October 5, 2006

Ryan Schifrin loves monster movies. And that’s a good thing considering he’s the writer and director of the upcoming Anchor Bay release ABOMINABLE, out on DVD October 3rd, 2006! The ‘bigfoot’ creature feature stars Matt McCoy along with genre favorites Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace Stone, & Tiffany Shepis. We talked to Ryan about his humble beginnings, the making of ABOMINABLE and a fun little short he made featuring Jason vs. Ash! Read on!!! – by Robg. 10/06

What are your earliest recollections of the horror genre? Do you remember the first film to have an impact on you?

It wasn’t a horror movie per se, but I saw this movie when I was about 3 called ‘THE DEEP’ which scared the crap out of me. There was a scene in the movie where this guy had a skeleton costume, and he breaks into this girls room, but I thought it was a real skeleton. (laughs) I had to sleep with a night light for several years after that. And then HALLOWEEN was the first horror movie I can remember seeing, that I wasn’t supposed to. I was not allowed to watch it, but somehow we had a tape of it. Me and a friend snuck off and watched it.

Would you say from HALLOWEEN on, you were a devoted horror fan?

No, it was pretty much instant. I always loved monsters. By the time I was 3, I was drawing monsters and I loved dressing up as monsters for Halloween, so I was just always fascinated by monsters ever since I was a little kid. I was reading Fangoria when I was in about 5th grade, I think? Again, collecting those magazines without my parents knowing about it.

Do you remember what first sparked your interest into how movies were made? When did you first get the idea of looking into filmmaking?

That’s a good question. Since my dad (composer Lalo Schifrin) was in the industry, I was exposed to the behind the scenes aspect of films early on. And I remember asking my mom how certain things were done and she’s always say “Oh, it was camera tricks.” I didn’t know what that meant, I thought that meant there were magic cameras. Almost imagining to myself what CGI would’ve been. I thought movie cameras were magic. (laughs) But then I got a Super 8 camera and I started making films with some friends, and then I got a video camera after that. I think it was just a hobby before I even knew it could be a career.

How old were you when you made some of these films with your friends?

Starting since I was about 8.

What led up to your film education? When did you decide that besides making it a hobby, you wanted to go to school and pursue an education in film?

When I was in high school. I found out about NYU and USC and that there were film schools that you could go and major in film. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was thinking of law school or all these other things, and none of those career paths appealed to me. I realized I could actually pursue this for real. And I never looked back.

Was there any aspect of film that you wanted to specifically focus on when you started film school? Did you want to direct? Or write or act?

I wanted to be a director. The very first day of film school, our instructor said to the whole auditorium “Who wants to be a director? Raise your hand?” Everybody raised their hand. And he said “Well, probably none of you will ever get to be one, so you’d better start finding other jobs in the industry you’d like.” (laughs)

It seems like everyone at every film school says that though!

Well, a lot of the instructors are teaching because it’s such a brutal profession. They just want to prepare people for how hard it is.

Once of the first film credits I saw you listed for was a short film called ‘Evil Hill’, which was a spoof of Notting Hill with Dr. Evil in it?

Yea, it’s a spoof of Notting Hill starring a young Dr. Evil.

(laughs) How the hell did THAT come about?!

Well, my friend did probably one of the most successful short films of all time called ‘George Lucas In Love’ and the co-writer of that, Tim Dowling – he does a great Dr. Evil impersonation. And so, he wanted to do a spoof of Notting Hill and we came up with the story together. We decided to do it along the lines of ‘Lucas In Love’ and shoot it on 35 mm. Make it as a calling card to the industry. We had the same composer as ‘Lucas In Love’. A lot of the same people behind the scenes were involved.

And that actually premiered on the Sci-Fi channel?!

It was on a site called Media Trip, and it came out on the ‘George Lucas In Love’ DVD that they put out. And then Sci-Fi had a show called Exposure, where they would have short films and interviews with new directors, so it premiered on there.

You’d written several scripts before you wrote & directed ‘ABOMINABLE’. Why a “Bigfoot” story for your directorial debut?

Basically, as you pointed out, I had been writing and I wanted to be directing. Writing is cheap because all you need is a word processor. But it’s so hard to get a movie made. I knew I had to do something that was lower budget. I couldn’t write a $10 or $20 million dollar film and expect someone to let me direct it with no credits. So, I thought the key to doing a low-budget film was having a limited location. And my favorite of all time limited location movie is ‘Rear Window’. And I also love ‘The Twilight Zone’ episode with (William) Shatner on the airplane and he sees the monster on the wing of the plane. I just thought it was so logical to combine those two and do ‘Rear Window’ as a creature-feature.

