Murder Party’s Lab of Madness
Written 14 hours, 30 minutes ago by Donny Broussard
I got the chance to pick the brains of the crew behind the kick ass horror romp, “Murder Party,” and below are the fruits of my labor.
Jeremy Saulnier: Director / Writer / D.P.
Chris Sharp: “Chris aka The Brown Knight” / Producer
Macon Blair: “Macon aka The Wolfmelt” / Exec. Producer
Tell me how “Murder Party” came to be. Who came up with the idea and how did you gather up such a talented group of people?
JEREMY: The concept of having a murder party had been floating around our group of friends for years. Our buddy, Nick Marston, envisioned such a party as a black tie affair in which a guest of honor would be blindfolded and murdered as each of the ‘hosts’ lined up to take a stab.
I took this idea and ran with it, originally wanting to do a Halloween-themed short film with a quick and bloody conclusion wherein the guest would turn the tables on his murderous hosts.
I suggested expanding this concept into a feature film while Macon Blair, Chris Sharp and I were workshopping the sixth draft of another script that was trapped in development Hell. We were demoralized by the process and needed something new. MURDER PARTY was the answer.
We decided to greenlight it right then and there. I wrote the screenplay to accommodate our available talent and resources. It was a very collaborative process throughout, and was the perfect opportunity to introduce The Lab of Madness to audiences and the industry on our own terms.
Personally, MURDER PARTY was a desperate attempt to shoot a feature film before I turned thirty. It was an arbitrary deadline to put up or shut up. And it worked!
If you had to describe “Murder Party” to a group of people that have never heard of it, how would you describe it?
JEREMY: “It’s THE BREAKFAST CLUB- with chainsaws and hard drugs.”
CHRIS: One of the top five Halloween-horror-comedy-art-satire-indie-gore-fest-with-a-heart flicks ever made.
MACON: Or at the very least in the top twenty of that particular well-traveled genre.
The flick won the Audience Award at the Slamdance film festival, tell me about that experience, and why do you think it plays so well for audiences?
JEREMY: MURDER PARTY plays well with festival audiences because it serves as counter programming. It’s blood-drenched sleaze that aims to please! People rejoice when they are granted an 80-minute reprieve from standard ‘high art’ festival fare. Sure, our film’s got a bunch of white people talking in a room, but at least we had the decency to kill everybody off before it’s over.
CHRIS: Slamdance has been repeatedly very good to us as filmmakers (we had a short film there in 2004, Crabwalk, and it won the Jury Prize) and it offered the perfect venue to premiere the movie. This is a perfect Midnight movie and had subsequently been screened at the witching hour more often then not because of it. Get drunk, grab some friends, go see Murder Party and you’ll still be in bed by 2am. You can’t beat that.
MACON: And going to Slamdance is cool because it’s like the punk rock festival with real indie cred. Sure, we’d love to get a movie into Sundance- who wouldn’t?- but since we can’t, we really embrace the whole anti-establishment vibe: “You ain’t indie, Bobby Redford! You ain’t street!” You know, we actually passed him on the street one day and this twat in his entourage literally shoved our buddy Phil out of the way like she was on Secret Service detail or something. “You ain’t street, Bobby Red! Fatcat! Rich boy!” See? It’s fun.
I think that the media climate has changed a lot in the last few years, making it easier for filmmakers to market themselves without the help of studios. Has this shift towards a more digital culture, where in some circles a blogger can hold more weight than a seasoned critic effected the way “Murder Party” was marketed?
JEREMY: MURDER PARTY had the benefit of a successful yearlong festival run. That’s the root of its marketing campaign- word of mouth from film fans and festival goers. Horror fans are especially die-hard so we benefited from a large pre-existing network of genre loyalists that were more than happy to spread the word.
Magnolia/ Magnet reached out to the mainstream press for the DVD release and Macon has been doing an ongoing web based marketing campaign through our Myspace page. We’ve lucked out so far with a majority of positive reviews, but there are some hard-core cyber bullying naysayers that post ruthless, personal attacks at us for making the film. I need to get over that shit, but at times I really want to track them down and fight them.
MACON: Fight them? I wanna choke them. Not because they don’t like the movie- that’s fine with me- it’s how deliberately nasty they are about it. I wish I was more like the dudes from “Blood Car” who just have a laugh about mean-spirited shit like that. But for some reason I feel compelled to post responses where I take the critic to task for their poor grammar and factual inaccuracies, as if we were dealing with a Congressional legal brief or something, nevermind the fact that it’s probably just some booger-eating teenager in his mother’s basement with a chip on his shoulder. (sigh) I think I need to go to church or something.
The film took me back to flicks I loved in the 80s’ but it also played like it would work equally as well as a stage-play. Was this intentional or am I the only one that brought this up?
