Well where are we with "Sluaghter"...

So I've been doing research, mainly watching a shitload of horror movies, some I'd seen and some I hadn't. Some of the movies that I've watched of late are "Saw 3", The Masters of Horror episodes "Cigarette Burns" and "Imprint" and "Black Christmas". I liked all of them but one of them for a different reason to the others… and this reason was because it was rubbish and laughable and I can't believe how unimaginative the script is!

Imagination is the key…

An important thing for me and Nay was that "Slaughter" had to be tense, scary, horrible, entertaining and imaginative, we didn't want to just show tired old horror stuff that is simply repeated in movies like "Urban Legends". We wanted new stuff! We want horror fans to watch the movie and be like "yeah that was cool." We want people to be on the edge of their seat saying to themselves "how the hell are they going to survive?" We never wanted "Slaughter" to be predictable, we wanted twists and cool movie sequences that stay in peoples mind. Something that has always stayed with me from watching Cameron and Argento movies is that you got to take the character and the audience to the limit – whether that be sustained action sequences ala "Terminator" or sustained sequences of pure terror ala "Suspiria." As I was watching Miike's "Imprint" I was stunned at one scene in particular, for those who have seen "Imprint" you will know what I'm talking about - the punishment/torture scene of Komono. Now that is what I call sustained terror upon the female form, the scene is incredible, with Komono ending up looking like a work of modern art, a thing of twisted beauty. Indeed the scene is hard to watch and even harder to forget but it's things like that that I like - horror should be horrible, right! Standout sequences like this is what we we're striving for and I remember that when we first met one of the producers in the US, Cheri Wozniak, one of the first things she said to us, when she talked about the script, was "I turned the page and was like what the fuck?!" She was referring to a set piece that myself and Nay always wanted to standout within the audiences mind, like the opening 12 minutes of "Suspiria" or the final showdown with the Terminator. And with Cheri saying that, it sought of validated the script for us because this is our first script that producers have liked!

So yeah "Slaughter", me and Nay have been working on the "Slaughter" re-write based on notes we received from the producers - Goddamn Hollywood!!!! No I'm only joking we were incredibly grateful for the notes we received, as far as we are concerned anything that helped improve the script was a bonus, I mean we want to make the best possible movie here and the script is now a 100% improvement on the script that won the Slamdance competition, whilst still being the same story it now contains a lot more twists, with extra layers of complexity and is no longer just the straightforward horror flick it was before. When we started the re-write we knew that we had to alter the structure as in the original draft it wasn't until page 55 that we had our first scare or death scene and after watching the hugely successful "Saw 3" (over $80m US domenstic gross) I was shocked at the amount of set pieces and gruesome death scenes it throws in, in the first 20 minutes!!! - WOW - it's a lot, three to be precise, opening with the guy breaking his foot to get out of a footcuff...! Cutting to a guy all chained and hooked up (nasty) and then to a police detective in this rib-cage trap thingy with acid (very nasty) It certainly aims to 'gross' out it's audience within minimal time. Personally I thought it was one set piece too many and after taking 20 minutes to introduce the doctor character and even longer to introduce Geoff, I was like 'what the fuck who's my main character!' But then again the "Saw" franchise is built on these elaborate and crazy contraptions that kill people in horrible but 'fun' ways so give the audience what it wants, right... and it does have a pretty standout ending, I mean I want to see "Saw 4".

So back to "Slaughter", we changed, added, took out and just improved the script and hopefully the producers will agree, we haven't heard anything back as of yet, well they only got it yesterday... What we haven't done though, is added gross out scares that feel forced and totally unnecessary, just for the sake of it, indeed we do have some pretty sick and horrible sequences and set pieces but each one drives the story forward not like "Black Christmas" which I only watched because it was a new teen horror/slasher movie and was a remake and man it was lame - this is the movie I loved because of how bad the script was!

Now that's BAD!

"Black Christmas" - I actually don't think that this movie has any redeeming qualities, it was just nasty, devoid of any tension, irony, entertaining set pieces, plot twists or even entertaining death scenes for that matter! And one of the most important things in a horror movie is characters and likeable characters, characters that the audience root for and don't want to see die, like in "Wolf Creek" and countless other great horror movies "Halloween", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Night of the Living Dead" and so on, but "Black Christmas" had no characters that I cared for, I don't even remember their names and I'm good with characters names, I mean I remember Geoff from "Saw 3"!

