Darren Lynn Bousman: The Devil’s Carnival

It was amazing, hence why we're doing the second one. The tour could not have gone better. For the first road tour we did 40 stops, there was 40 different theatrical performances of it, and we sold out 85 percent of them. There was only a few cities that we didn't sell out.

The whole reason that we're doing this thing is my last three movies had a really small theatrical release – if any release whatsoever – from Mothers' Day to 11-11-11 to The Barrens. These movies, you pour your heart and soul into them, and you have all these people work long and tireless hours…So at a certain point I just got fed up and I said fuck it. I don't need someone to tell me if my movie is commercial or not. There is a fan base for what we do, and as long as you put in the hours you can find the fan base.

So we went off on this first road tour as an experiment saying if we make something out of the box, a weird little musical, I guarantee people will want to come see it. It wasn't our intention to go off and do this alone, we wish we had partners and major studio backing, but we didn't. But that didn't stop us, and we went off and we did it not knowing what was going to happen. We ended up having an extremely successful tour...The fan base is crazy around this and they're dedicated. And because of the success of the first road tour we obviously have done the second road tour, and now we're in the middle of pre-production on Episode 2 of The Devil's Carnival. We're going to be making a Part 2 and a Part 3.

Here's the thing, Repo! was something that obviously was a passion project for everyone involved with it, and we were met with a lot of heartache and hard times because we were still within the studio system. We were trying to do something out of the box and yet trying to have a very in the box kind of distribution model – we were basically met with failure with that. Lion's Gate, they released movies like Saw and these type of things, but all of a sudden I get into this weird, crazy black opera starring Paris Hilton and Sarah Brightman…Now, looking back in retrospect, I understand why it was kind of dumped only into a couple theaters, but because of that it was a first step where my career changed. I realized that I can't count on anybody, nor do I really want to.

I'm an artist and I want people to see my art. I shouldn't sit back and rely on a group of people to get that out there. I have to do it. If I believe in my art, I should be the biggest champion behind it. So Repo! birthed the road tour. [Co-writer and actor] Terrance [Zdunich] and I started getting in the van and driving across the country to do this thing. It was the success of what we did with Repo! that spawned The Devil's Carnival. The Devil's Carnival is completely independent of Repo!. It has its own world, its own characters, there's no interconnecting storylines. With that being said, they're cut from the same cloth. They're both musicals, they both use this really crazy world with crazy characters. They exist in the same universe but they're different worlds. They're very much akin. I would call Devil's Carnival the bastard child of Repo! The Genetic Opera, coming from the same family but its own thing.

Well thanks. It was actually $200,000 not $500,000. That's even more insane when you think about it….You hear these stories about actors being paid millions and millions of dollars…It's really disheartening for independent filmmakers when you see that you can never afford the actors or locations or anything like that. It's not really true. Actors will get behind and do things that are unique and different and speak to them as artists because that is in turn what they are. I think that we could never approach these people from a monetary standpoint because we didn't have the money. So you approach them from an artistic standpoint. That's how we were able to get people like Clown from Slipknot or Ivan Moody from Five Finger Death Punch or Emilie Autumn, who I'm a huge fan of. Emilie Autumn is this amazing musician/singer and plays the Painted Doll. When you approach them you have to take money off the table because whatever I'm going to pay them is insulting….

You go to them and you let them hear the music and you let them see what we're doing. I think that at the core all of these people are artists and they want to do something that's cool. We were able to basically pull this thing off for no money because we used the passions of everyone involved. You don’t get that with a lot of movies. A lot times for people it's just about paychecks, it's about career longevity, it's not about actually the art.

Yeah. I think that's what separates Devil's Carnival from other movies – it's more than just a movie. A lot of times if you go see whatever's in the theater that week, you go there, you pay your 10 dollars, and you sit down and you quietly watch the movie, and then you leave and go home. The Devil's Carnival is not that. You're involved in Devil's Carnival before you ever walk into the theater, and you're involved long after you leave. I think because of that it encourages people to come out and show their true colors. It allows people to basically dress up and to be noticed and to be seen.

When I was growing up, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was like a safe haven for me. I wasn't an athlete, I wasn't a scholar, I wasn't popular, I was none of those things, but when I walked into Rocky Horror, all of a sudden I was encouraged to be unique. It was basically an outlet for me to be creative. It's something that inspired me and stoked me, and it still does today. I think that that's the kind of thing that I want to make and the thing that I think I'm most passionate about.

