Interview: J.R. Bookwalter: Past, Present, and Future. - Part One
J.R. Bookwalter's Tempe Entertainment has been a driving force in the no-to-low budget independent film industry. Sycowalt gets inside J.R.'s head and shows us what he's thinking.
When the definitive history of Underground Cinema is written, there's sure to be a sizeable chapter on J. R. Bookwalter. First breaking on the scene with his George A. Romero homage DEAD NEXT DOOR, Bookwalter has kept on the cusp of underground and low-budget cinema by working on both sides of the camera. Stints with auteur David DeCoteau, and as a haul as producer, director, and effects guru for one-time indie heavy hitter Full Moon, is a testament to his longevity. After 18 years in the business, Bookwalter is older, wiser, and ready to strike out on his own with his self-run company, Tempe Entertainment. Recently, Living-Dead.com had a chance to talk with Bookwalter about his unique career.
L-D: Let's start at the beginning, with probably your most famous and talked-about movie, THE DEAD NEXT DOOR. What inspired you to take up a camera and do such an ambitious project your first time out?
JRB: I don't think I considered THE DEAD NEXT DOOR all that ambitious at the time! (laughs) I have always been missing the "common sense" part of my brain that tells one not to attempt such foolishness...between the ages of 11 and 18 I made more than 50 short films, ranging from a minute to 25 minutes in length, some unfinished. I was always doing crazy stuff in them and never gave it a second thought. I look back on DEAD now, 18 years after starting on it, and wonder why the hell anyone ever listened to me! (laughs) But at the time, it was just the next logical extension of all the movies I had made up to that time. To me, that's the beauty of that film...while I can't stand many things about it looking back, it has a gutsy-ness that many indie films lack. Well, I confess that came more from just not knowing what the hell we were doing and not taking "no" for an answer.
L-D: On DND, you handled all of the production chores yourself, from the project's conception to acting and scoring the film. How long did it take you to complete the entire process?
JRB: I wrote the script in August, 1985 after meeting with Sam Raimi and being encouraged to make a feature on my own instead of finding PA work with others. Raimi had shown interest in kicking money into something if I got it started, and that was all the encouragement I needed. But it was a long and arduous battle...we didn't start actually shooting until the spring of '86 and after the first 2 weeks we realized the camera had an underexposure problem and most of that footage was no good. So we shut down for a couple weeks to regroup and then shot most of the summer of that year. Editing started in the fall, along with reshoots and pickups which lasted part-time through the fall of 1988 when I flew to Los Angeles to lock the edit with Sam. We finally finished the sound mix in the spring of 1989, and immediately after I got the deal to make my second flick, ROBOT NINJA. So it was basically a 4-year odyssey with another year tacked on before it ever saw the light of a release, sparse through it may have been.
L-D: Would you recommend this "hands on" approach to young film makers with more enthusiasm than money?
JRB: It's not for everyone. I have met so many people over the years who think I'm just flat-out nuts for tackling all the things I have. Now, in all honesty, as the years have passed I have given up some aspects of it that no longer appeal to me...I haven't scored the music for a film since 1990, I haven't really acted in my own flicks since OZONE was shot in 1992. And I haven't shot one of my own films since POLYMORPH in 1996. It gets exhausting being a one-man band. Eventually you sort of want to play IN a band and collaborate on some level with others. (laughs)
L-D: You were just a kid (relatively speaking...still in your teens and early twenties) when doing the project. Was your inexperience and youth a hindrance or an advantage when undertaking such a project?
JRB: It's funny because most of the cast & crew of THE DEAD NEXT DOOR were much older than me. There were also a few that were younger. And none of them ever made my age an issue! I think I carried myself with a level of self-assurance that either made people comfortable or at the very least they may have thought I was crazy enough to actually pull something off. And being 19 during most of the shooting was an asset also...you're young and naivé and you think you're invincible, so you're likely to try things that older film makers wouldn't dare, such as zombies on the White House fence! (laughs)
L-D: What is DEAD NEXT DOOR's relationship to Sam Raimi?
