J.R. Bookwalter Interview
By MicroCinema Scene • Jan 29th, 2007 • Category: Articles, Interviews
In many ways, J.R. Bookwalter epitomizes the spirit of what MicroCinema Scene is all about. This may sound like a strange claim to make about someone who is best known for directing a sprawling Super8 zombie epic financed by the director of Evil Dead II. Infected with a love for filmmaking at an early age, Bookwalter has brought his visions to cinematic life by any means necessary. Throughout his career, his has continually pushed the envelope, undaunted by lack of money, industry connections or geographic proximity to Hollywood.
But for cinema elitists, Bookwalter is an easy figure to overlook. Not only does his oeuvre consist mainly of blood-splattered horror, but the majority of his films are shot on videotape. Bookwalter was shooting features on Super-VHS and Hi-8 video before DV was even an indie buzzword. In fact, his sci-fi action flick Polymorph may actually be the first legitimate DV feature, beating The Celebration and Julien DonkeyBoy by years.
In addition to his filmmaking, Bookwalter started a video production and distribution company and published Alternative Cinema, a nationally distributed magazine to promote both his work and that of other low-budget filmmakers. Several years ago, Bookwalter sold Alternative Cinema and ceased production of his shot-on-video movies. He has since moved to California and repositioned Tempe Productions as a post-production company for the independent film industry.
The following interview was conducted by Christopher Sharpe in mid-2001 for Eyeball Magazine.
Bookwalter: Star Wars, without a doubt. It sounds like a stereotypical choice for someone my age, I know. It’s quite amusing now as an adult to see The Phantom Menace, and all the kids love it and all the adults hate it.
While I don’t recall that being exactly the reaction to Star Wars, I know most of the adults around me as a kid thought I was a freak, so I guess history is repeating itself. After I saw it opening night and was disappointed, I took my nephew Zach to see it and he flipped over it! He loves that Jar Jar Binks, what can I say? He and his sister call me “Uncle Jar Jar.”
What were your early films like?
Bookwalter: Pretty awful. I mean, the first one I did was called Darth Vader Lives! It was basically two minutes of bad animation with Star Wars action figures. But it wasn’t until Fangoria #1 came out with that piece on Tom Savini’s work for Dawn of the Dead that I freaked over blood and guts. Then it was a bunch of neighborhood slashers and zombie flicks until high school, when I dabbled in music videos. I was always a horror buff, being raised on Dark Shadows and films like Grizzly and Equinox on late-night TV. Probably the one that influenced me most was a film I didn’t get to see until I was well into The Dead Next Door: The Incredible Melting Man! I saw it in Starlog magazine and it struck some kind of nerve with me. I know it’s a bad film, but I still love it. I’d love to helm a sequel!
Was The Dead Next Door your first feature, or did your projects get progressively more complex?
Bookwalter: Well, they got more technical as the years stretched on. At first they were all silent. Eventually I got a Super-8mm sound camera and David Barton had a sound projector, so we worked together for awhile until we each got our own. The music videos were a challenge to attempt lip-sync. In my year of college at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I did a 20-minute short called Go Insane, inspired by the Lindsey Buckingham album—originally it was going to be some kind of big concept video. That was the longest thing I did up to The Dead Next Door.
How did you get Sam Raimi to put up the money for a feature-length Super8 zombie epic? Or is that a taboo subject?
Bookwalter: It’s never a taboo subject. If I had a dime for every time I’ve been asked that question, I’d be a millionare! It’s a very generic story: I had quit the Art Institute when my apartment got robbed, and returned home to Akron, Ohio. I languished around for a month being a bum, and happened to be flipping through some old back issues of Fango looking for inspiration when I rediscovered the article on The Evil Dead. Somehow, it suddenly dawned on me that they were in Detroit, which was only four hours away. I had heard rumblings of an Evil Dead II, so I figured I could get a production assistant job easily with them.
