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Steve Sessions: Director
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1. Tell us a little about your background, where are you from and when did you decide that you wanted to become a filmmaker? Born in Maryland, grew up there and New York state, ended up on the Gulf Coast. I watched horror flicks on channel 20 in Washington, D.C., as a kid, on a program called Creature Features, hosted by Count Gore DeVol (who was nice enough to “introduce” my first flick for me… ). Somehow early on I took an extreme liking to very seriously played horror, particularly British productions. Peter Cushing could say the most absurd things and give it such gravitas. I loved the Universal monsters back then and the German expressionistic-inspired look, and 50’s sci-fi horror (the original “The Thing,”), but it was Amicus and Hammer films that mostly resonated with me in terms of atmosphere and the overall effect. I decided I wanted to become a filmmaker very early on. I went to film school for a year, but then my life got sidetracked, and I gave up the idea for a while until the video revolution made it possible for everybody and their brother to run around with a prosumer camcorder and claim they were an “indie filmmaker”. I started making my first feature flick at the end of 1998, so it’s been seven years now. Ten, if you are reading this in 2008. 2. Who inspired you to become a filmmaker? Classic horror movies I watched on tv as a kid gave way to John Carpenter, Romero, Fulci, Argento, Clouzot, Tourneur, Lumet, Hyams…. I was already inspired to become a filmmaker by then, but these directors’ work clicked with me, in particular early Carpenter. His early stuff (and I don’t know why he changed he methods, somewhere right after “In The Mouth of Madness”), was all smooth floating panaglide movements and long, long-takes that weren’t examples of showmanship (like Well’s “Touch of Evil” opening), but seemed his natural film storytelling language. A lot of it was Hitchcock-derived, but internalized, not mimicked (DePalma). Carpenter’s creepy atmosphere-building through camera movement and pacing and music inspired me, while Hitchcock’s calculated suspense-building inspired me to become a filmmaker. That’s one answer to the question. The other answer is that the guy who made a micro-budget horror film I rented at a video store in 1998 inspired me to become an actual maker of films, 16mm student films and cable access stuff notwithstanding. 3. Tell us about your latest film "Southern Gothic". Jeff Dylan Graham (Home Sick, October Moon) plays a New Orleans paranormal investigator. There’s a haunting in an antebellum mansion (the location since destroyed by hurricane Katrina) in the deep south, and he looks into it and finds it’s not exactly the haunting that was presented to him. Sort of a movie-of-the-week mystery with Asian horror elements and a nice maggot-vomiting scene. And alligators. (Just alligators swimming around…no one vomits alligators). 4. You often both write and direct your films, do your films often turn out exactly as you pictured it during the writing process? Hell no. That’s micro-budget. Ideally I’d do things more like Hitchcock and have the entire movie made on paper, pre-vized, or storyboarded, before actually shooting it. But guerrilla filmmaking doesn’t lend itself to this kind of planning. I say they call it b-movie making because everything is a plan B -- the way I do stuff now is this whole point-and-shoot thing, run in and run out. I often leave the camera running, and only I can decipher the movie from the tapes when it’s done. I edit in my head as I go, since you really can’t even do master shots and cover a scene properly to make choices later. On my first movie I needed a crematorium. It was in the script. (It was called CREMAINS….) I tried to get one and couldn’t. I had a funeral director take me on a tour of his place and say I could shoot in the casket selection room, and this room, and back here, but not the crematorium. So I said nevermind. Nowadays I’d say hell ya! and then rewrite it to take advantage of the great location I was offered but turned down because it wasn’t part of the script. (Below you ask if I have any regrets…honestly, that is one of them.) In micro cinema you have to do everything backwards a lot of the times. If you try writing a great story and then trying to get the people and places to fit it, it will never work, and the end result will be a vicious bastardizing of your original idea. The process of making the movie is often this – decimating your movie piece by piece. I’m the only one who usually sees the movie not made, so I’m more critical