Your latest movie is called Warning!!!
Pedophile Released. In a few words, what's the film about?
Shane Ryan with Kai Lanette |
The faults of the justice system (or it more asks if our justice system is
flawed by the way it failed the characters in this story). It’s also about
love, innocence, and small towns (or the decline of small towns as most of
what you see are run down or abandoned homes and businesses).
What inspired you to do a film on that topic?
I actually can’t remember. I was trying to think of a movie I could do in a
week, like Amateur
Porn Star Killer, and this was the first idea that came to mind. But
the project grew and it took about 8 months instead of a week. When I was
getting the project together I had inspiration along the way. I always loved The
Woodsman, so even though I didn’t get ideas directly from it I carefully
watched it before doing anything. And just before shooting I saw Wendy and
Lucy in the theatre, at least two or three times I saw it I loved it so
much. Pedophile
is nothing like it but it does feature a main character, a girl, who spends a
majority of the movie homeless in a small town and walking around, so that
film gave me hope that if people found enjoyment in that, they might find
enjoyment in my film. Sean then came along and brought more inspiration and
his own ideas.
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Lead actress Kai Lanette does an amazing job in the film [Kai
Lanette interview - click here]. A few words about her, and was
she your first choice or have you ever thought about doing the film with
someone else?
We’ve been dating for a while now and I came up with the idea of
something we could work on together so she was always my only choice for
the lead. I was going to have another actress play her for the
interrogation scene because she was supposed to be 12, but I think she
pulled it off very well and since she goes from 12 to 15 to 16 to 18 in
the film it would have probably thrown people off if another actress
popped in there somewhere. If she started off at 9 or 10 years old then
I’d obviously have to have used another girl for that age. Another
problem was that people are so overprotective and paranoid and just plain
stupid nowadays that when I was trying to cast that part they thought I
was trying to get a 12 year old naked for it and didn’t understand
there was another actress over 18 already cast for the nude scene (even
though clearly stated). So, I was getting threatening emails, and
didn’t feel like putting up with the bullshit since I already have to
deal with it so much.
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Kai Lanette's part in Warning!!!
Pedophile Released is very unglamourous (and intentionally so).
Did she have any problems with that?
One extra feature, if I were to have one, would have been to show how
we shot this, only because people would probably have complimented Kai’s
performance even more so. We shot out of sequence and had about 80 or so
scenes and only about 6-7 days to shoot it. So, she had to change in
between outfits/make up/ages/character sometimes every few minutes.
Sometimes it really made her look worn out and sleep deprived and
unglamorous simply because of all the rushing and reapplying make up. She
was not an actor who sat around for 5 hours to work 5 minutes, it was
completely vice versa. She also has a 9-5 job (and at that time the job
was very strenuous) so she would get off work, be already exhausted, and
then have to put up with me for the next 8 hours. Sean and I would work on
stuff during the day and Kai’s average workday when she wasn’t working
her real job was probably 14 hours. Anyways, I don’t think she had a
problem with the unglamorous thing, it was mainly the HD camera that drove
her nuts because it was so defined it showed flaws in the face the human
eye doesn’t even show. That drove me nuts too, I’m not really a fan of
HD, if I had money it’d be film, so I did a lot of editing to try and
bring down the quality and make it more rough.
Kai Lanette is also credited with co-writing the film. How big was
her creative input? Well, the entire crew was Sean Cain,
Kai and myself, so I’d say everyone’s creative input was significant.
Sean more on the technical side and Kai more on the character side. I came
up with the idea and wrote the outline based on locations I liked while
Kai threw in things she would instinctually know having been a teenage
girl once herself. She also was homeless while being a pregnant teen in
real life, and has been through abuse and traumatic experiences so some of
that came from reenacting real situations but changing them up for this
story. She took me to the places in town where she actually slept and I
just wrote ideas for shooting in those areas (though I think instead of
shooting in actual places she’d been we’d end up next door or down the
street because it worked better on camera or was too difficult to shoot in
those areas). What it came down to was that I wrote the outline and just
had her do what came naturally once we were in each location. I didn’t
usually know exactly what she would do which is what I wanted because I
wanted the camera to also be a character and be in the moment. A
few words about yourself as an
actor, playing the second lead in Warning!!!
Pedophile Released?
Hmmm, well, I hope I did alright. I think I would have been more proud
of my performance if somebody else were directing because I was too
self-aware, but until I start getting roles like this as an actor I’ll
just have to keep doing it myself. I was hoping this would be a good
chance for me to really find range in my acting but it ended up being more
about the character of Echo, which is just fine. I felt much better
shooting it than I did acting. I think I really would prefer to just act
and just direct and switch back and forth but not both at the same time,
at least not regularly.