Eventually I wound up in Detroit at the Renaissance Pictures office to meet with Sam, Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell. I had my Super-8mm projector and a selection of some of my 50-odd short films to show them. Sam and I adjourned to the office next door and he seemed to be immediately taken by them! I was fairly embarrassed as he had me shut them off and rewind, dragging in Bruce and Rob for a look! But they all seemed to dig them, though certainly Sam had the most faith in my abilities without a doubt.
Later, the conversation turned to the future and I expressed to Sam my current need to just get back in the saddle doing anything on films. I explained that I was thinking of taking the Romero route, doing local industrial films and commercials. Raimi scoffed and said I’m wasting my talents and should be making features, and on top of that, said he’d be willing to kick in a few bucks if I got something going!
After spending an afternoon with him, I headed back home with all sorts of crazy little ideas running around my head. At first I thought of using a friend’s VHS camcorder and editing system—barbaric by current standards—and shooting something for $4,000. At the time, that seemed like a fortune! I decided to do a loose sequel to a short film I had made called Zombie, and the rest is history. Raimi loved the idea of doing something on the cheap and the project continued to grow and evolve over four years.
How old were you when all of this was going on?
Bookwalter: I wrote it when I was 18 going on 19, directed the bulk of it at 19 going on 20, edited it at 20 going on 21 and completed it just prior to turning 22. By the time of my 22nd birthday I already had a second feature in the can and two more lined up as a producer!
The fact that you pulled off such a complex movie at such a young age with such a low budget is pretty impressive. Looking back on it, are you kind of amazed that you pulled it off?
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I look back at all these older folks I had to lead during that period of time and Im pretty amazed myself! I suppose if I had stopped to think about what the hell I was doing, I would have freaked out. I was just so driven, and that energy got translated to everyone around me. We ate, slept and breathed that movie for years! I don’t think much of the movie now ? it’s pretty crude. But I think we pulled off something pretty amazing at the time, and certainly it’s an experience I’m not likely to ever have again. It makes me edgy thinking about the pending sequel. While it’s certainly not like The Dead Next Door has a following like a big horror flick, I’m very aware that it does have a following and I’d hate to disappoint!
After The Dead Next Door was completed, there was that whole weird thing with Raimi wanting to be credited as “The Master Cylinder” and basically not admitting that he produced the film. Was he embarrassed about it?
Bookwalter: That really came about because he had an exclusive contract at Universal and couldn’t really have his name attached to anything else. He said he wanted his name credited as “The Master Cylinder,” which at first I thought was a joke. Later I realized he was serious and chose not to credit him at all. He actually has admitted that he financed the movie in print ? one of those “greatest hits” issues of Fango and some foreign press. I hate to burst the bubble of fans of Raimi, but he basically stumbled backwards into this whole horror business and really wanted out of it. After Darkman got some heat, I think he wanted to remove himself from that genre altogether, and especially the underground stuff he was attached to, like The Dead Next Door.
Do you have any idea how he feels about the film now?
Bookwalter: I haven’t spoken to Sam in some years. I know he has no interest or financial attachment to any future sequels, so I think that chapter of my history will remain closed. But I owe Sam a lot. I went through some early trauma about him detaching his name from the movie, but I think he did the right thing. It really is my movie, after all, for better or worse. He was a guiding force as far as getting the money and steering us out of some troubled waters.
Does it surprise you that The Dead Next Door still has quite a few rabid fans?
Bookwalter: In many ways it does, because the movie has not aged well! It came out in the UK a couple of years ago and it was split straight down the middle: Half the folks loved it and half thought it was ‘80s rubbish. It used to be that seemingly everyone seemed to like it or at least be impressed by it, but there’s been a lot of stuff since then. I guess fortunately there haven’t been too many zombie movies that have topped it. I’d like to think the appeal is just people seeing what a ballsy thing we did by making it at all, against all odds. It’s that whole sort of “we can do it, too” vibe. You watch the movie and you’re impressed by the sheer scope of it, but at the same time it’s accessible as something that’s within people’s reach because of the lowball way it was made. I have to say, I’m flattered that people remember it and it seems like it gets more popular each year. I hope the planned DVD special edition release will get it in the hands of a new legion of fans and pave the way for a kick-ass sequel!
