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Your new movie DinoGator
- in a few words, what's it about?
A gigantic, mutated reptile - half dinosaur, half alligator - gets loose
in the swamps, and the murky waters suddenly become an all-you-can-eat
human buffet. Now how did the project fall together in the first place?
Like all Hollywood projects, DinoGator
started haphazardly - I'd made a
movie on location entitled Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre. It was
lensed in Marianna, Florida; and while down there amongst the caves,
swamps, lakes and backwoods areas, I thought this would be a great place
to shoot a monster flick. It has everything you need to make something
cool in the Sci-Fi
Channel monster mode. When I got back to L.A., I
started working on ideas and hired a writer friend to start penning the
script. It was all based on photographs I showed him of the particular
locations. With DinoGator
being a creature feature, and not exactly your first one, is this a genre
at all dear to you, and some of your genre favourites? Some of my favorite creature features are the ones I first saw growing
up on New York television: Harryhausen's The
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Honda's Godzilla, Bert I. Gordon's
Beginning of the End. If it
had something 'giant' in it, I usually watched it - like whenever it was
on. Recently, I enjoyed Godzilla Minus One - as it was a beautiful
'throwback' to the films of my childhood. What
can you tell us about DinoGator's
writer Blake Miller, and what was your collaboration like? Blake Miller is a fictitious name for a good friend who has
collaborated with me on a number of recent projects for the Sci-Fi
Channel. I give him story points, locations and characters and he writes
up a storm. He's very talented but wants to remain in the shadows for
these kinds of projects.
Do
talk about DinoGator's
approach to the horror genre! DinoGator
is a giant monster who eats people... so for me, it's the
living characters who matter most. They're what make you enjoy the movie.
And it's always a plus when three of them are all such hotties. As usual,
if you know my other films at all, I tend to go for humor, as it endears
the audience to the people emoting on screen. So I always go for a laugh
or an 'in-joke' to evoke sympathy for my potential victims. It's a trick that Roger Corman
[Roger Corman bio - click
here] taught me, and it always somehow works.
A few words about your
overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
As far as directing is concerned, I have a decent work ethic. I get up
early and work hard all day to make the film look more expensive than its
usually meager budget. I populate the scenes with people I know will bring
something more than monster-movie-acting to their roles. So when they fall
into jeopardy, the viewers are with them 100 percent.
What can you tell us about DinoGator's
cast, and why exactly these people?
I've made five movies with Mike Madsen. Helluva guy. If he likes ya,
he'll give you the world. But if you cross him, your world may be
instantly over. I really enjoy what he comes up with on set. I purposely
gave him a gay son (Bryan Clark) in DinoGator
to see his response. And he
didn't let me down.
Now get this, before I left for Florida, I chose three actresses to
play the swamp vixens. Only one showed up - Grace West, the blonde. The
other two (who will and should remain nameless) failed to get on the plane
just two days before filming commenced. They must have talked with each
other and convinced themselves they were headed off to be eaten by gators
in a murky quicksand swamp. I was in a terrible bind, so I reached out to
an actress friend of mine, Lauren Parkinson, who jumped on the next flight
out. She plays the brunette of the trio.
The redhead was a real discovery. Savannah Goldsmith was a model at a
nearby Mississippi agency. She had never done any acting or been near a
movie set, but she was a natural in front of the camera. The movie-gods
had smiled down and provided me with a shockingly sexy cast as the clocked
ticked down to production start. Do talk about the
shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere? We had a lot of fun making the movie in Marianna. The house pictured in
the flick is where all the actors and I were housed during the shooting.
The crew hung out nearby in three adjoining trailers. Madsen stayed in
town at a hotel but spent a lot of time hanging with us at the beautiful
location. And yes, we occasionally had a cold brewski after I called wrap
for the day. You gotta remember, it was steamy hot down there in theSouth. Anything you
can tell us about audience and critical reception of DinoGator?
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I've shown the film only twice. Once at a drive-in, so I couldn't
really gauge the audience reaction - although some people came up to me
after the show saying how much they enjoyed it. The other showing was at a
local screening room here in Hollywood - just to check the color values.
The guy from the lab asked me who the blonde was and why didn't I bring
her along, so I guess he was paying attention. Any future projects you'd like to share?
Next for me is a remake of an old 1950s pot-boiler, Cat
Women of the Moon. Sexy girls, giant spiders and retro space suits. Now that should be
fun! Your/your movie's website, social media, whatever else?
You can find the film here now for pre-order and after 1/28/25 on US cable providers and most transactional VOD platforms:
iTunes/Apple TV (US, CA, UK): Shortened link: https://bit.ly/4gYIZRB
Vudu/Fandango at Home (US): Shortened link: https://bit.ly/3VZCvKg
Vimeo (US, CA, UK): Shortened link: https://bit.ly/3ZWGdFP
Thanks for the interview!
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