Another thing that really puzzled me about "Black Christmas" is that this was a movie set on Christmas Eve surely they could have incorporated some sense of Christmas irony (maybe calling it "Black" Christmas was as ironic as it gets) What about this guys... a Santa Clause costume set piece… Imagine the scene, friendly nieghbour hood guy gets butchered by the psycho, his Santa costume is taken and then the psycho calmly knocks on the soriety girls house's door dressed as Santa, enters, gives out gifts (but these are like no gifts you would ever want – off-course they aren't opened until later in the movie) whilst all the time he's got his nasty blood splattered axe also tucked away in his Santa sack!! The audience knows this but the soriety girls DON'T, even scarier if he asks to use the bathroom and one of the girls shows him where it is, alone... All the time we are waiting for him to strike but like all good horror movie scares and kills they don't happen when you expect them to! Just an idea and having not seen the original, I hope it was a lot better than the remake, it's on my to watch list! Oh and the eyeball gouging was just gratuitous and nasty but not entertaining and isn't that the name of the game - entertainment...

Slamdance Film Festival, Park City!

Well aint be able to blog for a while, me and Nay have been busy with rewrites on Slaughter and we’ve now handed in our first re-write and the good news is that Greg liked it - although it does need a dialogue polish and a few minor changes.

But anyway going back from where I left off.

So January 20th 2007 it’s about 8:00pm and I get a phone call from John Stoddard, he’s one of the organisers of Slamdance and the horror competition. John informs us that we have won and he would very much like us to try and make it over to Utah for the festival and to meet the producers and accept our award! Great! So as quick as you can say “book me a flight” we we’re on a flight, 15hours in total… murder because I hate flying and this was Nays first time on a plane and it didn’t bother him one bit… So we fly to Utah, changing at LAX and then heading onto to Salt Lake City, Utah.

9:00pm 24th January we land at Salt Lake City, jump in a cab and head to the Holiday Inn – tired, jet lagged and starving.

The next morning we’re up bright and early and take a 45 minute cab ride to Park City and meet up with John Stoddard, Peter Baxter (who is a fellow Englishman) and the rest of the Slamdance crew at the Treasure Mountain Inn, Slamdance’s base camp. The day was spent watching movies at the festival – The Path of Most Resistance was cool and funny and the star of the movie, Spencer Grammer, was there, she’s hot (daughter of Kelsey). Slamdance is amazing with Sundance going on right across the street. For the duration of these two festivals Park City really comes alive - it's just packed out with movie fans with everynight a party, bars are packed with huge queues to get in the places!!

So it’s not till later that night at a Slamdance party that we meet Greg Segal and Cheri Wozniak, Slaughter’s producers. Greg has his own production company along with John Gallagher, Angel Baby Entertainment and Cheri works for Maverick. It was a pretty amazing thing to actually meet producers and talk about Slaughter. That night we were taken to a Thai restaurant, the meal was very nice, although the beer was pretty poor, no Fosters and no Vodka! So during the meal we talk movies and horror movies, discussing everything from The Sixth Sense to The Hills Have Eye’s remake to Wolf Creek – I’m a little surprised that one of the producers didn’t really think too much of Wolf Creek or The Hills Have Eye’s as I think they’re both amazing, especially if you look at the deeper issues and undertones within The Hills Have Eye’s and how it relates to 9/11 particularly how the US creates a monster it can’t control and the monster comes back to cause murder and chaos.

After the meal we head back to Cheri’s place and wow what a place it is, a three story house that she’s renting for the duration of Slamdance. Oh and MC Hammer is there having beers with a Eric Thompson (head of Maverick Red) and a few other guys. We talk more about Slaughter. Cheri likes the script but feels it needs something more added to the end in particular, something that would make audiences want to see a second movie. This is a good idea as originally when we wrote Slaughter we conceived it has a quick one off horror movie that pays homage to Japanese horror cinema. But adding a twist ending just for the sake of it is always horrible and as much as we liked the idea we knew that if it was going to be accepted by an audience then it would have to make sense and not just be tacked on. The movies that twists that I like are from movies like The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, Haute Tension (Switchblade Romance) and Ringu (The Ring) So it’s like 4am and we’ve been drinking bud all night at Cheri’s place and Mathew St Patrick turns up (Keith from Six Feet Under) he’s a big guy he’s also starring in Rogue (War as it’s now known) along with Jet Li and Jason Statham, we tried to pick his brains about the movie, being Jet Li fans, but he didn’t give too much away.

Flash forward a couple of days and we’re at the Slamdances award ceremony where we get our Sparky award, the Sparky’s original design is actually designed by Shepherd! We’re told not to kiss them as it’s a tradition for the organisers of Slamdance to pee on the Sparky’s! Now I still don’t know how true this is, but I wasn’t taking any risks!

