9DCU0213HD_Directors_Cut_Studio_Transcript

 
. .  If you could look below the surface. . .  ( child reciting nursery rhyme ) His body is divided into three parts. . .  Child: That married the man. . .  Complete metamorphosis. . .  There's something here that's evil. . .  * Bacteria infect and start a new life cycle.  Child: He kissed his wife.  He could not. . 

.  But while the creature changes. . .  Child: He hoped and prayed.  Night, day, and morn. . .  Ahh! Happy Halloween! This is a special spooky edition of Director's Cut.  I'm Charles Monroe-Kane.  That was a clip from the film, "The House that Jack Built," which is a perfect flick for this holiday, a film that director William J.  Meyer calls a "fairy tale horror romance. " Happy Halloween.  Welcome.  Hi, Happy Halloween.  What is a "fairy tale horror romance"? I've never heard of that genre before.  Well, as it applies to the "House That Jack Built," just working from the back forward, the romance is because Jack and Liz are getting engaged in the film.  And they have a history together, which comes out in the course of the film.  And the horror is the more visceral aspect of this disease that begins to grow on his hand and spreads to his arm.  And you see that develop.  And the fairy tale aspect is, what I like about fairy tales is, it's basically one step to the left of reality. 

 You just look askance and there's something in the closet, there's something in the woods.  Ah! And you know, fairy tales, I think, often are a lot darker than what we recall, or what we see in parody.  If we're even willing to let them go there.  I have little kids, and sometimes I don't end the fairytale, if I have the original ones.  I'm not going to go there.  But the kids are eaten in those.  Right.  That's good, though, you went there.  We know that association.  But no blood and guts.  This is a horror film.  No blood and guts.  I would assume that's the way to go in horror genres, blood and guts.  There's no slasher stuff in this at all.  Why did you choose to do that? Well, what connects with me for horror, and I'm not the biggest horror aficionado, but for me, you know, I'm never going to be trapped in a cabin in the woods with a bunch of zombies surrounding me.  I'm not going to be bitten by a vampire.  But the horror that I at least tried to elucidate in this film is Jack's self-loathing, really, to get down to it.  I mean, you could look at the whole disease thing as this metaphoric externalization of his interior fears that, "if she knows the real me, my wife will leave me. " Oh, you're getting into real horror now! That's real horror! Not afraid of the guy under the bed, but being afraid of your wife leaving you! But that makes more sense for the viewer, right? Well, yeah.  For a more mature viewer.  Sure. 

 But no use of the blood and guts.  So how do you feel like you're able to then scare people.  What scares you? What's the biggest thing that scares you when you watch a film? Like that's something that, wow, that's going to affect me for five or ten more minutes.  Loss of control, I think.  To me, the scariest moment in cinema that I've seen, honestly, is when Mookie throws the garbage can through the window in "Do the Right Thing. " I mean, my god! That just. . .  'Cause he's out of control in the situation.  Yeah, and it's just a mushroom cloud of emotion.  That's interesting.  Well, one thing we haven't talked about, and I want to show a clip from this, is that a lot of this film, there are certainly parts of this film that are animated.  And I want to show a clip.  Then we're going to come back and talk about that.  Because I thought the animation was super.  Talk about to the left of reality.  I found that animation really helped me go to the left of reality and watch the film.  So here's a clip.  Can you set it up for us? This is where he goes through that tunnel in the woods.  Yeah, so right before this, Jack has been gardening.  And his wedding band is stolen. 

 By this thing.  And he chases it into the woods to reclaim his wedding band.  I believe that's what we're seeing here.  He's going through the glens beside their home.  To get back the wedding ring.  Right.  All right, let's check out a clip from "The House That Jack Built. " My name is Jack.  I can't tell her.  She'd leave me.  ( creature laughs ) I'll fight it.  I need to work on my horror laugh.  I love that.  That's a great clip from "The House That Jack Built. " Animation.  Tell me about it.  You did all that yourself, right? Yeah.  First, the story came.  I developed it with Jeff and Georgia Lyon, the producers of the film.  After I wrote the script, then I said, okay, how am I going to achieve this.  A lot of it came to just incorporating PhotoShop and After Effects, and other off the shelf software on my computer. 

 And developing the effects through various techniques that I learned.  How long did it take you? You're a novice doing this, in a sense.  Yeah, well, post-production, including editing, picture, sound, doing the ADR recording, and the visual effects, was a year and a half or something.  Why? ( Jeff laughs ) Why would you dedicate, I mean, it's a great film.  But you're not going to make a million dollars off it.  Why did you do it? You know, when you begin, you have this story to tell.  And you have this entity that's inside of you, like the chest burster in "Alien. " Sure.  And it has to get out there.  And you know, coming home from work, and sitting down in front of the machine and just putting in the time.  It was like a part-time job, I guess.  You know, the creative freedom is peerless.  I want to talk about some other things.  The animation is fantastic.  I really liked it.  But there are some other things in the film that in some sense, are fairly simple.  The film starts with a dollhouse.  There's this great dollhouse.  And then there's this use of an old photograph.  There's also the use of nursery rhymes.  There's use of some other really set images like that, that to me, really got me scared, really set me on edge a little bit. 

