Scary Folk

17 Days Later:

I thought when I went through the experience of having a new born child that it might prepare me for directing a feature film. Boy, was I wrong. 

As I write this, my eyes struggle to focus and my skinnier body aches. I would say a piece of me is dead, but that’s not true. I’m just drained. And not because this journey of making my first feature film was a bad one. It definitely was not. 

The cast and crew that helped me transform my vision into a reality turned out to be the most amazing group of people. I owe each of them forever for their hard work and enthusiasm for this script. 

So I want to say thank you to each and every person that was apart of making “Jug Face” a reality. 

-cck

1 WEEK!

Next Tuesday is it!

The actors arrive Sunday.

Rehearsals on Monday.

Camera rolls on Tuesday.

-cck

13 Days!

Thirteen days till I say “action” and the camera rolls. Crazy. 

-cck

Shock Value:

After I won, I stayed in LA for another week to take meetings and get as much advice as I could. My head was spinning. Everyone had an idea about what I should do with “Jug Face” and my career in general. 

One night, while I was with my friend Forrest Satchell, he pointed out a book called Shock Value by Jason Zinoman. It’s a behind the scenes account of the horror filmmakers of the 60’s and 70’s. I had not heard of this book but was excited to read it. 

On the plane home, I sat in my seat not knowing what to do. I could let someone option “Jug Face” and focus on my next script or I could find someone to also let me be the director. Because what if I do direct it and the film doesn’t ever come out? I’ve wasted the next year when I could have been writing. Who says anyone would let me direct in the first place. By holding out, I could pass up an opportunity for my name to get out there with a produced writing credit.

But as I read through Shock Value, everything became clear. The early stories of Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter and others felt familiar. It was like reading my own history just forty years before. Every page energized me and I knew that I had to do what ever it took to make “Jug Face.” Getting a chance to be a director was the reason I started to write feature scripts in the first place. 

The plane landed, and I began my search. To my surprise, it didn’t take long at all.

-cck

Background: Childhood

I’ve always been into horror movies even when I was a young child. 

Since I was a late sleeper, I never woke up to watch cartoons. Instead, I would  catch a horror movie at noon on a show called Commander USA’s Groovie Movies on the USA network. If that show wasn’t on, I would rent a VHS at the country video store. I was so young then, I would wear a lego mask to keep from being scared as I watched those movies. 

Around the same time, the movie “The Howling” came out. I think about it often because of the effect that it had on me. Yes, the werewolfs were scary, but that’s not what got to me. There was a scene where Dee Wallace was hiding under a piece of plywood at the base of a deck with a werewolf coming after her. But when it reached in, she chopped off its hand. 

That image has stuck with me since. It wasn’t until I started studying horror movies that I understood why. Seeing the image of the severed hand can elicit what Freud called the castration anxiety. No wonder it freaked me out! 

But this showed the power of the genre and started to explain why I was drawn to it. 

-cck

Intro:

On October 5^th 2011, my horror script “Jug Face” won Grand Prize at the Slamdance Screenplay & Teleplay Competition. 

Fast forward five months, and here I am 41 days from bringing that screenplay to life by directing my first feature film! Crazy as hell, you bet! 

This blog will be the place where I share my experiences making “Jug Face.” I’ll post updates every Wednesday along with related items throughout the week. 

Bookmark, like, or tattoo yourself. Whatever it takes to visit and share this with your friends. Let me know what things you want to hear about so I can make this blog as useful as it can be. 

-Chad Crawford Kinkle