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Your new End Times
- in a few words, what's it about?
I call End Times an end-of-the-world love story:
Set during a zombie pandemic, it’s about a retired mercenary who’s done a lot of
questionable things, who takes this pampered young suburbanite under his
wing, and trains her to survive in this unforgiving new reality.
With End Times
being a zombie movie, is that a genre at all dear to you, and some of your
genre favourites? I
grew up in Pittsburgh, so George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead looms
large in the zeitgeist. In high school we’d make pilgrimages to
Monroeville Mall where they filmed Dawn of the
Dead. I’m also a huge fan
of classic horror films from the 1930s/40s (I host a podcast called The
Borgo Pass Horror Podcast that’s dedicated to classic horror), so
films like White Zombie and
I Walked with a Zombie are big deals for me as
well.
(Other) sources of inspiration when
writing End Times?
One of the biggest sources of inspiration for End Times
happened when my wife and I bought a house a few miles from our apartment. Every day for a few
weeks I’d drive over there with my 1975 Chevy Nova (which cameos in the
film) filled with stuff, and on the way I’d pass this huge neighborhood
of ruined houses that used to be housing for the Navy, when they had a
shipyard in Long Beach, CA. It had been abandoned for decades, and LA SWAT
would use it for practice. There were goats there to keep the grass under
control, and coyotes.
I managed to get permission to film there (which NOBODY ever had), and this
was right around the time Jamie Bernadette [Jamie
Bernadette interview - click here] and I were talking about
finally doing a project together—so it came together very quickly. It
had to, because they were bulldozing this place daily. So we shot the
first half of the film mostly there and around San Pedro, took a hiatus
while I finished writing the second half of the film, and then we came
back and did that bit. All during one of the hottest, driest summers
LA’s had in a while.
For all the gorehounds among the audience, you just have to talk about the
blood and guts effects in your movie for a bit, and how were they
achieved?
The gore gags are about 70% practical and 30% digital. As I said we were
working in very dry firewatch conditions, which meant we couldn’t use
blank firing guns or squibs. So most of our blood gags were done with
compressed air systems. I brought on my SFX/armorer from House of Bad,
Anthony “Doc Death” Eikner, to create most of these—as well as
Timothy Keuhn, Molly Porter, and Lillian Vince. Some of these gags were
then digitally augmented in post by our VFX supervisor Damon Shelton, who
also did all the gunshots, augmented some zombie makeup effects, and
created that amazing burning city vista that’s the film’s first shot.
I like it when the audience can’t see the handoff between
practical/digital, so they just go with it.
Also, End Times
does have its fair share of fights - so do talk about the action and stunt
work in your movie! I’d
never seen anyone do a real swordfight with machetes in a film, and
decided that was something I wanted to contribute to cinema. We did a day
of safety training with Craig, Jamie and Kaiwi with my neighbor Bruce Nuńez,
who I met one day in my back alley when he was shirtless cracking two
bullwhips at the same time. The final fight was choreographed by BryanCartago. How would you
describe your overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
We
shot the film pre-pandemi,c so my ‘directorial approach’ was that of
Jim Towns a few years ago, haha. I’ve directed 2-3 films since then, so
I wonder what I’d do differently now. Mainly I wanted the film to feel
immersive and real—nothing superheroic or physically unbelievable, but
very based and practical. How would you survive in this type of
environment? How would you find food? How would you cook that food? Who
would you trust, and who would you go to any length avoid? In the course
of the story, Freddie and Claire encounter a few different groups who’ve
come up with their own way to live in this dangerous new world, and
there’s this clash of ideologies. Post-apocalyptic movies are really
about people being able to reinvent themselves into who they secretly want
to be, and I think that’s a big part of the lure: we’d all like to do
that, to some degree. Do
talk about End Times'
key cast, and why exactly these people?
Jamie
Bernadette was key from the start, of course. We’d worked on some
smaller things together and were eager to team up on a bigger feature.
