"Itching To Act"

It's been a while since I've done any real acting, in fact, it hasn't been since I played the gypsy crone in CREATURES OF THE NIGHT that I've had a role with speaking lines so I've just been itching to get back into the acting groove. Although I've never considered myself a real actor I love to dress up as a different character other then myself and emmerse myself in a personnae other then my own.

Some of my favorite roles were as a Joan Crawford clone in the short play MOMMY DEAREST 2 (an original student play that will never be performed again although I still have the pix), the old gypsy crone in CREATURES OF THE NIGHT (because I loved getting in the make up and becoming a white person), and my favorite role is as a possible Vietnam vet in a mental hospital in the original play PSYCHED (which remains one of my only true roles for which I created a full fledged character). I've also played a postal worker (in the short film FROM ABOVE), a claravoyant (in the short films SEANCE and the feature THE SAYER), and a college student in the film JACK O'LANTERN.

These are few of my more notable roles as I've played extras in several films. These pale in my memory next to the roles that I actually believed help my ability as an actor. I'll never admit that I'm an actor but I do enjoy playing in front of the camera. I have nothing really lined up other then a few lines as a lawyer in Ed Harlaque's next film, so, I can at least look forward to that.

WHEN I LEARNED TO LOVE FILMMAKING

I’m a writer by trade who started off making short films in college as a lighting designer. I must have worked on maybe three to ten short films in my Junior year at Georgia State University and this was not even part of any class. I happened to help on a friend’s film who was in Filmmaking 1 and he liked my work so much that he mentioned my name to other students in his class and from there I just continued to work on all manner of films. When I eventually made my way into Filmmaking 1 a year later I had already had a lot of lighting experience and again I became known as the go-to guy for lighting (so much so that I never finished my own filmmaking requirements for the class because I was always too busy working on other people’s films. My teacher passed me with a B in the class anyways – I ended up helping him on his film as well).

This is when I loved doing lighting for films. Whether it be on 16mm, 35mm (I actually got to do a short film in this format), video, or eventually digital video, I tried to get my hands dirty on whatever I could. I didn’t really have any influences on how I lit films. It was all trial and error as I discovered that gels changed not only the color of the light but the color temperature and that using scrims and bouncing light was more pleasing then direct light (which some of my fellow students could never grasp).

Although I loved doing the lighting on films it was never something I intended to do for a living. I’m a writer and writing stories and screenplays is where my interests is. I just happened to be good at lighting and enjoyed it more then any other student in my class (they, after all, all wanted to be directors or actors).

The moment when I truly loved being on a film set didn’t come from all those short films I shot during college (nor my feature length documentary on the GSU production of DRACULA, still yet to be edited) but instead came when I was an “accident” actor on a little zombie film called NIGHT OF THE HUNGRY DEAD.

One night during the whole college craziness a good friend of mine by the name of Brent Brooks had a film shoot in which he invited me along not as an actor or a lighting person (in fact, I can’t even remember why I went anyways). All he could tell me about the film was that it was a zombie short that had the potential to be aired on a local television station as part of a Halloween-themed event. Well me being the big zombie-lover that I am I jumped at the opportunity to be on the set in whatever capacity. Of course, Brooks never told me that the film shoot was all the way north in Gainesville, Georgia (a place I only knew as being home to the Ku Klux Klan). He also didn’t tell me that the location was in the middle of nowhere and would be all night long, so I wasn’t exactly in my element.

The film NIGHT OF THE HUNGRY DEAD was directed by a newcomer filmmaker by the name of Ron McLellen whose only other film work was the unseen film MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. McLellen and actor Dave R. Watkins wrote the screenplay as they were filming it. The film concerns the night of the zombie apocalypse (as dictated by events from the ’68 film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) as a group of young people get stranded at the home of a serial killer whose house is swarmed by all his past victims whom were buried in the backyard. The film is very much a collection of greatest hits from various zombie films that inspired the two writers. The cast was filled with complete unknowns, some of which were on McLellen’s previous film. I on the other hand had my own camera on hand and started filming “behind-the-scenes” stuff with no means of what was going on (I still plan to put this footage together in a short vignette one of these days).

At some point in the night McLellen realized that he didn’t have enough zombies for the big siege scene so I was thrown in some cover-alls and make up and made to be a farm hand (with an afro since I forgot to cut my hair) zombie. It was a great evening of zombie gut munching zaniness as I’m not an actor but being a zombie was one hell of a great time. What made things even funnier was that Brooks tried to teach us zombies how to walk and act (this is on video) and McLellen had so much screaming in the movie that you’d think we were making a slasher film instead of a zomedy.

