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Your new movie Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers - in a few words, what is it about?
Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers
is about Hawk, a paranoid loser night
security guard, and his journey to save the small town of Santa Muerte,
CA, USA… from vampires, and finally get accepted for the hero he knows he
is. Along the way, he ropes his best friend Rev, a peaceful
groundskeeper, Theo, a selfloathing writer, and a poly-amorous mis-identified goth band into the process. From there, things get a lot
more complicated, ridiculous, bloody and of course… HEROIC!
What
were your sources of inspiration when writing Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers? My inspirations were a strange blend: 1) Hitchcock
- all of it. It’s in
everything I write. I can’t get away from it :)
2) Revisionist westerns
like A Fistful of
Dollars, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Wild Bunch,
Django… 3) 80s heroic
action
movies - Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Cobra, Big
Trouble in Little China… 4) 80s campy horror - Evil
Dead, An
American Werewolf in London, Maniac Cop, Gremlins, Tremors... 5) 80s adventure
- Lost Boys, Goonies, Beverly Hills Cop… Do talk about
Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers' approach to both horror and comedy!
The approach to comedy was my favorite blend,
grounded but strange, thrown-away but over-the-top: 1) keep dialogue fast,
thrown-away, combative and very Shane Black with lots of zingers and banter
grounded in character, so the characters all sound real, but slightly off.
Have their bigger moments come from character and their strong point of
view to break it up. 2) Keep the physical comedy dumb, gross and over-the-top as a counterpoint to the nice banter, to break it up and add more
surprises for the audience. Basically lure them in and hit them on the
head :) The approach to horror was pretty much the same: 1) Start with
some seemingly realistic stuff, make it visceral, so that it smelly real
enough for the audience to have real stakes when they’re watching, some
fear, some empathy. 2) Then very quickly throw it right over-the-top
into absurdity and turn it into comedy in the most fun/worst way possible
so you could get a 2 for 1 with the gore :) It’s always a surprise for
the audience to suddenly find themselves laughing at someone losing a
leg/head, etc. It’s fun!
Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers does feature its fair share of
gruesomeness - so why don't you talk about the bloody bits in your movie
for a bit, and how were they achieved?
The idea from
the very beginning with the gruesomeness was to always keep it a bit
scary, just enough to have it smell real, but then really make it more
fun, light and go to the absurd. We used a mix of practical - real fake
blood, body parts, etc - then supplemented with CGI blood for maximum
goriness and absurdity.
A few words about
your overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
My approach is to always over-prepare and
then be happily surprised if extra stuff happens. With this specific
story, I storyboarded the living daylights out of it. We were shooting 2
camera coverage and I wanted it to feel very specific and not thrown
together in the edit. I love center/side framing. I love the formalism of
the Japanese directors, Ozu and Kurosawa, who obviously inspired Wes
Anderson, Edgar Wright, and David Fincher. So with that in mind, I
wanted enough formalism and detachment to give it a snappy style and
accentuate the weirdness and comedy, but not so much to get in the way
of the humor or more importantly, the scarier stuff. So it was a
balance on all that. You
also play one of the leads in Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers - so do talk about your character for a
bit, and what did you draw upon to bring Hawk to life? And did you write
him with yourself in mind from the get-go? The inspiration for Hawk came from all the
toxically macho guys I grew up with that were also painfully fragile and
immature. They’re man-children with big ideas and bluster, but are still
just children. This tended to be a genre stereotype in eighties films. I
love it and it’s a great springboard to comedy. These guys just take
themselves sooooooo seriously and are sooooo tunnel-vision. It’s very
easy to make fun of them. If anything you have to pull it back or it just
becomes mean :) And I definitely wrote the character with myself in mind.
