Love in the Time of Monsters

Hey Matt, do you believe in Bigfoot? I believe in Bigfoot as much as Bigfoot believes in me. Oh, that's nice, it's very positive. 'Cause he does believe in you. I would hope so. (upbeat music) Hey, hello and welcome to Indie Film Lodge, a podcast about the nuts and bolts of independent filmmaking from the bottom up. I'm Matt Jackson. And I'm Robb Padgett, and today we're gonna talk about scale. How to make a giant production with giant actors

without a giant budget. And if the actors aren't giant, they're at least larger than most humans and much, much hairier. That's true. Today's guest on today's show is Matt, too. What? Yeah, did you make a movie? I mean, I guess I did. I guess we could do this. Oh, great. What do you really want to? You qualify. So here we go. Well, I guess so indeed, I did make a movie. It was called Love in the Time of Monsters.

It's a horror comedy. It's about two sisters who go to a roadside attraction. To visit one of their boyfriends and then get attacked by toxic monsters. Who take the form of the Bigfoot mascot performers that fell in toxic waste. And hilarity ensues. And terror ensues. It's a great time for everybody. And when you say toxic monsters, you clarified toxic waste. These aren't like, you know, monsters that think women should stay at home and not vote.

Well, yeah, but jury's still out. We did not treat those scenes, but... And nobody asked them in the movie. I do mean toxic in the in the purest, their radioactive and mutating and gushy and there to eat human flesh. That's pretty fun. It's pretty fun. It was our big love letter to that kind of movie. So we wanted to make it happen. So speaking of love letters to movies, can you give me like a few inspirations for the movie?

Like, what did you watch to get in your right head space? I know the movie reminds me of, but what were you actually doing? So we talked about this a lot. So by we, I mean, the producer, Andy Gunn and the writer, Mike Skvarla, we love watching movies, especially the time, you know, there's that special vibe of like fun kind of group movies. So we, the vibe we were trying to hit was that Evil Dead II or Big Trouble in Little China vibe.

Something that was an absolute crowd pleaser where you didn't know what was going to happen next. It felt a little epic that was maybe a little silly, but if you buy into it, you buy into it and it's gushy and it's gross and it's fun and it should have something for everybody. And with that, we wanted to cut it with the idea of Slither,

which is the James Gunn movie, which is also very gushy, very gross, but it has this undercurrent of love. My favorite thing about Slither of the various things about Slither is the big final sequence where it's Elizabeth Banks and she has to like fall in love and like slow dance with her horribly mutated husband. And it's it's so weird and it's so gross, but we wanted that undercurrent of emotion underneath

all of the gushy grossness that was in the movie. And then finally, my weird one is that foundational text for me is the LucasArts game, Sam & Max Hit the Road. It's a point-and-click adventure game from LucasArts from 1992 that that follows freelance police, Sam, a dog and Max, a rabbie type thing, as they go solve crimes. And in that game, they're hunting for a missing Bigfoot while they go on a road trip across the country.

Yeah. And I already hear is that I've never seen Slither. But I have played Sam and Max. Hey! It's a cool thing game like all the time. And it would say it's so weird. It was one of my first LucasArts games. And I remember playing it when I was 12 in my bedroom and to think that then when I was given the chance when this this script fell on our on our laps and it was it was about Bigfoot and roadside attractions.

I was like, oh well, this feels like fate. So, so here we are. And we did it. Good. So now we're on to the amazingly titled OPM section of the podcast. Now, Obsession, Pivot and Miracle. Because movies rarely just appear in front of you like a Sasquatch on a nature hike, especially independent ones. There's a long journey between the blank page and the silver screen. So let's talk about your Obsession, Pivot and Miracle moments.

What was it about this idea that made you want to take the plunge? Like, where did the idea come from? You didn't write the script. So that's true. So we came up with the idea. Well, we didn't come up with the idea. Basically, Andy and I had done a short film previously. And when to do a short film, you're like, well, let's do a feature film. And for whatever reason, we didn't want to do a feature version of the short we just made.

The short was a comedy was written by a friend of ours, Ben Schiener, who was super funny. The movie was very fun. It was pretty well received. But we were like, we want to do something else, something totally different, something it sells. And so we started looking for a horror picture we could do. And we put the call out. And Mike Skvarla, who's a good friend of mine, was like, hey, I got this script.

That I think is going to be what you want. We read it. And it had so much energy. They had to be made. The first script he gave us, which is not anything like what actually made it to the screen. But it had so much verve and so much fun that it was like, well, this is it. It was called Gigantopithecus Doom. It was about twin sisters who go to this lodge. And there's a crazy man in the woods. And there's Bigfoot.

