FROM ICONS OF FRIGHT

Larry Fessenden is a jack of all trades within the horror genre. An actor, director, writer, producer, the filmmaker is not only one of the best auteurs in the last 20 years, but is also responsible for producing some of the most up and coming genre directors’ films. Ti West’s THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL/THE INNKEEPERS, Jim Mickle’s STAKE LAND, Adrián García Bogliano’s LATE PHASES, and the list goes on and on. Fessenden himself has been one of the most influential filmmakers in independent genre films around, having helmed such revered films as NO TELLING, HABIT, WENDIGO, THE LAST WINTER and 2013’s BENEATH. Playing such a huge part in filmmaking in all aspects of the word, Fessenden and his company, Glass Eye Pix is celebrating 30 years of auteur-driven films, with an upcoming Scream Factory boxset featuring four of Fessenden’s films, a series of screenings of Larry’s films, and now, a mini-documentary series revolving around the various films Glass Eye Pix was responsible for.

Icons of Fright alumni Adam Barnick is directing each episode of the series, and fright fanatics, we’re happy to say, we’ve got the first episode of the series for you to check out. Watch the video below and by all means, visit http://glasseyepix.com/ for more info!!

Appearing in three films at London’s Fright Fest, Mickey Keating’s POD, Ted Geogehan’s WE ARE STILL HERE and BODY by Dan Burk and Robert Olsen, Scifinow took notice and posts this extensive interview with Fessenden.

It’s a bastard genre and I stand by it. I think the world is a frightening place and people should be shocked out of their complacency. Now the irony is, I don’t know that everybody thinks of horror that way, but I think of it as a confrontational genre, a way to scream from the rafters, ‘Look at humanity, it needs fixing, it’s a mess, look at how we treat each other.’ So I use it as a punishing genre! [laughs]

I love it, and I also love the aesthetic of horror, the creepy, the cobwebby cellars and corridors, I like the darkness and I like the night and a big full moon and a creaking tree. So these are actually purely aesthetic things and you can almost not quite put your finger on why you’re like that. I think it’s literally psychology or something dreadful happened when I was a kid that I don’t remember [laughs].

But at the same time I do resent not being taken seriously as a filmmaker because you’re involved in the genre. I think that’s just an oversight of the culture and so it will be. People actually are afraid of death and they’re a little wary of people who are constantly harping about death [laughs]! So you’re a little bit like the weird guy in the room, let’s face it, and that’s like being a punk rocker, it makes me feel OK, I don’t mind. I don’t know that the pristine glowing happy smiling society is particularly accurate to our experience in life so I’d rather call it like it is: a bit of a scary place.

read the full article at scifinow

Screen Daily recaps Frontiers Market with quotes from producer Peter Phok (The Roost, Beneath, Sacrement, In a Valley of Violence, etc) From the article:

Having worked with Ti West, Glass Eye Pix’s Peter Phok brought up the DIY approach to film-making and just going out there and shooting without finance necessarily in place, adding that it’s increasingly become about “taking advantage of what you have” with the lack of film funds available in the US.

“A lot of films are put together mainly through equity and now all the states have a tax credit incentive, so we’ll get a script and as much as it’s about shooting where makes sense, you have to look at those incentives and start to build your budget around those,” explained Phok.

“It’s not a privilege to be a film-maker; it’s something that if you want to do, you do it. Even when I did make money at the start of my career, it wasn’t very much. You invest in yourself and you work with what you have.”

Read more here: Experts debate genre film finance models

At Glass Eye Pix, we always said Rick Alverson’s THE COMEDY was a horror film, both as a tongue-in-cheek answer to the question “why would an indie horror production company make a comedy?” (silly, because we make lots of movies outside of the genre), but more importantly because Alverson’s film was an uncompromising portrait of the detachment and socio-pathology of the modern, privileged, white male hipster, a less overtly violent version of the American Psycho, but just as debasing to society.

Now, after this year’s Sundance, Buzzfeed starts to catch on to Alverson’s themes, while simultaneously (and finally) acknowledging the scope of a genre too often pigeonholed. 

Check out the excerpts below and read the full article by Alison Willmore at BUZZFEED.

3 New Movies That Are Redefining The Horror Genre

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, The Witch, The Nightmare, and Entertainment challenge old ideas of how horror films can look and feel.

PARK CITY, Utah — There are horror movies, there are art movies, and then there are those that fall in the sweet spot between where fans of the scary and fans of the exquisitely shot come together. And that usually happens at a film festival.

Like many fests, the annual Sundance Film Festival has a midnight section where most of its genre selections — including Eli Roth’s latest, Knock Knock, and David Robert Mitchell’s beautiful, terrifying sexually transmitted haunting movie It Follows — are grouped. But this year, the most talked-about horror film in Park City, The Witch, premiered in the bright light of afternoon in Sundance’s largest theater, courtesy of its place in the main dramatic competition. And, in addition to The Witch, two other movies also pushed the boundaries of what horror could be with innovative filmmaking and a willingness to show the many different types of fears people grapple with.

