Phil Gelatt's film The Bleeding House got picked up by the Tribeca Film Festival!
It'll also be on cable pay-per-view from April 20th - June 20th and available on DVD sometime after that. It seemed like a good time to find out what Phil has been up to since his first interview, so I asked him a few questions. Enjoy!:
1) You are both writer and director of The Bleeding House which will premier at the Tribeca Film Festival. How did you get involved with the project?
I originated the project myself, years and years ago. I used to be an assistant to some independent film producers in New York. And then I quit my job to start writing, and one of the first things I wrote was the script that would eventually become The Bleeding House. It was a much much different story back then. I never intended to direct it myself but eventually that idea became very appealing and luckily I wrote it to be a very very low budget movie so we were able to raise the money from family and friends. And I'm still a bit in shock that Tribeca picked it up. It'll be in a festival AND on Video on Demand AND on DVD. I even got to do a director's commentary... on which I sound completely silly.
2) How did you come up with the story?
I really started with the setting (old house in the middle of nowhere) and an interest in doing some genre tweaking (I wanted to play with some of the formal aspects of a slasher film and make them do something else). And from there a story just kind of formed bit by bit. I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave at the time so I can feel a heavy Cave influence in the whole thing, in particular in the figure of the villain of the piece who is even named Nick. Luckily, I had producers working with me who are talented at story development, they were an enormous resource in refining and developing the whole thing.
3) Are you a big horror fan or just a versatile writer?
I am a big horror fan but in a kind of an odd way. I guess I self-identify as a horror fan but I have very specific types of horror, flavors of horror, if you will, that I like. I'm a discerning (read: picky) fan. Like Clive Barker? yes. Stephen King? Not really, no thanks. H.P. Lovecraft? Definitely. The Saw franchise? Never. Argento? Oh yeah. Eli Roth? Jury's still out. I'm a big fan of heavily atmospheric horror, somewhere between suspense and nightmare; I usually like the sinister over the explicit. And I like horror that is blended and mixed with other genres; horror that is masquerading as something else.
4) I hear that Victoria Dalpe is quite the hot little number. Were you tempted to break out the old casting couch when you knew she was up for the part of Beth?
She is QUITE the hot little number. I tried to get her onto the old casting couch but she thwarted me. She has a very particular process, you know.
(Okay, for those of you who don't know Phil, Victoria is his wife.)
5) What's the best / worst thing about directing?
God, that's a hard one. The best thing is really everything you do that isn't on set. Editing is great, writing is great, pre-production is great. Being on set is incredibly hard, at least it was for me. You have to be completely focused and making quick decisions, correctly, for 12+ hours a day. It is exhausting.
5 ½) how bossy are you in your regular life?
I'm not terribly bossy in my regular life, I'm more stern and occasionally asshole-y, especially when in discussions on certain topics. Strangely, I don't think any of that came out while I was directing. I was more terrified that I was going to screw something up.
6) Looks like your graphic novel Petrograd will be out with Oni Press soon. What else are you working on?
Right now I'm finishing up a screenplay that I was hired to write almost a year ago. It's been a long process but I think it's some of my best work as a writer actually. Here's hoping it actually gets made. I'm also putting the finishing touches on a series called PARIAH that is coming out this summer from Sea Lion Books.
http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/bleeding_house-film35065.html
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