And there's little, how's something like Little Johnny or something? It was like a little, a little deformed Bigfoot kid, like a Jason Voorhees

pre-muchicular transition. And the script was so much fun. I was like, oh, this is totally it. Like, let's work on it. And then we spent the next four years of me giving Mike's shitty notes as it got into a place that we were all happy with. And then we were, it was like three years of shitty notes. And then a year of budgetary notes to knock it down to where we wanted it to be. That we actually shoot it.

You knocked it down to where you ended up? Yeah, it's shocking, but yes, tactically yes. There was originally a scene with like a golf cart jumping. No, it was a horse jumping a pool that was on fire. And it was in the script forever. And at one point our line producer was like, hey, we can do whatever you want. But this is going to take a lot of infrastructure to do. And I don't think we have the money to do a horse and water and fire.

So I'll pick zero of us and we could do it. And you did. You picked zero of them because it's not in the movie. That's true. That's true. There's a lot of water in the movie. There is a lot of gross water. There's a lot of gross water. A lot of things falling from the sky. A lot of rain in that movie. But yeah, but we got rid of it. We got rid of the flaming ambulance. And so, you know, we did have to make sacrifices to make it.

I think nowadays you might be able to get a flaming ambulance if you, you know, did the right visual effects. That's true. That's true. At the time, at the time, it was tough to consider how we could do that kind of visual effect. And honestly, I think it feels better when they're physical anyway. Yeah. And you do have physical, a lot of physical effects in the movie. Oh my yes. Oh my yes. We'll talk about that in a minute.

So, but we're talking. So was this one of the big pivots? Then, you know, we're going to talk about the pivot now. Every production starts with the best intentions. And, you know, rarely goes off of that hitch. So was there a major pivot you had to make while you're shooting movie besides horses and flaming ambulances? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There was, there was quite a few, but the biggest one was when our funding fell through.

And so our big plan was to shoot the movie for, I think we had a budgeted for half a million dollars, which is a lot of money. But what happens when you start thinking about movies, when your perspective is like a Moana that's made for $220 million. You're like, well, half a million dollars is nothing. Right. Until you're an ordinary schmo trying to get half a million dollars. And it's really harsh.

So we were out fundraising. We were trying to find the money. Presales, talking to banks, talking to whoever we could, we could to get some money together. And for whatever reason, people saw us as a group of untested filmmakers, they asked you for half a million dollars. They were like, oh, absolutely not. Thank you. No, thank you. And so, you know, no ill will to them. But I remember it was, the idea was that they were going to shoot the movie in

September, I think. Yeah, we're going to shoot the movie in September. And the goal was because I was also engaged at the time. And I was going to get married in March. And so the plan was to shoot the movie in September, get married, and then enter post-production. And our funding fell through and we hit that moment of like, well, it's, it's do or die. Even either that we don't make this thing or we figure out an easier way to make it.

And so we, we had a real come to Jesus moment. And we, we saw how much money we could get. And we were able to find $250,000, which is still a ton of fucking money. So we found it and we're like, okay, well, how can we budget the movie to make it still happen? With the idea that we still wanted to have as much of the fun, like, crazy nonsense in it as we could. And so Mike did a great pass on the script where he combined a couple of characters.

He got rid of a couple of characters and then he not downgraded, but made some of the big sequences more budget friendly. But still keeping with the idea that we wanted more, that more was always more,

which you might not have been the best solution long term. But it made us feel really good about making it. And we were very excited and we were really lucky. You know, we downgraded. We had an effects guy who was working with us. Who's really great and was doing awesome work for us. And we came to him with our new budget and he was like, I can't do it. But he recommended somebody else. So Scotty Fields came on as our effects guy.

And Scott, he was excited at the chance, the challenge. So he attacked a full force and we talked to all of our actors about our changing budget level. And every single one of them was totally game for what we were doing, which was awesome. Yeah, that's great. I mean, because you had 250,000 still a lot of money. Imagine how much money you have to have to, because these guys know when they're giving movies money, they're not most of them.

If they're smart enough to be rich to begin with, which, I don't know how smart you have to be anymore. But you're just smart enough to be rich to begin with. You have to have enough money that a couple hundred thousand or a hundred thousand here there. Not a big deal. Not gonna be a big deal. So you have to go pretty high up on the chain to get somebody who's willing to

to part with a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, because it's a ton, and especially with like, I don't know, we're not talking about ROI and finding investors and all that stuff. But man, like, when you get into the weeds of like, how something makes money, we went to, we went to AFM to find money. We, we, we win in with a big package where we shot an EPK and we had done a proof of concept short.

