Motivational Growth Q&A With Don Thacker Pt. 2

Here's the second and final half of my Q&A with Don Thacker of (soon-to-be wild, uncontrollable, mouth-frothing) Motivational Growth fame. This will be wrapping up my coverage of this movie for now... but I want to recommend that everyone keep their eyes peeled for this film in the future.

I'd like to thank Don Thacker for approaching me, letting me get a look at Motivational Growth, and for taking the time to answer my questions about the film. Again, I've talked about the movie... here and here. And the first part of the Q&A can be found here.

Let me say once more: what follows is pretty much (save for a few grammatical or spelling errors) an unedited version of our Q&A. I've added a few little observations of my own to the mix, after receiving Don's e-mail, but I've placed these in parentheses. I should also point out that ALL of the images in this post, and the other posts I link to above are NOT MY IMAGES. They are all images belonging to Imagos Films or Don Thacker, that I've culled from the internet.

Here are my last 5 (or so) questions with this man:

Yes ladies of the internet, that was the sound
of all your panties hitting the floor simultaneously. 

Let's get this thing started. 

6.       I loved The Mold. Its appearance, its attitude, everything.

Thanks! That's huge. He's our shark. Our Jaws. If he doesn't sell by the end of the film, it was a waste of our time.

I don't think it was a waste of our time at all.

How did Jeffrey Combs get involved with a project where he would be voicing a crusty growth of bathroom fungus who only seems to speak in tough-guy hyperboles? 

Jeff was our first choice. We had a fallback position, but he was the man. There's a bit at the end of the film that I wrote in Jeff's voice. I am a massive Jeff Combs fan. (As am I -G.G.)

Once we got the script to him he read it on a plane to a festival, I think, and called me immediately  He told me he loved it and he was in. After that it was up to the money people to work it all out. Jeff an I spent the following weeks just talking about who The Mold was, and working out his center.

Ladies of the internet... you know the drill. 

One thing I thought was pretty solid was that Jeff wanted to do the script entirely as written. I think there's, like, a single ad-lib in the whole picture. The rest is word for word from the page.

30% of that slang is real. I made the rest up. I characterized The Mold as the father of a greaser from a late 50s hot-rod grease-monkey film. You know those guys with the greased Pompadour and the pack of Strikes rolled up in their sleeve? Super misogynistic muscle car dudes. The Mold is what I imagine one of their dads is like. The mess of a guy who can turn a sweet little kid with a bb-gun into a selfish raging ass-hat.

Jeff just ate it up. When we recorded him he'd do a take and be all super into it and right when he got to the end of the line he'd look over at me and crack this massive kid grin like he's just done the coolest thing ever. A number of times, he had.

It's thick stuff, The Mold's dialogue. Jeff makes it seem like it's totally natural. Not only the language, but that a 3' fungus is saying it.

Tell me more about working with a b-movie horror legend and how that effected the process of making Motivational Growth (if at all).

Jeff was a dream to work with. He'd been doing voices for Transformers Prime at the time, so he was totally prepared for vocal work. He came at it 100% and held nothing back. I pushed him in places as well.

It's an awesome actor who can step into a booth with some little indie director and just deliver for hour after hour. This guy's worked with Peter Jackson. This guy's headlined Stuart Gordon pictures. This guy's been on three different Star Trek franchises and has legions of fans at every con he goes to. He's in the booth nailing this esoteric fake-slang for some guy nobody's ever heard of. Just nailing it.

His facial expressions, some of the bigger "Combs" moments, were used by the puppeteers/creature effects team as a basis for performance as well. If you're a huge Jeffrey Combs fan, you can see some of his signature moves in The Mold. No small feat for an animatronic fungus I must say.

Mad props to Steve Tolin from Tolin FX on his amazing design/delivery.

We recorded Jeff first, edited his dialogue and delivered it to the creature team who practiced against the recordings. We piped his voice over loud speakers when we shot, so when The Mold speaks, The Mold is actually talking to Ian. The bathroom set is 4.5' off the ground. The creature team is under it controlling The Mold to video monitors with a feed from the set above them. If you're not looking down there, you're just seeing Adrian DiGiovanni talking to a living fungus with Jeff Combs's voice.

Jeff also influenced something totally unrelated to The Mold as well. He described the exact type and style of TV remote he remembered from growing up. For those console TVs, like Kent, the remotes were ultrasonic. They had little hammers that hit little metal bars inside - like really brittle bells - that would signal the TV to turn on or off or whatever at a frequency at the very upper range of human hearing. He said he used to jingle his keys at the TV while his dad was watching it to change channels or turn it off.

