Beyond Fest Programmers Chat Their Favorites Of The Fest and How They Make Their Annual Picks
Mary Beth McAndrews
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Beyond Fest is one of the premier horror film festivals in the country, where films such as Raw, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Freaky, and Psycho Goreman have screened. Now, after being hindered by the pandemic, the festival came back in its full in-person glory, screening Halloween Kills, Antlers, Titane, The Empty Man, and so much more. There were incredible Q&As with surprise appearances by the likes of Guillermo Del Toro. The festival lived up to the hype and more with its grand return to the city of Los Angeles.
Dread Central sat down with festival programmer Evrim Ersoy, as well as festival programmers and co-founders Grant Moninger and Christian Parkes, to discuss the festival’s return.
Dread Central: Beyond Fest is one of the most hyped-up festivals around. What has that experience been like for event programmers, to see the love and excitement around the festival?
Evrim Ersoy: It’s very scary. It still is. It’s like, you make some gifts for your parents. And there’s that very small chance your parents are going to go, “You’re not very talented and these are terrible gifts and we hate you now.” So every year you work on it for 10 months, then you put it to bed. Then the moment the press release goes out, you’re frantically refreshing social media looking for the angry comments, no one likes it. It’s terrible. We’re all going to die. No one’s going to like it. And then, slowly, the audience does like it. People want to see stuff and you haven’t done a terrible job. And you might live another day. Then you start to feel some relief and some excitement.
Grant Moninger: The reaction has grown naturally over the nine years. Year one, we had to convince people that there even was a festival and try to explain what it is and get people involved. And through Goblin, and the screens of Goblin people found it, maybe found a couple of the screenings that year. But now this year we were trending number one in Los Angeles. I felt like we had the amount [of interest] that probably could have filled Dodger Stadium for some of these events. So the embrace is great. Through and through the people who’ve been around Beyond Fest, that’s coming for nine years, they secure their tickets, they have nothing but love for the festival. It’s a great feeling that we share with this community of people.
DC: L.A. also has such a great horror community and an amazing horror scene. I wanted to hear what your experiences have been interacting with the horror community, not just this year, but your time being involved with the festival.
Ersoy: I actually am based in London. So I travel to the festival. And then afterward, I leave. But I am very grateful that the horror communities embrace those and they come to see everything, not just Halloween Kills, which is amazing. And we’re so grateful to have it. But also they take chances on the smaller ones, too. That’s really gratifying for someone who’s looking for these new voices, unique gems, just all across the year.
Moninger: We keep in touch with horror film lovers all year long. We’re constantly engaged with the community in L.A. Then there’s the horror community of the masters of horror, Don Coscarelli and Mick {Garris], everybody always coming out and supporting and wearing the Beyond Fest shirts throughout the year. So it’s a great support system, both from the people who have just been coming to the films, and through the filmmakers who come and celebrate at Beyond Fest.
Christian Parkes: I think it’s also a reflection of how we try and program as well because we recognize that there isn’t just one type of horror fan or one type of genre fan or one type of film fan. There are some people who will exclusively watch ’80s slasher movies. And you know what we’ve got a place for them. That’s the thing. But then we’ve also got a place for people who aren’t into that, it can be folk horror. It can be like classic grindhouse stuff. It can be really progressive stuff like Possession. So, there’s ultimately it’s not one size of football. We want to appeal to as many of those different audiences as possible.
I come back to the very beginning of Beyond Fest, which is original inspiration was the Cinematheque way back when pre Beyond Fest sell, probably like 15 years ago, maybe probably 18 years ago. They did this weird program in the middle of the summer.
That was like sci-fi and horror. And it literally went one day with Ray Harryhausen. The next day was Park Chan-Wook, Miike Takashi. It was crazy. It didn’t make any sense. But I went to all those screenings and it was the one time in L.A., a massive city that wasn’t connected and didn’t have community, where I actually felt that I was at home because I was surrounded by my people. And again, whether it was the Ray Harryhausen movie or the Miike Takashi movie, I just felt like I was home. It’s that spirit and that sentiment that we wanted to bring to Beyond Fest.
We’ll premiere South Of Heaven at the Shudder Theater of Los Feliz, or you’re going to see Halloween Kills. This is your home. We’re film fans, and we’re genre fans. We’ve just extended that into creating this festival. And so we’ve always just looked at this thing from a fan festival as opposed to anything else.
DC: I would love to hear also like how you guys approach balancing both premieres of new films versus these retrospectives. What does that kind of process look like for the programming team?
Ersoy: A lot of it is about the stuff that we love and we want to celebrate. When we find out that there’s a new restoration of Possession, it’s a no-brainer because I love that film. I’ve seen that film so many times it’s ingrained in my brain. I can just see it when I close my eyes. Of course I want to share that new 4K with an audience who’s just going to get envelope[d by the film]. We have a lot of friends, such as studios and sales agencies who know sort of approach us with this stuff. A case in point is New York Ninja. We booked New York Ninja, I can now say a year ago.
