Editorials
How ‘Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker’ Redefines LGBT+ Representation
The commonality between horror fandom and the Queer community is well established. For years, the genre so often marginalized and maligned has drawn our community to its films like bears to a leather bar. LGBTQIA+ individuals find validation in a genre that so often depicts its heroes and villains as misunderstood, repressed, and cast to the side. And catharsis can be found in these films, which are never shy to acknowledge the harsh realities and dangers of the world around us. Cue Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker.
The Dissonance of Queer Horror Fandom
That being said, to enjoy the genre, Queer horror fans face significant dissonance in embracing these films. While finding great pleasure and connection in the genre, Queer fans simultaneously find themselves faced with many moments of casual cruelty and bigotry in a genre that also revels in an often toxic male gaze and slings homophobic slurs about with little thought to the collateral damage the viewing audience might experience.
Take Ronny Yu’s Freddy vs. Jason (2003) as an example. Most Queer horror fans will know the infamous scene in question. Kia (played with iconic early aughts flair by Kelly Rowland) confronts Krueger and draws his attention to her in a moment of heroic friendship to allow her friends to reach safety. She taunts him, asking, “What kind of a faggot runs around in a Christmas sweater.” A character who simultaneously embodies much of the strength, style, and charisma that many a Queer fan would embrace chooses to use our identity as a form of attack. Do we applaud her bravery? Do we cheer for her death to punish her casual homophobia? Can we do both? Such is the dilemma of the Queer horror fan.
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker: A Troubling First Glance
At first glance, William Asher’s film Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981) checks the boxes on all the trademarks of insensitive, bordering upon cruel, portrayals of the gay identity we might expect from film in the early 1980s. The gay couple featured in the film faces a tragic end. One partner, Phil, is brutally murdered and framed as a sexual predator. Of course, he is the first death in the film, a fate so often reserved for such tokenized cast members. His grieving partner, Tom, is forced out of his job at the local high school and also accused of sexual perversion.
One of the film’s main characters is Joe Carlson, a proudly homophobic police detective who drops frequent gay slurs and equates homosexuality with sexual predation. The main love interests in the film are our protagonist, Billy, and his girlfriend, Julia. They represent the quintessential heteronormative love story. Blonde hair and blue eyes. Innocent and in love. Everything society suggests we might wish for our youth.
As a gay viewer, it is challenging, but not surprising, to watch such content in film. However, ambivalence moves in both directions. A film that on its surface appears supportive can cause harm. And in the case of Asher’s film, could a story that at first glance appears so wantonly cruel to the community actually be the most affirming gay horror film you’ve never seen?
Deliberate Inclusion of Queer Themes
What is intriguing about Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is that the Queer subplot could have easily been excised from the film with very little impact to the plot. A psychosexual horror film exploring the incestuous obsession of an aunt toward her young nephew and the murderous lengths she will go to to keep him in her life provides more than enough fodder to carry a feature-length film. The inclusion of Billy’s mentor and coach, Tom Landers, his secret relationship with partner Phil Brody, and Detective Carlson’s obsession with linking Billy to the murder as a way of covering up an imagined love triangle is, on first watch, jarring. Queer characters and plots were still very rare in 1981.
This was an interesting historical period of time that existed after the fight for freedom, represented by the Stonewall riots of 1969, and before the AIDS epidemic, which was just beginning to be reported in the summer months of 1981. Significant strides had been made to fight for basic human rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, but they were still very much marginalized and invisible, particularly in media representation.
Filmmakers’ Empathy for Marginalized Communities
The writer’s and director’s choice to include an explicitly gay subplot was clearly deliberate. And that makes more sense considering the background of the staff who brought this film to life. While no one involved in the creation of this film appears to have been openly Queer, their personal backgrounds make it clear how they could have empathized with, and been supporters of, such marginalized communities.
Co-writer Stephen Breimer was adopted and openly discussed his interest in using this film to explore the ambivalence that comes with not knowing one’s biological roots. And two of director William Asher’s most well-known works beyond this movie were the sitcoms I Love Lucy and Bewitched. Two properties that, while not explicitly Queer, have long enjoyed a deep connection to these communities who see themselves reflected in the strong women who defy the norms of society and the patriarchy. The filmmakers clearly held the Queer community in high esteem.
