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Duane: I interviewed you guys about your previous film, Monsturd, but let's start off by having you re-introduce yourselves to everyone and tell us all a little about that previous film and how you got started.Rick: While Dan and I have been shooting and writing together in one capacity or another since 1984, Monsturd was our first outright attempt at a feature-length movie. It was inspired by Jack Frost, the killer snowman movie (not the family-friendly movie of the same name with Michael Keaton). We saw Frost in the video store one day and said, “If they’ll release a movie about a giant killer snowman, then they shouldn’t have any problem with a movie about giant shitmonster.” And we were right. The movie, which took two years to make (a year to shoot a year to edit), was shot on miniDV for about $3K using a Canon GL1. We edited it on a PC with Adobe Premiere 6.0. Our first distributor sold 4,000 copies into Blockbuster and our international distributor sold the rights to UK, Ireland, Russia and Thailand. While we didn’t really make any money from Monsturd, we are happy to see that it’s developed somewhat of a small cult following in the Internet space.
Dan: We were also powerhouse titans of the gay porn industry and acquired some modicum of infamy years ago for selling human body parts illegally on ebay which were obtained from a shady funeral home that shall remain nameless until the mountain of lawsuits are worked out…we also dabbled in white slavery and dipped our toes into a minor league prostitution and PCP ring…later we illegally imported poisonous snakes and briefly ran a makeshift meth lab which I assembled inside a tool shed in my mother’s backyard…let’s just say we got “explosive” results out of that venture. I have the third degree burn scars to prove it…then we made an independent horror/comedy about a monstrous shitman…it got a little hazy after a bit…crazy times…but good times…I’m just sorry about the dead monkey. Who knew monkeys liked crystal meth so much?
Duane: Retardead took a lot of years to make. How long did it take exactly, and how difficult was it to keep the cast together and to keep things on track over that length of time? Did you have to re-shoot any parts of it because of losing someone in the cast?
Rick: RetarDEAD was indeed an epic undertaking. In retrospect, had we known how involved this movie would become, we would have scrapped it altogether and gone back to brainstorming other ideas. Production took three years, and then it took another two to post. In fact, we were still filming some key scenes while we were still editing the end of the movie.
As far as keeping the cast together, we had our challenges there. The good news is that most of cast stuck around for the project to see it through to the end. It helped that Dan and I cast ourselves in major roles in the movie, because we knew neither of us would flake out on the project. Had Dan tried to drop out mid-way through production, I knew where he lived and could go and kill him. We did have a problem with one of our lead actors who developed a serious drug problem mid-way through production. Over time he became increasingly unreliable. We had to do an important scene up in St. Helena (about an hour and a half north of our hometown of San Francisco) and the guy didn’t show up. We had talked to him the night before, and he promised he would be there, but he ended up binging instead. Dan had to play his part in the movie for that scene. Needless to say, after that stunt, Dan and I rewrote the script and essentially wrote him out of the movie.
Dan: Yeah that whole affair was very sad and frustrating because he was a core group member that we had worked with for years and years…he had become the “Brian Jones” of our little Rolling Stones core group. It got pretty sad and ugly. Beth (Agent Hannigan) and I were going through a divorce at the time, but still living together and our sad, drug-addled unreliable nutty friend was staying with us at the time…couch surfing…when he flaked on the movie I came home and wanted to literally strangle the bastard….it was just very sad to see and experience. There were some very hard times during the making of this movie
Duane: When a film takes this long to put together, how difficult is it to deal with continuity? Were there things that slipped in there or little continuity errors that you noticed after the fact when it was too late to do anything about it?
Rick: The good news with regards to our continuity is that when we did film, we usually filmed an entire scene in one day, so the continuity within the scene is usually pretty dead on. Where we ran into trouble was when you start editing the scenes together. We had some situations where hair color and length changed. But that was the worst of it. Even though we all aged three years as the movie unfolds, the movie moves so fast (and our acting stays the same), that you can’t really tell. There is one scene in the movie when Beth West (Agent Hannigan) is on a shooting range firing her gun. In the very next scene she walks into her office and picks up the phone. Beth had actually aged two years between the two shots.