The only question was “What monster should I make it?” So, I thought about that for a while, and again, going back to my childhood and my love of monsters – Bigfoot was a favorite. And I thought there hasn’t been a theatrical Bigfoot movie since ‘Harry & The Hendersons’. I was a kid still and I didn’t understand why there haven’t been more Bigfoot films. It’s such a famous iconic monster. It’s public domain. It’s easy to market. Why aren’t there more movies with Bigfoot in them? It just seemed like a logical thing to do and then you can set it in a remote mountain cabin, like movies like ‘The Evil Dead’ and ‘Cabin Fever’. It’s a classic setting for a horror movie.

In regards to the writing process – you ended up having a great cast with familiar genre actor’s such as Jeffrey Combs and Lance Henriksen. Did you have these people in mind as you wrote it as a wish list? Or was that just luck with the casting later on?

That was luck with the casting later on. I wrote it with Matt McCoy in mind for the lead. I knew Matt. And I also wanted Paul Gleason as the Sheriff. I didn’t know what kind of budget we were going to get to work with. I didn’t know if we could afford to get any of those names, so once our budget went up a little bit and we got casting director, I said “Wait a second, I’ve got this wish list of people I’ve always wanted to work with.”

(Jeffrey) Combs being at the top of that list. And so then, we were able to go after them. Then when we shot that new scene a year later, I did write that part specifically for Lance Henriksen. And once I knew that it’d have Jeff coming back – it’s easier to write for them and have more fun with it when you know who’s going to be playing the part. I didn’t know it would be them when I wrote the initial script, no.

Speaking of that scene with Lance and Jeff together, how the hell did you get that rhinoceroses story that Lance’s character tells Jeff?

That’s an actual urban legend. The Darwin awards is a real thing. It’s these awards they give out every year to people who die really stupidly. (laughs)

Is that story actually the way someone died?! (Krazy gluing themselves to a rhinoceroses ass and having it defecate on him.)

I don’t know if that’s an actual Darwin award, but it was told to me as an urban legend by a friend. And I think it might have been nominated for a Darwin award. (laughs) But somebody had told me that story 6 years ago and I never forgot it. I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard.

It’s definitely one of the funniest moments in your movie having Lance deliver that story.

The idea for that scene… What I love in Tarantino films is he always has these characters talking about pop culture or something kind of silly. And then a scene of violence right afterwards. In Tarantino’s films, it’s usually interesting because its hitmen or assassins or bank robbers and they’re talking about things you wouldn’t expect those guys to talk about. In this case, I thought if you had some redneck farmers out in the woods, what would they be talking about that you wouldn’t expect that could be kind of funny. And also, Lance has been playing such serious roles such as in Millennium. You usually see him and he’s pretty grave. I thought this would be fun to give him the kind of Bruce Campbell role. (laughs)

(laughs) He’s a funny guy! His reaction to the dying girl in the cave if priceless!

Yea! Again, I was picturing if it was Bruce Campbell, that’s something he would say, and I gave Lance a chance to do it because he’s so funny. It’s great just to show a different side of him.

As a fan, was it intimidating to work with people like Lance and Jeffrey?

Ya know, you get used to it, but the first meeting I had with Jeffrey I was really nervous. Because I was a HUGE ‘Re-Animator’ fan. I saw it when I was in elementary school. And it was one of my all time favorite horror movies. Meeting him was nerve-racking. But… you get used to it. You have a job to do. They put you at ease so quickly because they’re very enthusiastic and professional and happy to be there and collaborate. So, yea, you become friends with them and you get used to it. But anytime you meet someone whose films you grew up watching as a kid over and over, how could you not be nervous?

Going back a bit… can you tell us a bit about the production itself? Did you end up doing this independently? And did the shoot go smoothly once you started production?

Yea, we did it independently and we were very lucky. It went smoothly and we were just as prepared as you could be. We had a great crew. Everything was storyboarded. We had a definite plan of action before going up into the mountains with our cast and crew and staying up there for a few weeks. But of course, there were things you just can’t plan on that can go wrong. We managed to get thru all those things. It’s just scary when you realize all the things that can go wrong that never occur to you. For example, there was a bark beetle problem in these mountains where there’s a bunch of dead trees.

