Editorials
[Sundance ’12]: ‘V/H/S’ Sells To Magnolia, Three Of The Film’s Producers Poisoned!
Let this be a lesson. One that encourages you to pursue your dreams, but to avoid Dick Clark’s in the Salt Lake City Airport while doing so.
I’m sure you Bloody-Disgusting readers are as caught up as you need to be on what V/H/S is. My interviews with seven of the filmmakers were all published last week, leading many of you to wonder aloud, “how many people directed this d*mn thing?” And, “Does Joe Swanberg play Dexter?” If you’re not familiar with the film, feel free to click on that red title and learn all about it.
And then hit the jump for the epic story that unfolded because of it. So while many of you have probably heard that V/H/S premiered at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend. The first midnight screening was packed and the reception – from my point of view as a twitter voyeur in Los Angeles – was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Subsequent screenings went equally well. Yes, someone did pass out at one of them. Some people have questioned the veracity of the event, but I know many of the parties involved and can tell you that it wasn’t staged. And, as Simon Barrett put it, the intensity of the film itself was a “quaternary” factor. The dude was tired, hungry and at a high altitude. The film being intense was just the cherry on top.
Zak Zeman, Roxanne Benjamin, Brad Miska and Simon Barrett in more innocent times.
News broke in the middle of the night that Magnolia Films had acquired V/H/S, the winners of a bidding war with several other suitors. Per The Hollywood Reporter, “Magnolia Pictures is acquiring North American rights to the horror film V/H/S for slightly more than $1 million after coming out on top in a late-night bidding war that involved three prospective buyers, according to sources. The film, which had its premiere in Sundance’s Park City at Midnight section on Sunday, will be given a pre-theatrical video-on-demand release as part of Magnolia’s Ultra VOD program and it will also receive a significant release in theaters after the 30-day VOD window. Sources said that rights to the film in several foreign territories are in play, with offers on the table from potential buyers. V/H/S is the first horror title to be acquired at the 2012 festival. Several distributors had expressed interest in the found-footage-within-found-footage creeper.”
But did you know that the deal was closed while two of the producers were in the hospital? Throwing up buckets full of bile? Rocking high temperatures and hallucinating? But on their cell phones anyway? Yep! That’s kind of where Dick Clark’s figures into all of this.
Earlier in the day producers Brad Miska, Roxanne Benjamin and Zak Zeman (along with Mr. Miska’s better half, Andrea) were unwinding in the airport eatery, likely exhausted from (and elated by) the fest. It was around this time this fateful tweet caught my eyes.
@BradMiska “Dick Clark’s with @roxanne73 lots of drinks on this table !! pic.twitter.com/at9Kf7ig”
Several hours later, upon their arrival in LA, this hit my feed.
@Roxanne73 “Landed. Got bags. Got to car. Puked next to car. Ahhhh, that LA air. I blame @bradmiska and @zakzeezy for their restaurant choices”
Shortly afterwards – @BradMiska “Joining @roxanne73 in hospital. Thanks dick Clark’s cafe”.
I kind of thought this was a joke. I even thought it was a joke that Roxanne was in the hospital. I thought that, perhaps in this case, “hospital” was a euphemism for “indigestion”. That is until Brad texted me that he was actually on the way to the hospital. For all the complaining he does online about food trucks, he doesn’t strike me as being a hypochondriac or overly dramatic, so I figured it was legit serious bad business. Then Andrea informed me that he was literally writhing on the floor of the hospital in pain. Sh*t!
Once I knew he was feeling at least a little better, I went to sleep. I woke up at 6AM to the wonderful news that V/H/S had indeed been sold. I figured the ink was already dry on this thing by the time they had even left for the airport and that it was simply a delayed announcement. How could any back and forth happen on the deal with so many parties out of commission?*
Here’s how.
Roxanne Benjamin as photographed by Simon Barrett.
After electrolytes were restored, admissions were discharged and (reasonably lucid) consciousness was achieved here’s how the rest of the morning played out.
@BradMiska “A night of celebration was ruined by the worst food poisoning ever, it was insane. Filled buckets”
@BradMiska “I still haven’t even seen the press release. I barely remember last night. I was in so much pain they pumped me full of morphine”
@BradMiska “I apparently was mumbling insane sh*t and was unresponsive to the doctors and @andreatumino”.
After some well earned ranting about the hospital system, Miska’s twitter feed concluded** with perhaps the most damning piece of evidence of all –
@BradMiska”Dick Clark’s at the airport in Utah poisoned @roxanne73 @zakzeezy and myself. All got chicken fingers, ‘cept @andreatumino who was fine.”
But the happy (and real) news is that a great horror anthology (my opinion after seeing a rough cut – and we are allowed to disagree around here) will be coming your way this fall. Courtesy of Magnolia, one of the only distributors around who doesn’t have their head in the sand.
Simon Barrett, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Brad Miska, Zak Zeman and Glenn McQuaid
*Zak Zeman also had food poisoning but opted out of the hospital. Now I know never to f*ck with Zak.
**For dramatic purposes only. Everyone knows Brad’s twitter feed never really “concludes”.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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