In Laymon's Terms

Originally Published in Cemetery Dance #34, 2001

INVASIONS AND TREPIDATIONS

Asked to join the artist, GAK in covering an independent film shoot for The Midnight Hour, I had mixed feelings. There were good reasons not to do it. For one thing, I don’t like to go anywhere on weekends. Safe at home, I usually turn out lots of pages on Saturdays and Sundays. For another thing, I’m a novelist, not a journalist. I don’t know how to cover real stories. Also, I get nervous about meeting strangers. If that weren’t bad enough, the adventure would require driving for more than two hours on the freeways of Southern California. I like to avoid them. Southern California freeways are nerve-wracking at best, lethal at worst. Finally, it would mean driving into unknown regions of Oxnard, where I was almost certain to get lost. I’m a novelist, not a navigator.

On the other hand, Matt Johnson had asked me to cover the shoot. It’s difficult to say no to Matt. Not only is he a terrific guy, but he’s a publisher. As a writer, it can’t hurt to do favors for a publisher.

Plus, I’d never watched a film being shot. It seemed like a great opportunity. Losing a day of writing would be a small price to pay for all the new material I might gain. Also...who knows?...as a writer, it never hurts to meet film-makers. Usually doesn’t help, but can’t hurt.

To top it all off, I looked forward to spending the time with GAK. I’d enjoyed our occasional encounters at horror conventions and figured this would be a great opportunity to get to know him better.

I was still hesitant about undertaking the journey, however, until my nineteen-year-old daughter, Kelly, agreed to come along and help with the navigation.

All things considered...and various qualms shoved aside, I decided to go for it.

Nor did I back out, even though I was beset by worries that we might crash and get killed on our way to or from the shoot. I mean, more than two hours on the freeways...it could happen. I told myself these were just normal worries, not premonitions...though they felt like premonitions.

OFF WE GO

At nine-thirty on Saturday morning, we climbed into Kelly’s car armed with directions, a note pad, a pen, a couple of cameras with extra film, a micro-cassette recorder, and two bottles of water to ward off dehydration in case we should break down, survive a crash, or become otherwise stranded in the wasteland of the Southern California freeway system. Then, off we went.

Strangely enough, the drive from our place in west Los Angeles to GAK’s place in Northridge went smoothly. The traffic was light and we encountered none of the usual nut cases. Perhaps they were still in bed, sleeping off last night’s drunken rampages. Nor did we get lost, thanks to good directions from GAK, Kelly’s reading of them, and her clever reminders of the difference between right and left: “No, go that way, Dad.”

Having left the house early enough to reach GAK’s place by our scheduled meeting time of ten o’clock, we arrived there at nine-thirty. This happens to me all the time. In my attempts to arrive “on time” even if I should get lost or encounter heavy traffic, I often arrive at my destinations half an hour early.

As we drove by GAK’s place, we saw no sign of him. Of course not. He lives there. Why would he go outside and stand in the sun half an hour early?

Figuring we had a long wait ahead of us, I parked at the curb near the front of GAK’s apartment complex, turned off the engine and turned on the radio.

Over the course of my career, when attempting to rendezvous with various agents, publishers, and writers, I’ve found that one thing or another almost always goes wrong. In several instances, for example, my meetee and I end up waiting simultaneously for each other in slightly different locations. I fret, wondering where he is while thirty feet away, he’s wondering where I am.

Having learned from decades of mistakes, I sat in our car for about ten minutes before saying to Kelly, “Hey, you wanta jump out and make sure GAK isn’t out there someplace?” Being compliant and spry, she hopped out for a look. And quickly reported back, “I don’t know for sure what GAK looks like, but there’s this guy up there.”

The guy was GAK all right, who’d come out to wait for us almost half an hour early! He’d already been waiting a while, but not long.

This was turning out to be a lucky day!

LOST!

With GAK in the passenger seat and Kelly in back, we embarked for the shooting location in Oxnard. The freeway drive, which I’d been dreading, went by without the slightest hitch. In fact, it turned out to be fun. I enjoyed talking with GAK so much that I hardly even noticed the traffic...