JEREMY: Yup, people talking in a room. You’re not the first to bring it up. I think it would translate quite well onto the stage, but it wasn’t really our intent. MURDER PARTY was designed to be an inexpensive production and thus we followed the ‘indie film’ guidelines for the bulk of the film. Character driven, heavy dialogue, minimal locations, etc… But we figured we owed it to the audience to throw out those guidelines for the finale, and so we introduced heavy makeup FX, fire, animals and night exterior rooftop chase sequences into the mix.
CHRIS: In fact, MURDER PARTY will be on Broadway in 2011, starring the original cast. Bigger than Cats, more stirring than Les Miserables, more laughs than Miss Saigon!
MACON: And in my case, fatter than Hairspray!
What was it like working in an environment where your actors also served as your crew, where one minute someone is acting and the next they are working on make-up or another important job? Was it hard to find a balance when it came to this aspect of the process?
JEREMY: Working with a trusted group of friends provided a comfort zone within which we could experiment creatively and enjoy the process of fumbling through our first feature production. But we definitely spread ourselves too thin and the quality suffered a bit. Luckily we had some expert crew members that more than made up for deficiencies above the line.
During the writing process, I had plenty of help from Macon Blair, Chris Sharp, and others but on set I served as both director and cinematographer and at times it proved too much. I never sat down during the course of a shooting day- I was camera blocking or lighting when I should have been storyboarding or rehearsing with the talent. I left a lot of people hanging, but like we always said on set, “fuck it, it’s MURDER PARTY!”
CHRIS: Yes. Corners were cut, some scenes were compromised but in the end it kept us honest and moving and allowed us to make the movie with total autonomy while having a hell of a lot of fun in the process.
MACON: I did additional jobs during pre-production and post-production, but during the actual shoot I was only an actor. So I just sat around having farting contests with Bill and Sandy and complaining about what a doofus Jeremy was being.
I actually went to art school and some of the characters in the film seemed like they walked right out of my classes and onto the screen. Where did the characters come from?
JEREMY: Us. We are a creative collective that’s been working together for twenty years. There’s plenty of love to go around, but we’ve had our differences. It was great fun to lampoon our scene, our insecurities and ourselves on screen.
The film was cast before page one was written, so every character in the film was derived from and developed by the actor playing the role.
The film looks great, even better than a lot of the films being released by Hollywood, so if you don’t mind me asking what as the budget for the flick?
JEREMY: Why thank you very much! It was extremely low budget, but we paid nearly everyone on the crew and signed a SAG Ultra Low Budget Agreement, so it added up quick ($12K for catering?!). Our initial budget (including production, editing, color correction, and sound design) was around $160K. Festival expenses and publicity were tens of thousands of dollars more. We were lucky enough to secure distribution but the cost of delivery (insurance, music & effects sound mixes, special features, legal clearances, pan& scan, etc…) brought the grand total to around $245K.
How do you feel about the film vs. digital argument that seems to be rampart in the industry right now?
CHRIS: Film still looks swell and if we had the money we would have used it. Now digital looks pretty swell too and if we got some money, we’d totally use that too depending on the project.
JEREMY: I’d say at this point it’s no longer an argument- it’s a choice. I’m a purist, my preference is film. I like the mechanical, untethered nature of film cameras and the texture of the traditional photochemical process. But even shows that shoot film are tending to do the majority of their FX work and color correction in the digital realm. Factor in the recent advances in digital technology and kick as digital acquisition cameras like the Viper FilmStream and the Panavision Genesis and it’s hard to deny that things are leaning digital. That being said, I’ll prefer to shoot film as long as they manufacture it- I don’t like cables and hard drives all over my set.
MACON: Wait a sec…didn’t we shoot Murder Party on film?
I guess I have to ask the prerequisite question, who were your biggest influences as a filmmaker?
JEREMY: Lots of the standard film nerd heroes: The Coen Bros, Kubrick, Scorsese, Raimi, Carpenter, etc… These days I’m more into specific films than directors, as greats like Friedkin (THE EXORCIST and THE FRENCH CONNECTION!) have made some stinkers. 2007 has been a great year for film, so my faith in the industry has been fully restored.
MACON: Hell yes. Zodiac, No Country…, and There Will Be Blood, that’s the greatness triangle right there. Thank you, 2007!
CHRIS: Brett Ratner and Uwe Boll all the way!
MACON: Oh, be nice. 
These guys truly are cool cats, so do yourself and them a favor and pick up a copy of murder party as soon as possible.
http://www.killerfilm.com/interviews/read/Murder_Partys_Lab_of_Madness-16
Thank you so much, Donny! Killer Film has been a big supporter from way back and we sincerely appreciate the kudos you’ve thrown our way. (Compliments, I mean, not the delicious granola-and-chocolate snack bars…although some of those would be nice, too.) And anyone who can describe us as “cool cats” without adding a sarcastic winking emoticon is okay by me. High five, brother.
