March 19, 2005.

Chuck Hartsell is the co-director of the low-budget zombie comedy "Hide and Creep", in which he also plays one of the main characters (appropriately named Chuck, natch). Hailing from Alabama, Chuck was nice enough to sit down and talk about "Hide and Creep", the art of making zombie movies on a budget, and why lesbian zombies are money in the bank. 

Me: First of all, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to do this, Chuck. I don't know what you guys do for fun over there in Alabama in-between making zombie movies and football games, but your time is appreciated.

First question: in my review of "Hide and Creep", I referred to your cast as "semi-pro". Now, did any of the actors read my review, and should I be worried? Say, run out and buy stock in Kevlar?

Chuck Hartsell: You're quite welcome, and thank you very much for the interview. I'll try my best to be both entertaining and insightful. Or at least not come off as too much of a jackass.

No, you won't need any Kevlar for that remark. The "unsightly" male nudity comment, though, didn't go over well with Michael (the actor who played Michael and Lee), but I think he'll be ok. Personally, I think all male nudity leans towards the unsightly. That's why it always gets a laugh.

Actually, the semi-pro comment went over rather well considering most of the cast definitely don't consider themselves professional actors. Kyle Holman, who played Keith, was our most professional film actor, and we also two great, local stage actors playing the parts of Barbara and Reverend Smith, and a few others with some experience in short films, but beyond that we primarily had non-professionals who we just felt were the right fit for the parts. I think that's really one of the biggest tricks in no-budget filmmaking, especially when working with as large a number of speaking parts as we had. Chance (writer/co-director) kept saying in pre-production that he felt we could get one or two good lines out of anybody. I didn't find that to be 100% true, but it's pretty close. The trick is casting people in the roles who are already close to what you want those characters to be.

I should confess something: My initial grade for the movie was 4 stars (out of 5), but I deducted half a star for the open-ended conclusion. After watching Chuck et al battle zombies for so long, I was a tad peeved that you guys threw such an open-ended conclusion on me. Especially with the Chuckster. Was this the ending you planned all along, or did something happen during production/scripting?

UGH! I half star off just for the ending! This is like being back in college.

Well, I ok, I guess that's fair. You're not the first to express unhappiness with the ending. Some people have said it's just right, and others have said it feels like the movie just stops, so you're definitely not alone in that camp.

What we shot was what was there in the final script, more or less. And in script form it seemed right. It felt like that was, tonally, a fitting end to the movie. Chuck has a chance to escape while it's safe, but he's such a football fanatic he stays to watch the game. Seemed like a good final joke. But, when I watch the finished movie now, do I feel the same? I'm kinda torn. On one level, as a viewer, yeah, I can see where it feels like we put you on a roller coaster, ride you around, bring up this final, big hill and you're thinking, wow, there's going to be some loops or some crazy shit down the other side to finish this off, but then we get you to the top and go, ok, ride's over. On the other hand, I feel like it does fit the tone of the movie, which is more comedic than horror.

So I take it there was never any intention of continuing the story by way of a sequel? Then again, the possibility of a sequel would depend on how the film does in distribution. Speaking of which, where are you in distributing the film, and can zombie lovers hope to be able to rent the film from their local Blockbusters or buy it online on Amazon by the end of 2005?

We've since joked about the idea of a sequel, but that was never a thought during the making of the movie and definitely didn't have any bearing on the end. I mean, here we were making our first feature with just Chance's credit card and a couple of friends who chucked in a few bucks for financing. The best we hoped for back then was that we'd get into some festivals. Video distribution was like this lofty dream that didn't seem likely, but we hope for all the same. So no way, the idea of a sequel at that point, man, that would have been hubris in the extreme.

With the finished film, though, everyone who worked on it is thrilled with how it turned it, and we got this incredible reaction to it at our premiere screening at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival back in September, so who knows. We don't have any plans to make a sequel, but hey, if we got distribution and HIDE AND CREEP became this big, cult hit, who knows, we might go back and see what else happens those characters. Well, the one's that we didn't kill.

As for distribution, I hate to pull out that ole chestnut, "I can't say much right now," but ... Ok, the thing is, we are talking to a couple of interested companies right now, and it's looking really good that, yes, zombie lovers will hopefully find our movie on video store shelves before the end of 2005, but, honestly, even talking about it before everything is signed scares the piss out of me. I'm not being all superstitious here either. It's crazy, man, but we're finding out fast that in this business excitement can change to ho-hum to nothing in a day. It's like, first call; "Love the movie! We can sell this!" Next call; "We're looking into, thinking of how we can market it. We'll get back to you." Last call; "He's in a meeting and can't come to the phone right now, but he'll get back to you soon?"

At the same time, right now we're talking to some great people, so I'm cautiously excited that we'll have something to announce soon.

You mention (co-director/writer) Chance Shirley and his credit card. I take it the budget was meager, and that production came about guerilla style? How much was the final production budget, and why the decision to shoot on film instead of video (or even digital video)?

