Written & Directed by Kelly Reichardt

A drowsy, sun-drunk road movie in which a would-be Bonnie and Clyde
never really commit a crime, fall in love, or even hit the road.

“Highly original and filmed with perfect assurance…
one of the finest independent films of recent years.”
Dave Kehr, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

“A lively, entertaining movie about how life isn’t like the movies.”
Kevin Thomas, LOS ANGELES TIMES

“One of year’s smartest indies. Not for squares.”
J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Now Streaming

TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE The Podcast

23 TALES now available at your favorite podcast outlet • FREE • Episodes drop each week

THE PALE MEN (Glenn McQuaid & Larry Fessenden) speak to Clay McLeod Chapman about “The Mattress King,” now streaming on TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE The Podcast.

THE PALE MEN: Bug Horror tends to gross people out, and, in fairness, Mattress King certainly has its icky moments but there is something very haunted, even dreadfully sad at the heart of the horror, can you talk about where the idea for the piece came from?

Clay McLeod Chapman: The idea coalesced from a few stray thoughts… Living in New York, we tell our children to steer clear of the errant mattresses that line the curbs for fear of bedbugs. In my neighborhood, I have witnessed the very same white van without windows trawl our blocks for abandoned bed mattresses. I kid you not, this gentleman driver will pull over whenever he comes upon a mattress, hop out, pluck the mattress off the sidewalk regardless of its condition and toss it on the stack bungee-corded to his van’s roof. I’ve seen him with a mound of five or six mattresses on some days. And thus the Mattress King was born.

CMC: Beyond that, I’ve always been curious about ghost stories and how we’re haunted… and whether or not there are new ways in which the supernatural can penetrate the world of the living. I thought bed bugs — and the blood they’ve ingested — could be an interesting way to explore new narrative territory when it came to ghosts. Haunted mattresses? Possessed bedbugs? Has that ever been done before?

THE PALE MEN: It is a sad twist of fate that we find ourselves releasing Mattress King at a time when there are even more dire contagions than bedbugs. We also recall a certain story you pitched called Seasick… Is there a pattern there…?

CMC: For better or worse, I am personally obsessed with societal order disintegrating and our civilized culture regressing. Global pandemics are wonderful catalysts for this. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, we’re only one sneeze away from collapse.

THE PALE MEN: You’re mainly known as a writer, how was the experience of directing Mattress King live?

CMC: It was petrifying, to be honest. I was terrified. I felt the awesome responsibility of working with such heavyweights as Kate Flannery and Martin Starr and… and this Larry-fella, what’s his name. Being a part of SpectreVision’s SpectreFest was amazing, and rummaging around LA with the rest of the Glass Eye crew was wonderful, but as soon as the show got underway… it was crippling. I felt like a conductor. I just had to lean into the script, the music of the moment, and just ride the words. At one point I remember feeling the audience at my back, hearing them react, and it was such a huge relief. Thank goodness they went along for the ride.

THE PALE MEN: You have written several radio plays for TALES on your own and in collaboration. Do you enjoy the form…? maybe speak to how it relates to your own oral performance work which predates TALES.

CMC: I feel like the oral tradition is at the core of most if not all of my work, regardless of the medium. We’re all sitting around campfires of some sort, whether that’s in a movie theater or with our ear buds. What’s great about Tales and how it dovetails with what I love about live storytelling, is that it truly intimates the listening experience… Onstage, the audience tends to close their eyes and lean into their ears. With these plays preserved and presented for the podcast, that live performance is in effect a frozen moment in time, an insect trapped in amber. Maybe a bedbug?

————

Clay McLeod Chapman (Brooklyn, NY) is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session “The Pumpkin Pie Show.” His previous publications include Rest Area, Miss Corpus, and The Tribe trilogy – Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal, and Academic Assassins (Disney). He is the writer of TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE’S “The Mattress King,” “Like Father, Like Son,” co-author of “Tales We Tell PT 1 & 2” and performs in several Tales including “Reappraisal,”  “In The Wind,” “Cold Reading,” and “No Signal.”