We spent ages finding the exact remote he described, and even more ages in sound design making a convincing (while technically inaccurate because it is audible) ring every time Ian clicks the remote. If you listen closely, it is never the same ring. Also, the ring changes with the darkness of Ian's situation.

All because of Jeff's remote story.

7.       The “Stay Tuned” style television sequences throughout the film seem sort of self-explanatory, what with the nature of Ian’s attachment to Kent (his T.V.). But there is a heavy use of video-game imagery, music, and actual 8-bit scenes featured in the film as well. Can you explain some of the reasoning behind this?

Technically, the game sequences are 16bit graphics. While the Vikingr99 SuperSystem (the MG world's invented game system) has an 8bit CPU, the graphical capabilities are 16bit (via coupled 8bit graphics processors.)

The film takes place in 1991. To some people that is crazy obvious. There are KMFDM posters in Ian's apartment. He mentions that Gene Rodenberry just died. He still uses a fax machine and plasma TVs are like something from the future. There's no "In the year 1991" title card in there, and no one ever says "because it's 1991"  at any point, but Leah is costumed pretty deeply in 1991 apparel and all of the junk in Ian's apartment (including his tape deck and Shreikback tapes) are pretty explicitly early 90s.

To me, the 90s was clouded in an 8-16bit haze. Not a day went by without some form of video game media. As such, Ian can't get away from it.

The Vikingr99 SuperSystem is a pretty bold ripoff of the Turbo Grafx 16.

The entire soundtrack for the film, save the cheesy TV show BGM, was created on NES and C64 hardware. As far as I know, MG is the only film that boasts that. An entire composed score in chiptunes. Real deal chiptunes, as well. Made/recorded on the hardware.

8.       Who do you see as your influences in developing your voice as a writer/director? What books/films/other media do you see yourself as having been weaned on as a creator?

I have to start with my mom. She trusted me with media as a kid. She trusted my little kid instincts. If I wanted to see something we'd talk it out. Something scary or a little hard for a kid. If I saw it and my little mind was broken we'd talk it out afterward. I wasn't watching Basic Instinct or anything - but I am sure I was allowed to see/experience stuff that most kids my age weren't trusted to be able to handle.

When I was super young, E.T. cracked my mind in half. When he looks at the screen and screams in that weird super-alien way, my little brain broke to pieces. I had nightmares forever. But that was a formative moment for me. If that was kept form me, I wouldn't be able to write something that scares me. I was trusted and supported. That's so essential.

The same goes for Alien. Terminator and Robocop - both super R movies - I was able to see with the provision that we talk any of the confusing stuff out. Before anyone starts accusing my mom of being irresponsible it has to be said that this was all informed decision making. This wasn't a videotape left on the TV at night or something. This was all managed.

My experience is that if you're a kid with a stable home scenario and you see Robocop, you see a movie about a robot guy and some bad guys and the robot guy saves the day. That's the takeaway. When you're 17 and you re-watch it you get the subtext and the corporate B-story and the really hideous gore and everything. When you're 22 and you watch it you start picking up on the satire and the dark comedy and the really multi-layered statements being made about everything from 80s mega-corporaiton culture to industrial design to Jesus Christ metaphors.

But when you're a kid, it's a robot guy. A super cool robot guy who looks real and saves the day and that is inspirational in ways that Saturday morning cartoons just can't deliver.

My mom also got me into Frank Herbert. Dune. Issac Asimov. Foundation. Books. Adult books. Thick thousand page books. Arthur C. Clark. The Martian Chronicles.

I'm also a huge nerd from the 80s. My ideal stories have some totally bonkers fantastical element. It doesn't need to be robots (thought robots effing RULE), but I'm not satisfied with a coming of age story about two kids who discover themselves against the backdrop of one sweltering summer in South Carolina. Unless one of them has a brother who's also a vampire, and the other one gets offered the command of a Gunstar to deploy the Death Blossom against the Ko-Dan armada under orders from General Xur.

It's just how I roll.

9.       If you could go back in time to your childhood and rescue one favorite item that you have no chance of simply buying on eBay now… what would it be?

I had this tape deck - the top loader kind with the handle that slid out of it. I took it everywhere. 

