January 27, 2010

One of the most intriguing newcomers to the “Indie Scream Queen” scene has been actress Rachel Grubb. In the short span of four years, the Minnesota based actress has managed to boast over 30 genre credits (including 13 Hours in a Warehouse, Camp Kill and the upcoming Haunting Kira), an impressive feat in itself, on top of acting as a writer, director and producer on her own feature film Why Am I In A Box?

With Brooke Lemke, Grubb formed Silent-But-Deadly Productions, a company which has made four feature length films, and continues to contribute to the rich Minneapolis filmmaking scene by offering women internships and the opportunity to work on locally made movies.

Shock talked candidly with Rachel about making horror films, her original ambitions as a novelist and how horror filmmaking isn’t always her full time job.

Robg.: How does horror or movies in general play into your childhood and upbringing? Were your parents OK with you watching scary movies?

Rachel Grubb: My parents definitely encouraged being creative for sure. My mom always said that she wasn’t really creative and thought that it was really cool that I was ever since I was a little kid. She always encouraged me to do creative things like art and writing when I was in school. Not acting so much, I was mostly pursuing writing when I was growing up.

Robg.: So it’s safe to say they supported your writing, but they didn’t think you were at some point going to get involved with acting?

Rachel: Probably not, no. But also, it was very different then what they were into. My mom has not seen any of my movies because most of them are too scary for her. She doesn’t like horror. She thinks it’s great that I do them because she knows how much I like them, but she can’t watch! [Laughs] She always asks me when I have a premiere, “Will I be able to watch this one? Is it scary?” She seen all of the Christopher Mihm films like The Monster of Phantom Lake and Cave Women On Mars, which are more cheesy sci-fi comedy stuff than anything else, but she doesn’t like horror!

Robg.: We originally met because a few years ago because you were one of the very first actresses in the Fright Girl column on my previous site Icons Of Fright. What amazes me about you is that in that short time period, you’ve amassed a huge list of film credits in the genre, which is impressive. So going back to the beginning, what was the first “horror” movie that you worked on and what stands out about that experience?

Rachel: It’s hard to say because you work on so many at once, sometimes one right after the other. But I think the first one I did was Doomed To Consume, that was my NFTS production, and I had a really small part in that as a featured zombie. I wasn’t one of the extras, but I didn’t have any lines. I was really, really interested when I saw the casting call because it was this low budget horror movie made in Minnesota and I love horror, so I decided to do it. I met with Jason Stephenson, the director. He was just really cool, a lot of fun and he cast me in that movie and since then I’ve done a lot of stuff with them. That’s the first horror feature that I did.

Robg.: So you were zombified in your first horror movie, which means you dealt with make-up and blood right off the bat!

Rachel: Yeah, yeah. [laughs] That was the thing, because it was a horror film I knew was what I was in for. It probably took about 3 hours to do the make-up, but it didn’t bother me at all. It gets uncomfortable when you’ve got fake blood and maple syrup in your hair and it starts to smell pretty bad, but that’s what it entailed.

Robg.: Ah, the joys of filmmaking! You’ve done a slew of independent horror features, most of with people that you’d worked with previously and had known fairly well. What’s the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure for the sake of low budget filmmaking?

Rachel: Well, this is just a personal thing. I worked on the movie 13 Hours In The Warehouse, and they had this thing in my mouth. Chris Ballas was the guy who did the make-up for all of the ghosts in it. He’s worked with everyone from David Lynch to Jackie Chan, so he’s a really interesting person. He had two possible pieces for the ghost make-up that would go into my mouth and be strapped on my head. I choose the bigger one because I thought it looked scarier. But when he put it on me, I couldn’t close my throat, so… I kept drooling the whole time. And it got really, really gross. [laughs] The director loved it of course because it looked really creepy, but I have a personal aversion to saliva. [laughs] It was really hard! Paul Cram who is one of my best friends and in that movie with me, he was on the floor in front of me after we’d done this scene and I found out after the fact that I had drooled on his ass. He said it was OK! But I felt so bad. I know a lot of people might not think that’s a big deal, it’s just a personal thing for me.

