You are currently putting the finishing touches on your debut
feature film, The Bunker. In a few words, what's the film about?
The Bunker's about
the teenage daughter of a New York City congressman, sort of a wild-child,
who's disenchanted by the scrutiny that being part of a political family
entails, so she runs away on the night he announces his bid for
reelection. The congressman, knowing that a scandal could destroy his
career and ambitions, hires some unsavory types to comb the streets and
find her before the press gets wind of the story. What nobody's aware of,
however, is that a sadistic killer has kidnapped the girl and secreted her
in his underground bunker, where she's made aware of how long she has left
to live. In some ways, the movie's a classic thriller, in others a gritty
horror film. I like the way the two genres play off one another.
What
were the main inspirations for making the film? In 2003 I'd had a short
story of mine, Chance Meeting, from the anthology Stuff Outa My Head,
optioned for a TV pilot. I wound up getting the job to write the
screenplay, and the pilot was produced, although not picked up for
broadcast. The producers released it to the foreign market (Asia), as a
direct-to-DVD release, and it did quite well. Being 1-for-1 in terms of
screenplay writing, I started to write another, although not with the
intention of directing it. That came about purely by happenstance. But
given that most of my previous writing had been in the comic book field
and world of short-story fiction - neither market being particularly
lucrative - the appeal of reaching the kind of audience you can with TV
and film was really the driving factor behind my shift in focus. I really
enjoyed the filmmaking process from the writer's standpoint, so it was
quite easy to find the inspiration to try and do it again. How
would you describe your approach to the horror aspects of your movie?
I try and take a lot of the
traditional aspects, like what an audience is going to expect, and apply
non-traditional means to achieve my goals. When I began making The Bunker,
the torture-porn trend was in full swing. It would have been very easy to
take my female protagonist, toss her into a hellhole, and have my main
bad-guy (Terry M. West), abuse her for 90 minutes and call it a movie.
Throw in some gory effects, some creative violence, and bingo, it would
have been done. But that really didn't appeal to me, despite that sort
of movie doing well financially. So, I reached points in my film where the
audience had an expectation of what was going to happen, and I tried to
surprise them. Sometimes, the film delivers precisely what's expected,
and others, there's something the audience didn't see coming. I think
that's why straddling the line between thriller and straight-up horror
film set my film apart from other movies that have similar themes.
Imprisoned, virtually-helpless characters, a limited cast, a
claustrophobic location, etc. It could easily have made for a
production-line kind of fast-food movie. I wanted to do something more
than that, so I took the approach that people might expect to see A and B
and C, and I would be happy to lead them to the edge of all three, but
then give them W, Q and Y instead. Given the response from reviewers and
distributors, I made the right decision there.
Terry M. West |
A
few words about your principal cast?
I wrote the kidnapper's
role for Terry M. West, a fellow director who'd also been in front of
the camera in Alan Rowe Kelly's The Blood Shed [Alan
Rowe Kelly interview - click here], because I'd known him
forever, going back to my days in comics. The decision surprised some
folks, because while Terry may look like Mr. Bad-Ass (one of the reasons I
chose him), if you know him, he's just the greatest guy. But I knew he
had the potential to take over a scene, and to be larger-than-life. He has
an intensity about him when he's in character that could make any
co-star cringe. I'm grateful he took the role, because he brought
something to the film you can only hope to get lucky enough to find when
putting out a general casting call. He delivered in every take, of every
shot, in every scene.
Saskia Gonzalez |
As for
my female lead, Saskia Gonzalez, I had to go with my gut. We held an open
casting, and she impressed me the most. The only reason I was a bit
reluctant to give her the role was because we were looking for a very
slight, very young-looking girl who could pass for 16. Saskia was a little
curvier than the girl we were initially going to go with, but in the end
we went with her, and she surpassed everything I'd hoped for in an
actress with very little experience. When this film is released, she's
going to turn heads, and not just because she spends a good portion of the
film in her underwear. You are blind, and
I bet you have been asked this a lot and I know this is a kind of stupid
question, but I still feel obliged to ask: how can a blind man direct a
movie?