I did flirt occasionally with casting someone else, but at the end of the
day, I knew I could nail it more specifically, so I took one for the team
:)
What can you
tell us about the rest of your cast, and why exactly these people? Well,
Ari Schneider [Ari Schneider
interview - click here] who plays Rev is my brother-in-law, so we’ve been
working with each other in some capacity for years. He’s always in
everything I do as an actor and pitches in with everything from producing,
music, writing, general creative molding and even counseling when I’m
losing my damn mind. So… yeah. Then, the rest of the cast are all
folks I know personally, or I’ve worked with before, either through a
personal connection or the indie-comedy-improv scene in Los Angeles (Upright
Citizens Brigade or Groundlings). I basically cast folks I thought were
great talents, fun to work with and good people. Then I rewrote the script
a bit to fit each actor, so it really felt natural to them specifically.
It was important to me to have great actors who look like real people and
not ACTORS from the 90s, Baywatch style. I can’t stand that. It’s
so much funnier to me when I feel like I could know the character, like
they may live around the corner, so I always go for that in casting. I also
go for a very specific personality type that is a bit more easy-going and
adventurous, so we can have more fun on set and not walk on egg-shells :)
NO DIVAS! NO BRATS! A
few words about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere? I’d say the the on-set atmosphere was fun, but also
pretty
serious. Great actors, comedic ones specifically, tend to be very serious
about the comedy. Additionally, the shoot was quite challenging. We had a
tiny budget of 1 shoe-string and 3 hamburgers, one being vegan of course.
Naturally, we took locations that were donated, so scheduling was very
challenging and we even got shut down at some point before we could shoot
our ending. This forced me to re-write the location for the big ending
showdown - and lucky for everyone, it turned into a really nice
opportunity to do a couple rounds of pick-up shoots. Of course we were
shooting at night, it was freezing, especially with all the fake blood
spraying about. It got pretty sticky! So people got sick, Ari even missed
his stag party on the last round of pick-ups because he got so sick. It was
pretty nuts. But at the end of the day, I was amazed at everyone’s
dedication to the film and finishing it off. They obviously knew it was
something special and I really appreciate all their hard work and contributions to the film. They say it takes a village to make any film,
but with an indie film - it takes a village of damn warriors!!!
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The
$64-question of course, where can Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers be seen?
Right now we’re playing a nice blend of horror/genre film festivals and
normal ones as well. New Orleans Horror Fest and San Antonio
International
are next. You can buy a ticket and watch during the screening time from
anywhere as they’re all digital now. Distribution-wise, we should be
everywhere, on every service, possibly even a bunch of drive-ins by next
spring. You can always check https://www.hawkandrev.com
for where it’s playing.
It’s usually pretty up to date on the screenings available. Anything you
can tell us about audience and critical reception of Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers? Audiences have always loved
Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers. From the very first
test screenings in our living rooms all the way to the WORLD PREMIERE at
Dances With Films, and now into some of the amazing reviews we’re getting
- folks love this film. It’s a fun watch. It’s really heartfelt.
It’s got something for everyone without sacrificing its soul. It’s a
universal film that can be translated into any language and someone will
get it. That was always my goal. Be true to the film and make it fun! Any future projects
you'd like to share? Listen Carefully is the next film.
It’s already shot and is nearing the end of post-production. It’s
basically Jacob's Ladder for new parents. It’s darker and more
mind-bending than Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers, but is still a ton of campy/pulpy fun. I
play a new father, Andy, whose newborn baby gets kidnapped, and Ari [Ari
Schneider interview - click here] plays
the voice of the kidnapper that tortures Andy through a very cute
owl-shaped baby monitor. It’s really funny in a darkly humorous way,
like Funny Games or Goodnight
Mommy. It’s messed up in the best way and
hopefully we’ll be talking about it a lot next year. Obviously, I’d
like to shoot something new this fall, but Covid is making that next to
impossible and very scary, so - maybe something animated? As far as I know, you entered the
filmworld as an actor - so what made you want to become an actor, and did
you receive any formal training on the subject?