Nevertheless, we didn’t crash.

Just so happened, our directions to the shooting location took us past a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The shoot would be continuing all day, so we were in no big hurry to arrive.

“Mind if we stop for a minute at the Barnes & Noble?” I asked. “It’s a bookstore.”

GAK is an artist who loves to read.

So we ran into the Barnes & Noble. I wanted to see if they were carrying my novel, Bite, which had just been released by Leisure Books. So far, I hadn’t seen it in any bookstores except for Dark Delicacies and Borderlands where I’d had signings. Over in the horror section, there was Bite. Face out. Eight copies. It warmed the cockles of my heart.

Next stop, McDonalds. GAK and I had eaten breakfast, but Kelly hadn’t, so she picked up McNuggets and a Coke. Then we were off for the movie shoot.

Which we couldn’t find.

Directions had been sent to me by email. Very specific directions, with street names and everything. We followed them carefully. Only problem, the final street, Martin, didn’t seem to be where it was supposed to be...or anywhere else in the vicinity.

We spent about half an hour looking for Martin, cruising up and down empty streets in an industrial area that seemed to be abandoned for the weekend. This looked like a good place for filming a spooky movie. And a nice day for it. While the valley had been sunny and hot, Oxnard was cool and bleak with fog.

Perhaps the fog had swallowed Martin Street.

From the start, I’d figured that something was sure to go wrong with our little adventure. How about driving all the way to Oxnard and not finding the location of the shoot?

But the email included the director’s cell phone number. In my experience, cell phones rarely work. This was our last chance to achieve our objective, however, so we backtracked to the same shopping center where we’d visited the Barnes & Noble. I went to a public phone, popped in a slew of coins, and dialed the director’s number.

Someone answered!

“Hello,” I said. “Is this Jason Stephens?”

“Yes, it is.”

“This is Richard Laymon. We’re supposed to cover your shoot today for The Midnight Hour magazine, but we can’t seem to find Martin Street.”

“Oh,” he said. “The street’s Walter. Not Martin, Walter.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. That explains it. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

FOUND

We’d already been through the area several times, so we had no trouble finding Walter or the proper driveway entrance. We parked at the curb, disembarked, and walked up the driveway. The sky was gray and somber. All around us were parking areas and loading docks and almost no signs of life. If I were a horror writer, I might’ve suspected that a calamity had wiped out everyone. Oh wait...

We spotted a few people. They were milling about a van and a couple of cars near the front of a warehouse. Alive. We approached them.

“Is this where the movie’s being shot?” I asked.

Indeed, it was. The man introduced himself as Jason Stephens. He was young, but not a kid. Cheerful and energetic, but not a flake. Trim and clean-cut. No pony tail. Dressed in a T-shirt and blue jeans. Not in black. Not in leather. No pierced eyebrows or lips. Not what I’d expected.

Meet Jason Stephens. Blond hair, six foot one, 185 pounds. Writer, director and producer of the film, Decay and the film we’d arrived to cover, Vampire Night. Co-producer and director of Merchants of Death. Gaffer of Things 2, grip and assistant cameraman of Haunted, dolly grip on Cyber Wars, etc.

And that’s in his spare time.

Full time, he is a deputy in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

Jason Stephens, independent film maker, cop.

FILM-MAKER WITH A BADGE

I was fascinated to learn of Jason’s “real” job.

Here is a man who makes horror films, but who deals on a daily basis with real-life horrors. What sort of effect, I wondered, did his police work have on his films?

“I see a lot of strange people in my line of work,” Jason said, “and deal with a lot of troubling situations. Sometimes I write characters based a little on someone I’ve dealt with but generally I don’t. You get a lot of life experience being a cop, so I guess it probably does affect me in my film making on an unconscious level. Usually people write about what they know or have experienced.”

Being in law enforcement helps Jason in various areas of film making. “People trust me on their property. I get things donated to me more easily. The cops don’t show up on my locations and tell me to shut it down, because the cops are already there. (I usually have a bunch of cops on my set.) I also think it helps me direct better. In my job, I have to direct people a lot and it’s the type of direction people sometimes don’t want. Directing a film is different. I’m telling a bunch of actors who want to perform well and look good what I need for them to do to achieve their goal, which is also my goal. Much easier...most of the time!”