Dan: There are a few “magical” hair color changes as Rick says…but all things considered we did okay for trying match things up over that long a span of time. That’s simply one of the pitfalls of doing indie movies with very little money. You’re always going to suffer problems like that. It’s just a question of doing your best or just not doing it at all. This is what certain armchair Spielbergs like to make fun of, but simply don’t realize this kind of movie making takes a lot of stamina and drive to realize. This thing literally became like “Apocalypse Now” for us toward the end…it seemed like this was never going to end. It’s a wonder we didn’t kill each other trying to pull this off. I mean after all the crazy shit that happened in our lives during this we really just shrugged at hair color changes, as it was a wonder this thing got made at all. I mean, I solved my hair continuity by cutting my own hair before shoots…so I literally looked like Moe Howard from the Three Stooges for 3 years of the shooting on this…well, maybe a foot taller. We had one scary Ed Wood moment during editing in which an actress’s dress literary changed into another dress mid-scene…and we didn’t catch it for months…when I finally caught it I almost shit myself…it was just so careless…luckily we went back to the footage and had realized it during shooting and did the same shot with the proper dress…it even matched perfectly length-wise…but that was a continuity scare that I thought we were just screwed on…it would have looked so “Plan Nine From Outer Space”.
Duane: The budget on Retardead was considerably larger than it was on Monsturd. What were some of the more costly aspects of making this film for you guys, and did you look at any of those after the fact and suddenly find yourself thinking of cheaper ways you could have done it without losing the quality? In contrast, is there anything you wish you had spent more money on in an effort to make it better?Rick: Yes, RetarDEAD was more costly that Monsturd. Monsturd’s budget was $3K vs. RetarDEAD was about $15K. The good news was that the cost didn’t hit me all at once. It was pretty much spread out over the course of the three year production. It was more expensive than Monsturd, because we actually hired a special effects makeup artist to do a number of the effects for us (Ed Martinez, who did the special effects for the 80s zombie flick “The Dead Pit”). Ed was the only person who actually got paid for his work. While he did give us a pretty good deal on his time, we had to pick up the costs for his supplies. And if anyone has ever tried to price out special effects supplies, you know that they’re not cheap! I think we ended up paying him around $8K when all was said and done. And we have NO complaints. He did an awesome job, and we’d happily hire him for our next film as well. The other thing we paid more attention to was to make sure there was some kind of food and drink on the set most of the time. While we never had anything fancy (bagels/juice and coffee for a.m. shoots—hot dogs/pizza for p.m. shoots), those food costs added up quick. Other miscellaneous costs included, costume upgrades, building supplies (for building fake walls/floors) and props.
Dan: Craft services and Ed Martinez…both very smart investments. There was never a question of spending more money on things as there wasn’t anymore. Rick was literally flat broke by the time we got to the opening premiere. If we had the option of more money we probably would have hired some name actor for a cameo that would have had marquee value…but we did okay with our crazy cameos, Jello Biafra did it just because he liked “Monsturd”…Herschell Gordon Lewis let us use the narration he’d recorded for me and Dave Friedman let us use the footage I had paid for to have shot of him…those were left over from a project we’d planned about doing their life story but realized we couldn’t afford to. They were both gracious enough to let us use the leftovers from that project and give us that link to our exploitation forefathers. Now we can always have some small link to “Blood Feast” and “Two Thousand Maniacs!”…and too me that’s pretty much better than any simple cameo we’d have to fork out money for…that’s a link with an insane part of film history.
Duane: The cast of students at the school did an excellent job of playing the mentally handicapped. How much did you have to work with them to get just the right performances? Was it hard to get it just right, or did they take to it right away?
Rick: We took an interesting approach with the special kids. Three of them (Marc Samules, Sean Kresal and Jay Huston) came from a comedy troupe called Blue Blanket Improv. The other two (Dave Dumanis and Dalia Vidor) both have backgrounds in improv and comedy acting, and we had used them both previously in Monsturd (Dave played the husband who is tasked with cleaning his private toilet by his harpy wife and Dalia played the café’s waitress). We really wanted to have improv comedy players for those roles, because we wanted to give these actors the freedom to do whatever they wanted with their part. In short, we did not write their parts in the movie. We gave each of the "special kids" some guidelines of what was supposed to happen in their scenes (i.e., they were start out "slow"—without being overtly offensive--and grow progressively smarter over time). That was pretty much it. With that information in hand, each of the comedians developed their own personas and character arcs. They told us what they wanted to do, and we just captured it.
Dan: The scene with Dr. Stern (Dan Burr) had to be scripted, the big speech, but they really all contributed to how those characters played out. I believe one or two of them had experience working with special needs people beforehand as well…we’d hoped that joke of the special needs people could be handled with a little tact…the whole movie was so tasteless as a whole we didn’t need over the top jokes about mentally retarded adults who were being victimized my a sociopath/doctor. We didn’t want actors doing some caveman drooling schtick…The title was already pushing it…we just wanted them to be played like special needs folks who happen to live in a town filled with crazy people. We wanted special needs people…not the “Citizen Toxie : The Toxic Avenger IV” type of caricatures. That stuff works fine for Troma, but we pull in the reins at times…not a lot as you can see…but that was one of those times. It was done more as a point “A” to point “B” plot point so we could have that ridiculous title.