I
received a ton acting training from some of the best film acting teachers in
Hollywood. I was also part of multiple theater companies over the years and
most importantly, I did improv training for years at both Groundlings
and Upright Citizens Brigade. This really trained me to think on my feet
as both a performer and director. It trained me to think about logistics
and story and theme and then just jump right into character without fear.
It was the best thing I ever did! I recommend it to all actors. I did get
into UCLA on a theater scholarship, but I can’t sing or dance, so that
fell by the wayside pretty quick :) You
eventually branched out into writing, directing, producing and whatnot -
so what was the idea behind taking that step? And what do you enjoy most,
what could you do without?
Mostly I started writing because I wanted to perform my own stuff. And also
because nobody would cast me in anything good. Additionally, I was always
really into visual art growing up, so the process of directing was just
very natural to me. I started making shorts, all terrible of course, and
then some music videos and then webseries and then finally took the
plunge into features. It’s the ultimate challenge as a
director/writer/performer to do a feature. You have to build everything
and then wrap it up in roughly 90 minutes. You have to be very specific in
the form. I love it! It’s so challenging to me. Every part of the
process turns on my creative and my analytical side. It’s very
full-filling. The one thing I will always do - hopefully - is directing.
When it’s my own project, obviously I’ll play a role and write,
because why not, but in the real world of Hollywood, I think I offer
the most as a director. And I have no problem working on other folks’
scripts, working with other actors, etc, that’s easy stuff. So yeah,
all that. What can you tell us about
your filmwork prior to Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers, in whatever position? My first feature film was
The Truth - writer/director - a home invasion thriller starring John Heard, Brendan
Sexton III, Danny Baldwin. I was very green. It did well in distribution,
but didn’t really reflect my sense of humor and ultimately I’m not
happy with it, but that’s life. My second feature film was
Elijah's Ashes - co-writer/director/Kevin - a tiny indie comedy about homophobia
that played a ton of festivals and won a ton of awards. Ari [Ari
Schneider interview - click here] played the lead
role of Lawrence Shaw and I played the supporting role of Kevin, his
numbskull homophobic older half brother. I love this film creatively and
knew I was onto a new way of working once this was complete and out. My
third feature film was Repatriation - lead role of Chad/producer. This
little drama about stolen valor was my friend Doug Mueller’s directorial
debut. I helped him produce and played the lead role of Chad, a guy
pretending to be a soldier on his first night back in a small midwestern
town. It was a great learning experience. We shot in Dubuque, IA on location
for a few weeks with a small crew and fantastic actors from Chicago. It
gave me a lot of confidence to play a lead role and carry a film. My
fourth is Hawk
and Rev: Vampire Slayers. Fifth is Listen Carefully. Filmmakers,
writers, actors, whoever else who inspire you?
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I love
Kubrick
and his process. I aspire to that level of detail and specificity. I also
love Spielberg and the sense of wonder he brings to everything. I love British comedy, all of it. I also love the Japanese writer Murakami and
the surreal nature of his relationships. I also love really nerdy science
stuff like physics and neuro-psych stuff. I’m basically an information
junkie. It helps me build the worlds :) Your
favourite movies? The
Shining, 8 1/2,
Magnificent Seven (OG), Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Goonies,
Jaws, Alien,
Manhunter, Bill and Teds, Brazil, all Monty
Python. ... and of course, films you really
deplore? I hate really pretentious dramas
that try to be deep and artsy - barf, gimme a break. There are too many
to name :) Your/your movie's website, social media,
whatever else? Website:
https://www.hawkandrev.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/HawkandRev
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/hawkandrev
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/HawkandRev
IMDb:
https://www.imdb.com/tt3425300/
Anything else you're dying to mention and
I have merely forgotten to ask? I’m an immigrant from
Zimbabwe, trying to live the American dream. I’m an example of why we
need to let new folks in, to keep the voices and opinions and stories
diverse and rich. So there :) Thanks! Thanks for the
interview!
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