And we had a prospectus, we had the whole thing. And you go to AFM, which if you're a filmmaker, I both recommend it and also recommend you stay in a

way because it is a total sausage factory of all they want to know is if you're going to hit certain,

certain checkboxes that then they can sell the movie wherever. Which is why you see Michael Madsen or Eric Roberts in so many movies because those cases will do movies for, for relatively cheap. And then once you have that name in your movie,

you'll get a better distribution deal because you have an Oscar nominee in your movie. I can't get over how many movies Eric Roberts is in right now. It's crazy. I mean, God bless Eric Roberts working up a storm and just doing it. But yeah, he's like, in everything, it's crazy. Oh, the sometime I gotta be like, Eric, you gotta, you gotta be a little more discerning. Just a tiny bit more discerning than this.

I mean, maybe, but now paycheck is a paycheck in our life. I guess and he will be the best thing in the movie even when he's phoning it in. Yeah. All right, so that was your biggest pivot. So let's talk about the miracle. The biggest miracle. The all the rain. Look, my gosh, the rain. We shot in the Pacific Northwest, which is not ideal when you get a lot of scenes that are happening outside, not in the rain.

Now, the movie was full of miracles from like signing Doug Jones and, and Kane Hodder to,

you know, all just like that Trees of Mystery, like our locations, all that stuff. But the biggest, the biggest, biggest miracle had to be the lodge. So the whole thing takes place at this lodge in Northern California. And Mike, as he was writing the script, was just like, yeah, it's a lodge somewhere. And we gave him a bunch of notes on the script and he wanted to go on like a walk about to go gather ideas.

So he went on a road trip through Northern California. It was driving through just Bigfoot country, like trying to absorb the bigfootness of the world. And, you know, drove through Crescent City and then it was on his way out of Crescent City into Oregon on,

I think it's, it doesn't matter. It was looking for the perfect location or just something and then he turned a corner and out of the mist

comes this beautiful lodge. It'd been there for a hundred years as the Patrick Creek Lodge. It was a restaurant motel style lodge that was haunted that had a swimming pool.

It had this huge back area. It had a stage. It had a separate cabin. It was everything we were looking for. And Mike stumbled on it out of nowhere. And then God bless him. He stopped, stayed there for the night, found the owners and talked to them. And he was like, hey, so we're thinking about making this movie. Could we make it here? And the owners were like, yeah, as long as the, as long as it's the off season.

Sure. No big deal. We're like, okay, so he came back, he told us. And then the next, you know, 18 months or so, we made inroads with them and we kept going up. We kept seeing the place. It was 12 hours away from LA. So every drive up there was a drive. But yeah, we drive through through everyone's in the wild. Yeah. But it was great. It was so perfect. And they bent over backwards for us. They were like, yeah, you can totally shoot here.

You can use our kitchen and we'll cook your meals for you. You put up the cast and crew here. We had staging areas for all of our makeup stuff for all of the, the effect stuff. And then we had a secondary hotel that was like 20 minutes down the road that we put our overflow cast and crew into. And it worked perfectly. And they had a bar that they left open for us after we shot. So we shot overnight.

They'd be like, we're going to open up the bar because they understood that we had to money to go anywhere else. So they opened up the bar and let us get a few drinks and let people let off steam. And it was like summer camp. It was the absolute best. And the whole movie never would have happened if we couldn't find that lodge. Well, and it's good for them because off season, you know, they got a full lodge.

They're making money off of drinks that they wouldn't have been making normally. You know, there's a couple of people staying there. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's cool. So that was one of my questions about now that we're into the topic of the thing, scale. We're talking about how to make a large production because this is a large production on not a large amount of money. Yeah. Although, you know, if you ask me, $250,000 is orders of magnitude

and larger than my budget for my film. It's a whole thing. It depends on how you spend the money. I guess is what it is. And your scale is in terms of scale in terms of scope versus scale in terms of money or two different things. And so we went as big as we could go with just everything we could do.

We were like, yes, let's figure out a way. Because I wrote some stuff down when I watched it again. About the groups of people like, there's a bunch of groups in this movie. It's a kind of 80s style in that aspect where it's a group. Like they have a group of people that have a story over here. A group of people have a story over here and they converge and they diverge every once in a while. They'll come together and come apart.

But there's like Sasquatches and there's the Sisters story that goes on. And you have all the resort workers that are there. You have Slavko and Dr. Lincoln and the dancers, the employees. You have the recluse in the woods. You know, that kind of stuff. You have 35 credited actors in the movie. My movie has 20, but I credited literally everyone. You have 35 credited actors. But you also have, like, you've seen the end of Lord of the Rings.

