{"id":134213,"date":"2013-09-25T19:14:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T02:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/?p=134213"},"modified":"2013-09-25T19:33:46","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T02:33:46","slug":"interview-we-are-what-we-ares-jim-mickle-nick-damici","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/2013\/09\/25\/interview-we-are-what-we-ares-jim-mickle-nick-damici\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: We Are What We Are\u2019s Jim Mickle & Nick Damici"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WeJim Mickle<\/strong> and Nick Damici<\/strong> started carving out a place for themselves within the horror genre back in 2006 with their first feature collaboration, the zombie rat movie, \u201cMulberry Street,\u201d then moved into the realm of vampires for 2010\u2019s \u201cStake Land,\u201d and now dabble in some cannibalism for their latest endeavor, a remake of the Mexican film, \u201cWe Are What We Are<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mickle and Damici\u2019s rendition hones in on the Parkers, a family of five preserving a simple, quaint existence in their upstate New York home. However, when their mother unexpectedly passes, it falls on Rose and Iris (Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers) to maintain that lifestyle and it includes a vicious family tradition. <\/p>\n

While Mickle and Damici both hold the same writing credit on the film, Mickle highlights the successful combination of their differing contributions during that process: <\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m looking at a script or an idea, it\u2019s sort of like I\u2019m already looking at what it\u2019s gonna look like and what the editing pace is gonna be and what the music might be, and all that. I\u2019m always thinking of sort of the outside, external stuff and I think the beauty of working with Nick is I think, you know, since he\u2019s an actor, first and foremost, he\u2019s able to look at every character with a sort of perspective I guess of where they\u2019re coming from and what they\u2019re motivated by.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even after going into production with a strong script and twice the budget they had on \u201cStake Land,\u201d Mickle still found \u201cWe Are What We Are\u201d to be the toughest film he\u2019s ever shot:<\/p>\n

\u201cI would come home every night and just sort of have like a sense of panic about it, you know? I think a lot of it was because with \u2018Stake Land\u2019 and \u2018Mulberry Street,\u2019 because they were low budget, we could do a sort of more fluid style of shooting \u2026. \u2018Stake Land\u2019 and \u2018Mulberry Street,\u2019 you guys could step in and out of focus and it actually gave it a nice aesthetic to that, and I think once you kind of commit to, we\u2019re gonna be very precise, we\u2019re gonna be very meticulous, you have to do that the whole time and so at some point it just becomes overwhelming to do that on a small budget.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Overwhelmed or not, Mickle delivers some incredible visuals and one in particular stems from clever tactics developed by Brian Spears, the special effects artist. Mickle revealed the movie magic behind his autopsy scene:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Kassie [DePaiva] laying there. They painted her whole body so she was kind of pale and had veins and stuff, but then they put a chest plate on top of her where the ribs could open up and all that stuff in there, and then she just laid really still.\u201d<\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only drawback to that method is that Spears opted to simply run out and buy a liver to put into his chest plate, and when you\u2019re shooting in a tight, hot space, there\u2019s just so long you\u2019ve got until that thing starts to stink.<\/p>\n

Find out what sort of company that rotting liver attracted, hear Mickle and Damici\u2019s thoughts on the potential rise of the cannibal subgenre, and catch what they had to say about Dexter himself, Michael C. Hall, inhabiting a different kind of killer in \u201cCold In July\u201d in the full video interview below, and be sure to catch \u201cWe Are What We Are\u201d when it arrives in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on September 27th.<\/p>\n