Dial The Wild
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Dial The Wild
The Art of Independent Horror: Kyle Remminga and Brandon Watts
What happens when you trade Hollywood's corporate machine for the creative freedom of the Midwest? Filmmaker Kyle Remminga reveals his journey from editing yoga DVDs and network commercials to creating the award-winning indie horror anthology "Killanois" in Western Illinois.
Walking through a park during the pandemic, Kyle witnessed a massive production spending a fortune to film two people sitting on a bench. That moment crystallized his frustration with the industry: "I could film six features on that." So he packed up his Hollywood knowledge, returned to his Midwestern roots, and assembled a team of passionate local collaborators.
"Killanois" connects four distinct horror stories through a psychopathic host character (brilliantly portrayed by Brandon Watts) who has kidnapped viewers, threatening them with a brick unless they listen to his twisted tales. The anthology format—inspired by classics like John Carpenter's "Body Bags"—allowed Kyle to finally realize short film concepts he'd been developing for over a decade.
The local community in Macomb embraced the project enthusiastically, with municipal leaders, business owners, and talented locals contributing to make the film possible. This collaborative spirit resulted in "Killanois" winning "Best First Time Filmmakers" at the Hot Springs International Horror Film Festival.
Catch a screening of "Killanois" in Macomb or Galesburg this April, and visit cubeofjustice.com to support their Kickstarter campaign for "Curebreed"—their ambitious next project aimed at creating professional film jobs in Western Illinois and establishing the region as a hub for independent filmmaking.
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Speaker 3:That's what we're here for. That's what this is all about. Boom. Welcome to another episode of Dial the Wild. And here we are, back in reserve Artisan Nails, thanks to old buddy Brandon here, brandon Watts, who was a performer in this film. And we have what. Do you consider your step producer?
Speaker 1:uh producer, director, writer, editor, uh professional struggler whatever of the hit movie killinois. Killinois, not kill noise we should have killed somebody in the movie that said who said illinois?
Speaker 3:yeah, that'd have been the sequel you don't pronounce it and slam him in the head with a brick. God damn all righty. So how do we get in the movies like how did this, how did this thing get started?
Speaker 2:oh, what's the?
Speaker 3:backstory, oh uh get started.
Speaker 1:Oh, what's the backstory? Oh, uh uh. Bad decision making. Um uh. Initially I moved to la when I was 21 22 went to film school. Um was there for a while. My first job was editing yoga instructional dvds and I did not fit in with that crowd at all um, to see a lot of weird freaks, but I I definitely uh learned from that a little bit.
Speaker 1:And then, um the uh, I met my wife uh girlfriend at the time and she's japanese and we ended up moving over to japan after uh uh in 2008, when the whole economy collapsed and everything.
Speaker 1:So we moved over to japan for a while. We came back. Then we lived back in la again for another I don't know 11 years, whatnot and then started working as a vendor editor doing commercials for different clients discovery channel, disney channel, tbs, tnt, just pretty much anybody and then ended up in my current day job. I edit commercials for movies, okay, but um, work with that whole network and like the whole a and e umbrella. But kilinoy is something that is completely independent of that. It's um, it's something that I've been working on for well, killanoi itself is not something I've been working on for a long time the the short films thereof in Killanoi.
Speaker 1:Killanoi is an anthology film of four different short films and I've been working on those four different films for ever in a day, um, trying to put them together. And then've been working on those four different films for ever in a day trying to put them together. And then when the pandemic happened, everyone was working from home. We decided that we could go back to the Midwest and where I'm originally from, st Louis, and create the short films. And then we couldn't do that because, again, the day job they don't have a. You know, there's tax presences and things in different states and each state has different rules and it's difficult to go different state to state and it was easier for them if I came to Illinois because Chicago has an office that's already set. So we decided to come to Illinois instead. We went to different college towns. We started actually over at Charleston and made like a counterclockwise circle around illinois.
Speaker 1:We had already decided on champagne, because we loved champagne so much and we kind of came through this area on a whim, like all right, well, we've got the extra couple days, let's just go see this last area. And then by the end of the day, in macomb, my phone was, you know, texts were blown at my phone from local realtors and business owners and, like, uh, municipal leaders saying we'd love to have this, we support the arts, and they were just very supportive. So we ended up there and, okay, we made the first film, the still um, which is about a bunch of aliens who need people's dna and they, they eat them as, uh, they feed them to their giant cocktopus in the basement and they steal their dna to create new people. Uh, we made that one first and it went over so well. We ended up making like, well, we can do our other three short film ideas. We've had forever and I mean we're talking about like working on these films for like 10 years plus just trying to get them finally done.
Speaker 1:So let's just do them all, because this one's so well, let's do the other three and then we got the other three done and we were considering doing different festivals for each one, and then we thought you know what? Let's do a. If we do a, a host segment, like tales from the cryptid, we can link this to like an old school anthology which people don't really do that anymore, and so let's think of something we could do to link them all together into one thing.
Speaker 1:So we came up with the idea of having a psychopath who is himself a failed writer, who has tied us into his uh basement and he has going to either hit us with a brick in the face or we're going to listen and give honest feedback on his feature ideas. So that's just like your crypt keeper, yeah, yeah. And then we're going to listen and give honest feedback on his feature ideas.
Speaker 3:So is this like your crypt keeper? Yeah, and then we're like we need somebody who's genuinely disturbing.
Speaker 1:And then Curtis is like well, you got to talk to Brandon Watts and he's showing me Smell's Kitchen a show they worked on and everything, and it's like yeah brandon's perfect and then. So I just went down to the studio when he was like, hey, now you're crazy, you want to be on our thing, is that sure?
Speaker 3:so brandon, in his own right, is a very creative writer, a very good writer, and he came in great like I play the role well because I am also a failed writer. Well, I mean, you still write music, you still write poem and spoken word and well, the the.
Speaker 1:The thing that brandon did really good was like we had we had kind of a basic script of what was going to happen, but we had to do everything in one take because it's all told from, like, our pov and he's yelling at us, so we couldn't really do cutaway, so we do everything in one take. So everything you see of brandon is pretty much ad-libbed. It's just like here's the idea, here's what we kind of have in the script. But you just kind of wing it and just get to this point, this point, this point, and it came through just killed it, killed it, literally killed it, kill an oi give me a brick.
Speaker 2:There you go, I'll make things happen. Well, how much of how much of smells.
Speaker 3:kitchen was like ad-lib stuff, or was that mostly scripted? Oh, not mostly all ad lib, was it?
Speaker 2:So you kind of had an idea of what you wanted to do and then, just yeah, we had like a basic, like menu plan. Okay, and then we we like Just run with yeah. Like pointed jokes.
Speaker 1:Does everyone know what smells kitchen is? We've talked about it a little bit on our podcast.
Speaker 3:If you don't know, get over to.