Not stupid at all. It's
everybody's first question, really. It'd be mine, too, if I weren't
the subject. The thing is, I always had a visual sense. It's what helped
me create successful comic books - I still thumbnail my own comic stories
with cardboard templates and stick figures - and it's why I think I
moved so easily into screenwriting. The key for me is, methodical planning
and paying attention to details. I built the primary sets for the film
myself. I knew every square inch of them. I built the lighting rig and the
system for hanging our mics. I could walk every character through a scene,
communicate to them what I wanted, and then, like any director, sit back
and let them run with it. True, I did have a set of trustworthy eyes
watching the monitor, but only in case something went wrong. If I have a
character deliver a line conveying a threat, I don't expect him or her
to be grinning or making goofy faces. No actor wants to be embarrassed, so
it's not like I need to rely on somebody else to convey the facial
expressions in any given scene. That's not directing, that's
micro-managing. For that I could do an animated film and just tell artists
exactly what to draw. I focus on the performances after going over the
blocking and emotion of a scene in walk-thrus, and then I let them do what
I cast them to do...make me look good! How much influence did you have on the visual
aspects of your film despite your blindness?
Almost 100%, believe it or
not. For principal photography, if it wasn't a scene being shot in a set
I built, it was in a room in my house I set-dressed. If it was an exterior
location, it was a place I had scouted or knew from the past, when I still
had my eyesight. When I went over things with my director of photography,
I'd rattle off film examples so we'd all be on the same page, such as,
“Okay, we have a three-shot here. I want the characters positioned like
Brody, Hooper and Quint from the Indianapolis scene in Jaws, and when the
camera angle shifts to focus on this character, I want to slow-creep in
until we go from a wide to 3/4 medium shot.” I'd do that, and my DP
knew what I wanted, my cast knew their blocking and positions, my lighting
guys knew where to set up the equipment, etc. I wanted the film to have an
overriding, claustrophobic quality, and that meant I had to plan out how
that would be best conveyed visually and in terms of physical space. You
can't get more hands-on than that.
Joe Monks, Carmen Rose Socorro |
What can
you tell us about your crew? Believers. The people who
signed on for this were convinced from the get-go that it could actually
be done. I had some people show up for the first crew meeting who never
showed up again. But everybody else? Carmen Socorro, my script supervisor,
was tenacious about details. Audra Pezza, who came to the project with
almost no experience, developed into my right-hand-man (so to speak),
handling propmaster duties, learning script supervisor details from
Carmen, organizing our DV tapes and labeling everything so we could find
it later, I mean, she just became a jack-of-all-trades in a very short
period of time.
Vallo Lleo, Brian Mulder, Joe Monks |
Vallo (Salvador Lleo de la Fe),
my DP? Absolute gold. He showed up last-sec, because our original DP had
to bow out at the last minute due to a family illness. He flew in from Los
Angeles, spent two days before we began shooting getting himself
acclimated and comfortable with the script, and when we geared up on Day 1
of shooting, he was as familiar with the movie as anybody who'd been on
board since the beginning. There's too many people who pitched in to go
through individually, but despite some hassles, I had a tight crew that
gelled on the first day of shooting and stuck together no matter what went
wrong. Without them, this thing would've been a cinematic Hindenburg. Making
The Bunker was
pretty much plagued by delays. What can you tell us about the lengthy
process to get your film finished? Yeah, that. It can pretty
much be summed up in two words: Hart Fisher. The Bunker
wasn't finished
in 2006 as planned largely due to problems with Hart. Almost from the very
beginning, working with him on this project was a mistake. He wasn't
even supposed to be involved with the film, to be honest. I'd hired an
editor, Vince Azgurdsen (sorry, Vince, I know I am butchering that
spelling!), and if he hadn't gotten an out-of-state job offer right
before we began filming, I think The Bunker
would never have been
sidelined. Unfortunately, Hart, who I'd been friends with for 14 years
at that time, offered to do the rough cut, and it seemed an easy decision
to make. He had the same equipment, he could assemble the scenes based on
my script supervisor's notes and my screenplay (which was as detailed as
an Alan Moore comic book script). No brainer, right? But Hart had the
footage for nearly a year before his wife was diagnosed with cancer, and
all he managed to get cut was four scenes and half the framing sequence.
This is why I'm partly to blame for the ongoing delays. Misguided
loyalty. I should have replaced Hart in the spring with a qualified editor
who could actually get the work done, instead of relying on a friend to
come through on the work he promised. I'm the one to blame for that. I
gave him even more time after his wife got ill, and only in 2007 did I
finally tell him I was bringing in somebody else. I did that because I
didn't want him having the weight of my film on his shoulders while his
wife was undergoing cancer treatment in Japan, because I knew he had too
much on his plate. But prying him out of the movie wasn't easy, and so
when Liz Smith was hired, we started fresh. We dumped everything. Hart's
footage - which I wasn't happy with to begin with - was discarded, and
we started from scratch. By mid-summer, we had a festival cut ready to
screen, which received great reviews at the Florida SuperCon, and we were
invited to screen at the Halloweenapalooza Film Festival. Again, great
reviews, critical praise, and screeners began going out to distributors.