The after show party is cool and I’m drinking this Michael Collins whisky and red bull, it tastes horrible but I drink it anyway, it’s free! That night we head back to a house party with the Slamdance crew at Red Stone– where they have a lot of alcohol… a lot of Vodka and cranberry! Once at the party I have a pretty in depth conversation with John and a producer, Joey, about The Stone Roses and Oasis – see they are popular in the USA!!!!! Nay has disappeared somewhere with Erin! I suddenly feel like this is becoming more about the parties than the script and I like parties!

The next morning I wake up in a bed I don’t recognise with a killer hangover! Not good!

So Slamdance finishes as does Sundance, everyone leaves and we’re told by the producers that they’ll be in touch with script notes about the Slaughter re-write!

Park City suddenly becomes empty and we figure it times to get the hell outta here!

Slaughter - The origin...

Hey people, well whoever has taken the time to check this blog out, THANKS, it’s much appreciated…

Well anyway this is the blog for “Slaughter” and as you probably won’t know “Slaughter” is a script written by myself (Bobby Lee Darby) and Nathan Brookes and it’s currently in pre-production with Angel Baby Entertainment and Maverick Red in Hollywood!!!!!! IMDB it, it’s there.

But I suppose I should start at the beginning of how two lads from Dudley in the West Midlands in the UK managed to get a horror screenplay that they wrote in just under two months into pre-production with LA producers Gregory Segal, Cheri Wozniak, Mark Morgan, Guy Oseary and John A. Gallagher!

Well here it goes…

Firstly the whole conception of “Slaughter” began about a year and a half ago whilst me and Nathan were making a short film entitled “Final Take” strange really as "Final Take" involved clones, car chases and all kinds of crazy stuff. And “Final Take” turned out okay, not great but okay – for anyone who has seen it, it’s all about that low angle Michael Bay pan!

But yeah so the original idea for “Slaughter” came from this short film and after writing various high concept action movie scripts and getting nowhere we were like “let’s just take a group of people to one location and chop them the fuck up” – it worked for “Evil Dead”, it worked for “Reservoir Dogs” maybe it could work for us! So we sat around for days, weeks, months trying to come up with a cool concept that we would be like “hey that’s a pretty cool premise” if we saw it on the big screen - cue lightbulb moment and it hit us!!!! But not going to reveal exactly what hit us, yet.....

So the script writing process began and I have to give Nathan credit here because I wasn’t so sure once we started, I think I had my heart set on another high concept action movie – hey it’s from growing up watching Cameron movies! What can I do it’s in my nature! But after a horror weekend movie marathon of watching “Halloween”, “Saw”, “Nightmare on Elm Street”, “Suspiria”, “Tenebrae”, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (original and remake) and the brilliant “Wolf Creek” I decided “okay this could be a quick sick little exploitation flick with lots of nudity and gore!”

Originally we structured the script in a way that we felt was different from many horror movies of today and years gone by, essentially taking the “Wolf Creek” structure and using it as a template for ours where the first half of that movie was simply the characters talking, where we didn’t learn a great deal about them and nothing particularly interesting happened to them during the movie’s first half but I did love the characters and when the bad shit kicks off in the second part of the movie I didn’t want any of these characters to die, I was nearly in tears when Liz died and when Kristy died I was in tears, man tears like! So that was essentially how the first drafts of “Slaughter” looked, I mean in the original draft no one died until page 55 but from then on out through to page 90 it was all out carnage, set piece after set piece! Basically the sickest stuff we could think of. And at the time we we’re happy with the finished script and the fact that we had written it so quickly gave it a raw energy. But looking back now it was obvious that it needed changing - the structure particularly!

So with the script all finished we we’re kind of at a loss with what to do with it. You see we had tried sending UK based agents our work before but had got nowhere and we really couldn’t see any agent liking “Slaughter” – it was horror, it was an exploitation flick, it had lots of gratuitous nudity for Christ’s sake! But we tried anyway and surprise surprise no one was interested! We tried everywhere – emailed production companies, wrote letters, tried to get it too actors – nothing. Although there was Screen West Midlands who kind of liked it but thought it needed more work but to be honest it was something they would never make, not enough kitchen sinks – if you know what I mean… All seemed lost and at the time we we’re considering making the movie ourselves, raising the money, we believed that £20000 would be enough to do it, shoot on Hi-Def, unpaid actors beg, borrow, steal etc etc. But then through a stroke of luck Nathan had an email from this website that he had signed up to, Talent Circle, the email was requesting screenplays for a horror competition in the USA for Slamdance Film Festival, only thing was all entries for the competition closed in two days time from when we got the email – we’d never be able to mail it in time!!!! Luckily if the postmark was before the closing date then they would still accept the script so like crazy we rushed to print, package and post the screenplay and so began the crazy surreal journey of “Slaughter” that took us to the USA where we had lunch with movie producers, met MC Hammer and so much more…

To be continued…