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EXPOSURE - THE
CONCEPT
Okay,
here's the deal: I've always been intrigued by, and scared of,
werewolves. Or
Sasquatches. Or basically any kind of hairy beast-man. My mom
attributes this
minor obsession to the Little Red Riding Hood book that I fixated on as
a small
child. I also recall reading a story wherein a werewolf pressed its
nose to a
window pane -- I ran all the way to my bedroom without looking at any
windows.
This fear/fascination grew into a love of horror films in general, and
monster
movies in particular.
I
remember my teenage self sitting in a theater wondering why the hell I
was
watching "An American Werewolf In London" ("I can't be here --
I'm scared of these things!") yet relishing every minute of it. John
Carpenter's "The Thing" just blew me away, as did the first two
"Alien" films. As an adult my taste in horror has broadened to
include psychological classics like "The Shining" as well as small
gems like "Session Nine".
Still, there's nothing like a good creature
feature.
EXPOSURE
is sort of my attempt to turn the clock back a little, just a hair
before what
some call "torture-porn" became big box office. Don't get me wrong,
two of my very favorite horror films are human-punishment themed: "The
Silence Of The Lambs" and "Misery". Maybe I watch the news too
much now --the older I get, the more films like "Saw" and
"Hostel" just seem like, well, reality. And I want to escape that
reality. So our movie won't appeal to everybody, but I think it will
work for
those who like their thrills a little more old school.
Speaking
of news, the concept for EXPOSURE sprang from that report about the
hiker whose
hand became pinned beneath a boulder. Knowing he would probably die
before
being rescued, this guy chose to cut his own hand off.
Now, I didn't go out and make the "Guy
Cuts His Own Hand Off" movie; I might have needed to get the actual
rights
to that, and that would have required some level of research and
perhaps more
than one phone call. What the story jogged in me was base instinct,
that inborn
sense of danger in "the wild". I began thinking about being lost in
the wilderness, how terrifying it might be to be that vulnerable, that
alone.
And what if I then realized I wasn't alone?
These
notions dovetailed nicely with our practical concerns. Our first film,
a
mockumentary called THE SASQUATCH HUNTERS, had required the efforts of
a full
crew. That had been a wonderful experience but took a long time to pay
the tab
for. Now, years later and with families to consider, we needed a
concept made
for guerrilla filmmaking. Something that would ideally require us to
build only
one small set. (I
had been obsessed with
the "one small set" thing since I saw the movie "Cube",
which was a brilliant example of making a lot from a little.)
This
idea of a lone character in the woods would do the trick. Maybe he
could
stumble upon an abandoned cabin? (Seen it.) A cave? (Nah.) Then I remembered the old
fruit cellars I had
played in as a child. That idea seemed right: there had been a
farmhouse once,
but it was burned and gone now, with nothing left to mark the spot but
a tiny
ice house dug into a hillside. It would be about the size of... oh,
say, my
garage? And we could keep it there for as long as it would take to make
the
movie.
It
didn't quite work out that way. EXPOSURE took nearly five years to make
and we
had to disassemble and move the set several times for various reasons.
But the
central concept held: We had envisioned a film that we could actually
make on
our own terms, on our own timetable. I'm proud of what we accomplished.
Now if I can just shoot that
werewolf script, I think I'll have beastmen totally out of my
system.
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