Hair, Jacob (2001 Maniacs)
Dread Central Staff
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Storyboard artist, writer, creature designer; Jacob Hair has worn many hats since he made his way to Hollywood a few years back, and judging by the quality of the man’s work in all fields, there’s a good chance he’ll be sticking around for a while to come.
As part of our on-going features to promote the March 28th release of Tim Sullivan’s 2001 Maniacs on DVD, I sat down with Jacob Hair to chat about his storyboard work on the film, as well as the segment he wrote for the upcoming anthology Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror and how he managed to get on the DVD cover for Maniacs.
Be sure to read through the whole interview, because I’ll be putting in never-before-scenes storyboards for the unflimed “Barrel Roll” death! Enjoy!
Johnny Butane: So how did you hook up with 2001 Maniacs?
Jacob Hair: I met Tim two or three weeks after I moved to L.A. I’d been drawing concepts for Vincent Guastini, who was originally the effects guy during the film’s first incarnation, and he got me involved. I had just finished up art school in Georgia, where I was for three years, so the chance to poke fun at the south was great.
Vinnie hooked me up with Tim because they needed storyboards, they had no storyboard budget whatsoever, and I jumped on board immediately because I just wanted to get my hands dirty. It actually gave me a bit of false hope about L.A. since I was out here for one week and I’d already gotten a gig (laughs).
JB: But I’m sure it helped in the long run with more work…
JH: Definitely! Tim was as a great contact to make; a lot of cool opportunities opened up for me since that gig. Pretty much all the stuff I’ve worked on since then is within a few degrees of 2001 Maniacs.
I’m actually surprised at how close knit the whole horror scene is out here, it’s a very small community of directors and actors, everyone’s at the same cons and screenings and going to the same sites online. Everyone keeps in touch really well.
JB: Did you have any involvement with the DVD?
JH: Personally no, and I don’t think they did any storyboard gallery, but there are a ton of features on there. It’s cool, though, because the storyboards have already gotten a lot of play. They existed for about two years before the movie actually got made, so they got shown around town a lot. Tim had them on some websites, so they were seen by a lot of people and really helped get my name out there, as well. It was kind of the perfect portfolio.
JB: Now did Tim have the storyboards with him during the shoot, or by then do you think he had them memorized?
JH: (Laughs), Yeah, he had it all planned out so far ahead of time, and I’m sure he probably had memorized some of the shots by then. Tim’s able to look at his locations and see the shot he wants to get, so he had a pretty good idea what he needed ahead of time anyway. I don’t even know if he needed the storyboards or if he had just planned it all out in his head already. Drawing them was worthwhile but in the long run he may have been able to get by fine without them! (laughs)
JB: You worked with Tim again on Driftwood, how was that different?
JH: It was actually a lot less of a task, I did a lot less storyboards but got paid more for it, where conversely I did a ton for Maniacs and didn’t get much. Funny how that happens (laughs)!
The main reason it was a lot less work was I think because Tim was a lot more confident this time out; he had two cameras on the shoot and there was just lot more he could do right there on the set. With Maniacs it was all a lot more speculative. It was cool, too, because on Driftwood all the locations were picked out ahead of time so the boards could be matched specifically to the location.
The other thing with Maniacs was that all the boards were made up with the original location, the one that caught fire, in mind, but it worked out because the boards worked a lot better at the final location in Georgia than they did on the original set.
JB: Where you able to be there for any of the Maniacs shoot?
JH: I was able to come down one day. Tim said I had an open invitation to come be a maniac, so I went down myself over a weekend and just spent some time hanging out. I think I was only there for one day of shooting, but it was intense. They were firing off a lot of shots; I was trying to count all the setups and eventually lost count (laughs)!
It was really cool though, cause they shot a scene that I had storyboarded hardcore called The Creep Walk, the part where the main characters are all walking through town and they’re getting nervous, starting to realize what’s going on. I got to play one of the Creeps called Onion Joe. It’s sort of like the Mos Eisley spaceport scene of 2001 Maniacs; Tim just wanted to have all these different, far-out characters. But it was really cool because they shot it almost exactly like I had boarded it. Being on the opposite side of the camera was a bit surreal.
JB: Tim mentioned to me that you actually made it onto the DVD cover, right?
