Things I've Learned...Greg Lamberson

Things I've Learned...
STICKING TO YOUR CINEMATIC SIX-GUNS
By Greg Lamberson, director of SLIME CITY and the recent GRUESOME.
I recently interviewed Larry Fessendedn for a book I'm writing called Cheap Scares! How to Make a Low Budget Horror Film and we discovered that as directors, we share a common malady that causes us undue stress and self loathing upon completing our respective films: we've both compromised our vision in order to appease a collaborator when it just wasn't necessary, just to be "nice." I won't elaborate on the instances when Larry feels he's made this mistake--you can read all about it in the book, hopefully next year!--but I'm happy to admit where I've diminished my work by acquiescing to the wishes of others.
If you're a regular poster on B-Independent, you probably know that I wrote and directed a film in the late 80s called Slime City, which enjoyed a rebirth when Shock-O-Rama Cinema released it on DVD two years ago. You're probably aware that I've devoted most of the last year to a multi-media project called Johnny Gruesome (www.johnnygruesome.com). And it's just possible that you may remember I directed two other micro-budget features, Undying Love, which E.I. Independent Cinema released on VHS as New York Vampire, and Naked Fear, which was included as an extra on the Slime DVD.
I also wrote a novel called Personal Demons, which won the Anubis Award for Horror, and worked in supportive capacities on the films I Was a Teenage Zombie, Plutonium Baby, Brain Damage, and West New York.
As a novelist, I've submitted early drafts of my work to fellow writers for constructive feedback. I've received useful, often essential, suggestions from these folks. I've chosen my mentors carefully and I know that their comments are sincere and are not born of ego. I rarely show my screenplays to people for their opinions; I'm much more confident in that medium, and I'm not all that interested in what anyone has to say about my work in it. Have you ever noticed that everyone's an expert when it comes to filmmaking? "The acting was bad," "I didn't like the lighting," "The sound didn't match"--useless comments from armchair critics. As a director, I've learned to filter out the opinions of others and honor my own vision.
On Slime City, my Assistant Director--a sharp guy who considers all the angles--convinced me that a scene in which my protagonist (and antagonist) uses a hack saw to dismember a prostitute he just killed made him unsympathetic. "Are you kidding?" I said. "He cut her throat with a straight edge razor! How does sawing the corpse make him any less likable than he already is?" My point was that the action dramatized the character confronting what he had done while possessed by an evil spirit, and that without that moment, the sequence was less horrifying. But I took his advice and regretted it. I should have filmed the scene as written and decided in the editing whether or not to keep it.
There is a general debate in production circles regarding who is the true "author" of a film. I think the "auteur theory" is bullshit, but if a single entity writes and directs a film, who is its author if not him? I ultimately believe that the screenwriter and the director are equally responsible for the creation of a film in most cases. But there's also a third creative entity who shares as much credit for the finished project. If the screenwriter is responsible for a film during its genesis, and the director is responsible during production, then the editor makes key contributions during post production; that's why directors tend to sit in on the editing, and do everything they can to keep the writer out. Even when I've written, directed, and edited a film, I've never called it "A Greg Lamberson Film"--I think that title is pure ego and diminished the hard work of many other people.
To a degree, you can control what happens during the pre-production and post-production of a film from the comfort of a chair, with plenty of time to consider your options and moves. It's a different story on the set, when you have to think on the fly. If, as a director, you have a full sized crew, or nearly one, you'll find yourself barraged by questions all day long which require immediate response. "Which costume do you like better?" "Do you want to leave that lamp there?" "Actor B wants to know what time you'll be finished with him?" If you're smart, you'll establish a chain of command right off the bat and instruct people go to your 1st Assistant Director and let him be your buffer. I also interviewed Scooter McCrae for Cheap Scares! and while he doesn't really use an AD, he's also used miniscule crews so that he only has two or three "department heads" coming to him with pressing questions.
My features have all been micro-budget affairs: I made Slime City on 16m for $50,000; Undying Love on 16m for $35,000; and Naked Fear on Hi-8 for $7,000. In all three cases, my casts and crews have worked for free, or for Net Profits (usually the same thing, I'm afraid). Consequently, I've been more considerate toward their opinions than I might have been if was paying them $150 a day; overly considerate, to the detriment of my films. Film crews are like circus troops: we band together for an intense period of time, during which we see little or none of our family and non-circus friends, and then we go our separate ways and see each either again a year or two or three or even four at the premiere of the finished film.
There have been a number of instances where an actor executed an action or a reaction in a scene that I didn't care for, but I allowed them to do so because I wanted them to feel like they were making a contribution, when of course they already were. Because of the limited coverage on a micro-budget movie shot on film, as opposed tone shot on mini-DV or Hi Def, these moment s usually made it into the final film (Roy Frumkes once described one of my films as "coverage-less."). On Slime City, there was also the occasion when my effects artists--who did a great job--decided that the over-the-top ending needed some humor; for the gag when the heroine "guts" her possessed boyfriend and he stuffs those guts back into his belly, they made their latex props resemble sausage and eggs. I didn't like the joke then and I still don't like it 21 years alter. But I kept my mouth shut and now I have to live with the consequences--over and over and over. Several reviews mentioned this moment, some in a positive way and some in a negative light, but always attributing credit/blame tome--and rightly so.
Although Undying Love, like Slime City, features no nudity, it's a very sexual film. The femme fatale (Julie Lynch) sucks the protagonist's (Tommy Sweeney) blood by performing fellatio on him. As is common in vampire lore, he then becomes a vampire when he sucks her blood. In my screenplay, I describe the scene thusly: She leads him into her bedroom and lays down on her bed. From between her knees, we see him looking down at her off screen vagina. "You're bleeding," he says. "I'm bleeding for you," she responds. As he gets down on his knees to suck her blood, we fade to black. The night before we started shooting, Julie called me in a panic. "Oh my God, is he drinking her periodblood?"
