In an in-depth interview with the fellas who oversee the Shout Factory releases, Jeff Nelson & Cliff McMillan by Fango regular Jerry Smith. Fessenden mention excerpted below:
FANGO: I personally loved the Larry Fessenden Box Set just because HABIT is my favorite vampire movie of all time. How did that come about?
MCMILLAN: That’s sort of how the whole IFC thing started; somebody contacted me about Larry’s earlier films and wanting to do a box set. I love Larry’s movies, too; I remember seeing HABIT and WENDIGO when they first came out. I was excited about doing it and Larry is a super cool guy and fun to work with. So that’s how the whole IFC thing came to us. And I think it was the success and interest of us to want to put that out that made them decide to come to us for the distribution on the IFC Midnight line.
NELSON: I want to reinforce that too, and Cliff said it a couple times. If the Larry Fessenden collection and those discussions didn’t happen, we would not have had all of these great movies like THE BABADOOK, WYRMWOOD, THE HOLLOW, and BASKIN. You may say, “Hey, why would you do a collection on Larry Fessenden? He’s relatively unknown.” Well yeah, because of that and look what the domino effect is. We’re pretty proud of that.
MCMILLAN: Oh, now I remember what it was. Well we picked up BENEATH with our deal through Chiller. That’s what started it. Larry wanted to do a set, and then he talked to IFC and said, “You should talk to Shout Factory. They’re interested in doing my earlier works.”
FANGO: One thing that a lot of fans just absolute love about your brand is how much effort goes into giving special feature junkies the absolute best that you can offer. Was that always important to you to give people that extra attention?
NELSON: I would say yes, and Cliff would probably agree.
Add a comment