More News Coverage

We were on the local nightly news yesterday. Check it out at:

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=73558

And the Plain Dealer ran the first of a series of articles on us today:

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1188464574165640.xml&coll=2

Some Pics from the Reformatory Shoot

Top pic: Jessica Cameron ('Victim') and me. Rest of the pics: zombies, zombies, and zombies!

DEAD MATTER in the media

Thanks to the unswerving efforts of Sarah Mann, we've been swamped with media attention of late. The shoot has already been discussed in several newspapers and magazines, with more to follow, and we're going to appear briefly on the nightly news Wednesday at 11pm (local channel 3--NBC). Here are the links to some of the articles already out:

http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070820/UPDATES01/70820027

http://www.news-herald.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=18750022&BRD=1698&PAG=461&dept_id=21849&rfi=8

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2007/08/27/1_DEADMATTER_--_LIVE_MON._NI.ART_ART_08-27-07_B1_T97NBE0.html?sid=101

A Tale of Two Locations

At least I'm no longer the only one who thinks there's something eerie lurking right around the corner.

We've shot at numerous locations over the past three weeks, but the two I want to focus on are the Mansfield Reformatory and the Bissman Building.

The reformatory is possibly one of the most deliciously creepy places I've ever been to. I invite you to visit the website and take the virtual tour at http://www.mrps.org/, but I also have to say that viewing the images pales in comparison to actually being there. It's the kind of place where the norm is to have encounters of a supernatural nature, and you're the odd one out if you walk through it without at least a chill running down your spine. A cell where a former inmate was shanked to death and stuffed under his cot, entire floors of lead paint peeling off the walls and bars, a chapel where the echoes don't stop even after everyone has long ceased saying anything: the reformatory is a horror fan's dream come true.

But that's not all! The Bissman Building, located in downtown Mansfield, has been used to film several scenes, and it too comes equipped with built-in creepiness. Constructed in 1886 and used to supply foodstuff to nearby groceries, Bissman has been frequented twice of late by ghost hunters. The two most prevalent presences, it is claimed, are the spirit of a man who was decapitated by the lift that goes up the center of the building, and the spirit of a little girl who apparently drowned in the basement. And let me assure you, the basement--where a scene was shot last week--really is a very unnerving place.

But the weirdness isn't isolated there. Donna Williams, the script supervisor who also plays the character 'Rebecca' in the movie, rushed into the room that we were doing make-up in the other day looking quite blanched. She said that she was sitting alone in one of the first floor rooms when she felt something move behind her and saw something out of the corner of her eye. I could tell from her tone that she was most certainly not kidding around.

So needless to say, production couldn't have chosen more appropriate locations to film a horror story! And now half the cast and crew are looking over their shoulders from time to time...

And We're Back!

Sorry for the delay in a new post. Last week tested the mettle of the entire cast and crew, but I'm happy to say that we pulled through it quite well and are now settling into the last days of the shoot.

A week from yesterday we were slated to film a very cool and elaborate scene at the Mansfield Reformatory, perhaps best known for being the location of much of The Shawshank Redemption. I'll talk about the reformatory and all that comes with it in a separate entry. What I want to mention now is that we were thwarted by the weather. Much of the scene in question takes place outside, and Ohio made national news with the storms that came our way that Monday, flooding a good portion of the Mansfield-Crestline area and leaving us having to shuffle the entire shooting schedule, since exterior scenes were planned to be shot all week.

I can't emphasize enough how amazing everyone was in meeting this challenge. Schedules were flipped, sets were built post-haste, everyone rose to the occasion, and things fell into place. More than that, actually. We returned to the reformatory yesterday to shoot the scene, and the evening couldn't have been more perfect. Cool weather, clear skies, and a lunar eclipse to boot!

All's well that ends well!

The Dead Matter Behind the Scenes Trailer

Pics From Sunday

Top pic: the gang at Sojourner Cafe.