"Well, yes, but we don't show it...." "My agent says I can't do the film if that scene stays in, and you have to put it in my contract that you won't use a body double to suggest what's happening. It will be the end of my career!" I was in a tough position because I had arranged to shoot the entire film during a two-week vacation from my job. If I pushed shooting back a week to cast another actress in this key role--a role which I'd already had trouble casting--I could have shot only half of my film. So I caved in. Julie gave a very good performance, and was professional and pleasant to work with, but for me, as an artist, the film lacks bite it would have had if we'd filmed it as I intended. Ultimately, I wish I had told her to take a walk.
When I wrote that screenplay for that film, I deliberated on a title for months. I didn't want anything typical-nothing with "blood," "fangs," or "vampire" in it. Mike Raso at E.I. Cinema thought Undying Love sounded too much like a Meryl Streep melodrama; first he changed the title to Curse of the Vampire, then to New York Vampire. I don't like either one. If Mike ever gets around to releasing the film on DVD, I hope he goes back to my title, which was much, much better than what he came up with. I'm in no position to demand it, though; some things are beyond your control--unless you protect yourself at the contract stage.
When I took my first baby steps toward becoming a filmmaker, I wrote a screenplay called Johnny Gruesome. Vestron Video, then the largest independent video label in the world, loved the script and were interested in producing it. But they wanted me to make all sorts of concessions as director, so I made Slime City on my own instead. It's possible that if I'd agreed to the changes they wanted, I might have had a much different career in this business (which is to say I might actually have a career). But it's more likely that I would have chaffed at something else they wanted me to do along the way, and I'd have quit in a huff or have been fired, and someone else would have finished the film. In which case, I'd be a very bitter person today instead of the happy go lucky fellow I am.
Last year, when my daughter was born, I decided to adapt my Johnny Gruesome screenplay into novel form (my first novel, Personal Demons, was also based on an un-produced screenplay) while staying at home to play Mr. Mom. While I was writing it, I hired an artist named Zach McCain to illustrate the story. I wasn't sure if the novel would be published as a limited edition hardcover--which would have allowed me to use the illustrations--or as a mass market paperback, in which case the publisher would have made every marketing decision. But I figured that I could always use them to promote the novel on my website, or to include them in a presentation package to potential film investors. As it turns out, a small press publisher, Roy Robbins of Bad Moon Books, and a paperback publisher not to be named expressed initial interest at the same time. By then, my friends Giasone and Marcy Italiano had already started recording a companion rock CD, Gruesome, and I'd found two different comic artists to adapt chapters from the book for me. A writer friend advised me that I would have more say in the project if I went with Roy, and that's all I needed to hear. I essentially presented him with a complete marketing package, which he approved, and the book that just became available for presale (www.badmoonbooks.com) is 100% the book I wanted to see produced. Introduced by fellow writer Jeff Strand (www.jeffstrand.com), it's a deluxe volume limited to 250 signed and numbered copies. The mass market paperback publisher is still interested, too, which is great. But their contract gives them the right to change the title (shades of New York Vampire!) and to control the destiny of my heavy metal zombie character...
But this essay is supposed to be about filmmaking, isn't it? To promote the novel and the CD, I decided to shoot a music video that would incorporate key images from the feature film I was never able to make. It had been nine years since I'd completed Naked Fear--and 13 since I'd shot it. I was supposed to direct a flick called Prison of the Psychotic Damned, but when relations with the producer broke down, I walked. The music video grew into a short film and I cast Erin Brown ("Misty Mundae") in it. We filmed the project in four days, spread out over three weekends. I got to direct a movie star, use a dolly for the first time, and see a character I created 22 years earlier kick ass. It may only be a short promotional film, but it has my best direction and I'm ecstatic about the acting. One person complained to me about the black and white cemetery footage; I answered, "Are you crazy? That stuff is pure Night of the Living Dead!" Another criticized the lighting in the bathroom scene, when Johnny chomps the middle finger off a cheerleader. That scene was lit with a flickering neon bulb and screams minimalist 70s filmmaking, which is my favorite cinematic period. I believe in context, which is something that contemporary digital filmmakers fixated on making their films in post production lack. Gruesome is exactly the film I wanted it to be. And I did it my way...
The lesson? Control your projects. It may sound like a cliché, but don't compromise. There are imperfections in every film, but as long as you adhere to your vision, the end result will be your film, with your imprint, not a product created by a committee. Listen to suggestions and keep an open mind when they're presented to you, but say "no" if you know in your gut that this person is serving his own vision instead of yours. If you state your position and a cast member, crew member, or department head shrugs and says, "You're the director..." in a condescending manner, cut them the fuck loose at your earliest convenience. You're the person who has to live with the finished film, and if you allow someone to influence your film in a negative way, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Greg Lamberson is a novelist and filmmaker dwelling in the horror genre. His first novel, Personal Demons, won the Anubis Award for Horror. His second, Johnny Gruesome, will be published as a limited edition hardcover by Bad Moon Books this fall. Lamberson’s first film, Slime City, played as a midnight movie in New York City before being sold around the world; it was released domestically on VHS twice before Shock-O-Rama Cinema gave it the deluxe treatment on DVD. His second film, Undying Love, also played as a midnight film and was released on VHS by E.I. Cinema, and his third film, Naked Fear, is the second feature on the Slime City DVD. He is currently writing Cheap Scares! How to Make a Low Budget Horror Film, which McFarland will publish in 2008.
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