Found Family and Queer Intimacy
LGBTQIA+ audiences will also connect with the themes of found family and surrogate parental figures which are deeply present in this film. Particularly in Billy’s relationship with his basketball coach, Tom Landers. There is deep love and intimacy in their relationship, but it is never sexualized or suggested to be improper. In the film’s bloody climax, his coach is the first phone call Billy makes. Tearfully, he tells his coach: “I need your help.” Any parent will recognize the love and trust implicit in this phone call and Coach Landers’ immediate willingness to come to his aid.
Landers’ willingness to support Billy throughout the film is frequently reminiscent of the caregiving that a parent (biological, adoptive, or otherwise) would provide. He encourages Billy’s journey to seek a basketball scholarship. He resigns from his coaching job rather than drag his students, Billy included, further into the personal drama perpetuated by the homophobic police force. And in an act of painful personal sacrifice that only a parent could understand, he even provides evidence to the police in an effort to corroborate the story that his lover may have attempted to rape Aunt Cheryl.
There is clearly no truth to this story, but Coach Landers is willing to sit with the pain of tarnishing the name of his life partner and their relationship if it means a chance to help Billy escape this situation unscathed and go on to live his life fully.
Subverting Heteronormative Expectations
The comparison of Coach Landers’ support of Billy is juxtaposed frequently with the more heteronormative parental figures that surround him. His Aunt Cheryl most obviously. On paper, she should represent the loving mother figure that society suggests all young boys need. However, the film wastes no time demonstrating the darkness behind her “love” of Billy. The first scene they share depicts Billy as a three-year-old boy sobbing uncontrollably in her arms. And flashes forward fourteen years to show her waking him up for school. She uncomfortably purrs into his ears and draws her nails seductively along his back. She later drugs Billy. With milk of all beverages, the ultimate symbol of a mother’s love. At no point does the film suggest that this heteronormative family system is healthy or in Billy’s best interests.
The final frame of the film instead leaves him in the presence of his gay coach, a man who has been labeled as a deviant, predator, and sick man but who has shown himself to be anything but. A brief scene in which their neighbors are shown comforting them in the aftermath of the first murder also highlights the insufficiency of the heteronormative family in supporting Billy. “Maybe you should go with him,” his neighbor says to her husband when Billy steps outside to get some air and try to process the shocking murder that has occurred in his home. “No. I don’t think I better,” he responds. Choosing instead to sit in quiet discomfort as this young boy suffers.
Again, the heteronormative family fails to provide the care and compassion which Coach Landers is able to give so instinctively.
Detective Carlson’s Harmful Antagonism
Detective Joe Carlson is the other potential caregiver presented to Billy in this narrative. Similarly to Aunt Cheryl, not only does Detective Carlson fail to provide any support to Billy, but he actively causes harm to all those around him. This is highlighted in a scene where he stops by the family home to question Billy on the murder. Billy is playing basketball in the driveway, and Detective Carlson takes the ball and plays with him briefly, even offering some pointers on how to shoot a better free-throw.
But this scene is played with no sense of parental caring. Instead, Detective Carlson mocks Billy and weaponizes his coach’s homosexuality against him. Throughout the film, Detective Carlson uses gay slurs to refer to Billy, Tom Landers, and Phil Brody. While the language is uncomfortable, a Queer audience can always detect the intention behind the use of such language. In the aforementioned Freddy vs. Jason, Kia’s use of the word “faggot” feels cruel and unnecessary. And the filmmakers confuse the messaging further by positioning her as a hero in that moment. In Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, there is no ambivalence in how we are meant to view the use of such language from Detective Carlson and Aunt Cheryl.
They are the clear villains of the film, and their language is clearly used to tell the viewing audience how misguided they are in their understanding of what it means to be a gay man.
Redefining the Real Monster
In a particularly interesting element of this film, the creators chose to extend the ending beyond Billy’s victory over his murderous aunt. In a typical slasher film, the movie would have ended with her death, as Billy grapples with the trauma of having impaled her upon a fire poker in his fight for safety. But the film continues and brings Detective Carlson back onto the scene where it becomes clear that he, rather than Aunt Cheryl, is the film’s true monster.
It’s the homophobic detective who Billy must kill to end the story. And notably, he does so with the help of Coach Landers rather than his girlfriend, who only arrives on the scene after the villain’s death. This storytelling subversion tells viewers who the filmmakers see as the true antagonist of their story and who are the sympathetic heroes.
