Exclusive Interview: Director/Producer Jeremiah Kipp Vs. Brian S.

I was introduced to Jeremiah Kipp's creepy short film masterpiece 'Contact' just a few weeks ago and I instantly became a fan and found out alot of cool info about him afterwards. Kipp has been involved in some really cool projects from the critical smash zombie opus I Sell The Dead to the upcoming Psycho Street horror anthology. Check out my interview with filmmaker Jeremiah Kipp where we talk about the cool projects he has going on, some of the cool people he's involved with in filmmaking, working with some legendary genre vets,  his acting and I brought up my crush on actress Debbie Rochon.

Brian  S- Hey Jeremiah, we posted your short film 'Contact' a few weeks ago and people really are digging it! It feels like I'm actually watching an episode of The Twilight Zone (on drugs) and with it being shot in widescreen black and white it just has that movie feel to it. How did you come up with this and make it turn out so good?

JK: It’s not for me to say whether the movie turned out good or bad, although certainly I go back to my films and see what I could have done differently or better.  But the key for me is that I don’t make the movies for myself, I make them to be seen by an audience. Sometimes when mapping out the plot of a narrative, I write “AUDIENCE” in big letters on the page, considering what information they have, what is being withheld. You want to take them on a rollercoaster ride, or lead them down a garden path.  The movies are for them; and of course I consider my friends and myself to be the first audience, so if we’re not entertained or captivated by what we’re seeing, there’s absolutely no hope that anyone else will care.  The widescreen black and white was a specific choice; we wanted Contact to have a strong iconic look, and I wanted to pare down all of the constitutive elements of the movie and make something that was pure cinema. Black and white seemed an appropriate choice; but “that movie feel” is to the credit of strong actors, an innovative director of photography like Dominick Sivilli, imaginative producers in Alan Rowe Kelly and Bart Mastronardi, the evocative soundscapes of composer/sound designer Tom Burns, and Daniel J. Mazikowski’s special effects, which are highly expressionistic.

 

Brian  S- Dude, ‘Contact’ is so cool I could see it as an intermission on HBO, Starz or how about TMC and their Splatterdays in between movies! I think I’m on to something here Jeremiah!

JK: It’s always an honor to have your movie screened.  We worked very hard on Contact and our goal was simply to make the best movie we could. Honestly, it was the lowest budget I’ve had on a film project in years; literally the whole thing came together for around $600 (although many of my collaborators were doing it as a favor and are used to making more money and playing with bigger toys). I wonder if the limitations of the budget forced me to think outside of the box more. It’s painful to make no-budget movies, but in this particular case it opened up possibilities in the imagination. But my cast and crew quite rightly is ready to move on to other projects; we’re ready for our feature film now and excited about the possibilities.

Brian  S- I have to say something: 'I Sell the Dead' is one of my new favorites!

JK: As a crewmember, sometimes you work on movies and don’t want to get up in the morning because the set is so frustrating, or you don’t have a genuine passion for the material you’re working on. I Sell the Dead was very much the opposite kind of experience. Even though it was difficult work and there were the usual on-set pressures and frustrations, every day you’d show up and say, “What’s on the menu today?  Zombies bursting out of cages on a foggy seaside moor, or aliens dug up in the graveyard, or drinking games at the tavern of thieves, or Angus ‘The Tall Man’ Scrimm facing off against a vampire?”  In many ways, it felt like making a B-movie serial where it was a new adventure every day. People on set look to the top to see how to behave, and it was an honor working for our producer Larry Fessenden, who lead by example and set a tone of “we’re all in this together”—while at the same time giving a charged performance as Willie Grimes, a sort of Artful Dodger cockney type, this loveable rogue on workaday adventures with the undead. I will be forever grateful to Larry for hiring me as assistant director to Glenn McQuaid on I Sell the Dead.

 

Brian  S- Tell me about your part in the Psycho Street anthology, I'm really looking forward to this!

JK: I’m credited as Associate Producer; the fact is I was very happy to be asked to participate in this horror anthology by executive producer Marv Blauvelt, who is creating a hub for genre film production out in the Midwest. Marv brings tremendous enthusiasm, passion and hard work to the projects he involves himself in. The segment I was involved in was “No Rest For the Wicked”, shot on the east coast, directed by and starring Raine Brown. Our cinematographer was Dominick Sivilli, who lensed Contact, and it was a good experience being on set with him again, planning the look and tone of this thorny psychological horror narrative. A single mother (Brown) is living a life of profound alienation, and the root of her troubles seems to be her child born out of wedlock. The horror of the story is directly connected to the savageness of a mother’s love, and as we all know the heart’s extreme love is connected to the heart’s extreme hate. “No Rest” is character-driven horror that spins off the rails into madness.

 

Brian  S- I just watched the trailer for Satan Hates You, this looks like a fun ride and it has a great cast!  What all can you tell us about this movie and when can we see it?

