Never say die...

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2010)

Watching Johnny Depp as the irrepressible Ed Wood always brings back the memories (most of them bad): memories of trying to make Public Access movies with amateurs whose sudden "claim to fame" led them to dictate how we would and would not shoot a scene that I had conceived and written and was supposedly directing; watching my would-be "stars" as they literally walked away, time after time, from location after location without cause and without giving reason; etc. In January of this year, I'd planned to begin a remake of a short I'd made 15 years ago (IN THE WOODS, about a group of homicidal mental patients rampaging through a forest near the hospital from which they had escaped). At the last minute, both the cameraman (who had a camera capable of shooting widescreen and in black and white) and the makeup/fx guy (who claims to have worked on a zombie film shot in New Orleans last year) punked out on me (though they kept the copy of my script). In February, I wrote and planned to direct THE CRAVING (about a cabbie who battles a zombie plague here in Wilmington- called "Filmington" in my script), but the cab we were to use developed transmission trouble the day we were to begin shooting; nix the cabbie vs. zombie movie. By March, I'd done a story for the fourth issue of my black and white comic (CAPE FEAR COMICS), entitled BOTTOM FEEDERS. The story involved a group of homeless people who do battle with the UNdead- another homage to George Romero. I'd hoped to premiere it at a zombiecon in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in October. Things got off to a good start when a guy who'd helped put on a local stage version of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD volunteered to be the lead. We went out and shot some scenes of him arriving at the local bus station and then getting mugged (leaving him thus penniless and homeless in a strange town). That very evening, apparently, he got a call from a local video store to which he had applied. No longer would he be available for BOTTOM FEEDERS. As this is being written, I'm trying to cast for my fourth attempt at making a movie this year: it'll be called KILLBILLIES, and it's a cross between DELIVERANCE, SOUTHERN COMFORT, and THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE. One of the leads is a professional wrestler who lives here in Wilmington (North Carolina). Like Ed Wood himself, I refuse to be dissuaded, but the lack of money has proved an almost insurmountable obstacle (NOBODY is willing to work for nothing around here). I'll keep you posted.