A Tender Portrayal of Queer Grief
The generous lens this film grants to its gay characters is evidenced no more clearly than in the scene in which Detective Carlson first confronts Coach Landers with his knowledge that he and Phil were lovers. He points out their matching rings and takes glee in pointing out Tom’s inability to openly express his grief or even receive his lover’s personal belongings without outing himself.
A lesser film would not have included such a scene at all or may have played it simply as a plot twist to shock the viewers. Asher instead directs the scene in such a way that the camera lingers upon Coach Landers, allowing the actor (Steve Eastin) to portray this man’s grief in a way that is understated but powerful and as loving as it is tragic.
A Multifaceted Queer Horror Classic
It is a small but powerful moment in a film that might otherwise be written off as a campy and forgettable eighties popcorn flick. And it is exactly this balance in the film which makes it an essential entry in the canon of Queer cinema. As is the beauty of many horror films, it can be enjoyed on multiple levels.
Choose to tune in for Aunt Cheryl’s scenery-chewing spiral into murderous rage, portrayed to perfection by Susan Tyrrell exuding “Baby Jane” energy in a way that only a Queer audience could fully appreciate. Or choose to peek beneath the surface and find a surprisingly poignant and intimate depiction of the challenges of existing as a gay man in a society that will not accept you.
And the power of found family in helping us all navigate the dangers of our world and coming out the other side stronger than before.
The Host (2006) may not be director Bong Joon Ho’s most acclaimed film, but it’s certainly the one that I find myself revisiting the most. At the time of its Cannes premiere in 2006, it was lauded for how effortlessly it handled both a mix of genres that make it hard to pin down and for how smoothly it delivered its social commentary. Beyond that, its dynamic directing and instantly iconic monster make a creature feature of a different caliber. 20 years later, it’s hard to say the film is anything but some of his best work, even against the impressive catalogue that Bong Joon Ho built up in the following two decades of cinematic excellence.
Among the likes of Best Picture winner Parasite, jaw-dropping crime thriller Mother, and even its much more popular creature-drama counterpart Okja, The Host stands as an incisive movie in Bong’s filmography that manages to cut right to the heart, even on rewatches. But what is it that makes it so endlessly effective, and so continuously cathartic, on every single watch through?
The Host, Real Life Ecological Horror, and Dirty Secrets
While kaiju films intertwined with ecological horror are nothing new (Godzilla as a franchise has revisited the well many times since vs. Hedorah in ‘71), The Host is one of the only kaiju films to succeed at really unsettling you with its subject matter. It has a verisimilitude that is undeniable, and the reason why is shocking: it’s actually inspired by a real-life story.
Before Shin Godzilla tackled the collapse of faith in civil authority, the dangers of bureaucracy, and the uncertainty of our ecological future, The Host was here to blend all of our contemporary fears into a thick slurry of sickening terror and add a dash of real-life depression to it. The movie is overtly inspired by the real-life McFarland Incident, in which a mortician named Albert McFarland, working at the U.S. Army’s Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, commanded a subordinate to dump 24 gallons of formaldehyde into the Han River rather than dispose of it properly.
The opening scene of the film is a recreation of this incident, overtly labeled the cause for the film’s monster, the Goemul, to mutate into what it does: a gargantuan, deformed, half-blind fish creature. What ensues from its birth is a harrowing few days in Seoul, as father Gang-du and his estranged family race to try and rescue his daughter Hyun-Seo from the creature. As the Park family’s search for its youngest member puts them on the path of opaque health officials and military hiding secrets about the creature, a clash between the public and the government begins to brew and threatens pure chaos.
Taking Large Scale Horror and Making It Personal in The Host
In the following decades since Bong’s heartbreaker kaiju born of pollution was put to the screen, the real life Yongsan Garrison painfully remains a symbol of ecological irresponsibility on the part of the American military. Its groundwater is saturated with insane amounts of carcinogens, nearly 30 times the permissible standard.
In the great knife twist of governments obscuring the truth, the status of forces agreement between the U.S. and South Korea gives them effectively carte blanche to dispose of chemicals without any sort of supervision or oversight, mainly for the sake of “keeping the peace”; it’s a dangerous and all too realistic parallel to the smokescreen the government uses in the film to keep the South Korean public in the dark, supposedly in the interest of public safety but more obviously in defense of optics.
There’s an ever present irony, and a hard to swallow misfortune in this fact, that makes the film’s biting commentary sting just a little worse and for much, much longer. As our delicate ecosystems hang in the balance, we live with a sword dangling above our heads; few still have hope that the powers that be can or even want to keep it from cutting us. That’s the real horror the film draws on, and it’s a soul draining theme that permeates it.