I, like a lot of people, first read about you and The Dead Next Door in that Fangoria article. For me, it was one of the things that made me realize it was possible for “regular’ people to make movies. Have you run into people over the years who got into filmmaking because they were inspired by that article?
Bookwalter: Not in particular. Tim O’Rawe, the filmmaker who wrote and directed Ghoul School, found me from that article. And certainly it was seen by a lot of people who came into contact with me in the years following. That article was, sadly, a bit premature, leading to letters to the magazine later about “Whatever happened to The Dead Next Door?” But I guess that was part of the mystique ? this mysteriously movie rumored to be financed by Sam Raimi and all. Ironically, that issue was also the first edited by Tony Timpone. Fangoria has been pretty good to me, also doing major coverage of Ozone and Bloodletting, as well as a recent piece on Witchouse 2.
After The Dead Next Door, you made a couple of low-budget 16mm films—Robot Ninja probably being the most well-known. How did these come about?
Bookwalter: I had come out to California for a couple of weeks with David Lange, who was helping David Barton do some makeup FX for Murder Weapon, a David DeCoteau film. I happened to call Sam while I was here and next thing I knew, the trip turned into two months and we finished the sound mix and music out here. While I was here, I had a number of run-ins with DeCoteau, and Barton suggested I hit him up for some directing work. DeCoteau seemed impressed by some of the unfinished The Dead Next Door, so we started talking about new projects. At first I was going to produce movies for two other filmmakers—an anthology called Basement for Tim O’Rawe and a monster flick called Maggot Man for Jon Killough, who would eventually write and direct Skinned Alive. DeCoteau wasn’t crazy about either project, so we started talking about my stuff in an effort to salvage the momentum. I really didn’t want to do any of my stuff for cheap ? we were talking about doing these for $10,000!
So, DeCoteau tossed out a title: Robot Ninja. This was around the time of the movie version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, mind you. So I wrote a story on the Greyhound back to Ohio, DeCoteau liked it, I wrote the script in three days, DeCoteau liked it and we made the movie for chump change: $15,000 shooting budget and another $10,000 to $15,000 for post. And this was finished on film to answer print, mind you! Anyway, that led to producing Skinned Alive and Ghoul School. I quit Ghoul School because I thought the script sucked, so that wound up being made in New Jersey largely without me. The other two were shot in Ohio under my guidance.
The reaction to Robot Ninja was pretty negative. Were you disappointed about this after all the excitement over The Dead Next Door?
Bookwalter: You know, I think I was under some kind of delusion that Robot Ninja could still be a good movie up until I saw the final release version. It’s one of the only movies I’ve done where everyone sort of universally agreed that the script was really good and it just didn’t translate. It was a very exciting time, shooting a second film on 16mm with Tim Burton’s Batman movie about to come out. But, much like Burton’s Batman, Robot Ninja fizzled.
The most devastating thing came with Fangoria’s review of Robot Ninja. Ouch! Robot Ninja was actually the first movie I had released—the kudos for The Dead Next Door didn’t come until much later after the sting of Robot Ninja started to wear off. I can’t even watch the movie now. It’s hands-down the worst thing I’ve ever made. But it’s really big in Germany, for some reason. They love it!
Did you move to California after Robot Ninja?
Bookwalter: I stuck around Ohio to make Skinned Alive and then got involved in Ghoul School after the fact. When it was clear that the Cinema Home Video financing was winding down and DeCoteau went back to producing for Charlie Band to make some money, I headed west with Mike Tolochko, my director of photography. I got married in July 1990 and then moved back to Ohio the following year to pursue more movies with CHV, this time shot on Super-VHS.
