Reflections from The Cutting Room Floor (Part V: Murder Party)

Murder Party

 

 

Holy hell, what a fun time this was. 

 

 

As soon as I had the idea for filming a horror anthology, I knew that I wanted to have the final short film be a cheesy spoof on classic black and white horror films from the '50s and '60s.  I was thinking really old school, Ed Wood and Vincent Price-type of fair, which are a blast in themselves.  The important part was I wanted to end the movie with an over-the-top throwback to horror nostalgia.  I didn't expect it to be half the running time of the entire movie, but I feel it's a great way to end the film.  After all, you want the audience to leave on a high note, so we saved the most action-packed, ridiculousness for the end.  And if you were chuckling through the beginning of the film, you should be rolling by the end (you know, when we actually intended on it being funny...).

 

 

The idea came from an actual Murder Party that my wife and I threw a couple years prior.  We'd do these theme parties a couple times a year, where everyone would dress up and then just stand around getting hammered at our place.  For the Murder Party, we instructed everyone to come as a character of their own creation, and bring along their weapon of choice, then every half hour we drew a name out of a hat and that person became the next victim.  This was part of the inspiration for the movie, and as you can see in the picture, the first time Leonard "Whiskers" St. Elliott found his way into our lives and our hearts. Chelsea Harris' character in the film, Gwendolyn Trundlebunk also originated from this evening, and even though I didn't have the Black Swan costume yet, I still went as a chick; a french-maid/runaway Nazi war-criminal named Alexandra Macedonia. I guess you could say that was part of the inspiration for Nicole Koester's character in the movie, and I suppose its debatable that she looked better in a dress than I did. Neil also crafted a unique character that will be popping up in a movie soon; a traveling Tonic Salesman by the name of Charlie Arnold.  He might even have some ties to Whiskers and -ah, I've already said too much.

 

Anyway, this script came together pretty quick, the only problem was, how much of it came together.  I think the finished script was about 22 pages, which ended up being twice as long as anything else we shot. (and I use small font so I can fit more per page).  Either, way, it was going to be a bit of a stretch to film all in one night, which was pretty essential.  In the end, we ended up having to go back and shoot the opening about a week later, but we got the majority of the film done over an 8 hour period, which was pretty astounding.

 

I think the first thing that stands out about Murder Party is the fantastic cast of characters.  As I mentioned in part 1 of this blog, the whole point of this blog was to get away from using these inside jokes that we all had and make something that everyone could enjoy.  And despite the fact that a couple of the characters in this had originated before we filmed the movie, we were able to introduce them to a brand new audience, and they really connected with them.  Everyone in the movie did a fantastic job, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out a couple obvious scene-stealers.

 

-Troy Potter as Leonard St. Elliott is, what I believe to be one of the greatest creations Troy has ever gifted to the world.  His first child will have a tough act to follow, unless of course it is birthed with a full mustache, in which case, I suppose it would be equal to the crowning achievement of Whiskers.  As I mentioned, Whiskers had already graced our presence about a year prior, so I got a good feel for the character and everything Troy brought with it, so I wrote his part with that in mind, knowing Troy could fill in the rest.  And boy did he ever.  He actually came to set with a list of strange facts that he had prepared for Whiskers to share with the group during takes.  The story of the Hindenburg crash, along with the sinking book depository and the last full moon were all Troy, and they were marvelous.  Same goes for the parasol, the mustache comb, and all the snappy attire.  I've grown quite fond of Mr. St. Elliott, and I think audiences are in for a long journey with him.  A surreal moment happened on the night of the premiere when we overheard a little kid telling his parents he wanted to be Whiskers for Halloween.  My heart melted and exploded at the same time.

 

-Paul Gothard as Ron Jacuzzi. Wow. Just wow.  Another fantastic performance, that Paul had created completely on his own a couple years before we shot this.  I've been trying to fit Cooze into a movie for a while now, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity for him to pop in and do his shtick.  I think Cooze is really the fan favorite of this movie, and Paul has everything about him just figured out and nailed down to a "T."  The majority of his lines were things that he already came up with an has been running with for a while, I just threw them in.  I also love that Cooze really contributes very little to the actual story, usually just leaning in for a non-sequitor, then backing out and accidentally killing a good guy.  While most of Cooze was all Paul, I take great pride in the scene where he unwittingly shoots Sarah in the face while trying to save her from the villain.  That scene, along with Whiskers' nonchalantly-snapping of Nicole's neck got some of the biggest laughs in the premiere, and they're too of my favorite things we've ever shot.  And no, I don't have an animosity towards women, I just think it's funny when they unexpectedly die.  (I kid, I kid.)

