Stake Land

Nick Damici: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on it for eight or ten years. We have a system where I do the hands-on and then he [Jim Mickle] comes in and does the edits, and we talk it out. We do that about 500 times until we have a script.

Danielle Harris: I’ve heard that Jim mellows out Nick’s writing.

Connor Paolo: There’s a little bit of green screen, plus some practical stuff. We’re doing all our own stunts.

Danielle: Belle is a free spirit, Suzie Homemaker-type trying to round up this rowdy group of boys. She’s sort of the nurturing caretaker and also an odd man out amongst these burly men. She’s making a home and trying to keep the peace and be positive. She’s also pregnant as they continue on the trek, which was interesting – I hadn’t gotten to do that yet in my career. [points to her stomach] Just a little bump right now!

Danielle: Oh, yeah. The movie is kind of about finding a family out what’s left.

Danielle: Yeah, I’ve worked on supposedly epic, $100 million dollar features that looked like crap, but from what I’ve seen so far this is looking really amazing. We’ve got two red cameras shooting at all times, which is awesome. Jim is covering the crap out of the film, and the reason I wanted to do it was because I saw Mulberry Streetand what they were able to do for that amount of money, and I did think “God, this one will be epic.” It really looks unbelievable from what I’ve seen so far.

Danielle: Liar.

Sean Nelson: Willie is a military guy that they pick up, and he’s really trying to get back home to his family. He’s trying to find his way and he’s lucky to get picked up by these guys, they save his life. That’s basically the gist of my character.

Danielle: Oh yeah, there are lots of villains, one in particular.

Connor: That was a big part of the hiatus, not only getting the summer-to-winter thing, since this film takes place over two years, but also because it’s ultimately Martin’s coming of age story. He kind of narrates the whole thing in retrospect of his time with Mister and becoming the man he was born to be.

Danielle: Oh, yeah.

Connor: Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Danielle: I don’t know if comedy is the right word, but there are some lighter moments.

Connor: I just took it, I wanted to do it. The great thing about my show is that we have so many storylines going it’s easy for them to take one character out for a week or two. This leg of the film is only about two and a half weeks, so that’s really only two episodes. It wasn’t a big deal, we gave them enough notice.

Danielle: Yes! I had great luck with Fear Clinic, which I did with FearNet, with Robert Englund, and they’ve been talking with me about directing some stuff for them and finding webisodes to do. I couldn’t really find anything that I wanted to do, and I was talking to Jim and Nick a bit about it, and then I went on hiatus and came back and got a call and now we’re gonna do it. And I think it’s a good idea because we kind of get thrown into Stake Land rather quickly and it’s a nice way of letting the audience see all of the characters’ back stories. I’m directing Sean, Willie’s story. I told him today that he has a 4:00am call time tomorrow!

Danielle: [laughs] So, yeah, I’m excited about it. I think it’s a really great idea. They’re short, about five minutes, just little snippets to kind of get an idea. It’s our job to get you emotionally invested in the characters in that amount of time. And all the directors are very different, so it’s nice to see the different filmmakers’ styles.

Connor: Mister and Martin are very committed to not hearing anything about the history of the people they meet, and we don’t talk about where everyone is from, so any chance in the film of finding out about a character’s origins we quickly kind of shut down.

Danielle: I think I’ll have some of it up – you know, I’ve got this video camera and I’ve got my website, the HorrorGal website that I’m doing, so I’m gonna grab my camera and shoot a lot of my directing assignment tomorrow. I couldn’t shoot any of me when we actually shot Belle’s story, because it would have given away sort of the end of the short, so I couldn’t really bring the camera around, but I’ll put the making of that on after you see the webisode.

Danielle: I hope so. I’ve been reading scripts for the last year and a half, and it’s hard to find a really great script. I’m on the hunt for that first, debut film, but I haven’t really found it yet.

Danielle: Oh, God no. I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t put that in there, please. Omit that! But yeah, I’m done. Four Halloweens is enough. But I don’t know, I’ll probably come back in flashbacks, though.

Connor: We’re pushed almost back to witch hunt times.

Danielle: I don’t watch dailies.

Connor: But you could watch it on a laptop.

Danielle: I’d go crazy if I had to watch myself every day.

Connor: Some actors do like that, but it’s harder for other actors. You don’t want to see the mistakes you’re making. If you start worrying about the way your hair looks or something…

Danielle: Yeah. Let Jim do that.