Speaker 2:YouTube and watch some Smell's Kitchen If you don't like people throwing up, don't watch it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Art Warehouse is the brand there.
Speaker 2:It's actually great for having dinner at home with your families.
Speaker 1:A lot of good recipes. Art Warehouse Smell's.
Speaker 2:Kitchen. Yes, what was the onion cat food milkshake that you had, or well, I know, yeah, I just I just got a kick out of it, like every tool that you would pull off the wall yeah, every tool you'd pull off the wall like you just smack the counter with it for no reason, whether it was a butcher knife or a waffle iron or a katana something it was pretty wild ball gags definitely fun stuff.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, we have a little bit of that probably coming out soon too. We have a few unreleased episodes and then hopefully we're going to be starting that back up soon.
Speaker 3:Hopefully that kicks back off this is just really a for the warped sense of humor. This tie hangs out with me enough he can tell you how warped warp sense of humor Ty hangs out with me enough he can tell you how warped my sense of humor is.
Speaker 1:And like no, no, no. Well then, you'll love killing all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to, but it makes me think I which was it? The creep shows that were segmented?
Speaker 1:Creep shows were saying yeah, yeah, remember scarab shows were segmented.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, remember having one of those on vhs. What was the?
Speaker 2:dark side. Well, the black blob that got onto the deck and ate the people wasn't vhs like that vhs is like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tales from the hood as well yeah, tales from the dark side, the the some of the tales from the crypt stuff what was they? Also had standalone episodes on hbo.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the uh. It was the one where it had, like, the black blob that would come out to you in the pond and eat you up, and then uh, like it had the wooden Indian out front of the uh oh yeah, yeah, that chased the guy down, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Body Bags is really where the main inspiration for the format of Killanoi came from. Have you ever seen Body Bags?
Speaker 3:John Carpenter's.
Speaker 1:No, where John Carpenter himself played the guy that was keeping the morgue. And it's more that vein of Body Bags than it is Creepshow, Because it's more comedy first horror second as horror as the avenue for the jokes. There are some genuine scares in it. I got horror. Second, as horror as the Avenue for the jokes. Um, I, there are some genuine, you know, scares on it. And we we did have one person at one of our screenings who, uh, when the toenails start getting ripped out, just Nope and just yeah you'll have that.
Speaker 3:I'm also really good friends. I've done podcasts with, uh, Neil Armstrong too. I was going really good friends. I've done podcasts with uh, neil armstrong too.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I was gonna try and get him here tonight, but he had some other things going. His toes are the ones that get ripped off. Well, actually they're my toes, but they're his character's toes, so there's a lot of vfx work going on to that so, um, so do you put the?
Speaker 3:you said something about putting together a series of short films that was going to overlap into the over. Was there an overall ending to all of it? I know you didn't want to drop too much about it, but the structure of it seemed very interesting.
Speaker 1:The structure of it yeah, there is a through line I won't give it away. But in each segment there is a recurring character who may or may not be human, and that kind of ties the whole thing together from beginning to end.
Speaker 3:People will love it. What else about the movie? What else are we looking forward to have? We had a screening already.
Speaker 1:I've had a couple screenings. It's one of those things like the hardest thing is getting people actually to commit to spending a Saturday evening or a Friday evening to actually sit down and watch it.
Speaker 1:Um, it's once. People are in the theater and they see it. So far we've we've gotten great reviews on everything we did. Uh, we won best first time filmmakers at the hot springs international horror film festival. Um, that was a great experience. Uh, we were in the carnival of darkness film festival. Uh, this, the screening we had brandon went to. There was over 100 people. Everyone was happy. A lot of them were involved, but we've had several screenings since where it's all been strangers and everything.
Speaker 1:People have no reason to kiss our ass and we always get applause and hoots and hollers, so everyone seems to like it. Especially the scene where brandon shoots the mormons at the door is very popular.
Speaker 2:Are the problems not that scary in real life?
Speaker 3:he's a big teddy or he's a teddy bear. That's kind of a scary teddy bear yeah you know the one who's got the one eye sewed shut, yeah that's.
Speaker 1:That's actually one of the best. I mean, I'll give listeners a spoiler alert. If they don't want to hear it, they should fast forward like 30 seconds. But one of the best moments of that film is you know, we're tied down to the basement. He goes upstairs and we just hear audio and there's this ring of the doorbell and then it's just a couple of mormons and he just shoots them and you're like, all right, so you go up and you answer the door. I'll put the sounds effects in a post and you just come back down. And then I needed to have people to be the mormon, so I called my buddy, nick howard. He's at chuck dixie productions.
Speaker 1:He made a film called christmas chaos and oral history of the stabba claws, which you can watch on Troma Now streaming, which he's very proud of. It's a great movie. And then my other friend, scott Vigil, who played Stabaclaws in that film. I grew up with both those guys and I called them both independently of each other. I go, hey, look Scott. I tell Nick, I say, hey, you're going to be the first Mormon when the door opens. You're just he's going to shoot you. So give me a reaction for that. And then, uh, scott, you're going to be the second Mormon. You saw your brother get shot and then you're going to get shot. After that, you guys just kind of wing it, put it together and I'll put it in the post. And these two were not in, they weren't sitting together, they were totally different parts of the city, like they had no idea. The other was reading the other part. And then I get a thing from from scott and he's like oh my god, jonathan, you, son of a bitch, you shot me. Oh, it's a great performance.
Speaker 1:And then I get one from nick and nick's like hi, I'm with the church of jesus christ and it all comes together so wonderfully spoilers over and then brandon comes down, he's like, throws the gun on the table, like don't touch that, it's still hot.
Speaker 3:Let's get to the next story brandy, you got kind of like uh, like kip, a brother from napoleon dynamite. You kind of got that look going on and and uh well, thank you, that's adorable was that what you were going for? Socks and sandals? I mean?
Speaker 2:mean they dressed me.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 2:We did. They bought the outfits and didn't blame me up. We would Might have been a little cold, but it was fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we went to Goodwill and we were just like my wife was pulling out different things, Like what about this?
Speaker 2:I go, no, that's the one I still have the shoes and the brick, yeah and the brick yeah, oh, you have the glasses, yeah we met my wife, she does effects and she made a.
Speaker 1:So we had two bricks. We had a real brick and then we had an exact copy of the real brick that was made out of styrofoam. Well, of course, and you, if you weren't touching them, you couldn't tell the two apart oh and then you we're like hey, you have brandy, you can have it as a souvenir. And then we go to where he used to work over at Iron Spike and he's like he throws it at people. Oh my God.
Speaker 3:For those that don't know, that whole building is brick. Yeah, and it's over here throwing bricks.
Speaker 1:We are thinking about eventually adding to our website uh kilnoy bricks for merch oh yeah, we do have. Uh, we have the materials to make about uh 50 or 60 fake bricks and we signed by brandon.