So, at this point, you were producing the shot-on-video flicks for DeCoteau to release?
Bookwalter: After moving to L.A. in 1990, I got disgruntled with not being able to jump to the next level. It dawned on me that the video technology was becoming such that it might be worth a try. We had originally thought of shooting The Dead Next Door on video ? first on VHS and then we did some tests on 3/4” ? so it wasn’t the first time I had considered it. My plan was to move back to Ohio, buy a nice JVC S-VHS-C camcorder that I had found and produce a couple of cheapie features myself while paying the bills doing some graphic design work, one of my mainstays at that time.
When DeCoteau caught wind of this, he tossed out the idea of me making a couple of vidpics for him to get started. I figured, why not? So we did Zombie Cop and Kingdom of the Vampire, and it was not a good experience. We shot Kingdom first and I broke my knee at the end of the first day of shooting and had to direct from a wheelchair. They were shot back-to-back, so when we ran out of time on Kingdom, we pulled scenes and whisked through Cop. The first cut of Kingdom came up at 45 minutes, so we went back out and shot the cut scenes, plus some new stuff to pad out even the measly 75 minutes that CHV wanted. Anyway, by the end of six of these in a seven-month period, I had pretty much had it and was ready to throw in the towel or at least reinvent the wheel.
So is this what led you to start up your own company to produce shot-on-video horror movies?
Bookwalter: Mostly just frustration from how Cinema Home Video handled things. It’s a common mistake: The filmmaker blames the distributor for all their ills. Now having done it on my own, I understand what David DeCoteau was going through. But I still felt that, with a little more emphasis on quality over quantity, good stuff could get made. So Ozone was my means to that end. I certainly knew it was better than the stuff that preceded it, but I never expected it to make the impact it did on other folks who were doing similar things. I think if I hadn’t made Ozone, I might have continued on a downward spiral and eventually called it quits, so I owe that movie a lot.
Looking back at the slew of shot-on-video movies you produced, would you do it all over again?
Bookwalter: I like to say I don’t regret the way my career has gone, such as it is. I’ve learned something from every single thing I’ve done. Had I not done those six vidpics for DeCoteau, would I have been ready for Ozone? Probably not. So while I wouldn’t want to do it all again, I suppose in the long run, it was for the best and everything has followed a path. I don’t mind moving along in baby steps, so long as things keep moving forward.
With Ozone, there’s definitely a sense that it’s your balls-out turnaround film. In your mind, was it kind of a last-ditch effort to get back on track creatively?
Bookwalter: Certainly was! I knew with a little more time and effort, a good movie could be made using what I’d learned and done with CHV. We spent about $3,500 cash on Ozone, plus about the same to market and duplicate dubs. So I played it very safe financially, but we tried to mix it up and take some chances with the movie. After all, I felt I had nothing to lose! It was a valuable lesson that makes me more aware of what I’m doing at each step of my career now.
After Ozone, you made The Sandman. This seemed like another big change of pace for you.
Bookwalter: The Sandman was my failed attempt to crack the Blockbuster nut. I intentionally scaled back on the blood and guts, wanting to try my hand at something that would be the equivalent of a PG rating. In the end, Blockbuster said they wanted it, toyed with our box art and then flaked on the deal—something they’ve gotten quite skilled at in the years since. We missed out on a little window in which some of the underground stuff got in the stores, but I have it on good authority that was considered a fluke and a major failure that the company will not attempt again. The stuff just wasn’t ready for prime time, I guess.
Bookwalter: Certainly the technology had come forward. The Sandman was shot and edited in S-VHS, but the final picture assembly was done non-linear with Adobe Premiere and a basic system I had cobbled together, allowing us to do some of the CGI work. Polymorph was the first DV flick we did, edited completely non-linear. The tools surely aided in my efforts, but I think the experience of making so much stuff that didn’t work early on made me more aware of my own failures and how to circumvent them.