Danielle: He’s really difficult to work with!

Connor: A total asshole.

Danielle: [laughs] Yeah, he’s great. There’s a big canvas too, I mean look at where we’re filming.

Connor: The locals in this area kind of have to be involved, too, because we’re using different areas and we’ve got scenes where we need 50 people in the background, which is a lot to take on.

Danielle: Everyone here is really excited to be part of it, including the ‘townsfolk,’ for lack of a better word, as well as the crew.

Danielle: No, it’s actually moving nice and steady. We’re racing the sun a lot, but yeah, ten or eleven hour work days. We have two cameras and our DP is great and the crew’s great, and everything is set. We just rock and roll. You know, I’ve done a lot of movies at this budget and I’ve seen a lot of disaster, and you’re always worried about things when you’re filming and freezing, but we’re really not aware of working with a crew of this size because it doesn’t feel like it.

Danielle: You know, in this genre you never know what’s actually going to end up making it or not making it. Right now, there are three things that have come my way and I’m just hoping that one of them works out. We don’t get cell reception up here so I haven’t been able to do any business or anything, we’re just focused on this. But I’m waiting to see and hoping there might be a film, or maybe a franchise in my future.

Danielle: Yeah, it was just voice work, it’s CGI-3D. Simon West is producing it. It’s a really cool, interesting idea. To come back as an iconic character like Annie in Halloween and now to be Barbara in Night of the Living Dead is pretty awesome. I kind of decided after the last Halloween that I was only going to do movies this year, and I keep saying this for press because I want to stick to my word, I’m only going to do genre things that I haven’t done before. This was the first vampire script I’ve done, and trust me I’ve read a lot – it’s kind of the wave of the moment – and this was the vampire movie that I wanted to do. And Night of the Living Dead was the zombie movie that I wanted to do. So, I’m being a little bit pickier and I’m also kind of done with being the victim for a while. And I’m not doing any of the CGI part of Night of the Living Dead, and I’m not even sure if it’s going to look like me. It might be a cross between me and the original Barbara. But the script is very heavy, I was actually surprised at how intense it was. It’s about the origins, it’s a prequel that takes place in New York City and it’s insane. It’s mostly scenes with Mos Def and I, and I’ve still never met him – it’s just voices.
With that, the Stake Land cast was gathered back up by the assistant director to go do some more filming and I was left to mull around the set some more, talking to crew members about the demands of getting that day’s shooting in the can and watching them set up for a second location down the road in a local bar, where they would be joined later that evening by the film’s legendary producer, Larry Fessenden, and the other star of the film, Kelly McGillis, making her return to feature filmmaking after a multi-year hiatus.
After a long meal break it was time to tackle a nighttime schedule, during which multiple quick, indoor scenes would be filmed. These night scenes included, in order of least-to-most interesting: a snippet of a rowdy get-together in a tavern where lots of local humans have gathered; a set-up in a cramped attic space where our survivors watch through their window as the military fires guns outside and someone gets snagged by a random bullet; and an intimate musical performance by Danielle Harris’s Belle, who sings a lonesome, bluegrass-style song about the damage the vampires have wrought. It’s not every day you get to watch a live performance of a vampire-inspired country music song!
During the down period before the intensely-paced night shooting began (remember, this is an indie film where every second counts) I got a chance to sit down with both director Jim Mickle and producer Larry Fessenden, where we discussed the origins of this project and the plans for its release by independent financiers Dark Sky Films in 2010, as well as plans for potential sequels. A long-time staple of the independent film world, Fessenden has a longer credits sheet than most Hollywood veterans and is an industry maverick who prides himself on working successfully outside of the system; he was able to give me some insight into how a low-budget genre film like this gets set up and financed in the current economic environment, as well as his thoughts on the benefits and negatives of making movies outside of the Hollywood system. Here is a transcript of our talk:

Larry Fessenden: Yeah, Dark Sky offered a slate of three movies over the course of a year, and I knew I wanted to work with Mickle. Long before I was on Mulberry Street I met Jim and he pitched me a sort of vampire picture, and I saw his shorts, and was totally into working with him. That didn’t quite work out and he went to make I]Mulberry Street and when this idea for the slate came up with Dark Sky, I went straight to Jim.