EVERYWHERE. I played the Knight Rider audio tapes in it under my pillow to listen to the adventures of KITT and Michael Knight while I went to sleep. I danced around the neighborhood singing AxelF. It was more than a tape deck. It was a spaceship that deployed tape shaped fighter craft if it was held upside down. It was a super cool dune skimmer from some alien planet if you popped the tape carriage up and pulled the battery pack off the back of it. It was, as Kent the TV would later be, my best friend for some time. I could always put the Beverly Hills Cop II tape in there if anything was messing up my little kid world and instantly be happy, even though I had no clue what George Michael was talking about in that one song I'd always skip until I started thinking about girls.

It's become a sort of myth to me, this tape deck. I'm sure I'd never recognize it if I saw it today. It would be too small, too light, the wrong color or just a plain old tape deck to my adult eyes - but I can close those eyes and be instantly transported to laying on the floor in my mom's townhouse making hyper-warp space jumps with nothing but that tape deck and a knockoff Star Battles tape from the library.

10.   What do you have coming up in the future? Any Spin-off plans for The Mold? Any other films in the pipeline, or is Motivational Growth still the center of your world right now?

The Mold is having his moment, with the rest of the Motivational Growth crew. The festival circuit is a long and arduous road wrought with success and peril. We took home the Best Feature trophy last month at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival, for instance, but the film was also shown at 4am to a totally different crowd who just weren't interested in Ian and his crazy world, and were quite vocal about it. At this point we've racked up far more praise than dislike, but both are expected in a film like MG.

As for films in the pipeline: yes. We have films in the pipeline. For instance, we have Flexure, that film we made Motivational Growth in place of. It's a thriller about particle physicists who accidentally create a fissure in reality with a particle collider. My writer and I have spent a couple days a week for the better part of a year with scientists at Fermilab in Batavia Illinois locking a set of actual physics circumstances to hang the weirdness on. It's been quite a blast.

Otherwise, we've got an entire pitch deck. Hopefully there will be some interested eyes after MG shows at a few more fests. We're bristling with ideas and just need to find someone who wants to support them.

11.   I’m going to cheat and throw in an eleventh question here in the interest of… self… interest. What exactly prompted you to contact the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks blog? How desperate are you to promote this film? Your blunt honesty is appreciated.

This question is framed in such a manner as to imply that it would be hard to be bluntly honest in answering. This is not the case.

I've got an alert system set up. When anyone mentions MG on the internet, to the degree that other people can freely view it, I get a notification. I set this up specifically to find people like you. You're my audience.

I don't know if you even like the film. I only know that you were initially interested in it and that you are someone whose interests intersect with my own at enough vectors to convince me that you'd watch the film honestly and your opinion would be one whose weight would carry with me. Again, you're my audience.

MG is a hard film if your vectors don't intersect with mine. It's a hard sell, honestly, to a lot of people. I am convinced, however, that it's an easy sell - an attractive piece - to even more people. People, for instance, who go kifing through Goodwill bins for epic geek finds.

I don't contact everyone. I don't base this interaction on fan-base or reach. I am laser targeting the type of people that I would like to go see Motivational Growth in a movie theater with, and asking them what they think of it. Because I honestly care.

In staying true to the "brutal honesty" request, it is my sincere hope that those who love it will talk about it and get the word out to other people who they feel would also love it. Less as marketing, however, than as honest sharing of something cool.

There's this story - true or not - that I overheard in LA. It's about the original Evil Dead. Some people hated it. Some people loved the living hell out of it. Those that loved it taped it. They brought it to friends' houses and their friends taped it. In a year's time there were these 4th and 5th generation shitty tapes of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead that people would play late at night whenever anyone had a get together. The film resonated so hard with enough people that the messed up VHS copies, with roll and squiggle and crappy audio, were what people were watching.

That's magic to me. That's amazing.

I'm not comparing MG to Evil Dead. This is me laying on the floor with my tape deck hoping that one day someone will like one of my stories enough to tell everyone about it. And wondering what the hell George Michael is talking about.

(Soooo.... that's all I've got folks! There's a bit after this that I am including because I've had people express some interest in how they could see the film, and I contacted Don again to see what he had to say about it. -G.G.)

I have people asking me how they can go about seeing your film.

F**king awesome.

How do people go about seeing your film at this point?

Right now it's festival only, or through someone like you.

You don't have a distributor yet do you?

Nope, which is why I'm not just letting everyone see the thing. Once I get distro, it will be out in the wild!

