Elston Gunn Chats Up The Director Of The MTV Horror Movie SAVAGE COUNTY!!

Hello. Elston Gunn here. Last year, MTV celebrated Halloween with an original made-for-TV slasher movie, MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16, based on their popular series MY SUPER SWEET 16. This year, horror fans are going to get something a little different: SAVAGE COUNTY, an original horror movie directed by David Harris and executive produced by Craig Brewer (HUSTLE & FLOW, BLACK SNAKE MOAN). The story centers on a group of high school kids, who trespass on a ranch, owned by the Hardell family, to drink beer and skinny dip. When they run out of beer, one of them pounds on the country house and ends up staring down the barrel of a shotgun. His friends come to save him and the elder Hardell ends up dead. When the rest of the Hardell family finds their patriarch murdered, they seek vengeance, hunting down the teens one-by-one. Here is the trailer:

Savage County Killers Trailers - Kasper from Savage County on Vimeo.

Harris shot the project on a limited budget with the original intentions to showcase it as a web series, but now, after thousands of requests to put it on the air, SAVAGE COUNTY will premiere October 7th, at 11EST / 10 C, on MTV2. For more information, visit savagecounty.com . Harris took time to answer questions from AICN. [Elston Gunn]: How did this opportunity to direct SAVAGE COUNTY present itself to you? [David Harris]: I’ve been working on SAVAGE COUNTY for over three years now. I started independently, planning a series of stand-alone shorts that could grow into a longer form project. When I went to work for MTV, my job wasn’t to pitch original content, it was to support established creators who were new to online. My first project was working with Johnny Knoxville to introduce him to information architecture and user experience design on jackassworld.com. Even though I went to film school, I didn’t want to be “that guy” pitching stuff all the time. My boss, David Gale, ran MTV Films for a long time before he left to run MTV New Media. He has a history of supporting new filmmakers in the films he’s produced and the films he’s distributed (ELECTION, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE). When I finally talked to him about Savage County, he was very supportive and gave me a little money to shoot an example episode of what the web series would be like. We shot it in March of 2009. I turned it in the day before I left to get married and figured that would be that. (I’m a pessimist.) When I got back from my honeymoon, I found out the full series was greenlit. [EG]: Talk a little bit about the story and the antagonists. This doesn't sound like a clear cut innocent victims-preyed-upon-by-evildoers-without-reason story. [DH]: You can watch SAVAGE COUNTY taking the side of the killers and the logic of the story holds. The kids in the movie aren’t bad kids, but they kill somebody and try to hide the crime. The killers have an extreme response, but it’s relatable. There are a lot of great horror movies that deal huge punishments to protagonists for fairly minor infractions - having sex, social snobbery, a lack of compassion. My protagonists have committed a serious wrong - their lives would be permanently damaged even outside the context of a slasher movie. I see our killers as a personification of guilt - they’re exactly the people you wouldn’t want coming for you if you’d done something wrong. They’re the incarnation of all the consequences you fear you might have to face. [EG]: What are you bringing to the genre that people wouldn't want to miss? I read that you had trouble finding sponsors for this. [DH]: Well, for $250,000 we didn’t reinvent horror, but we riffed on some of my favorite elements of horror in ways that I’m proud of - it’s Southern, it’s gothic, it’s got killers with personalities and great lines, and we took advantage of all the various video cameras that fill life in 2010 (cell phones, web cams, camcorders) without being gimmicky about it. It’s got a very morbid sense of humor to it. MTV was very cool about going forward on SAVAGE COUNTY without sponsors, and knowing that sponsors were going to be unlikely. We’re far from torture porn territory and the film implies a lot more than it shows, but it does get bloody and apocalyptic in ways that aren’t going to help anyone move units of a diet snack product. In my wildest aspirations, it’ll do really well and somewhere, someone sitting on a mountain of unsold baked corn chips will cry tears of regret. They can then console themselves by eating some of the chips. [EG]: You have said the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE movies were a big influence on you. What other films can you point to that you referenced or drew for inspiration? [DH]: I spent a lot of time watching low-budget horror movies to see how other directors solved problems, but in terms of a creative influence - outside of TCM and TCM II - DELIVERANCE and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN were the main inspirations. DELIVERANCE - not for the “squeal like a pig” scene or the hillbillies, but for the way Boorman built the movie on guilt and shame. You spend a lot of DELIVERANCE watching John Voight and Burt Reynolds watching trees, but it’s extremely tense because you know what they’ve done and what was done to them. There’s 99% less tree-watching in SAVAGE, but I tried to capture some of that slow burn. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was a big influence for the way the Coen brothers made Bardem into a force of nature. He’s unstoppable. Also, Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” for the deadpan of The Misfit; and Icelandic sagas for the viking sense of violence and retribution. Working with the guys at Dickhouse (the jackass production company), I’d seen early cuts from THE WILD AND WONDERFUL WHITES OF WEST VIRGINIA, which definitely informed the way Danny Alvarado and I wrote for the bad guys. [EG]: In what specific ways were you able to stretch the budget? [DH]: Darian Corley, the production designer, and the art department worked their asses off to give SAVAGE COUNTY the look of a much more expensive movie. We filmed in and around Memphis and had a lot of decrepit, scary locations. It was a great start, but almost all of them required massive clean up - from sealing off bird-shit encrusted rooms to removing big-ass snakes, and then had to be dressed from scratch. Everything looks like it’s been there for a hundred years, but it’s all the invention of Darian’s team. Our cinematographer, Paul de Lumen, worked with a really small kit, and whenever we were outside, we basically staged the action around our one 5,000 watt light. He did a lot to make the limitations work for us - taking a glass-half-full approach and using the darkness instead of complaining that he didn’t have any lights. It wasn’t so much stretching dollars as it was people supporting my movie. There was a massive donation of talent from every department, particularly from the cast. [EG]: As you mentioned, you shot this in Memphis with Craig Brewer (HUSTLE & FLOW, BLACK SNAKE MOAN) executive producing. What specific advice did he give you? [DH]: It’s funny, because Craig was directing the TERRIERS pilot when we were shooting, so he never actually got to visit the SAVAGE set. I think it was pretty scary for him, because I was working with Erin Hagee, his producing partner and working with his team, and he basically vouched for the show with everyone in his home town and every time he checked in from TERRIERS he got some kind of horror story about the shoot. So, during the shoot, I got a mix of Craig being very protective of his friends and crew, while at the same time being very encouraging and talking me through problems that you only know how to solve if you’ve been there. The first day of SAVAGE COUNTY was filmed at a pond an hour outside of Memphis - the middle of nowhere - our sound mixer was lost, we were locked out of the grip truck, the RV (and only bathroom) didn’t work, a PA drove a production truck into the pond, my iPhone fell into the water as I was trying to help get the truck out, an AC broke our lens adapter, two people fell through a dock and we ran out of daylight. In David Gale’s words it was “the worst first day I’ve heard of in twenty years of making movies.” The next morning, Craig called first thing to tell me, “I know you think your career is over. It isn’t.” That meant a lot. Craig was also great to have in the edit - he’s really sharp about the way cuts impact an audience and how to keep a film moving - so he gave the kind of notes that you could do and immediately see an impact. [EG]: What was the biggest lesson you learned from directing SAVAGE COUNTY? [DH]: I learned so much, it’s hard to pick out the single biggest lesson. Buy snake-proof wading boots at the beginning of the shoot, not the end. Pack a flashlight when scouting morgues. The answer to “is this enough blood?” is almost always “No.” But, it all came together for me after the shoot when I saw a Kubrick poster that praised him as “Uncompromising.” I think that lie is woven into the myth of filmmaking - that compromise is a weakness. The big lesson is that compromise is unavoidable - especially on the low budget side of things - you’re going to have change forced on you constantly. The secret is making those changes work to the benefit of the movie. It’s the Bruce Lee version of not compromising - the art of not compromising by compromising. SAVAGE COUNTY is my Shaolin temple. [EG]: Could you talk a little bit about your online Demand It experiment with the requests for SAVAGE COUNTY to be aired on MTV? [DH]: Eventful, the company behind the campaign, has a huge list of low-budget horror fans from their campaign for PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. If you want to reach this crowd, they're the ones to call. Being able to substantiate support for a project like this up front is a big deal. Unlike MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16, which builds from an established franchise, SAVAGE COUNTY is a total unknown. It means a lot that 100,000 people have taken the time to watch the trailer, register, and voice their opinion. It shows the network that taking further risks on the project makes sense. I’m glad it worked. People have asked me if the demand campaign was just a publicity stunt. Was it done for publicity? Of course - that’s how we got the word out. Was it just a stunt? Nope. Every network out there has spent more than the cost of SAVAGE COUNTY on all kinds of shows that never see the light of day. It’s great for SAVAGE COUNTY that we got the 100,000 demands. If we hadn’t, I don’t think the project would have survived. I’ve spent a lot of time watching that Eventful odometer roll up towards 100,000 - it’s very good for my mental health that we got there. We're trying to push the envelope a bit on how we market the film outside of the demand campaign. We commissioned artist Vincent Castiglia to paint a poster in his own blood. There are also two comics coming out: one written by me - the first of which is available online at http://comicbookresources.com; and one by writer/producer Nina Bargiel, who has created a whole universe as a prequel - starting at http://savagecountygazette.com - which also lets the audience interact with the story before the movie comes out. We're doing an iPad and iPhone app. All of this stuff is very much home-brew, done by indie creators and developers, but hopefully it adds up to something worthwhile for people who play with it. [EG]: What's next for you? If this is a success, are you up for a follow-up? [DH]: Hopefully, I’m making more movies sooner rather than later. I’d love to make a SAVAGE COUNTY sequel (or maybe prequel - we kill a lot of people I really like in the movie), but I’ve used up every favor I can ask for in the world, so if we make another one, we’re going to need a bigger budget. I’m writing another horror script and working on a comedy. I’ve heard rumors about a BIO-DOME remake with Justin Bieber playing the Pauly Shore role, so I’m going to try for that. We’ll see what happens. 2 In Blu!! 126 Blu-rays Under $10!!