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Your segment Bigfoot in Love
of the anthology A Stab at
Love - in a few words, what's it about?
It is about a domestic couple, the Lemmings, who don't like each other
very much. They do a nature survival podcast that is marked by
their personal competitiveness, which causes their followers to abandon
them in droves. One day, while surveying the woods, they come across
Bigfoot and his mate, who are also in domestic turmoil - they are
fighting to the death. He kills his mate in the fracas. The few
followers who still follow the show think they faked the encounter to up
their ratings, and they also start abandoning the podcast. Later
the Lemmings return and try to re-locate the creature to save their
show. Bigfoot finds them, but they are too incompetent to know it. He
follows them and eventually he tries to demonstrate his love for Mrs.
Lemming with a mating dance. It doesn't go well for either the Lemmings
or the would-be union with Bigfoot. Blunt
question, why Bigfoot?
Is that a cryptid that personally fascinates you, and some of your
favourite Bigfoot-movies?
I became involved in the project when Tonjia Atomic [Tonjia
Atomic interview - click here], who put the project
together, asked me if I would do a segment, involving love and monsters,
complete with a tie-in dating video. I was at the time writing a script
called Bigfoot in Love
as a tie-in to another of my films, Dr. Jekyll in Love. It was to be a more serious piece until I found a feature on
YouTube that was so similar in storyline that I abandoned it. So I
adapted the idea to a comical short for Tonjia's project. I have no
actual fascination with Bigfoot, nor do I believe it exists. As far as
good Bigfoot
movies - that is difficult as most are so bad. But Bobcat
Goldthwait's Willow Creek
is a genuinely suspenseful found footage film in which Bigfoot
is never shown, but his prescience is felt under the
skin. Hammer's
The Abominable Snowman is also a very good, creepy
thriller in which the cryptid is also barely glimpsed. (Other)
sources of inspiration when writing Bigfoot in Love? None that I can think of. Sometimes stories just materialize in
my head and I really don't know where they came from. Bigfoot
is a popular mascot for the local college sports teams, so he is invoked a
lot in the Pacific Northwest where I live. That probably had something
to do with its being in my creative subconscious. What
can you tell us about Bigfoot in Love's
approach to horror? It was intended to be comical so I didn't think much about
"horror" making it, except that I love monsters and monster
movies. It has zero suspense or atmosphere that you try to exploit in a
horror story. Though it does have some unexpected gore. But mostly I was
after laughs, not scares. At least to me, Bigfoot in Love
is also pretty funny - would you at all agree, and if so, what can you
tell us about the film's brand of comedy?
As stated above, it was intended as a comedy. Its brand of humor
is silly and intentionally dumb. The real fools in the story though are
the Lemmings, not the creature, who outsmarts them totally until the
end. In the end, like so many of us, Bigfoot loses his intellectual
advantage when he falls for a pretty face. Do talk about
your movie's Bigfoot-suits
for a bit, and how much of a say did you have in its design?
I came up with the suits myself. I had often thought of using
gilly suits - those camouflage suits hunters wear to look like
shrubbery. I bought the suits online as well as some decent
looking ape feet and hands and prosthetics. The make up was applied by
Amy Calkins, a local FX person. I was a tad upset when she cut the
facial prosthetics into pieces to make them fit the actor's faces more
tightly. The edge of the so-called appliances were far too thick to
hide the seams. I'd have rather they were left in one piece even though
the fit may not have been perfect. But it was all such a goofy project
that maybe the cheesiness of the make-up is part of the fun - let's hope. A
few words about your overall directorial approach to your story at hand? I didn't invest much money in it so we had to shoot fast. It was
all done in one day at Amy's wooded property in Elk, Washington. So I
didn't have time to get everything perfect. So we had fun. It was a cast
and crew of people I like very much, and we always have a good time
making a film. I also bought some stock footage to create the "love
montage". The order of the day was fun and nothing deeper than that. What
can you tell us about Bigfoot in Love's
cast, and why exactly these people? Dalin Tipton is a very good friend and actor, we have appeared in
a lot of plays together and always got along famously. Plus he is a
handsome young man which is always good for your lead. Kailie Jackson
has been in my previous short called Don't Feed the Monster. She is a
fine young actress who I enjoyed working with, and she was all up for
being in another film of mine. Bigfoot himself was another theater pal,
Jeffrey Riddlington. Frankly, he was cast for his height, though he is
also a fine actor. Mrs. Bigfoot was also in Don't Feed the Monster,
Sharon Bryant-Butcher, and had wanted to get more film credits. So this
was a good time to work with her again. Do talk about the
shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere! Fun, fun, easy going, and more fun. I think we all had a good
time making it in a whirlwind of activity. As mentioned, Bigfoot in Love
is a segment of the anthology A
Stab at Love - so how did that come about, and has Bigfoot in Love
been specifically made for the anthology? And if so, were there any
guidelines you needed to follow? Yes, it was made for A
Stab at Love. Tonjia Atomic put the project
together and asked me to do a segment. We have been Facebook pals for a
long time, and I enjoy her micro-budget films. The guidelines as I
recall were to have a horror or monster story under 15 minutes long that
is also about love in some way. She also asked me to make a fake dating
video to tie in with the project. That's also in A
Stab at Love. The $64-question of
course, where can A Stab at
Love be seen? It can be seen in the first weekend of May at the
Crypticon convention in Seattle. We will see if it gets distribution after that.