The other thing that is surprising is this that the fans are the true people that are keeping these things going. It's not the studio, it's not the publicity machine, it's the fans. When you can involve the fans at the ground level, they are more important and more valuable than any billboard ad that I can take out or any commercial that I can get on TV. They are walking billboards, and I think that that is what's great about this. These fans are part of our team. They're not just fans, they've transcended that, they are the team of [t]The Devil's Carnival.

Yeah…There's one moment in my career where I think everything changed for me about that. We were in Las Vegas for the premiere of Repo! The Genetic Opera. Paris and everyone was there. It was a big red carpet premiere. All of these fans flew in from all over the world – I'm talking all over the world – and we're sitting there in the audience, we're seeing all of these kids dressed up and it was amazing. It was a really cool experience. The after party was at this club in Planet Hollywood. There were bouncers, there was a big red carpet, and we walked into it and I looked around and there was not a single fan there. There were just agents and managers and actors. All of a sudden the fans were left outside just standing there and they couldn't get in. They weren't dressed the right way, they didn't have the right shoes on, and it made Paris and I kind of sick.

I had a suite at the hotel, so we just left. We left our own party. I walked out into the lobby with all the fans and I said, “All right guys, the party's in my room, everyone come up.” In retrospect it was kind of stupid because I'm not sure how many of these people were actually the correct age or anything like that. But we opened up the hotel room and we had a party in my hotel room. The fans and all the actors were there, pretty much fans from all over the world hanging out with the people in Repo!. In the meantime that party that was supposed to happen at the club kind of diminished and no one was there.

I think that was the first step into changing the fate of Repo! because all of a sudden there was no tiers. It wasn't like we were in the VIP area and they were standing outside. They were on the same couch with us, they were having pizza with us out of the same box, they were having conversations with the creators. I think that that's something I want to do with every film that I do. I don't treat them like fans because they're the ones that buy your tickets, they're your real bosses.

Yeah, they are. That's the other thing, we don't have any money to rely on publicists, I can't afford ads in papers or anything like that, so what we rely on is these people to go out – and they do. They go out and they flyer and they hand out brochures and they dress up and they do flash mobs. We had people doing flash mobs of this where they just broke out into song and dance.

One of the things that I always talk about, even today, when I was making Saw 3, there was a moment where Lions Gate sent an email out, and this email, the headline was "Now you know we've arrived." It was just a single picture in the email of an adult male who basically had a tattoo of the Jigsaw puppet on his leg. Everyone was like, “Look at this, look at this, this is amazing!” I remember the chain of emails was about 50 or 60 deep with people all talking about how great it was that we've transcended into pop culture. Looking back on that now it's kind of hilarious because Repo! has thousands of tattoos now, thousands of people that are sleeving their arms and their legs and their bodies.

It's crazy to think this little movie that was released in no theaters has now transcended into pop culture to the point where people are branding themselves with the artwork. And we've already seen it start to happen with The Devil's Carnival, where people are getting huge tattoos. And again that's crazy; The Devil's Carnival is a short film, and the fact that people are doing that at this early stage – it's only been out three months and this is already happening!

The whole idea behind it, the whole genesis of this, was to do something that would give the audience an experience that could not be downloaded. The last couple of films that I've done have leaked online months before they're released. They've been on torrent sites, they've been on all of these places where they can be basically acquired for free before they ever hit the theaters. Now when you're dealing with a 3,000 screen release like a Saw film, that's not that big of an issue. You're not really going to hurt yourself that much. But when you're dealing with a movie that's only released in two screens, three screens, it's a huge issue when it ends up online beforehand.

We know that it's part of the industry now. We now live in a technological age where it's easy to steal something and put it online, so how can we defend against that? What can we do to take measures to make it so you can't do that? And so The Devil's Carnival was born. We wanted to make an experience, a live show, a concert of vaudevillian acts, burlesque acts, we wanted to make it a party. I mean, how can you download a party? You really can't. So we turned it into a live event as well as a movie. We have burlesque dancers, we have freak shows, we have contests, we have give-aways, we have sing-a-longs, we have Q&As.

It's an entire event, it's not just a screening. While the movie is only an hour long, the screening itself is a whole event of about 2-1/2 hours. There's a master of ceremonies who is navigating you through the evening. We fill it full of vaudeville acts, burlesque acts, freak shows, and we have give-aways. We have fan costume contests where the fans win prizes based on what they've worn, and we end the night with a Q&A with myself, the creators, and whatever actors we have on the stops. We also stay around and sign things at the end of the night. Some nights we've been there five and six hours signing things. Again, it's trying to make this whole thing an experience and trying to take things to the next level. As an independent filmmaker things have to change now. We're in a different world than we were five years ago. I think you have to adapt or you're going to die. This is our version of adapting to what's going on out there.

