An Interview with Derek Cole, Director of Revenant a.k.a. An American Ghost Story

by Dale Pierce

November 2012

Films directed by Derek Cole on (re)Search my Trash

You recently directed Revenant. Tell us about the plot!

Revenant is about a down and out writer who moves into a house known to be haunted so he can write about his experiences in a haunted house ... but he gets more than he can handle.

Where might it be ordered and are there webpages where more info may be seen?

www.2manproduction.com - and soon it will be in stores.

This played at the big Shriekfest festival in October. How well was it received?

It had an amazing turnout and the audience was jumping and screaming at all the right moments. It was great!

What was it like working with Stephen Twardokus in the lead?

 

Stephen Twardokus

Stephen is one of my best friends and co-partner of 2 Man Production. He also wrote the movie so I knew his head would be in the game from start to finish just as much as mine. It’s because of our friendship and his hard working attitude that I knew I wanted to do this film with him in the first place, so needless to say he is always a pleasure to work with and we had a lot of fun. Jon Gale was also a pleasure to work with as usual. He was an actor in the movie playing "Skip" and our Producer.

 

Stephen Twardokus, Liesel Kopp

And with Liesel Kopp?

Liesel is not only an amazing actress she is also an amazing person. She is very sweet and funny as hell so we had a very good time working together. Liesel is also a talented artist and she is the one who made our poster for the film and we can’t thank her enough for doing such an incredible job.

You also plan to run this film at big fests in Chicago and New York?

At Buffalo Screams in NY, Revenant was nominated for many categories including best feature, best director, best actor, best cinematography, best screenplay and best editing. We won for best screenplay and best editing awards. So we thank Buffalo Screams fest for that and we will have to see how it is received at The Living Dead Fest in Chicago.

Anyplace else?

Living Dead Festival in Chicago and we are gearing up for distribution.

Again, what do you think the reaction might be?

I think no matter where the movie plays it will get some screams and jumps as it usually does.

Who came up with the title?

I did with one of the other actors in the film, Cain Clifton who plays the character “Sam”.

This was not your first film as director, right?

No I have done several films before this one but the most recent was The Mutilation Man, which I directed alongside my brother Shane Cole [Shane and Derek Cole interview on Mutilation Man - click here].

Any interesting behind the scenes stories to tell with this movie?

Well the one thing that comes to mind is the fact that this movie was done in my house and I have a family so almost every nighttime shot in the film was done without sound because in the raw footage you can hear my wife or kids laughing and talking in the living room or bedrooms. We did all the sound FX later cause I didn’t want to force them into different rooms and on top of that make it so they couldn’t do anything while we shot scenes of Stephen walking through halls and rooms. It was a lot of work for sound but we knew we would have to make more notable sound FX anyways.

This is more or less a haunted house tale and there have been, with all due respect, many such film. How might yours be different?

It isn’t found footage and it has more of a patient filmmaking appeal to it. What I mean by that is, it doesn’t jump to the scares so quickly making it a very “on the edge of your seat” type experience throughout the movie, all the while paying tribute to more of the classic type scary films.

If you had one thing to point out to people to get them to see this movie above others out here, what might it be?

Feeling lucky ? Want to search any of my partnershops yourself for more, better results ?

The links below will take you just there!!!

Find Derek Cole at the amazons ...   amazon.com   amazon.co.uk   amazon.de Looking for imports ? Find Derek Cole here ...   eThaiCD.com Your shop for all things Thai Something naughty ? (Must be over 18 to go there !)   find Derek Cole at adultvideouniverse.com

Well I’m not all that sure what to say but if they would like a good scare then this movie will definitely make you jump and it's an all around good story.

What would you say is the strongest point of the film?

It has a much bigger ending than what you would expect from a low budget horror film.

When directing do you prefer to take complete charge or do you allow a lot of wiggle room for actors to add in what they want?

I actually like giving wiggle room to the actors because they might want to give a reaction that in your head doesn’t seem necessary but then they do it and on camera it's amazing. Again, Revenant was done on our own time and own dime, so wiggle room is fun to experiment with when you have that time.

Future projects?

We have a few new features, shorts and trailers coming out soon. Please visit us at www.2manproduction.com to check out our future projects.

Thanks for the interview!

© by Dale Pierce

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