The film generated interest among the likes of Grindstone
Entertainment, Galloping Films, Barnholtz Entertainment, Shoreline
Pictures, and others.
What everybody wanted, though, was the locked-down cut. A version with the
final film look and stereo sound design, which I'd been promised for
months. By late 2008, though, I still had nothing to show for all my faith
in Hart. On top of that, he refused to stop mucking around with my edit.
He kept reintroducing shots that I had cut and continuity errors left and
right. I finally had to get a lawyer involved and basically threw him off
the project in October of '08. Three years, and he couldn't complete a
rough cut, couldn't get me the paperwork for the bands I wanted to use
for song licensing purposes, couldn't finish even a basic stereo sound
mix and actually tried to cover some bad audio hum we had in one scene
with the sound of chirping crickets. You know, I'm no sound engineer,
but I did live in New York for the better part of 30+ years and guess
what? You don't find many crickets on the streets of Lower Manhattan in
the commercial district. Somehow, Hart thought loud chirping crickets was
a viable solution, though. When I heard that, I couldn't believe it. He
was claiming to have a sound pro on board to work on the sound design and
this was what they came up with instead of simply suggesting an ADR
session? It was a totally Ed Wood kind of solution, like so much other
crap he tried to push on me, and that was one of the final straws. There
were a lot of other issues, to be sure, including him putting his
director's reel on a The Bunker
screener. He was supposed to send me a DVD
with the film and my promo reel and clips on it, because he had my drive
with the latest edit. This was going in a media kit that was being
hand-delivered to a booking agent with the David Letterman show. The DVD
showed up the day my contact with the booking agent was supposed to fly to
New York, but her flight got pushed up, so I actually got to check the
disc, which I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. I don't believe
that was an accident. Why was his director's reel, and the opening
credits for his TV show on my film? He had no answer. Why did he include a
music video he directed, too, and leave off my promo reel entirely? Again,
no answer. But by then I'd already decided. Hart was too insecure to
accept any criticism of his edit as valid - despite me having a number of
other filmmakers helping me screen the cut - and I could no longer ignore
the fact that Hart was impeding my progress, not just slowing me up. You
know the old saying, about how a difficult task seems to be two steps
forward and one step back? Working with Hart Fisher was more like one step
forward and two steps back. The longer he was involved with the film, the
further it seemed to get from being release-ready. At some point, I had to
face the fact that it felt intentional. This went beyond mistakes and
differences of opinion about the film look or sound design or my
preference of which cut to use. This began to feel like outright sabotage,
and when I got that edit with the crickets and slo-mo effects put in
for no reason and bad dialogue re-introduced that I'd cut out not once
or twice but several times? That convinced me. Only later did I find out,
via a post on his blog, that he was still talking to people about The Bunker, and that he laughed off an offer from a distributor. Again,
no matter what Hart did to screw things up along the way, it was my
decision not to dump him earlier. I should have, it would have saved me a
thousand headaches and I'd be working on an entirely different film
right now. Your/your film's
website, MySpace, Facebook, whatever else?
The film's official web site is:
http://www.sightunseenpictures.com
And I can be found on MySpace at:
http://www.myspace.com/joemonks1
And, we're Facebooking too, at:
http://www.facebook.com/JosephMMonks
The 64 Dollar
question of course: When and where with The Bunker
be released
(tentatively)?
We've received an offer
for international distribution from Galloping Films, an Aussie-based
distributor which covers a number of foreign territories. They've been
very supportive despite the delays, and I think we're looking at Down
Under sometime by Summer 2011 at the latest. As for North American
release, there are still a good number of distributors who have expressed
interest, but it'll depend on the final cut and the new post-production
efforts we're making. I'd like to see the film out by next summer, but
it'll all depend on the release schedule a distributor sets. The Bunker was your debut film as
a director but not your first expedition into the movie world, you have
also written the short Flowers on the Razorwire back in 2004. What
can you tell us about that one?