Robg.: Obviously, acting is a difficult business for anybody doing it. So what have been some of the day jobs or other gigs you’ve had to do to help sustain working in movies?

Rachel: Well, right now, I still do have a full time day job. I work in medical records at a clinic and I really like it actually. I like having the double life. It feels like being a superhero or something, because people at work are always really surprised to learn about these other things that I do. They’re very, very good about letting me take off to do movies. I tell them I’m doing this movie and they say, “oh that’s so exciting!” And they let me go do it. It’s nice to be at work and be in that world and then after I can go off and do all this other stuff with filmmaking and be a completely different person. I like having a regular job too. It’s fun and it keeps me grounded. I can be away from the filmmaking world for a bit, because it can become stressful if you’re in it 24-7.

Robg.: You seem to generate your own projects to work on. Is that just because of where you’re located? Is it more beneficial to work on your own projects as opposed to say auditioning for other stuff?

Rachel: That was something that Brooke (Lemke) and I decided when we started Silent-But-Deadly Productions. We wanted to create some good roles for women. Not that there weren’t any, but a lot of people in the movie business are men and they don’t always write really great roles for women. Of course, sometimes they do, but we just thought that women should just be more a part of the whole process so that’s why we started our production company. Also, I always thought I was going to be a writer. Growing up, I read a different book every day. I was starting to write novel length stories in junior high and always thought that I’d be a novelist. I was an English major with a writing focus when I went to college and I was really surprised when I was 25 and all of a sudden I started taking acting classes just for something to do and then I got really good at it and decided that that was what I wanted to do. I do enjoy writing occasionally but I don’t think I’m intuitive enough to be a novelist or anything. I can write a script and I could do this, so why not make a movie ourselves? So I directed Why Am I In A Box? and it was really a lot of fun and I learned so much, because I’d never directed anything before. I didn’t know what to expect and I was learning as I went along and it was a lot. It was like going through four years of film school in a few months. But it was truly a great learning experience.

Robg.: Speaking of Silent-But-Deadly Productions, one of the things I found fascinating on your website is how much you cater specifically to women that are interested in the film business. For example, you offer internships!

Rachel: Well, on one of Brooke’s shorts, we had a teenage girl come and visit the set and she didn’t really do too much. She helped out with crafts services, but mostly she was just there to see what it was like and to visit a movie set and see how it works. I thought that was a cool thing, because when I was that age, I would’ve loved to have visited a movie set to see what it was like and see if it was something I was interested in and wanted to do. Because I would’ve been interested in making movies when I was younger, but I never had the opportunity to just go and see what it’d be like for myself. So we do stuff like that, and we do have internships. A lot of our crew positions aren’t just PA gigs either. On the film I directed, we had a lot of students that were grips and helping as various crew on everything. A lot of film students need internships so we do that. Since we’re a smaller operation, we don’t have interns answering phones or anything like that and a lot of them appreciate that! [laughs] Some of the people we’ve had have had to do that in film school and they did not like it at all.

Robg.: You’ve based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. People often think of Los Angeles when it comes to film or New York when it comes to theatre. So in terms of Minneapolis, do you consider your location a benefit or a hindrance to filmmaking?

Rachel: I definitely consider it a benefit, because it’s not like New York or Los Angeles where there’s a really big industry. There still is a lot here. There are films being made here all the time and there are two film schools. There’s always people coming up that are being trained in filmmaking and there’s commercial work here and people making their own films too. It’s a really rich film community, but it’s not LA. It’s really unique and I love working here. I don’t really want to leave. People ask if I’d like to go to LA and… I don’t really. I’ll probably stay here forever. It wouldn’t bother me if I ended up out there, but I’d like to be able to come back to do stuff here. I’m really connected to Minnesota and to the way people in this town support each other. We don’t get competition from other people. We don’t have to be that way out here because there aren’t that many people. If you’re casting for a project, you can get really good actors to do everything. There are tons of really talented people right here willing to give their all. You can have a full crew and cast of just really awesome people and I love that.