 

-Scott Goedert as Dr. Weisenkompf.  Another great find.  Scott played a badass zombie earlier in the film, as well as one of the hunters in Haunted, but man, he killed it as the effeminate German doctor in this.  Every delivery was hilarious, and he had the accent nailed (fun fact, apparently Scott took German in high school- or that's what he told me anyway).  Amongst a slew of hilarity, my favorite line is when he tries to conceal his secret meeting with his fellow villains and tells Cooze that he's just singing a traditional German folk song in the room by himself.  That was all I had written in the script; but then he goes on to break into 99 Red Balloons, very briefly, before just trailing off and resuming their conversation.  One of the best moments in the movie.

 

There's so many other great performances, many of which I was disappointed in how much screen time they received.  Both Alex Finch and Collins Eboh, were amazing, and brought so much to their characters (whom I gave them very little direction on), I wish we could've had them in it more.  Hopefully we'll be able to rectify this in future endeavours. Another well-deserved shout out for PK, as his character: Colonel Urban.  This is another character Paul created from his Man Vs. Kinda' Wild web series, but viewers don't need to know that going in; he's just a great Southern Military guy whom Paul has a hard on for playing.  I think he's going to be popping up again.  Col Urban, not Paul's boner.  Although I suppose it could be both.
 

After the characters, I think the second thing that really stands out about Murder Party is the awesome location.  This was one of the hardest locals to lock down because we basically needed a large building for us to have free reign in for a night.  And frankly, not a lot of businesses will be willing to do that for a group of young adults shooting a movie they've never heard of.  We were close to running out of options when PK someone stumbled upon the Kirby Building, and after a quick talk with the owner, we got the okay to film in there. The owner, Tony Pfol, was nothing but great to us, letting us in for multiple nights, and even giving the okay for future projects as well.  Hell of a guy who didn't mind helping out local artists, and we couldn't have made the movie without his help.  I mean, the building was just perfect.  And there were so many great finds that we stumbled across and were able to work into the script (ie: the strangle collection of tubs that Cooze is afraid will run him out of business).  Also, it's a creepy place. It doesn't really hit you until you're packing up to leave and you have to hit the lights on the second floor and then make your way back downstairs to the exit.  It would make a great setting for a crappy found-footage horror flick that could linger in a redbox for a couple months before being replaced by something almost identical two weeks later. 

 

God, there's so much to talk about on this one, but I'll try not to get too wordy with it.  The general plot line was always: Get a bunch of crazy characters together in a building and have them start getting killed off one by one.  Upon writing the script, I tried to think up something original, yet very familiar in the horror tropes.  I liked the idea of incorporating the Nazi war criminals (1. I'm a huge Hellboy fan, and those are Hellboy staples, and 2. because it gives it the nostalgic, retro feel that I wanted this to have.)  We wanted to have the color black and white and over and under saturated, full of grain and scratches (I'm also a huge Grindhouse fan, if you couldn't tell).  It was also a conscious decision to never really say the time period.  I wanted it to have that timeless quality, with the Nazis and Whiskers, but still show people on their cell phones, giving it this weird feeling of not knowing when the hell this is supposed to take place.  After all, it's supposed to come off as a bad movie, so I assure you, that was intentional. 

Another question, one which we got at the premiere during the Q&A after the film: Why frogs?  Again, in Hellboy, there's a famous story arc involving a plague of frog creatures, so that was an instant nod to that.  And on top of that, because Frog zombies just seemed so retarded, we had to do it.  We already had a whole segment in the film around zombies, so the villains couldn't just be zombies.  I tried to think what would be the least intimidating animal for a crazed dictator to want to rule the world... Toads seemed like a safe bet.  Plus we could throw that cheesy "ribbit" sound effect in as much as we wanted.   (a funny side note to that- every time someone gets bit and becomes a frog monster, they all took it upon themselves to ribbit in their characters native accent.  Col Urban ribbits with a southern drawl, and Collin's character utters a very heavy French "ribet'".  What makes it even funnier is, we never told them to do that, planning all along to add all the ribbits in later when we were in post production.  Oh well, happy accidents and dedication to their characters.)

