Interview with Spill Your Guts Podcast Host & Indie Filmmaker Kevin Lane

[00:00:00] We're the winners first here in the works before his passing. Yes, you know, I always thought they were very, they were, and his films were very political as well. I always think it's kind of a mixed blessing on some of the Georges and around today because what's going on politically these days, he would lose his mind.

[00:03:02] Yeah. and it was something George had been working on. I never read that, so I don't know what that is. I knew about the book that came out a couple years back. I had read a bit of that. Yeah, I think it's unpublished a comic or something. Well, no, there was a book that George was writing. I think it's just called The Living Dead. I think it was just the title. It was a novel, like a full length novel.

[00:04:21] And it came out a couple years ago.

[00:04:23] I can't remember now who finished it up when he died, editor of Fingory Magazine, he's just all around kind of horror genre guru. He's interviewed everybody and he was very close with George and we often talk about how the interesting thing once you got to know George was like, there was zero pretension to George Romero. He was just such an easy guy to be around. Lovely. And very generous. Yeah, just always willing to, you know, once you kind of got in with George, he was very

[00:05:46] loyal guy.

[00:05:47] He would, he would do all about this, when you're talking about stuff that you love, it's really easy to

[00:07:03] seem excited because you always are. And try to have fun with it too. I mean, it's like, you know, what I think I'll always say about horror films is like they're the most fun sets to be on because as soon as you take a bunch of people and you give them fake blood and they're, you know, they're, you're just, you know, laughing at people are immediately gonna have fun.

[00:08:20] So I just try to make sure that the conversations

[00:08:23] have that tone.

[00:08:26] And then, you know, other than the casual side of things? I think, you know, that's a, that's a funny question. I, it's a, it's a quality I think I have as a person that just, again, early on

[00:09:43] the show, I think I censored that that trait of myself thinking,

[00:10:46] ask people things for sensationalist reasons, it's always part of trying to get a complete narrative. If that narrative is about their life or about a project they're involved, it's still all coming

[00:10:51] from that same place of just trying to give the listener the whole story. And I don't think you

[00:10:57] can always get the whole story if you're afraid to ask occasionally difficult questions. And if a

[00:11:03] guest says, you know, I'm not comfortable answering that you can tell the person is guarded or that you can tell that it's going to take longer to get them into a comfortable space. And then it just becomes a thing of making sure that they're clear that it's a that they're in a safe space that I won't ask them anything or and I've done that. I've I've had questions or I was like, you know, I'm not going to ask this because I

[00:12:22] think it's going to upset them or make them uncomfortable.

[00:12:24] So it sounded good.

[00:12:25] But now they just said one statement that now would probably make me want to know those. I'm like, yeah, right? We're a person's like asking something and you can hear the guests actually creeping into their voice of like, you know, I don't want to go this road or I don't want to talk about this anymore. I've said as much as I want to about that subject. But I think sometimes that has to do with an interviewer having an idea of what they want to hear.

[00:13:40] And then when they don't get it,

[00:13:42] they're still obsessing over like,

[00:13:44] but I wanted it to be said like this

[00:13:45] or I wanted it to go this way.

[00:13:47] And when it doesn't, they keep going. Yeah, something along those lines. Yeah. And I think, you know, the the enemy of a depending on the format of a show, right? I mean, there's those shows that are just kind of cinema bros that just like yak about what they think about movies. And some of those shows are fun. And I look, you know, if they if the people talking are interesting, then that's great. But if the premise of your show is that you're an interview, it's an interview space, an interview

[00:15:03] show, the audience isn't there to hear all about collective. Like of all time? Yeah, you would recommend to anyone if it's not scary. Just you feel like it has wonderful art direction and. Okay, it's been unnecessarily horror. Well, just mainly keep it horror, but like just

[00:17:40] a genre best. Like you're just like, this is a must find something new in it to kind of go, wow, that's so fucking cool and sort of study. And I'm a part of my French. I'd cemetery the Mary Lambert film, I think is, you Hunter, that starred Devin Sawa and Nick Stahl and I can't remember the gals. I think I saw that posted but I didn't know what I was streaming on. I love that movie. I love that movie. I think it was such an unsung masterpiece of a genre film. The director Sean Linden is

[00:19:06] Oh, I did hear about it. Camille Sullivan and the Zeta Canadian actors. Yeah.