Let's see, what can I tell
you? Well, I wish I'd gotten paid. Somebody got a production check from
the foreign producers, and while I retain the copyright on the short story
and the screenplay, I wasn't paid for it. So, while the process itself
was fun, and I enjoyed being a part of it, I'm only dealing with
reliable, honest filmmakers now. I understand the short is scheduled to
run in Europe sometime in 2010 or 2011, but I've yet to see a contract,
and since my company co-produced the film and my corporate logo is on it
and I don't believe the thing can actually be sold anywhere without my
consent, I'm waiting to see how that plays out. I don't expect to see
any money coming from my work from the show's producer, though, let's
put it that way. In Flowers on the
Razorwire, you also have a small role, actually playing a guy with
eyesight. Now how did that come about? Totally by accident.
Originally, I wrote in this small part to build up some tension in the
story by having a blind man, tapping a cane, approaching from off-camera,
which was disconcerting to the lead actress, who was in an apartment
building basement, all by herself. The unusual sound of the tapping, to
her, was essentially coming from nowhere, until the blind man was
revealed. Hart thought having me as the blind guy would be fun, and I
agreed, but I was unavailable during his shoot dates, so he replaced me
with quite possibly the worst blind-acting man ever to appear on film.
Totally unconvincing, which was kind of surprising, since Hart had seen me
operate a cane and should have been able to at least coach the guy to be a
little bit believable. But anyway, I couldn't be that guy, so when we
decided to add the Flowers on the Razorwire wraparound, based on one of
his comic book characters, he asked me to play the protagonist, a true
crime writer who gets himself stuck in a bad fix. Trust me - I am no
actor. But I hit my lines and all my cues and my prop work on-camera was
good, and it was nice to get decent reviews. Being in front of the camera
isn't something I aspire to. A walk-on or cameo in The Bunker
was all
I'd envisioned for myself, but I wound up replacing an actor who
couldn't make it in one scene, which again required delivering a bunch
of lines. I hope this is a trend that does not continue.
Besides making
movies, you are also a writer, mainly for comicbooks. What can you tell us
about your writing career? Professionally, I've been
writing since 1989, when I co-created the underground horror comic Cry For
Dawn. That led to a number of other opportunities, from writing articles
for some comic book based magazines to doing feature interviews, short
stories for other horror publishers, that sort of thing. I've also
written music reviews and film reviews for a number of publications, and a
lot of adult fiction for men's magazines. The adult stuff is fun, and
pays the bills a lot better than freelance short-story horror fiction
does, but I still continue to return to the genre. In 2002, shortly after
I went blind, I released my first paperback collection of horror stories,
Stuff Outa My Head, which sold quite well for us and got a favorable
reception from critics. Bernie Wrightson, who frequently collaborates with
Stephen King - at the time he was coming off King's Dark Tower: Wolves
of the Callah - provided the illustrations. I was quite happy with the way
that turned out. Right now, I have two film properties sitting with the
film production company Sometimes, Dead is Better Films out of New York,
so we're hoping to get funding finalized for one or both of them
sometime in 2011.
Comicbook artists you have
worked with? Oh, man, a whole lot. I've
been fortunate enough to work with Bernie (Wrightson) on several projects,
and Basil Gogos was a real treat. He and Ken Kelly and William Stout
provided covers for the Zacherley's Midnite Terrors comic we did, which
was a blast. Ken Meyer's always a pleasure to work with, as is Frank
Forte. I have a story that's going to be coming out in the near future
that Frank illustrated for his Asylum of Horrors title, and we go back a
long way.
Mike Koneful and Jeff Salisbury are two of the most talented
guys I've thrown down with the past couple of years.
And I'm currently
working with artist Shane Smith on an adaptation of my short story Walkers, from the
Roadkills chapbook released in 2004 for the International Festival of Fantasy & Terror
in Mexico City. I'm also
sitting on an unpublished (but not for long) story illustrated by Harry
Roland, which I can't wait to see the light of day. I can't name 'em
all here, but I'd gladly work with any of those guys again if the
opportunity presented itself. How did you get involved in the comicbook
world in the first place? I'd gone to grammar and
high school with Joe Linsner, and we'd become great friends over the
years, so we decided, well, I wrote, and he drew...why not do a comic
book? The black and white indie boom was just beginning, and we came in at
just the right time. Though the relationship didn't survive the business
aspect of things, we produced some great books, and that's how I sort of
fell into the industry. Your main inspirations as a
writer?