But amidst these large-scale societal fears that the script explores, Bong Joon Ho has added an emulsifier of sorts. One pivotal ingredient that takes the large-scale and makes it personal: a sense of alienation in everything. The way the film is structured, from how its characters are written, to how its narrative is split, to the very flow of hope and fear that it uses to pull at your emotions, relies on evoking a sense of alienation in the viewer.
A Cast of Characters Without a Country
Each of the characters within The Host is a man without a country. Each one alienated from the other, their estrangement is evoked for some very dry humor at times, but it’s a laugh that makes you cry. In what is possibly the film’s most overtly humorous scene, the Park family falling out and crying at the memorial service, Bong uses the physicality of the event and their clinging to one another before being torn back apart to represent the family’s irreparably divided nature. There’s a deep sickness of longing in the family, a sense of complete otherness from parent to child and sibling to sibling that is delved into as the characters progress throughout the film.
Our main character Gang-du, is the clearest example of a person who slipped through the cracks and simply ended up alienated from the entire world; he’s a child of poverty, malnutrition stunting his mental growth. Neglected by his father, he ended up resorting to picking around for scraps through the tradition of seo-ri, a type of subsistence by theft that becomes the film’s shorthand for the solitary nature of its characters.
Alienation and Family Trauma at the Heart of The Host’s Horror
His siblings both share this hunger, particularly Nam-il. Once a gifted student and political activist, it becomes clear later in the film that Nam-il has become alienated from his own political identity and sense of self. Becoming a cold and mean-spirited alcoholic, Nam-il has grown numb to hope for change as he is left behind by friends who have become part of the system he wanted to dismantle. Disillusioned by the state of government, Nam-il is consumed by nihilism and trapped in the very bottle he seeks escape through. Even the most accomplished of the siblings, Olympic archer Nam-joo, whom the family delights in watching, is alienated by virtue of becoming a symbol of her family and country’s success rather than being her own person.
A Camera That Embodies Separation
As the script puts together these characters consumed by alienation, Bong places them in the frame with the intention to make you truly feel their hopelessness and terror as the world falls apart around them. Bong favors wide shots of the cast, who often stand alone, contrasted against an encroaching threat. The close-ups he uses in conjunction with them are often uncomfortably intimate, reflecting the trapped state of the Park family, both emotionally and when physically endangered by the monster.
The Agent Yellow sequence is the film’s starkest example of this; each of the Park family being swallowed up by the rolling chemical cloud, scattered protestors starting to grow violently ill as they’re separated from their people. But if I had to hedge my bets on the most striking, it’s between two interspersed sequences: the scientists going to lobotomize Gang-du, and Hyun-seo’s daring escape attempt, which coincide at the end of the second act. They’re so radically different in just about every aspect, with Gang-du’s medical horror being bright and hauntingly sterile in its invasiveness; Hyun-seo’s prospective climb to freedom, mere feet away from the monster is caked in grime and masked in minimalist lighting.
Bong Joon Ho, The Maestro of Emotional Manipulation
But both of these scenes exemplify how masterful a filmmaker Bong truly is. After building up these tragic characters you feel dangerously close to and then placing them in nightmare scenarios, he’s able to get his hooks into you. The whole movie is filled with moments like this where Bong, through visual language and frame perfect editing, drags you up and down on an emotional rollercoaster.
He fills you with hope for the Park family and then shocks you with reveals that snatch your seat out from under you. By tapping into our own fears of the world and then placing us alongside characters whose fear of isolation compounds onto your own, Bong Joon Ho’s The Host stands as a film of true emotional power.
It’s a testament to just how truly moving and profound a horror film can be in the right hands, and of the way a genre film can be pushed to its absolute limits. Loneliness is a heavy weight to lay on the heart, and there are few films where it feels as heavy as The Host.
In May 2015, my father died. It wasn’t sudden, but it was difficult nonetheless. I had just moved to Rhode Island, no longer able to afford Boston. One evening that August, in the midst of my grief, I met up with a new friend I had made since moving to the Ocean State. We had bonded over our love of horror movies – the thrillers we loved, the new releases we did not, what we thought was missing from the genre. At some point, I thoughtlessly said, we should make our own horror movie.
