Owen: You have
started your own production company Tempe
Entertainment (www.tempevideo.com); do you have a mission
statement or company focus?
J.R.:
Tempe has been around since late 1988.
Toward the tail end of post-production on THE
DEAD NEXT DOOR, I decided to scrap my
Amsco Studios name and go with The Suburban Tempe
Company, and in 1991 Tempe Video branched off
from that. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1997, I
decided "Tempe Entertainment" had a
better ring to it so that has stuck ever since.
My
mission statement is a simple one...when I have
an idea I think is cool and want to make a movie,
I do. When I see a movie I think other people
need to see, I acquire it. It's really not more
difficult than that. (Laughs)
Owen:
What did you learn in your extended time with
production companies, Full Moon Pictures and
Cinema Home Video that you either wanted to
incorporate or correct with your own company?
J.R.: Mostly I
just learned what not to do! (Laughs)
But the real-world experience from those
companies was invaluable. The Cinema Home Video
experience showed me that it was possible for an
average Joe to start his own distribution
company, and it helped me keep going making new
movies at a time when I needed to do that. But
mostly it taught me some bad habits in the long
run. The same applies for Full Moon, although it
was financially rewarding for sure. In Charlie
Band's case it was amazing to watch this guy
who's been in the business since the early '70s
make the same really obvious mistakes over and
over again and never learn from them! The guy has
more lives than a cat is all I can say. (Laughs)
Owen:
So what is the first order of business, the plan
of action for Tempe?
J.R.: Unlike what
they teach you in business school, I'm not out to
dominate
or be a conglomerate. I'm perfectly happy running
this as a small boutique operation, occasionally
making some small movies that I'd like to do. If
anything, my main goal is just to introduce
people to some different stuff...we have a very
eclectic lineup of product, with extreme comedy
from Chris Seaver (MULVA: ZOMBIE ASS
KICKER!, FILTHY McNASTIEST),
experimental short films from Jason Santo (BENT),
gritty drama/comedy from Jeff Burr (EDDIE
PRESLEY) and some gutsy horror from guys
like Scott Phillips (THE STINK OF FLESH).
It's a bit more variety than most distributors, I
think.
Owen:
You began your directing career at 19 when you
started filming 'The Dead Next Door'
in the mid 80s, which was partially financed by
none other than Sam Raimi ('Evil Dead',
'Spiderman'). How did that
come about and what do you think he saw in you?
J.R.:
Basically it was one of those total strokes of
luck that happen once in a lifetime. Right out of
high school I attended the Art Institute of
Pittsburgh, and at the beginning of my second
year there my apartment was robbed. So I decided
that was a sign from God, packed it in and moved
back home with my mother. I'm sitting around
feeling dejected, flipping through back issues of
FANGORIA magazine and I come across the cover
story on THE EVIL DEAD. This was
a movie that I saw over and over again as a
teenager, to the point where I could almost
recite the script by memory even today. (Laughs)
I had been reading that they were trying to get
an EVIL DEAD 2 off the ground,
so I figured I'd try my luck getting a job on it
as a production assistant since I was in Akron
and they were only 4 hours away in Detroit.
Long
story short, I wound up going up there to meet
the Renaissance gang, never expecting that a job
interview would turn into my first feature! I
think it was probably a Midwest thing, similar
upbringing in a similar region...who knows.
(Laughs)
Owen: I've read that Raimi's frequent star, Bruce
Campbell, even helped with the sound editing for
'The House Next Door'. But
more importantly, I want to hear about Bruce
teaching you to drive a stick-shift!
J.R.: Yeah, Bruce
got involved at the very end. We had finished all
the picture work and the movie was again
languishing. I happened to come out to L.A. with
a friend just to kick around for 2 weeks, and
made one of those fateful phone calls that wound
up being the one that got the movie completed.
Bruce was brought in because he had been the
post-production supervisor on the Renaissance
flicks up to that point...I guess he knew more
about post than anyone else there. He basically
built all of the foley and did a lot of the ADR
work, including the characters of Raimi and
Commander Carpenter. It was quite a kick to work
with the star of EVIL DEAD on my
first movie!
It's
true, Bruce Campbell taught me to drive a manual
transmission car! The place where the movie was
being mixed was in Hollywood and for some reason,
Bruce was going to be there awhile and I had to
get back to the Van Nuys area over the
hill...probably because I was scoring the movie
as the sound was being built. I didn't have a car
so Bruce suggested that I drive his little beater
and he would find a ride to come and pick it up.
The problem was, I didn't know how to drive stick
shift then! So Bruce gives me this crash-course
on the streets of Hollywood and then sends me out
to the wolves on the 170 freeway during 5 o'clock
traffic! I was grinding gears and stalling out
like you wouldn't believe. (Laughs) But I got
back to where I was staying OK and it's a pretty
funny story looking back on it now.
Owen: While you
were enrolled at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh
you had the honor of being an extra in the
classic 'Day of the Dead'.