Speaker 3:So we're a little more.
Speaker 1:We might put those up this summer at some point, if people are interested, who see Killanoa, who want to have a collector brick.
Speaker 3:So with it being an independent film and doing like, what are the steps? As far as you got an idea, and then you put the whole thing together and then there's you know your festivals and your screenings and blah, blah, blah. So like walk me through just kind of a basic outline of what that looks like hey I got this movie.
Speaker 3:I want to do and go from there okay because, you did say sorry but you did say that, like you worked on these for like 10 years, so oh, I mean, most of the time was conceptual, right?
Speaker 1:uh, obviously wrote out the scripts a couple of times and then some of them were just outlines. You do your steps when you first get your outline to, uh, if people don't know, you register your idea with the WGA. So that way, if someone steals it, you sure we took those kinds of steps for some of these outlines and some of the titles have changed over time. Some of them, uh, we didn't actually register, we just wrote in my notebook and then I found them later, like, oh, I had this idea like 12 years ago, I got to do that or not.
Speaker 1:And then, um, there's just a big process for that, um, and I had to find old ideas that I had, you know, before my current employment, because I don't want to have, you know, you don't want to have any issues with, like, does it belong to us or them, or whatever. So it's always something that we have to have old ideas. So we do, I, you know I have had other concepts since then, but just live in my head, right, but, uh, you know, these older concepts we, we worked on and we put together and, uh, uh, three of them we had scripts for already and then the other one. We had a couple versions outlined out and then, uh, we just kind of sat on them for all because I I really got just too busy with with work and, you know, working in the industry what's your day other things is it?
Speaker 3:is it still doing the? Yeah, I'm still doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah uh, and it's it keeps me pretty busy. So it was really really hard to come up with time. So I just kind of put everything on the shelf and you know, I'm working in hollywood. I'm working like I lived in hollywood. I lived two blocks from the chinese theater and I had that whole like okay, I'm here, I'm doing it, whatnot. But then after a while you're like I, I love my job, but I didn't move to hollywood to make promos I didn't move there to make movies yeah but it became really, really difficult to make it there um everyone always.
Speaker 1:I always tell people when they say hollywood movies suck, now I'm like no, burbank movies suck hollywood is full of genuine creative people who move there, who believe it still exists yeah it doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's just, you know, the thing we say is almost like I am a movie director. So, yeah, which Starbucks do you work at? And it just came to a headway one day during the pandemic and I was walking my dog around to Long Prey Park it's a little park in Hollywood and there was a production going on. I think it was Netflix, I don't know, it was four years ago. I don't know if it was a Netflix or Hulu production or something, but it was a. It was a. It was a production company that would be releasing under a Netflix or a Hulu, so it wasn't actually them. But uh, I'm walking around the long play park and I see, uh, about 10 trailers just parked there with like costuming and wardrobe and catering and just all these huge things full blown and it was during the pandemic, yeah, and it was.
Speaker 1:You know, they had these two huge floodlights fill in the park and like, well, this is a big production. What is it going around? And I'm walking the dog around and I peek in and it's just two people that I have no idea who. They are sitting on a on a bench having a conversation, and I'm like for how much this night probably cost them quarter of a million dollars or more, like I could film six features on that. And then we just started talking about the logistics of filming there these days, what it's like, and it's like, well, we could go back to the midwest, where I have all my friends, and take the knowledge we've accumulated and just do it.
Speaker 3:And that's what we did and then find guys like brandon watts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and it turned out that macomb and galesburg is just full of a bunch of freaks and we just fit right in so horror, horror has always been kind of no, uh well horror.
Speaker 1:There are two things about horror. Horror is cheap and it's marketable. Okay, um, it in the three. It's also fun as hell. Yeah, you know you could. I mean it's never been like I was a horror junkie, but that everything I've made has been horror because of that. And it's just funner to make. Like, if I had a hundred million dollars, sure, I'd go for a science fiction or something, but I don't, I don't know something. But I I don't, I don't know. I've always wanted to avoid like cheap looking sci-fi. But you can have cheap looking horror. That's still really really cool and really really fun, sure, and doesn't come off as cheap. Um, you can't do that with, like space battles or anything, sure. So, um, we've just stuck with horror. And then, you know, I've gone around different conventions and festivals and things and you meet the people and the horror fans just seem to be very kind of a genuine nice people, open to doing whatever creep beside a comic-con.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. So start to finish. When, when you decided to pull the trigger and you know you're buying costumes and stuff uh, to actually doing your screenings like how long of a process was that?
Speaker 1:better part of two years.
Speaker 3:Two years, yeah, is that typical, or is that just?
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, it all depends on how much budget you have, uh, and where you can pull talent from uh. We were coming into the to this area blind.
Speaker 1:We didn't know anybody in western illinois and it started off with um just going to a coffee shop there, sullivan taylor, and just went like hey you guys know anyone who's into this and then going to the next shop and going to the uh there, there's a different comic shop there at the time called kapow, which I think they're still open on the other side of the square now too, but now spellbound is in their old spot. I've been just talking to like the people there and getting word of mouth, going eventually going into the mayor's office and being like hey, uh, we came here with every intent to fill your town with blood and scrying scrying and screaming people and I hope that's okay and they're like sure we love the arts and Western being there.
Speaker 1:They.
Speaker 3:I mean it is. You know, with western being there, they, I mean it is you know, yeah, it's going and I don't know how much you get pulled or or resourced from from western or not, but it just seems like the vibe there is very open to, I think, the people are more open there because of western and, like the, the diversity and stuff that goes on there we do?
Speaker 1:we do have a couple actors who were students okay um, and we did do our screening at the sandberg theater, but, um, yeah, the the coordination just was there because when we started they were in the thick of like their next spring semester and probably still doing a bunch of online classes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was it was.
Speaker 1:It was a rough time during the pandemic. So, um, we kind of did our own thing, but we just found a bunch of people and came together and it just kept coming together and each project we would do, you meet more people and then they have friends and they and there's just kind of exponentially grows from there. And then our, our friend Curtis, he's, he helped a lot, I would say probably of anyone who's not my wife or immediate family, curtis helped more than anybody in terms of just diving into a very talented individual.
Speaker 2:Yeah shout out curtis, uh, nomad tattoo. Who is actually?
Speaker 3:helping out with the next show in mccomb. So yeah, so yes, there's a great guy special like. But yeah, um had some work done at nomad. Great place, place, clean place, good people yeah, I'm sure. Just look at if you're wondering, just find Curtis on social media and look at like half the videos he's done. And you'll see him on Smell's Kitchen too, right?
Speaker 2:Smell's Kitchen. Yeah, he was a you know direct producer, well co-director producer, along with Carl McNaught on that project.
Speaker 3:So carl was part of that too yeah, nice.
Speaker 2:Uh, I wrote a little bit and just acted, but you wrote a lot of bit, a lot of it, but yeah it made all the food yeah so what was what was it?
