Being the efforts of a local film dude inspired by Pig Destroyer.
Stowed deep
away atop the mighty House of Heroes comic book hot spot in the thick of
Oshkosh is a grand laboratory adorned with majestic posters (mostly of
the original 'Evil Dead') and copious objects truly fitting a film savvy
scholar that houses one mad soul hard at labor on a challenging
collection of projects and ideas meant to work the value of the area
filmmaking community to an ever higher level. The soul in question is
that lovable man on a seemingly endless movie mission, John Pata. Pata,
many of you should swiftly recall, is one of the chief creative engines
behind one of the most positively received and widespread cinematic
success stories to ever have been generated out of the Oshvegas/Fox
Valley landscape, 'Dead Weight'. That film (which finally landed a fully
legit, national distribution deal via Kino Lorber and became
available online and on store shelves late last month) signaled the
clear arrival of a potent cinematic commando with a natural knack for
the form.
For
those yet to witness 'Dead Weight' (a number of the populace that
hopefully continues to dwindle), it is the tense, often troubling story
of a young man named Charlie (Joe Belknap) and his increasingly self
centered quest to be reunited with his eternal true love Samantha (Mary
Lindberg) across a post outbreak tainted, mid western backdrop. The film
plays out with minimal flaw despite the relative inexperience of many
involved on either side of the camera and serves as a much more
effective study of the strange ticks of the human
mechanism than some entrail laden 'Walking Dead' wannabe or entry level
slasher also ran (though the new packaging its been draped with may
lead some to assume otherwise).
'Dead
Weight' has done a serious number of festival dates and managed to win
over a phat percentage of the folks who took it in, many of whom (myself
included) would eventually gain the itch to see just what this Pata
fellow and his constantly expanding army of contributors (especially his
Head Trauma co-hort Adam Bartlett) would follow this baby up with.
Enter,
of all damn things, Virginian grindcore band Pig Destroyer and their
frontman, J.R. Hayes' engagingly demented arrangement of words. See,
several years back, when Pata was in the midst of his U.W.-Oshkosh
student tenure, a friend introduced him to the writings on the inlay
booklet of Pig Destroyer's 2001 record 'Prowler in the Yard'.
Now, Pata, not traditionally given to the fashion of sonic violence
contained within the record, nonetheless found himself immediately taken
by a brief (4 paragraphs+1 sentence) piece of writing included in the
booklet. The words attempt to convey the very fractured psyche of a
severely downtrodden soul sitting in his car outside the house that
contains the 'better half' of a recently terminated relationship while
holding depraved intentions of a dire sort of reconciliation close to
his crippled heart.
During
a meet up a short while back, Sir. Pata confessed to me that he found
that scant passage to be one of the most 'beautifully disturbing' he'd
ever run his eyes across. It stuck with him and he found himself
returning to it a few years on when, in the wake of a rather
disheartening creative setback (the disintegration of an ambitious
horror opus named 'Among the Dead'), Pata immersed himself in the
penning of a series of
short film scripts, the Pig Destroyer idea (to be tagged 'Pity') fell
easily in line.
It
would ultimately be a tad longer as the whole 'Dead Weight' thing soon
came together and soaked up a dominant chunk of Pata's precious time.
But in 2013 the focus came right back around to 'Pity'. In the small
interim between the close of production on 'Dead Weight' and this new
short, Pata kept his filmmaking chops well oiled by lending assistance
in varying capacity on several film projects guided by others. One such
production, an Illinois based anthology called 'Chop-Shop', introduced
John to several crew members whose work ethic and overall skill sets
greatly impressed him ('They were all on the same page...it was almost
like they 'shined', they didn't have to verbally speak!', he told me),
most of all, cinematographer Robert Patrick Stern who would carry his
considerable abilities and enthusiasm over to
'Pity'.
The
time spent helping out and lugging around equipment on the sets of
other people's productions only worked to magnify the itch in John Pata
to get back to realizing his own cherished vision. Pata reapproached the
'Pity' script, sent word out to Pig Destroyer main men Scott Hull and
J.R. Hayes of his adaptation intentions and pitched to them his plan on
how to interpret the material as a short in hopes of acquiring the
official rights to do so, which he did. The next obvious step was to
pull together the bodies, locations and gadgets necessary to take this
thing all the way. Along with the already mentioned Adam Bartlett (who
served as assistant director) and camera ace Stern, Pata tapped Sarah
Sharp to realize the production design and to embody the lone acting
requirement of the story, there is a guy named Jake Martin. Martin, a
onetime frontman for a local band named Lead Me Not, is a long standing
friend of
the director who has taken part, on camera, in each of his three film
projects (as a zombie in 'Better Off Undead" and an intimidating redneck
in 'Dead Weight') and was deemed a natural fit for the brooding, closed
off and ever silent 'Anonymous' (the only words spoken in the piece
come care of voiceover).
Following
around two and a half months of pre-production the actual meat of the
production process was largely meted out on an area soundstage with a
heady array of toys (lights, cameras, rainmaking devices) to give the
project a much greater polish than anything Pata has attempted to date.
The shoot only needed two days to complete,yet the director explains
that 'Pity' required a greater level of complexity and variety in the
camera work and number of set ups for shots designed to help spice up a
potentially limiting concept of one individual doling out his last
moments of mortality while sitting in a car. Once the
'Pity' shoot wrapped up nicely, Pata set to the arduous undertaking of
piecing the resulting footage together into a coolly effective 6 minutes
of elegant, dark storytelling.
