Interview – Director Jim Cummings on the Hair-Raising Creature Effects in THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW and Working With the Legendary Robert Forster
Michelle Swope
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I first discovered Jim Cummings’ work because of his incredibly impressive film Thunder Road, which began as a short film, and later became a feature film. Cummings wrote, directed, and starred in the film, which won multiple awards including the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2016 and the Grand Jury Award at SXSW Film Festival in 2018.
Cummings’ latest film is a horror comedy, which he also wrote, directed, and stars in, called The Wolf of Snow Hollow. The film also stars the late Robert Forster, who plays Cummings’ father, the sheriff of a small town in Utah. The Wolf of Snow Hollow is an extraordinarily fun movie that follows a series of grisly murders that lead the sheriff’s department on a wild hunt for the killer, who might be a werewolf. The film also stars Riki Lindhome, Jimmy Tatro, and Chloe East. The pandemonium and hilarity that ensue, as well as phenomenal creature effects make The Wolf of Snow Hollow a must-see movie and an extremely enjoyable, and much-needed, break from how awful everything in the world is right now.
Dread Central was delighted to have the opportunity to talk with Jim Cummings about what it was like simultaneously writing, directing, and acting in The Wolf of Snow Hollow, working with the legendary Robert Forster, the amazing creature effects, and a lot more. Read on to find out what we talked about!
Orion Classics will release The Wolf of Snow Hollow in theaters and on demand on October 9th.
Dread Central: I thought your previous film, Thunder Road, was fantastic and I’m so glad you decided to make a horror movie this time. I also love that The Wolf of Snow Hollow features your dry sense of humor, which was prominent in Thunder Road. What was your inspiration for this story and why did you want to make a horror movie?
Jim Cummings: I wanted to do Zodiac as a comedy [laughs]. I’m such a fan of David Fincher’s work and I just had the idea that this would be a really funny thing to do; it’s a nice leveling up. I saw so many filmmakers make a breakout independent film and then they would get to make a horror movie as their first studio movie. I had this idea of a terrifying ending for the movie with a simple reveal that would give away who the bad guy is, and it was just so clever to me. I was like, “Oh, man, that would be such a cool shot. I’m such a fan of Hitchcock and Fincher and this could be something like that.”
I started writing it over this hot summer in Los Angeles and I was like, “Okay, this will be fun. We’ll go and have a snowball fight with the rest of my small indie team and maybe it will work.” And then, we couldn’t get anybody to make it. Then Thunder Road won SXSW and went to Cannes and then immediately we had people reaching out to see the script and it happened very quickly. It was this fun, collaborative experience to make these jokes about crazy violence in a small town, and I get to talk about all of the serious stuff of how it affects family and society and it’s a fun detective case. It just spoke to me in a funny way and I had to do it.
DC: You play Robert Forster’s son in The Wolf of Snow Hollow, and the two of you have such a close, but troubled relationship in the film. It’s been almost a year since he passed away and you dedicated the film to him. What was it like working with him?
JC: It was a dream to work with Robert. He was such a champ and such a juggernaut in what he does and knew exactly the tone of the movie and what it was going to be, and he was so much fun to work with. It’s a funny thing; most of the time I’m making movies, I’m not an actor, but I really did get to feel that way with him because we got to play off of each other so much, and he just basically kind of became my dad on set. My dad in real-life is eighty-three and he’s about the same age and so we got to bullshit and have that relationship that a father and son would have. It was almost like Indiana Jones talking to Sean Connery. It was like, “Dad! You can’t do that!” It was this fun back and forth twenty-four hours a day on set. He was just wonderful and such a gentleman to work with and with the cast and crew. We kind of needed somebody who could do the serious, dramatic stuff, but then also be light-hearted and fun and also be okay not looking good all the time.
The movie is about this complicated relationship with the power dynamics inside this small-town sheriff’s department, and the ending of the old guard and this guy dying and the passing of the torch onto the younger generation. It had to be someone of Robert’s caliber and when he said that he would do it, I was like, “Okay, cool. Now we have a movie. It’s not just us pretending. Robert’s going to come on and eat our lunch [laughs] when it comes to performance.” And he did. He’s so good in the film. The monologue about the bank robbery in 1978 is just so good with him telling the story. Then it cuts to me and I’m doing the hand gestures like I’ve heard this story a thousand times and it’s just so honest. Then he’s so pissed off at the end and he goes, “Oh My God. I’ve got eleven emails about these murders. This is worse than my birthday.” [laughs] He was so authentic and so funny.