Now prior to this experience I had made lots of short films but this was the first horror short that I had done, never mind the fact that NOTHD had a huge cast and lots of action and deaths. And did I mention the fact that we filmed until well into the rising of the sun of the next day? The film was on a deadline in order to compete in the television contest and we were filming like mad to get it done. It was both exhilarating and exhaustive but we lived through it (or at least most of us did. Some left early so the original cut of the film was choppy in parts).

Everything that was missing from those previous film experiences at college were present here which is mostly that I had fun on this film. The films I did in college were all pedestrian in story (as many of the filmmakers were not writers) and the stories were mostly dramas or comedies (that really weren’t that dramatic nor funny) – films that you would watch once and never again (which is why I remember so few of them now). NOTHD was extremely fun and gory and I met a lot of people I would subsequently work with on other productions.

I fast became friends with McLellen and Watkins and we all worked on numerous horror films and crazy productions such as JACK O’LANTERN, HELL’S END, CREATURES OF THE NIGHT, BAD LAND, and SHUDDER, among a plethora of short films for both of their individual production companies. McLellen liked my performance so much as a zombie in NOTHD that I became one of the stars of his next film JACK O’LANTERN (I’m not even an actor and I survive the film) but after that film I realized that my talents were best spent behind the scenes as the guy who helped produce the film and do all the technical “paperwork” on the production so that McLellen could concentrate on the actual production of the film. I was production manager on HELL’S END and CREATURES OF THE NIGHT moving up to producer on BAD LAND and SHUDDER.

I’ve since worked on both horror films and all other manner of genres from teen comedy (Movie Tao’s 6 DEGREES OF DESPERATION), urban film (BREAKING THROUGH), and suspense thriller (my own feature film HOUSE OF SECRETS), among others.

I can honestly say that I may not be in the indie film business if not for Brooks and McLellen and that little zombie film NOTHD. If NOTHD had not happened then I wouldn’t have worked with all the great filmmakers that I’ve become acquainted with since that dark night in Gainesville.

I could have easily become one of those people who went to film school but never did anything with their degree other then work at UPS (which I’ve done) or the neighborhood gas station (which I worked for two separate gas stations in my life). Instead, whether for good or bad I make indie films in Georgia where I get to work with a huge talent pool of people in any and all genres.

I’m currently working on finishing up HOUSE OF SECRETS as well as a short film for a vampire anthology, finishing up the screenplay for my next film which is a love story (A LOVE SONET), filming a documentary on remote viewing, working on a documentary on drag Queens (should be very interesting), and finishing up a script for the reboot of the JACK O’LANTERN franchise tentatively called JACK O’LANTERN REBORN, so I’ve managed to curtail my little experience as a zombie on a no budget short film into an ongoing love affair with filmmaking.

Not bad if I say so myself.
And if you’re wondering NOTHD may not have screened on television but we did go back and shoot additional footage for the official DIRECTOR’S CUT version which is far superior and far bloodier then it probably should be but it has screened in several film festivals and can be seen on You Tube among other places.

"Why I Love to Write"

People who know me (or at least think they know me) know that I like horror films. It’s no secret. I watch a lot of horror films and I study a lot of horror films and I support the horror genre but what many people don’t know is that I generally don’t like all that many horror films that I see. In fact, on average I like about 25% of the horror films I watch in any given year (most of which are indie productions that don’t see a wide release at the Box Office).

As a filmmaker I could have decided to study any genre of film whether it be horror or drama or comedy or noir but I chose horror because of the films I’ve seen the most in my 33 years of life George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) is the one that I’ve seen more than any other and has inspired me the most as a writer (I said “writer” not “filmmaker”). It really wasn’t this film that inspired me all that much but one of that director’s later films MARTIN (1977), a pseudo-vampire film, released a year after I was born. I happened to find a copy of MARTIN at the library and it was the cover that struck me the most – vampire teeth and a razor blade with blood coming from it. That video box cover was amazing to my young eyes as it told me that this was a “different” type of vampire film. Indeed it was as this vampire film was a 180 degree turn on what I had been told vampire films were suppose to be about. It was an intriguing story on myth, religion, faith, and sexual horror unlike anything I had ever seen before (you have to remember I was in middle school when I saw the film). I devoured the film several times before having to return it to the library and then never saw it again (until the invention of DVD) because the video rental I frequented didn’t have it on their shelf (and as a middle schooler I never went to the library all that much) but what stuck with me was that box cover and the fact that the title of the film read as “George A. Romero’s MARTIN, ” which for the longest time I thought that was what the movie was called.

