Tales of Halloween Interview Spotlight: Mike Mendez
Staci Layne Wilson
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Horror hits like V/H/S and The ABCs of Death have proven that the anthology film format has been revived, and so a new omnibus is afoot for 2015 – assembling the likes of Neil Marshall (The Descent), Darren Bousman (The Devil’s Carnival), and Lucky McKee (The Call) behind their collective cameras.
Epic Pictures Group financed and produced Tales of Halloween, which brings together ten segments from different directors into one unified series of stories, all set in an Anytown, USA, suburb terrorized by ghouls, ghosts, and slashers on one, er, epic Halloween night.
We had a chance to chat with Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider!), who is a producer and director on the series along with Axelle Carolyn (Soulmate), and get the lowdown on the production. We caught up with him on the set of Neil Marshall’s segment, which shot in Eagle Rock, CA, one nippy November night.
Dread Central: We know how much everyone on this project loves Halloween, so I’ll bet everyone you asked said “Yes!”…
Mike Mendez: Yeah, totally, it was Axelle’s idea. She said, “Hey why don’t we…” This actually happened not too long ago, and it’s the fastest movie I’ve been involved in that happened in less than six months actually, and to be honest, I would say that she came up with the idea at Son of Monsterpalooza. She said she thought that Neil Marshall would do it, and then we went to Adam Gierasch and Andrew Kasch, and they were all, “We’ll do it,” and then I think we asked Darren Bousman, and he said, “Yeah, I’d do it.” I think that was about it pretty much, and then we had about other six filmmakers we wanted to do. We had Dave Parker, Neil Marshall, Darren Bousman, Axelle Carolyn, and myself, and I told the producers who had done Big Ass Spider! that we had an anthology film… and they met with us, I think, the following Sunday. So, she came up with it Friday, and we had them interested and pretty much ready to commit to it within a week.
DC: Wow!
MM: Yeah, and then the hard part was: That’s a great idea, but how do we make [it] a reality because there’s a lot of moving parts there and how do we have some sort of quality control? So… it’s like, okay, we are friends, we spend all our leisure time together, you know, why don’t we make a thing where we really try to work with each other and try to be a support system but also the difficult part is be a bit of a critiquing system. Like, I don’t know about that, I don’t think that story works or whatever, and that’s hard when you’re doing it with friends and you’re dealing with ten filmmakers. You know, not everybody wants to hear, “I don’t think your story works,” but we got through and we worked together and we got ten stories that I think we were all happy with and we all thought were cool, and here we are now.
God, that’s probably about six months from when it was just an idea at the party, and here we are filming it. We wanted it to be the same night and the same town on Halloween, and so there’s a lot of inner-connectivity to the stories ,and in fact, all of the filmmakers will appear in a lot of the stories throughout. A lot of the characters will cross over [too], but at the same time we want each filmmaker to make kind of a unique thing but that fits into the world together. I think a lot of the problems with an anthology is that it’s so scattered, and it’s like, “That one is good, that one is not so good, that one is not so good, that’s okay, oh it’s good.” You know, you’re kind of taken through a ride, and we wanted… hopefully, we’ll see; we’re only really on Day 4 here. We wanted to do something that was entertaining from the beginning all the way to the end so we’ll see how that goes.
DC: Are all the scripts predicated on one another, or did you all sort of compare notes as you wrote your scripts?
MM: We all compare notes, yeah. I mean, the only directives were that this was a horror movie, that it had to be modern day, that it had to be in the same town, and other than that, that’s about it… and then, when we read all the stories, we would have a meeting and go, “Hey, that’s great, so and so, but I don’t know about that; I think you can do better.” Sometimes it would be met with resistance or sometimes it would be met with appreciation but I felt it was necessary. I mean, it sucks and it was a difficult thing to do but we got through it. I felt that was necessary to kind of call people out, like, “Hey, I don’t think that’s as good as it could be. I think we could do better,” and there where tense moments. But we got through, and I really think it was for the better of the project.
DC: Was there something that wouldn’t work for this anthology?
MM: A period piece wouldn’t work… there’s a lot of stories where the hunter become the hunted as the twist, and so when you have four or five stories where that happens, you’re kind of like, “Oh, I don’t mind if that happens in two, three [stories] tops, but out of ten if half of them are the person you thought was the victim turned out to be the monster, it’s not a big surprise… Okay, we already did that, so it’s finding new angles to things… sometimes they were like not a full-fledged story, and so, there is that… we didn’t want to go too broad comedy and we didn’t want to go too torture porn and we didn’t want to go kiddo. No found footage; that was a big one. We wanted it to be very cinematic.
DC: And what’s your story about ?
MM: Mine is one of the wackier ones. Mine is really funny but certainly very gruesome.
DC: We never would have guessed that from you. (laughs)
MM: I know, right? Who would have thought that? Mine is called “Friday the 31st” and what happens to hockey masked killers on this special day. Nothing is what it seems, and there are all sort of surprises out there.
DC: So, each director writes his or her own script?
MM: Yeah, each director writes their own script or wrote it with a co-writer or something. So, each director generates their own story. Yeah, and tonight we’re here on set with Neil Marshall’s “Bad Seed,” which is about killer jack o’lanterns. The animatronic jack o’lanterns that eat children are here on set tonight, and we ate a child earlier today… that should be a good time. I think that was the other thing… because horror goes in such trends and I think we’re in that kind of spooky ghost Annabelle/Conjuring kind of spell of squeaky door and ghosts and that kind of thing, a lot of us are kind of tired of that. We were all for new stuff that we would like to see that we don’t see on the big screen anymore [and] Neil got a chance to be a little sillier than he usually is.
