Jason Christ

An Interview with Jason Christ

Hi Jason, could you start by telling us about your background and how you got involved with Wicked Pixel?

I had a rather uneventful childhood living in the wide-open spaces of rural Missouri. I guess because of the fact that I spent an inordinate amount of time alone (my brothers didn't enter the picture until I was eight), I developed a rather vivid imagination to keep myself from going insane. That imagination was kicked into overdrive the day my parents opened a video rental store when I was around ten years old, which incidentally became my first job when I got older.

I realize it sounds cliché and Tarantino-ish to say I got my humble beginnings working in a video store, but it was hard to not become infatuated with the idea of making movies of my own. Growing up in the middle of nowhere, the movies that I watched opened my sheltered eyes to the vast world that existed around me (the only other things I had to occupy myself with at the time were video games and bad 80's pop music). Not only that, I realized that I had a lot to rationalize about myself as well, which only intensified as I got older. Cinema seemed like a very natural extension of who I was as an imaginative human being (well, I thought I was imaginative anyway). I could use cinema as a means to document both how I perceived the world around me and the discoveries that I made about myself in an entertaining way through storytelling.

Of course, I had absolutely no idea on how to go about this. Filmmaking is not a rational and sane way to make a living. It just simply wasn't done where I grew up. I remember running around with a VHS camcorder my parents gave me after I graduated high school, where I would tape silly little comedy skits with my friends to pass the time. I had the desire, but I didn't really have the drive to get out there and get my hands dirty by making a film of my own. I knew that my parents were getting worried about me for pursuing filmmaking as a career. I think they were afraid, understandably so, that I would end up dying alone and penniless in a gutter somewhere for foolishly chasing a pipe dream (which still hasn't been ruled out as a possibility). To be honest, I was getting a little apprehensive about whether or not I wanted to pursue this as well, but that all changed when I met Eric Stanze.

I remember first hearing about Stanze when I was still in high school. He was having a premiere of one of his earliest projects, a feature student film called THE SCARE GAME, at Jefferson College, a local community college just outside of my hometown of Hillsboro. Needless to say, I was shocked. What the hell is this? Some dude actually made a movie in my neck of the woods? I was impressed, to say the least. I knew I had to go see this movie. I remember walking, in the pouring rain, from my high school to Jefferson College, only to be turned away because I didn't meet the age-restriction the college had put on the screening. I was insanely pissed that I didn't get to see the film, but I moved on with my life and tried to put that sordid experience from my mind. Ironically, I went on from high school to attend television production classes at Jefferson College, the same school that had denied me access to THE SCARE GAME screening years before. One day, when I was driving to location to shoot a local high school football game, I met Rebecca Kennebeck (who would later write the poem that I used as the basis for my short film, THE QUIET PLACE). She mentioned that she was working on SAVAGE HARVEST for Stanze as an actor and that immediately perked my interest. Rebecca was gracious enough to bring me along to the cast and crew premiere of the film, and to put things bluntly, I was very ecstatic over what I saw. Regardless of any minor problems the movie had, I couldn't be more impressed with the film. Stanze managed to create a competently-made, shot-on-video movie for next to no money that was more entertaining than professional films that were made on budgets that were much bigger than what Stanze was working with on SAVAGE HARVEST. I knew this was a guy I needed to work with, so at the end of the screening, I approached him about my wanting to work with him (Stanze has no recollection of me doing this). A few years later, I got word about auditions for ICE FROM THE SUN. I went in, got a part, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Savage Harvest 2: October Blood has recently been released on DVD. Why did you decide to write and direct a sequel to a 10 year old film and what did you want to bring to it?

I decided to make SAVAGE HARVEST 2 for a couple reasons. First, I was hungry to get a new project off the ground. It had been a couple years since I graduated from Webster University in St. Louis (I transferred there from Jefferson College in 1995 to study film production) and I was growing tried of riding on the minuscule success I was having with my short film CURVEBALL: PILE OF JUNK (which appears on THE SEVERED HEAD NETWORK DVD, starring Stanze). I knew it was time to do something new. I was also a big fan of demon-possession films like THE EVIL DEAD, THE EXORCIST, and NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, and since the original SAVAGE HARVEST fit rather neatly into that sub-genre, I thought it would be fun and a great learning experience to take an established story and expand it. So, I whipped up a script, got Stanze's blessing, and set out to make the movie.