For instance, I recently edited a movie for David DeCoteau called The Brotherhood. I had less than two weeks to digitize, sync dailies and deliver an edit for a film finish. I was in the middle of Witchouse 2 editing and was in a funk about having to cut The Brotherhood, so I’d cut some material each day, not really paying any attention to what I was doing. When Dave came over to watch the first cut, I was amazed at how good it was! It was like I had gone on some kind of auto-pilot, just editing on instinct. I like the editing on that show, and it was a real eye-opener to how much work I’ve done in the past that allows me to just shoot from the hip and do it.
What led you to start up the Alternative Cinema magazine?
Bookwalter: Mainly because there was a void. There were little fanzines and there was Draculina and Film Threat Video Guide, and that was about it. I had this newsletter called The B’s Nest and it was always a crowd-pleaser. So I figured, why not expand it? I had a graphic design background, and I had done some magazines in junior high and high school and published a couple of indie books. Alternative Cinema was the easiest thing I’ve ever done, and the quickest to get recognition from everyone I knew. Even my parents and family were impressed! With the movies, it was always harder because the family’s down on gore or people were turned off by the video look or whatever. With AC, it was sort of a universal hit and the fact that it got some great newsstand exposure certainly helped. If I hadn’t had the fire to make movies, I probably would have published that rag forever. It was a blast.
Beginning with the first issue, it was a pretty impressive magazine. Did it all come together pretty easily?
Bookwalter: Thanks, I put a lot of hard work into that mag. I pretty much knew exactly what I wanted it to be, and since I did all of the layout work for the first nine issues, I knew what I wanted it to look like, and it grew during the course of time. As I alluded to in an earlier question, AC was absolutely one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. I had been making little fanzines as a kid, and in high school published a magazine called Fantastica ? I nearly got flunked out of vocational graphic arts for spending so much time on it! We had the newsstand distribution right away, and very few places refused to take it. With each issue, we’d add a few new distributors and by the fourth issue with the “controversial” Brady Bunch Movie cover, it finally hit the local Borders in Akron, Ohio and we knew we had made it. The advertising was also easy to come by. In the beginning it was a lot of friends. I had a buddy who ran the mail-order at Full Moon and we somehow got them to pony up $500 each for the first two back covers, which really impressed folks. A lot of the ads were swaps with other mags or ads for filmmakers we wrote about, and also our own stuff. Certainly we didn’t get rich off the ads, but combining that with the subscriptions, retail sales and the tapes we offered through the magazine’s Videoshelf, it was quite profitable. Somehow, when E.I. took over, it took a nose dive financially and I hear they’re putting it on life support, which is a real shame.
In the early issues, it seemed like you were trying to cover a lot of different types of film—some pretty creative and edgy stuff. Then, as it progressed, it seemed like a little subculture grew up around AC that was obsessed with making unimaginative shot-on-video serial killer/lesbian vampire movies. This eventually overwhelmed the magazine. Did this subculture already exist, or do you think Alternative Cinema just became the inspiration and outlet these guys needed?
Bookwalter: How funny that you would notice that. I guess that’s one of the things that made me want to get out of it. It had grown into its own Frankenstein’s monster, running around the countryside throwing innocent kids in the lake. Being a control freak, I felt that the magazine was taking its own direction and I had lost control of the steering wheel. I think a lot of these guys were making these movies, but didn’t really have an outlet to promote them. We gave them a beacon of hope.
So, at this time you were running Tempe, editing and designing the magazine and producing and directing films. Was all of this exciting and fun or was it overwhelming?