DC: Yeah, that’s very unusual.
MM: Absolutely, and then I got a chance to really go back to my Sam Raimi / Peter Jackson loving roots… I’m attempting to push onscreen gore to a lot of what we haven’t seen in a long time and go kind of back to the Eighties and back to the double life and evil and things of that nature. That was my goal; I don’t see a lot of it on the big screen, and I really want to see some serious gore. A lot of them are really cool stories. Dave Parker has got a really cool one called “Sweet Tooth,” which is about a kind of creature that lives on Halloween… It’s going to be a good one, and I’m excited to see it.
DC: What’s Axelle’s story about? I know she is a huge fan of Halloween having done her short, “The Halloween Kid.”
MM: Actually, she is one of the brave ones who went for scary. So hers is called “Grimm Grinning Ghost.” It’s about a little Halloween legend, and hopefully that turns out well.
DC: Do you think you guys are going to wrap by the end of the year?
MM: We’ll definitely wrap by the end of the year; our goal is to have the movie done by early January. We have ten filmmakers so it’s like it really can finish pretty quickly. So we are shooting in two days each eight-minute short; really people can do this in a weekend, and then we have to kind of assemble the whole movie to flow, but hopefully all the filmmakers have a final cut of their shorts. We want to have the same kind of process that we did with the stories… we do have to support each other and tell each other, “Hey, that’s too long,” or “We thought about this; what if you try that?” The filmmakers listen or not. I mean, at this point, once you’re done with the short, I think everyone is pretty open. I think there’s a lot of respect among a lot of the filmmakers. I think the world of Marshall; I’m a huge fan, and I’m a fan of a lot of the filmmakers. So, to me, I’d feel foolish not to listen to some of these people, so many people I respect and admire, on what might make my show better or what might make the entire show better. So yes, that’s kind of the plan – to continue to support each other and critique each other and kind of push each other to go further because yes, we kind of are starting to feel like “Hey, this really could be something.”
DC: Exactly.
MM: Yeah, totally, and then the other thing is because the LA horror community can be sort of tight-knit, we really started to draw out all of our friends – Lin Shay and Joe Dante, Adrienne Barbeau, Stuart Gordon, Caroline Williams, and Jaime Duval. It goes on and on and on.
DC: You’ve worked with Lin and Adrienne before…
MM: Yeah, totally. This is the “best of Mike Mendez.” Everybody that I’ve worked with has somehow made it back in here. They’re working because of the connection, not the money.
DC: It’s low budget but definitely high spirits.
MM: Yeah, because it’s like we don’t care about the money, you know! Epic Pictures has been awesome at supporting us and paying for this whole endeavor, and you know, that was the thing. [They said,] “We’ll pay for it if you guys do it cheaply,” and so that was the thing. We set a mark for $100 a day, [and] there is no “favorite nations” across the board and nobody gets anything more than anybody else and we do it together. That led to a nice feeling of community, and again, everyone is doing it because they want to do it and having big fun and two days are short; it’s not a huge commitment.
Tales of Halloween will showcase the following ten short stories:
- “TRICK” Directed by Adam Gierasch
- “BAD SEED” Directed by Neil Marshall
- “GRIMM GRINNING GHOST” Directed by Axelle Carolyn
- “THE WEAK AND THE WICKED” Directed by Paul Solet
- “FRIDAY THE 31st” Directed by Mike Mendez
- “THE RANSOM OF RUSTY REX” Directed by Ryan Schifrin
- “THIS MEANS WAR” Directed by Andrew Kasch and John Skipp
- “THE NIGHT BILLY RAISED HELL” Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
- “SWEET TOOTH” Directed by Dave Parker
- “DING DONG” Directed by Lucky McKee
The film has an ensemble cast including Pat Healy, Barry Bostwick, Noah Segan, Booboo Stewart, Greg Grunberg, Clare Kramer, Alex Essoe, Lin Shaye, Dana Gould, James Duval, Elissa Dowling, Grace Phipps, Pollyana McIntosh, Marc Senter, Tiffany Shepis, John F. Beach, Trent Haaga, Casey Ruggieri, Kristina Klebe, Cerina Vincent, John Savage, Keir Gilchrist, Nick Principe, Amanda Moyer, Jennifer Wenger, Sam Witwer, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Ben Woolf, Caroline Williams, Robert Rusler, Cameron Easton, Austin Falk, Madison Iseman, Daniel Dimaggio, Natalie Castillo, Ben Stillwell, and Hunter Smit.
Cameos include Joe Dante, John Landis, Adam Green, Adam Pascal, Adrianne Curry, Mick Garris, Lombardo Boyer, Graham Skipper, Stuart Gordon, Greg Mclean, Spooky Dan Walker, and Adrienne Barbeau.
Axelle Carolyn created the concept and brought the filmmakers together for this unique production. Tales of Halloween is being produced by Patrick Ewald and Shaked Berenson of Epic Pictures Group along with Mike Mendez and Axelle Carolyn. Composers Frank Ilfman (Big Bad Wolves) and Joseph Bishara (The Conjuring) are both attached to the project.
Synopsis:
Ten stories are woven together by their shared theme of Halloween night in an American suburb, where ghouls, imps, aliens, and axe murderers appear for one night only to terrorize unsuspecting residents.
Categorized:News