Warning!!!
Pedophile Released has at the same time a very improvised and
carefully mapped out feel to it (if that makes any sense). How detailed a
script (or even storyboard) did you have, and how much did you actually
leave to chance?
No storyboards, no script, but a strong idea and a very specific
outline with all of the locations in order. Since there wasn’t much
dialogue I just wrote down the idea of the scene and then trusted the
actors could bring it with the improvising, which I think everybody did
perfectly. I think I was the only one who had trouble with improvising.
But if we got ideas along the way, or passed by new locations, etc, we’d
go along with it.
On your Amateur
Porn Star Killer-movies, you usually worked with the epitomy of a
skeletal cast and crew (usuall two actors, one of whom also holding the camera, and
nobody else). Did you have a bigger crew on Warning!!!
Pedophile Released?
Nope, like I mentioned it was just me and 2 other people on the crew.
Aside from one time I had to ask Rob, who plays Echo’s father, to hold
the camera for a scene. I’m not good with technology but I knew what I
wanted in the camera work (as far as just going with the scene and NOT
trying to make it look good) so Sean would set the camera up for me and
then I’d shoot Kai doing something while Sean downloaded the previous
stuff in the car (he was the one who got stuck sitting around for most of
the shoot). If I was on screen Sean would shoot it (in which case his
camera work was usually too good so I had to look for when he was
readjusting the camera to grab my shot in the editing room – I guess I
have a thing for the imperfection). But there were still a few real cool
shots he did that I had to put in. A few words about Sean Cain,
who acted as producer on Warning!!!
Pedophile Released and also had a supporting role in it [Sean
Cain interview - click here]? Sean actually came up
with his character, that was all him, I just figured out where to put him
in the story but I think it was a great subplot to the film and gave more
mystery (if not obvious) about the kind of stuff and people Malachi had to
deal with in prison. But it also showed how Sean’s character, whether
you liked him or not, was trying to re-enter society and that it can feel
pointless.
Sean also really had a lot to do with how well the movie turned out.
Originally, when I was talking about the one-week movie, it was completely
different. It was the same story only it was all to take place starting
when Malachi’s released and he gets a camcorder and documents his
release as a journal because he doesn’t want to write anymore. That was
a way we could shoot it cheap and easy and, like Amateur
Porn Star Killer, another mockumentary. I really liked the idea
but another mockumentary seemed a little much (although when you work on
50 dollar budgets you don’t really have a great list of choices). Sean
heard about it and offered to shoot it on his camera, the same one he shot
Silent Night, Zombie Night on. He also had the idea of his
character and had some insight on what it was like for a pedophile in
prison because of stories he had heard from people who went through
similar things.
So, Sean really helped it go from another mockumentary to the more
original/experimental film it became and if he hadn’t come on board I
might have had a film I felt proud of but I don’t think I would have
felt nowhere near as accomplished. A few words about
adult actress Joanna Angel, and how did she end up in this movie of yours? We
didn’t even shoot Joanna’s scene until about a week before the
theatrical premiere. The majority of the film was shot in April, 6 months
before, so that last minute scene was a lot of stress. I already had the
scene in mind when we were shooting but the original actress I was going
to use I just decided not to, I can’t even remember why, but I didn’t
really know her and it would have been a favor to someone else. I ended up
helping Sean out on a scene in his film Breath of Hate along with
Kai (we were a strip club couple) coincidentally watching Regan Reese
(from my other APSK
films) strip. She turned out to be there with Joanna who had a part in the
film so I thought I’d ask Sean to get in touch with her. She wanted to
do it and was really easy and nice to talk to (unlike some actors who give
the worst first impressions) and I knew she had a fan base so I figured it
could work. I told her the idea and she easily improvised it so it worked
out great. The only problem has been that people think I made up the scene
just for her but that was already part of the film before I even knew who
she was. And in the long run her publicist couldn’t even promote it
because of the title. Call me naïve but apparently you can murder as many
people as you want, or talk about pedophiles and much as you want, or make
movies about them, or EVEN BE ONE! (i.e. Roman Polanski, Victor Salva) but
if it’s in the title of your film you’re completely fucked and
you’re a pervert.
Netflix, fucking Netflix, rejected the film because of the
title, even though they have a film called The Hanger (and no
disrespect to this filmmaker just the unfairness of Netflix’s
bullshit) where this girl has her legs spread open and we see her vagina
lips and asshole (already way more graphic than Pedophile)
and then a hanger is shoved through her clitoris and ripped out for a
massive blood flow. I’m flabbergasted why that’s okay and a scene of a
depressed homeless girl taking a shower to clean herself isn’t. We even
got rejected by DVD Empire who carried the APSKs
(all much more graphic than Pedophile)
although now they’ve dropped all of the APSK’s because
of this film. And they even have their own Adult Site - adultdvdempire.com?!?!?!?