When I realized that George A. Romero was the writer & director of the film I immediately set out to find all the movies that this guy had done (and in the age of pre-Internet it wasn’t all that easy). It was my mother whom had seen the name before and lead me to my next Romero film as we owned a copy of it in our video library – NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968). I was floored! I had one of his films all this time and never knew it (I was young and horror films just weren’t part of my viewing pleasure at the time).

This was the film that forever changed me. It was terrifying and spooky and – I hate to say this – starred an African American. At the time the only African American on my radar was Sydney Poitier and I had seen every film he had ever done and now there was this new guy (I’d later learn his name to be Duane Jones). I don’t think the film would have stuck with me as much as it had if the character of Ben (Jones) had lived at the end. His death at the hands of ignorant (as I saw them at the time) white hillbillies was a travesty but made me realize that films (not just horror films) could be depressing and be more then just entertaining. They could tell a “real” story.

From that year on I started watching NOTLD at least once a year (if not more) so much so that I wore out our VHS copy and forced my mother to replace it as soon as possible. It was a lot harder to come by Romero’s other films SEASON OF THE WITCH (1972), THE CRAZIES (1973), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), and KNIGHTRIDERS (1981) not even knowing about THERE’S ALWAYS VANILLA (1971) until I was in my mid ‘20s. The amazing thing about all of Romero’s films were that he didn’t simply want to entertain but he wanted to leave audiences questioning complex ideas about people, relationships, and life, not only through the horror genre but other genres as well (KNIGHTRIDERS being another particular favorite). It was through my absorption of these films that I realized that I wanted to be a writer.

Now over the years I’ve seen some equally monumental films – CITIZIN KANE (1941), BRINGING UP BABY (1938), SCAREFACE (1932), CASABLANCA (1942), THE HAUNTING (1963), and FREAKS (1932), among many others, that helped carved my idea of what a good story was capable of and what a great story could achieve no mater what the genre.

I didn’t always want to be a writer, in fact, for the longest time I wanted to be a homicide detective (of which I live out through my constant viewing of LAW & ORDER, BONES, and THE CLOSER) but that never seemed to quash my love of writing and the movies where I could literally put my mind into whatever situation, job, or circumstance that I wanted.

As a grow up there is a point in your life where you either realize that there is something or someone that inspires you to do what you do and continue to do regardless of the consequences or how hard it is to do and that’s where NOTLD comes in. I’ve been writing since I was in forth grade introduced to the craft by Mr. Sanders, my forth grade teacher from Alaska (yes, people do live in Alaska and I was one of them for five years), and I’ve never looked back since. There have been times when I didn’t write (mostly during the later years of high school when I focused my attention on drawing & painting) but my attention always came back to NOTLD and thus my fate was forever sealed.

Whether Romero realized it at the time or not (and he’s said that he didn’t on countless occasions), NOTLD is not just a zombie movie but it is a film about race relations and how the differences between two races can sometimes blind us to our similarities. In the film you have a strong white character Mr. Cooper and a strong black character Ben who use the house that they are trapped in as their own battlefield against one another when there is a greater threat just outside their doors. When they refuse to put aside their differences in order to work together as a team their fates are sealed in total defeat, hence they both die by the end of the film. Nothing brings this home more then in the final moments of the film when Ben is mistaken by one of the white posse members as a zombie and killed. Now you have to remember that the posse is made up of like minded people who have come together to defeat the real menace which is the zombie plague whereas Ben is the lone survivor who dies because of his own stubbornness to put aside his own prejudices. Not such a simple film now is it.

Take the film as you like. The above is an interpretation that many scholars and critics have attributed to the film while others just think of it as a great zombie flick.

Now I try and write everyday whether it be part of a screenplay, rewrites, a short story, film review, blog entry, poem, etc. and on a good day I can get about 10 pages done (and on a great day 15-20 pages). Writing – it’s what I do and what I think I’m good at whether any one else thinks so or not.
I love films but if you were to ask me some of my favorite literary authors my list would be smaller with Gaston Leroux (THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA), Franz Kafka (THE METAMORPHOSIS), Albert Camus (THE STRANGER), Ira Levin (THE STEPFORD WIVES), Jhumpa Lahiri (THE NAMESAKE), William Peter Blatty (THE EXORCIST), and Clive Barker (SACREMENT), to name a few. The reason my list is small is because I read more non-fiction then fiction these days but regardless I like a good read but I love a great movie.