It's funny. I can find
inspiration just about anywhere. A single line from an otherwise
forgettable short story. A story from the newspaper or nightly news. A
song lyric. After I released the Gardens of the Dead portfolio with Bernie
Wrightson in 2004, I heard a lyric from the band Assemblage 23 (who I
highly recommend people go see if they get the chance). The line is from
the song Disappoint, and goes, “What pushed you down, into the soil's
embrace.” I was sitting there in my office one night, listening to the
goth/darkwave college radio program, and I heard that line, and that
night, I wound up writing four of the stories for the follow-up portfolio
project, which will be out in 2011, with artwork by artist Rob Granito.
The title and overriding concept - The Soil's Embrace - was perfect for
the project, which is a series of zombie stories with large-format
illustrations. Whenever
you're having fun or enjoying something or something engages or
challenges you, I think it's easy for the brain to start sending sparks
flying. I tend to find inspiration in out of the way places as often
as not. Having quite a career as a writer, what made you
go into movies?
I'd always thought that
writing a screenplay would be something I tackled, but wasn't working on
it actively at the time the Flowers on the Razorwire project came up. I
think I would have gotten around to it eventually, but when my short story
got optioned and they asked me to take a shot at writing the script - no
easy task turning an incident that takes place in about 7 minutes into a
half hour television pilot - that was really what opened the door. Once
I'd seen what somebody else did with that short, botching the continuity
and cutting corners and kind of settling for less, I decided I didn't
want that to happen again. At the time, I didn't necessarily know that
my very next screenplay would be the one that put me into the director's
chair, but I did know that somewhere down the road I'd get behind the
camera. Your work as a writer as well as
director is mostly of the horror variety. Why is that, and do you consider
yourself a horror fan?
I'm a huge horror fan, and
that love of the genre is why I stick primarily to it. Besides Chance
Meeting (the TV pilot), and The Bunker, I've got 5 completed screenplays
that are in the horror genre, and one that's more what I'd classify as
urban fantasy. It has elements of horror in it, but I wouldn't call it a
horror film. In fact, safe for one aspect, it would almost be a standard
drama in a gritty urban setting. I'm really proud of the way that
screenplay turned out, and once The Bunker
is wrapped, it's a film I'm
considering producing myself, with some investors, in South Florida. I
think it'd show well at festivals and appeal to an entirely different
audience than I've cultivated with my comic book work and first two film
projects. I've also written a dark mystery novel, which I'm currently
agent-shopping with, and I think it's one of the best things I've ever
written. I could definitely see it on a shelf alongside some of my
favorite writers in the genre, like Sandford and Connelly. We'll see
what happens. I do stray out of my usual comfort zone from time to time,
and I'll probably be doing it again in 2011 when I start working on my
first fantasy novel. It's something I've been spending time outlining,
which I'll be writing for my young nephews. That, I think, could prove
to be the most difficult project I've taken on to date. Perhaps more so
than directing a film I can't see. Directors who inspire you?
Obviously, I haven't
really done a lot of movie watching the past eight years. So my frame of
reference tends to go back a bit farther, and even then, only to certain
films. I mean, don't get me wrong, Spielberg's done a bunch of great
stuff. But ET? Yeah, it's cute, and well done and all that, but I
wouldn't sit through it again given the choice, while Jaws? If it's
playing on cable? I'll find myself getting sucked in for the thousandth
time no matter where I come in.
The original Texas
Chainsaw? To me, still
the best thing Tobe Hooper's ever done.
Carpenter's The Thing? I'd
still say it's the pinnacle of his career.
Then, I look at somebody like
Alan Rowe Kelly [Alan Rowe Kelly
interview - click here], who cracks me up whether he's in a short or
directing/starring in a film like The Blood Shed, and I know from talking
to him that he's doing this on a real low budget, and still producing
really good work, and that's inspiring.
Marcus Koch [Marcus Koch interview -
click here], what he did with
100 Tears for the money he spent?
The guys behind Zombies! Zombies!
Zombies!? That kind of stuff is inspiring because you know none of us have
the budgets that a movie
backed by Lionsgate does, so when they come out and they're that
impressive, it's like a challenge. You get fired up because you've not
only seen a good flick, you know these guys are in the same trenches you
are, fighting the same battles, and when a movie like 100 Tears gets a
distribution deal, it's like a battalion of soldiers in the same army
takes a hill. You might not have been involved in that battle, but you
feel a kinship because it's the same war, and you're on the same side.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that the bigger-name directors can't be
inspiring, plenty of them are. But I'm not quite as inspired when a
studio puts up thirty mil or so and a movie like Zombieland actually turns
out good, as I am when I come across a flick like Tears or Zombies! and
they deliver the goods.