You guys must still be running the festival circuit shopping around?

Exactly right. The festival circuit is a marketing gig. Non filmmakers think it's some big altruistic art party where we all get together and talk about film, but the awful truth is that it's a business (the festival) trying to make money by selling tickets, and charging filmmakers entry fees, and a bunch of filmmakers glomming on hoping someone with the ability to do something about it is there to love on their film.

Oddly, I think most non filmmakers think that a theatrical release is also not a marketing cost. Like, you make a movie and it just goes to theaters via some form of "you made a movie" magic. This is also not the case. It costs an egregious amount of money to place a film in a theatrical release schedule, and even more to tell people that it's in the theaters. As much as actually MAKING the film. Sometimes more. It's all marketing.

It's going to be a while before this gets a release? Maybe?

The hope is no. But, if we're bad at it, and people like you shut up about the film, it could be up to a year if it is going to happen at all. If not - if we can get a huge pre-audience, it's a better case to a distributor. If we have people begging for the film, someone will be much more likely to want to buy it and resell it to those people.

I don't know the industry admittedly. These are all words that sound semi-right to me.

Pretty good. For a human.

Anything I can share with others about where to see M.G. in the future?

Well, right now the best thing to tell people is that they need to see this film or they will be forever broken and empty inside. And that they can see the film at the upcoming fests it's going to, and that's cool - but that the best way to get the film is to start a grass roots internet furor about the thing. That's my best opportunity for a legit sales pitch. Walk into a distro meeting and tell them I know of 3,000 people who will buy it today. 30,000 would be better. 300,000 and I'll get another film budget out of the gig :)

Motivational Growth Q&A With Don Thacker Pt. 1

Here is the first half of my Q&A with Don Thacker of (soon-to-be) Motivational Growth fame. 

I've maybe mentioned the movie a couple of times on the blog... here and here. 

What follows is a pretty much (save for a few grammatical or spelling errors) unedited version of our Q&A. I've added a few little observations of my own to the mix, after receiving Don's e-mail, but I've placed these in parentheses. I should also point out that ALL of the images in this post, and the two other posts I link to above are NOT MY IMAGES. They are all images belonging to Imagos Films or Don Thacker, that I've culled from the internet. 

I'm sending you 10 (technically 11 ) questions.
Feel free to answer or not answer any of these in any way you choose. 

Let me start by pointing out that each of your 11 questions
 is actually, like, four questions. :P I am happy to answer them all.

(Okay, so I was hoping I could totally slip the whole "each of your 11 questions is like 4 questions" thing past without too much notice. They were at least organized in such a way as to give the appearance of same-topic musings, fit together with question marks at the end. My questions will be in bold, while Don's replies will be in standard text. -G.G.)

1.       Give me some of the background on yourself and Motivational Growth.

I am the director at Imagos Films, a company founded by myself, Alexis Thacker and Edward A. Chaves Jr. Alexis is our executive producer (and sometimes producer) and Edward is our CTO/DIT as well as an executive producer.

Imagos was founded in 2010 with the hopes of producing feature films. Motivational Growth is the first of these feature films.

Imagos Films resides in Seattle, WA, and employs a lead writer and composer. On the side we do hand-picked creative work for other industries. We're currently providing design and writing for an upcoming video game and our most recent commercial/trailer - for Pixeljam's new game "Potatoman Seeks the Troof" - has been met with cries of both "trailer of the year" and "what. the. fug."

You can see the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnAeHNZAbNs

Where did the “road to Motivational Growth” begin?

With an entirely different film, actually. When we were seeking feature funding we pitched a completely different film; a more expensive film. When the negotiations smoke cleared and the resultant super-indie budget was agreed upon, the decision to make a much smaller scope film was made as the budget wouldn't have done the originally planned picture justice, but would fit MG just fine.

As I am sure is the case with many other indie studios, we have a bit of a library of pitches/treatments to offer against potential budgets. MG was in there, to be sure, but it was just a kernel of an idea. A little nugget.

How has it changed or evolved from its beginnings?

The original Idea for MG was hatched at a 24hr deli in Los Angeles at, like, 2am over a bowl of matzoh-ball soup and half of a reuban sandwich. I'd saved up for a few days of PA work for this sandwich.