So one fine Tuesday night, Brandon Perras-Sanchez picked me up to discuss this possibility. He shared an idea for a horror movie with me that he had with his friend, Christopher Dalpe. It started as an absurd riff on hookup apps. “Brandon and I knew we wanted to put a dick through a meat grinder,” says Chris. We picked him up and all drove to Ogie’s Trailer Park, a dive bar in Providence’s West End. As Brandon recalls, “our blood pact was made that night at Ogie’s.” That evening, we began building upon their ideas of what would become our first feature film, Death Drop Gorgeous.
I bring up my father’s passing because I think, in many ways, this project carried me through my grief. If you’ve watched Death Drop Gorgeous, this might be silly to read – that a John Waters meets 80s slasher drag queen exploitation film helped me process the loss of my father, but as Joni Mitchell once wrote, “laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release.” I’d find myself in cafes in Providence every weekend, writing pages and pages of what the three of us discussed, following our sticky note outline. Then, every week, we’d meet up and read the pages aloud. Brandon made it gorier. Chris made it wittier. We’d change scenes, switch the order, add more, delete less.
Go In, Completely Blind
In this process, we didn’t consider the road ahead. Prior to that, I had always been a type-A Virgo. I planned, I assessed, and I organized. None of us had shot a short film, never mind a full-length. Brandon had gone to school for some sound design, but he didn’t major in screenwriting or filmmaking. We didn’t bother ourselves with those trivialities. Letting go of that control and not considering what it would take to shoot a feature lent to our momentum. Maybe that naivety is in part the reason we finished it at all.
Building a DIY Horror Filmmaking Collective
At some point in pre-production, Brandon looped in his long-term friend, Wayne Gonsalves, to create a more realized character of Dwayne, and his partner, Ryan Miller, to help with finessing the story. We became a strange quintet, running around town, shooting scenes, figuring it out as we went along. No permit? No problem. (Not a joke, we’ve never got a film permit – not for lack of trying! They just never emailed us back.)
At some point, we realized we had to name ourselves. I think it was Chris who came up with “Monster Makeup”; it referenced our first feature: the drag, the gore, and special effects, but it also represented what we did: we made horror movies, we created monsters.
There were a lot of conventions we ignored. For me, this article is not only about reflecting on our work, but also about sharing our process. Like adulthood, there are milestones in a filmmaking career that you’re, allegedly, supposed to follow. I’m not insinuating they don’t help, but there are other ways to make your filmmaking dreams a reality.
The Coven Becomes a Collective
If you finish this article and remember any piece of advice, I want it to be this: if you’re going to shoot a DIY, shoestring-budget movie, you have to have community, and you must collaborate. No matter how intimate and personal your vision may be, filmmaking is inherently collaborative. As a collective, we had to shed our egos. Of course, over the decade, there have been a handful of disagreements, but we never saw our movies as these precious things that only one of us had the final say on.
Funding a Microbudget Horror Movie Through Local Support
Community is the reason our films exist. Death Drop Gorgeous was mostly set in nightlife, and most of us had been working in the bar scene for years. We knew the queens, the venues, what drew crowds and what didn’t. We called in favors to shoot a fake trailer. In addition to a crowd-sourcing campaign, to raise our budget, we also threw fundraising events from a drag show, to a (human) pup Best in Show, to an interactive murder mystery.
“Our projects would not exist without the immense support we received from our friends, family, and community,” says Chris. “Not just money. The spaces we’ve filmed (gifted and donated), the actors and talent (volunteers, many acting in front of a camera for the first time), costumes, makeup, pizzas for the crew – everything has been a labor of love from this weird village, and I’m eternally grateful.”
“We are forever indebted to our Providence family,” Brandon affirms. These films transformed from pipe dreams to community initiatives. As more folks joined our projects, the more it was helped along by others outside our core five. Our thank you speech could be its own feature-length. Somewhere along the lines, we convinced our city we were filmmakers, and eventually, we started to believe it, too.
Working With Your Community as Creative Inspiration
I emphasize collaboration and community because I think aspiring filmmakers feel limited by what they don’t have and not inspired by what they do have access to. We knew drag queens, we knew nightlife, we knew local music. It’s not just “write what you know,” it’s also “write what you have.” I also think some filmmakers have a sense of ownership of their work that doesn’t come from a place of pride but a place of possession. If you’re going to shoot a microbudget film, you need to learn when to take notes, and let others take the reins.