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Your
favourite films? Well, I mentioned Jaws,
that's one of my all-timers. The Thing, Casablanca (which I put ahead of
Citizen Kane any day), The Seven Samurai, Romero's Day of the Dead is a
guilty pleasure, and I'm a huge fan of the 1954 film Them! I've told
people before that if I ever find myself in the position of being asked to
do a remake, that's the only film I'd want to do. I think that film is
ripe for a modernization, and I once approached Time Warner about
licensing the property for a comic book mini-series. Unfortunately, what
TW wanted a small-time indie publisher to do in order to secure rights to
a property that was doing absolutely nothing was prohibitive, but I'd
love to take a couple of the CGI guys from Starship Trooppers, and bring
in some top-notch practical guys, and go wild out in the desert with giant
ants. I'd stay faithful to the original concept, but my version would be
a lot more violent and the ants would play a much bigger part. That would
be a hell of a lot of fun. And of course, movies you really
deplored? I wish I could get back the
two hours I wasted on Salo: 120 Days of Sodom. I was so flabbergasted that
somebody at Criterion got huckstered into giving that a Criterion
Collection release. I think that was on laserdisc, as I was a big
laserdisc guy when they first came out. I went to college, I know all
about fascism and all that, but Salo is nothing more than Passolini
disguising his personal fetishes and distasteful exploitation of children
as art, and somehow, he got enough critics to buy into that. Utter waste
of time and celluloid. It pains me to think, we lost London After
Midnight, but this piece of garbage survived. I also can't understand
how Joel Schumacher keeps getting jobs. I mean, after the Batman films? I
know he's got A Time to Kill, but come on, after that last Batman-flick,
who would give him $40 million to do, well, anything? I'm also very down
on sequels. I know that's an easy position to take, because more often
than not they're not retaining the creator(s) who made the original
flick good, or even great. But really, tell me...who green-lit Jason Takes
Manhattan? Or the fourth Hellraiser? And
Blair Witch 2? I understand,
there's greed and the almighty Dollar has final say, but why not put in
the minimal effort required to keep the fans happy and provide a decent
story concept and screenplay? Bring in a guy with some writing chops,
who's a fan of the original film, and let him do his thing. Don't just
keep trying to come up with something crazier and crazier each time out.
People love character-driven series. They'll stick with you for a while
just because the horror audience is the most loyal fan base there is. But
when you think taking Jason Voorhees into space is going to appeal to the
faithful, or you simply trot out a handful of new Cenobites for each
subsequent Hellraiser flick...you're just disappointing fans. They know
when they're being rooked, so why not just take a little more time and
do something that's not just steering the series or property in an
entirely different direction. The Friday the 13th audience doesn't need
Jason in space or underwater or in another dimension, they simply need him
to have a viable reason to be on the move and carrying a machete and
wearing the mask. You create some compelling characters, and cannon-fodder
supporting roles the fans can care a little bit about? Then you'll have
something that'll satisfy fans as opposed to turning them off or making
your franchise a joke. Even a little story would go a long way when it
comes to our faves, and yet, sequels continue to be awful and
poorly-received. You'd think the desire for a good sequel and the
built-in love of long-established characters would lead to a better end
product. Think: James
Bond. (not that they're all great by any means,
but they're still acceptable if you toss out Moonraker). You don't see
1 star James
Bond films getting made. The folks who stand to make a ton of
money off better sequels should take note. Anything else you are dying to mention and I
have merely forgotten to ask?
The Bunker, despite it's having
a distribution offer, still needs to wrap up some issues in post. Sight
Unseen Pictures has launched a project on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter.com, so if readers feel like giving us a hand towards our
goal, the project will be open until September 30th. I've provided the
producers with a lot of signed merchandise, everything from comic books to
portfolios to paperbacks and other hard-to-find and limited edition
goodies. You can check it out here:
http://bit.ly/b0iNJh
After that, my personal site
http://www.joemonks.com will
put the store back online, so folks who come across this interview later
on can check out my work that way. There, my self-serving marketing for
the day has been done. Beyond that, I'm very happy to respond to
comments and questions from fans or those who are simply curious. You can
reach me via e-mail through any of my sites. I answer all my own e-mail,
and even if it takes me a bit, I will get back to you, so feel free to get
in touch. Thanks for the interview!
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