And the mainstream DVD Empire site carries this French film call Fat
Girl which has a 13 year old actress (not just her character but the
actress was 13, her character was 12!) being raped and it shows her actual
breasts!!! I can’t believe that was even legal. Our film has a 15 year
old being raped but it doesn’t even show her naked in the rape scene and
the actress was 22, so where the fuck is there any sense or justice in
that?!?!?!?!? Anyways, my “I hate the world rant because it’s
full of dumb fuck inconsistent moronic sensitivities and pure bullshit”
... but on to the next question… What
can you tell us about the rest of the film's cast and crew? Molly
Wryn, who plays my mom, is a close friend, her daughter Emily and I have
worked on a bunch of projects together, so Molly was attached from the
start. She did a small role in David Lynch’s Dune and was an
actress in some other good stuff back around that time. We had never
worked together as far as me ever getting to see her act, but knowing her
background I took a chance and thought she was marvelous. She also knows
my mom, so that helped. I didn’t want her to be a phony blind person
like I see in many films, I wanted her to act like my own mother (as far
as being blind but her character’s attitude is different though she has
a similar look as my mom). Her close friend Rob Dale plays Echo’s father
and he really does look like Kai’s father so that worked out (though
most people don’t realize Kai’s half-white or can even tell her
ethnicity so I guess it doesn’t really matter but to us it was cool). I
already knew Rob as a friend but not as an actor so I had him try the
scene in several ways, from yelling to screaming to just doing it calmly
and sincere which is what I ended up using in the film because I thought
it was the most touching and added the most character for how short his
part is. Jerell Gray I’ve known for a long time and he makes
movies too, which I act in some times, and I just thought the small part
of the kind friend getting the drug hook up fit him. His friend Darrell
plays the guy who hits me and we don’t have the best past together so
the tension I thought would naturally work for us.
And Alyssa, also known as Prelandra (a great artist) is Kai’s best
friend in real life and she acted in a film I did 10 years ago, so that
was just an easy relative shoot for us. Alyssa can be pretty moody some
times so I told her “just be yourself in a bad mood.”
My brother, Jeremy, plays the cop in the truck who’s also the faceless
cop in the interrogation. He’s several years younger than me but always
looked older, and I thought the long hair and sloppy beard was great, a
change from the Law and Order/CSI cop look,
and almost an inside joke given my brother’s history with cops.
And then there’s Elina Madison, the biggest pro on the set ironically
with the smallest part. She’s acted in like 100 films. I had to pretend
to rape her in a Creep Creepersin film (in which case she wasn’t even in
the scene for the bad rape part – I had to fake it completely) and she
seemed really cool [Creep
Creepersin interview - click here]. She had worked with both Sean
and Creep several times so I just asked her and she had to squeeze it
between films since she gets so much work. I almost thought I wasn’t
gonna be able to get her in it or Joanna since it was the same scene and
they both work a lot. Anyways, I wish I could have used her more. Man, I
hope I’m not missing anybody but I think that was our whole cast!
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The
locations Warning!!!
Pedophile Released was shot in seem to mirror the mood of the
movie rather perfectly. How did you find them?
They’re all from my home town, or in the area. Most of them. The
abandoned town I walk through I saw on the way to Ojai one day. The second
scene where Kai’s walking by abandoned cars behind a fence and that torn
up area I saw when picking up my dad’s dogs, I had to drive through this
old road. Everything else I either already knew about or found when I was
driving around gathering all of my ideas for locations. I love run down
locations and stuff like that for its character. Over long
stretches, Warning!!!
Pedophile Released lacks dialogue, which makes the incidental
music all the more important. A few words about the film's musical score? One
song (which I got just before completion) was by Jacob Wild who used to
sing with Emily, Molly’s daughter. Everything else was royalty music,
and cheap royalty music surprisingly. The first musical piece in the film,
just after the rape, kind of shaped the whole movie. I found that way
before shooting and already knew I wanted Kai screaming (with no noise
other than the music) when that intense beat kicked in. That was the one
thing I was 100% specific about. I told her you have to scream at the top
of your lungs (but we’re not going to use the sound) and look like
you’re in the most emotional pain you’ve ever been through. I had her
scream so much I think she really was emotional damaged by the last couple
of takes.