If there's one thing I wanted to bring to SAVAGE HARVEST 2, besides the gore of course, it would have to be more fleshed-out characters. The one thing that was a little lacking in the first SAVAGE HARVEST was the character development. Now, I realize that Eric didn't set out to make a heat-felt drama with characters that had huge, sweeping arcs. The first movie really focused on the stylish camerawork and the outrageous gore, which is what I think made the first movie so successful. Since there were really no expectations put on us with OCTOBER BLOOD, I thought it would be a better approach to take the sequel in an entirely different direction in terms of style, story and characterization while keeping the elements that made the first movie so much fun to watch. Since I was going to be living with this movie for an extended period of time, I wanted to develop the story in a manner that would keep me interested in the project for the duration of the shoot. It’s for that reason that I decided to incorporate elements of my own personal life into the characters, particularly in the character of Tyge Murdock, who was played by Benjamin Gaa. I thought that this approach would make it easier for me to develop the characters beyond the level of cardboard, one-dimensional ciphers that one usually finds in the movie like this. That way, the audience will hopefully feel a little empathy for them when they start getting torn limb from limb.

What were the high points of directing your first full length film and were there any major obstacles that you had to overcome?

The high point in making SAVAGE HARVEST 2 for me was that I got to make the film and that I was able to make the film the way I wanted to make it. I’m sure most people would frown on the dramatic elements in the script. I think the normal way of addressing material like this would be to cut down the characterization and ramp up the more rudimentary and marketable elements of the horror genre, namely boobs and blood (not that there’s anything wrong with having those things). It’s to Eric’s credit that he let me make the film I wanted to make instead of demanding changes to make the movie play like hundreds of other horror flicks that are flooding the market nowadays.

I was also ecstatic to be working with such a great cast. I had a rather ambitious script, and I didn’t have any money to pay my actors, so I was afraid I was going to get saddled with ”actors“ that could afford me the time but who had little to offer me in terms of acting. Those fears were quickly laid to rest as I began to cast the film. In my humble opinion, I thought I had an amazing cast, from my leads (Emily Haack, Benjamin Gaa, Eric Stanze, and David Propst) to my supporting cast (Jonathan Baker, Julie Farrar, Anna Knobeloch, Ceily Davis, Eric Spudic). I was also thrilled that I was able to bring Lisa A. Morrison back from the first SAVAGE HARVEST. I put them all through a ton of shit, and they really stepped up to the challenge as actors and they really helped to expand the movie beyond its budgetary constraints. I know it sounds cliché for a director to heap praise on his/her cast, but make no mistake, this cast really came through for me and had my back, which helped me overcome a lot of the obstacles that threatened to knock this production off the rails. I’m indebted to all of them for their tremendous efforts and I hope to be able to work with them again someday.

It had been a while since I’d directed anything feature-length (I'd made a couple feeble attempts at making features before SAVAGE HARVEST 2 came along that will never see the light of day if I have my way), so I was really feeling the weight of the movie on my shoulders. I was working with all these great people that were taking time out of their lives to help me conjure this little opus of mine and I was in constant fear that I was screwing that up due to my inexperience as a director.

Since a good portion of the film is set outdoors, we had to deal with radical shifts in weather. When we started the production in September of 2002, we were pouring sweat outside. The movie is supposed to take place in the fall, and I had my characters dressed in fall attire, so I know that my actors were not very comfortable shooting in these conditions. Once November rolled around, it was an entirely different story. I remember one particular night shoot with Emily and Eric where it had snowed the night before. Since it was a night shoot, I shot mostly in low-angles and used sparse lighting to avoid seeing the snow that was constantly threatening to invade my frame. Other nights got so cold that frost actually began to form on the outside of the camera as we were shooting. Of course, the cold weather became even more unbearable once the blood started flying. That must have surely been a miserable experience for the actors, but to their credit, they remained focused on the task at hand and did whatever was necessary to get the job done.

