were editing throughout to shoot, so I knew what I needed to get, what was missing, and we could sneak that shot in when we could when I had Keith back. So yeah, Mark Cohen amazing asset between Mark and Keith and Kent. And then my friend's like Mark fight they could.
Call it on and tell me about the music for the film. How did that come up with?
Yeah, this guy, so Kent knew this guy. His name is David, but he goes by vow beat a l. He's like a mad scientist with sound effects and sounds and creating the score that's reflective of what's happen happening out on screen and what's happening in the mind of the main character. And if you go to his Instagram, he's just so talented. And it looks like we're going to have the soundtrack on a vinyl and through Anchor Bay,
they're the ones that are distributing this. They're going to have a Blu ray and a DVD that comes out twelve fifteen.
I believe the movie's gonna.
Stream ten twenty nine, but they're already thinking of physical media because they know horror sciance like physical media. And the vinyl I can't talk about who is just possibly going to do it, but it'll be great to have something. I go to enough of these conventions and I know collectors like this stuff, and just in putting it together for the vinyl release, it was so exciting because we just were able to weave in all the dialogue in between and throughout. And I'm really proud Holds.
And what date When was the first time you saw this with an audience.
We saw it in London at fright Fest. We got to go out there in August, and then in just a few weeks ago we did that Los Angeles, and then we're doing it in Chicago, my home child. So we just hit those three places. Yeah, we just wanted to get it out there where Again, like I said, it's about doing it, making it and getting it seen the accolades. That's great, but we just want the audience that find in the middle of the night and wants to go on some weird chippy ride.
I hope those kids from Grand Rapids come down and check it out wait a little far.
But maybe we'll do Want to Detroit in the future, but they'll probably already be streaming it. Yeah, I owe those kids a lot. They really inspired me. So what's next for you all? Can thays I worked on this show and I'm still working at Dexter Original Sin it's the new prequel of the Dexter series. And then we had a couple of projects and Kent and I were talking about some things in the future, but we'll see
what happens. Anchor Bay has been very supportive in the Sole project, and yeah, I hope there's a future of doing some more stuff with them too, maybe who knows.
Sounds like you've got a lot more support this time than you did with your previous film.
Yeah, and that again because of the low budget. When you're working on this level, you have to be more efficient, but you have more control and that's definitely what I was looking for this time out.
Jeff, thank you so much for your time. This is so great talking with you.
Yeah, thank you, thanks a lot. This is fun and hopefully the trade the hell is right next to the building.
It's like the Blues Brothers.
I hope Blade's during the interview.
I didn't hear it at all. So comes by so often you don't even notice that.
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