Duane: You guys did a phenomenal job on the gore effects in this film. Tell us about how all that was put together and if any of it actually made any of the cast kinda sick. Also, there was some vomiting in the film. What was the vomit made of exactly and how hard was it to hold enough in your mouths to make it look somewhat realistic? Seems like it would have been pretty nasty.
Rick: As mentioned above, we were very lucky to have special effects maestro Ed Martinez on our team. He did some pretty sick effects. Did anyone actually puke? I think a few people came close. Especially when it came down to putting the fake, blood-drenched gore in their mouths. While the blood was fake in the movie, a lot of the gore was real. We went to the butcher shop to buy intestines, livers, hearts, tripe and anything else that looked like guts. We cooked the stuff so no one would really get sick, but, once out in the open, we only had a couple of hours before the stuff would begin to reek. And reek bad! We filmed one scene towards the climax where this one zombie’s stomach gets ripped open with a chainsaw. We had a live chainsaw that went into a dummy body that was filled with all kinds of gross entrails. When the chainsaw hit the guts, they went flying all over the place. The splatters on the walls and ceiling were easy enough to wipe up, but there was no way to get the crap out of the carpet, and it started to stink really badly as the days went on. I’ll let Dan talk about how the vomit was made.
Dan: Honey mustard and salad dressing…that yellow really played well as bile and made a disgusting scene seem even more disgusting…it was Technicolor gross…so bright against that red blood splattered everywhere. I’m very proud of that vomit mixture. It really worked well. People really go nuts over that scene…literally screaming in disgust…it’s quite special.
Duane: It seemed like there were a lot more locations in this film than in your previous one. Where was the film shot and did any of the locations present any particular challenges that you had to deal with?Rick: Yup. Had tons more locations in RetarDEAD. The movie was mostly shot in and around San Francisco. We filmed some scenes in the mountains of Butte County (yes, that’s a real place) and St. Helena up in the Napa Valley. And even got a quick couple of shots when I was visiting my cousin in Road Island. Another thing that opened the movie up and made it look bigger was that we enlisted the help of 2nd unit directors from around North America. This was another experiment that worked to our advantage.
We knew going into RetarDEAD that we had big shoes to fill. There were already such great zombie movies out there like “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Dead Alive.” To make matters worse, there seemed to be a glut of indie zombie movies on the market already. We needed a gimmick that could help set us apart from all of the rest of the schlock out there (aside from the offensive title).
The idea was to hit up all of the indie filmmaking Websites around the country and solicit wannabe filmmakers to help us film our climax. The only thing we asked for were zombie death scenes. We weren’t asking for dialog or anything else. Just set up a scene where people are attacked and killed. We gave them some parameters: Shoot the footage at night, shoot it in full screen (not widescreen), and if you can film look it before you send it, that would be helpful. We also sent out photos of what our zombies looked like so they could make sure their zombies looked similar. No one would be paid, but everyone who participated would get a credit and a copy of the movie when it was done. Out of 80 filmmakers who responded to our initial query, 8 people actually sent us some material. And out of that, 7 of those folks actually ended up in the final cut of the movie.
Dan: We had a few nightmare location problems that we had to deal with on the spot. That happened about three times and was really a test of sheer will…but karma seemed to be on our side in that respect. Rain was a key factor for switching locations twice. The Living Dead Girlz scene in which they seduce and eat Dr. Stern was to take place in an auto dismantling yard…then came the threat of rain…so we switched that to Stern’s hideout about a day before we had to shoot…the big climax shot with 40 extras chasing Rick and me had to be relocated at the very last minute for the same reason, from the same auto dismantling yard. We were literally writing down new directions on small pieces of paper to send this great collection of extras to a space that one of the Living Dead Gilrz shared at the time and was large enough to accommodate this onslaught of zombie extras. 40 people may not sound like a lot by Hollywood production standards, but for our production it was like “Gone with the Wind” and that was a key scene. It was organized chaos that day. We had no idea how many people would show up, and it was just insane. Ed started recruiting zombie extras to apply the gray pancake make-up to other zombies. Seconds after we got the key shot it started pouring rain…just a downpour with everyone scattering to grab equipment. Total insanity. We also lost a location for the Agent Hannigan and Timmy prison scene and had one day for that as Timm Carney (Timmy) was in San Francisco for a short time and we only had that day to shoot this scene…we ended up with this nutty “Silence Of The Lambs” basement as apposed to the “prison” set we’d secured and been locked out of with no warning that morning…we ended up shooting it in Timm’s old San Francisco apartment building where friends of his still lived…then we had to deal with a nightmare of audio issues that happened…suddenly they needed to do construction next door after we finally found a suitable location…it was really horrifying…a real Murphy’s law type of day. You really have to grow alligator skin to do this kind of crap. You have to have a masochistic drive to make movies.
