Filmmaker Dave Campfield was nice enough to put the
answers to my questions on film and edit the whole thing into a nice 8-minute
interview-piece ... Thanks a bunch, Dave.
So here goes
... and if you're in no mood to watch the thing, find the transcript below ...
Let's just say that Caesar is an effeminate tough guy, kind of like
if you genetically melded Moe from the Three Stooges with Norma Desmond
from Sunset Bouldevard. And then you have Otto, who's basically the
world's laziest man. He is a hopeless romantic who falls in love with
virtually every woman he has ever laid eyes on.
Caesar unintentionally
punches out the mentally challenged brother of the chief of police. He and
Otto have to go into hiding - as summer camp counselors at the strangely
vacant Camp Sunsmile. Carrie shows up - who's played by Felissa Rose, and
the summer camp counselors begin disappearing one by one, and Caesar and
Otto piece together the mystery before they themselves become the next
victims.
Part Three Stooges, part
Abbott and
Costello, Dumb and Dumber - I
throw these kind of characters into an 80's slasher film, a low budget
80's summercamp slasher film.
Why did you figure the characers of Caesar and Otto would work
within the slasher genre, and is the slasher a genre dear to you,
personally?
I made a $700 comedy called Caesar and Otto,
and when an opportunity came up to make a movie with the producer of Dark
Chamber, I pitched the idea to put these Caesar and Otto-characters into
the middle of a slasher film. The producer liked the idea, and it evolved
from there.
I remember watching a
lot of older movies like Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein, and Abbott
and Costello Meet the Mummy, Meet Boris Karloff - they don't really make
that kind of film anymore. So that was very much the inspiration for
writing this film, trying to make a modern day equivalent of that, granted
on a much lower budget. I wanted to make sure that the low budget didn't
hinder the comedy, I wanted to make it part of the absurdity.
Paul Chomicki, Dave Campfield
A few words about your cast: What
can you tell us about yourself and Paul Chomicki as Caesar and Otto?
We
started off doing sketch comedy in basements - probably this basement right
here. It's basically through one of these exercises that Caesar and Otto
evolved from. And years later, that became the basis of these feature
films. Paul is my good friend, and hopefully we have a lot more Caesar and Otto-films left in us.
Felissa Rose
Felissa
Rose, the girl (?) from the original Sleepaway Camp?
Felissa
Rose I met on the set of a local commercial, and I was telling her about
this independent thriller I was writing. She was really interested and
said she wanted to audition. I had no idea that she was the star of
Sleepaway Camp. We forged a friendship from then, and I wrote this thing
without knowing if she would accept it - so thank you Felissa for saying
yes to the role, I don't know what I would have done if she didn't do it.
CKY
leadsinger Deron Miller?
Felissa's friends with Deron
Miller. When he heard about the project, he wanted to get involved in it
... of course, it's Deron Miller, if he wanted to play Caesar, I would
have let him. We got along really well, he very much understood where I
was coming from, we definitely forged this rapport.
Months later,
Felissa called me and told me Deron had this idea for a story, and he
wanted to adapt it into a screenplay with me, and if I could fly out there
and develop it with him ... and co-writing with Deron was the best
collaborative experience I've had.
He actually has a much extended part
in Caesar and Otto's Deadly Christmas.
Brinke
Stevens knows her stuff! She knew everybody's lines, did her stuff in just
a few hours, and was extremely pleasent along the way. So without a doubt
I had to bring her back for Caesar and Otto's Deadly Christmas.
Joe Estevez
Veteran
actor Joe Estevez?
Joe Estevez is more fun than any human
being has the right to be, and if you're a big Joe Estevez fan, be sure to
buy yourself a copy of
Caesar and Otto's Summer
Camp Massacre, because there's a 25 minutes
exclusive interview with him.
A few words about the rest of your
cast and crew?
Films like this, low budget, micro-budget
indie films rely so heavily on the crew, so I really gotta thank
people like Robin Ritter, Christian Voss and Summer Ferguson - everybody
who was involved on this crew day-in and day-out, working for nothing,
just for their belief in this project.
You have previously used the characters
of Caesar and Otto in the movie Caesar and Otto. What can you tell
us about that movie, and what were the inspirations for the characters to
begin with?
The first
Caesar and Otto-film
was much more
akin to Dumb and Dumber meets The Truman Show. These two half-wit half
brothers become part of a reality TV sitcom of which they themselves don't
know they're on. And if you're a big fan of the Caesar and Otto-characters
make sure to visit the original website - http://www.caesarandotto.com
- I'll make the first film available for steal starting in October or
November.
As far as I know, you are currently in post
production of a third feature featuring Caesar and Otto, Caesar and
Otto's Deadly Christmas. Anything you can tell us yet about that movie
already?
Caesar and Otto's
Deadly Christmas is the darkest, goriest and funniest Caesar and Otto-film with the most heart. I'm currently editing it right now, and we
should have it done for X-mas.
Any future projects beyond Caesar and Otto's
Deadly Christmas?
If the
Caesar and Otto-films have
some life and there's interest from the audience, I've got a whole slew of
other films that we could parody like Paranormal Activity, ghost movies,
...
While the bulk of your movies are
comedies, your first film was actually a serious horror effort, Dark
Chamber/Under Surveillance. What can you tell us about that
movie?
Dark Chamber was my debut film. It was very
much my attempt to tell a modern day Hitchcockian story. There's not really
any gore in the piece, it's much more character, drama, mystery, strong
atmosphere and plottwists. I got tired of just the same old gorefest, and
the only way I was willing to do a gorefest was making a joke of it, and
that's what we're doing with the Caesar and Otto-films.
How did you get into filmmaking int he first
place, and did you receive any formal training on the subject?
I
heard a quote from Steven Soderbergh, who said that if you really want to
get involved in the film industry, you should probably take that money
that you're using for college and put it into your own independent film,
because you're gonna be judged on the basis of what you have done and not
what you've studied.
And that was the genesis of my debut film.
My
education really came from working with other student filmmakers, as a
production assistand, as a grip, publicity, to any myriad of DVD
commentaries - that provided for me as much of an education as a $100,000
degree ... it provided more.
Directors
who inspire you?
I'm a big fan of Brad Anderson, who's the
director of The Machinist and
Session 9. I love the work of Edgar Wright,
Christopher Nolan.
Your
favourite movies?
Feeling lucky? Want to search any of my partnershops yourself for more, better results? (commissions earned)
As a filmgoer, I love anything from On the Waterfront to an
action film like Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think it's the best example
for that kind of film. But I love some of the lower budget stuff like
Steve Miner and William Katt and Ethan Wiley's movie House from the 80's
... I enjoy a very wide range of movies.
... and of course, films you really deplore?
I'm not a big fan of when films just shock you for the sake of
shocking you, like "look how absolutely disgusting and tasteless this is"
... there is no reason for being that disgusting and tasteless other than
the fact that they want to shock you - that's then like snuff, I'm not
much interested in that. And also I'm not a big fan of films that have
done what everybody else has done before without trying to reinvent it in
some way.
Everything I've done is an attempt to breathe fresh life into
familiar materials. Whether I've succeeded or not, I don't know. And
Caesar and Otto's Summer
Camp Massacre was an attempt to not do just the
same old Shaun of the
Dead-ripoff or Zombieland-ripoff lot of low budget
filmmakers make. I wanted it to be something that's fresh again.
Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between, Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
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