Bottom pic: the gang afterwards, enjoying what's left of a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Sunday Canoeing in Mohican Valley

Our first week wrapped up wonderfully on Saturday, concluding with a night shoot at the Crestline library. Sunday is a day of rest for all of us, so we decided to seek out some much-needed R&R. Per Tom's suggestion, we made our way to Mohican Valley for a canoeing adventure. What a great time! Afterwards, we went to Loudonville and dined at the fabulous Sojourner Cafe.

This brief trip resonated even more with me than it did with the others, since my parents had a small cottage in Mohican Valley when I was a boy, and we would often spend our summer weekends there. We also frequently visited nearby Loudonville. Once more, I found myself with a sense of "coming home." This time, though, the feeling wasn't accompanied by any sort of weird premonitions or convictions that someone or something was lurking right around the corner. No doubt those strange interludes that punctuated my experiences on the set last week, and even before when I first came location-hunting, are now a thing of the past.

Or so I hope.

Shenanigans!

Some cast and crew at Shenanigans, where we filmed the tavern scene on Monday. From left to right: me (Frank), Kat (make-up), CB Spencer (Jill), Meredith Beardmore (Angela), Ed Douglas (director), Donna Williams (Rebecca), House (special make-up effects), Sean Serino (Gretchen), Tom Nagel (Mike), and Katie (wardrobe). Many thanks to Brian van Camp (Mark) for taking the pic!

Conceptual Analysis of the Damned

The cast and crew are slowly getting to know one another and what our lives are like outside of our involvement with The Dead Matter. CB Spencer does theatre work in Los Angeles and is a member of West Coast Ensemble. She has made appearances on “Ally McBeal” and “Passions”. Brian van Camp has been living in Michigan for the past year and a half working on a master’s degree in anthropology. Before that, he lived in Germany for five years and England for four years. He has acted in New World Disorder and Terror in the Mall. Tom Nagel and Sean Serino have both acted in horror/action movies before. Tom’s been in numerous films including The Butcher and The Beast of Bray Road, and Sean is featured in Robert Kurtzman’s own The Rage.

On my end, I’ve told folks that I’m finishing up my doctorate in philosophy at MIT. That’s led to some reasonable questions about what exactly it is that philosophers do. And I think any of my friends back in Boston would agree with me that that’s not the easiest question to answer. So I thought it’d be better to show folks what philosophers do—or at least some of what philosophers do—with a fun example. I owe it to discussions I’ve had with my friend Selim Berker, who is currently a member of the faculty of Harvard’s philosophy department.

Zombie movies of late have been pushing the envelope as far as what counts as a zombie, which raises the question: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for zombiehood? Can a zombie move fast (Dawn of the Dead)? Can it have higher-order thoughts (Land of the Dead)? Can it be something that hasn’t first died and then come back to “life” (28 Days Later)? The only guide we seem to have in answering such questions is our intuitions. So here are my thoughts on the matter. Take one of the “ragers” from 28 Days Later. Now pretend that besides this rager being fast and not having died and then come back, it also has higher-order thoughts: a sense of self, the ability to plan, stuff like that. Is this suped-up rager a zombie? Seems to me that it isn’t. That’s a good start. But exactly why it isn’t a zombie is the more interesting question. On my end, I think there are several reasons. I’ll grant that zombies can move fast, but intuitively, a zombie has to have died and come back from the dead. They’re undead, and you can’t be undead if you’ve never been dead. More controversially, it seems a zombie can’t possess higher-order thoughts. Part of what makes zombies scary in a way that’s different from ghosts or vampires is their mindlessness: they can’t be reasoned with, for one thing. So this warms me up to claiming that being dead and then having come back from the dead, and lacking higher-order thoughts, are both necessary conditions on being a zombie. Being able only to move slowly, however, isn’t. What do you think?

We're Off and Running...er...Shooting!