Speaker 3:like you coming into the film and like that, he was saying that like um, you know the connection was made there. Yeah, it was something that you've wanted to do. Or when you heard it, you're just like I was just open to it.
Speaker 2:You know it was more on the tail end of it, after we had already filmed the shorts we'd done a lot of things and we just met through curtis and he asked me and I want to pass up an opportunity to beat somebody to death with a brick Right.
Speaker 3:Beat somebody to death with a foam brick.
Speaker 1:Especially when that that somebody is is, uh, the other, brandon Brandon Thompson.
Speaker 2:From Sullivan.
Speaker 1:Taylor From Sullivan. Taylor, he's the one that gets beat to death with a brick. Uh, as our opening credits.
Speaker 3:Nice, which is fantastic, that's awesome. I love how you incorporated all these like small parts of macomb and, yeah, midwest anyway, anybody who spent like a decent amount of time in macomb especially.
Speaker 1:We'll get to see somebody that they know or grew up with get harmed in kilinoy, so that may be a good or bad thing.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I'm not sure which house it was or whose house it was that we were filming at when we did those scenes. Like before we started even our first scene and we walk into the basement. I go to open the door and the first scene to where I'm like coming in, like threatening the pov camera, as if there's someone there about to listen, and and I open the door and a bat falls from the curtain straight to the floor and I was like, is that a turd? I get closer and it flies straight in my face.
Speaker 2:Oh my God.
Speaker 1:So I was like okay, this is going to be a good omen. Yeah, I hear like on the other side.
Speaker 2:I'm on the other side of the door and I hear like oh, shit, shit.
Speaker 3:And I'm like like what is it? And he's like there's a bat, what? And then I open the door and then it flies right in the room like oh, there's a bat.
Speaker 2:I, I think his first words were oh my god, is it a turd? And then turd flew into your face I mean they're they're just as dirty as turds they are.
Speaker 3:Did you go get your rabies? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I already got my rabies shot. Yeah, get your turd shot. It was a prerequisite for the film didn't sign a waiver on that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool and then, after we did kill an oi, we did another short film proof of concept that uh brandon also appeared in, called uh merwolf, which is available for viewing on cube of justicecom. You can watch the whole thing there. That's a, that's a proof of concept. That's my wife's idea. That is pretty brilliant.
Speaker 1:She, she kind of I mean well, she had kind of the base idea of like what if a small town mayor was also a werewolf and we call it mayor wolf? And it could be like a kind of Andy Griffith style mare who's a werewolf and he could get into some kind of legal trouble because of some animal rights activists. And then she told me this idea and then we had a three hour drive from St Louis back up to Macomb and during that three hour drive we came up with the most elaborate plot of legal mumbo, jumbo, mumbo, jumbo. Um, that's great. And then we're like we're gonna need a million dollars to shoot this thing. Let's do a proof of concept and film one scene of something just just for fun and see how it goes.
Speaker 3:And you know, brandon was in there playing the animal control guy ready to ready to shoot the mayor with a silver bullet against the other calling that he never followed you'd be a mean dog, guy, dog catcher yeah, animal I know, but that's what I'm saying is like you'd get down with the mean ones, but you definitely come here, gotcha. I mean, oh, pet a kitty and now I'm gonna wrestle your dog.
Speaker 2:I did have stitches in my face. Uh, from a dog, what like two months ago yeah how'd you manage that one? Huh, oh, you know you never pet a dog when they have a treat. Were you the treat apparently?
Speaker 3:yeah smell like alpo. What's going on, oh man you didn't.
Speaker 2:You didn't know about that I, I remember it happening, yeah, yeah, I couldn't remember why got a nice little uh extra scar for the next videos we do nice yeah, look even crazier, nice, great, okay, so this two-year process happens.
Speaker 3:Finally get your editing done, your special effects, everything else, uh, we'll just call it the production side of things. And then how do you go about submitting these things to like? Well, now it's easier than it ever was. You used to have to go out and track to like well, now it's easier than it ever was.
Speaker 1:You used to have to go out and track down film festivals. Now there's a site called film freewaycom and it basically works like a, like a social media for festivals, and you literally build your profile, your okay, you upload your it's like a distro kid for yeah, and then it and then you just submit it.
Speaker 1:There's like lists of lists upon lists of festivals you submit to and then they can just go like it's kind of like a LinkedIn for festivals really, um, and that's how pretty much everyone operates. And then you submit and you know you, for every 15 or 20 you submit to, you'll probably hear back from one, and then from each one of those you'll get into one out of five.
Speaker 3:So it's just a numbers game at that point and that was my next question was is it like you know, I got these over here that I want to avoid, but these are the ones I really want, or is it? No, I just take every one that I get. You can't really do that.
Speaker 1:You just got to kind of shotgun it, because unless you have like a named talent attached or something, I got, there's a, there's a higher, and you know each festival is its own thing. Some of them have excellent reputations, some of them are new, some of them are kind of dodgy, some of them have bad reputations, what whatnot, and you don't have time to research every single one because there's just so many film festivals nowadays and you kind of have to shotgun approach it until you find a good group of people who are willing to accept you, who you also would like to be a part of. Sure, um and then, um, you know there are some. It's everything from like south by southwest film festival, one of the biggest art festivals in the world, down to like scam festivals that are just made up to get you to pay a 50 submission fee that don't exist. So you gotta, you gotta research before you like submit, but you can't really.
Speaker 3:You know you're talking there's not much picking and choosing, you're just happy to get what you get. Hoping that kind of yeah, as long as they're you know reputable. They got a source and they've been around you.
Speaker 1:It's just definitely something you want to be a part of, and most of them are are great, so and it's and it's really really hard work to run a festival, to be fair.
Speaker 1:So fair, so a lot of people like you don't want to go out there and say like, oh, this festival sucks, because it could be just like two people trying to put it together and they're working really hard and it would get better and better and better. So I mean, like you look at things like Troma Films, initially with Toxic Avenger and stuff, like it was rough around the edges and that's part of his charm is that it's rough around the edges, but then it grows into something else, organic. So some of these festivals that you might think are a joke today could be the next Sundance in 10 years from now you know, and something that's a big shot right now could be Martin Scandal in 10 years.
Speaker 1:So you just kind of go for everybody, because everybody's doing it out of their passion and what they want to do.
Speaker 3:I'm sure it's fun and all having everybody see your film and watch it and give you this or that, but it's probably also a really good networking tool, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, and you know the the unfortunate reality of the world we live in today is that it's it's becoming less and less of a profit motive to do these kinds of things and more and more of just a love of the craft, just because things have been so restructured, with the way streaming works and the theaters shrinking down and, you know, the DVDs and VHS disappearing, and it's it's not really a proper stream anymore, unless you're like a big fish in a ever shrinking pond. So, um, you really really have to love what you're doing. And in an ever-shrinking pond, so you really really have to love what you're doing. And if someone asks me they go, what's the business model for making a movie? I say well, you have an idea, you get some credit, you turn that credit into debt and then you do it again and then you just keep setting things on fire and hope that some sucker gives you a million bucks and then, until that happens, you just keep going, until you're dead and completely broke and penniless.