Things were bad for me back then. I was in a pretty dark place. I'd moved to LA in 1999 with stars in my eyes and was hit pretty hard by the harsh reality of a deeply competitive and mature industry whose single barrier to entry - the network - loomed large like some sort of monolithic iron wall tempered against incursion from young nobodies in a forge of broken dreams. Everything is very dramatic when you're 19.

So I'm in this deli with butcher's paper over the table and I pull out a pen and pad and fail miserably at being brilliant. All I can muster is "His name was Kent. He was my television set. He died sometime around week 67. Odd-- I'd always thought I'd be the first to go."

I had this television in my parents' basement back in Michigan - this little 13" deal with a built-in VCR that I used to spend summers playing Turbo Grafx 16 and watching bootleg anime on. I named it Kent. After the dude with the braces from Real Genius. In my head that this TV was my friend. I longed for him in when things got dark.

In those long summer nights in my parents' basement it was just me and that TV. I would have lost my mind if he'd died.

So that's 1999. Between then and 2010 everything changes. I've got a film company, that giant iron wall dissolves with the advent of a universally accepted system of internet communication and, well, I just grew up. I kept that line from the deli, though. And I'd pondered a story about a guy and his television on and off for the decade between that line and our decision to make MG.

When we agreed to do MG, I took that concept, as well as a number of others we'd worked into the story, and wrote drafted a script.

Then we made it. :)

There's a completely different story about The Mold - where he came from - but that's one I'm going to keep for now.

Where do you see it heading next?

In all honesty, I made a film that some people will hate, and some people will not be able to ever stop thinking about. Real world experience with screening it has born out the success in this regard. My goal in MG was to make something for people to discuss. Make something for people to dig into.

Also, though, make something that strives to make up for its lack of budget by adding value in as many ways as are possible. To go deep where it couldn't go tall. To offer a bent reality rather than an expensively impressive reality.

In that way, I hope it gains a faithful audience to whom it resonates deeply. I fully expect that this audience might be a smaller audience. I have been told that it has the makings of a "cult classic" or a "go-to midnight movie", and honestly I can't imagine a cooler outcome.

If there's one dude out there who thinks that MG is awesome, I've succeeded.

I know that's kind of dodging your question. I can't really speculate on where *I* see it going. I'm caught up with it right now. I'm flying it all over the world, to festivals all over the place.

I suppose in the immediate future I see it going to the Sun Valley Film Festival in Idaho, the Little Rock Horror Picture Show in Arkansas and ECU, the European Independent Film Festival in Paris.

That's just March, though. Right now it's difficult for me to see past March.

2.       You’ve worked with many cast members from Motivational Growth before on previous shorter film projects. What can you tell us some about the cast and your history with them? 

So, you've been doing your homework!

You get a B-. 

(To be honest, my “homework” consisted of poking around on IMDb for about 15 mins… I should totally get a D at best. -G.G.)

See, there's a time dilation effect in film. The short stuff looks like it came first because it was finished and released more quickly. I first worked with most of those people you're talking about on MG, though. It just takes 4 months of pre-production, a month and a half of production proper and 18 months of post-production for that to come bear fruit. In that time, one can produce things. Like award winning short films.

Adrian DiGiovianni (MG's Ian) is a rare gem. When we auditioned the role of Ian for MG we did so in a public library. We did this because I needed someone who wouldn't be afraid to be doing/saying uncomfortable things in front of people, even if those things were inappropriate. For Ian we auditioned the toilet monologue. As you've seen the film, you know exactly the monologue I'm talking about. It's not a public appropriate monologue.

While every other actor, regardless of skill, stood there uncomfortably or briefly pantomimed "bathroomy" things, Adrian asked me if he should drop his pants. I was sold.

I spent the next few weeks calling him in to feed lines to other people auditioning for Ian, to see how he held up under the pressure. I wasn't really auditioning those other dudes for Ian, I was paying attention to Adrian the whole time. He never lost energy. He never broke.

I knew I'd found a guy I could hang from the ceiling in his underwear.

There are similar stories for the other cast.

Danielle Doetsch, Ian's love interest, had no problem giving me a blood curdling scream on command (in the same public library), a scream I later capitalized on in The Catastrophe at Catalina (https://vimeo.com/40921927).

Pete Giovagnoli made Box the Ox a giant at his audition, even though he's only, like, 5'2" tall. His performance was so solid that we used platforms and forced perspective to make him look as big as Box is in the film.

Ken Brown did an absolute TON of research for his part.

Everybody nailed it.

Since then, I have worked up personal relationships with almost every cast memeber from MG, and worked with most of them. I have since cast them in other projects, and will continue to.