Duane: What experiences did you have in making Monsturd that made things smoother and easier for you guys when it came down to shooting this film?
Rick: To quote Tim Allen from Galaxy Quest “Never give up! Never surrender.” That’s the biggest thing I learned. We learned that the only way to get a movie done is to put your head down and just do it. Don’t sit around a bitch about how difficult it is to do something, be resourceful and figure it out! Think of a movie like a journey of a thousand miles. It begins with a single step. When you think about everything that’s involved in producing a feature-length movie from start to finish, it can be daunting, and honestly a lot of people never make it through the process and give up. But if you think of a movie in terms of simple baby steps, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to get to that thousand mile mark… even if it takes you five years to get there.
Dan: I think Ricky summed it up nicely…but you really only learn by “doing” and not talking. There are a lot of “talkers” who love to point out what missteps you’ve made, but to really go through the torment and run that gauntlet would shut a lot of mouths very quickly. That’s not to say we are great filmmakers, it’s just stating we possess this insane drive to put blinders on and go for broke. We could certainly always improve on what we’ve done, but working in our realm of budget and production value you have to simply do the very best you can…like “Apollo 13”..we were lucky to get back to Earth on this mission. If a lot of “talkers” were actually presented with the numerous tough scenarios that we faced they might be cowering under a bed under those circumstances. Perhaps they can justly compare our movies to “Blood Feast” and “The Human Tornado,” but they cannot say we didn’t attempt to undertake something most people in their right mind simply wouldn’t do…but we do relish this Batman-like existence…dressing up in costumes and going out and attempting things that normal humans just don’t do in daily life. What the Hell else would you do with your weekend? Watch a football game? Where else do you get the chance to run around acting like a psychotic freak and not get arrested?
Duane: The note you sent me with the film basically made it sound like you guys were worried that some people might find the portrayal of the mentally handicapped in this film offensive. Being the kind of a guy I am, my first (and final reaction) was like, "Jeez, who cares? It's a just a fun film! People need to stop looking for crap to be offended by." Is this something you're really concerned about in general, or were you just worried about it because I was a reviewer? Personally, I found their portrayal quite realistic while at the same time amusing, and not offensive at all.
Rick: The fact is the name of the movie is offensive. We’re not going to sugarcoat that. In fact, Elite Entertainment (a company that was interested in possibly distributing RetarDEAD) actually floated the title to one of his sub-distributors, who, in turn said, “You’re going to have a hard time moving a movie with that title.” He was referring to all of the big chain stores like Wal-Mart, Best Buy et al. And he’s right. Those big chain stores don’t want to court controversy. All you need is one angry letter writer to the president, and you’re movie is off the shelves.
We chose to keep the name because we came to the conclusion that none of these stores would carry our movie anyway--even with a different title and subject matter. So we decided to just say, “Screw it!” If they don’t want to take our movie, then we’ll just release the thing ourselves!
But, back to your point, while the title is offensive as hell, we wanted to make sure we treated the special kids with some modicum of respect. There are other “comedies” out there (I won’t mention any names) that have made fun of “special” kids, and typically, the kids all end up being the butt of the joke (not part of the joke). In our movie, the kids are the victims of Dr. Stern, not an excuse to simply make fun of the mentally challenged.
Dan: All that and we’re really just a couple of exploitive, opportunist douche bags.
Duane: There was a lot of artwork throughout the film here and there, and the DVD cover artwork is absolutely amazing and definitely one of the coolest DVD covers. So which one of you is the artist and have you done anything else with your artwork. I personally think the cover art on this film would especially lend itself to being used for some awesome comic books.Rick: I’ll turn the mic over to Dan for that one.