Bookwalter: For the first four issues, it was all very exciting. Whenever income from the video stuff was down, the magazine was there to bring in revenue, and vice versa. I had really only mentally committed to four issues, and continued it only because it seemed to be picking up its own momentum. To stop it at its peak would have been stupid! But eventually my short attention span got the better of me, and by the time I shot Polymorph in 1996, I was ready to call it quits. We had some bad rain days on that shoot, which was all outdoors, so we ran a bit over schedule. Because the magazine had a strict two-week gestation period, I had to stop shooting, tend to the magazine’s needs, then resume shooting. This was very frustrating to me and was really the beginning of the end of AC for me.
I wouldn’t say it was overwhelming, but I never really had a good graphic design staff to help alleviate some of the chores on that end. But, at the same time, I wouldn’t have wanted to delegate that to anyone else either. I finally gave up the reins for issue #10, which Ariauna Albright edited with Wayne Harold, who did the layout. I just wrote the editorial and laid out the cover. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I had this pending move to L.A. hanging over my head. It was a doomed last-ditch effort ? no matter how hard Ari and Wayne had tried, I was pushing to sell the magazine and move on. I had an offer on the table to sell it to Hugh Gallagher at Draculina, but then E.I. came in and made a higher bid to keep it. They had been footing some of the bills since issue #7, so it was only natural for them to continue it.
I can’t say I was sorry to see it go at that point. E.I. offered the whole staff positions on their new version of AC, but every single one of them declined, I guess out of loyalty to my vision of what the mag should be, because they all wanted to see it continue. I’ve toyed with doing another magazine on and off over the last few years, but I think it was something that I had always wanted to do, I did it and it was successful in my hands. So that’s good enough for me.
Towards the end of your Alternative Cinema run, I got the feeling that you were sick and tired of the low-budget scene. I got this image of you packing up all your stuff and driving to Hollywood. What was it that compelled you to make a break for it?
Bookwalter: I know a lot of shit spread that I was turning my back on the underground, so let’s set that record straight. Basically, after Ozone, The Sandman, Polymorph and Bloodletting, I felt I had squared away my past demons—those S-VHS movies. So what’s the next logical step? Take the show on the road and try to get some bigger stuff. That meant stopping what I was doing, taking myself out of the picture for awhile while I waited for the next thing.
I could easily have done what so many other guys are doing, but it becomes a game of chasing my own tail and letting grass grow under my feet. I had to part with the magazine because it was too attached to some of the B.S. that came with the underground scene.
Do you still own and operate Tempe Entertainment? At the end of your Alternative Cinema run, I got the impression that another company was taking over not only AC, but Tempe as well.
Bookwalter: Yes, Tempe is all mine. I can understand the confusion: E.I. bought the mag and was distributing my stuff at the time, then I sold them my Video Outlaw label outright and eventually have withdrawn all of my titles from them, except for Basic How-To Halloween Makeups. Up until recently, Tempe was basically just a web domain outlet to keep selling the old productions. Now we’ve got a deal with Full Moon to produce a series of new shows, which I’m producing with Chuck Williams and Ariauna Albright. The first one is Horrorvision, which comes out in January 2001. It’s directed by newcomer Danny Draven from a story that Scott Phillips of Drive and I came up with. In some regards, it’s a techno-Ozone—you have to see the movie to see what I mean. I was originally going to direct the movie for Full Moon in 1999 as Fear.com, but then Witchouse 2 came calling. We were very lucky to get Mac Ahlberg from Re-Animator and Innocent Blood to shoot it! And James Black of Ozone came back into the Tempe fold to play the mysterious Bradbury, who steals the show. The second in the series is Stitches, which is halfway through shooting.
How did you get involved with Full Moon Pictures?
Bookwalter: A few months after I moved to L.A. in April 1997, I was helping two filmmakers from Wisconsin that I had met during my tenure as a distributor. They had a new film called Sleepwalker that needed a sound mix, and ultimately some final editing as well. They came out to L.A. and did it at my place, and during this, David DeCoteau came back into the picture. He was there for a lot of the final sound mix in my living room and was pretty impressed. Next thing I knew, he was asking me for a bid to edit and mix Shrieker, a movie he was about to direct for Full Moon. I was sort of this “entity” in North Hollywood that no one but DeCoteau knew, so everyone was eager to see what I was all about.
