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Filmmaker: How did Glass Eye Pix come aboard the project?
Asensio: I had known Larry Fessenden for a while, not quite as a friend but as an acquaintance, through the independent film community. I had the opportunity to work with him on one of his Tales from Beyond the Pale episodes, the radio series he produces. I mentioned to him that I was determined to make my film over the next year and that I wasn’t going to wait for anyone else. The film had a journey of going to different places and not being financed, so I was determined to do it myself with my own savings.
I told Larry about the story. He was interested and asked to read the script to see if he could help the film. He approached it as a friend, to see if he could advise me on the film. When Jenn Wexler, a producer at Glass Eye Pix, read the script, she sat down with Larry and they both decided that they wanted to make the film happen. They had limited resources, but we wanted to put our means together and see what we could do. It was fantastic. It was very collaborative from the very beginning and I had a lot of freedom. Larry, himself being a director, understood how a director feels when creating his or her own material and let me know that his door was always open if I needed to bounce off ideas. Glass Eye put all of the logistics together and even part of the financing at the very end.
Being a first-time director, it was a very safe environment to work in, being so exposed, as I am, in the film. This group of people took care of me and were protective of me as a first-time director. It was a really wonderful and nurturing experience….as well as wild [laughs].
Filmmaker: There’s a recognizable, practical style to Glass Eye films that Most Beautiful Island upholds. It’s independent genre filmmaking working within an economy of means, and there’s a human aspect centering the material. How did you find this film works within the the company’s previous filmography?
Asensio: I am a huge fan of Larry’s film Habit, a terrific, one-of-a-kind film that I would put at the top of everything at Glass Eye Pix. I am a fan of certain kinds of horror films (not all of them), but the nature of filmmaking that Glass Eye Pix displays was something that I’ve connected with from the very beginning. I knew that my film possessed a genre element, and knew that, although not a 100 percent horror film, it could appeal to the horror community as well.
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