But if I know Tonjia, she will get it out there. Anything you can tell us about
audience and critical reception of Bigfoot in Love yet? It was screened by itself at the
Spokane Comedy Festival last
year, where it got the requisite laughs in the right places. That is the
only public screening of it so far.
Any future projects you'd like to share?
Yes, I am raising money now for a more serious non-horror film
called Under Glass. It is based on a short story by one of my closest
friends, Tim Sullivan, who died last November. Before he died he asked
me to make a film of it, because he knew how much I admired the story.
Also it was about another friend of ours, Tim Murphy, who died in 2010.
I feel obligated to make it, but also I dearly love the story. It is
about a man who is made executor of his friend Bob's estate after his
death. He learns his friend, who was an eccentric sort, collected
bottles and jars said to contain the souls of deceased people. One of
the jars is supposed to contain Bob's soul. Now, he is an atheist who
doesn't believe in such things, but he also loved his friend and wants
to do right by him. His dilemma in the story is whether to open the jar
and release Bob's soul, or to simply keep it as a memento of his friend.
The heart-breaking conclusion comes out of that dilemma.
Here is the GoFundMe campaign for that project: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ron-fords-heartfelt-film-project
What got you into filmmaking to begin with, and did you receive any formal
training on the subject? That is a long story. I have always been a movie freak,
especially genre films, and always wanted to make them. I used to
work as a driver on movies and I would give my spec scripts to the
producers. Nothing came of that for years until finally one producer
contacted me saying he loved it and he hired me to write The Fear, the
1995 video horror hit. From there I went to work for Wildcat
Entertainment, a company making micro budget films for the video market.
i learned on the job, writing and producing features. But I wanted to
direct and finally got the chance with a sci-fi action comedy called Alien
Force. And I never stopped making films after that. What can you tell us about your
filmwork prior to Bigfoot in Love? I have written and/or directed dozens of features when I lived in
LA, most notably Hollywood Mortuary, Mark of Dracula, Witchcraft
XI and Vampire Resurrection. These days I am retired and I make two or three
short films a year out of pocket. The most successful of those was the
stop motion film The Ravin', based on my poem, a parody of Poe's The Raven. How
would you describe yourself as a director? Laid back, easy going on set but well-prepared. I know what I
want before I get on set, but am flexible enough to change those plans
on set should better ideas present themselves. Filmmakers
who inspire you? Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, James Whale, George Cukor,
John Ford - those are the greats. Modern directors I like are Eggers, Spielberg,
Scorcese, Damien Chazelle. Your favourite movies? Citizen
Kane, Chimes at Midnight, King
Kong, Kiss Me Stupid, A Star is Born (Cukor version), Grand Illusion, The
Searchers, The Quiet Man... the list goes on. ...
and of course, films you really deplore?
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So many, but let's start with a couple recent ones that a lot of
folk seem to love and I despise to the core - The
Substance and Poor Things. Both pretentious and heinously unpleasant. Your/your
movie's website, social media, whatever else?
I don't do a lot of websurfing. The only media platform I
indulge is Facebook, which is a great was to stay connected with the
filmmaking community and to promote my stuff. Anything
else you're dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask? You will notice a lack of genre stuff in that list of favorites.
When I was a kid I wouldn't watch a film unless there was a monster or a
spaceship in it. But in my teen years I met my late movie mentor Hugh
Murphy who taught me how to appreciate cinema on a deeper level. I still
love the old monster movies, and revere the best of them. But now it is
about appreciating great works, and genre is a secondary consideration.
That said, most of my films fall firmly in genre circles. Thanks
for the interview!
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