JRB: As I mentioned, Raimi wound up financing the bulk of the film over a long haul of 4 years. The original plan was to shoot on VHS video for $8,000 and then 3/4" video for $25,000 and then we decided to shoot it on Super-8mm film with sort of a "whatever we need to spend" budget. (laughs) Sam had always been fascinated by the idea of shooting a feature on Super-8mm and we both felt comfortable with the format, although we made a lot of costly mistakes -- both of us -- because we did not have sufficient knowledge of the electronic post-production process in those days. The film was transferred to 1" video and we did an offline edit on 3/4" video.
L-D: Do you and Raimi still keep in touch so many years later?
JRB: Very infrequently, since we co-own the movie. After the film was finally finished in 1989, I rushed into making movies for another company...I didn't really want to become a fixture of the "Detroit Mafia" but rather forge my own path. And I haven't really ever regretted that decision...I'm totally grateful to Sam and his cohorts for the faith and support on THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, but I'm someone who works best under his own self-made conditions.
L-D: After investing a good chunk of your young life, DEAD NEXT DOOR gets made and distributed. What was the critical reaction to the movie?
JRB: I remember screening it for some of the cast & crew after coming back to Ohio when the sound mix was complete. The general consensus was that the film was good and it had been worth the 4 years of struggle! But the first review didn't come for quite some time after that, I believe it was Film Threat Video Guide. I remember being stunned by the high marks they gave it, and even made the bold claim that I had outdone Romero himself, which of course is ludicrous. (laughs) Over the next few years, the reviews and fan feedback continued to pour in and it was all amazingly positive. It wasn't until a few years ago, with the Internet becoming more prominent, that some bad reviews started to surface. A new generation of fans had come in and they were less forgiving to backyard films...and honestly I can't say that I blame them, because no one is harder on that film now than me!! So now it's pretty 50/50, I'd say...the folks who love it are pretty die-hard and everybody else thinks it's amateur central.
The one thing I do find shocking about today's audience, most of whom I assume are kids...there are a lot of incorrect comments regarding the film's format. I've seen many reviews that trash it because it was shot on video!! I mean, what did we do...add all those Super-8mm emulsion scratches?? I think these kids have been spoiled by DVD...
L-D: I remember some indie and underground film magazines were touting you as underground horror's "Great White Hope". How did all of this buzz affect you and your career?
JRB: I never considered myself anyone's "Great White Hope"...I was (and still am) just a guy trying to make some movies. For awhile I was happy to carry the underground torch, being an advocate of shot-on-video and all that. And a lot of folks looked up to me and were inspired to do their own thing. But none of this ever made it any easier to find work or get movies made! Years ago I predicted the day when everyone would pick up a camcorder and make their own movies...and today it's a reality. It hasn't necessarily made it harder to get my films seen, since we sort of had the jump on everyone...but I wouldn't want to be the poor slob just starting out. No doubt he's got it much tougher being a small fish in a very big pond instead of a small fish in a medium-sized pond!
L-D: How did you go from shooting a self-styled indie film to hooking up with the multiple-monickered David DeCoteau?
JRB: That's question I've been asking myself for years! (laughs) Basically, after 4 years of toiling away on THE DEAD NEXT DOOR I was eager to make another movie. I had two friends with low-budget scripts they were trying to get made so I pitched them to DeCoteau for me to produce. At the time, he didn't trust "unproven" talent with his money so we started talking about something I could direct for him, just to salvage the deal. He threw out a title, ROBOT NINJA, and I guess the allure of making another movie — and on 16mm this time out — was too much to refuse.
As we were finishing ROBOT NINJA, I pitched DeCoteau on the idea of two new projects for my friends, again with me as producer. And that's where SKINNED ALIVE and GHOUL SCHOOL came from. I wound up walking off GHOUL before it started shooting because of creative differences with the script, but showed up on the set to help the filmmaker wherever I could and also keep an eye on DeCoteau's investment.
Once those projects were completed, things dried up and I made my first move to Los Angeles in 1990. I wound up returning to Ohio a year and a half later to start on my first shot-on-video flick. DeCoteau caught wind of what I was planning and commissioned me to do two of them for him, and in the space of the next 7 months that became 6 movies! By that point I was pretty burned out and sick of making "product" so I took a few months off and came back with OZONE, which I'd probably more accurately consider my follow up to DEAD NEXT DOOR. The rest of that stuff was more to pay some bills and keep practicing on someone else's dime. (laughs).