Yeah. And they thanked everybody who ever gave them a dollar. Yeah. That's what your extras credits looked like. It was pretty intense. I didn't count them. I don't know how many extras credits there are, but there are quite a bit. Yeah, the advantage of shooting in a small town. So we were shooting in technically, I guess, Gasquet, California. But it's right outside of the Crescent City. You're up there shooting a movie.

You put the casting call. Like, hey, we need people to fill in the holes and be an extra for us. Or come work on the movie. Everybody shows up at your doorstep. It's great. Yeah, because I mean, they're still in California. They still like movies. Well, and once you get out of LA, like, the film commission did a lot of work for us. She was, I forget her name, Cassandra, something. She was working out of the Del Norte Film Commission.

And she helped us out a lot, like, connect with resources and connect with other locations. Like, we had a fine, we had a fine, like, the lake. And she helped us find the lake for the whole thing. But it was very much like, once you're outside of LA, people want to help you make a movie, which is wild. Oh, yeah. They'll really help you. And you don't have to go even that. You don't have to go 12 hours.

You can just go in some place where there's not a lot of people. Yeah, you could probably go to Fresno and figure it out. Oh, yeah. You could probably film on the street. Well, I filmed on the street in Long Beach. But you could film on the street up there. You could wander around filming with people. Yeah. So tell me about the film commission. Because I haven't dealt with the film commission before.

I've never tried to deal with as few people as possible. So what is that? Like, what is that resource that anybody can use? Yes. I'll freely admit that we had excellent set of producers who were really the forefront of that communication. And I was just the happy idiot to be there. So we had our main producer, Andy Gunn, who was making the inter-rudge. We had our line producer, Rob Overbeck, who was really instrumental and just make sure

the nuts and bolts of the whole shoot was working. And our co-producer, Allison Vanore, who was the unsung hero of that whole process. That she would do stuff that you didn't realize how instrumental she was to the whole process. But they know, producer 101 is, you're going to shoot somewhere. You need, especially because we're shooting at the lodge. And we need to make sure we have permits. Is that they reached out to the permit office

to be sure we had our permits in line. And then they got in contact with the film commission that way. And then the film commission told the local newspapers. So we got features in the newspaper a few times. And yeah, it was just a simple email. Like, hey, how's it going? And then they wanted to help because they wanted more people to know that you could shoot up there in that whole area and that they were amenable to it.

As a matter of fact, they were really thankful. We were shooting the same place that Will Smith had just made after Earth. And after Earth was shot there. And so they were shocked that we are a so kind and be that we didn't need a huge RV, or Mata to make the movie. They're like, oh, you're just, you're pretty compact. And we're like, yeah, there's just a lot of us. Also, fun fact, the area we shot was the forest moon of Endor

from Return of the Jedi. Nice. So, yeah, they're not strangers to filming. Right. But yeah, that's, so you have to have, especially when you're dealing with scale like this, you can't make a movie without, of this size, without some sort of a budget. Because you do need permits and stuff. When you start filling up the streets with people, or you start filling up places with people, they tend to get noticed more than just a couple

of people wandering around a city. And so, did you ever think about making it smaller or was that just like, no, no, no, this is, we're going to do, this is the scale. This is the movie. Without the scale, the movie's not the same. Yeah, I was, I'm a big believer that anytime you're going to attack something big, you need to be a little dumb about it. Because you can't know how hard it's going to be.

So, so you'll just attack it full force. So, the movie I wanted to make, the movie I wanted to see was as big as we could possibly make it. I wanted to go big, big, big. So, if we're going to cut something, they need to have a really good reason to cut it. You know, there's, I think there's five big-foot kids. There used to be six. And so, we cut that down by one. Yeah, I'm sure you saved a lot of money by cutting that one big-foot out.

We did. I mean, we saved more than you think. We ended up, we saved three big-foot costumes. And we didn't have to put another person up. And we didn't have to like, feed them. And feed them and house them and the whole thing. And it made the choreography a little easier. So, it's not, it's not a huge cut. It's not like a, you know, $100,000 cut. But it's, it was still like a, probably a five to $10,000 cut.

And taking things like, there's a scene in it where a couple police officers come to the lodge, see what's going on, and get attacked, and get totally devoured. That scene initially was multiple cop cars show up with an ambulance. The sirens blaring and then the creatures show up and, you know, start puking toxic goo and lighting stuff on fire. And, you know, like they blow up an ambulance and stuff.