JH: (laughs) Yeah, yeah I am! I promise that was very unplanned, I don’t think anyone at Lionsgate’s art department knew what my involvement was or anything. But now it’s weird because there are pictures and pop-up ads all over the ‘net and I just keep seeing myself! I never expected to be associated with a horror movie, let alone end up on a freakin’ DVD cover with Robert Englund!
JB: Not bad company be in! Tim also said that you got a writing gig recently, can you tell us about that?
JH: Yeah, I recently wrote segment for an urban horror movie called Hood of Horror. I was involved before that, because they had the idea and they were adamant on getting Snoop Dogg attached, so they asked me to come up with a cool illustration of Snoop looking evil and surrounded by all sorts of creatures, so I put that together for them.
Then at some meeting it was proposed that I write one of the segments… There were two guys involved, John McHugh and Tim, and they were both writing segments, so I ended up co-writing one with Tim. Tim had read one of my scripts, cause I am out here trying to write as well, and he had given me some notes on it as a favor. So in return for working on Maniacs for so long with so little pay, he gave me a shot, giving me my first produced writing gig, which was totally awesome. It swung the doors opened and helped me a lot with my writing and helping people see me as not just a storyboards artist, even the ones I had worked for in that capacity before .It was a huge payback!
It was a weird gig, too, because they were like “we’re gonna get Snoop Dogg attached to this and then were gonna go make it”, and then they got Snoop Dogg attached to it and went and made it (laughs)! That’s almost unheard of out here, there are usually so many haung-ups and bumps, but this one was a great example of following through on your intent.
JB: Can you tell us what your segment is about?
JH: The one I co-wrote with Tim…. Well, I’m not exactly sure how much I can say about it, but basically it’s a bizarre story; It’s called “Crossed Out” and it’s all about graffiti writers. When I was back in school I knew some graffiti writers, so I used that to pitch the idea to Tim and John and they both really liked it. Tim helped me develop the idea, and we actually cranked it out really fast, it was really smooth. There’s not much else I can say, but it’s kind of a mix of grim reaper and voodoo mythology put into this little story about graffiti writers.
Like most horror anthologies, Hood is very much born of the EC Comics mythology; all the stories are sort of morality tales. I’m pretty sure there was some blending done when I had finished, as well, to get the whole thing to function as one piece, to keep the themes consistent for each story.
JB: Sounds like it’s going to be really cool.
JH: Yeah, I hope so! I know they’re doing a lot with it post right now, so I’m excited to see how it turns out. I basically wrote it and haven’t had any dealings with the production otherwise. It shot out here and I think I visited the set for maybe one day, which was really cool, but other than that, I’m just as excited to see how it turns out as anyone else! (laughs)
JB: I wanted to ask about one of the credits I see on your IMDB page; I see you were listed as a tattoo designer for a few films. How did you get that gig?
JH: (Laughs) Yeah, that was a gig I got while working under Allan Apone at MEL Efx, who is Samuel L. Jackson’s personal makeup artist. On a few movies when Samuel wanted tattoos for his character, I drew some mock-ups for him and they were decaled onto him.
JB: Sounds like a pretty cool gig! I’ve wondered when you see stuff like Blade who actually took the time to design the tattoos…
JH: They’re usually really crude drawings, too, they’re done pretty quickly. Usually it’s just a one-day gig. It’s actually a lot like real tattoo artists, which is kind of scary, that you’re going to get something permanently engraved on your skin and the artist sits down the night before to sketch it out real quick and the next day he’s inking it into you…
JB: Tell me a bit about your creature designer credits, too…
JH: Well, I’ve been working with Vinnie mostly as well as some other guy. It was for a bunch of different flicks, a lot of it was speculative when I first got out here and some of it never went through, but it’s pretty cool. Usually we’ll get vague description, I usually don’t ever read the script, and they like to see what I come up with. If they’re too specific it could get narrowed down too much too early on, and the conceptual phase is a lot of tinkering around. It’s a lot of getting it wrong, actually, usually taking tons of shots in the dark and figuring out what they don’t want before finally landing on what they do.
It’s the same with storyboarding. That can be a really difficult medium to work in. If you’re capable of doing one good illustration, it’s kind of hard to sit down and do 2000 illustrations really fast, you know? It’s tough to work at 30% of your potential. But the cool thing with storyboards is the quantity, and then seeing it all on screen is a great feeling.