She’s also a producer on the film and there’s no way I could have made
this without her as my creative partner.
Craig Stark came on early on, and the chemistry I saw between him and Jamie is what
convinced me this was going to work. He’s done a bunch of Tarantino
films, but I don’t think he’d ever had as much screen time in a film
until this.
The
gang Claire runs into in the beginning was fun to cast with folks we knew
and respected: Dan Buran, Maria Olsen [Maria
Olsen interview - click here] and Jessica Morris were all people
Jamie had worked with. Renato Biribin is a friend of mine and a great
stage actor who I try to put in as many of my films as possible.
Kaiwi
Lyman had worked with Jamie as well and he’s amazing as Hayden. Sadie
Katz from House of Bad came in on almost no notice and killed it as
Deirdre. She instantly got what made that character tick right away.
Victoria De Mare was someone I’d known about, and she blew us away in her
scene, and her performance became the template for
all the other zombie performers who came after. We were really lucky to be
able to call upon a large cast of talent and have them show up ready to
play. Many of the actors from End Times
have become good friends of mine.
You also have to talk about your wonderfully dilapitated
locations for a bit, and what was it like filming there? And how did you
even find them?
Again
the big one was that abandoned Naval housing complex. The caveat was that
we couldn’t start filming until 4pm when the bulldozers stopped, and
only had until 8 or so before we lost the light—so those were hectic
days. It was also an incredibly dangerous environment: Nails, wires, wild
animals—they had to come get a fresh coyote kill out of one of the rooms
we were going to shoot in right before we rolled camera one day. I went
and visited this location just a month ago and toured one of the $1.3
million dollar townhouses that sits right where we shot—kind of
mind-blowing. If they only knew...
We also shot in a lot of the walking scenes, ocean shots and canyon bits
right here in San Pedro and Palos Verdes near where I live, so quite often
I’ll drive past one of our locations. It was nice shooting a film
basically in my backyard.
A few words about the shoot as such, and
the on-set atmosphere? This
was a hard shoot—probably the hardest of my career. As I said, it was
one of the hottest summers in recent years and the film is about 80%
exteriors. That was really punishing. In addition most locations had no
power, no restrooms, nowhere to sit and cool off—we were basically out
in the wilderness making this movie, while meanwhile still surrounded by
one of the most populated cities in the US. The $64-question of course, where
can End Times be seen?
It’s on VOD pretty much everywhere right now, and will be dropping on one of
the streamers later this summer. I’m hoping for a physical media release
as well—we have a bunch of special features ready to go, including a
ten-minute opening of the film that was shot and edited and scored, but
ultimately dropped from the release.
Anything you can tell us about audience and critical
reception of End Times
yet? It’s
been very positive. Some critics have said it’s a bit long, but really
that was the film I set out to make—a story that evolves in its own time
as you follow these two characters. Mostly people really seem to
appreciate what we were trying to do here.
Any future projects you'd like to share?
I shot an exorcism film last year with Sadie Katz called The Possession of
Anne that should be coming out later this year. It co-stars Vernon Wells
from Road Warrior and Commando.
I got to reunite on that film with Chad Courtney, my DP on House of Bad,
and it looks amazing—totally a different palette than End Times. I just
shot an action/drama called Killer Ex last month—my first time actually
being a DP on my own film, which was a great experience. It stars Jose
Torres, William Christopher Ford (Karate Kid 3) and Mohammed (Michel)
Qissi from Kickboxer. That should be out early next year. Shooting a
feature really makes me appreciate Ray Karwel, our gifted DP on End Times,
and all the other talented DPs I’ve worked with. It’s a lot of
pressure to get the look just right!
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Your/your movie's website, social media, whatever else?
I’m on all the medias: Facebook/Instagram/Twitter—just look up Jim
Towns and you’ll find me.
Anything else you're dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to
ask?
Thanks
so much for the interview, Michael—I look forward to talking with you
again soon on the next one.
Thanks for
the interview!
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