Speaker 1: Oh g is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 2: go out to a theater.
Speaker 3: They want cold.
Speaker 1: Sodas from a pop popcorn, and no monsters in the
Speaker 1: Protection Booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring, got it off?
Speaker 4: Mm hm, you're a man homed bias semens and you
Speaker 4: need to understand. Hey, you will tell you're capable of
Speaker 4: or you're gonna end up right back here or worse dead.
Speaker 1: He's dead.
Speaker 4: I'm scared.
Speaker 1: I what is that I don't want?
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 3: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 3: with Jeff Daniel Phillips. He is mostly known as being
Speaker 3: an actor, but he's also a writer and director as well,
Speaker 3: talking about his second feature film, Kursed and Baja, which
Speaker 3: came out this year. It is currently touring around and
Speaker 3: will be appearing on DVD and Blu Ray from Anchor
Speaker 3: Bay later this month. Thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 3: and I hope you enjoyed the interview. Thanks so much
Speaker 3: for coming on to the show. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I want to know a little bit more
Speaker 2: about you. From what I understand, you grew up in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Is that where you got your love up performing? It's
Speaker 2: funny you say that. So I am in Chicago.
Speaker 1: We're promoting this live screening we're doing tonight at the
Speaker 1: Datas Theater. It's an old vaudeville theater. It's built in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen. Anyway, we're here and I got to go
Speaker 1: on WGN in Chicago in the studio for it was
Speaker 1: a morning show. It was a place that Boso Circus
Speaker 1: was done, and I win as a kid. So it
Speaker 1: was such a surreal thing to be on the same
Speaker 1: stage that they shot Boso. You could see the backgrounds
Speaker 1: in some of the areas and here I am as
Speaker 1: like a seven year old. That antidote where you show
Speaker 1: me the kid at seven, and I'll show you the adult.
Speaker 1: Here I am going to see a clown on camera,
Speaker 1: and now I am the clown on camera. So there
Speaker 1: you go.
Speaker 2: It was fun.
Speaker 1: So that was my first experience in being on a set,
Speaker 1: my first experience in seeing cameras and how it worked,
Speaker 1: and I know it planted a seed in my head.
Speaker 1: As far as theater goes, I didn't do a lot.
Speaker 1: I was more of an athlete. So I was a
Speaker 1: goalie basketball player. So I guess that's where my stage
Speaker 1: experience was in the beginning. It didn't start intill college.
Speaker 2: Actually, did I read right that you studied an.
Speaker 1: I did study in Italy. It was in an art
Speaker 1: school for a year, and then I went back for
Speaker 1: another half of the year.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then actually I had a partial art scholarship at
Speaker 1: USC which I went I finished to have an art
Speaker 1: degree and a film degree.
Speaker 2: There were you learning more behind the camera stuff rather
Speaker 2: than in front of the camera stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting enough. When you went to film school
Speaker 1: back then, you didn't have to have acting experience and
Speaker 1: you're trying to learn how to be a director, which
Speaker 1: I thought was very strange, Like, how am I going
Speaker 1: to direct an actor if I don't have any experience
Speaker 1: or don't understand what they're going through. So I went
Speaker 1: to Hollywood and there was a studio called the Loft Studio.
Speaker 1: Peggy Fury and Bill Traylor and all these alumni came
Speaker 1: out of there, and I studied there, and that's where
Speaker 1: it started. I became part of the theater group and
Speaker 1: I did that for the next decade. Then La Underground
Speaker 1: Theater scenes.
Speaker 2: So when did you move into like movies, TV commercials.
Speaker 1: I woul audition while I was studying, and I guess
Speaker 1: I got my sag card on a horror film. It
Speaker 1: was called to Die for two, so they had one line.
Speaker 1: But then immediately after I was up for this movie Sneakers,
Speaker 1: and I had this small bit. But I went into
Speaker 1: the audition and here I am in this audition room
Speaker 1: and I look across from me, and here i am
Speaker 1: a real film school mirror and I'm sitting across from
Speaker 1: m m At Wallash and I'm like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: It was just dumbfounded. And this guy's just trying to
Speaker 1: look at his lines going in and he could care less.
Speaker 1: And I just got to tell you, I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of you, mister Wallace. It so that's how it started.
Speaker 1: And then when I got the gig, they brought me
Speaker 1: to the makeup trailer and I'm sitting in the chair
Speaker 1: and they go, we want to introduce you to one
Speaker 1: of the other actors. I'm sitting next to Ben Kingsley.