So, our first day of filming, the electric company shows up and cut off all the power and said they’d be there for the next 3 weeks cutting down dead trees. They don’t notify anyone on the mountain when or where they’re going to be doing this. So, there was no way for us to have advance notice about that. Eventually they agreed to come back 3 weeks later. They could’ve just been jerks and just said “We’re going to stay here and too bad.” We would’ve had to shut down the film. We could not have afforded the leave and then bringing everybody back up. Things like that are terrifying.

How long was the shoot itself?

It was about 24 days.

With a legendary character such as Bigfoot, how’d you go about getting the right look and design for the creature in ‘Abominable’? Was it difficult to decide what he should look like?

Yea. It was a series of things. Originally, when I was writing it, I was picturing something out of these books I used to read as a kid. Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot books. Then I met this guy who did storyboards and he happened to be a huge Bigfoot fanatic. And he wanted to do some designs for the monster. And we just decided, this is not THE official Bigfoot, because everybody has an idea in their mind of what Bigfoot looks like.

So, we just said that this is going to be something in that family. More like an inbred cousin. So, we were free to design whatever we wanted but to make it scarier and just more freaky looking. So, he came up with that sketch, which we then gave to Christian who did our sculpt and made the head of the monster based on this sketch of the monster that our storyboard artist had come up with. We went with that look. I thought it gave it a lot of character, but the face is not what I would picture if there actually was a Bigfoot. This is more of a monstrous look. An evil uncle to Bigfoot. (laughs)

Speaking of the creature design, who handled the effects on the film & what was it like interacting with the special effects make-up artists to achieve some of the death scenes you wrote?

The guy who did all our effects is a guy named Christian Tinsley. Who I met during that film Evil Hill. He used to work (I think) for Steve Johnson’s effects shop and he had just gone off on his own. So he did our Dr. Evil prosthetic and bald cap, and we became friends off that short. So, when I was writing ‘Abominable’, I went to him and asked him if he’d do effects. Kind of as a favor and he agreed to do our monster and do all our effects.

He actually came back after he read the script and asked me if I had cast the part of Otis, the male nurse. And I hadn’t, so he wanted to audition for it, so I said OK. (laughs) Once I saw him do that part, I couldn’t picture any one else in it. He was just perfect. So, he did double duty on the film – he did effects and some acting. He’s the one who gets his face bitten off towards the end, so he got to kill himself.

Great effect! I didn’t realize that was him!

He’s a world class effects wizard. He was nominated for an Academy Award for ‘The Passion of the Christ’. So, for our tiny little movie, it was really great that he did our effects. He was able to whip these things together really fast. The one girl gets her guts stomped out, another girl gets her neck ripped out. Whatever the script called for, they were able to do all that stuff.

Another genre person – Dee Wallace Stone is in the opening scene of your film! Tell us a little bit about working with Dee? Did she audition for that role?

She was somebody on the top of my wish list. I went to the casting director and said “I would love to work with her. Is there any way we could get her to come for a couple of days?” So, I met with Dee and she’s just great. She’s an amazing actress and takes her work very seriously. She’s also an acting teacher. The experience was great, because it’s the first scene of the film, so to get a recognizable face right up front, and also it helped establish the tone. If she’s so terrified of whatever’s out there, then hopefully the audience will feel some of that. I felt very lucky to have her be in the film.

You said you had Matt McCoy in mind when you wrote the script for ‘Abominable’. Can you just tell us a little bit about Matt and the Preston character and why he was your ideal choice?

Sure. Well, again just being based on ‘Rear Window’ – Jimmy Stewart is one of the great actor’s of all time, I think. He’s so likable. One of the little secrets to having a good protagonist to a film is casting an actor who themselves is very charismatic and likable. Tom Hanks has that quality. Denzel Washington has that quality. It has nothing to do with directing ability. They’re just their own personalities and it comes thru. So, in looking for a Jimmy Stewart-type person for this movie, I already knew Matt – we met on tennis courts and had become friends over the years playing tennis together.

And I always thought he had those kind of qualities of being very charismatic and likable and being a really good actor. He hasn’t really been showcased in this kind of role, so I thought it’d be neat to give him a chance to show his range. He has to carry the whole film, so I was nervous about who I was going to find. Because basically, he’s in every scene and there’s big close-ups of his face. The whole film is on his shoulders and he’s reacting, and the audience is going to experience the whole movie thru him.