L-D: Like yourself, DeCoteau would work on many facets of a film...from sound effects to producing and directing. Was this style of "guerilla film making" helpful to you or had DEAD NEXT DOOR opened your eyes to the colossal amount of work that goes into a low-budget production (especially with the stop motion effects and such you were doing in the films)?
JRB: One of the reasons DeCoteau and I hit it off was that we had a similar "do-it-yourself" philosophy about making movies. Unfortunately, I took that to an extreme back in those days and put my hands in too many pots! While I consider myself a patient person in many respects, I'm easily discouraged waiting for others to do what I think I can take a decent stab at. So I would try a lot of different things, often to clean up other peoples' messes or just because I thought I could do it better and/or cheaper than others could. While I don't regret it on one hand — I think everyone should take a stab at the various aspects of filmmaking to learn the process fully — it does tend to spread one too thinly.
The irony is, probably the biggest cast & crew I've had in 18 years was on THE DEAD NEXT DOOR...despite the fact that I was writing, producing, directing, editing, acting, doing some makeup FX, squib work and shooting quite a lot of it. It was still a massive undertaking and there was a lot of interest from folks to climb aboard for just the thrill of doing it.
L-D: In this period of your career how many films did you work on besides your own? Any one film stand out above the rest?
JRB: After finishing THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, from early 1989 to early 1992, I wound up doing 9 features, 4 special interest videos and a book with DeCoteau, plus a lot of video sleeve design! Of that stuff, I really only directed ROBOT NINJA and KINGDOM OF THE VAMPIRE. Once I broke off on my own in 1992 with OZONE, I then directed THE SANDMAN and POLYMORPH as well as publishing & editing the first 10 issues of Alternative Cinema and also executive producing & editing BLOODLETTING. There were a few odd jobs in there also...producing MIDNIGHT 2: SEX, DEATH & VIDEOTAPE for John Russo, our NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 25TH ANNIVERSARY DOCUMENTARY, a bunch of editing jobs, launching the Tempe Video label and distributing a buttload of other folks' movies.
As far as stuff standing out, I'd cite OZONE and POLYMORPH as personal faves. I'm especially critical of my own work so it's hard for me to get enough distance to be objective, but OZONE was certainly the one that "saved my soul" at the time.
L-D: As I go through the credits list on the films from this time in your career I keep coming across the same names in the cast and crew (such as actor/director James Black and Jon Killough). Were you working out of a selective group of business people, or were you all friends working cooperatively to hone your craft?
JRB: Each person has a different story...for instance, Jon Killough started with me on DEAD NEXT DOOR, where James Black came to us for ZOMBIE COP in the "dark days" of 1991. For whatever reason, I seem to attract a circle of like-minded individuals. It's just always been that way. These folks would rally around whatever crazy notion I had at the time, and then I'd try to repay the favor in some way down the road, such as Killough getting a shot at writing & directing SKINNED ALIVE or James Black directing THE VAULT.
I'm certainly honored to have these folks around, and even though some of them are not really part of things at the present, being involved with Tempe is sort of like going to high school...eventually we'll have a reunion of some sorts to sit around and reminisce about the "old days." Most recently, over the last few years I've been gathering on-camera interviews with as many of them as I can track down. We've been using these to cut together making-of featurettes for the DVD releases and eventually I might cut a documentary on all the crazy stuff we've all been through.
L-D: Some of the films you worked on in this period were projects for Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment. Correct?
JRB: No, the Full Moon days didn't begin until late 1997, after I moved back to Los Angeles. I had sold Alternative Cinema (magazine) and secured distribution for our last Ohio production, BLOODLETTING, and was looking to move on to something new. While doing some post work for some filmmaker friends out of Wisconsin at my new place in L.A., DeCoteau caught a glimpse of what we were doing and put me to work editing SHRIEKER, a film he was making for Full Moon. The irony of that was that I had been doing this kind of post work on my own flicks all along, but because they were shot on video, DeCoteau couldn't care less. When he saw the stuff applied to a 16mm flick, suddenly he was all interested in taking advantage of the cut-rate prices and fast service.