Speaker 1: They're putting on a ponytop. Then they brought me a
Speaker 1: set and I got to see Robert Redford shooting in
Speaker 1: one set. It brought me to mindset. I'm working with
Speaker 1: Sydney pot, Dan Ackroyd, and David Stratzer. It just it
Speaker 1: was mind blowing. This was one of my first gigs
Speaker 1: and I spent three nights with these guys doing these
Speaker 1: night shoots and they couldn't have been nicer. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a great way to introduce me to the
Speaker 1: whole scene. And yeah, of course I've never had that
Speaker 1: big of a star line up since, but it was great.
Speaker 2: They were very supportive. Was Convict? Was that your first
Speaker 2: feature that you directed?
Speaker 1: Yes, I did this movie Convict. It was called Odisse.
Speaker 1: It was based on the Odyssey. But I didn't have
Speaker 1: the most supportive producers in that situation. I had a
Speaker 1: great cast, I pulled in a lot of favors, but
Speaker 1: they didn't quite understand the film that they signed on too,
Speaker 1: so it ended up not being a very great situation.
Speaker 1: And so after that, I took a break for a while,
Speaker 1: almost like a decade of doing anything like this again.
Speaker 2: Now it's time. I just have to ask who's taller,
Speaker 2: you or Kevin Durant.
Speaker 1: I'd say Kevin Durant's about an inch taller, about thirty
Speaker 1: pounds more muscle and better looking too, I'm sure, but
Speaker 1: hopefully trying to bring me down in this interview.
Speaker 2: Just I have to say, I am admiring your hat
Speaker 2: so much. I love spend Gooli.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I grew up. Spent Gooli was my horror
Speaker 1: show host and now I'm friends with him, and I
Speaker 1: was just he just had an encore performance of him.
Speaker 1: I was on the show driving a hearse with him
Speaker 1: in it, and yeah, he's such a great guy and
Speaker 1: he's a Chicago icon. And that's what I grew up
Speaker 1: watching those spent Gooolie and creature features and that's where
Speaker 1: my love for the B movie came from, watching those
Speaker 1: as kids and the creatures and all that kind of
Speaker 1: practical sex and whatnot. So yes, s BEng Gooli is
Speaker 1: a big hero mine and a great.
Speaker 2: Guying a practical effects. I'm so curious. How long does
Speaker 2: it take you to get into the Herman Monster makeup
Speaker 2: or the Goico Caveman makeup? Mostly I'm familiar with seeing
Speaker 2: you behind a layers of other stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Herman Monster, I think it was about three
Speaker 1: hours they got it down to and then an hour
Speaker 1: to get out, So that was four hours on a
Speaker 1: makeup chair in and out, and then you'd have to
Speaker 1: balance on the shoes and then you had this muscle
Speaker 1: suit that was it was like wearing a wet suit.
Speaker 1: We'd switch it out half the day because I was
Speaker 1: just dripping. Why it was very hot. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: I did that and then the Geico came in probably
Speaker 1: about two and a half hours. But they've gotten that down.
Speaker 1: It depends how much hair they have to be put
Speaker 1: on my arms and legs or whatnot. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I have a high talentance for being uncomfortable, I'm told.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, how did Chris de Baja come about? It's interesting.
Speaker 1: So I go to a lot of these horror cons
Speaker 1: and I was promoting the Monsters. Rob Zombie's The Monsters,
Speaker 1: and I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and they had
Speaker 1: me talk to these young filmmakers. I came in there
Speaker 1: and I was trying to help them, giving them advice
Speaker 1: on how to make low budget fil homes, and in
Speaker 1: doing so, I was just rattling off how you pull
Speaker 1: it off, make your list of location then and things
Speaker 1: you have access to, and talking about digital technology and
Speaker 1: how it's affordable, and doing table reads for my theater
Speaker 1: days and just giving them all this advice. Anyway, their
Speaker 1: enthusiasm was great. It was just contagious. And so I
Speaker 1: came back to Los Angeles and I spoke to my
Speaker 1: friend Kent Isaacs, who's a producer, and as I was describing,
Speaker 1: he goes, why don't we just do it ourselves? And
Speaker 1: so the two of us sat down and we wrote
Speaker 1: down a list of locations and things we could pull off.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of actors from the theater days,
Speaker 1: also just working for the last three decades, and so
Speaker 1: we made a list and I crafted the piece or
Speaker 1: the film around what we had. And the one place
Speaker 1: we had was a farm in Mexico and Baja, and
Speaker 1: I knew I could double that in Los Angeles where
Speaker 1: I could use a lot of the La actors there
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't have to travel them down to Mexico.
