In my last blog, we saw a gory little slice of social commentary in Waylon Bacon’s HELP WANTED. If you haven’t caught the film already, do yourself a service and check it out. It is mind-bendingly fantastic and as I pointed out previously, I think it has a lot of interesting things to say about us as a society.

The director was kind enough to spend some time with me and answer some questions about HELP WANTED and about what the New Flesh means for the future of film. You can click here  to read my first blog on the movie.

FANGORIA: HELP WANTED has a really dark streak to it. It’s funny, but there’s a lot going on there. Anything in particular you wanted to say with it or was it just a fun premise?
 
WAYLON BACON: A bit of both, really. I definitely had something I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to be preachy about it. I’d been feeling annoyed about a lack of rebellion in the current generation—kids who go straight from high school to college, and then to the first high-paying job they land. That always struck me as something that could end up not as fulfilling as people think. But again, I hate preachy media, so by putting it in the context of a fantasy, you can get away with saying these things in a roundabout way. They used to do that in THE TWILIGHT ZONE, my favorite TV show as a kid.
 
FANGORIA: I got this kind of “we’re in the same universe as GRAND THEFT AUTO” vibe from the picture. Like we were looking in at a day at the dead hooker processing plant. Am I seeing something that you put there?
 
BACON: I’ve always liked the fairy tale approach to storytelling, where outré’ elements are treated at face value. There’s so much cinema coming out now that needs to explain everything to people and it drives me nuts! So I definitely wanted to keep things ambiguous. I also wanted to make sure the film was funny, and the best way to do that was a nonchalant presentation of horrifying situations.
 
FANGORIA: What is your relationship to the film world right now?
 
BACON: I don’t know if I have one! Mike Everleth of BadLit.com writes about me quite a lot (god bless him!), and I think a small chunk of the San Francisco Bay Area is familiar with my work, but other than that I’d consider myself pretty well under the radar. Which is fine. Being under the radar leaves you free to experiment, which is the big draw for me in film. As an art form, it’s still very new—there’re still a lot of avenues to be explored. I often feel like a mad scientist.

FANGORIA: When we look at the whole online indie scene and the DVD/tape trading scene, is this the future we are seeing? Do you think audiences are more and more willing to accept getting their entertainment online and straight from the source than through the Hollywood apparatus?
 
BACON: It’s definitely all going online, although I’m not sure if it will open the floodgates for indie filmmakers. For a time probably, but the big boys have a way of swooping in on movements like that and co-opting them. I think free content will probably be the line in the sand, and then we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s a never-ending battle.
 
FANGORIA: When did you start making your own films?
 
BACON: Pretty young. The first thing I remember doing was a live action version of THE TOXIC CRUSADERS. I was 10. All of my friends where dressed up as characters from the show, and my little sister played Melvin Junko, since no one else would wear a tutu. But I hated it—I got so frustrated that I actually fired someone (!) and didn’t think about making movies again until middle school.
 
FANGORIA: What kind of equipment are you using?

BACON: For years I shot on a VX2000, as that was the “big” camera in the early 2000s. Now of course, it’s all HD, but I refuse to actually buy a camera. You never know when they’re going to come out with a new model and make the older one obsolete. I work on a Mac because it’s idiot-proof, and edit on Final Cut Pro. It still amazes me that I can put together a movie in my bathrobe over morning coffee. Modern times…
 
FANGORIA: What kind of a crew did you have for HELP WANTED?
 
BACON: We had a pretty large crew on this film, because we had a fairly large cast. All the dead hookers and homeless people were picked carefully for having a particular look, and they had a particular costume and makeup assigned. So this meant that Sami Martin, the costume designer, needed assistants to help keep track of the costumes. Then Shannon Burla, the SFX makeup artist, needed assistants to help get all the makeup done in time. And because I couldn’t afford to pay for everybody’s gas and toll, casting director Amy McDonald offered to do transportation so I’d only have to pay for one person’s gas and toll. And of course, if you’re going through all this trouble, you want the film to look good, so I hired a cinematographer, an incredibly talented young lady named Marcia Ong, and she had three assistants under her. Then there was catering, Pas…it was pretty overwhelming. It was the largest thing most of us had done. The first day of shooting I look over at my AD Noah and said “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
 
FANGORIA: What does it mean to you to be an independent filmmaker?

BACON: I’m not really sure, to be perfectly honest. I make films, but I don’t consciously think of myself as “indie” while I’m doing it. I just make the films I want to make and hope people like them. I prefer the term “low budget” actually!
 
FANGORIA: What do you have to say to anyone else out there reading this who is thinking about writing something or picking up a camera?
 
BACON: Well, first, don’t get discouraged. Film is a tough medium, and you may strike out the first time you try it. And I think that’s good. The negative experiences you have as a filmmaker really help you as you continue to learn. I’d also say don’t shoot a film in the hopes of emulating what’s playing at the local theatre—what’s the point? Give people something they haven’t seen before. When you have no money, that’s the only leverage you have, and it’s a powerful one.

FANGORIA: What is coming next for you?
 
BACON: Quite a bit. HELP WANTED is playing at this year’s Comic-Con International Film Festival [which occurs on Friday, July 22], so my girlfriend and I are trying to find a cat sitter and a cheap hotel room. I’m also putting together some items to sell on my web page. Right now, there are two T-shirt designs and a DVD with three of my older short films, including a comedy about jaw cancer! It’s also got a number of special features, which is sort of the hook—the films are online, but the DVD has stuff on it that’s not available on the Internet. I’m of the mindset that special features are the main draw of DVDs anyway!
 
The next film project is a documentary on my father, which I hope to have completed by the winter. He used to tell us stories from his life that made my jaw drop. These are totally subversive, dark and hilarious tales about the duality of human nature that I’m sure affected my outlook on the world. It’s also a great chance to make a film that has a lot of sex, violence and humor without any special effects.
 
And finally, I’m working on a feature-length horror script about hospitals, prescription drug addiction and Kafkaesque bureaucracy that I hope to produce in the next few years.  I’m a workaholic, and am constantly creating projects for myself. Is it a quest for meaning in life? Who knows?

My special thanks to Waylon Bacon for giving us this interview and such a funny, scary and ultimately thought-provoking film.  As a bit of a preview of what Long Live the New Flesh has in the pipeline, we’ll be exploring the dark side of the intermission clip with design firm MK12. We’ll also be joined by DC-area indie death-rockers Lost Tribe to talk about their revival of an edgier Goth sound and, of course, more movies and thoughts on the emerging internet video scene and the collapse of video as we know it. Bookmark us for your summer fix on everything fast, cheap and out of control in the world of horror.

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