Dan: I’m to blame for the art and art direction on the film. I never want to draw another fucking zombie as long as I live. I worked very closely with a longtime collaborator, Ken Dashner who is just brilliant at layout and graphics. Ken handled most of the coloring and we worked together on layout for a great deal of the art. It was really a collaboration much like making an actual comic book. Ken handled a great deal of the technical side of things at which I am a total idiot. I contribute the ink drawings and Ken manages the technical side of where they need to go for an actual movie. We worked very closely on final product, but it’s really total teamwork between Ken and myself. We’ve known each other for years so we can work together really well, and he brings to the table things that I am not capable of. Some of that was a lot of fun to work on actually. When we could throw in a joke in the graphics while we were hammering things out, that kind of thing was always fun. Ken always kicks serious ass on layout as he knows exactly what he’s doing and you can realize a vision with that type of person. I can draw movie poster art…Ken can make into an actual movie poster. His layout for the DVD was pretty fucking fantastic. He was also responsible for the phony snack bar intro to the film. Ken directed that and it really starts the film off with a bang. It was Ken’s Terry Gilliam moment in our realm. We only thought of doing that because Ken obsessively collects those old drive-in snack bar ads and we all sat down years ago to create a joke out of that. That’s where that intro came from. It took a bit of hounding, because he became obsessive over the authenticity of the damn thing, but the end result is goddamn hilarious. Also the aging on the “Frankenstein And The Bloody Beast Of Ghastly Terror”…he made that so authentic…some people actually thought that was a real euro trash movie trailer.
Duane: Is the film going out to any festivals?
Rick: RetarDEAD played at the most recent Dead Channels film festival here in San Francisco. That was cool. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the film into any of the horror fests that play on or around Halloween. We’re keeping our eyes open though. If we see one that looks interesting, we’ll submit.
Dan: Just getting into the Dead Channels fest in San Francisco was an honor…if only to have a screening where you didn’t have do jack shit but show up and intro the picture and not worry about four-walling the damn theatre. Our ending Q&A was a bit intoxicated but we’d kind of had our fill of RetarDEAD by that point. We couldn’t actually sit through the movie again so we adjourned to a nearby bar during the showing…I think our drunken answers about the making of the movie were forgiven as performance art by most.
Duane: Do you guys have another film planned or in the works, or are you just taking a break now after working for so long on Retardead?
Rick: Yup. We’ve got another flick we’re in the process of getting together. It’s still too early to go into any details on it. The reason is we never know what direction we’re going to take until we start shooting the dang thing. Honestly, between the end of RetarDEAD and today, we’ve actually had three other ideas we liked and talked about pursuing. All of them have been killed to date.
Dan: Yeah…currently we’re shooting some second unit stuff for Mark Pirro’s new movie: “The God Complex”…beyond that…we have a new movie planned…the screenplay is in the works, and we’ll see if we all want to leap on board. Never curse your project by talking about it too much. We’ve shot some very funny stuff on the fly that might make any supposed fans of ours happy…we do have a plan in place, so we’ll see what happens…as Rick said, we’ve sprayed Raid on a few screenplay cockroaches that we really liked that were creeping around so we’ll just see what comes of committing to something.
Duane: After going through the production of two feature films now, what advice do you have for those film makers out there who are just about to start putting together their first film?
Rick: Wow, I could write a book on what I’ve learned. A few things to keep in mind: Don’t shoot in standard def. In February ’08, the government’s making the transition to HD. Any filmmaker worth his/her salt has already purchased an HD camcorder (including us), and that’s who you’re going to be competing with out there. Also, spend some time directing your actors to get the lines said right. I have seen so many “indie” flicks where the dialog delivery was just terrible! miniDV tape is cheap! Sit there and work with your actor while the camera is rolling and have them say the line over and over again until they say it right. People can overlook bad acting as long as the line is said right. And lastly, just because you have no money doesn’t mean your movie has to look cheap. Be resourceful! Do everything in your power to make it look like your movie cost a million bucks. That includes: Capturing good audio and filming in convincing cool locations. To give you an example of something we did for RetarDEAD… We wanted to have a car crash in the flick, but we didn’t have the budget to wreck two cars. Instead we found an auto dismantling place (that had 10 or 15 cars that were in the process of being torn apart for scrap) and asked the owner if he’d help us stage something with a couple of his cars. He said, “No problem.” The effect came out great and the only thing it cost us was a credit for his company and a final copy of the movie.
Dan: Like Rick stated…the advice could fill a book. I would sum it up with this: Be smart, resourceful, driven, clever, never have 20 year olds play 40 year olds, have great attention to detail, DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH SEVERAL PAGES OF YOUR OWN DIALOG, when working indie have a great sense of humor about what you are doing…if you don’t …people will tune out…bring some humor, or at least try to. Try to present some sort of gimmick that hooks potential viewers in…you are only as good as your last picture…and this is your first…you need viewers…you need a goddamn fan base….think big but small…and watch all small details and above all GET GOOD SOUND! ..think of what you are competing against and be realistic…what the hell makes your movie stand out? If it doesn’t stand out on some level it’s doomed for the trash bin!
Duane: Is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we wrap this up?
Rick: I think that about covers it for me. I just want to say thanks again for taking the time to interview us for your site. We hope your readers find it useful.