I couldn’t afford to rent or buy a camera to shoot SAVAGE HARVEST 2, so through various connections I was able to borrow a camera for the production. Unfortunately, the camera I was using (a Sony VX-1000) had been around the block a few times. In fact, this very camera had been used to shoot a majority of the Sub Rosa Extreme flicks that were produced between 2000 and 2002 (about 8 to 9 feature-length projects in all, like THE UNDERTOW and CHINA WHITE SERPENTINE). Needless to say, this camera was very beat up by the time I got my hands on it. We ended up losing large portions of footage, sometimes entire scenes, as a result of using this camera. The biggest scene that got nailed was the first fight sequence with the protagonists and the demon possessed. We did a large number of setups in a very limited amount of time and we wrapped the sequence just as the sun went down. Then, the next day, I checked out the footage and it was completely ruined by the camera (it was later determined that the recording heads on the camera were faulty). It was completely devastating to me. How was I going to explain this to my cast and crew that we have to add another day to the shooting schedule so that we can redo virtually the entire sequence? Needless to say, I was really pissed off at the situation. However, I really couldn’t get pissed at the people that lent me the camera. After all, it was extremely generous on their part to even lend me the camera in the first place. Still, I felt really awful about the chaos I found myself in. I felt like, in some weird way, that I had let my cast and crew down, but I was so far into my shooting schedule and I didn’t have any extra money in the budget to get a new camera, so I really had no choice but to try and forge ahead and pray that the camera would hang in there for the remainder of the shoot (the camera would go on to ruin several more scenes before the shoot was wrapped).

On top of everything else, on the night before Thanksgiving in 2002, I was in a serious car accident which left my truck in ruins and my production schedule shot to shit. That was the breaking point for me. I remember going to the hospital that night, my clothes literally drenched in my own blood. Being that it was the night before Thanksgiving, the overwhelmed emergency room staff had no place to put me…except for a padded room where they kept mentally unstable and/or suicidal patients. I remember sitting in that room, unable to decide whether I wanted to cry or to laugh at the absolute insanity of the situation. I don’t think I did either one though, as my mind was completely fried at the prospect of figuring out what to do with the remainder of my shooting schedule. The accident basically shut the production down for a couple months. We regained our momentum around March of 2003. I was hoping that everyone involved with the production would hang in there during the interim, and I was very happy to see that nobody jumped ship while I was scrambling, with the help of my awesome producers, to keep this project from completely falling apart.

To sum things up, this was, without a doubt, an extremely difficult production for me. There were a lot of things standing in my way to prevent me from finishing this film. I never really had any thoughts of giving up on the project. It’s not really in my nature to quit something that I’ve started. What would be gained by my quitting SAVAGE HARVEST 2? Fortune favors the bold, as they say, and I knew that if I kept pushing forward with the production, the end would eventually justify the means. I’m happy that I didn’t let the movie kick my ass.

You’ve made several short films. One in particular that impressed me is a story told through a sequence of still photographs, called The Quiet Place (which is included on the Savage Harvest 2 DVD). What inspired this approach and how difficult was it compared to traditional film making?

THE QUIET PLACE came about as a result of the same creative anxiety that I was feeling that propelled me to make SAVAGE HARVEST 2. I actually shot THE QUIET PLACE in the summer and fall of 2001 while I was developing the SAVAGE HARVEST 2 script. I really wanted to challenge myself with THE QUIET PLACE. I didn’t have the money to make a film in a conventional way. Even if I did, I wanted to do a project that would somehow incorporate a process that was new for me. I had a 35mm still camera and I wondered if I could use it to create some kind of experimental project with it. When I thought about possible material for the story, I stumbled across a poem that was written by my friend Rebecca Kennebeck called ”Her Soul Flies Free.“ I thought it had a wonderful sense of humanity to it in how it dealt with alienation and sorrow. I adapted it into a story about Hope (played by Julie Farrar, who would go on to play a role in SAVAGE HARVEST 2), a woman who was suffering from a personal loss, which compelled her to retreat to a fantasy world of her own making. Even though she finds solace in this dream world, she is unable to hide from the pain that awaits her when she returns back to reality. Through a continued series of bad choices, she places herself in a downward spiral that begins to take its toll not only in the real world, but in her fantasy world as well. In looking at this story thematically, the notion of memories really stood out for me, and since photographs are the main way people hold onto memories, I felt it was thematically correct to shoot the film in still photographs.