Speaker 1:So you have an awesome collection in your house of cool stuff.
Speaker 3:So is that the goal? Is that to eventually get picked up To go?
Speaker 1:broker to find some sucker with a million bucks.
Speaker 3:Either or both, maybe a bit of both. No, I mean, do the moneyers get money? Get a little bit better and your ideas get a little bit better?
Speaker 1:My goal is like, I think, I think we do have some genuinely really good ideas at Cube of Justice that's our production company. Okay, I do think, oh, we, we've had some things in the can for 20 years, like I've had ideas listed out for long in the 20 years that we've, we've got these scripts completed and things that can do it, but they just take financing. They just take funding. Sure, um, and that's that's always the hard part.
Speaker 1:but we're getting better at with each film we do, we get better at making those dollars stretch further because, we get, we get better at doing these effects, get better at shortcuts and things that will still look good and, luckily, the the ace up our sleeves is the fact that I've had now going on 20 years of I guess more than 20 years of editing and camera and production experience working on, you know, things in some of the big leagues, um, like doing actual film sets that you know, worked on sets at fox studios, and big things and then even small things down to, like those yoga instructional dvds I told you like everything adds to the kit, to the tool belt, and so now I've just got this vast like utility belt at my hands of like all these things I've acquired to learn how to do so.
Speaker 1:We save a ton of money that way. By me. Just you know the, the currency is me pulling my hair out and just stressing my way through it.
Speaker 3:Well, that's why I like the story about walking through the park and seeing like, yeah, huge production. You said what quarter of a million?
Speaker 1:probably I mean who knows? I mean just equipment. Yeah, you're talking about paying those actors and then all the crew and all the makeup and all the caterers and everything. It's just a huge amount of money that goes in to kind of mundane things. When you think about it, there's a lot of talented people out there. A lot of people talk about why everything remakes and sequels and like all these things. Now, it's because a lot of these companies, uh studios, are afraid to take a risk they're just afraid to take a risk.
Speaker 1:they put in um, I think a lot of times they'll put a producer in a director's role like they won't even want to put a director in there who would take a creative risk with it, and they'll put a producer in there who's like we're going to make sure we've got the coverage and then they're just going to flood the editor with way too much footage because nobody can make a damn decision, because they're, all you know, for lack of a better term, children. They just don't want that.
Speaker 1:Nobody wants to meet an adult and be like nobody wants to be an adult and be like no, we got that shot already, we're moving on or we need this kind of shot for this reason. So you'll get situations where you've got really really good professional people, awesome cinematographers, awesome set designers, art department, brilliant actors, brilliant customers, everybody working so hard to do something, and the person at the top will be some like you know, producer who's got no experience on anything other than marketing commercials and things, and they're they're just calling these shots because these are the, the shots that we need from up top and like a creative director who's, like I said, serving drinks at starbucks available, who's really really good, and hollywood's full of of brilliant people with bad luck. So, uh, we just didn't want to be that, so we decided to to do our own thing there you go, so Hollywood's full of of brilliant people with bad luck.
Speaker 3:So uh, we just didn't want to be that, so we decided to to do our own thing.
Speaker 1:There you go. So, yeah, no, fail on our own terms if we have to, or succeed on our own terms. And uh, so far it's been working out pretty good. We've had a lot of fun. We've met a lot of cool people. We've definitely had some experiences we never would have had if we had stayed there, and that's not to bag on LA. I love LA, but at the same time I tell people, la is kind of like a French hooker right, like it's going to be expensive and you're going to get stabbed and you're probably going to get sick, but goddamn if you're not going to have the best night of your life. Yeah, it's just an awesome place. So it's pretty wild.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so screenings, yeah, you want to get into that, sure.
Speaker 1:Um upcoming screenings that are happening soon. There are three still that are going to happen this month. Um, we've got two happening in Macomb.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:Those are happening at city hall in Macomb uh, in the community room uh, and they're open to the public. Anyone can come see, put their own, their two cents, uh, definitely not, not a.
Speaker 3:Uh, uh, all ages screening it is definitely a horror film, definitely a horror film.
Speaker 1:Definitely. It's not rated by the motion picture association of america, but if it were, you could bet your ass. You'd have to be id to walk in the door. You'd have to be ID'd to walk in the door.
Speaker 3:You'd have to have your parents to watch it at a theater.
Speaker 1:If you're parents and you want to bring your teenagers or whatever, that's parental guidance suggested, Strongly advised. But that said, my own kid is in the movie and she's seven.
Speaker 3:But you know, she was was she the one to open the basement door?
Speaker 1:yes, and she's, you know. She's also um uh, what do you call it? Like. She saw how the monsters were made and she knows that it's made of so she knows it's all latex and that it's a puppet, and so you know she can see, she can have fun, but it's like you, you can't. At the same time, I don't let her watch other horror films that she doesn't know what it is, because you know she'll get scared to think that it's real, so like only the things that she herself, like you, helped me make this, and this is the results of that labor.
Speaker 1:You can see how that that works, but then, of course, we shield her away from certain aspects of kilinois as well, yeah, well, where it's like yeah, you can't see this scene because you know it's probably not good for your daughter to watch brandon shoot mormons on the porch. Yeah, exactly, so she doesn't get that she doesn't get that kind of stuff you never saw.
Speaker 1:There's very much like yeah, there's very much like okay, you're going to see this scene Now, you go out and go play, so, but yeah, so there's two screenings in Macomb this Saturday and next Saturday at 7 pm.
Speaker 3:Those are both at City Hall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can check out on our website qofjusticecom. Yeah, we'll definitely link that in there and then there's one here at the Reserve on Thursday April 10th.
Speaker 3:Is it the 10th April? 10th, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And then we'll see if we can squeeze one into Quincy or not. We'll make a couple calls and see what can happen, yeah.
Speaker 3:We'll hook it up up. That would be awesome, yeah we'll get that going.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, and then more to come, but um, mayor wolf is always available on our website to just watch whenever. And um, the first short film we did, the one that initially brought us here the still, the one that we did, uh, as a family, before we ever formed any kind of production group or did anything like that. And it was just just uh, you just just a, you know, just a family, essentially making something they thought would be cool for youtube, uh, as like a hobby film, and then it turned into this.
Speaker 3:Some folks you know as a family they go to ball games or they go do this, or you know they go to the park or something. It's like your family makes films. Yeah, we learn how.