DC: Oh, wow.
Ersoy: So, October, 2020. They said, we have this film and it’s going to be a world premiere. It’s been lost for 37 years, and we just restored it. Here’s the first cut with no sound. I said this is a hundred percent Beyond Fest. If you could hold up a year, I’ll give you a celebration that is truly worthy of the work you’ve done on this. So we were waiting for a year. It’s just working with the partners and finding the things that we love and celebrating them, especially in terms of retrospectives and the new stuff.
It’s filmmakers we want to celebrate, stories we want to celebrate, and stuff we think that the audience is really going to like. All of us have very different tastes and sometimes it’s a lot of back and forth. But I know that if someone on the team really loves something, it’s going to appeal to a certain part of the audience, and people are going to come out. So it’s an enriched program.
DC: That’s awesome.
Parkes: There’s a filter of two steps. The first one, is there an audience that needs and wants to see the film, and then the second filter is, do we believe in the film. There are a lot of films that we don’t play, but we know that they could have an audience and it’s because the film might not be that good.
It’s because we’re putting our name and the Beyond Fest brand identity [on it]. Ultimately what we want is people to come and see what claims so many themselves have not seen and they might not have heard much about it. A lot of these films, in particular, U.S. premiere, World premiere, these small film, these filmmakers that we love and in particular, who’s following these filmmakers for years and years. We want to expose them to audiences. You should feel confident and comfortable that if you haven’t seen a film, also if you don’t know about this film that’s playing, you should be able to go into the theater knowing it’s going to be awesome. That’s a big key consideration.
DC: What is the film that you’re most excited about screening this year?
Ersoy: I keep saying this, but I really want a lot of people to come and see The Empty Man. It had a sloppy release and David Prior was one of the most talented people working in the industry. And he really, really, really deserves to connect with the audience in the way that I know that film.
Parkes: I’m going to go with two. I’m going to go with New York Ninja and Antlers. The reason being, as I said earlier, the New York Ninja story started last year. But then even before that, Antlers, we started the conversation with Antlers, which is quite an essential classic art movie produced by Guillermo Del Toro, directed by Scott Cooper who is a serious director. And the conversations about us screening this film started a year and a half ago.
We started from January of last year, pre-pandemic about doing the special screening outside of the fest, because it was like April or something of last year. And we persevered, the filmmakers persevered, and the people releasing the film, they persevered as well. And we all sat together and it’s a lot of work paid off the same. The same thing as well, I got to say for Halloween. After we’d seen the first Halloween, that’d been on a Saturday. Monday morning emails were sent to Jason Blum and the rest of the team of Blum. He actually said, this is unbelievable, we have to do the next one. There was a little pushback, but we all just stayed on it, we all stayed committed. And so those were really, really special.
Moninger: I would say to me, the L.A. films, I’m excited to see the things that kind of show L.A. I love Michael Mann, glad we are having his picture. And psychotic Tom Cruise is the best Tom Cruise.
DC: It is the best Tom Cruise.
Moninger: They’re like maybe this mad boy could do couple other psychotic films. So I’m excited to see that stuff. And then the film Bernard Rose made called Traveling Light. That was literally shot across the street.
DC: Who are you most excited that you got to be able to be a part of a live Q&A with the audience? Because you guys got some incredible talent.
Ersoy: I’d like to jump in on this one and say, we have Leon Issac and Vinegar Syndrome and Cynthia Rothrock on stage. The 12-year-old me is screaming right now. So I’m incredibly excited. I might actually get all of that on stage. So if anyone wants to watch and gold man fumble, they can come to New York Ninja.
Parkes: Or they can see Blood for Dracula and question at the alt of the great Udo Kier. That is the 12-year-old in me screaming. That is the 20-year-old in me screaming the 30-year-old, the 40-year-old. It is every version of me screaming for the four decades.
Moninger: I got to agree with you. This is the first time we’ve got [Kier] out just strictly to celebrate Udo, his career. Everyone’s had an adventure with Udo when they meet Udo. So he’s a lot of fun
DC: It sounds like working as a programmer is incredible. And also maybe an excuse to talk to some incredible people that you’ve always wanted to meet.
Ersoy: I want to celebrate the work of these people with the audience, more than just like being able to shake someone’s hand. Udo Kier has been in film for over 35-40 years and every film he brings something interesting. These incredible actors and these incredible directors who sort of work all their lives and they never get that kind of treatment. At Beyond Fest we can do that.
DC: That’s incredible. Is there anything that you’re really excited for the future of the festival?
Parkes: Sleep.
Moninger: Christian was fighting for the film Raw years ago. No one knew what it was. And we had to basically wrestle it from another festival in order to do that. And then we have Titane this year. So as you talk about the future, we’re not even sure what that is. It might be one of the films Ed picked over the last year. And in four years, there’s this amazing film that everyone’s going to want because we’ve shown their films earlier and we already have a foundation for the career. That might be what we’re excited about for the future. It’s just unknown. Today we kind of forecast tomorrow.
Categorized:Interviews News