Trial-and-Error
What we learned in the previous film, we would apply to the subsequent project. Saint Drogo, our second feature, was an intentional shift. We lassoed in local photographer and musician Kevin Bowden (who scored a majority of Death Drop Gorgeous) to ensure a more visual spectacle. The quintet became a sextet. We wrote a leaner script without a B, C, and D plot. We wanted to explore another genre and demonstrate our growth. “Myself, and some of the other crew members, lean more towards dark, bleak, folk and fantasy horror,” says Brandon. “We really wanted to take a shot at it.”
While we didn’t want to limit the story, we did go into writing Drogo with the reminder of having undergone such a long production with Death Drop, which included an ensemble cast and numerous locations; we wanted to make filming more manageable for us. Sometimes, the pressure of limited setting or characters forces you to wrestle with the story, assess your resources, and really consider the necessity of scenes. In turn, producing more effective work.
Queen of the Rats and a Decade of Filmmaking Lessons
Our next feature, Queen of the Rats, feels like the culmination of what we’ve learned over the course of these ten years. It’s a meld of our first feature’s flippancy and chaos and the intentionality, cinematography, and nihilism of our second feature.
“I think you’re going to laugh,” says Chris of Queen of the Rats. “It’s a genuinely funny script with amazing characters. But there’s a lot of heart in it, and you might feel sentimental and nostalgic for a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“It’s even exceeding my own expectations,” notes Brandon. “I know every asshole in the biz will say ‘there’s really nothing like this,’ in regards to their own film, but in all sincerity, there really is nothing like this.”
Defining Success as a DIY Horror Filmmaker
Our method is not ideal for everyone. Sometimes, it’s not even ideal for us. Each project consumes a huge portion of our lives, with productions taking over two years, shot in between our day jobs, and we are still fundraising to make each one happen. But we’ve accomplished a lot and never let what we lack compromise the vision. What I am most proud of is our commitment. It’s also worth considering, however, what you as a filmmaker define as success. Sure, we have bigger dreams, but I still feel a great sense of fulfillment finishing these projects, like I’ve run a marathon.
All our lives have changed in the course of our collaborations. As Chris notes, “We’ve all grown up together. We’re a family, and these guys are my brothers. We’ve all changed jobs, boyfriends have come and gone. We’ve been to weddings and funerals together. We’ve watched the city that inspires our films change and transform…With each creative project we’ve taken on, our community and network has expanded, and it feels like our little creepy family just keeps getting bigger.”
“Being able to navigate through this dystopian pedophile pyramid scheme hellscape with a circle of some of your best friends is a blessing”, says Brandon. “There’s comfort and solace knowing that as our work/life balances wax and wane, our dedication, or addiction, to making horror films and content will always remain a sturdy axis.”
Why Queer Horror Stories Matter More Than Ever
Art carried me through the grief of losing my father. Horror helped me cope. These aren’t new, profound concepts, but something I want to highlight, especially given the current state of, well, everything. We need new voices in filmmaking. We especially need queer stories right now. As humans, we aren’t meant to withstand this much grief constantly. We’re going to need art to carry us through.
Monster Makeup is having a retrospective exhibit in Providence, RI, at AS220’s Aborn Gallery for the entire month of June. Opening reception is June 6th. On June 13th, we will be doing an artist talk at the Aborn Gallery and screening a preview of Queen of the Rats. Both events are free.
Final words of advice from the Monster Makeup crew:
“Make whatever you feel passionately about, no matter how successful it may or may not be. Letting that pass you by will always haunt you.” – Wayne Gonsalves
“Story matters. Whether you’re shooting with Richard Deakins or on an iPhone, if you don’t have a story, you’ve got nothing.” – Kevin Bowden
“Aim high. Make it work. Dedicate weekly time to writing, filming, whatever, and you do not stray from that schedule. Get creative. Do not compare your art to other art in a self-deprecating way. DO NOT GIVE A FUCK WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK.” – Brandon Perras-Sanchez
“Just get started, and you’ll learn by doing. Every mistake you make on set will just make you a better filmmaker. Utilize the resources within your community and its natural enthusiasm for filmmaking. It will only elevate your project many times over.” – Ryan Miller
“Follow people’s advice if you want to do what they’re doing. Follow your gut if you want to do something new. Regardless of which one you choose, do it with friends.” – Chris Dalpe
(Behind the scenes photos of Death Drop Gorgeous were taken by Chris Eastman. Behind-the-scenes photos of Saint Drogo were taken by Maxwell Snyder. All other photos by Kevin Bowden)