Episode #23 The Mattress King

Glass Eye pal Nick Tucci departed this world March 3, 2020.
Celebrate the life and works of the talented thespian and watch him in YOU’RE NEXT,
starring Barbara Crampton, Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz and Fessenden.
Revisit his contributions to GEP films THE RANGER and
SXSW winner MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND, now streaming.

Farewell Nick, thank you for all the memorable performances.

Raves for FIRST COW by long-time Glass Eye Pix associate Kelly Reichardt (RIVER OF GRASS, WENDY AND LUCY, CERTAIN WOMEN), now opening in theaters from A24. The New York Times calls it “A Masterpiece“

From Daily Beast

Reichardt agrees that her films don’t necessarily spell everything out in purely conventional Hollywood terms, but that’s because, “I like to think that my audience is smarter than me.” It’s additionally due to the fact that, in her mind, her target demographic is akin to her colleagues at New York’s Bard College—where she teaches—as well as her closest cinematic colleagues, Todd Haynes and Larry Fessenden, about whom she reveals, “I’ve been in conversations about film with them since the beginning, since I was young and they were young.”

Doug Jones, Ron Perlman and writer/director Jeff Buhler (Pet Sematary, Midnight Meat Train) chat after recording the TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE Space Oddity “This Oracle Moon”— now available on TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE The Podcast.

Episode #22 This Oracle Moon

Barbara Crampton Wraps Horror ‘Jakob’s Wife’ From ‘Amulet’ Outfit AMP International

EXCLUSIVE: Horror legend Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, You’re Next) has wrapped filming on her latest genre feature, Jakob’s Wife, after an under-the-radar shoot in Canton, Mississippi.

Travis Stevens (Girl On The Third Floor) directed. The project comes from production and sales outfit AMP International, which recently premiered its latest movie, Romola Garai’s Amulet, in Sundance’s Midnight program.

Jakob’s Wife was developed by AMP and Crampton from a script by Mark Steensland, Kathy Charles and Travis Stevens. The story, a supernatural horror, follows a woman in her late 50s who, after a chance encounter with ‘the Master’, discovers a new sense of power, a change that comes with a heavy toll.

Also starring are Larry Fessenden (Stake Land), Bonnie Aarons (The Nun), Robert Rusler (Weird Science), Sarah Lind (Edgemont), Mark Kelly (Fear the Walking Dead), Nyisha Bell, and Phil Brooks (Girl On The Third Floor).

Producers are Bob Portal and Inderpal Singh from AMP, alongside Barbara Crampton and Travis Stevens. The project was also fully-financed by AMP – the London and Los Angeles company is looking to ramp up production activity in 2020.

The film is a co-production with Mississippi-based Eyevox Entertainment, with Rick Moore from Eyevox serving as executive producer, alongside James Norrie and Nina Kolokouri at AMP. Co-producers are Joe Wicker, Morgan Peter Brown and Kim Barnard.

“I’m thrilled to be able to bring Jakob’s Wife to life with such highly experienced producing partners at AMP International. It’s been wonderful working closely with Bob Portal in developing this amazing project, and reuniting with two of my favorite colleagues in the business, Travis Stevens and Larry Fessenden,” commented Crampton.

“Since making We Are Still Here together, I’ve been looking forward to telling more scary stories with Barbara and Larry. Jakob’s Wife has been a chance for us to dig deep in to the lives of these fictional characters and test them in ways I think genre fans are going to love seeing,” added Stevens.

Producer Portal called the project “a wild ‘marriage’ of talent that’s created such a rollicking, smart, fun genre feast.”

Director Stevens previously acted as a producer on the 2015 Crampton-starring pic We Are Still Here.

AMP’s credits include Anna And The Apocalypse, and the Sam Rockwell-starring Blue Iguana.

read article on Deadline