Speaker 1:That's your thing how to make, uh, you know, props, the fingers getting cut off and things, but yeah, it's just. It's just. You know, my wife is a makeup artist and sure you know I, I wanted to always be a director, but I'm an editor by trade and it's just always something that we've done and you got to get the right, right shot on those yoga pants oh man, anybody ever give you help for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that was. Um, that job was, uh, I, I I won't say anything bad about the people, because the people who ran it, even the owner of the company, like they, they were all great people and they helped me a lot. Um, and if you're into yoga, uh, they, I, they, I mean the company no longer, no longer exists, but, um, they were really great people and I wish them nothing but the best, but I did not fit in that crowd at all, but it took doing stuff like that to get you where you're at now.
Speaker 1:That's how you learn, right, you know cause, like of my, of the graduating class at my film school. I would say there were like 80 of us and I think there's maybe five of us that actually work in the industry. What?
Speaker 3:film school. Is that I?
Speaker 1:went to Los Angeles film school on uh, it's in uh, la. I mean, obviously it's in Los Angeles, it's in Hollywood, it's right across from the Cinerama dome. A lot of people might know that it's an accredited school. They have I think they have bachelor's programs and they do more things. I think they've merged with I I think don't quote me on this I think they might've merged with Full Sail at one point.
Speaker 1:Florida but, I don't know if they did or not. I haven't really followed them since I you know, since I went to Japan.
Speaker 1:But when I went there, it was it hadn't been accredited yet it was literally just like a bunch of producers and camera guys and uh editors and stuff, who who were like we need to teach kids how to do this who can't, you know, can't afford to get into your uscs, your afis or your ucla film schools or your new york film academies and we can just teach them, you know, like a trade skill and they can, and that was that was how my education was.
Speaker 1:Like literally, we had my producing teacher would take us to like the commissary at ABC studios and be like you're going to have lunch with these guys and, you never know, maybe this guy comes in here. He comes in here Like you know, we do that, we.
Speaker 1:They took us to um, uh, mole Richardson, where they created a lot of the stage lights that are used. And like we met the guy who invented some of these lights and created some of them and he just kind of talked us through and he's like, yeah, you just grab this. And we even had, um, there was a new uh at the time the canon xl2 had just come out. Canon xl1 was the all the craze, but canon x XL2 had just come out and it was not really out for the public completely yet. I think it was like a limited release. But they just got a huge shipment of these things and they're like here you go, kids, nobody's ever touched these cameras before. Go on out and have a ball, like that was our first day. Like, come back and show us what you got.
Speaker 3:And we're just running around Hollywood with these expensive prosumer cameras making these things.
Speaker 1:But Hollywood with these expensive prosumer cameras making these things, and then then then, uh, but, but you had people who had legit credits there, like my, my producing teacher, jeff Young he's an Emmy award winner, you know and uh, there were just, um, it was just a really good bunch of folks and it was a really good kind of guerrilla filmmaking way to learn. And now they've, they've, they've grown, they've become accredited and good for them. They've gotten a really good educational program. So if you want to learn, it would be a great place to to join to learn this, uh, the trade, um, but it might be kind of counterintuitive to what it once was, which was a cheaper option for for yeah, there's now it's now it's more kind of prestigious, I guess.
Speaker 1:Um well, you said you said the right word there in trade school.
Speaker 3:Trade school, yeah, cheaper option for for now it's now it's more kind of, uh, prestigious.
Speaker 1:I guess, um well, you said you said the right word there in trade school, trade school, yeah, like it was definitely a trade.
Speaker 3:You're not going for a four.
Speaker 1:It might be now a four year degree, but at the time I'm not sure the current program, but I think they offer a bachelor's.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure it was their different tracks like writing, editing, or were you just getting a taste of everything you?
Speaker 1:could um you. You basically would pick um your major and your minor and I majored in um uh directing and minored in editing okay um, but then there's, there was also cinematography and set design and writing whatever you wanted, and that would be your primary focus. That's cool.
Speaker 3:And was there much experience going into that, or was it just Going?
Speaker 1:into. That was no, so my love of movies started with my again my friend Nick and Scott, the ones who did Stabaclaws.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was like every filmmakers, like we're in high school and we're just spending. You know, other kids are out drinking and smoking and partying all weekend and we're out with my cam corner, covering my car in blood in the park, getting in trouble with the police and being like no, no, no, we're making a student film project and that's why my car is covered in blood.
Speaker 3:That's the kind of stuff we did. That wasn't the reason Brandon's car was covered in blood in high school. But we won't go there, it's totally different.
Speaker 2:I don't think I hit any you don't think you hit anyone hey, I was a good kid in high school, yeah, you were yeah.
Speaker 1:So, uh, yeah, but that's that's kind of how it went. My ball dances yeah, I got into when my um, it's not, it's, it's more of a sad, sad reasoning, but, like when I was a kid, when I was 11, my dad was diagnosed with als, okay, so he spent most of my childhood in a wheelchair, completely bound, and, uh, he passed away when I was 24. But, um, throughout my whole, like junior, high and high school uh, existence. All we could do was watch movies together because we couldn't go out, okay, play catch or do whatever, because he was stuck in the chair.
Speaker 1:So we watched movies and that's where I got this like love of film and then, um, it was one of those things like I you know a lot was going on when there's a lot that goes along with that, with family issues and stuff.
Speaker 1:Graduated high school on a plea bargain, but I did get out of there and then worked at dairy queen for a while and then eventually it was just like what am I doing? I gotta do something. And then uh ended up finding this, this shoestring film school, a film school which was like perfect timing, and went there and got to california and a few hundred bucks and a random, uh, random dream, and it's kind of come together.
Speaker 2:So there you go.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, yeah, and like I said, you rope in some talented people from the area, like brandon and like neil, and oh, curtis, curtis tattoo guy. I will be editing that. No, like I see him all the time in my home really well, because it was one of those things like I.
Speaker 1:so there's uh, he's in the film, he's got a cameo. Uh, he doesn't have any lines.
Speaker 1:Dustin, uh, berg and McComb and he goes oh, you gotta be my friend, battle cat I'm like battle cat, who the hell calls himself Anyway and then I, and then he sets it up and, um, we, we met. And then it's like, almost immediately it's like, oh yeah, it's you, you'd be a great protege, and like, we do a lot of like, a lot of um. Curtis is a very, very excited and dedicated student to anything Right and he's got a lot of really creative ideas. Dedicated student to anything right and he's got a lot of really creative ideas, and I think we work together pretty well because he'll be really good at like I want to do this and he'll xyz, and then I'll be good at being like okay, well, here's how you do it with you know these next steps.
Speaker 1:This is how you actually make it kind of happen what you want to do, and sometimes it's like easier than you think, and sometimes it's a lot harder than you think and yeah, you know.
Speaker 3:But is it like having a brand where you could just like set them free with a?