And that was, you know, maybe a bit out of our price range. Sorry, we didn't, we took that down. But the idea was to cut like 10% from everything and still do as much as we could. And after the process was over and I'm proud of the move. I don't want to suddenly, I'm not proud of it and the work that everybody did because everyone did such an incredible job. And I think as a director, like they were all trying to make me happy.

And they did unequivocally. It was absolutely what I wanted to make. But as I get to this part past the process, I look at it and like, oh, you know, instead of this avenue, we could have excised one of these crazy attacks. And maybe other attacks, you know, 2% better. You know, done 10 holes as opposed to kind of a three-ring circus. Right. And so it's one of those things too, because I watch it. And again, afraid of scale because the man, the work involved,

like it's terrifying to me. I'm like, you know, you don't need all these Sasquatches. One could attack somebody, like just two people on the woods or something, you know, that would be scary. Or like, so a lot of the scale came from not just the sheer amount of Sasquatches,

which I wouldn't have made this movie, let's be honest. I would look at it and go, nope, this is too much. But, you know, it's all, it's eating the elephant, you know, that, you know, the elephant looks intimidating when you're standing in front of it. But it all starts to say it might, like, you just got to take a bite and just take a piece by piece. And honestly, because our run-up to it was so long that I kept making the movie over and over again.

One of the best pieces of advice I got from, I think, Overbeck was make the movie with each department. And so I would sit down with everybody. And I'd say, okay, we'd start a page one. And then we'd, we'd just walk through whatever that department had was. How we're going to do it, how we're going to shoot it, you know, what we need to see, who needs to be there, all that stuff. And then I did it as a group.

We did one big meeting where we were deep in it. We just, we try again, we kicked off pre-production. I did a big meeting where I was like, okay, everybody. And I pitched the movie to everyone. I was like, this is what we're doing. And I walked through it and I made them take notes. And I was like, we're doing this. I acted out all the parts. I really like showed them what the movie was. So they are excited about it.

And then in our final pre-production meeting, I made them tell me the movie. So we were all like, generally on the same page. And we all knew what was going on. And then once we got to set, so when we got to set and things started to fall apart, it was like, oh, but we've already made this so many times with each other. And our heads that as a problem arises, you're not totally taken out of it. You're like, okay, well, I know how this fits in with the larger context.

I know the pieces that are available. Everybody knows how it's supposed to work. So now everybody can pivot to something that will work. There's an attack in that movie. Jade's death. She gets attacked by Kane in a pool of water. And I had that scene all mapped out. I was like, it's going to be great. She's going to be in this pool of water. And then Kane's going to pop up behind her and like, slowly walk toward her and strangle her.

And it's going to be a medium shot. It's going to look incredibly awesome. And like, here we go. And we started to shoot it. And what I didn't realize is that the bottom of the pond was rocky and very slippery. And so, poor Kane in this giant fur suit couldn't move very fast.

And it was also unsteady on his feet. So by the time he got to Jade, Zylan, he put his arms around her to choke her. But he just kind of fell over. So a whole thing fell apart so fast. And it was the first kill we shot in the entire movie. It was the end of our first week. Everybody was watching because they're so excited to see like, "Ooh, what are the kills going to look like?" Right. And you know, it happened.

I, my dreams were shattering in my brain. As the audience watching, the audience of the crew. Everyone's cheering. It's so exciting. I'm like, "Oh my god, this is the worst." But because I had made it so many times, I knew the important parts that we needed to see. So then I was able to take the idea of that scene, cut it into bits, and then re-stage it. So Kane didn't fall over on this poor woman.

And, you know, we still get the same kill. We still get the same effect in a much different way. And that really helped. And then also the mentality that every day was just shooting a short film. You know, it didn't necessarily matter what we're going to shoot two weeks from now. Or tomorrow, even. What mattered was what was right in front of me. I needed to do this scene. This scene needs these four setups.

Or, you know, ideally, these two setups. But, you know, it needs to be like, this and this. I mean, you gotta, you know, do this bit. Then we gotta move on to go do something else. But because I was prepared for the whole movie, the individual pieces weren't as scary. And then as it gets broken down to smaller, smaller pieces, it's easier to digest. And then the whole thing doesn't seem as big at the end of it.

Well, so that's a good, that's actually a pretty good way to go about filming something even small. But especially something big. Because I've been having that problem with my writing, actually. Like, look at the script. I'm like, God, I get so stuck. Because I'm looking at the whole script. And so I started trying to have the mentality of treating it like a bunch of little stories put together. Sure.

