THE
HOLLYWOOD GEEK: KILL AND KILL AGAIN Who is the Hollywood Geek?
David Rosiak is a screenwriter, living and working in Hollywood. Each month he
brings us tales of navigating the murky waters of filmmaking,
shares the ups and downs and explains how very wrong things can go between script and screen...
This month, David thinks he might be all burnt out on blood...
This month, David thinks he might be all burnt out on blood...
 Bloody death from Hard Ride to Hell. |
The question was posed by my longtime writing partner Matt Chernov, and it was a valid one. Matt and I have been working together for almost six years, and we’ve almost exclusively made our living by writing screenplays to horror films. The first script we sold was a gory Satanic cannibal biker story called Hard Ride to Hell. Since then, we’ve written grisly serial killer tales, killer shark movies, bloody slasher flicks, Cronenberg-esque body horror and creepy ghost stories. We’ve spent many sleepless nights concocting unique and horrific methods of onscreen murder. When it comes to grotesquely offing people in fictional film universes, Matt and I are official experts.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a lifetime of viewing horror films, it’s that acts of murder and violence are intensely cinematic. Sure, there’s something to be said for the stately and austere works put out by the likes of Merchant and Ivory or the lovingly composed shots of Terence Malick’s films, but I’ve always been drawn to the macabre. Give me the exploding heads and gaping zombie bite wounds in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead over the yearning glances exchanged between Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson any day. There’s a genuine visceral thrill to be gotten from watching actors go through hell in a horror film, an emotional catharsis at seeing someone participating in and enduring acts which you will (hopefully) never have to experience firsthand. To bend a phrase coined by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street… gore is good.
But sometimes it can be a chore.
A little over a year ago, I got together with horror
director Mike Mendez to collaborate on a project called
Overkill. At the time, Matt was finishing up a solo
project (hey, we don’t always write together) and I
had some free time to do something on my own. I had known
Mike for several years, ever since his last movie, The
Gravedancers, was released in the first wave After
Dark’s “8 Films to Die For” horror fest. I had run a few
scripts by him, one of which (a gooey cross between
Cocoon and Re-Animator) he’d quite favorably
responded to, and we were determined to work together. One
night in March of 2008, we’d gotten to talking after a DVD
signing outside of Dark Delicacies, a horror-themed book and
video store in Burbank. He mentioned that he wanted to do a
sort of mash-up of his favorite iconic horror movie killers
together in one film, and we began to hash out some ideas. A
week later, Overkill was born. Overkill takes place in a world in which unstoppable, iconic serial killers exist. It’s centered on a reality-based gameshow on which everyday people compete for a massive cash prize by solving puzzles and navigating through labyrinthine levels while having to battle inhuman killing machines. Whoever is left alive by the end wins the game. There are shades of movies that run the gamut from The Running Man to Battle Royale to Series 7: The Contenders. We imagined it as a satirical grand guignol riff on the myriad slasher films we’d grown up with, as well as a grand statement on the television audience’s inherent bloodlust. And we knew that it had to have a massive body count.
So we set to work not only concocting a host of characters but also every possible means to gorily dispatch them. The first ten pages alone featured no less than fifteen kills, which was only the tip of the iceberg. We gleefully decided to make it one of the most over-the-top violent films ever conceived, envisioning multiple ways to decimate human bodies onscreen.
 Original death from Hatchet. |
It’s a lucky thing that I work in Hollywood, where most of my friends are fellow screenwriters and horror enthusiasts, because if I’d run these questions by folks who don’t also live and breathe this sort of thing, I likely wouldn’t have any friends left.
Mike was consistently supportive and inspirational, and we texted back and forth whenever new ideas occurred to us. I wrote a couple of drafts of the script sitting on his couch while he tossed out every brutal idea that came to mind. When I finished the final draft of the script, it featured well over a hundred kills, each one distinctive. I’ll admit it -- I felt pretty accomplished.
But I also felt pretty exhausted. Had I said everything I had to say on the horror genre? Had I hit every goal I’d set for myself when I first hit Hollywood? I thought that I very well had, and I began to seriously consider switching genres.
So when Matt asked what I thought about writing a script in
which we didn’t have to kill anyone, I agreed that this
might be the best way to move on from what I assumed would
be my last horror hurrah. We mulled over the idea of a
romantic comedy. It’ll be a pleasant change to deal with
characters whose issues don’t revolve around staying alive,
I thought. As we settled down to outline it, the ideas
flowed freely -- we’d focus it on a sheltered girl from
Reseda stuck at a crossroads in life who finds love (as well
as her own purpose) amidst the quirky nightlife of Hollywood
in one crazed evening. But who would her fated love turn out
to be, we wondered. Who? And that’s when it hit me…“He’s a serial killer,” I grinned. “Her Mister Right is a serial killer who’s already left a trail of bodies in his wake yet but his life turned around when he meets his one true love. And our lead girl finds her purpose in life by joining up with him on an orgy of mayhem and death.”
Hmm. Maybe I hadn’t said everything I had to say in the genre after all.
Post-Script: Overkill has yet to be made, but it should be going in front of cameras quite soon. Below, you’ll find a promotional “proof of concept” trailer that Mike Mendez directed and shot in order to secure financing. And yes, that’s Ray Wise, of Twin Peaks fame.
.
"0V3RK!LL" trailer from mike mendez on Vimeo.
--
David Rosiak
Visit our comment form!
HOME