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Rick Alverson’s dread-filled latest, Entertainment, isn’t a horror movie at all, not in the traditional sense. But by the end, it feels like it fits in that genre as much as it does comedy: Essentially, it’s like watching someone die repeatedly, albeit on stage.

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the movie gets more Lynchian as it goes along, with strange, surreal cul-de-sacs in which the comedian encounters a nervous fellow traveler (Michael Cera), a chromotherapist, and a woman in labor.

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This is a movie that is about as enjoyable as embracing a cactus. But once it starts to feel like Entertainment’s protagonist is actually stuck in some ironic, awful purgatory, waiting and waiting for someone to tell him it’s time to go home, it’s difficult to shake the movie off, even long after it’s over.

Fessenden, JT Petty, Travis Stevens and more discuss the biz of genre filmmaking in the Fall 2014 issue of MovieMaker Magazine, on newsstands Nov 25th.

From MovieMaker.com:

“A decade ago, the primary focus of independent horror moviemakers was making a good horror movie, knowing that if they did their job well, they were virtually guaranteed to find an audience and make their money back (and then some). Horror was the Teflon genre—or so it seemed.

“In the last decade it’s gotten cheaper to make movies, and harder to make money off of them,” says J.T. Petty, writer-director of horror features The Burrowers (2008) and Hellbenders (2012). “The ‘guarantee’ most people took for granted was the DVD market, and that’s all but gone.” Today, the business of independent horror moviemaking has changed dramatically, and while making a good movie is still paramount, the moviemaker of 2014 must wear other hats just as well in order to survive: branding expert, distributor, producer, publicist, sales agent. “And,” as Eduardo Sanchez, director of 1999’s game-changing The Blair Witch Project and the upcoming Exists, says, “most of us didn’t get into this to become distributors.”

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According to Larry Fessenden, director of Wendigo (2001) and producer of Stake Land (2010), “Executives often say, ‘Do you have anything in the Blumhouse model?’ The thing to understand is: Blum’s films have name actors (Ethan Hawke, Patrick Wilson) who work at scale, the films are made relatively cheaply, and there is a distribution scheme that gets the movies onto 3,000 screens on opening weekend. This is not the same as making an independent haunted house movie on the Canon 5D and hoping it makes a lot of money. You can’t guarantee your investors that your $15,000 movie will earn $200 million at the box office.”

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“Horror used to have that whiff of danger and discovery,” says Fessenden. “That is why the remakes don’t excite the fans, because there is no discovery there, just studios cashing in. Blum’s films are original stories, even as he franchises them, and that alone makes his approach more compelling than the studio approach.”

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Stevens is philosophical, though optimistic. “Your perspective shifts a bit. Maybe there isn’t more money coming in, but what are the upsides? Our film played around the world in festivals, which gave us opportunities to meet more filmmakers, financiers and distributors. It played globally in cinemas and was easily available in retail outlets. This meant we were building an international audience and international distributors see value in that. It allowed us to secure more money on our other projects. Your definition of ‘profit’ expands a bit, working in this space.”

Check out the full article at MovieMaker.com.

Stuart Gordon lists Fessenden’s “N is for Nexus” as one of his top ABCs OF DEATH 2 segments. From TheTalkhouse.com:

“N is for Nexus” directed by Larry Fessenden
This story, set on Halloween in New York City, builds up quite a head of steam in its short running time. Mr. Fessenden again proves himself to be one of our best working horror directors by delivering the most suspenseful and effectively disturbing episode in this series.”

Check out the full article here.

Mysteriously appearing today 13 August, an interview with Fessenden by Sean Axmaker to support the release of… BENEATH…?

Tonight Fessenden will be chatting LIVE on The Ghostman & Demon Hunter Show available on 102.7 FM the Hog, Celestial Radio, PP Entertainment Radio, and Stitcher.

Show starts at 7!

About the G&D Show–
Each week the G&D Show brings home the crazy with celebrity interviews, weird news, insights by authors and specialists, new investigations, the truth behind local legends and seemingly impossible tales. They are the American Pickers of story tellers… accept no imitations!

Tune in!

 
From ChillerTV.com:
Writer, Director and Producer (he acts, too! Quadruple threat!) Larry Fessenden has been behind some of the most original and talked about horror movies of the last decade – The Last Winter, House of the Devil, Stakeland, and Wendigo, amongst them. He’s also the creative force behind Beneath, out from Chiller Films this Tuesday, July 16 (It’s available On Demand and in select theaters, so its super easy to watch). To celebrate Beneath‘s release, we asked Larry to tell   Continue Reading »

 
From Brian Truitt at USA TODAY:
With a giant man-eating fish in tow, the maven of indie horror returns to the director’s chair for the first time in six years with Beneath.
“I would not have told you a year ago I was going to make a movie about a giant fish. I can guarantee that much.”
Nearly 40 years ago, that could have been Steven Spielberg talking about Jaws. Here, though, it’s indie horror guru Larry Fessenden, who is just as much   Continue Reading »