Under a full moon and on my late Dad’s Birthday,
I finished the mix and color correct on BLACKOUT.
Anyone who knows my process knows there will be tweaks to come,
but the bulk of the work is done.

With thanks to my cast and crew and the unsung soldiers
of post-production who bring a movie into focus.

Hope to get the film out to the public soon;
we make these pictures to share and console and jostle.
—L Fessenden, april 6, 2023

photo of October 2022 full moon by Garth Battista

2007, Fessenden, Mark Borchardt (AMERICAN MOVIE) and Ti West
on set of CABIN FEVER 2, directed by West. 

Ti West’s MAXXXINE coming soon 2023.

From Hollywood Reporter:

MaXXXine — the third film in the X horror series — has set the cast that will join franchise star Mia Goth in the Ti West feature.

Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Halsey, Giancarlo Esposito and Kevin Bacon are set for the feature that will start shooting his month in Los Angeles.

MaXXXine will take place after the events of X, and follow Goth’s Maxine as the sole survivor of the farmhouse massacre who continues her journey toward fame as she sets out to make it as an actress in 1980s Los Angeles.

A24 is behind the new film, with Jacob Jaffke, West, Goth, Kevin Turen and Harrison Kreiss acting as producers. West is writing and directing the sequel.

Get the full scoop HERE

Slash Film: Showing Up Director Kelly Reichardt On Working With Michelle Williams,
Judd Hirsch, And Animals 

Remember when “First Cow” came out in 2019, lighting Film Twitter on fire thanks to a combination of incredibly poignant storytelling, a strong and compelling bond between its two working class main characters, and an utterly (udderly? sorry) adorable bovine at the center of it all? Indie studio A24 did what they do best and leaned into those aspects (especially the bovine of it all) for as much as it was worth, driving up buzz online and helping turn writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s quiet and unassuming movie into a film festival hit.

So how would the filmmaker hope to recapture that magic with the next A24 collaboration? Well, Reichardt remains blissfully unaware of the whims of social media (“Fortunately,” she dryly states during our conversation) and whatever marketing power it may or may not hold, allowing her and frequent writing partner Jon Raymond to concentrate solely on the needs of the script in front of them. That focus paid dividends on “Showing Up,” the upcoming slice-of-life film starring Reichardt regular Michelle Williams as Lizzie, a frazzled sculptor attempting to navigate the minefields of her impending showcase, her dysfunctional family, and her irritating fellow artist/landlord Jo (a brilliant Hong Chau).

Not only is the film a surprisingly funny drama, but it also shares a serendipitous parallel with “The Fabelmans.” In a recent Zoom interview, I spoke with Reichardt about beating Steven Spielberg to the punch in casting Judd Hirsch and Michelle Williams as estranged relatives, working with animals in the tradition of her other films (“Showing Up” happens to star a scene-stealing pigeon), why the character of Lizzie was described as a “trapped badger,” and more.

Read full exclusive interview HERE

A world off kilter

Ted Geoghegan on casting, design and the supernatural in Brooklyn 45

Five people. One room. It’s late at night in Brooklyn, just after the end of the Second World War, and friends have gathered to comfort one of their number who has recently lost his wife, who shocks them when he says that he wants their help to hold a séance. Writer/director Ted Geoghegan is a little nervous about his new film, Brooklyn 45, because it’s not stuffed to the gills with supernatural shocks like some horror fans may be hoping; rather, its focus is on the psychological, and on the damage done by a conflict which led people to encounter situations they simply were not prepared for. It went down well at SXSW, however, and as it screened at the Overlook Film Festival, I asked him how he managed to assemble its impressive cast.

“I had written the role of Clive for Larry Fessenden,” he begins. “Larry’s one of my oldest friends here in New York, we only live a few blocks apart. He’s one of my one of my favourite carousing and drinking buddies, where we sit around and we bounce ideas off each other all day. I wanted to create another role that I felt Larry could excel in as an actor, because so often he’s given these tiny roles in genre films, he shows up and he gets killed, or he shows up and has one line and walks away – and he’s just such a phenomenal actor.

Read the rest of the interview HERE

TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE
launches “loss-less” versions of every Tale on BANDCAMP

Special re-mix of
Glenn McQuaid’s INT. COFFIN – NIGHT available now

The lads have a chat about the new project:

Larry Fessenden: Glenn can you tell the fans why this new platform for TALES? Why Bandcamp and what is “Lossless audio?”

Glenn McQuaid: When it comes to Tales from Beyond the Pale, every detail counts, I’m most proud of all the nuances and subtleties that go into our final mixes but it’s fair to say that a lot of the stuff we spend hours trying to get just right in the studio can get muddied once the files are compressed for streaming. Releasing the work as lossless audio ensures all of these details are preserved and the listener can hear the work without any loss of fidelity.