[00:20:05] right psycho another one oh man see you get me going here and you're in trouble psycho as a movie I've seen like a hundred times and I'm still always just

[00:20:09] like blown away by the craftsmanship of that film probably times of the lambs

[00:20:15] there you go circling around and and science alarms and Jody Foster is just

[00:20:22] like two of the great performances of grew up in Play School Mississauga that that we ended up having to do multiple runs of the show because people got kept coming to see it

[00:21:40] and it was a high school play and it was a thing, you're not doing that. So, um, but that also cemented to me that I wanted to make films. So I directed my first film when I was was very not typical of a short film. And it was like, yeah, it was like a ghost movie. It was called The Synambulis. And that's kind of when I was when I kind of started to realize how distribution worked and around that time I started getting into a relationship with Anchor Bay.

[00:24:22] They no longer exist, but they used to put out a lot of the great horror content.

[00:25:26] I was a great moment. I said to Jason X where the director, who was a lovely guy, unfortunately, he's no longer with us, but he was trying to get a shot of Jim Isaac was his name. He was

[00:25:31] trying to get a shot of Jason. It was just like a quick pickup shot of Jason coming through a hallway.

[00:25:37] And the timing of the shot with the camera wasn't working the way that Jim wanted. So Jim said to

[00:25:42] King, can you maybe just move a little faster? And King was like, what do you mean. So, um, Cain was, you know, refused to do those things. He was just like, nope, that's not the character. Um, you know, Robert England, all the great guys like that, that, uh, Bruce Campbell, like they all have sort of stories of like, you know, though, I mean, for Bruce, it was like most of the time he was working with, with Raimi. And so, you know,

[00:27:03] they both understood the rules of that character. But, but I think for Robert and, and, and debate fictional battles between characters from comics, movies, and video games. We've got a new show every week, and almost always, am I the winner? Yeah, not true, right? In the past, we've discussed such matches as Captain America vs Darth Vader, Solid Snake vs the Iron Giant, Classic matchups like RoboCop vs Terminator, and even the Muppets

[00:28:20] vs Sesame Street.

[00:28:22] That one was crazy.

[00:28:24] So if you're a fan of geek culture and the weird thing was Stuart had his own

[00:29:41] personal email listed on IMDB at that time he was like, yeah, that is good. And it kind of broke the ice and, and I gave him a script and on the thing I was working on, said, would love to know what you think. And he a few days later, he called me and said, let's grab a coffee and I'll tell you what I think. And he didn't like it. And he went through why and it was really helpful. And

[00:31:01] it was kind of the beginning of a friendship. Because you know, people like Jeff Combs, who became a friend and stuff through, through Stuart and, you know, I'm going to an event with Stuart and Jeffrey Combs and Toby Hooper. Joe Dante was there. It was for a screening of a movie, William Malone did. And like all these, it was like a horror boys club, like every, all of the guys were there.

[00:32:24] And I got to just like go and hang out with them and just get to know them all.

[00:32:27] And Toby was the first time I met Toby. to be curious. And curiosity is a funny thing in that, you know, there's all these stupid expressions like curiosity killed the cat. And I can't think of a dumber instinct to kill in a young person than curiosity because it's how you learn and how you get better is by how you,

[00:33:40] you know, when you start asking questions going, now, why does that work

[00:33:43] that way? And if you if you had done it like this, what would happen then,

[00:34:46] a trick I would use sometimes but I think the key is like early on yeah be curious you ask questions uh if you don't understand something I find the film business is an industry where most people in

[00:34:51] it are um they feel a sense of duty to pass things on and they feel a a keen sense of wanting to

[00:35:00] share their journey with you and uh if you don't ask? So we knew what they were doing. I have plenty of those. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I did a movie called Offseason. It was a slasher film. And we shot it like in the middle of nowhere in the woods. And you know, you have your whole crew and cast altogether for,

[00:36:22] I think we had two weeks to shoot it.

[00:36:24] And, you know, it was one time on on that shoot where I uh I was uh set up high up on this like scissor lift thing for a shot we're gonna do and I fell asleep in this thing and nobody and everyone was so tired they forgot I'd gone up in

[00:37:40] it so I wake up like I don't know I was shooting with Dean and you know but like are you familiar with Dean Kundee's work? Yes, I love that cinematographer. Yeah yeah he's amazing and I remember we were doing we were

[00:39:01] shooting a project called Lineage and there was a. Oh yeah, and he's a wonderful person.