But what about violence in movies? Whenever real-life acts of violence take place in this country, the news media and politicians are quick to blame various forms of “violent” entertainment—from computer games to music videos to television shows and movies. Horror films are often catching the heat for contributing to juvenile violence. Being a law enforcement professional, Jason’s view on this subject should carry special weight. So I asked him about it.

“I’ve seen some really good kids that are horror movie fans and I see a whole lot of bad kids that aren’t. I really think the problem is in the home. If someone’s kid is being too heavily influenced by violence in the movies or on TV, then the parents need to take action. I’m sure the violence seen today may in some ways desensitize children, but it falls on the part of the parents and teachers to explain human suffering and tragic loss of human life. The news doesn’t always show the massive impact a loss of life in a family brings. The Christmases spent without a loved one, birthdays, waking up and eating breakfast together. On the news it’s just, ‘Two teenagers shot down in an apparent drive-by shooting...more at 11:00.’ If I was watching that news program with my child, I’d be damn sure he knew the impact of that situation. There’s a lot of things that need to be done differently.”

As for his own films, “I don’t glorify violence. I wouldn’t make a film about how great it would be to go into a restaurant and kill a bunch of innocent patrons. Anyone that would make that type of a film is sick. You could make the film with the same situation about the hero that tries to save the patrons. That is the difference.”

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

Why does Jason Stephens focus on making horror films?

Not because they’re the latest fad. He didn’t jump on the ol’ Scream bandwagon. Nope, he’s been a horror fan since he was a little kid.

He says, “I remember seeing horror movies with my dad since age 6 or 7. I guess they all had some type of effect on me. From the bad to the great, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes to The Exorcist. I used to love to get scared at the movies. That doesn’t happen any more really so now I look at the suspense to affect my emotions. Now I watch the horror films that seem possible. Those types are scary to me...If I had the finances to make a Big film, I wouldn’t make a campy horror movie. I’d like to make Jaws or Dead Calm or a suspense horror film like that...something people will remember and really think about.”

Jason started creating his own films when he was 13 years old, making “little Saturday Night Live style video skits...As I got older and started working, I was able to afford nicer equipment and my videos started looking better and better. Then I started taking classes at my local Junior College and some video specific courses in L.A.. When I was 21, I met Dennis Devine, who was teaching a lighting class. I showed him some of my videos...several of them horror genre type stuff. Dennis thought they looked pretty good and asked me if I wanted to help crew a low budget horror movie he was doing. That was Haunted, which ended up taking forever to release. But I did grip work on that and a little camera work. I also took an acting role on, when we needed to fill a scene. From there I worked on a few other films with Dennis who was starting a distribution company called Cinematrix Releasing.”

In 1996, Jason did a part of a trilogy called Merchants of Death. This is “a really campy horror movie which was shot for a REALLY low budget. I took on the lead role in my part of the movie, in which I play a priest who goes crazy because of all the sin in the world and starts to absolve the sexual deviants of the world by killing them off in the name of God. It was a really fun movie to make, although it was difficult playing the lead and directing it.”

At the end of 1997, Jason started working on his first feature film, Decay...“a crime thriller with a horror twist.” He wrote, produced and directed Decay. This was his biggest project yet with a cast of 22 main actors, about 40 extras and 9 locations. It starred action star Robert Z’Dar of Maniac Cop and Cash. Jason tells us that Decay has a lot going on in it, with plenty of plot twists.

On the set of Vampire Night, nearly everyone I encountered had apparently worked on Decay in one capacity or another. They all spoke of the movie with great enthusiasm and smiles on their faces as if they’d had great fun making it. Several times, people said to me, “You’ve gotta see Decay.”

JOHN AND LES

One such person, the cheerful and friendly John Phillip Sousa, Jr. (whose grandfather’s cousin was the legendary composer and bandmaster) played a mobster in Decay and has the role of a homeless alcoholic in Vampire Night.