Tell me about that experience?
J.R.: One of my
motivations in picking AIP was of course because
Romero was still based in Pittsburgh and I
secretly hoped I could find some grunt work on
one of his flicks. Halfway through my first year
they were in production on DAY OF THE
DEAD...I used to go over to Tom Savini's
house and just hang out, watching them come up
with some of the early stuff like that Dr. Tongue
puppet that graces the main titles. My school
schedule was 4 hours each weekday in the
afternoon, so there was no way I was going to be
able to get a job on the movie and still go to
school. I had someone from the employment agency
at AIP call the production office to see what
could be done, and they suggested I come out to
be a zombie extra. So my roommate and I schlepped
out to Beaver Falls and wound up in the scene
where Steele is being pursued by Bub, gets bit
and winds up committing suicide. If you look
closely (maybe with slo-mo on the DVD) you can
see me in a few shots, I'm the zombie in the red
jacket with half of the left sleeve missing. It
was mostly a lot of waiting around, but at the
end of the night I got to take a great pic with
Romero. It was a great experience, because I
learned about wrangling extras and the following
year I'd put that experience to use making THE
DEAD NEXT DOOR.
Owen: When you
came to LA you worked doing a great deal of
post-production work with Full Moon as well as
other studios working on such movies as 'Shrieker',
'The Brotherhood', 'Talisman',
'Curse of the Puppet Master',
etc. What are the best parts about
being an editor, what did you enjoy about the
work?
J.R.:
I always had an interest in
post-production, mainly because it's the phase
where everything comes together. Most filmmakers
live to be on the set directing, but honestly I
would rather be locked in a dark room with the
footage, putting it all together! So when I
decided to relocate to L.A. in early 1997, I
didn't really have a plan except to get out of
Ohio and try something new. About 6 months went
by and I was doing some freelance graphic design
and website work at the same time I was helping
some friends post their movie SLEEPWALKER.
A director I had made some flicks for in the past
happened to see all of this going on in my living
room and I guess it gave him an idea.
Next
thing I know, he sits down to offer me the
editing and sound mixing on SHRIEKER,
which he was about to make for Full Moon. I had
never cut a 35mm show before even though I
was using my same Adobe Premiere system on a
Power Mac that I had used for my shot-on-video
flicks, they wanted to cut the negative so that
was a new challenge. I also bought a basic Pro
Tools system and learned it in time to mix that
show. It was all very seat-of-your-pants and low
budget, but for me it was a big step up. That gig
got me the same one on CURSE OF THE
PUPPET MASTER, which led to a slew of
post work for Full Moon and finally to me being
hired as their post-production supervisor. In
short order I was manning a team of 20 people,
but by the summer of 1999 I was really not
interested in doing that anymore. I wasn't doing
creative work; I was just scheduling and
supervising. Thankfully around that time, Full
Moon decided they couldn't afford to keep an
in-house post team, so we went back to doing
everything freelance. After a few months, I got
hired to direct WITCHOUSE 2: BLOOD COVEN
for them and that led to producing a string of
other flicks, where I was responsible for
literally everything from script development to
laying out the final DVD!
Owen:
You have also done a great amount of producing,
most notoriously producing William Shatner's
directorial feature 'Groom Lake'
(2001). What was the primary source of all
the problems and friction with the
production?
J.R.: You know, I
really, truly hate producing but if you look
at my IMdB page, I've now done more of that than
anything else! (Laughs) GROOM LAKE fell
into my lap as part of a series of DVCAM features
that I produced for Full Moon after directing WITCHOUSE
2. It was the biggest of the four movies
that were being made back-to-back between August
and December 2000. There were several problems
with GROOM LAKE. The first was
that Charlie Band was lying to Shatner about the
money we were going to spend. He told him this
was a $500,000 movie and then would turn around
to me and expect it to get made for $250,000. The
script was way too big for either of those
budgets, and Shatner was told this all along but
he wouldn't budge, and in fact he wound up making
it more complex as time went on! But the
main problem is that Shatner was not used to our
hit-and-run style of filmmaking...this guy
directed STAR TREK V with a
fleet of producers and assistant directors, for
God's sake. He didn't like to be told
"No" and I was the guy that had to keep
doing that to him. So we had some pretty gnarly
spats, but I treated him just like any other
director that I've produced for...I wasn't
intimidated by him at all. Sadly the budget
problems and Shatner's inexperience just collided
into the big fat train wreck you see on video
store shelves today. (Laughs)
Owen: As
a director you have made some solid work -- 'Witchouse
2: Blood Coven', 'Witchouse 3:
Demon Fire', 'The Sandman',
'Polymorph', 'Ozone',
'Deadly Stingers'. As a
director what bit of advice do you have for all
the "digital revolution" folks lensing
their own movies?
J.R.: Well, I have
an interesting perspective on the DV revolution.