It was fun to shoot the film, since I didn’t have to screw around with location audio, which is something I truly hate having to deal with. I could just focus on the visuals and worry about the sound design in post-production. Since I was shooting this film in an unconventional manner, it was interesting trying to approximate how many stills I needed to cover a particular action. How many stills would I need to cover the motion of Julie walking from point A to point B? Since I wasn’t using a high-speed camera, I knew the movement wouldn’t be fluid, but I still wanted to try and get enough ”footage“ to properly suggest a particular movement in any given scene. Digital photography was not entirely practical at the time when I shot this film, so the fact that I was shooting on film created a little anxiety for me. I never really knew if all of my shots where in focus (the shots that I intended to have in focus anyway) until I got my prints back from the lab.

It must have been quite a challenge for Julie to give a performance in such a piecemeal manner. She had to give her performance one shot at a time, which would be a challenge for any actor, but she’s got a wonderful sense of imagination, and I think she was very good at modifying her performance to the unconventional manner in which I was shooting the film.

When it came to the editing, I was facing an interesting dilemma. My raw footage consisted of over 1,000 photos that had to be individually scanned, cleaned up and matted before I could import into the Avid for editing. After that daunting, and frankly quite tedious task, I then had to figure out the pacing of these inert images to create some sense of movement and narrative cohesion. Since I wasn’t dealing with traditional, real-time movement in my ”raw footage“, I was worried that the final film would last only a couple minutes, which would’ve sucked ass, seeing as how I’d spent a lot of time and money on this project. As I delved deeper into the edit, I eventually began to find the cutting rhythms for the imagery. Once David Moore and Gus Stevenson delivered the amazing ambient score, I was able to fine tune the images even further to create a smooth melding of visuals and soundscapes.

I'm really happy with how the film turned out. It has a dream-like quality to it that I think is rather beautiful and I think it was the unconventional use of still photography in a cinematic way that gives the film that quality. I’m not sure if many people will dig the film. Personally, I love the film and I think I learned a lot making it. Ultimately, since THE QUIET PLACE was truly created in the editing, I think the film was a wonderful learning experience in how I approach post-production. It really opened my eyes, not only to the importance of sound and how it relates to an image to convey meaning, but to think about the purpose of each image and how it correlates with every other image in a film. It’s the understanding of these relationships that can improve my overall approach to filmmaking; whether it’s the writing of the script, or the actual production itself, or the manner in which all of these elements come together in the final edit.

You’ve also been in front of the camera in several films, including Ice From The Sun, Bizarre Lust of a Sexual Deviant, The Undertow and recently, Deadwood Park. Do you enjoy acting as much as directing and what have been your most enjoyable experiences?

Yeah, I really dig the out-of-body experiences I get from acting. It’s cool to assume a persona that’s not necessarily my own. I love the liberation that acting can offer that allows me to break free from the rules and restrictions of everyday life. I also think it's a cool way to infuse any emotional baggage that I may be carrying into a particular character that I'm playing in an attempt to work those problems out. From that perspective, I guess I could view acting as a groovy and cheap form of therapy.

Take BIZARRE LUST OF A SEXUAL DEVIANT, for example. Even though I’m nowhere near as big a loser as the character of Scott Loomis that I play in the film (at least, I don’t think I am), I still had to find some kind of connection to the character to be able to play him. I was able to take the loneliness and alienation that I sometimes feel in my own life and use it to help breathe a little dimension into the character. Since the film dealt with rather dark subject matter, I was able to completely dive into the character and push him, and the emotional boundaries that he existed within, to some rather uncomfortable extremes. It was an empowering experience being able to explore such territory in any way that was saw fit. I felt safe, somehow, doing things that I probably wouldn’t do otherwise. There was a point in the story where I wanted to show the character at his most emotionally raw state. My impulse was to play the scene naked, which I initially shot down due to my own personal self-esteem issues. Perhaps it was because of the professionalism of the production, but I felt comfortable and I was excited about the prospect of taking risks with the character, so I went ahead with the nude scene. Even though the final movie is nowhere near the neighborhood of being perfect, and the critical reactions to the film were way short of being positive, I was still happy with the choices that I made with that performance. I felt that the experience of making the movie really opened me up emotionally and physically in ways that I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t been involved in this movie. Who ever thought that being in a kinky, sleazy, no-budget fetish flick would be such an enriching experience?