Another homeless alcoholic in Vampire Night is played by Les Sekely. Unlike John, Les was scheduled to perform on the day of our visit. He’d shown up dressed for action, filthy and wearing a filthy trench coat. He had apparently achieved the desired effect by rolling in some nearby mud.

Les, like so many of the others we met that day, is a man of many talents. When not making films, he is a substitute school teacher. He also hosts a traffic school—for those trying to get moving violations removed from their records. Traffic schools in California often have “themes.” Les runs a hugely popular comedy traffic school, which apparently consists of Les doing stand-up routines. He is funny. At one point, I heard him ask where vampires “buy those old clothes. And where do they get those torches?” (The ones we always find in their lairs.) He wondered if they shop at Vampires R Us.

After talking to Les for a while, I was tempted to go out and run a red light.

But such drastic steps aren’t really necessary. Les can be seen as a homeless man in Vampire Night. He also wrote and directed a film called Vampire Time Travelers and acted in The Man Who Never Calls Back. In addition, he co-produced and acted in Amazon Warrior, in which he plays the blind man.

It may seem as if Vampire Night is mostly about homeless guys. It’s not. I’ve simply told you a few things about John Phillip Sousa, Jr. and Les Sekely because they took the time to talk with me.

VAMPIRE NIGHT

Vampire Night is actually about a young girl named Peggy who, in Jason’s words, “ventured off to Hollywood to become an actress against her brother Carl’s wishes. A no-good agent, Johnny Hollywood, has a deal with a vampire cult to provide runaways for their blood. Johnny sends Peggy to the cult where she is held captive and drained. The vampire cult finances their lifestyle by putting on a play at a small theater. In this play, they actually use their victims and the audience has no idea they are being killed in front of them.

“When Carl doesn’t hear from Peggy,” Jason explains, “he gets worried and comes to L.A. to find his sister. Carl sees through Johnny Hollywood’s lies and eventually finds the theater. Carl, in an attempt to get his sister, is attacked by the vampires and finds himself using his skill as an ex-Navy Seal to fight a different kind of enemy.”

Carl is a kick. Vampire Night would be worth watching if only to see him in action. He is played by actor/stuntman/bartender, Jimmy Jerman. Think Jean-Claude Van Damme, make him an American, add some muscle and wit, and you’ve got Jimmy Jerman.

As we stood around on the concrete floor of the warehouse shortly after arriving, I overheard this muscular guy say, “Not that I have a problem landing on cement—we’ll only have one take that way.”

Later, he said, “I’m like the male Buffy.”

But he looked very believable as an ex-Navy Seal. Dressed in black, he carried a Glock semi-automatic and a wooden stake in holsters on his utility belt. Not to mention a pack of Altoids.

TOOLS OF THE MOVIE TRADE

The Glock was easy to come by, the writer/director/producer being a deputy sheriff.

The stake was a bit more tricky. Apparently, the stakes in Vampire Night were made from the legs of a small table. I know this because a new stake was needed while we were there. A member of the crew walked by, struggling with pliers to remove a screw-like attachment from the thick end of an already-sharpened stake-to-be.

The stake was intended to protrude, point first, from the chest of a female vampire who lay sprawled on the concrete floor. The top she wore was a rather skimpy leather vest with laces up the front. While she squirmed on the floor, the makeup woman crouched over her and attempted to make the stake stand upright by shoving its thick end between the vest’s laces. Unfortunately, it kept tilting and falling over. And the vampire kept complaining about the cold floor. At last, the stake was fixed against her chest with a gob of goo and they shot the scene.

From watching the stake work, I concluded that a well equipped tool box is nearly as essential to film-making as is a camera.

The camera being used in Vampire Night, by the way, was a state-of-the-art digital Panasonic job of the same sort used in making Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. It was being wielded by Dennis Devine, director of photography for this film. Dennis (who had invited us to the shoot) wrote, photographed and directed the Cinematrix film, Vampires of Sorority Row. Also, he wrote and directed, along with Steve Jarvis, the film being made after Vampire Night, called Bloodstream.