The “secret” was that I was doing all of this very low-tech, with the same Adobe Premiere software I had cut Polymorph and Bloodletting on. I finally chucked my Amiga audio system and replaced it with a basic Pro Tools system, but even that only had eight audio tracks to do a stereo mix with! They had shot the film 35mm anamorphic widescreen, so I digitized the audio from timecode DAT, synced it up with the lo-res video and dug in. It was pretty exciting!
Thankfully, Charlie Band loved the edit and, even more, the mix. It was all done on a fraction of what they’d been spending, so obviously Charlie wanted me to do more. I figured it would be a one-time gig, but soon I was editing Curse of the Puppet Master, then eventually supervising all of the post work with a team of 20 people! Of course, that has led me back to directing and now producing a series of small shows with new directors.
You’ve just finished your first 35MM film. How did that experience compare to your more “guerilla” filmmaking experiences?
Bookwalter: Yep, Witchouse2: Blood Coven is my 35mm leap. In many ways, I had to think on my feet and deal with a lot of unexpected curveballs. The film was shot in Bucharest, Romania, where Full Moon has done a lot of their stuff in the 10 years since they kicked out the Communists. But, in many ways, they’re behind the times. We had a stunt with one of the demon acolytes smashing through a window, and they used real glass for the stunt! Thankfully, we had a stuntman dressed up to double for the actress, but I was still convinced he was going to get shredded. It all went off without a hitch, but as much as they have a film industry there, it’s a little bit of classic Old Hollywood as well. There are also some camcorder segments, many of which I shot myself. That stuff was a lot of fun, and has been getting singled out in the reviews thus far. So this show was a little of the old mixed with the new.
What’s next for you as far as films go?
Bookwalter: In addition to producing Horrorvision and Stitches, in late October we’ll shoot The Vault in Tucson, Arizona. James Black makes his directorial debut, which is very exciting, since he started with me on Zombie Cop, of all things! It’s one of Full Moon’s urban films that come out under the Big City Pictures label, with actor Mel Johnson from Total Recall helping guide the ship. In November we’re shooting Groom Lake, also in Arizona, with William Shatner directing and co-starring from his story. It’s a very exciting script, sort of in The X-Files vein. I’m slated to direct Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys in January, which I consider to be a challenge, having read so much of the fan mail that Full Moon receives with each new movie in the series. I think we’ll do something very cool with it. And Dead Future, that Dead Next Door sequel, is on the boards for next year.
Is Dead Future the big, futuristic epic that we’ve all heard rumors about?
Bookwalter: The first treatment I wrote years ago ? almost a book in itself at 50 pages ? was very Planet of the Apes in spirit. But when I hooked up with Dennis Petersen to write the screenplay, we both decided it was just too big and unwieldy to attempt on any kind of low budget. So we did that whole thing Romero did with Day of the Dead: We pared it back to something smaller and more faithful to the original. Now it’s kind of the middle chapter of a possible trio. I still like the original treatment, so if the sequel gets made and does well, who knows?
Will Dead Future be produced through Full Moon?
Bookwalter: I haven’t taken it to Charlie. Given that The Dead Hate the Living did well for them and we’re discussing a new zombie movie, I suppose it’s an option, but not one that I’d take at the moment. I think the budget needs to be higher than Full Moon’s current cash allows, and there’s the issue of creative control to contend with.
Is the DVD edition of The Dead Next Door scheduled yet?
Bookwalter: I have a tentative deal on the table with Full Moon, who are planning an underground label called Wizard 3000. But, I may do it through Tempe. The Wizard thing sounds cool, sort of the old meets the new. We’re also planning a special edition of Scott Spiegel’s Intruder, uncut at last, and also Skinned Alive, The Sandman and probably Polymorph. Others to be announced in the future.