I think I’ve continued to learn about acting from the various other roles that I’ve been able to play over the last few years. The thing I really love about whole filmmaking process is that as you gain more experience in one part of the process, such as acting, your skills in other applications, like writing or directing, improve to give you a clearer insight into the overall process of filmmaking as a whole. I’m not sure how much success I’ll be able to achieve as an actor. I think I’ve made some improvements over the course of my career, but whether or not I gain more success as an actor, I know those experiences will come in handy should I continue to explore other aspects of filmmaking that I love such as writing and directing.

How do you see Wicked Pixel developing in the future? Where does Wicked Pixel fit into the American film industry and have you seen any changes in the demand for independent films?

We're always trying to push our creative boundaries at Wicked Pixel Cinema, whether it's the stories that we tell or the means that we go about in telling them. I think Eric and I share the same creative intention of always trying to do something different in each project that we do. Even if we sometimes tread familiar ground in a narrative sense (like SAVAGE HARVEST 2), the way we go about telling each story will be done in a way that will make it unique from anything we've done in the past. Granted, some fans of films like ICE FROM THE SUN and SCRAPBOOK might be turned off by DEADWOOD PARK's more subtle and morose tone, but I think most movie-watchers appreciate the fact that we don't regurgitate the same type of flick over and over again.

It's all about providing alternatives, and I think that's the purpose of production companies like Wicked Pixel Cinema - to give audiences counter-programming to the bland, mainstream films that are coming out of Hollywood, especially when you consider the alarming amount of remakes that are being produced these days. I don't know if Wicked Pixel Cinema will ever be fully acknowledged as being a part of the American filmmaking industry, but as long as there's an audience with a taste from something different, I think we'll always have a home in the marketplace.

Which film makers have inspired you?

Since there are a million films out there vying for my attention, I tend to get inspired by filmmakers who go out of their way to create films that display either a truly unique cinematic voice or that demonstrate some level of technical expertise that goes beyond expectations. I've always found it difficult to pinpoint a favorite director, since my personal tastes in film tend to be rather eclectic. David Cronenberg is a filmmaker that I truly admire. I greatly respect the intelligence and originality that Cronenberg brings to every film that he does, even to his more mainstream work like A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. His early work in horror really left an impression on me. Films like THE BROOD, VIDEODROME, SCANNERS, THE FLY, and DEAD RINGERS showed me it's possible to make films that can give the audience a gut-wrenching visceral experience with gore and special effects (particularly VIDEODROME) while framing that carnage within an intelligent and thought-provoking narrative. Aside from Cronenberg, I really dig Hal Hartley (AMATEUR, SIMPLE MEN, HENRY FOOL) for his wonderful use of quirky characterization and dialog, his judicious use of framing and editing, and his thoughtful use of music (which he writes himself) that collectively form a cinematic style that's uniquely his own.

It's really hard for me to narrow down the list of directors whose films have left an impression on me. Directors like Francis Ford Coppola (APOCALYPSE NOW), Shozin Fukui (964 PINOCCHIO), Vincent Gallo (BUFFALO 66'), Bernard Rose (PAPERHOUSE, CANDYMAN), Alfonso Cuarón (CHILDREN OF MEN), Lodge Kerrigan (CLEAN, SHAVEN), David Gordon Green (GEORGE WASHINGTON), Wes Anderson (THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS), Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO, INSOMNIA, THE PRESTIGE), William Friedkin (THE EXORCIST, THE FRENCH CONNECTION), Richard Kelly (DONNIE DARKO – the theatrical cut), Brad Anderson (SESSION 9), Ti West (THE ROOST), Monte Hellman (TWO-LANE BLACKTOP), Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA), Lucio Fulci (THE BEYOND), David Lynch (ERASERHEAD, LOST HIGHWAY), David Fincher (SEVEN, FIGHT CLUB), Sofia Coppola (LOST IN TRANSLATION), Darren Aronofsky (PI, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, THE FOUNTAIN), Jim Van Bebber (THE MANSON FAMILY), Steven Spielberg (JAWS), M. Night Shyamalan (THE SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE), Quentin Tarantino (PULP FICTION), Fred Vogel (THE REDSIN TOWER) and Lance Weiler (HEAD TRAUMA) have all made films that have left their mark on me.