So, it was really important to cast somebody who could do all of that stuff. I already knew his personality from playing tennis with him, I knew his voice. So, it was really easy to write it, picturing him saying those lines.

And he did a great job.

I’m really proud of his performance in the film. He doesn’t have the flashy role. He’s not the comic relief, but he’s got to be the anchor for the whole thing.

Speaking of comic relief… I don’t know if I should call him that, BUT… Paul Gleason cracked me up in every scene he had in ‘Abominable’. If you were a kid in the 80’s, then you probably recognize him. Unfortunately, this was one of his last roles. What was it like working with Paul?

That was great. I loved Paul in ‘The Breakfast Club’ and in ‘Trading Places’ and in ‘Die Hard’. I’ve always thought he was great at playing a likable character. He did a film that my father scored called ‘Money Talks’ which is Brett Ratner’s first film. I remember hearing Brett say that Paul liked to adlib lines, because he knew he had all these kids who liked his work and liked to quote him. He wanted to come up with more lines that people would quote. Knowing that, I told him right off the bat to feel free to adlib lines and inject some of his witty humor in there.

He’s got a lot of great lines in your flick. (laughs) One of my favorites is “What a shit-colored mess THAT was.”

(laughs) Yea, and that’s actually one that I wrote.

Really?!

Yea, that’s like one of the few funny one’s he had that I wrote, but all the other ones, like when he’s calling everyone “Candy-asses” – all that stuff he came up with on the spot. Everyone was laughing from behind the camera. The whole place was cracking up.

He’s great in it. The film itself looks really beautiful. Was it always a conscience effort to shoot it in 35? Was that decision ever compromised due to budget?

Well, I was really keen on shooting on 35. The whole challenge is to take a really low budget and make it look like it’s big. On ‘Evil Hill’, we did a similar thing where we shot it on 35 and tried to make the production value look like it cost 5 times more then what it did. If you can shoot on 35, it’s expensive, but if you can get deals or shoot with short ends. Do whatever you can do. You don’t obviously get as many takes, but if you can manage to do it, it really does make the whole thing look more professional – more like a studio film. So, that was part of the whole thing, to make this look like we had a couple of million dollars budget.

Speaking of the look of the film, your director of photography was Neal Fredericks, who unfortunately was killed in a plane accident shortly after the completion of your film. Can you tell us about your working experiences with Neal?

Yea, Neal was an amazing guy to work with. He had a great temperament. And he was really a mentor. He had shot about 17 or 18 low budget films after ‘The Blair Witch Project’, so he had a ton of experience. He had a crew of really good guys that he liked to work with who had a lot of respect for him. And he was very hands on thru pre-production, production and post. I mean, he was a key collaborator on this. I couldn’t have made it without him. We storyboarded the whole film together, shot-listed the whole film. We were on the same page thru the whole thing. He worked very quickly. He always said “You’ll never be waiting for the lights to be ready.” And that was true.

He knew that since we had a lot of shots we wanted to pull off – a couple of crane shots and dolly shots and steady-cam shots. All these things take time. He really made sure that we were able to get a good look, lighting-wise, but we were still able to get all the set-ups during the day, which was way more then usual. You have to go at a much faster pace when you’re shooting low budget. So, he could do both those things. He had no ego whatsoever. I could not have asked for a better collaborator.

Ok. Let’s get serious here… Tell me something… ANYTHING… about Tiffany Shepis?

Well… Tiffany was the last part we cast. Because again, with a low budget, when you’re getting someone who’s going to do nudity, you can always find them, but what’s the quality of the acting going to be? And vice-versa. How do you find someone who will do nudity AND can really act well. When you don’t have a lot of money, that’s hard to find. So, we saved that part for last. And then I remember the day we were going to do auditions for that role, she was the first person that we met with. And as soon as we walked in and saw her sitting there, she looked up and we saw her, and she knew she had the part and we knew she had the part. She just had this confidence. And sure enough, her audition was great. She’s obviously a scream queen, but she’s a really talented actress. She could be on an NBC sitcom. She could really do anything. I think horror fans are lucky that she’s just a cool chick that loves horror movies and knows what the fans want and digs doing them.

In the past few years, her career has flourished in the horror genre.

Yea, and I hope she continues to do more. I think she’s really, really a big talent. Her death scene is probably one of the one’s that gets the biggest reaction in the film.