I made my first video feature in 1991 on
Super-VHS, at a time when everyone said we were
crazy to even attempt such a thing! And to be
honest, the technology was not up to par then.
But I kept at it and something like OZONE
showed people that it was really possible to make
something cool with no money and a camcorder. By
the time we shot POLYMORPH in
1996, Sony had just shipped their first VX-1000
and we got our hands on one. I'm fairly certain
we were the first guys to shoot a feature on
Mini-DV. But really what separates me from most
of the DV guys is that I've shot on all kinds of
formats...Super-8mm film, 16mm, Super-VHS,
Mini-DV, 35mm, DVCAM and more recently HDCAM 24p
for DEADLY STINGERS. Most guys
don't have that depth of experience. I mean I'm
thankful to have done all this at a time when we
cut some of our early shows on 16mm film, on a
bench, and now can translate that experience to
Final Cut Pro. Cutting old-school style on film
teaches you a certain discipline, and I think you
can then apply that to digital editing and do a
better job than the guy who runs home from the
Apple Store having never cut anything in their
life and installs Final Cut Pro. (Laughs)
Really the best advice I can give
is, shoot your movie like it's a movie! Light it
and compose your shots cinema-style. Get the mic
off the camera and boom your actors like the pros
do it. These are simple things, but you'd be
amazed how many people can't seem to grasp these
basic concepts. And for God's sake, stop shooting
raw video and trying to fool everyone with film
look...24p has eliminated that completely!
Owen:
Tell me about Tempe's 'Bad Movie Police'
series.
J.R.: BAD MOVIE POLICE started as an in-joke amongst my friends years
ago. Every time I heard a siren wailing in the
distance, I'd joke that "the Bad Movie
Police are coming to get me" and it would
always get a laugh. Then I started thinking; what
if there really were a Bad Movie
Police? What if they went after bad
filmmakers for acts of "cine-terrorism"
and then presented the offending movie to the
public? Of course, thankfully I had the perfect
movies to use for this vehicle and those were 5
or 6 video features that I had made for hire back
in 1991-1992. After a false start or two, we shot
the first 3 segments in early 2003 and the first
2 were released that fall. The initial sales were
OK, not spectacular...sadly I spent far too much
money shooting the 3 wraparound segments only to
have the concept weighed down by these dreadful
movies. But the people who saw them, dug them,
and the reviews were great...most of them were
way too kind to the movies as a result of
the approach we had taken! (Laughs) So I have 2
more movies to do this treatment to eventually,
and a lifetime of ideas to tap into.
Owen.: Are series
favorites Lilith Stabs (as Lt. Drucilla Dread)
and Ariauna Albright (as Sgt. Elke Mantooth) as
much fun as they seem?
J.R.: Absolutely!
It's kind of funny because most people know that Ariauna
and I dated briefly before we ever made movies
together, and at the time we shot BAD
MOVIE POLICE I was dating Lilith.
(Laughs) So I think everyone kept waiting for the
claws to come out, but it couldn't be farther
from the truth. Those two had a blast together
and they bug me all the time to shoot new
episodes. The original concept only had Ariauna
by herself, but I'm glad that I expanded it to be
two gals, because they play off each other very
well. Lilith's background as a dominatrix
certainly lends itself to playing Drucilla Dread,
whereas Ariauna was playing it a little more
hard-boiled. I had a good time making those
episodes with them...my only regret was that I
decided to produce instead of direct, but
probably for the next two I'll remedy that so I
can get in on the fun a bit more.
Owen: So when you
look back on your youth do you see instances
that make you nod and say, "Yep, that kid
was destined to grow up to be in horror
biz."
J.R.: I'm sure my parents do! I mean, my bedroom was
lined with horror movie posters and what-not, I
always had my head in an issue of FANGORIA or
Famous Monsters or whatever. I took my first
stab at making home movies at age 10 or 11, and I
just kept on doing it right through high school
and college, up until THE DEAD NEXT DOOR.
I don't think there was ever a doubt in my mind
that this was what I'd wind up doing. (Laughs)
Owen:
What projects do you have lined up in
the near future?
J.R.: I'd like to
finish out the BAD MOVIE POLICE series,
and maybe even take the idea one step further
with something called THE BAD MOVIE
POLICE MOVIE...sort of like an AMAZON
WOMEN ON THE MOON-style comedy. The
current interest in zombie movies has resurrected
interest in my DEAD FUTURE: THE DEAD NEXT
DOOR sequel, but that's been round and
round so many times by now I don't hold out too
much hope that it will ever be made. I've been
taking a long break from production for the last
couple of years, mostly to cleanse myself of some
bad habits I picked up from working with folks
like Full Moon and also to concentrate on the DVD
business. So I'm not entirely sure when I'll step
behind the camera again...
Owen: What scares
you in real life?
J.R.: Sharks still
get me, every time. I thought the last half of OPEN
WATER was just as effective as JAWS!
My two biggest fears are probably being broke and
dying alone, though. (Laughs) |