That term, guerilla filmmaking, gets bandied about a lot lately. It's become one of those cool things to call yourself. I'm a guerilla filmmaker. I keep hearing about these "guerilla filmmakers" who only had a million dollars do work with and it was sooo hard, and I'm like, man, I don't know how far a million goes in Hollywood, but if Chance and I had that kind of money to work with I wouldn't be bitching about anything. We'd be working a kicked back, relaxed set, that's for sure.

Seriously, though, not trying to get all indignant about it, but I definitely think there's a big difference between what's considered low-budget filmmaking in Hollywood terms and real guerilla filmmaking. I think the thing is, if you're talking about guerilla filmmaking and you're happy about making movies that way, then you probably haven't really made a movie guerilla style. It's a pain in the ass. We were shooting only on weekends because everyone working the film has a day job, and we sure weren't paying them anything. That put the bulk of production running over the course of 6 months. Among other issues, that can create continuity problems simply because it's difficult to keep up with so much over such a long period of time.

And then there's location problems, prop problems, effects problems, all things you could throw some money at if you had it, but guerilla style you work around it. You've got all these people out working for you, giving up their free time just because they love film, love the process of making a film and want to be a part of it, and that's great, and everyone we worked with was fantastic, but just by the nature of how we were working, there were a few days where the crew was me on camera and Chance on audio and a couple of poor actors hoping we can give them some direction at the same time.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't give up the experience for anything. It can be an invigorating process, and, for all my complaints, there are some good things that come out of working that way. But that doesn't mean I want to do it again. I mean, I will if that's the only way to get the next picture made, but I'd much prefer a real budget, even a small one, than to do the credit card thing again.

Speaking of, you asked about the final budget. I don't recall right off hand. Stacey Sessions (co-producer) handled all the accounting, so I'd have to check with her, but just imagine about how much the limit is on someone's credit card, someone with good credit, I should say, and that's about right.

So after all that you might say to me, ok genius, so why shoot on Super 16 film, which is going to be much more expensive than digital video. I guess the short answer is that Chance and I are film geeks. We shot a short film a year before on 16mm and we were hooked. I'm definitely not anti-video. There's a lot of great looking digital video films out there, and the look just keeps getting better and better as the technology progresses, but film still has an asthetic that video just hasn't quite captured yet, and it was that look and feel that we really felt was important to the overall production of HIDE AND CREEP.

I absolutely think you guys chose correctly by going with film. Video, even digital, still carries a stigma nowadays among the general populace. 

So up to now you guys have been doing short films. Why choose a zombie comedy as your first feature length film? Just big fans of the genre, or did you choose it for other reasons? (Easy to make? Cheaper to make? The niche audience?)

I think you're absolutely right about the stigma of video. It's certainly becoming more widely accepted, which is great, but I think you have to use it for the right stories or the audience won't readily accept it. You have to look at it as just one more tool filmmakers can use to tell a story. And I think like any other tool in filmmaker, you have to decide what's the right way to tell your story, and then use the best tools to get it done. I've seen some great stuff that was shot on video and the medium really added something to the overall look and feel of the movie. With our film, once we decided on how we were going to tell the story and how we wanted it to look, film was really the best way to go, and, luckily, we had the resources to do that.

How we came up with our little zombie tale is a bit longer story, but I'll try to give you the condensed version. Chance and I had been working together for a couple of years, done a few short films, and had occasionally discussed what me might do when we tried to leap into features. One day my sister, who lives up in New York City, called and asked if we would mind doing a quick little video to send to her husband, Ces, on his birthday and she'd play it at the party she was putting together for him. Just a bunch of us standing around wishing him a happy birthday, that sort of thing. We decided to do something a little stranger, just because, and we made in one night a short film about my brother (Chris from HIDE AND CREEP) and I trying to call Ces and wish him a happy birthday while at the same time we were fighting off zombies trying to break into the house. It was all really silly, but he got a big kick out of it and they started showing it around and everyone that saw it loved it. So we started showing it to people to, and suddenly this little shot-on-video birthday card we did in one night was the best thing we'd ever done. Which of course made us feel great since we'd just spent about three grand shooting a short film on 16mm.

Well, I didn't end up making that story very short, did I. Oh well. The point is, the short, while not the basis story-wise for HIDE AND CREEP, did give as a general story idea, but more importantly, a tone we wanted to go for. A very dry comedy taking place in a horror movie world.

But, you know, after we had the idea, yeah, a lot of those other reasons you mentioned actually did come into play. I'm a huge fan of the horror genre as a whole, but Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD is definitely one of my favorites, so I was all about making a zombie film. Then there's certainly the idea that with a zombie movie there's already an audience out there, so maybe, maybe, maybe if we do a good job we can get a distribution deal. And finally, in terms of makeup, zombies are a monster you can do on the cheap.

I don't actually believe any of those reasons alone are good enough to make a film. You've really got to be happy with the story you're going to tell because you're going to be spending a hell of a lot of time with it. But, I think once we had this idea that we were happy with and excited about, all these other reasons why it was a good idea for this to be our first feature just fell into place.