I'd have to say that Stanze himself has been a great influence on me and my work. I find it truly amazing to see the various styles of filmmaking that he utilizes on each film that he does, from the wild and hallucinogenic acid-trip visuals in ICE FROM THE SUN to the raw, painful, docu-drama techniques he employed in SCRAPBOOK. The aspect of Eric's approach to filmmaking that I find especially intriguing is the fact that he doesn't let budget dictate his creativity. He's never had a substantial budget throughout his entire career, and yet he uses his innovation and intuition to create films that are both truly memorable and that excel far beyond his financial constraints. I can't think of a better source of inspiration than that.

What first attracted you to horror films and are you still as enthusiastic about them?

Thinking back to when I was a teenager, I felt that horror films helped me deal with a lot of the anxieties and insecurities that I was experiencing (bad self-esteem, fear of growing up, obsession with sex, etc.). They also gave me my carnage candy fix (i.e. – boobs and blood) and I liked the rush of adrenaline that they gave me. It was like the thrill one experiences when riding a roller coaster, and I became a junkie, for lack of a better word. The more gruesome the film, the more fun I had! I loved not only the thrills and excitement that horror films gave me, but I also enjoyed the fact that I was stepping outside of the realms of what was considered in good taste. In a sense, these films were helping me to explore and define my emotional and moral boundaries as I grew up. Horror films, in their own demented way, allowed me to rethink the world around me. They didn’t distort my interpretation of the real world. They turned me on to the idea that there is no one right way to view the world and that I can’t take anything in my life for granted.

Of course, as I’ve gotten older, my tastes have become more refined. I still enjoy the gore and the titillation, but I guess I’ve become more and more annoyed at the limited scope of the genre in terms of the horror films that are being made today. I think the horror crowd is a pretty smart bunch of people and yet they are constantly pandered to by the studios with either family-friendly, mindless PG-13 crap or overindulgent gorefests that seem content to merely throw some gore and body parts around without even bothering to tell a decent story. I have the utmost respect for the horror genre. Not only does the horror genre give filmmakers more license to creatively explore than most other genres, but they are remarkable at addressing issues that are fundamentally human (the fear of the unknown, the fear of death, etc.) by making them more approachable. I heard a perfect example of this on David Cronenberg’s audio commentary for THE FLY. He more or less comments on the film’s underlying theme of the impending death of a loved one who's being ravaged by disease. If this subject matter was placed within a typical drama, the material would probably be repulsive and unapproachable for the audience. However, if it’s in the guise of a monster movie, the audience is given a safety buffer that will allow them to feel more comfortable. They'll go along for the ride when the story traverses into the darker regions of human existence.

I’ll always love horror films. I have a hard time connecting to people who don’t have some affinity for the genre. Even though I may stray from horror from time to time for the learning experience, I think the horror genre is the perfect forum to vent my demons. At the end of the day, I want the films that I make to be entertaining, but I don’t see the harm in throwing a few ideas into the mix for viewers to ponder over.

You make no secret of the fact that you had a religious upbringing and that you are a man of faith. How do you balance your beliefs against some of the subject matter tackled by the films that you have been involved in? How would you answer the criticism that horror, gore and cruelty in cinema contributes to a violent society?

I suppose it does seem a bit strange, even contradictory, to profess to be religious when taking into account the nature of the work that I do. To me, it’s all about being honest with myself in my search for truth. Let me start out by saying that I’m hardly a role model for Christianity. I’m a very flawed human being who's made a lot of mistakes in my life (and I’ll probably make many more before I’m done), and even though I don’t always find comfort in institutionalized religion, I find a lot of truth and beauty in the fundamentals of my faith. I went through my angst-ridden bullshit period when I was younger where I tried to discredit the existence of God, but there were too many bizarre occurrences in my life for me to do that. Having accepted that God was a part of my life, I was left to wonder, ”What the fuck is this horror thing about? How can I have this faith while watching these (wonderfully) violent and profane films?“ I felt that these two opposing forces were intertwined somehow and I think the connection lies in how both horror films and religion tackle issues that have deep resonance with me.