 

This movie also climaxes in typical PK fashion.  Everything else we filmed in The Cutting Room Floor was very different from movies we have made in the past.  We got to expand our horizons, try different styles, show restraint, etc.  Murder Party was our chance to let loose and just make something that was an all-out blast.  It's like we had been holding back the entire shoot, and this was our excuse to just get it all out.  From the stumbling upon a cache of automatic weapons, to a big shoot out and drag-out brawl, this is PK's bread and butter.  After everything else we've done I figured Paul would never want to edit another muzzle-flash, but we threw it all in anyway.  It's always funny how as soon as Paul breaks out all of his fake guns, immediately, the entire cast gravitates toward them to start posing and playing with.  I think as soon as we got to the building the first hour was taken up by getting into costume and make up and playing with guns.

 

Looking back, Murder Party was one of the favorite things we've filmed to date.  Partly because of the freedom you have in making an "intentionally-cheesy" movie, so you can just go all out with it, but also in the fact that it was really just getting together with a  group of friends who are all very funny, and seeing how they interact with each other on camera.  I feel like Tagged is what I would put on a resume, you know, to show that we're capable of making a taut, well-made thriller (jesus god, did I just say "taut?"), but then after getting the job, I'd be like, "Hey, you wanna grab a couple beers and watch Murder Party?"
 

 

Good times indeed.  I'm gonna do one more blog in this series, focusing on wrapping up the whole experience, and then we're done with the look back at The Cutting Room Floor.  And while we're still on the topic, and since I don't think a whole lot of people are actually reading this, might as well drop a bit of a bombshell...

 

Whiskers, Cooze, and Swan will return for THE AFTER PARTY: MURDER PARTY 2.  2013.



Reflections from The Cutting Room Floor (Part IV: Haunted)

Haunted

So, two movies down, two to go.  At this point, we finished Tagged, and it was about mid-November. I remember, because it was freezing when we shot the alley scene in Tagged and I was still sick from parading around Halloween night dressed as a ballerina. (in hindsight, not the best idea.)

We took a little break over the winter, and then reconvened in January to film... Murder Party.  -But wait- isn't this blog about Haunted?  Why yes, yes it is.  But at that point, Haunted was a very different story.  

Haunted was the last thing we filmed, primarily because up until about a month before we shot it, it was a completely different script and story.  The original story was about a young girl that grew up in a haunted house.  The hauntings weren't malevolent or anything, and the girl almost saw them as a reassurance, or security blanket that had followed her over her entire life.  As a young adult, she now lives in the house, alone, but the occasional flickering of lights or creak of the door reminds her that she's always got this "presence" with her.  Eventually, she meets a guy, and upon bringing him back to her house, the ghostly activity gets more severe.  The guy gets injured in an incident involving breaking glass, and he storms off.  For the first time, she fears the supernatural presence that she had always came to rely on growing up, and under the insistence of her new boyfriend, they ask a pastor to bless the house.  The pastor shows up, and we have this increasingly, out of nowhere-intense sequence where the house freaks out at we go into some wild poltergeist activity.  Eventually, the house is cleansed, and the pastor leaves, shaken.  The girl and boy continue their romance, but she can't help but feel like she betrayed whatever presence has been with her her entire life.  Things get out of hand when the boyfriend increases his sexual advances and she has to fight him off, sobbing as he walks out of her life.  She then lies in bed, watching the door, waiting for the reassuring creak shut that it used to do, but it never happens.

So, that was the original idea in a nutshell. I like it, and I feel like it might make a better short story than a movie, so I'm filing it away for later.  The problem is, this story isn't very cinematic.  Not in a negative way, but this was supposed to be very low-key, without much spectacle.  It was a haunted house story but I didn't want to ever show any ghosts, or spell out what exactly was causing the haunting.  It was supposed to be a more emotional haunted house flick, and I feel like we couldn't have pulled it off at the time, so we switched gears completely, and went with a vampire flick.

However, I didn't want to just do a straight forward vampire flick either. I had the idea that a girl would meet this strange gentleman on the town and he'd essentially turn her into a vampire like himself, then use her to lure other unsuspecting guys as prey. On the flip side, the guys she lures, are onto her, believing her to be responsible for their friend's death, and are setting their own trap.  And to make it even more twisty-turny, we have the timeline broken up so it doesn't play in chronological order.  As I wrote this, I was really excited, because the story structure was so different, taking a page out of  the Christopher Nolan or Tarantino playbook.  The viewer never gets the whole story until the end, and it's not clear who the protagonists are, or what the plan was until the last few minutes. 

I think this movie definitely holds up more on the second viewing.  The strange story structure might've turned some people off, but it's intended to make the viewer work a little and question where it is going.  Haunted isn't as straightforward as Tagged, and isn't as entertaining as Murder Party, but I feel like it is the perfect "middle movie" of the anthology.  It's a little slower, more experimental, and focuses a little more on emotion.  