So there's a little beginning of middle in an end, a little beginning in the middle in an end. And if you see that, and if you use that when you're shooting also, then your scenes have some kind of movement to them. They go someplace. And if there's not a beginning in middle in an end, maybe you don't need that scene. Or it's not, or it's a part of a different scene. I mean, there's sometimes you have scenes

that shot in different places. But that's a, that's a nice way to think about it. To make it a little more manageable. Yeah, yeah. And it's really, it's like the metaphor for life. You know, like, everything you attack in life. Like, we're both, we're both dads. But you imagine what it's like when they first hand you the child, like, hey, congratulations. Keep this thing alive for the next 18 years.

You're like, oh my God. How? Yeah, if you think about the 18 years, it's okay. Yeah, it's crazy. But you just take it one diaper change at a time. You know, slowly you get good at it. And then you get good at the other things. Ideally, you have a good people around you who are there to help you out and support you. And then everything gets finished in a way that is at least is done. And that's the most important part.

I've got two questions for you there before we finish this whole thing. About scale. I mean, so you have a lot of special effects, visual effects. I mean, not visual. Well, you have visual effects also. Yeah, we have visual effects. So you've got a lot of practical puppetry and gore. And the movie would be very different without it. So I could imagine that that's one of the hurdles that you just kind of have to overcome.

But a hurdle that I see in the movie that I'm like, was there ever a discussion about it? Was the Uncle Slavko's theming of his lodge, the All-American sort of lodge? Because I assume you had to dress that whole place and theme it. We did. We did. John and Chloe are our art team. We basically gave them $12 and we're like, "Have fun." And those crazy kids, they came from web series and they're like,

"Hey, we can make anything with anything." We can make anything work with any amount of dollars. And it was like, "Great. Well, here's nothing." But they did a great job. The big thing was you can actually get a lot with a little. So you did the big-- The bunting and the-- We have a big bunting, but the big sign above the door. That was a big thing. Once you have the big sign above the door and then you add some bunting,

you're like, "Psh, now it looks like a place." But then inside you just reuse the bunting from inside. They made a bunch of Slavko stickers. They weren't even stickers. They were just like printouts that they cut. And then they would stick them on all the doors and stuff. And then that worked. And then we had the machine standy, which was perfect. It was just enough to make you believe that, "Oh, sure."

Slavko has branded the hell out of this place. But really, we were just-- We'd shoot one direction and have it all gussied up. And then we'd turn the camera around and move all the stuff. Take all those same things and put on the other side of the camera. And then we lucked out because we were-- We had some crazy connection with the Trees of Mystery. Again, talk about a freaking miracle. The guy who plays Dad, Joe Fria.

His family was family friends with the people who owned the Trees of Mystery. Okay. So they let us shoot the Trees of Mystery for three or very cheap. And then we walked in and we saw the giant Bigfoot statue. And we were like, can we borrow that? And they were like, yeah. So with a big, Bigfoot statue in the place, somebody, a local artist gave us the squash wall, which is a big painting of a Sasquatch plan,

a guitar that's up in the lobby area. So you had a couple of big pieces that anchored the space, and then you have a bunch of small specific branding. But then everything kind of worked. You're able to make then we leaned into what was naturally there in the environment, which I think is the advantage of shooting on location and not building your own set. Is that you can just take advantage of the pieces that are there.

Nice. Is there anything that you want to talk about before I ask you about the people who were in your movie? I guess that's my last question. Yes. What was crazy about about the movie, right? And so we went so big and we were scheduled to the hill. Like we had 18 days to shoot the movie. And the majority of the time we were there, it was clear skies and it was great until the last four days. The last four days we were shooting outside.

We're going to shoot the conclusion because we mostly shot the movie in order. And as we were like, great, we're going to shoot outside down, it was when it decided to rain. It rained for two and a half of the three days that we were two and a half of the four days we were there. And at half day it wasn't raining, it was when somehow Andy managed to land all of the EMT vehicles for the final scene.

So while it wasn't raining and it would be perfect to shoot the big climax,

we couldn't because we had all the stuff for the epilogue. We had all this great prediction value for that. And I guess the thing is, the gamble is when you're shooting like this, when you're shooting big and you're shooting to spend every dollar and put every dollar on the screen.

You got to realize that it's always good to have a real plan B in the back back of your brain.

I'm not a big fan of having a plan B's, but understand that when you're gambling like that, you could get to a spot where you're not able to do it. So you got to figure out a way to make it happen even if not. So that's their final sequence where it gets all a montage. The big psychoanimals fight. Like that scene, it ended up being that we had 20 minutes of light left. We had this one big sequence I wanted to do.