 And I wanted to ask about those images.  What do you think those images do to a viewer? When someone sees a dollhouse in a field, or someone hears a little girl doing a nursery rhyme.  Where do you think that takes the viewer? You know, I guess I'm a little surprised at some of the things that people come up to me that have seen it and say things like that.  Another friend of mine mentioned the dollhouse in the field, where it's a solitary image, as putting him ill at ease.  I guess I was a little myopic in the sense that, you know, I just approached it as the way that Jack proposes to Liz.  His proposal is to put a dollhouse in a field, and have little dolls, and have their pictures on the dolls.  Yeah.  It was totally creepy.  I'm like, oh, my god.  That was the creepiest thing in the film.  I love it.  You're just like, that's just how you told the story.  Well, I guess lucky for us, Liz did not think it was creepy.  Thank god, she would have left him and you'd have no story.  That wouldn't be good.  Well, and on top of that, in the film where you have an old black and white horror film that's being played, which actually, you re-created, right? Right.  And why that? What were you trying to do for the viewer, to show that in the background? Just to lay it out there, I was totally inspired by Brad Bird's "The Iron Giant. " There's a sequence where the boy is watching an old Sci-Fi film.  And you can do this really interesting edit, where you edit between the old-school and what you're doing.  And you can create this relationship with juxtaposing this unreal situation with your situation, which is supposedly real.  So Jack is watching this old Sci-fi film that we also shot, edited and treated to make it look old. 

 And it has this metamorphic transfiguration thing that's sort of paralleling his experience and what's happening to him, but in a more light hearted way.  So hopefully, there's some laughter in there, as well.  Well, I want to show a clip.  I want to go back to the dollhouse.  I want to show a clip because, we'll leave it up to the viewers here watching to decide.  You just do this as a piece of romance.  I find it the scariest part of the film.  So let's show the clip.  We'll let people decide.  This is the famous either romance clip or I think horror clip.  This is the dollhouse scene from "The House That Jack Built. " ( car door closes ) Hey, look at that.  * Let's go check it out.  No.  Come on! I'm not going out there.  Fine.  * Oh, that just gives me warm, huggy, romance feelings all over.  It's so romantic.  So romantic.  I love it.  It's not scary at all. 

 So, how did you get so passionate about filmmaking? Where did your love for the cinema start? I just want to take a quick shout out to Matt Knutson, Theresa Cheney and Christopher Carbeaux, the actors in the film.  Shout out.  It would not exist without them.  I don't remember what year it was, but Akira Kurosawa was getting a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars.  And I believe it was Coppola and Lucas that were giving it to him.  And I hadn't heard of Akira Kurosawa.  Living in the Midwest, I wasn't really exposed to foreign films at that point.  And they showed clips from his movies, and it just completely captivated me.  In particular, they showed a clip from "Throne of Blood," which was his version of MacBeth.  And Toshiro Mifune, the great Japanese actor, is being impaled with innumerable arrows.  And to find out later that they actually shot arrows at him off-camera.  "Hold still Mifune, we've got a couple more coming at you.  Stop moving so much. " Just the ba-ba-ba-ba-boom.  And just the stark imagery.  It was a fantastic black and white film.  They showed clips from "Ran," his color masterpiece, just, it was just epic beyond epic.  Just fell in love, and started to find out who makes these films, where do they come from.  There you go.  Well, thank you very much for joining us, I love your films, and please make more animation, come back on, I would love it.  I showed a bunch of my friends the film, they loved it. 

 Thank you very much.  And thank you all very much for joining us today.  You know, Halloween films can come in a variety of genres, from the suspenseful, from the slasher, even to the funny.  Here's a previous interview we did with filmmakers Ben Wydeven and Doug Gordon, who take a very different take on what horror means.  It's funny, you're talking about horror and talking about atmosphere.  Your film, not to give too much away, but there's no gore.  There's no blood and guts in this.  And I think about the way horror has gone, you know, from "Friday the 13," and "Halloween. " "Halloween" was all build-up, the whole film.  To now, the soft films, which is just completely blood and guts and no build-up.  You don't do any of that.  You don't pull any of the blood and guts punches.  Why do you not do that? Well, I didn't really grow up with the slasher films.  I watched a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films.  When I was younger, my mom started this thing with our family.  Every Sunday night, we'd watch a movie.  And for a long time, we were on an Alfred Hitchcock streak.  That was pretty cool.  We'd watch like almost all the mainstream Alfred Hitchcock movies.  Was there a moment you're sitting with your family on a Sunday night, and you're ten or twelve, and you say to yourself, oh, man, I want to do that.  Not immediately, I don't think. 