It wasn't long after SHRIEKER that I wound up taking over as post-production supervisor at Full Moon...which was a blessing and a curse at the same time. The money was too good to pass up and I was doing something I enjoyed, but it became a real drag to see so many bad movies get made that we were expected to "fix" after the fact. And by the end of that era, I was captain of a ship of 20+ people so I was too busy juggling schedules and putting out fires to really be very creative anymore. When that whole thing collapsed in late 1999, I was actually happy to see it go! We continued doing some post work on the side for them since the bulk of the gear we were using was mine to begin with. And that actually lead to me directing WITCHOUSE 2: BLOOD COVEN in early 2000, which is pretty ironic...I had to leave to get hired as a director! (laughs)
L-D: After working for several years both behind the camera and in the editing bay, what made you start your own company, Tempe Entertainment.
JRB: Actually, I had started Tempe back in 1988 before THE DEAD NEXT DOOR was even completed. I called it The Suburban Tempe Company back then, which I changed to just Tempe Entertainment when I moved to L.A. I've always considered myself working for my own company, because even when I've been doing freelance or even "full-time" work for people like Full Moon I was continuing to work on Tempe. But basically, Tempe Video was born out of my frustration with watching the way DeCoteau did things with Cinema Home Video, and the video industry in general. They treat video as a piece of product, which of course it is, but there is also room to release movies with a little TLC, too. I just don't like working for other people...despite how many times I've done it on & off over the years, I get frustrated and fed up and wind up coming back to do my own thing.
L-D: Tempe, for several years, worked alongside Full Moon. Why were some of the films you were Producing coming out under Full Moon's label when you had your own shingle out at the time?
JRB: Everything that was made during the Full Moon/Shadow years — 11 features in all — was done as work for hire. Basically, none of those movies are anything I would have done on my own! In almost all cases except for GROOM LAKE and STITCHES, the development of the movie was left up to us...which is a good thing, but due to their tight release schedules and Charlie's notorious "wait 'til the last minute" financial machinations, none of them really ever had sufficient time to be developed properly. So at best, almost all of the stuff I've made for Full Moon can best be summed up as "nice tries," although I am quite proud of most of them for the time and money. I'm most proud of the two WITCHOUSE sequels, because I was left pretty much completely alone to do my own thing with them. The other ones that stand out in my mind are HORRORVISION, DEAD & ROTTING and JIGSAW. Basically during this time I wasn't doing much with Tempe...we were hired to make these films for Full Moon.
L-D: You mentioned GOOM LAKE, directed by one William (Star Trek, Iron Chef USA) Shatner. By your admission on your website forums, this project nearly drove not only Tempe, but Full Moon/Shadow out of business. Would you care to give your side of the events surrounding the disastrous project?
JRB: I'm saving a full disclosure of the events behind GROOM LAKE for a book on producing I'm writing...I figure the association with Shatner ought to at least sell a few copies. (laughs) As far as it driving Tempe out of business...well, we live a little below the radar and don't have the overhead of many companies so it would take more than a GROOM LAKE to do that! But it was nearly fatal to Full Moon...after that production wrapped everything crawled to a halt, staffers were let go...it was bad. Only two movies were made in the 6 months after GROOM LAKE wrapped — DEMONICUS, which we did not produce, and WITCHOUSE 3: DEMON FIRE. Both of them were made super-cheap, even compared with the DV movies that had been done in 2000.
That said, I knew what a disaster GROOM LAKE was going to be from the get-go. Charlie Band originally wanted to make the movie for $200,000 and everyone told him it was impossible, myself included. The screenwriter was WGA, Shatner the director was DGA and of course to get Shatner in the movie meant a SAG cast. Even under the SAG Low-Budget Modified agreement, it was a big cast with a lot of difficult stunts, big locations and special effects.
Charlie kept telling Shatner the budget was $500,000. So right out of the gate, I was expected to deliver a $500,000 movie for $200,000. By the time the 22-day shoot wrapped, we had spent over twice what Charlie originally wanted to spend, and there were a lot of debts still owed...including money that I had personally loaned to the production to keep things going.
The movie sat around for about 8 months, during which time I was being hung out to dry because I had signed the SAG agreements. Eventually I was able to negotiate a deal for Shatner to take over the movie from Charlie...Shatner paid everyone, myself included, and took the movie out of Full Moon's hands. To make a long story short, the final budget was somewhere near $1.2 million — over 1/3 of which were fees paid to Shatner's attorneys! They're the only ones who made any money on the movie, and probably the only ones who ever will.