Well my writing partner Terrance Zdunich was in Repo! The Generic Opera. Him and I had been talking since Repo!. We wanted to do something else, we wanted to take another stab at the musical world, but we knew that it had to not only live up to what we did with Repo!, it had to surpass it in a lot of ways. For years it was failed idea after failed idea. We knew that we weren't desperate enough to pull the trigger on something bad just to make it – it had to be perfect, it had to be right.

One of the ideas that I had very early on is I wanted to do a movie that was about Heaven and Hell and a musical set in Heaven and Hell. We kept running back and forth with the idea of how do we make this interesting. Terrance eventually came up with the idea about doing morality tales, and what are the best morality tales? The thing that I love about Aesop’s is they're kind of morally nebulous. They're not necessarily clear-cut morality tales where this is the good guy and this is the bad guy. They're macabre and they're dark, and I think that it immediately spoke to us, this idea of these morals that are thousands of years old. It was great because the tales are still relevant today. I mean who hasn't heard of “The Scorpion and the Frog” or “The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs” or “The Dog and Its Reflection”? They're ingrained in us at an early age.

After we finish Road Tour 2 we're going to take it to the UK and do a UK road tour. Once we're back from that we're going to begin production on Part 2. We want to serialize this and make it something that encourages you to go back and watch the first, second, and third ones. It will basically take place in the same universe with the same characters, however we're now going to be cutting back and forth between Heaven and Hell.

In the first episode you're really only introduced to Hell. Paul Sorvino plays God and you meet him in Part 1, but he's more of a mysterious character. Part 2 basically petty much all takes place in Heaven. After Episode 2 occurs, it will be a constant cutting back and forth between Heaven and Hell. So Part 1 you met the Devil and his demons, Part 2 you're going to meet God and the angels. And it's absolutely not what you're going to expect. Heaven will be a lot more menacing than Hell is in some respects. That was our initial take on this. Our initial theme was what if the Devil was not the bad guy? Maybe he's been painted in a wrong light. And what if God was not so good? That was how The Devil's Carnival began, switching the mythology a little bit between Heaven and Hell. In this series the Devil is pretty much the, I won't say hero of the movie, but God is a lot more macabre than we've been led to believe.

I know. Our entire thing of this is that God is a toymaker. Basically the toys are us, they're human, and the whole issue is that he is making these toys and then destroying them because of imperfections. He personally makes a toy and its eyes got messed up or it's eyebrows are screwed up or it's too small and he's trashing these toys and throwing them into a bin which takes us into Hell. The idea is that Lucifer or the Devil embraces imperfection.

The other thing is that you go back to the earliest mythology, the Devil is a fallen angel. He’s basically a warden of a prison and his own damnation is to watch over these damned souls. It's not like he was an evil, horrible person. I think that's what we're trying to play this as, that the Devil is imperfect himself. He is like the things that God is casting down.

In the first scene of the episode of The Devil's Carnival we meet God, and we see him tossing toys out. We realize by the end of the episode that the toys are us, and he's messed these toys up. The Devil's Carnival is very tongue in cheek. Its stays in the same kind of vein as Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's over the top, it's flamboyant, it’s boisterous, but it also does have our own beliefs mixed in and our own message put throughout it.

The thing that I would say is that musical theater, musicals, they're not all like Glee. We pride ourselves that we are Tales From the Crypt meets the anti-Glee. We are darker, we're more macabre, we're sexier – think that we are Glee with S&M, death, destruction and Lucifer.

Musicals are cool, rock operas are cool. They used to be badass. In the ‘70s these were commonplace. They were not the exception to the rule, they were mainstream, from Jesus Christ Superstar to Tommy to Phantom of the Paradise. People came out in droves to see them. I think they've been commercialized too much and made more safe. You get High School Musical now and everyone thinks that's what these things are.

I think that's what happened. I think that's basically the kind of thing that we're trying to fight against now. Those aren't the kind of musicals we're making. When you put someone like Slipknot or Skinny Puppy or Ivan Moody of Five Finger Death Punch in a musical that we're doing – you're going to get what we're doing. We're not Broadway. That being said, I love musicals, I love rock operas, but we are definitely the R-rated darker, more horrific version of all of that. What we're trying to do is change people's perception of what musicals can be.


For more information on The Devil’s Carnival movie and tour visit thedevilscarnival.com/.