of it – no one else can see the location not there, or the person not there, or the effect not there… At least on most of my stuff I capture the intent and mood I was going for, which is satisfying, and goes back to my appreciation of horror movies that, while not necessarily great, delivered an atmosphere and tone that I enjoyed. But to go back to doing things backwards -- I wrote something that took place entirely at a civil war fort and found out later I would need a million dollar insurance policy to shoot there, plus a ridiculous fee on top of that. What a waste of a script and an investment of time and energy working on that project which I had to abandon completely. Meanwhile there’s probably someone with a cornfield they’d let me shoot in for free and I should be writing a scarecrow movie, though I haven’t met this person yet. 5. Tell us about your film "Dead Clowns" starring Brinke Stevens and Debbie Rochon. I’d hoped it would come out in the US sooner – the distributor is working on it -- but it’s been out in the UK for over a year now (a slightly darker copy, owning to PAL conversions), and I’ve had some good feedback from there. My clown zombies are like Fulci zombies, or Burial Ground zombies, or even the Templar Knights in the Blind Dead series. They don’t have eyes, and most of the clown make-up has been washes away or been dried up into the rotting flesh. But they still have the costumes on and those big shoes…. The story is that there was a circus train accident 50 years ago during a hurricane, and the train car took a dive off a bridge into the Bay. The clown car was never recovered. Now, a half-century later, another hurricane is coming, and with it the clowns return, angry at the town for forgetting them. It cuts back and forth from the various characters in town, dealing with the storm and then the clowns. Their arrival is preceded by a calliope heard beneath the wind. It’s a story I’ve wanted to do a long time – preferably with a larger budget -- but I’m glad to have been able to do it and exorcise that demon from my list of wanna-do’s. I wish I could have had more zombies, and had some of the disparate characters meet up and interact. I was thrilled to have Brinke Stevens and Debbie
Rochon involved, two of the most professional but chill actresses I’ve had
the pleasure of meeting. 6. From your experience, what do you think is the most important thing for a Director to bring to a set? I touched on this before -- in micro cinema, the ability to edit in your head and be flexible, because there’s no time for coverage, and things change all the time. Referring to your elaborate notes and stick-figure storyboards while everyone stares at you won’t help since you just had to drop the scene at the marina because it’s raining. Trying to adhere to the script when Y just called and can’t make it today (but how about next week – always next week) won’t work because your star (X) is flying back home tomorrow. That’s when you drive to the nautical souvenir shop and buy a few things and make a cheap looking “bar” set in the garage and have the character talk to a patron (me) instead of his bikini-clad friend at the marina and get the information out the has to be there for the story to make sense. In terms of dealing with the talent and such, I don’t know, and I wonder if there is anything I’m not doing that I should. I’m usually always happy with what I get in terms of the talent, so I’m either communicating it, or they just know what to do, or I cast it knowing they would do it right. Oh, and if anyone has any problems with the acting, blame me because I said “that’s good, let’s move on to the next thing.” And the most important thing to bring to the set are cool people who are into the movie and talented. Jeff Dylan Graham is in a lot of the stuff I do for this reason. And he can play a wide variety of characters. My friend/co-hort, Lucien Eisenach has been crucial to helping me get these things done. Recently a guy named Donny Versiga played a part in something I was working on, and he was so easy to shoot with, it reminded me making the movie itself doesn’t have to be stressful if the right people are there.. 7. Any future projects in the works? Give us the scoop! I’ve done pre-production on something and am all ready to go with equipment and props, but have no money for actors or locations right now. I was thinking of coming up with a way of offering associate producer credits in exchange for capital, and giving them the props and costumes after it’s over. But sometimes its more trouble than it’s worth involving other people and it’d might be better just to wait it out until I can come up with the money another way later on.