Jim Mickle: Well, we were working on Cold in July for a while, and it was kind of frustrating because it was hard to find funding, and hard to get actors attached, and it was kind of a frustrating two years. This originally started off as an idea to do webisodes, to do something cheap – basically to do Mulberry again, but [the concern was] could lightning really strike twice and we’d get a great film out of it? So, we went the other way and built the story around the webisodes. Nick wrote a little ten minute scene, which is the opening scene in the movie now, and that was episode one and then we branched off from there. It’s kind of an episodic story, and when Larry came along with the slate we tried to adapt to that. The original idea was just kind of folding them all together, and it didn’t quite work, but we kept finessing it. At some point Nick just got the bug, took all the characters and completely reworked the setting, gave it this weird, post-apocalyptic, political feel. I think it was written right around the time of the election, so there’s that. The economy was all over the news and that sort of became the backdrop, along with the swine flu.

Larry: Well, we do have plenty of gore! You can count on Mickle for that.

Larry: There are also so many great interiors that we found upstate, and once you’re inside you see people who have sort of hunkered down and made their own little world. It’s got a lot of texture, even more so than, I think, maybe The Road which I think will be relentlessly bleak and grey. This sort of shows how people do continue to survive and live in the world even when they’re fortressed against the vamps, which are outside roaming the place.

Larry: It feels like we’re making a zombie movie, but really they’re just hungry.

Larry: It would make a good coffee table book.

Larry: Well, I’m basically an idea guy. In this case, Adam Folk, who’s been a partner with Mickle, those guys do the hard work. They come in and do the SAG contracts and the schedules and stuff, but I take the role of being an advocate for the artist, making sure they get as close to what they want as possible. And on this slate, I talk with the money guys. I like to think outside of the box, and nurture a lot of different talents out there. My role is to set these things up and to fight for the vision. We go in and do some story stuff, depending on the project, each one requires different things. I just love the genre, there are so many different flavors. If I had the freedom to make my own films all the time, which I don’t, I would probably never make Stake Land. So, I get to be part of that and part of a movie about a chef that goes crazy. So, it’s an incredible privilege.

Larry: We hang out, and we work on it together sometimes. In the case of Nick, who’s probably written 600 pages for this, it’s a matter of going in and saying ‘Do you think we have the best possible story for it?’ We know we have several sequels in us, it’s just a matter of honing it. And then I have to go to Dark Sky and say ‘This is the one, this is the way it’s gonna go.’ We started with about nine or ten pitches, different movies, different directors, and so there is a bit of negotiation involved in landing us on the projects we land on – that’s the kind of thing I’m involved in, while my guys in the field are focused on getting every day to happen.

Larry: No, that was two years of waiting. Working on the script with Guillermo del Toro was a very exciting experience, but then I got into a casting miasma and that’s where the thing is. I think they’re going to do it another way, actually, so I think I’m out of it. Hopefully, they’ll still use my script, but I’m not sure I’m directing it. That’s Hollywood for ya!

Larry: I have, like, three movies that I want to do that are, ironically, at this level. The Orphanage got my foot in the door with studios and with managers and agents, but I don’t really trust that it works and I’m a little wary. I’ve seen Ti West get involved, he made Cabin Fever and then came running home to Daddy to work with Glass Eye Pix again. And honestly, my aesthetic is to be a bit of a badass and work outside of the system and see if we can scam em’ and make our own way. We all love a lot of different Hollywood movies and we presumably all want to work with a lot of money, but there’s so much trade-off for that. I continue to stick to this aesthetic of a band of outsiders trying to make movies. I’ve produced five movies since I’ve been dicking around with The Orphanage.

Larry: I guarantee the budgets with them, and that’s my cross to bear. We’ve got a lot of producers on this Derek Curl works very closely with Dark Sky, keeping them informed of our progress. But the fact is, we can’t go over. So, I ride Mickle and then it goes like that. We actually had to cut a day from this whole second half.

Larry: [laughs] And still he has time for you guys!

Larry: It helped us hone an approach to the filmmaking, which is what I love, when you’re constantly challenged. Winter has shorter daylight hours – just simple things like that, where you’re like, fuck, we have even less time than we had before! Even if it’s a case where we have to shift something in the film towards night, because that’s the reality. Also, when you’re dealing with all these communities you have to be respectful, while at the same time milking them for everything they’ve got. It’s all part of our rock n’ roll aesthetic, which is distinct from Hollywood, where they just buy everything they need. With this, you have to be a little more stealthy, a little more light on your feet.



Stake Land is in select theaters now.