Okay, you've finished shooting. You've finished cutting. You've finished everything that needs to be finished, that's under your control. Looking at the final product, what is the one thing you wished you hadn't done, or you wish you had done to make the movie better? What is that one regret about the movie that you have, that you know, without a doubt, you could have changed if only you had thought of it back then?

Oh, geez, I could go on for a while listing all the things I learned during the making of the movie that I wish I’d known before hand. But let’s see, one thing that really would have made the movie better? Hmm. Well, pre-production planning was a big area where I look back and I think I could have done a lot more work in. But, you know, I don’t know if you can ever plan for everything that’s going to come up on a small indie film.

One thing definitely when I look at the movie now and I just wish we’d put more into was gore effects. Not that I want it to be this over the top gorefest because it is primarily a comedy about the people in this town, but I really think we underestimated the amount of monster and gore stuff you can get away with in this type of comedy. I mean, money was certainly one issue with the effects, but still I think, at least for me, it came down to worrying that too much gore would have a negative impact on the comedy, and it really was quite the opposite. The wacky gore stuff, like the guy getting his head torn open (which was actually shot and added in after the first rough cut of the movie), really enhanced the film and the darker comic aspects of it. So, yeah, if I was going to go back and change something, there’d be at least two or three more good effects scenes.

It's interesting you'd say that. My biggest gripe with low-budget zombie films has always been the obsession with pouring on the gore (badly rendered gore, I might add) and not enough attention to the story/narrative.

Moving on... 

My favorite scene in the entire movie is the grocery store sequence. That has got to be the funniest damn thing I've ever seen. If the whole film was terrible, I'd still give you 2.5 stars just for that 5-minute scene. Who came up with that? And speaking of which, what is Chuck Hartsell's favorite scene in the movie?

In a pre-script discussion, I talked about the idea of people trying to go to a mall, like they’d seen in DAWN OF THE DEAD, and the joke would be that with such a huge crowd, the mall manager would have all the stores open for business. Later when writing the script, Chance took that notion and the line about “even though we’re in the midst of an unholy siege, the stores are still open for business,” and moved it to a grocery store and conceived that whole scene. And it plays out in the film pretty much exactly as it’s written in the script, so that’s hats off to Chance for a hell of a piece of writing.

I have to say, it’s probably my favorite scene in the whole film too. For one, I’m not in it, which rocks. Really, though, it just turned out incredible. It’s a great piece of writing that I think we executed wonderfully. And tying it all together is that fantastic piece of music that Eric McGinty wrote for it.

My second favorite scene is right after that when Keith returns to the Live Bait and finds the zombie strippers. It’s another scene like the grocery store where I watch it and think, yeah we got that just right.

The zombie strippers! I love that scene!

Okay, Chuck, it's 10:41 p.m. here (Central Time), so it's about time I let you go. But a couple of last questions that I MUST ask:

1) Why the alien subplot?

2) What's next for you and Chance?

3) If there was really a zombie plague, would you a) Chill at home with a beer and await the end; b) Race to the nearest mall and shack up with some SWAT guys and wait for Tom Savini to show up; or c) Grab a machete, some pistols, and go out in a blaze of glory?

1) Ah, the aliens! I almost forgot. Way back before we had an idea what we were going to do with a feature, that remake of PSYCHO came out and Chance was bitching saying, why would anyone want to remake a great movie like that. If you want to remake something, remake something that was bad the first time and could benefit from a reimagining, like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. So later when he got around to writing the script, he threw the alien sub-plot in as an homage to that notion. We didn't remake PLAN 9 obviously, but we have an army of the dead resurrected in some weird alien plot.

2) Next up for us will hopefully be a script I'm about halfway thru writing now. Each time we take on something new we try to do something a little different and step it up a level, so I'm working on a straight, character driven horror film. So we shall see.

3) In an all out zombie plaque, I'd do a little from all three; grab a beer and a pistol and go team up with Tom Savini. Then if we ran out of ammo, Tom could make us up to look like zombies so we could blend in.

You'd pull a "Shaun of the Dead"? Brilliant!

And on that note, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to do this interview, Chuck. Good luck on your future endeavors, and no doubt fans can check the progress of "Hide and Creep's" quest for distribution via the Crewless Productions website.

To close things out, one final question:

Lesbian zombies or naked alien abductee?

Thanks so much, man. This has been great. And, yes, people can check out www.crewless.com or www.hideandcreep.com for updates on when the film will be available.

And lastly, lesbian zombies all the way!

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(The following interview was conducted via email over the course of a day. You can contact Chuck Hartsell and get more information on "Hide and Creep", as well as all future and past projects, via his official website at Crewless Productions. We'd like to thank Chuck for taking the time for this interview.)

a scene from Crewless Productions' "Hide and Creep"

(c) 2005 by Nix and BeyondHollywood.com