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8. What is the biggest problem with Hollywood today? Preview audiences and corporations making creative decisions, turning movies into lowest-common-denominator product. But since that’s what Hollywood is, in a way it’s like saying the biggest problem with Detroit is they mass-produce cars. True, I hate when they remake classics with “hip, young casts,” but these things make a lot of money, so people are watching them, and that’s the whole point. It’s the same thing as remaking Asian horror for American audiences – you’re just translating to a different demographic to milk them for money. What’s painful is when you can almost feel a certain callousness and greed behind some movies, the soundtrack jammed full of songs to sell CDs, the cast made to look “hot” even when being pursued by sociopaths with a chainsaws, and no real concern for the plot, or atmosphere, or the original it should be homaging in some way. 9. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Reconsidering how hard I was on myself back then (now), and wishing I’d heeded my own advice to chill and enjoy the moment. Also wondering what ever happened to that Toxic Shock tv website and if they ever posted my interview. Asking myself why there are no flying cars in 2016. Still trying to raise a few dollars for my next project I was going to do in the spring of ’06…. 10. Do you have any advice to aspiring filmmakers? The internet is awesome and made my stuff possible in terms of finding people, or having people find me, and getting information about hardware and software, distributors, etc. But it’s also a danger (which luckily I’ve avoided) in that you can get so caught up with others talking about “the scene” that it’ll sap your energy and time and you never actually get out there and just make your movie. That’s the main thing – just make your movie. Start small, also – don’t try to make some epic out of the gate. Don’t be too ambitious to the point of paralysis: just do something small and simple, and make it the best you can. And you’ll do more later, so this one isn’t “it”. No pressure. Just get going on it and keep the momentum up when you start it. 11. When all is said and done, what 3 things would you like for people to remember about you? I would like the people I care about to see themselves the way I do, so they remember why I cared about them. (or even know that I did) And I’d like to have a movie out there that has some cult life to it so people remember that. It’s not important they know it was mine, just that it stays alive that way. And I would those few who I inspired to make movies – even if it’s one of those back-handed inspirations that takes the form of “hey, I can make a movie like that with my eyes closed!” – to remember I inspired them! 12. Here's where we give you a word or phrase and you give us the first thoughts that pop into your mind. Pancakes! Oh, you didn’t start yet. Sorry. Okay, go ahead, I’m ready now … Hollywood: Not a place, but an adjective, pejorative, and synonymous with “American”. Toxic Shock TV: _______________ Favorite Genre: Horror/Suspense. Biggest Regrets: Not having any thought when you said “toxic shock tv”. Biggest Prick: I was going to say the giant inflatable penis Mick Jagger rode during the 1975 Stones tour but I’ll go with George W. Both were filled with hot air. The funniest thing that has ever happened to you on a set: I laugh when someone says “set” – like we’re making a real movie. The closest to a “set” I’ve been on is when we convert the garage of my parents’ home into something – most recently fog-filled woods with trees made from foam insulation spray and corrugated cardboard. Racking my brain for a funny incident while shooting, though, I can’t think of anything in particular. There is, however, the constant humor of micro-budget movie-making itself: often you are reminded “this is not the way you make a real movie!” because of some absurd thing you’re doing to get the shot and fake something there no time or budget for. Your biggest "break-thru" moment: Not sure… you envision moments to come as being “break-thru” in some sense, but when they happen, you’ve already set your sites on something further ahead so they never feel break-thru. Getting the first flick out and in video stores should have been it, but by the time that happened, I was worrying about the next project, and how to pay off debts incurred making the first, etc. Seeing an ad in Fangoria for your movie was once a goal and would have meant I’d “made it,” but when it happened, all I could think is how this is going to come out of my profits so stop running it! Having a movie dubbed in a foreign language was another milestone I looked forward to, until it happened and they got the box credits all wrong and attributed my movie to someone else. Actually, I really don’t’ think I’ve had a break-thru moment. I broke into this realm of micro-cinema, but I have broken out of it. That’s mostly because I’m not aggressively pursuing more; I’d prefer to do underground low-key things… its just about having enough money not to compromise the project so it seems pointless, and about making sure the people involved are just as serious about the final product as you are. You can only watch three movies for the rest of your life, which three: Maybe “Bad Day at Black Rock”? The other two I have to choose based not so much on quality as re-watchability (and also since it’s only two more, representationality), so I’d pick Burial Ground (Zombi is a better movie, B.G. a greater rewatchability factor), and the original “The Fog”. You can only listen to three ALBUMS for the rest of your life, which three: I’ll spare you my internal rationalizations (awareness of contemporary likes being transitory, etc) and just say Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien score, Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” (cheating a little by getting in a bunch of songs from different albums in there), and some early 80’s ambient synth stuff from Tangerine Dream, perhaps.
Be sure to visit b-horror.com |
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