DC: You wrote, directed, and star in this film, which you also did with Thunder Road. How difficult was it to juggle all those jobs? I’ve never had a filmmaker tell me that it’s a fun experience.
JC: It’s amazing. It is my favorite thing to do. It’s impossible, it’s murder. It is self-flagellation constantly and I get to treat the world, and this thing that we’re making together, as this fun summer camp, as if it is the most important thing in my life and I only get one shot to do it. Some of my biggest inspirations are Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan, and to be able to focus on capturing the thing in the camera, like Buster Keaton, and to get it right on that day, because you’re never coming back to this location. It’s got to be perfect. It is such a rush. It feels like you’re getting a touchdown every time you get the shot and the rest of the crew cheers and it’s like, “Oh, cool! We nailed this long take. Cool. Moving on.”
It is an amazingly cathartic and wonderful experience to make movies and it also means that you’re going to lose a lot of sleep, and probably a few years at the end of your life [laughs]. I’ve cut myself and bruised myself more times than I can count doing this stuff, but the movie is going to live on forever, I’m not going to, and that’s a wonderful kind of Zen experience making movies, especially horror movies. It’s like, you get to get a rag tag team together and make something that is bloody and fun and hopefully, timeless. It’s my favorite thing to do.
DC: Wow, you are the first filmmaker to tell me that! I think it’s amazing that you feel that way.
JC: [laughter] Good!
DC: Can we talk about the creature effects without giving anything away? It looks great!
JC: Yeah! The way I refer to him is “the wolf.” The person who is the werewolf wears the costume in each of the shots as well. So, we wanted to cast someone who we knew could blend in as a townsperson as well as do all the fun, crazy character stuff and wouldn’t be oppressed in wearing this crazy outfit. So, we cast this performer months in advance, knowing that it was going to take ten weeks to get the costume built around a human being. We hadn’t cast basically anybody in the film except for me yet, and we knew that we had to cast this person and that person is unbelievable. The person who plays the wolf, I cannot tell you what an incredible performer that person is. Every moment that we were on set was just so vibrant and alive.
Building the costume, we worked with a guy named Michael Yale, who is a costume designer in Los Angeles, and then my good friend Lauren Wilby, who built the head as this kind of mobile jaw and eyeballs and teeth, and painstakingly placed every hair into the face. I can’t tell you how long and tedious that process is. It’s crazy what she did. It’s insane how much work goes into doing that. I have it in my garage. I’m looking at the costume right now [laughs].
When you’re making the thing on set, it’s very easy for it to look like a person in a dog costume [laughs]. So, working with Natalie Kingston, our cinematographer, it was just a back and forth of like, “How much do we show? Can we have the character in the foreground more, so you’re only seeing fur and claws on the other side?” So, it’s this kind of like tag team, collaborative work experience to make the thing look as scary as it needs to be.
DC: It looks realistic and I couldn’t figure out if you had tweaked it with any CGI or if it was all practical, because it looks really good.
JC: Thank you. It’s almost entirely practical. My buddy, Mike Cisneros, did the visual effects, the computerized CGI, and it’s only for two moments in the movie. With the werewolf costume, you can’t get the same breaths that you would get from a human being, so if a human being is in the scene and they’re breathing and it’s snowy and freezing out, you see their breath. But with a werewolf, you wouldn’t, so we had to amplify that digitally and then we broke his legs backwards in the one big, wide reveal shot so it would be more like a wolf. Those are the two major ones, but they did a phenomenal job. There are a thousand little clean-ups, but basically all of the wolf is practical otherwise.
DC: I hope you will make more genre films in the future! Obviously, we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, but can you tell me what you’re working on next?
JC: Yeah, I’m very lucky. We shot another horror movie, you’ll be happy to hear, called The Beta Test, that’s an independent film. We financed it through a platform called Wefunder, so the public financed the movie and we shot it in November and December. I’ve been editing that all through the pandemic in my garage, so the pandemic isn’t slowing us down. We’re very lucky that we weren’t in the middle of production, so that should be coming out in the next eight months probably. So, we might be able to have like a one-two punch with The Wolf of Snow Hollow and The Beta Test, which is very different, but still funny and scary at the same time.
DC: Are you in The Beta Test, too, or just directing?
JC: [laughter] Yeah, I’m the lead actor and I am a nightmare in that one as well [laughs].
DC: Well, I’m looking forward to that! I really love your work.
JC: Oh, thank you so much! That means a great deal to me. Thank you.
Categorized:Interviews News