And instead of really thinking and plotting it out, and trying to figure out the right angles, it ended up being like, we've got to go as fast as we can. We lay the kids up, the kids are actors. We lay the actors up, we soaked these animals in blood and we started throwing them at each cast member.

And we're like, all right, Jenna, it's your turn. So she'd stay in there with wing these things out her, get some good shots. Like great, got her out of there. Marissa's turn, she got out of there, then Danny's turn. And then we had all this stuff. I went to the editor. I was like, hey, congratulations. Make something. And he did. And it was great. Your editor who has impressive editing credits, by the way.

Oh, yeah, Todd was great. We caught Todd right before he really shot up in value. But he's a big Jody Hill guy now. Yeah. So that is one of the things because it will happen when you're shooting that something will screw you. Like, you have to shoot your climax. I mean, I can't think of another way to do it, then rethinking the whole thing on the fly or shooting the little bits and pieces and putting them together and posting.

And Mike's script was so, was so clockwork. Like, you don't necessarily think about it. But he was really particular of like, okay, well, this is going to happen here. So then we got to set this thing up here. So midway through the movie, Dan throws an axe. And then that Axe will be in, we're a show where it lands. So then at the end of the movie, that Axe is there. So you had to make sure that those pieces were taken care of.

That, oh, this fight's happening. And Armando's on this far end of the parking lot. And so now we're, we've trying to get rid of where everybody is. And there's so much of that in that movie of just trying to make sure we're keeping the geography straight. That it's, it's crazy. And then it becomes hard to cut it up because you want to make sure you're covering everything. Right. And that's sort of a hallmark of those type of movies.

It has an older vibe to it. I mean, it has a vintage vibe to it because it's shot in that vintage sort of style. But like, even in those 80s/er movies, they would do stuff like that. They would, they would keep track of, you know, they had a logic to them, even if they were biological. They had a physical logic in the context. So, since now you shot it and you did have those setbacks. Is there anything that you would go back and warn yourself about

if you could do that right now? I mean, other than the weather. Yeah, I mean, I would, I would maybe tell myself to really examine the, the heart of the script and what's important and what wasn't. In that script, everything was important. I know it was because, again, the way Mike Skvarla was that everything, everything counted and everything led to something else, which is a beautiful way to write a script.

But then you end up having a cast of, you said, 35 or whatever. 35. Yeah. And so maybe there's a different version of that movie that has those moments because I think the moments that really hit, really hit. And I think that sometimes you can make your movie feel bigger by contrast. You know, you can make your smaller moments feel bigger if your bigger moments are bigger. Not if there's more of that.

Once you have, once everything's kind of a big moment, then it just kind of becomes a mullage of obsceneness. So, activity. Yeah, exactly. So, I'd, the advice I'd give myself is like, it reexamined the relationships and maybe cut one action scene. I don't know which one. Cut one action scene and focus more on the, the people. Nice. Maybe cut one person. Oh yeah. Again, I, but I don't know who because I, you know, I love everybody in it.

I love, I love Cajunat. I love, you know, Brandy and I love Chester. And yeah, just love Dan. I love all of them. I forgot. I actually went to the end too early because I did want to ask you about the, the people. Oh, sure. Doug Jones and Mike McShane and those guys, you know, those guys are, are so gracious and so

incredible. Andy's old roommate, Doug Clayton was incredible. He worked in the LA theater scene so he knew a bunch of actors and was able to connect us with names and with just the acting scene in general, which is so incredibly helpful. And he was good personal friends with Doug Jones. So, he approached Doug with this script. He's like, hey, would you mind doing this? And Doug was like, well, let me get you.

I'm going to play some creepy monster. And Doug was like, no, we want you to play Dr. Lincoln. This doctor dressed as Abraham Lincoln and Doug lit up and was instantly into the idea because

he was, was into doing more face work. And Doug has a great face on his end being more of a caring person because Doug is the most caring person you'll ever meet. And because we were offering him a different aspect of what he normally did, he was like, I'm there. I will make room in my schedule for you. And Kane was the same way. I forget, oh, we met Kane through the effects guy we ended up not using.

It was a funny, it was a funny, it's a security fruit, but we met Kane in the same thing. We were like, we want you to be in this movie. And he was like, let me guess, you want to play the big monster. And we're like, well, we also want you to be this down on his luck, brow-beaten boss character. That was pretty funny. And he's like, oh, he's like, yeah, I would love to do more comedy. I know I'd love to show my face more, but he also loves to kill people.