 I've always been really interested in making films.  But like when I was younger, I didn't really know which genre I wanted to do.  When I was in college, I was doing a lot of comedy, because that's what my friends wanted to do.  It's easier to do comedy, because like I sai you get the immediate feedback.  With horror, I didn't realize I could do horror until when I did another movie and then I realized it scared the crap out of people.  My friends got goosebumps and so I realized, okay.  So you were sold.  You'd rather give goosebumps than make people laugh.  So would you go back to comedy, or is this it? Is this the genre you like? Comedy is fun, but I mean, it's not really the movie I want to see on a Friday night.  In 2004, I saw Michael Moore.  And one of the things he said in the press conference was that he tells filmmaking students to make the movie you want to see on a Friday night.  And after I heard that, a couple years later, I made "The Medium. " And I started to think about it.  I do like the darker, suspenseful films.  And we really, in the last ten years, there haven't been a whole lot of really good suspense films.  Yeah, I agree.  Speaking of "The Medium," let's see another clip from the film.  Why don't you set this next clip up.  This is the one with the needle in it.  I love this scene.  The needle. 

 They are in the hallway, and Raymond is touching the wall.  He's trying to figure out what's going on in the building.  And the tall guy with the meter isn't really telling him what's going on.  He's kind of in denial about it.  And so, Raymond's kind of walking around trying to figure it out on his own.  Well, let's see a clip from that film.  This is a clip from "The Medium. " If the needle jumps, let me know.  Where are you going? Not far.  I know the spirit's present.  What?! Shut up! Come on, spirit.  I mean no harm.  I'm only here to help.  (spirit): Raymond. . .  Ahh! ( door creaks ) Get out! Ah! Hey, the needle's moving! ( knocking echoes ) I want to talk--! What the hell are you talking about? Who is she? Who? The woman who haunts you.  She wears a white dress and has long red hair.  She's here? Yes.  Tom, who is she? I don't know.  I thought you did. 

 No.  Now, another part of that clip that I think really shows, and this film shows, is sound design.  Because sound, you know, you have setting in that you have a super creepy setting, and that's perfect.  But I think the other thing that's very important for a horror film is music.  I've got to have the creepy music.  "Jaws" without the music would just be a terrible film.  So tell me a little bit about the sound design.  Did you do it? I did the sound design.  The music was done by two friends of mine, Corey and Jason, of the band Planet of Nine.  They did the music for it.  For the audio, a lot of the stuff I did, I was living in an old house at the time.  And there was this metal shower.  And I got my boots on and I set up my microphone above it, over the shower.  And I just stood in there and I would pound on the walls.  I would breathe in and out heavily.  And there was this echo to it.  I would deepen it up in post production.  I'd throw that in there every once and a while.  And it sounds, you can't even tell that it's my breathing.  It just sounds like a rumble.  Do you add, I'm curious, not to get too geeky here. 

 But do you add the music and the sounds after the film, or do you have these sounds and then you kind of incorporate them in? Or do you say the film's done and then you sit there and add the soundtrack? How do you put the sound in? It's kind of an evolution.  Once I've cut it together, I kind of see how it looks and then I can add the sounds where it's appropriate.  It's super creepy, and very appropriate.  I think that's a big part of the goosepimples that you get from watching a film that way.  We're going to see one last clip.  But before we do, we're also going to be joined by another filmmaker, Doug Gordon, that you edited for, for his film, "Zombeatles. " Before we get to that, we're going to see one more clip from "The Medium. " Then we'll invite Doug up and we'll move forward on that.  Let's see one more clip from "The Medium. " ( grunting and coughing ) Mother-- She's your mother! Ahh! What about your mother? I know how she died.  I killed her! I'm talking to the man who killed her.  I'm talking to his son.  You cannot have him.  Him?! I have a son?! I want to see him.  ( indistinct ) Need to resist him.  I need you to resist him! ( screaming and grunting ) Ahh! What happened to my mother? ( woman gasps ) Your mother was killed.  Strangled to death by your father.  He wanted to see you, but your mother gave you up for adoption to protect you.  That child is mine, and I want it.  You cannot have him.  Him?! I have a son?! I want to see him. 