Nicholas
Elert (the man behind the band Northless who scored 'Dead Weight') is
back matching lovely sounds with the imagery and the completed 'Pity' is
set to make its big public bow during the natural monthly chaos that is
the Oshkosh Gallery Walk this coming April. This is going to transpire
at the Time Community Theater (of which John Pata serves as President)
right on Main Street with the film running every half hour and
accompanied by an exhibition of on set photographs snapped by Mary
Manchester and David Burke. From that point, Pata plans to push his
'Pity' heavily toward the sprawling film festival circuit (15% of the
short's $4,500 budget was set aside for submission fees) with a possible
DVD package featuring a much longer 'making of' documentary
to arrive at some time down the road.
Once
this 'Pity' thing and the 'Dead Weight' official roll out have both
cemented their respective places in the film universe, John Pata will
likely not waste time before jumping headlong into the next significant
stage of his filmmaking career. He already has multiple concepts in
rapid development (including one about a troublesome chain letter he's
at work on with Mr. Bartlett described as something along the lines of
'if John Carpenter directed an episode of The X-Files'). In addition,
John will be toiling as an editor on a documentary that is attempting to
chronicle the rabid punk music scene that erupted in Green Bay back in
the day between 1977 to 1987 (Kutskas Hall anyone?) and is slated to
arrive sometime late in 2014 or early 2015.
Beyond
all this, who knows, just rest assured people of Wisconsin, this native
son has no plans in the direction of slowing
down. Like the man himself summed it all up in relation to all of his
experiences to date working on films, 'No time on a film set is time
wasted.' Prime words from a perfect source.
Keep up on the progress of 'Pity' and other John Pata projects at these handy web spots;
We Are What We Are.
Rising
to a dismal rainfall, the matriarch of a remotely situated family in
rural New York State sets out to embrace the clear inevitability of her
impending demise. Left in the wake of this abrupt departure, an
emotionally distant, ever mulling father and his brood of
socially exempt offspring find themselves burdened with the obligations
of a particularly daunting legacy. Such is the core plotline
establishment of Jim Mickle's studied yet freshly unnerving re-take on
the 2010 Mexican thriller of the same name (or 'Somos Lo Que Hay' to
keep it culturally specific) by Jorge Michel Grau. Transplanted to a
storm ravaged East Coast setting with a shift in gender alignment for
many of the key characters, the story remains close in basic theme and
situational development all filtered through a fully distinct and
personal directorial touch.
As
with the two prior Mickle pictures ('Mulberry St'-probably among the
finest of those After Dark Horror Fest entries and 'Stakeland') the
director provides equal, perhaps even superior, space to aspects of
persona and genuine human behavior patterns as opposed to over
saturating his story with too many cheap, exploitation friendly shocks
and excessive carnage that would most likely reduce the proceedings to
the lower ranks of the disposable representations of the horror genre.
Sticking closely with this suddenly degraded family four pack (surname
Parker) as they shuffle weakly forward with their deep rooted lifelong
rituals, the film charts their struggle as they enter into a sort of
'fasting' process while pieces and portions of their closely held
secrets have slowly come to the literal surface care the violent
mischief of cruel mother nature.
The
thing that has placed this family so curiously outside the communal
mainstream is the very disturbing fact that they are, indeed, full on
cannibals. Not quite the grindhouse type sleazy savages of all those
(mostly Italian) flesh munching flicks that so
peppered the drive-ins and low brow venues in the bygone days of the
70s and 80s, these cannibals are a somber, meditative lot who almost
seem perpetually trapped in this hell embedded throughout their lineage.
Seems the ancestry of this clan enacted this human consuming human
option due to being unfortunate, Donner Party like settlers stuck with
no other survival alternative. Because of this intrusion of hostile
weather working past sins to the fore, many key members of the small
surrounding populace (i.e. law enforcement) inch ever closer to the
Parker's tightly hewn personal bubble. With the threat of discovery
closing in, the Parkers hurry to find a way, any way to keep their unit
from being torn apart eventually leading to a rather brutal collision of
worlds at the film's startling climax.
The
fair body of Mickle's variant on this flesh
eater saga centers close to the effect of this plight on the two young
sisters (played by able actresses Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers) who
must wrangle some semblance of stability together in their homestead as
their pa appears to degrade into a remorseful waking coma. Mickle makes
the most of his rather limited resources (this is no high priced studio
epic, mind you) as he has with his other works and sculpts some quality
performances from a completely game and impressive cast that includes
veterans Michael Parks (whose measured way of delivering dialogue
elevates his performance even more) and Kelly McGillis (far removed from
her 'Top Gun' prime but effortlessly effective here as a friendly
neighbor) plus some lesser known folks like Bill Sage as the casually
deteriorating father figure, the director's long time partner in crime
Nick Damici as the local Sheriff and even Kurt Russell's son Wyatt as a
deputy with an eye on one the Parker daughters.
'We
Are What We Are' comes to DVD and Blu Ray courtesy of the good folks at
eOne Entertainment who have included an entertaining enough running
audio commentary by director Mickle, his camera man Ryan Samul and
several cast members who give the impression of a fun and very
creatively healthy production process. There is also a near hour long
collection of behind the scenes footage that seeks to impart some of the
day to day hands on craftwork it took to make this film the fine little
piece of disturbed art that it came to be. Recommended to any and all
who favor a little bit more thought and class in their cannibal cinema.
parkerfamilytradition.com
Thank you for reading, may
you never hunger for long.
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