Definitely one of the best! You mentioned your father Lalo Schifrin earlier in this interview. He’s even scored one of Mike C.’s favorite movies… Amityville Horror 2! (laughs)

(laughs)

What was it like to work with your father on a professional basis?

It was good because again, seeing him work and seeing the way Hollywood has changed over the years, his big frustration is that in the old days, when he was doing stuff like ‘Dirty Harry’, the director would let him do whatever he wanted to do. So, they shot the film and my dad would go off and write the music and they’d show up to the scoring stage and the director would be hearing what the score is at that point. Whereas today, they make you do these mock-ups, and then you get notes on the mock-ups. Everything is micro-managed. And it’s very frustrating for him, because there’s no trust and he’s kind of handcuffed.

Also, they temp track films now, and he has to copy the temp tracks. It’s just kind of the way the industry works today. It’s different then what it used to be. So, knowing all that, I was able to basically tell him “These are the emotions I want here, here and here, now you go and do whatever you want to do. I’m not going to micro-manage you. I trust you.”

Because I think the best way to get people to do their best work is to let them know that you trust them. And to free them to be creative and follow their own instincts. Certainly in his case. Who am I to tell him how to write music? (laughs) I was really thrilled with how the score came out. And also, having gone to all his scoring sessions, I’ve really seen how it transforms a movie once you add music to it. That’s one of the most exciting parts. Because you see the movie a hundred times during editing, but then you suddenly add music and every scene changes.

Between the music, and look of the film, it just has a very old school vibe to it, which is why I think I enjoyed it as much as I did.

It’s a combination of the 50’s creature features like ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon’ but then also like the 70’s and 80’s kind of stuff. Even with the car they had, the station wagon. I was definitely trying to kind of make it a nostalgic feeling movie.

Can you tell our readers about the original poster art by Drew Struzan?

Oh, yea. Drew Struzan did our poster. And I guess he’s best known for his Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Back To The Future and Goonies posters. Every movie that I loved as a kid, he did the poster for it. He did ‘The Thing’ and ‘Big Trouble In Little China’. He’s my favorite poster artist. And everything today is photoshopped. That style of movie posters is not so prevalent anymore.

Unfortunately!

Yea. So, I would love to see that style come back. What made me think about it also was, being the fact that is was a monster movie – ‘Jaws’ and ‘Alien’ have that classic thing where you don’t really show the monster for the first 3 quarters of the movie. You try to hide it. And with the marketing as well, you don’t want to have a video box with a big photograph of the monster on the cover. Which you see in a lot of direct to video movies.

If you’re going to hide it for the whole film, then why put a photograph of it on the cover? ‘Jaws’ I thought handled it brilliantly with their poster, because it was a painting. You see the shark coming up to eat that girl swimming on the surface, but since it’s NOT a photograph, they can show it, and it’s not really giving anything away. There’s something about artwork that kind of inspires your imagination.

Absolutely.

So, I thought Drew is the number one guy to do this kind of thing. I never thought in a million years that he’d do our poster, but I tried to track him down just for the hell of it. I got a hold of him and took him to lunch. We hit it off, and he saw the film and agreed to do it. I don’t know why? (laughs) I think maybe he just loves monster movies – you’d have to ask him, but it was just really amazing that he did it.

Are they going to keep that image as the front cover of the DVD as well?

Yea. I made SURE of it. I couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to, and Anchor Bay loves the artwork. And they were on the same page. They wanted to use it. It wasn’t a battle to have to use it.

Can you tell us anything about how the deal came about to air ‘Abominable’ on the Sci-Fi channel for it’s premiere? Obviously, it had to be cut for television. Were you ok with some of the changes they had to make?

Yea, the thing about it is we had investors that had to be paid back. And if you give Sci-Fi Channel a premiere like that, it pays back the cost of the film. Which our investors love. And also, it can be seen by a couple of million people. If you were to get a wide theatrical release with those numbers, it’d be like a $20 million dollar opening weekend, with the amount of people who see it. It’s a great way to get the movie out there. Of course, the edits are unfortunate, but they kept the gore in. They mostly cut out the nudity and just some running time stuff.

It wasn’t too bad and I thought they cut to commercial in pretty good spots as well. And it was a version I could show my 93 year old grandmother. (laughs) Also, we have a lot of cousin’s who are too young to see the R rated version, so it was kind of cool to have a version that I could show to people that I couldn’t show before. But of course, you intend the film to be seen letterboxed and with all the scenes in tact.

Didn’t you tell me in one of our previous conversations that they edited out the word “Jesus” from the broadcast?