Speaker 1:well, that's one of the things a lot of a lot of times when you're, when you're taking on someone to to mentor, a lot of times they'll get kind of like standoffish about some of the things that it takes like well, that's when you have the, when you have those, those candid conversations where, like, you're not going to be able to do that without this kind of money or this kind of training or this kind of thing, or you need this or whatever.
Speaker 1:But curtis is really good at going like, okay, so that's what I need to do, going out and then doing it and putting his one foot in front of the other to make it happen versus, versus going like nah, I'll show you like, oh okay, I'll listen, I'll listen and I'll do that, and then pulling it off, you know, quite often better than you expect him to be able to, so sure, that's that's, that's great.
Speaker 3:So and how many times have we fought over a song and then at the end of it it sounds awesome because, we fought for an hour. Yeah, no, not at all.
Speaker 1:And then there, you know, like he. And then, even when it came to Killanoi, like he, he ended up acting in one of our short films and you know, he tripped over the couch at one point and smashed his face into the side of the wall and then, instead of complaining about it, he just kind of rubbed his thing. He's like Nope, that was my fault, I shouldn't have tripped over that couch, let's do it again. He's like, really. He's like, yeah, we'll do it again.
Speaker 2:I'll just take a bigger step.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, yeah, and he's like maybe I can run into the wall harder. It's like maybe you shouldn't do that, Maybe you should pretend to hit the wall.
Speaker 3:It's cool that you have the avenue where you can make a living and pay the bills and you know you've got that avenue of you. Know I can still work in film. It's not exactly what I want to do, but you know it does. It does support your livelihood, yeah, and then you can still do the site that you love at the same time. I think that's really cool, and what you want to do is always relative you know and it changes a lot once you have a kid your priorities everything changes so a lot of that is.
Speaker 1:You know, I just want to have fun with my family and my kid and you know, show her what I like to do, which is make these much.
Speaker 1:She helped me design a blood pop machine, which was amazing, which was my, my daughter's, design and idea. She was only five years old at the time she came up with this concept and it worked beautifully. Which was I. I we were trying to, my wife and I were trying to figure out a way to make just a huge, cartoonish amount of blood just pop over the basement as one of these victims got destroyed by a monster, and just an off-camera, huge blood come in. And we were thinking about like, oh, we could do, like a air pump or this and that or whatever air pump, or this and that or whatever. And then my daughter had the idea of like what if you just she? She basically came up with this idea of a box with a hinge on it that we could put two, two and a half gallon ziploc bags full of blood on and then have someone karate step on it yeah and pop, and that's what we ended up doing and it worked beautifully.
Speaker 1:And that was all my daughter's idea. She was only five.
Speaker 3:She designed this thing, so it like it not being creepy at all, it's just like huh, I know how to make that work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did tests with water over and over, and then we, the day up, we did it with uh, with uh, you know, corn syrup. That was then the next two to three days of cleaning for a second and a half of film.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those showers are never fun yeah, so that's awesome well
Speaker 3:I'm happy for you guys. You want to shout out any plugs or any links to go to just cubeofjusticecom, that's, that's where we put everything up.
Speaker 1:Um, for websites that cube like the three-dimensional shape of justice. Um, we've got this whole side story crafted of like being these angry aliens who have come to earth to destroy the boredom with ridiculous entertainment whether you like it or not, I love um, and we have our care breed, uh well, no, so cure breed. That's, that's what we're. The whole reason that you know, the whole reason right.
Speaker 3:So we're doing a kickstarter right um, we're trying to raise that you know the whole reason.
Speaker 1:We're talking to you, right? So we're doing a Kickstarter, right? Um, we're trying to raise some cash to do, uh, another one of my wife's genius ideas. Um, she had an idea for, uh, like a black mirror kind of episode, um, and then we worked together for a while and we we wrote it out, and then for a while, and we we wrote it out, and then, um, basically it's about, um, it's set in the future where, uh, humanity is it's dystopian, humanity's, you know, endangered and a lot, of, a lot of society's collapse and most people are dead and it's, uh, a mercenary chasing a man and his dog through the woods, and the dog's this cute little corgi named Churro, which we already have cast, and he's a really great dog and he's he's really uh, he'll, he'll be a joy to work with, cause he's he sticks to people like glue.
Speaker 1:Uh, he's a great dog, but um, basically, what it ends up being is, um, the civil war that ended humanity was because the secret to no longer aging or getting sick was discovered in our time, but the poor could not get access to it. Only the rich could get access to it because of insurance, co-pays and the way our system is set up and that led to a civil war, which led to everybody who had the treatment ended up getting killed and whatnot. But the treatment still lives in this dog because some Instagram influencer girl gave her dog the treatment.
Speaker 1:So now he's like a Knights Templar protecting this dog from a guy who wants to get it to create an army that can't be stopped. So that's the idea behind Curebreed. So we're trying to raise some money for that. We're trying to raise a fair amount. We're trying to raise $50,000 for it, which sounds like a lot, but if you think about it, it's less than a lexus to shoot a movie. Um, and at the same time, when we did kilnoy, we didn't have our. We didn't have a company set up. We didn't have anything. It was just friends having fun and we were just all working for lunch or whatever. But now we formed a company. We would like to actually set this up properly where we have hired jobs, people get paid a fair wage, people get, we shoot on a proper camera, we do everything you know like you're supposed to do as a business.
Speaker 3:It's not.
Speaker 1:This one is not just friends making a fun art project, like Killanoi was. This one is a film that would be intended to be marketed, that would intended to be released, not just like some, some youtube fun stuff, sure so um which does require some more, some more funding. Um so, kill an oil was, kill an oil was done, just like I said, just a bunch of friends with lunch, so that ended up costing like, but it's cool how that has evolved to where you can yeah, you can, you can pursue this now yeah, and we would love to be able to, you know, to bring something to this region, to western illinois, I think.
Speaker 1:uh, not just macomb, we've. We didn't know galesburg when we first came in, but we've started spending time up here as well and then just like, and even up upwards of quad cities and, um, even people over inlington Iowa. Just this whole region of the world just seems to have been forgotten by most people, and a lot of people call it forgotten, yeah, even we like it that way.
Speaker 1:But at the same time it's like I think there is like a. I feel like there's a yearning here for people to do something creative, and I think that it could be. If everyone played their cards right, not just us maybe some other people would come in to town and see how collaborative everybody is how everybody is. Yeah, and we could create an artistic community here. That's and that's why everybody's diverse, just like they did in.
Speaker 3:New.
Speaker 1:Mexico and Santa Fe and whatever. In the nineties, when everyone thought on New Mexico and Santa Fe and whatever. In the 90s, when everyone thought, oh, new Mexico, but now it's. You know, they call it Tamale-wood.
Speaker 3:And that's what the podcast is all about Totally. I mean there's so many talented, amazing people with amazing stories in this little chunk of our world, you know, and it's not like.