There are a couple flaws with this one though, and if I could go back and change anything, the first would be to fix the damn audio in the cafe.  It kills me that the ice-maker was running intermittently as we filmed, so it drowns out a lot of the audio.  Paul did a terrific job with the cinematography during their coffee date, but the botched audio kill the mood.  We even went back there the night before we were set to premiere the movie and attempted to redub the lines.  After about five minutes we decided that was absolutely not feasible, and had to settle with what we had.  It's not terrible, but it hurts the opening.  And the ghost story Sarah tells about her family home was a bit of a nod to the original story idea.  It also brings up the title, "Haunted."  Why keep the same title?  It's funny; when we switched to the vampire story, I was going to call it "Hunted," which wasn't a huge change, and made sense in the context, but I really liked the title "Haunted," and I felt it still fit the movie, and also gave it a more ambiguous title, much like the tone of the entire short.

The cast expanded a little from Tagged.  Sarah and Neil were the leads, and both did great. It gets a little "meta" here, because essentially, Neil is the same character from the zombie film, but playing an actor, playing a vampire.  Does that make sense?  No?  Let me spin it another way.  Neil's character in the zombie film, is an actor who plays a vampire in this.  So his character in the zombie film watches his own movie that he starred in as part of a local film festival.  Does that make sense?  No?  Then I'm sorry, I don't know how else to describe it.  It's also fitting that in Haunted, he takes Sarah to be his mate (or whatever), and in the zombie movie, it appears he has had a secret affinity for her, which he admits to her before finding out she has become a zombie and he has to lock her in the stairwell.  Layers upon layers, huh?

Also in the short: Myself, another part that I wasn't originally going to play, but ended up doing because of convenience. We're also joined by the two Scotts (Goedert and Reuber).  Goedert played the ticket booth zombie earlier and did a fantastic job, so we brought him back, and Reuber gave the most intense performance of the movie, as the friend distraught over the death of his buddy.  It was a conscious decision not to give any characters in this movie an official name, but man, it makes it tough to write about it afterwards.

This movie also featured some cool locals, beginning with Paul's family owned cafe and the ice machine of doom, and ending at Potter farm, home and breeding ground of the Potter family.  Haunted has some really nicely composed shots; it's just a shame it wasn't more consistent.  No one's fault really, we just had various things working against us on this one (time, daylight, and that damn ice machine.)  Overall, a good time to shoot, and we were able to expand on some of our film making techniques.

Join us tomorrow, because you've just been invited to... The MURDER PARTY!

Reflections from The Cutting Room Floor (Part III: Tagged)

Tagged

    The first of the three movies within the movie that made up our anthology was a short film called Tagged.  I remember brainstorming with Paul Kurutsides and Scott Goedert one evening, sitting around my kitchen table.  The zombie "book-ends" were taken care of, and I had ideas for two of the three shorts (Murder Party came together right away, and Haunted, although completely different from what we inevitably filmed, was already in the planning stages too.)  Originally, we were even considering offering some of our other filmmaker friends the opportunity to write/direct their own short and include it with ours, making it an ensemble piece.  Paul would've loved this, because it would've freed up an insane amount of time, but in the end, I'm glad that we did the entire thing ourselves.  That's not to say, there couldn't be a Cutting Room Floor 2 that could follow that path, but considering we're already about 5 projects ahead of ourselves, we'll put that on the back burner for now.

Anway, we needed one more short film to round out the anthology.  No one had any killer ideas, so we were just kind of shooting the shit, when I received a Facebook notification that someone tagged me in a photo.  I thought, hey, wouldn't it be crazy if you got notified that someone tagged a photo of you doing something horrible that you know you didn't do, like killing someone?  I immediately started to explain the idea, and about half way through the sentence I stopped and said, "Actually, holy shit, that would make a great movie- that can be the other short film," or something to that effect.  Probably with more swearing.  As soon as the idea popped into my head, the whole thing was immediately figured out.  Tagged was the quickest, easiest, and according to most of the viewer feedback we received, the best thing we filmed.

Out of everything, Tagged felt like it could stand on its own, as a tight, self-contained story that puts the viewer in the protagonist's shoes and keeps you guessing up until the end, in the vein of a good Twilight Zone episode or something. It's short on characters, which helps keep the run-time low, and the fact that it all takes place in a couple hours over the course of a night keeps the pace in check too.  There's little touches of humor, which seem natural but don't detract from the gravity of the plot, and I feel like everything in this movie works really well.  If I could go back and fix anything on this one, there isn't a lot I'd change.  Maybe just shoot it on a higher definition.  Or cut the scene where I take my shirt off.  (I don't know why I do that in so many movies...)