Speaker 1: So we went down to Mexico a few of us,
Speaker 1: and we shot a bunch of stuff exteriors, my character,
Speaker 1: Kent's character, who was also acting in it, and also
Speaker 1: doing this sound and doing everything else. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was great. It was a fast and furious thing. And
Speaker 1: we also had the strike coming up at the end
Speaker 1: of the summer that we're predicting, so we had five
Speaker 1: months that we were going to try to make it happen.
Speaker 2: How is it directing yourself.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for a while and I do shorts,
Speaker 1: some music videos. In this situation, it's very doable because
Speaker 1: our cinematographer, Keith Coleman, he's a busy guy, and in
Speaker 1: doing so, he would say, hey, I have this weekend available.
Speaker 1: All right, I have this time available. So we shot
Speaker 1: at chunks, So we shot a day, we shot a
Speaker 1: few days. This stamina to try to keep up to
Speaker 1: do that for three weeks doing all those things, wearing
Speaker 1: all those hats and acting is a little overwhelming. But
Speaker 1: in this situation, as long as you're organized and you're efficient,
Speaker 1: and you're respectable of people's availability, you could pull it up.
Speaker 1: And again this comes from that La underground theater. We
Speaker 1: would just make it work. We didn't worry about renting
Speaker 1: theaters or filling the house or having the right pr
Speaker 1: We would just do site specific pieces and this kind
Speaker 1: of had that same feel, and that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I brought a lot of the actors involved, like
Speaker 1: this guy Mark Fight, who have done stuff with for
Speaker 1: years and it was great. He's here in Chicago, he's
Speaker 1: going to be speaking tonight, and those are people you want.
Speaker 1: They're ready to throw down and they're part of your tribe.
Speaker 2: How do you even keep track of everything that you've
Speaker 2: shot and then what you need to shoot?
Speaker 1: Still, I usually my head's Smoke's coming out of my
Speaker 1: head by the end of the day. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of situations like you could I shut
Speaker 1: my lines underneath me as I'm talking, and then I'm
Speaker 1: looking over here and it's crazy. Again, you just have
Speaker 1: to do a lot of prep work and you could
Speaker 1: pull it off.
Speaker 2: It sounds like such a difficult situation. What was it
Speaker 2: like actually making this for you?
Speaker 1: It was great, And like I said, there's certain risks
Speaker 1: you try to We were trying to create a world
Speaker 1: that was a lot bigger than the budget we had
Speaker 1: and make it believable. I dig nonlinear storytelling, and I
Speaker 1: knew I had these film loops from past productions that
Speaker 1: I knew I was going to use as the main characters,
Speaker 1: thinking back and using things in his memory. And yet
Speaker 1: the biggest test, or the biggest challenge, is just to
Speaker 1: hold the audience's interest for hour and a half or
Speaker 1: our twenty minutes, and I think we did.
Speaker 2: Who did you work with as a sugarmatographer?
Speaker 1: So this guy, Keith Coleman, is used to shooting a
Speaker 1: lot of lives. He does off road things. He's a
Speaker 1: very physical guy. And I knew him almost twenty years
Speaker 1: ago and I would work on sets and behind the camera.
Speaker 1: So I ran into him in Los Angeles and yeah,
Speaker 1: I have all the equipment and it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: rough and ready shoot.
Speaker 2: And he was all gained for it.
Speaker 1: He owns everything. He has drones, so we went for
Speaker 1: that look and it's kind of looked that we can
Speaker 1: only afford. It's one of those things you create something
Speaker 1: that you're able to pull off. You have all these
Speaker 1: things access to and in his situation, he had all
Speaker 1: the cameras and the mounts for the cars and everything else.
Speaker 1: So he was the perfect guy. And a funny story
Speaker 1: with him when we were shooting in Mexico. We were
Speaker 1: doing a drone and this is the kind of guy
Speaker 1: is the GPS that it works so great. Down in Mexico,
Speaker 1: we were in this canyon and his drone went down
Speaker 1: on the side of the mountain. Keith just jumped out
Speaker 1: and climbed the mountain to get his drone.
Speaker 2: He could hear it beeping.
Speaker 1: There gonna be rattlesnakes, whatever comes down. He ends up
Speaker 1: falling on this barbed wire. We take the barbed wire
Speaker 1: out of the back of his back and then he
Speaker 1: keeps shooting the rest of the day and then we
Speaker 1: sleep outside and some sleeping bags in thirty five degree.
Speaker 1: Like he's just amazing. So when you get someone like that.