 Your mother died protecting you.  ( indistinct ) She was murdered.  And dumped down here.  Just like you're going to do with me.  Welcome back.  We are now joined by Doug Gordon, the director of the film the "Zombeatles. " It was edited by Ben Wydeven.  Let me see if I can describe this film for you.  "Zombeatles" is the name.  It's a mockumentary about the Beatles, as well as zombies.  It's full of brain-eating zombies, Beatles, all narrated by a kilt-wearing zombie journalist.  Doug, how did I do? Did I describe it? That's very good.  That's pretty much bang on.  What about you? You walk into somebody, they're in the elevator for one minute, like, so you made a film.  What's your film about, what's the "Zombeatles" about? I like to describe it as "Night of the Living Dead" meets "This is Spinal Tap" meets "All You Need is Cash," a Beatles parody.  We really went to school on that a lot.  What a great description! You know, what I want to do, and I don't normally do this quickly, but I think a picture is worth a thousand words.  So what we're going to do is we're going to show a clip from this over-the-top film.  Then we're going to come back and talk more about it.  What we're going to do right now is we're going to show a clip from Doug Gordon's the "Zombeatles. " Paul and I were in art school together. 

 Oh, we were dead and very hungry.  We were bitten by some skiffle zombies.  ( low, guttural grumbling ) In Pool of Liver, and after that. . .  We ate Bobby and the Bouncers.  And they were very tasty.  We were never the same.  * * OOh, I need your love * Babe * Yes, you know it's true. . .  * -- * While I'm eating you You do not see that every day.  That was a clip from Doug Gordon's film, the "Zombeatles. " I don't even know where to start.  First, it's a mockumentary.  Why a mockumentary? A mockumentary, Charles, because that's something that you can do fairly easily without a budget.  And just this idea came together, because my character, my Scottish comedian, zombie comedian character, Angus MacAbre, Scotland's funniest zombie comedian, I performed a few years ago at a Halloween Bash at the High Noon.  And I performed live and undead.  I did some undead pan comedy stylings.  And also on that same bill, the Fab Gore, the "Zombeatles," which is a side project of the Gomers, they performed at that same event.  Then, several months later, I thought, I just woke up one morning with this idea, hey, why not combine the two and put it into this mockumentary. 

 This sort of takes the zombie idea into a whole new direction by developing what I like to call a zombie verse.  Zombies have evolved.  You know, they started by eating the stupid people.  Because obviously the stupid people are the easiest to catch.  So then, they run out of stupid people.  You've got to put more effort into tracking down the smart people.  As you eat the smart people, you absorb their smarts, their brains.  And that allows you to evolve in a Darwinian fashion.  And the zombies are now creative conscious, intelligent creatures with their own arts, entertainment pop culture scene, of which the Fab Gore and Angus MacAbre are a part.  You know, I've seen a lot of independent films, and some of them are kind of weird ideas.  I have absolutely never seen a film like this in my life, not even close.  Did you sit down, so obviously, there was a meeting of the brains, no pun intended.  You have the Gomers and they're a rock band.  These guys are doing this Zombeatles idea, the zombies and Beatles.  You have the stand-up comic idea guy who's also a zombie.  So, hey, this is like the perfect idea.  You put them together and you want to make the film.  Was unique your goal? Like you sat down and said, okay, I want to be as unique as possible.  I want this to be as over the top as possible? Or was your goal just to be pure to the form of the documentary? A combination.  But for me, the key is to be unique.  Like the founder of Sun Records says, if you're not doing something different, you're not doing anything. 

 And I really believe that.  Whenever I'm doing something creative, I try to think, what hasn't been done before.  Well, let's see the Satan scene from "The Zombeatles. " I said what I said, and people take it the wrong way.  Now you have all this.  And what was the prince of darkness' response to Jaw Lennon's provocative comment? Was I upset when I heard what they said about, you know, being bigger than Satan? No, come on! I love those guys.  You know, it's show business.  It's not show friendship.  Am I right? I mean, come on.  I've got to tell you, betrayal on that level, I felt as though, you know, they picked that up from me maybe, a little something, I don't know.  You know, but you know, you gotta respect them.  They-- ( happy cell phone ringtone ) I gotta take this.  It's Tom Cruise.  Tom.  Tom, slow down.  Listen, I know, I heard.  My people are on it.  I know.  We're fixing it.  It's all right, everything's good.  Tom, I gotta go. 

 I'm doing-- Tom, listen-- I'll see you in hell.  Okay, bye-bye.  But no, they were fine.  Me and the Zombeatles, we're fine.  Wasn't that revealing? Thank you very much for watching this Halloween edition of Director's Cut.  For more information on "The House that Jack Built" please go to: wpt. org/directorscut And while you're there, send us an email, we'd love to hear from you.  Stay tuned.  Up next on Director's Cut Presents, you see all three films we just talked about, including a short by filmmakers Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, titled "The Life and Death of a Pumpkin. " Thank you very much, I'm your host Charles Monroe-Kane, and for everyone here at Director's cut, everyone, thank you for joining us.  Check the gate. ECHO is on.