I wasn't originally going to play the lead, but due to time constraints, and how much easier it would be to shoot around myself, that's what happened.  I don't go as dynamic as some of our other cast members, but everyone has been pretty kind about my on-screen abilities in this one, so to that I say, "ah-thank-you."

With that in mind, I might as well address why the same folks continually pop up throughout all the parts of the Cutting Room Floor.  It wasn't intentional, but as we shot it, there were certain, principle cast and crew members that were always with us.  Paul and myself were present for every scene in the movie (obviously), and Neil and Sarah were pretty frequent as well.  As a result, we all pop up more than others.  It works, I guess, considering the short movies are supposed to be local films, so it's not too far fetched that the same actors might appear across the board.  I like to think of it as a Monty Python-type of scenario, where the same cast members can just come and go in different rolls as they're needed.

This was the first of the shorts we filmed, and after the ordeal of filming the zombie stuff, this seemed like a breeze by comparison.  We shot it over a couple nights, starting with me and my cousin Paul Gothard's scene at the beginning of the movie, sharing some beers and watching TV.  That went about as smooth as could go, and we had plenty of time to do multiple takes to get the lines right and make the conversations seem a little more natural.  Then Paul bolted and we shot the ending, where my character returns to the house and confronts this evil doppleganger.  Maybe it was the fact that we had been drinking for most of the shoot, but the whole finale went smooth, without any hiccups or unforeseen problems. Neil and Sarah even swung by at the end, both of them lending a hand as a body double for me occasionally.  One stand out thing I remember from the shoot: to achieve the teary-eyed effect at the end, I was constantly yanking out my nose hairs between takes. I think we have some footage of that on the deleted scenes. Give it a shot, I guarantee you'll tear up.)


We went downtown and filmed the rest, cajoling one of PK's cafe employees to join us outside and crawl into the dumpster to play the corpse.  I don't think I ever got his name, and I'm guessing he has no idea that this movie ever released or wound up on DVD.  Oh well, he signed the release; we're all good.  Then we shot some more at 365 Ink, the local advertiser/magazine.  Then we took a break between shooting over Halloween.  I died my hair black for the Black Swan costume, so that's why I have my hood up for the remainder of the shooting we did.  I think we have a little bit of the black hair in there, but it's during dream sequence, so who gives a shit, it's supposed to be trippy. I also asked one of my buddies from my Blockbuster days to play the thug that roughs me up in the alley.  He had never acted before, but did a pretty good job on the spot.  He was less than willing to put the sharp knife in his mouth, more so because it looked dirty than because it was dangerous.  When I told him it wasn't dirty, it was just covered in "old food," he about stormed off (another good moment to check out on the deleted scenes that had us laughing our asses off all night).

 

I feel like I should address the whole doppleganger thing.  What is it?  Who is the character that is going around wrecking people's lives and framing them for murders?  Honestly, I have no idea.  I was inspired by a short story by one of my favorite authors, Clive Barker, called "Human Remains."  There's some very obvious nods to the story, which also involves a doppleganger that pretty much overtakes and assumes the lead character's life.  If you're a literary buff, check it out.  If you're not, check it out anyway; it's only like 50 pages and it would do you good to expand your vocabulary.  There's also a line that paraphrases a quote from Philp K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly," another favorite of mine. "...we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”  I always thought it was a cool quote, and it seemed to fit.  The doppleganger pretty much tells the protagonist, whatever is going on here, is above your head; do you really want to spend your last few moments dwelling on something you can't even begin to comprehend?  Then boom, dead, and onto the next one.  The kicker at the end where the doppleganger has now taken on the neighbor's form cements the ending.  Without it, you're left thinking, "what the hell?" but upon seeing that, I think it gives the impression that this is just some weird, fucked up creature that gets its kicks out of screwing up people's lives and driving them to murder/suicide.  Good times.




So yeah, in hindsight, Tagged it one of our best efforts.  It works well as a standalone piece, and I think it's a great way to kick off the short films in the movie.  It doesn't overstay its welcome, and even though it has some cool effects, it doesn't overdo them, or rely on them too much.  I guess there's some foul language that prevents it from being show at children's birthday parties, but what are they doing watching movies about murderous dopplegangers anyway?  Shouldn't they be bumper bowling or something?

Check back tomorrow for a look back at "Haunted."