JB: Usually when you sit down to do boards, do they give you a full script to work with, and do you just do the bigger scenes in the script or the entire film?
JH: With Maniacs we did a whole bunch of the kills first and then filled out what needed to be filled in before production, which thankfully we had that two or three delay to work that out! (laughs) Some of the other movies I’ve worked on, we usually do the most explosive and difficult shots first to get them planned out, then we go back and do whatever else needs to be picked up, like if a particular shot stands out in the director’s head they’ll usually have me draw that out first, but I’ve rarely just gotten a script and gone from start to finish.
Sometimes they won’t even get me a script, just some stick figure drawings or, as in most cases, we’ll just have a sit-down to go over it all. Sometimes we end up acting it out to get the stuff down pat. Usually it’ll be at a diner or a studio and we’ll just chat and conceptualize for hours…
JB: That must be a lot of fun…
JH: That is the fun part, what’s kind of tense is when you come home and realize you’ve just plotted out 200 drawings that you have go sketch out! (laughs) But absolutely that’s the most fun part, for me as well as the director, cause usually that’s when they realize that this film will be a blast.
JB: Is storyboarding something you’d like to stick with, or keep coming back to as your career progresses?
JH: It’s weird right now, man. I’m spread out over a lot of different stuff, and I really like the varied opportunities out here in L.A. There’s too many to try and explore and it’s difficult to close yourself off to just one avenue. Storyboarding is something I’ve been doing for 4 1/2 to5 years, and I’ve always been doing it at the same level. I would like to either ramp it up, though not to the point of being union and being locked into doing it consistently, but I definitely feel like it’s a lot less challenging than a lot of the other stuff I’m doing out here now. It’s always the challenges that will push you forward, you know?
I’m sure I’ll always keep it in my back pocket so I can do it when I want to…
JB: Right, I’m sure no matter what production you come to it’s always a bonus to have that artistic capability, I’m sure…
JH: Exactly, especially when I’m creating my own material I can make up illustrations for a more detailed pitch based on the drawings. Same thing with a lot of the directors I’ve worked with out here, some of the stuff I’ve worked on is purely just the director trying to get the wheels going on something. They’ll need some boards or concepts to make the whole pitch look that much more attractive.
JB: So what did you think of 2001 Maniacs when you saw the final film?
JH: The same thing I feel with every other movie I’ve storyboarded and then watch; I feel like I’ve already seen it 50 times, you know? But to be honest, with all the ups and downs that Maniacs went through I’m shocked that so much of it is so close to what was in the first draft of the script that I read however many years ago. I really enjoyed it! I went to one of the first screenings they have out here, and I had a blast.
The kills were pretty much intact, though we had done a barrel roll sequence that changed on the set…
JB: It’s very sad that that didn’t make it in…
JH: Yeah, everyone aggress on he barrel roll situation! (laughs) But I was really pleased with everything they did with it. With the conditions that they made the film under it was pretty amazing; I don’t think the final movie would’ve turned out the way it did if they had made it happen in it’s first incarnation.
JB: So what’s coming up for you that you’d like to talk about?
JH: Well, I’m always doing the creature concepts, working on a bunch of those right now, and I just finished the boards for “Jibaku”, which is Sean Cunningham’s entry in the anthology Trapped Ashes, though I’m not sure how much of that I can talk about. I also drew up some storyboards for a film adaptation of The Villikon Chronicles, which is apparently a pretty popular sci fi comic book, that’s scheduled to shoot sometime in May in Arizona.
But yeah, I’m working on a bunch of stuff right now and hopefully a lot of it will be coming out in the next few years and not suffer years and years of delay or anything!
We wrapped up the conversation there, all in all a good chat for both of us. Big thanks to Jacob for taking the time and to Tim Sullivan for hooking it up. As you know, 2001Maniacs is out on DVD March 28th. Be sure you click here to pre-order the disc. You can also see the trailer here and visit the official Maniacs site here. And hey, if you’re in Toronto, the Rue Morgue crew is showing the film on March 16th (details here), and if you’re in or near L.A., you should hit Dark Delicacies on the day of the disc’s release to meet pretty much everyone involved with the film!
That’s a lotta links! Stick around for more 2001 Maniacs interviews over the coming weeks!
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