[00:40:20] He's just, he's a person who did a lot for me in my career.

[00:40:25] He really invested in helping me build a career.

[00:41:25] like, you know, it was, I think a way for me to kind of alleviate the pressure of myself of me feeling like I'm an unknown young filmmaker.

[00:41:30] You're a legend in your industry.

[00:41:34] What are you doing here?

[00:41:36] But you know, the hell can I do for you?

[00:41:41] Yeah, yeah.

[00:41:42] You know, but it's, it's that thing of, you know, I remember I was shooting a shot, but it was Tom Atkins and Bill Sather and D Wallace was in the next shot and she was waiting and I was looking in the Dean Kundee was shooting Tom who he shot the fog with and Halloween and all these things with and I was like, this is crazy that these people are all here on my shoot.

[00:43:03] But then I mean, you felt very proud because it's like, well, it's just they don't look at it. Just since you look at someone like

[00:44:21] Carpenter who had so many movies that have no end on the same token. Like who predicted that Barbie was going to be like this breakaway runaway train of success that it was.

[00:45:40] So, you know, it's it's really impossible to know this.

[00:45:45] If it's like everyone who thinks When a movie, I don't know if it's as much like this now, but it used to be a sort of a thing where when the movie did really well, a lot of the time the credit went to the actors. And if a movie tank, the director got blamed. And I think that's changed a bit now. I think people are more acutely aware of what a director does and what the actors do. And, you know, we do they so bad on these next five moments? Well, I'm the thing is like the director still gets the credit, right? When you're like, you know, it was fast. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You know, and you'll never hear that guy go, well, actually, it was the DP and the AD who pulled this thing together. I was, I was out the lunch, like you never hear that. So. Yeah, I hope it can change.

[00:48:21] And everyone can kind of just call.

[00:48:24] I mean, much like we've seen with like Martin Scorsese will say something about the new Marvel movie. And then people go like, why is Scorsese being an old grouch? Like, just be quiet.

[00:49:40] And I'm just like, well, of course Martin Scorsese

[00:49:42] doesn't get these movies because it's like, well, but that goes for anybody. The minute you are just being told, hey, you know, I mean, I was devastated when not only the day Stan Winston passed away,

[00:51:02] but when Rick Baker retired.

[00:51:04] Yeah. Oh, yeah, man.

[00:51:05] And Rick Baker's retirement was like, oh, you're telling me no one

[00:52:02] into my rule about makeup effects people. But yes, most of them, I pretty much,

[00:52:05] everyone's been nice.

[00:52:06] It's really only been certain directors on the day

[00:52:09] or the extra coordinators or the wardrobe.

[00:52:17] Well, you know, you're gonna meet grumpy people

[00:52:21] or nasty people in any facet of industry.

[00:52:25] It's just, it's unfortunately.

[00:52:26] Yeah, that's actually are just people. Absolutely. It's very, it's very telling. Yeah. And so we kept to here and we've gone to town. And let's, let's go into the tips and tricks before we let you go.

[00:53:41] I was so, you know, obviously everyone kind of has their own personal checklist

[00:53:47] when they're getting handcuffed to a shotless, sometimes you could miss out on things that the actors might be bringing to the table that you hadn't accounted for or an idea that

[00:55:03] a, you know, anyone're AD and you're DP

[00:56:22] and you're production manager.

[00:56:24] These people, you know, if you get good ones,

[00:56:26] have a lot to offer. I had already flown out to LA where I was living at that time and this movie was shot here in Canada. And they said, we need you to come back. We want to do, we want to show this. And I was like, well, how do you want to do it? And they're like, we're going to have this thing where, you know, you're going to be hanging from a tree. And I was like, nope. And the director was like, what, why? And I was like, I know how miserable and uncomfortable that will be physically.

[00:57:40] I don't want to do it.

[00:57:43] I was already at that point where like acting to me

[00:57:45] at that point had become anything where like, it was,

[00:57:47] you know, I only did it in that scenario from there. Thank you so much, Ben. This is a lot of fun. Appreciate it. That's good. You're good. Follow us on the web on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The podcast is available on Pod B Spotify, iHeartRadio, Anchor, Apple and anywhere else.

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