Speaker 1:I will say this like our, our kickstarter goal is it's, it's ambitious and it's something that we want to do to we. Could we do it for way cheaper? Sure we could, but could we do it to the quality? We need to be marketable to bring more people here to do other things? No, but I will say that, um, we're not gonna be like if the kickstarter doesn't go through, we're not gonna be like oh well, shucks I guess we're not going to find, we already have something else in the can.
Speaker 1:That can be done, you know, cheaper and easier, but it's just not quite as ambitious. But it is something that we can go through, like we'll just steamroll right through to the night because like I said, we've got 20 years of ideas we've been sitting on, we've got stuff to work on.
Speaker 1:But we thought, you know, right now the iron's hot people are going. We just came off of this festival win and we should just see what, see what the pulse is, and maybe we can get it together and maybe we can bring some folks together to the region and do, uh, do, cure, breed. So we're doing these screenings, people can watch kilnoy, see what's going on and then hopefully go donate to the kickstarter. If they can't, they can share it and of course, kickstarter has um cool souvenirs. You don't just, you don't just throw money like it goes from anything from like you know, set photos all the way up to like having a speaking role in the film to, like you know, autograph t-shirts and yeah, that's a fun way to do it, yeah, so whatever based on what's what's in your head brand?
Speaker 2:let's I hear something rattling over there absolutely all that being said, is like macomb, galesburg they're both college towns like a lot of the towns you talked about have a lot of great people that are just coming up. Lots of talent out there. Lots of college kids like feel like these are like a great market yeah, and monmouth too.
Speaker 3:Curtis is from monmouth, yeah in monmouth, monmouth western and the community colleges of the area are very talented people in canton absolutely like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's so much room for us to get you know traction yeah that's something that I felt about this project, cause, like a lot of the things I've seen since I moved like I've only been a part of this region for three years, to be fair but I have seen other things like, uh, there are music scenes and uh, well, I won't say really music, but like, um, art scenes, like the art center, like Galesburg has an art center, macomb has an art center, macoma has an art center, and then there's like little things where they do clay labs and rotary clubs and whatever. Each town seems to keep to itself. The only thing I've seen bridge that gap is the music scene, where people share and share alike.
Speaker 1:You have people from beardston, from from beardstown, from canton, from galesburg, from burlington and I think I think the film thing could be the exact same thing and it could be another avenue to not focus on town by town rejection but like a whole western illinois unifying cause.
Speaker 2:So yeah, absolutely, it's all about community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like it and killing people with bricks. Well, foam bricks, yeah, I like it well, thanks for your time I mean this was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I learned a shit ton.
Speaker 3:I like I said I came into this not knowing anything about film. I knew he was in the film. I knew, yeah, neil was in the film. I knew curtis was in the film. I was like, okay, so there's too many cool people in one place not to you know. Look into this. It's a pleasure meeting you and hearing what your vision is for it and just wanting to do it in this area.
Speaker 1:I think it's really cool I do have to shout out to um, how listening, like you you mentioned, like neil and curtis, whatever, uh, thor and savannah, who are in the, still are, hands down, the two hardest workers on this film that were, uh, involved in the acting scene. But then, on top of that, clarissa was really, really good. Tessa was amazing. Julia Riley was our lead in the hag and she was literally the first person that ever contacted me in Macomb and was the most excited and helped us out quite a bit. Alex, you know he had a small role but he was very excited and helped out a lot. And everybody, maggie, um, just just all the actors and yeah, we've already talked about curtis and just everyone who could really go 110 gave 150 and it was just all for love because we went into this, everyone knowing like, look, this is a, this is not something that we're doing for profit, for whatever.
Speaker 1:We're just doing this for a fun, stupid thing to do, and everyone was and look where it's at and look where it ended up.
Speaker 3:So that's awesome.
Speaker 2:What are the dates of those two Saturdays?
Speaker 1:Uh, saturday April, this Saturday April and then next Saturday April. Uh, saturday April and then next Saturday April. Uh, let's see, let me pull up my calendar April 5th and 12th in Macomb at 7 PM and then here at the reserve, april 10th.
Speaker 3:And in Galesburg. Yep Right here in Galesburg and then what a what a better way to spend an evening what's watching some some horror films and drinking a beer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's 85 minutes of of your time and absolutely, it's like I said it's. It's one of those things like getting people in the door is the hardest part. We have not had a single person be like I didn't like that, it wasn't for me. Everybody strangers not just people who are involved with this, they're just.
Speaker 3:They seem to love kilinoy, so well, if you ever need somebody to get bludgeoned with a ball bat or something in one of your movies, I will gladly volunteer Ty to get smacked with a club.
Speaker 2:Don't worry, I won't hit too hard, we'll come up with something extremely creative.
Speaker 1:We like to always do something that hasn't been done before, really.
Speaker 3:I think Ty's a good candidate for Smell's Kitchen too, so I think all of our deaths we have.
Speaker 1:The most generic one we have is one of our coolest effects is the throat slit onto the door with the blood going off. But we have, you know, falling down the stairs via cat toy. We have being beaten to death with a brick. We have being fed to a giant cocktopus. We have. We have being beaten to death with a brick. We have being fed to a giant cocktopus.
Speaker 3:We have um, we have the dark, the dark monster.
Speaker 1:Um, that torments curtis. We have, uh, the, the coat hanger behind the kneecaps with, oh, beautiful, that was beautiful.
Speaker 3:All right, let's not give away too much, all right. Well, thanks for doing this, guys. One quick shout out yeah, go for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:All right. So also, obviously, we're doing the screening here the 10th Thursday, but shout out for Beer Fest. We have April 12th before the showing, so you can come to our Beer Fest here at Reserve Arsenales. There's going to be dozens of different breweries from around the local areas.
Speaker 3:Great, solid like all-star.
Speaker 2:list of area beers All-star list and you know, check it out Free tasters at almost all of the different vendors, all the different breweries that are around.
Speaker 1:And then you'll still have time to make it to the screen. Yeah, and it to yeah, and it's perfect timing where, when Beer Fest stops, you get perfect time on the Chicago train to Quincy, where you can catch the train in Galesburg and have a drunk ride to Macomb and have a good old night Watch the screening and then, after the screening, you can even catch a show.
Speaker 3:There might be a metal show going on at the Ritz that night as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can have a whole night, get all sorts of fun stuff going on. Hop the train, make a day of it get off.
Speaker 3:Go see kilnoy, then go see, just did a pod with uh or get a designated driver, and then yeah, and then just sleep in the street in my calm. We'll get you home the next day if you're in my calm, you're not going to sleep in the street. Someone's going to give you a couch. I mean, that's just how it goes. Just holler first.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah it's fine, and I know the sheriff. He might give you a cell if you need yeah he might it might be a concrete floor.
Speaker 3:You might be handcuffed but, all right, thanks a lot guys, I appreciate this. This was a lot of fun later thank you.