I have to ask you what you thought about American Movie.
Bookwalter: I had heard so much about it I was expecting more, to be honest. My gut feeling was it was fake! I watched the movie and thought, “I’ve got to see Coven, because this guy is too incompetent to have made anything decent”. Since I had bought the DVD, it had Coven on it. I was shocked to find that his movie was actually better than most of the stuff I used to have sent to Alternative Cinema magazine! So now I’m really doubtful that this guy could have been that incompetent and pulled off even that. The verdict is still out on that one.
Over the years, you’ve really pushed technology to its limits. What first opened your eyes to the fact that you could take advantage of this “consumer” level technology to get professional results?
Bookwalter: An old school friend of mine had an Amiga 1000 and I was amazed at what you could do with it. Of course, compared to current technology, that was nothing! But I’ve always been a control freak, and because of that, have tried to do as much stuff as possible on my own. I think as I went from Super-8mm to 16mm and then, trying to just keep making movies, to Super-VHS, it became a logistical procedure of how to make the most of what I had. I’ve always invested financially in gear to make movies, and have been able to make that gear pay for itself enough to advance forward. Today it’s so much easier: Buy an iMac DV and Final Cut Pro, plug in your DV camera and edit. We’ve come a long way, but now that the playing field has leveled on technology, it becomes a matter of who’s making the most of what they’ve got. Bad movies are made all the time ? by major studios or kids in their backyard. What you do with the gear and the skills and vision you bring to that are what makes you stand out.
Do you think people will use the technology to make some really good movies, or are we just going to see a lot more cheap lesbian vampire flicks?
Bookwalter: There’s no doubt that some folks will make some cool stuff with this gear. It’s just got to happen. I for one can’t wait! It’s too bad that The Blair Witch Project got all of the hype, because it was really a fluke instead of a legitimate stab at an entertaining feature. Not to mention it wasn’t even shot on digital camcorders! I do find it funny, all this DV hype. When we shot Polymorph, it was definitely the first of the underground to shoot in that format. The cameras (VX-1000) had literally just hit the streets. But when it came time to post, that Firewire port sat idle because it took another couple of years before anyone even had accessories to use with it! But it was an amazing step forward. It’s funny to watch companies like Full Moon finally making the move toward digital movies, thinking they’re on the cutting edge when we’ve been doing it for almost five years!
Are there any underground filmmakers who you think are currently doing really good work?
Bookwalter: Gosh, I get asked this question a lot. I never answer it directly, because I frankly have lost touch with “the scene” ? more because I’m disconnected from the magazine than anything else. I will say that many of the guys who consider themselves at the height of the scene would certainly not be on my list. In fact, one guy in particular is making movies now that are much worse than his early stuff! I did watch this crazy flick from Canada called Flesh Freaks while I was in Romania making Witchouse 2. It was fairly crude, but had a lot of energy. I always had a lot of faith in Eric Stanze for The Scare Game and Savage Harvest, but I haven’t seen his more recent stuff. It’s hard to see this stuff now, because the market has shrunk and if you want to see it, you have to buy it, and there’s too much to choose from. I might go into a video store once a year, if at all!
What advice would you give to an aspiring filmmaker with limited resources but stories that have to be told?
Bookwalter: Nowadays, that’s an easy one. Grab an Apple G4, some Firewire hard drives and Final Cut Pro. Spend double or triple the amount of time you do prepping and shooting on post-production! I see so many movies that could have been so much better if only time had been spent in post. But many guys don’t bother to take the time, or they get impatient and want to rush the movie out before it’s done. Learn how to use the tools at your disposal for maximum effect. That applies to actors, crew, you name it. The market is even tougher and more cluttered with product now than a few years ago, so you have to fight tooth and nail to stand out and do something interesting. It can be done, if you apply some effort! Good luck!
For the latest about J.R. Bookwalters projects, check out Tempe Video.
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