I've been here less than a week, but so many wonderful things have happened already, I feel as though a month has passed! Most of the cast arrived here last Thursday, and what to say other than that Ed has done a tremendous job putting it together. The core gang of friends includes Tom Nagel as “Mike”, Sean Serino as “Gretchen”, CB Spencer as “Jill”, and me as “Frank”. Then there’s Brian van Camp as “Mark”, Donna Williams as “Rebecca”, Al Tuskes as “Ray” and Meredith Beardmore as “Angela”. Thursday was put aside for us to meet each other, do wardrobe, and have dinner. Friday and Saturday were devoted to rehearsals.

I mentioned in a previous blog that Precinct 13 Entertainment is intimately involved with the making of The Dead Matter. Thursday, we met at its studio in Crestline, Ohio. I walked through the front door and after a few steps was greeted by what I will call The Red Room, which is a kind of Candyland for horror fans. A long table sits in its center, surrounded on all sides by a smorgasbord of monstrosities: a replica statue of the demon Pazuzu from The Exorcist, another of the Frankenstein monster, molded heads of various beasties from The Rage, even a collection of Asskickers of the Damned action figures. I felt like I had finally arrived home after all these years!

Monday brought with it the first day of the shoot. We were doing a scene taking place in a tavern. Coincidentally, the first day of the shoot of The Dead Matter (1996) was also a tavern scene. This one focused on the gang of friends and the unfortunate Mark, a vampire hunter turned zombie. It was a pretty challenging scene to start with, as it involved close to forty extras playing the part of bar patrons. But it was also fun for that reason, since virtually all the extras were associated with the movie in one way or another. Ed’s wife, Colleen Douglas, was there, as well as his parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Also making an appearance were Sarah Mann, Tracy Martin and Liz St. James, all of whom have helped out so much behind-the-scenes with Midnight Syndicate and The Dead Matter. There were also faces from the original, such as Paul St. James, who had played “Vellich”, and Tony Demci, the co-writer who had played “Mark”.

But talk of extras brings up something strange that happened that evening, when Ed allowed me to look at the dailies. During my shots, there appeared to be someone in the background who I did not recall being on the set that day. He—or she, for that matter—was sitting in a booth in the corner behind me, so the features were difficult to make out. The really weird thing is that when I tried to point this out to Ed, so that I could ask him who it was, Ed looked at me as though I was crazy. So did everyone else who was there looking at the dailies. I even had them pause it and I pointed to what I took to be the clearest view of the person, but no one except me saw anything but a well-placed shadow. Part of me thought that perhaps they see only what they want to see. But then I let it go; after all, it was late in the day, and maybe twelve hours of shooting had gotten to me!

So ended day one.

All We Hear is Radio Ga-Ga, Radio Goo-Goo

Well, I hope not! Today Ed Douglas, Tom Nagel (Mike) and I were interviewed on Cleveland radio station 98.5 WNCX, during the Mud, Mihalek and Mike in the Morning Show. What a great experience! Couldn't have asked for better people conducting the interview. They were fantastic. It was the first time I had ever done anything like that before, and my only thought upon leaving was, let's do this again!

There was a bit of a bump at the beginning, though, when Mud asked me how to pronounce my last name. I don't blame him at all. Not in this part of the country. In New England there are enough Robichauds and in the south there are enough Robicheauxs for people to be familiar with the pronunciation of the name, which, roughly, is row-bi-show. That said, I've decided that this is going to be my litmus test for fame. When 'Robichaud' rolls off the tongues of every man, woman, and child in the country, then I know I'll have arrived.

Yeah, sure. :)

Back to reality. I was wondering whether other people share my view that certain names just 'fit' with the profession of the named. Will Self, for instance, clearly tops the list of best-named contemporary fiction writers. (If you haven't read any of Self's work, get your hands on his first collection of stories, The Quantity Theory of Insanity.) So who are the most aptly-named horror writers, actors, or directors, living, dead or otherwise? Heavy-hitters like Stephen King and Vincent Price certainly have names that are impossible to disassociate from horror, but the names themselves don't seem to have that quality I have in mind. Hmmm.... Maybe Poe. There's something melancholic about his name, something gloomy. Yes, I think I'll vote for Poe as one of the most aptly-named persons in the horror biz.