Yea. I don’t know what the standards are for Sci-Fi. I could never figure it out. Because they would keep gore that would have probably been censored a few years ago, even theatrically. They showed all of the face-biting scene. They could show that. But literally, the word “Jesus” would be bleeped out. (laughs)

I’ll never understand that either! The DVD comes out October 3rd. What can we expect from it and what’d you put into it?

We did a lot for it. Aside from seeing the uncut version, I did a commentary track with Matt McCoy and Jeffrey Combs. We have a 40 minute behind the scenes documentary on the making-of. We’ve got deleted scenes, outtakes, blooper reel. I put one of my USC student films on there, trailers, poster/still gallery, storyboard gallery. And also the screen play.

Did much change between the time you wrote the screenplay to filming?

Not a lot changed. It was pretty close. You’ll see a couple of little things. For example, in the first scene, I had written that the farmers find a mutilated cow. And Christian called me up and said “Listen, I’m friends with the guy that’s doing the fake horses for ‘The Last Samurai’ and he’s got this big mold where he can make a big dead horse and a flocking machine. So, how about a dead horse instead of a dead cow?” And I thought, “That’s even better!” (laughs)

You said before you were a big fan of Jeffrey Combs and you got to do a commentary with him? What was that like?

Oh, that was awesome. This whole experience has been a dream come true. I’m still pinching myself over it. He did his commentary just for his scenes, and then Matt and I did it the rest of the film. But I’m really glad we got to do that new scene and bring Jeff back for it too.

I read in your bio that you recently sold a script for a feature called ‘Wimpy’ to Warner Brothers. Anything you can tell us about that?

It’s probably too soon to talk about it. They want me to keep the story under wraps. They wouldn’t let me say much about it other then Neal Moritz is producing it. It’s not a horror movie, it’s an action/comedy, but not something I’d be directing. I’m currently putting the finishing touches on what I’d like to direct next. It’s a bigger canvas then ‘Abominable’.

Is it ‘Spooks’?

No, that’s another thing that I’m doing with Daniel Alter and Adrian Askarieh whom are producing Hitman at Fox and Hack/Slash at Rogue. This is kind of a big tent pole action/horror/comedy that we’re also turning into a 4 issue comic book. We’re still doing the paperwork, but it’s one of the bigger companies.

Well, congrats!

Thanks! Look, I love the genre. So, it’s exciting to be able to work in it.

So, obviously you’re a fan of all types of films, but you’d be comfortable to continue making horror films and being known as a horror director?

Absolutely. That’s why I made ‘Abominable’. I finished ‘Evil Hill’ which was a comedy, and the screenplay I had sold was a comedy, I was kind of getting put in that comedy box. Believe it or not, I see myself as more of a genre guy…

Well, I think you’re a funny guy!

I love putting comedy in the things that I do, but I just love fantasy, horror, and sci-fi stuff so much. So, I thought for my first feature, I’d be much more comfortable being in a horror box, and going from there.

We met at a horror convention. What is the convention experience like from your perspective?

It was great. You get VIP treatment the whole weekend. (laughs) You get to meet all these other filmmakers and fans. Everybody that is there is because they all have a passion for horror, and all love it and are fans of it – whether you’re in front of the camera, behind the camera or just a fan. It’s just great to meet everybody and see what everybody else is doing. And also, you’re treated differently when you’ve made a film. Your idols that you meet… for example, I met Tony Todd, and you’re not treated just like a fan anymore. You’re suddenly given a different kind of respect, which is odd but really cool. (laughs)

Hey, were you the guy that edited that infamous clip of Jason Vs Ash? Are you responsible for that?!

I am responsible for that. ABC Nightline was doing a story on the popularity of horror movies and they had interviewed me for it, along with James Wan and Wes Craven. And then I guess they came back to me and asked if I would do a short film where I would edit together clips from existing horror movies and tell a story in one minute. I could’ve done what ever I wanted, but I had to tell a story in one minute. I’ve always wanted to see Freddy Vs Jason Vs Ash. So, I just used that as an excuse to do that. I couldn’t get Freddy in there because of the one minute time limit. That short is just me being a fan boy. (laughs)

Have you ever read that treatment for ‘Freddy Vs Jason Vs Ash’?

I have, yea and I think it’s a shame that that movie might not get made, because I think it would be so much fun.

I agree. Thanks for talking with Icons Of Fright, Ryan!