Another prominent piece of equipment at the shoot was the fog machine. Nearly every scene required swirling fog, so people were continually fooling with the machine. As it hissed and puffed, crew members fanned its vapors this way and that. Dennis never began shooting a scene until the fog looked right. Seemed like a nuisance. However! They say that every cloud has a silver lining. Well, so does fog. Now and then, they relied on it to hide small problems. “No big deal, the fog’ll cover it.”

A less dramatic but nonetheless fascinating piece of equipment was the Kevlar vest. Meant to stop bullets and likely worn on the job by Jason, it was worn by a stuntman (Jason’s brother) during fights in Vampire Night. To protect him from the concrete floor, more than likely. Fighting with the main vampire (played by Robert Ryan—not the dead Robert Ryan), he was frequently hurled to the floor. Take after take. “We need more of an impact,” he was told at one point. Good thing he was wearing the concrete-resistant vest.

While the stuntman kept being thrown to the floor, the vampire’s job was to leap high above it. He was aided in his leaps by a device that catapulted him into the air. It had to be “armed” before each take. Then, when the fog seemed to be just the right consistency, Robert would go bounding up the ramp, someone would trigger it, and he’d be hurled up, arms out, fangs bared, cape flapping. In true vampire fashion.

ASPIRING FILM-MAKERS PLEASE NOTE

I was fascinated and amused by a lot of this. And also impressed. Here was a small group of film-makers using state-of-the-art equipment...and also throwing stuff together with ingenuity and duct tape. Nearly all of them hold regular jobs outside the movie industry, but get together regularly and frequently to make their films. They take turns as to whose project will be made, and everybody pitches in, performing different duties on different movies. In this way, they have succeeded in making numerous low-budget films.

Films that earn profits for those who make them.

To me, this group seems like a model for small, independent film production.

I asked Jason what advice he might give to aspiring film-makers. He said, “It’s tough, but don’t get discouraged. Do as much work on other projects as you can and make contacts with people that can eventually help you. Plan, plan, plan. It still won’t go as planned, but at least have it all ready. Don’t just use friends and family in your shoots. Go to local drama classes or acting classes and hold auditions for your parts. Your productions will look so much better with a variety of actors in them. Tell everyone upfront that it’s low budget and what you are trying to accomplish. A lot of people will want to help you in front or behind the camera.”

Of course, actually getting a film made is only part of the battle. The other part is distribution.

“Most of our films are made for under 20 thousand,” Jason explained. “Self distribution is a hard thing to do. But Dennis and Steve Jarvis (Cinematrix Releasing founders) were tired of getting ripped off by low budget distribution companies. Going through them, we saw nothing! Even when we’d sell a film to a foreign country, our ‘expenses’ to get the film there outweighed the profits.

“Now that I sell my movies through Cinematrix,” Jason said, “I get actual checks in the mail. Cinematrix markets the films through several Internet sites and also to video stores. Cinematrix also has contacts with cable companies. They are now getting a foreign clientele, but it’s a very slow process. We also sell our films directly through the Cinematrix website at http://unknownproductions.com.”

Jason goes on to say, “For interested film-makers, we can distribute films for you. We don’t make unrealistic guarantees and don’t charge a ton of expenses. You will know exactly how much your boxes cost, your copies cost, and how many tapes were sold and you WILL get your money for the sales.”

For those who might be interested in using the distribution services of Cinematrix, visit the website. Or write for additional information or a catalog at Cinematrix Releasing, 22647 Ventura Boulevard, PMB #352, Woodland Hills, CA 91364.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN

We pulled off our return from the shoot without a hitch or a crash or a maiming.

I would eventually go on to write this-here article for The Midnight Hour...an article that would hopefully include photos taken of the shoot by GAK and Kelly.

Experiences from our trip to the shoot are sure to turn up in my fiction as time goes by.

GAK will be doing artwork for some of my future special editions.

I’ll be going back to the Cinematrix website and ordering some films—especially Vampire Night when it’s available.

You might want to check it out, yourself. And Decay. And Vampires of Sorority Row...that sounds like a hot one.