Here is another interview from THE VAULT! Wayne Alan Harold is the writer and director of Townies, a sleazy feature-length flick about a group of strange characters in a town called Schlarb, Ohio. Imagine a black and white Hal Hartley movie cast with recently discharged mental patients. In true b-movie tradition, it is these freaks and goons that are the heros of the piece. It’s the “normals” that you have to watch out for. 

Townies was shot on a budget of $300, and serves as a great example of overcoming all kinds of limitations, especially budgetary. It has a completely stripped-down grainy black and white look. But the characters are interesting, the locations look like they’ve been carefully chosen, the movie is very well directed and it’s actually FUNNY!

I get a lot of low-budget DV movies for review purposes and most of the time I can’t even watch them. I’m never “caught up” in them, like a viewer should be. I didn’t have that problem with Townies at all. It’s gross, funny and even a little touching at times.

MCS: Necrophilia? Squirrel-eating? What kind of sick and demented person makes a movie like Townies and why?

Wayne Alan Harold: Townies is like an episode of Lassie compared to what’s going to be in the next flick!



A lot of folks are comparing Townies to John Waters’ early flicks and I take it as a big compliment—his early stuff is so damned crazy! I just got Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living and Polyester on DVD and they’re still a hoot—almost more offensive with age, given the current P.C.’d climate of the country.

I just want to entertain folks. Make them laugh. Maybe gross them out a little. Put in a few touching moments that might surprise them in the midst of all the weirdness. That’d5s the extent of my filmmaking ambitions.  I’m not out to enlighten the world.  I don’t have a cause or anything.

MCS: Townies is a nice looking flick. In my opinion, the fact that it’s black and white really helps diminish the negative aspects of video. Can you talk a little bit about how you produced such a high quality flick on a low budget?

Wayne Alan Harold: Shooting in my hometown and the neighboring city of Kent means not having to worry about getting permits. If I was shooting in California, it would be a different story, paying for a permit, a police officer, etc., etc., at least $500 dollars a day and up. I couldn’t afford to shoot anything if I had to deal with that crap!

Here, I shoot at friends’ houses, outside, we’ve never have any problems. Especially in Kent. Thankfully, I still look pretty young—folks just think that I’m a crazy college kid shooting something for school!

Fortunately, I have a number of friends, including an ex-fiancee, Lori Scarlett (Pricey in Townies) who are professional actors and I somehow coerce them into working for free. The rest of the cast is filled out with KSU theatre students, friends like Kent-based comic-book artists P. Craig Russell and Jay Geldhof, and talented amateurs. I even put my dad in Townies—he’s the guy with the pet squirrel in the strange flashback!

I have been told that my greatest talent is talking rational people into doing crazy things. I can’t disagree with that.

Beyond that, I just try to actually direct. Pretty basic stuff. This shot follows that shot—just try to tell a story in an interesting but coherent way. I’m not successful all of the time, but once in awhile a sequence actually works. In regards to Townies, I’m particularly pleased with the last scene where Caduceus has the girl tied up for healing while the other Townies are practicing for a musicale across town. Cutting back and forth, it all went together surprisingly well.

I had planned for it to be black & white from the beginning, unfortunately, the film looking process took things down a bit darker than expected. A lot of those ‘backlit” outdoor scenes looked fine on the original video, but after processing . . . BAM! Everything was a silhouette! What a revoltin’ development! : ) I’m countering that by just slightly overlighting similar scenes for Aberration Boulevard.

Some DV purists frown on folks trying to make video look like film. They claim that film is film and DV is DV. I disagree and see it as being just another enhancement, in the same way that, for example, having a nice sound mix is a plus.

MCS: Some people may remember you from those Killer Nerd movies back in the 90s. Townies seems like a big leap forward. What happened between those movies and Townies?

Wayne Alan Harold: A lot of drinking!  It’s a good thing that Rolling Rock is cheap!

Actually, the Riot Pictures flicks, Killer Nerd, Bride of Killer Nerd and Girlfriends, were all done with a filmmaking partner. I wouldn’t even say that they were directed (laughs).

After Riot went belly-up, I edited and designed Cool Stuff magazine for Tempe and edited a few issues of Alternative Cinema.  Basically, I was waiting for the right technology to fall into place. As soon as Apple released their blue and white G3 with built-in FireWire, it was time to go back into business.

When we started Riot’s parent company in 1988—video production company called Entertech—we had to go in debt for about $40,000 for crappy analog equipment. By the turn of the century, I could do a hell of a lot more with a $1000 digital video camera and a $2000 Mac. God bless America!

So, anyhow, Townies is my first solo flick. It’s a good start for the direction that I want to go in.

MCS: What was the hardest part of making Townies?

Wayne Alan Harold: Shooting, because I basically have to do pretty much everything. Light. Shoot. Lug the equipment around. Mop up afterwards. The actors usually help out by holding the boom mic and helping to set things up. My buddy Jay wants to start dressing the sets/locations because otherwise I fall back on the Ed Wood school of throwing two actors up against a blank wall to shoot! Another girlfriend, Gina Gornik, did costumes and makeup for Townies, but has since moved to Manhattan to work in theatre. Now I have to handle those duties as well, under her guidance via Ma Bell.

MCS: What’s next for you and Lurid Films?

Wayne Alan Harold: Aberration Boulevard is now filming with much of the same cast from Townies. I don’t want to give the story away, but you will see Toby Radloff in a diaper (making #1 AND #2! ), a woman with a penis, P. Craig Russell sniffing Lori Scarlett’s feet, “The Great Unknown,” and a mule that gives oral. I smell Oscar!

You can learn more about Townies and Wayne’s other work by visiting Lurid.

Order Townies today at amazon.com.