Everything else I found as we were shooting, or while I was editing, or
I’d go back and change the music. I was pretty picky about that and was
really surprised I could find all that in royalty music. That still ended
up being the majority of the film’s budget though. Any films
or directors who have influenced you on Warning!!!
Pedophile Released? Probably subconsciously but I
can’t think of anything else other than what I mentioned earlier. No,
wait, Steven Soderbergh was one of them, I forgot about that. Just his
camera work, and wanting to hold the camera himself, I’ve seen how he
shoots A LOT of footage just to be in the moment, and is detailed with his
camera movements about (what some would find) the most insignificant
scenes or things. I did a lot of work for David Shepard when I first
started out, working on very old films, restorations on DVD, etc. So I
always feel I got huge inspiration from those, and using music over images
to tell the story with little dialogue here and there (instead of title
sheets). So, stuff like that.
With the Amateur
Porn Star Killer-movies and Warning!!!
Pedophile Released, hand-held camerawork has become a sort-of
trademark of yours. Ever thought of going for more traditional camerawork? I
already did, 8 years ago, with my short film Isolation. The film was still
experimental but there was minimal handheld stuff and everything was
carefully lit.
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s66nxIyr-Lg
I started out doing things the traditional way. A 35-minute film I made
when I was 14 was shot mostly by my dad so we did it fairly professionally
and had about 100 cast and crew. It’s not online but I do have a page
for it, http://alteregocinema.com/Shorts/CHANCES.html.
I even play identical twins in it and we did a special effects scene and
stuff. Back in 1994 as a high school freshman working with pro-equipment
that was pretty cool. Nowadays a 10-year old can throw that together on
his computer. Kind of takes the fun out of it in many ways.
Eventually I got frustrated doing things that way though and realized the
stuff I ran out and shot many times came out better than the stuff I spent
time and money and a crew shooting with (lots of that had to do with
getting good sound though). But it got me into the attitude of just do it.
Like Amateur Porn Star
Killer. I just grabbed a girl and a camera and shot
an idea. But there’s also only so much of that you can do so our next
film I finally got a cinematographer, and a producer. We shot some teaser
trailers but we haven’t shot the film yet. You can view all 3 trailers
by going to the site http://alteregocinema.com/Features/ABDUCTEDGIRL.html The film's website, MySpace,
whatever else? http://alteregocinema.com/Features/PEDOPHILE.html
http://www.myspace.com/amateurpornstarkiller
As far as I know, it was due to Warning!!!
Pedophile Released that the release eagerly anticipated Amateur
Porn Star Killer 3D was pushed back. Any release date for that movie
yet? Nah, I haven’t been able to get it together.
Technical problems, I shot it poorly (which for this film it matters so
it’s been tough figuring out some stuff) and just uninspired. I got so
fed up doing those films that I’m dying to get away from them. Plus I
did the first 3 with this serious dark story in mind and the first 2
really felt necessary. I felt like I had something to say. I’m
conflicted with how I feel about the 3rd but with the 3D one it just feels
kind of dirty. It’s not me. People can say the first 3 felt dirty but I
don’t think they were. Again, conflicted with Part 3 on that but I
don’t feel the first 2 APSKs are wrong. I’m proud of them.
But people forget that I was not into horror, or porn, or exploitation
films. I was into the human mind. Human behaviour, true crime, or in the
case of Pedophile, doomed love, faults of the justice system,
etc. APSK3D
isn’t any of that. And it’s not just a comedy for entertainment or
laughs either, it’s dirty in many ways. So, honestly, I’ve felt kind
of disgusted when I try to edit it. That’s why I’ve tried to get other
people to edit it but because of how it was shot I’ll probably have to
be the one. I’ll get it finished, I have to, and a lot of people
contributed a lot of great things to it. But, it’s honestly probably not
a movie I should have made. Any future projects you'd like to talk about? Abducted
Girl, an American Sex Slave. Keep an eye out. I’m also trying to get
acting jobs, where I’m just the actor (that’s why I started making
movies in the first place), so keep an eye out for any of those, or if
you’re looking for actors, hit me the fuck up. Anything
else you are dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask? Yes,
don’t believe one goddamn thing ever that you hear on the news. CBS,
CNN, The View, Fox, etc., it’s all bullshit. Sites like this are
probably the only honesty you get. You think you know this, you think the
media is full of shit, but until you see yourself on the news and see
their manipulative lies and bullshit and disgusting vomit just to get
ratings (and then they act like they’re the concerned ones) you just
don’t really know. For how full of shit Hollywood is, movies are far
more real and honest than the evening news will ever be. That’s all. Thanks
for the interview!
Thanks.
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