I also think that Bandcamp is an incredible platform, there is so much fun content on there from every genre of music as well audio drama (check out our UK friends on there, Bafflegab, their work is amazing) and it’s a place where listeners can choose to support the artists directly. As you know I make music as Witchboard (goth) and Luke Fuller (gay porn soundtracks) and a few other nom-de-plumes and I love the community of bandcamp creators and consumers.

LF: And to launch our new platform, we are re-releasing your recent Tale “Int. Coffin – Night”. Why re-cut/re-release a Tale?

GM: I listened to the original release of Coffin a few months back and felt it wasn’t up to our usual standards and given that it has no dialogue I felt it was especially important to get it right. I initially thought I’d go in and just do a re-edit and clean up some sounds but it ended up being much more involved than that. I went back to the original studio performance of Grace Cooper and chose different takes and recorded and added new foley, and changed the score. It’s fun to consider this one our first Director’s Cut even though there was no studio interference which that label suggests.

LF: So there’s no dialogue. How did you come to that approach?

GM:A few reasons, the pettiest being that a group of dull people in the business told me it wasn’t possible so I set out to prove them wrong. Another reason is that I find there’s an overuse of the narrator in the format these days and I wanted to kick against that. I also think there’s too much descriptive exposition in dialogue, “Look over there, I see a *insert detailed description here*…” kind of stuff.

Letting go of the dialogue forced me to consider soundscapes in new ways, they’re not just background here, they tell the story.

I release field recording/nature sound records (Glenn McQuaid’s Excursions in Sound) and in a way Int. Coffin – Night. is an extension of those records and I wanted it to be enjoyed almost as an environmental record too. The new edit takes its time, there are moments of trudging across a river, or walking through woods that were initially a lot shorter, the new cut is less impatient with the journey and allows these moments to open up and become much more lush and immersive.

As you say in the intro it requires that the listener give it their undivided attention, which is a lot to ask of modern audiences but it’s a puzzle box of sorts and it’ll open up if one gives it some focus. We’ve always pushed ourselves to try new things and this one certainly does that, I’m proud of it, I think it’s a terrific gothic horror and could make a great silent movie one day!

LF: Very nice job, Glenn. I hope fellow audiophiles will visit the Bandcamp site. Our low-fi friends can shuffle on over to our regular podcast sight where we’ve made the new INT. COFFIN – NIGHT is available.

And now back to the TALES HQ where we are slaving away on the new season…

TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE on BANDCAMP

INT. COFFIN – NIGHT revised at the TALES podcast

TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE podcast

CHECK OUT THE PROGRAM, NOTES AND ARTICLES

Launch Party at Posteritati

photos by Stan Oh

A Low-Budget Ratpocalypse – The Underrated NYC Horror Movie ‘Mulberry Street’

Apocalyptic infection flicks rarely show the initial chaos of their respective outbreaks. In fact, most zombie movies tend to skip over the downfall of civilization entirely, focusing on what happens after society has already collapsed. And even when these stories dare to take place during the immediate aftermath of a global crisis, most filmmakers (like George A. Romero in his seminal Night of the Living Dead) prefer to place their main characters in isolated locations where they’re only shown brief snippets of how the rest of the world is dealing with the calamity.

Obviously, there’s a simple explanation for this. Large scale stories need large scale production budgets and few studios are willing to bet that amount of money on a gory genre flick. Even World War Z had to be tragically neutered in order to justify its blockbuster financing, and indie filmmakers can’t exactly pay out of pocket to afford the special effects necessary to convey a global disaster.

Fortunately, there are exceptions to every rule, and every now and then ambitious filmmakers attempt to tackle large stories despite a lack of resources, with some of them succeeding precisely because of their down-to-earth approach to the downfall of civilization. One of my personal favorites of these low budget apocalypses is Jim Mickle’s tragically underseen Mulberry Street, a unique little infection movie from 2006 that revamps a familiar premise to make a statement about gentrification in New York.

While he’s now mostly known for his work on Stakeland and the Netflix comic-book adaptation Sweet Tooth, Mickle was once a freelancing film student who found himself working on amateur productions until he met future collaborator Nick Damici. Hitting it off with the writer/actor due to their shared love of genre movies, the duo decided to team up for a minimalist zombie film that would harken back to the manic energy and social commentary of Romero’s early work. As the scope of the project grew and the team accrued more investors, the proposed story changed into something more original.

Read Full Bloody Disgusting Article HERE

#15 HABIT

By Andrea Ballerin

Written, edited, and directed by Larry Fessenden, who also stars as the main protagonist, Habit is an independent take on the vampire genre that has become a cult over the years. Sam (Fessenden) leads a nonconformist lifestyle in New York, fuelled by the use of alcohol and drugs. One night, he meets a mysterious woman called Anna (Meredith Snaider), and everything changes.

Habit is characterized by an amazing and grainy representation of New York, elevated by great use of neon lights and handheld camera movements. At the same time, the urban and cultural environment that Fessenden can re-create for the movie pushes the stylistic level further. Habit still remains a haunting masterpiece that few know.

Read whole list at MOVIEWEB