JK: It was indeed a fun ride. That was another feature I worked on with Larry Fessenden’s company Glass Eye Pix, and my second time working with filmmaker James Felix McKenney. After assistant directing his post-apocalyptic robot movie Automatons, I stepped up to co-producing Satan Hates You along with McKenney, Fessenden, and Lisa Wisely.  The film was made in the style of Christian scare films of the 1970s, or the Jack Chick comic pamphlets you see, which resemble E.C. horror comics in a way. The movie was a far-out experience, mostly filmed on handcrafted sets made within a studio; it was an old-fashioned throwback to how B-movies used to be made in the old days. The movie turned out wonderfully, a subversive and darkly funny one-of-a-kind movie, and there are wonderful performances by genre stars such as Angus Scrimm, Reggie Bannister, Michael Berryman, and Debbie Rochon.

 

Brian  S- I have like the biggest crush on Debbie Rochon, can you put in the good word for me?

JK: Debbie Rochon is very much in demand, so I think we’ll both have to wait in line. Even though I’ve worked with her twice (once on Satan Hates You and once as assistant director on Chris Garetano’s powerful short film Cottonmouth), I don’t know her very well.  But she is a wonderful person and a total professional; she shows up ready to work and is criminally underappreciated as an actress. People have certain ideas of what a Scream Queen is, and I don’t even think of Debbie that way after having worked with her. I consider her an actress, first and foremost, and one who brings a tremendous depth to her roles, a full and believable characterization. I’m looking forward to working with her again this August on a top secret Bart Mastronardi film where she’ll be playing the lead, a woman who is nervous, very nervous, and teetering on the edge of madness.

Brian  S- Tell me about the 'Swine' project you have coming up with Tom Savini in it and how you got involved with this.

JK: When I finished Contact, I decided to put it online and circulate the movie that way, hoping it might be seen by more people than if I had gone the traditional route of submitting to genre festivals. It made me happy to see the blog-o-sphere catch on to the movie, and for filmmakers I greatly admire such as Frank (Basket Case) Henenlotter or Paul (Grace) Solet to see and praise the work. The producers of Swine, Frank Wibhey and Joe Pisani, decided to hire me after watching Contact, and I was excited about the possibilities of making an old-fashioned “killer in the woods” movie with some fresh twists involving animal steroids and how that induces a primal, feral madness. We are truly honored to have Tom Savini involved in the project; it felt very important to attach a charismatic, physical actor in the role of the killer, bringing added dimensions to a role that is usually played by some guy wearing a mask. The monster is always my favorite character in horror movies, particularly when we recognize the distorted, twisted, recognizably human side of them; the side of ourselves we don’t want to see.

 

Brian  S- Ok Jeremiah, are there any other projects you can tell me about?

JK: I have a monster movie that I’d love to direct, as well as segments of some anthology films in the works. There are other films that could be ready at a moment’s notice, such as an adaptation of a Greek tragedy that’s curdled in bloodshed, as well as a dark fantasy film I developed in a workshop with actors over the past two years. But one can never presume what the next project is going to be. I didn’t know I was going to make Contact until literally one month before the cameras rolled; I could never have anticipated Swine.  An earlier short film I made fell apart twice before a producer stepped up and said she wanted to make it; I dared her to make it happen because it seemed perpetually doomed, and she proceeded to assemble the crew, secure locations, and get the train moving forward so all I had to do was jump on board. The next project will reveal itself in the fullness of time; let the future come.

 Brian  S- What's your favorite part in making a movie? You direct, produce and even act, so which is your first choice?

JK: My God, to call me an actor is simply laughable. The extent of my screen time in movies is usually one minute or less, and my roles have been playing a robot, a demented bunny, a Hungarian composer and an Albanian pimp. Most recently, I was asked to make a fleeing appearance in a werewolf movie directed by Bryan Enk called The Big Bad, and I wore a gas mask on my forehead and think I was chomping on a cigar or something, pulling the plug on a jukebox. That is the limit of my acting ability, and I have no aspirations for being the next Daniel Day Lewis. My favorite part of making a movie is being a filmmaker; the entire process is beautiful, and I don’t separate the various components—the movie comes alive by the contributions of the actors, the crew, and the producers and directors at their best are the guiding lights, the ones who help everybody. Directing or producing a movie is not for the faint of heart; the act of making the movie is so much work, so much discipline, so much effort, so it requires one to be able to love it unconditionally. And in this interview, we’ve spoken of a few experiences that remind me of that thing we call movie magic.

Brian  S- Would you like to say anything to the cool horror fans checking this out?

JK: Thank you for supporting the genre; thank you for being selective and recognizing work made by filmmakers who love horror as much as you do, and for also rejecting films that were made simply to cash in. When we finish a movie, that film no longer belongs to us, it belongs to you; and we hope to continue to entertain you, frighten you, move or shake you in some way, and if you don’t like it, we’ll try to do better next time. If you enjoy the work, there’s much more where that came from. And please try to support indie horror—there are some terrific films out there like Glenn McQuaid’s I Sell the Dead, Jim Mickle’s Mulberry Street, Bart Mastronardi’s Vindication, Alan Rowe Kelly’s I’ll Bury You Tomorrow, and Graham Reznick’s I Can See You.  If your dollars go towards these films, it enables these directors to continue moving forward. I feel that indie horror is where the strongest work is emerging this decade, and the best is yet to come

Go watch Contact now!http://www.contact.shroggle.com/