Speaker 1: He took me out the death belly. He has a
Speaker 1: four wheel drive, which he has motorcycles.
Speaker 2: It was great. He's the perfect guy to have. That
Speaker 2: sounds like you guys were like a little army going
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but in already have three or four people,
Speaker 1: so yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: So you get it all done before the strike happens,
Speaker 2: and then how does the post process go.
Speaker 1: Mark Fowen is my editor and I've worked with him
Speaker 1: now almost two decades and he's just a really creative guy,
Speaker 1: Emmy Award winning editor. We're in the same wave. We
Speaker 1: like the same type of movies. He knows the kind
Speaker 1: of influences that we wanted to do. Nicholas Rogue was
Speaker 1: a big one. I like how he has a nonlinear
Speaker 1: feel and the way the bontage is visual landscape. The
Speaker 1: two of us would work on it and rework it
Speaker 1: and we were editing throughout to shoot, so I knew
Speaker 1: what I needed to get, what was missing, and we
Speaker 1: could sneak that shot in when we could when I
Speaker 1: had Keith back. So yeah, Mark Cohen amazing asset between
Speaker 1: Mark and Keith and Kent. And then my friend's like
Speaker 1: Mark fight they could.
Speaker 2: Call it on and tell me about the music for
Speaker 2: the film. How did that come up with?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy, so Kent knew this guy. His name
Speaker 1: is David, but he goes by vow beat a l.
Speaker 1: He's like a mad scientist with sound effects and sounds
Speaker 1: and creating the score that's reflective of what's happen happening
Speaker 1: out on screen and what's happening in the mind of
Speaker 1: the main character. And if you go to his Instagram,
Speaker 1: he's just so talented. And it looks like we're going
Speaker 1: to have the soundtrack on a vinyl and through Anchor Bay,
Speaker 1: they're the ones that are distributing this. They're going to
Speaker 1: have a Blu ray and a DVD that comes out
Speaker 1: twelve fifteen.
Speaker 2: I believe the movie's gonna.
Speaker 1: Stream ten twenty nine, but they're already thinking of physical
Speaker 1: media because they know horror sciance like physical media. And
Speaker 1: the vinyl I can't talk about who is just possibly
Speaker 1: going to do it, but it'll be great to have something.
Speaker 1: I go to enough of these conventions and I know
Speaker 1: collectors like this stuff, and just in putting it together
Speaker 1: for the vinyl release, it was so exciting because we
Speaker 1: just were able to weave in all the dialogue in
Speaker 1: between and throughout. And I'm really proud Holds.
Speaker 2: And what date When was the first time you saw
Speaker 2: this with an audience.
Speaker 1: We saw it in London at fright Fest. We got
Speaker 1: to go out there in August, and then in just
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago we did that Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: then we're doing it in Chicago, my home child. So
Speaker 1: we just hit those three places. Yeah, we just wanted
Speaker 1: to get it out there where Again, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's about doing it, making it and getting it seen
Speaker 1: the accolades. That's great, but we just want the audience
Speaker 1: that find in the middle of the night and wants
Speaker 1: to go on some weird chippy ride.
Speaker 2: I hope those kids from Grand Rapids come down and
Speaker 2: check it out wait a little far.
Speaker 1: But maybe we'll do Want to Detroit in the future,
Speaker 1: but they'll probably already be streaming it. Yeah, I owe
Speaker 1: those kids a lot. They really inspired me. So what's
Speaker 1: next for you all? Can thays I worked on this
Speaker 1: show and I'm still working at Dexter Original Sin it's
Speaker 1: the new prequel of the Dexter series. And then we
Speaker 1: had a couple of projects and Kent and I were
Speaker 1: talking about some things in the future, but we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens. Anchor Bay has been very supportive in the
Speaker 1: Sole project, and yeah, I hope there's a future of
Speaker 1: doing some more stuff with them too, maybe who knows.
Speaker 2: Sounds like you've got a lot more support this time
Speaker 2: than you did with your previous film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that again because of the low budget. When
Speaker 1: you're working on this level, you have to be more efficient,
Speaker 1: but you have more control and that's definitely what I
Speaker 1: was looking for this time out.
Speaker 2: Jeff, thank you so much for your time. This is
Speaker 2: so great talking with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, thanks a lot. This is fun and
Speaker 1: hopefully the trade the hell is right next to the building.
Speaker 2: It's like the Blues Brothers.
Speaker 1: I hope Blade's during the interview.
Speaker 2: I didn't hear it at all. So comes by so
Speaker 2: often you don't even notice that.
Speaker 1: M la h after
Speaker 4: Utter ter