Admit One!

Thanks to my friend Matt DelGrosso, we have an image of a ticket to the premiere of the original The Dead Matter.

THE DEAD MATTER Blog Is Launched!

Welcome one and all! It is my absolute pleasure to bring to you the official blog of the making of The Dead Matter. Over the next month or so, I'll give you as candid a look as is possible into the daily ins and outs of our experience shooting the film. It's been a long road getting here and I've been walking on it almost from the start, so I thought I'd devote this first entry to giving you a little bit of background.

The version of The Dead Matter we'll be filming this August has been, in some sense, over twelve years in the making. In 1994, Ed Douglas and Tony Demci completed the first script for The Dead Matter and Ed took the reins producing, directing and scoring it. It was shot on video (not even digital video, as that was a few years away from being a financially feasible option for us) and involved a cast and crew largely culled from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. The JCU gang included Ed as the director, Mark Rakocy as the director of photography, Kenlyn Creech as "Gretchen", me as "Frank", Jeff Kasunic as both "Mike" and as our digital effects guy, Samantha D'Angelo as "Jill", and Joseph Guay as "Mayor Osborne". Non-JCU notables, who were also greater Cleveland locals, included Tony Demci, the co-writer, as "Mark", Tracy Brown as "McCallister", and Paul St. James as "Vellich".

Our first official day of shooting coincided with John Carroll's winter formal. I recall many of us rushing off the set that day, which was at a bar in Chardon, Ohio, to get home, get fancy, and head out to the dance in the evening! So ended day one. It took us about six months to tape the whole thing. And then a year passed as Ed edited it. The Dead Matter premiered at John Carroll University in the spring of 1996.

Some local video stores carried the movie. (Notably B-Ware Video in Lakewood, Ohio, now sadly gone. B-Ware, that is. Lakewood's still there, last time I checked.) It also made a brief appearance on the shelves of a few online stores. And that, it seemed, was that.

But movies like The Dead Matter don't die easily. Or better: if The Dead Matter did die, it was perhaps inevitable that it would come back from the grave.

Skip ahead a decade. During that time, Ed and Gavin Goszka formed the delightfully macabre band Midnight Syndicate. Jeff and Mark moved out to LA, where Jeff now works for Dreamworks and Mark now works for Hammer Filmworks. I found myself at MIT pursuing a doctorate in philosophy. Ed and Tony came back to the table and rewrote The Dead Matter. And after much sweat, tears, and some pronounced sacrifices on many persons parts, The Dead Matter was given new life--or unlife, as the case may be.

And that brings us to now. I'm extremely excited to have the opportunity to reprise my role as "Frank" and am even more excited to be working with the rest of the amazing cast Ed has put together. And all of us are very psyched to be teamed-up with Robert Kurtzman's production company Precinct 13 Entertainment. We'll be filming near Precinct 13 in the Mansfield-Crestline area of Ohio.

On that last part, I promised candidness, so here it goes. Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to visit Precinct 13 with Ed and tour some of the locations in the area that were being considered for the shoot. We were both very excited by what we saw. The locations were perfect. Really perfect. As if--and I know this might sound a little strange--we didn't find them as much as they found us. The locations found us.

I mentioned this to Ed and he brushed it aside, saying that maybe I've been listening to his music too much! We laughed it off. I definitely think that laughter's the ultimate panacea for such things. It's the smiles that keep us going, don't you think? The little giggles and bits of good cheer. That's at least what gets me through things, like working on a doctorate. Let me tell you, few horror stories compare in scope of anxiety, fear, or dread to the process of writing a dissertation!

So I think I've blabbed on enough for this first entry. Please visit often! The first official day of the shoot will be Monday, August 6. But there'll be plenty of entries leading up to that. And comments are more than welcome!