His Kane is, Kane loves what he does. He just, he wanted to show a different side of him. So we were able to give him that. And he was excited. And both of them took very generous rates for us. And so we were able to afford them. And when our schedule got pushed around, they were also very much into it. And then Michael McShane, who I knew growing up from

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Yeah, that's I'm a big fan of that show. Doug came over with this big list of people we contact for Slavko and, you know, some cool names on the list. And I was like, could we get any of these? That's crazy. And I saw, I saw McShane's scene and I was like, that's the guy. That's the guy. See him ahead? I would love it. And we reached out and we met him. He was doing a show in NoHo. He was doing a version of what's that?

It's a the seagull? Is that a play? Yeah. Yeah, he's doing a version of the seagull. And we saw him

afterwards and we're like, so would you be interested in putting a weird voice and being this guy, he's like, yeah, absolutely. And McShane was such a huge booster of the entire process. And that's not to say anything about Shawn Weatherly, who was formerly on on Baywatch that we just kind of cold

reached out to and she was super game for it. And then Heather Rae Young, who's become the biggest star

of the whole picture. You know, she was, we were looking for babes and we called her because she was

in playboy. She was a playmate of 20, like 2009 or something. And we reached out. She was interested in

doing more acting and she did it for us, which is great. And I think she's absolutely wonderful in the movie. She's a great person. Has the best death of the movie. And has since given notifications every couple of weeks where it's like she's in the news because she's married to to re quit the space. And there's always, you know, Heather Rae Young or Heather Rae El Moussa now from

Love in the Time of Monsters. The gift they keep on giving. Yeah, that is true. That it's especially good to reach out to people if they have a name to offer them a role they don't usually get. I mean, I can't imagine how frustrating it is for Doug actually sometimes because he is always hidden. And he clearly has classic clowning in his, as one of his skill sets. And he's your face a lot for that. And but people latched on to the movement part and the fact that he's so thin that he

can fit into like whatever they need him to fit into that he's had to hide his face for so long. It's too bad. It's just too bad because yeah, yeah, because he's so, and he's such a lovely person. I want nothing but the best for him. I'm so glad that he's who's on that Star Trek show even though he was in a stupid mask. But, but it's so good to see him like, friendly getting his due out there because

he's he deserves it. All right. Well, thank you for coming on your own show and talking about

your own movie. It was pretty tough. It was pretty tough. I learned a lot about your movie that I hadn't actually talked to you about before. I never want to I don't want to bother you in the real world with questions about your movie. And you better not to the holy shit. I'm annoying. Eating eating food someplace. Hey, can you tell me about your movie? So anyway, tell tell everybody where they can find your movie and where they can stalk you through the internet wilderness. Well,

the movie currently is on Tubi, which is pretty fun. It it moves around. So do a search for love

in the Time of Monsters. The advantage of having to a wacky name is that it's really easy to search for enough to worry about other things popping up. Although there is a Dylan Dylan O'Brien movie that I hope we steal some thunder from because that movie is great, but I would love to just get a fraction of that audience. The movie was also released on DVD, although it is currently out of

prints, but you still find it, I think, via Amazon or say, hey, dealers and stuff. We also have an internet presence, a YouTube channel on the soft cow that has a bunch of documentary shorts that my friend Ben did for us while we were shooting the movie. I gave him a camera and carte blanche and I was just like, make little internet interstitials for us. And they're pretty they're pretty fun and they give a really good vibe of how the set was. I remember watching those back in the day when

your movie was coming out. Ben did such a great job with those and and I love them so much. They're on the DVD if you have the DVD. But yeah, and then me, you know, I'm on the Bluesky, Platypus Robot. I'm either Platypus Robot or Funk Guerilla, the gun kind of guerrilla, not the

hairy kind of Gorilla. On most of those things, so type in Platypus Robot, you'll find me. But yeah, but I'm on the Instagram and I'm on the Bluesky and I'm on the Twitter, although I don't use it

anymore for, you know, alt-right issues. I'm not on threads because that is Robb's turf. That's why. And you stay away from it. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Robb and I have a very, uh, Hall & Oates relationship. Yep. We got a fight on the street corner. Now we realize we both harmonize so well that we should team up as opposed to fighting. But when this stream ends, that's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. Talk to me. Yeah, you got it. You got a bus.

Well, and that does it for us. If you have any questions about filmmaking, more movies in general, please email us at indiefilmlodge@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you and we may feature your question on a feature show. Who knows? At the meantime, tell your friends about us. Yeah. And remember, the only thing holding you back is you. So get out there and shoot your feature. I'm Matt. I'm Rob. We'll see you next time.

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