I’m a firm believer that people by nature have the propensity to commit evil acts. I think because of that, violence has innate ties to religion. Religion can help us to recognize what we are capable of. It helps us to (hopefully) walk a better path to confront that violence that is a part of us in an effort to subdue it, and eventually vanquish it. I get kind of pissed off when religious-minded people ignore the very real and tangible evil in this world by simply refusing to acknowledge it, rather than confronting it. I find it outlandish and a tad bit hypocritical that these same people deem it necessary to lash out against those supposedly corruptible elements of our society, violent media in particular, as if by doing so the very moral fabric of our society will be mended. What about the image of Christ hanging on the cross? That’s a violent image, and yet it holds a certain truth for people of faith. So too, in my mind, is the violence I use in my films. True, there are certain things that I personally find distasteful and that I’ll probably never incorporate in my work (rape being one of them), but if I wish to remain truthful to the stories that I’m trying to tell, stories that are exploring some kind of truth either about the world around me or about myself, then I should use any and all of the tools at my disposal as a filmmaker to properly address them on film, and that includes violence. I don’t feel like I’m trying to perverse the world through my films. I also don’t feel the need to be didactic with the religious undertones of my work. I feel that my work is an honest reflection of how I see the world and of my place within it. It’s because of that fact that I feel no contradiction between my art and my faith.

I’ve noticed in recent years, particularly after the Columbine shootings, that Americans have a fast-food approach when it comes to solving our nation’s problems. We've got to have answers and we want them right now (and we’ll take fries with that)! Instead of trying to examine the circumstances that led these two kids to decide to violently slaughter several of their classmates, the nation pointed the finger at Marilyn Manson as the cause, which I think is positively moronic. I grew up on violent media as a kid. I started watching FRIDAY THE 13TH films when I was barely a teenager (I was probably younger). I’d always go out and play violent video games at the local arcade like DOUBLE DRAGON and MORTAL KOMBAT. I even used to write slasher stories in high school where I’d playfully name characters that get hacked to pieces after various classmates of mine (one of those stories even won a writing award), but I’ve yet to go on a killing spree. Why is that? Well, I think it all comes down to good parenting. My parents actually gave a shit about me and they were an active part of my life. They sat me down and explained to me the nature of the media I was consuming and that the violence was all fake. Sure, I went through a lot of emotional issues as a kid (what child doesn’t have some sort of emotional issue when they’re growing up), but I guess I always felt that my parents were always there for me to help me work out any problems that I faced in my adolescence. I’m not being boastful about this, because I know there are a lot of people out there that didn’t have that kind of attention from their parents when they were young, and that’s where I think the problem lies. I think people should stop passing the buck by placing the blame for society’s troubles on outside influences, like violent horror films, and start taking more responsibility for their child’s actions. It’s naïve I suppose to expect that kind of honesty to take root in our culture, but I think it would be an impressive start to enact any real force for change in our society.

What are your ambitions with regard to film making?

Well, to tell you the truth, I’m very happy with what I’m doing right now in terms of acting, writing, and directing. It’s been a pretty wild ride these last couple of years as Wicked Pixel Cinema has been growing in some rather exciting directions, both in terms of the people that we collaborate with and our fan base. It will be interesting to see where all this work will take us as Wicked Pixel continues to grow, but whether we’re rubbing elbows with the mainstream or rolling with the punches independent-style, as long as I can continue to learn and grow as a filmmaker, I’ll be a happy man.

What’s next for you, are there any new projects in the pipeline?

Nothing’s set in stone as of right now, but we’re currently developing a brutal slice of gore-drenched mayhem called SEIZURE. It’s been an interesting experience developing the project since I collaborated with Stanze on the screenplay. I’m also currently set to play the lead role (at least until the producers kick my ass to the curb when they find someone better). The film will have an American, 70’s style aesthetic in terms of the sex and violence with a surrealistic, fairy-tale visual flair. I’m really looking forward to moving forward on this one. It’ll definitely be a blast to make. We also have various other projects in development that cover a wide-array of genres, from sci-fi/horror to drama. Whatever we decide to tackle next, it’ll be in keeping with our desire to constantly do something a little bit different than what we've done before.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us Jason and I look forward to seeing your next work.

You are welcome, Steve! Thank you so much for your continued and undying support! I really appreciate it!