3.       Without delving too deeply into dangerous “where do you get your ideas” territory, can you talk about the some of the inspirations you drew together to build the story behind Motivational Growth? Some of it seems like it must come from some pretty personal, dark places.

MG is unique to my process. It comes from a dark place, as I've said already. Nothing else I've written is like MG in that regard. I am a huge fan of high fiction. If two people having a dramatic discussion is interesting, two people having a dramatic discussion about robots is better. Better still is two people having a dramatic conversations about robots while in space.

MG was an adult's interpretation of a young man's angst. I had the kernel when I was 19 but wrote it when I was 30. A lot happens between 19 and 30, most of it perspective. I tried to grow the weirdness of the world at 19 through the lens of being 30.

When you're 19, you have no idea. If you're 19 and reading this right now, you're totally lost. Even if you're on the perfect path and have everything under control, when you're 30 you'll see how stupid you were for thinking that right now. When I was 19 I had ideas about the world that, now, seem almost indescribably wrong.

I suppose MG is an expression of that. Ian's the worst of my 19yr old self and his twisted world is what my a romanticized depression might feel like through that lens.

That's not to say none of that touches on real stuff. I've had a number of people approach me after screenings to tell me that the could relate with Ian. With some of his habits or the depth of his depression. I know I can.

4.       Parts of Adrian DiGiovanni’s performance are delivered directly to the camera. They almost feel like they could be part of a staged one-man stage show. What inspired the decision to break the fourth wall in such a way?

This was a tough decision to make. I spent a lot of time, even after the initial edit, on the fence about this one. There is a huge story reason that he does this. It's a hard sell, though, if you don't come to that early on. I think that to most people, their first time through, it's just a dude talking to the audience.

If you like the film, and are willing to watch it again - maybe a few more times - it might become more evident that your initial impression was misguided.

Maybe he's not breaking the fourth wall at all. Maybe it's not the audience that he's speaking to...

5.       While there can be many ways to interpret the outcome of M.G. there is no denying there is a struggle between certain… forces going on throughout the movie. Without spoiling too much, can you give us any play-by-play on the different forces involved, how they are represented, or even just what they represent? Or is this ALL literally up for interpretation? At least tell us a little about why Mold and TV play such heavy roles in Ian's development.

I'm not going to spoil anything, I don't think, by saying that Kent and The Mold are definitely at odds. This is true. There's a struggle there. It's an odd struggle, though, because both of them represent a very distinct dichotomy.

Kent is TV. If you grew up in the 80s, like me, the TV is this chained god sort of entity to you. It had all of this great stuff, but there was this burgeoning attitude toward television that shrouded it in this weird form of semi-taboo. TV was responsible for teaching us, for informing us of the current state of the world, for entertaining us but also accused of dumbing us down, creating mindless zombie consumers out of us and corrupting our perfect little minds. Watching TV was semi-bad, but no household was without one. It's bizarre, really.

The Mold is a fungus. Actually, The Mold is fungus. All fungus. It's gross, but it's natural. You don't want it in your bathroom, but it's been around since before there were people around to invent bathrooms to keep clean. It's nature. It's something bigger than man.

So you've got this guy who's been, essentially, abusing his TV intake and ignoring the atrophy engulfing his apartment. While he veges out on the couch, nature begins to devour his bathroom.

Again, not trying to spoil anything, what events would make that television and that fungus pillars of this guy's life? The film has a single event that does this - that polarizes these two forces - fits them into slots.

I suppose you have to choose your idea of good and evil. It becomes obvious to everyone who watches the film that one of them is good and the other is evil. The thing is, though, people don't always agree on which is which.

I imagine that Ian lives in a world where good must be sought out. Must be paid attention to. It's message must be inferred from context. It's words spoken in code. A world where evil asserts itself under the guise of good and presses, unyielding, against one's will.

As the storyteller, I have the answer. The film isn't an exercise in interpretative art. There's a through-line, and I worked very hard to both make it at once clearly discover-able to the dedicated viewer and sufficiently well hidden to entice one to watch it again.

I am sure that this will turn away a section of the viewing public. Hell, I understand - sometimes I just want to watch Commando, man. I have that shit on Blu-ray. But sometimes I want to be given a riddle.

This film is for the riddle-breakers.

Okay that's it for part one of the Q&A! I'll be back soon with more of the Q&A soon, so until then... go buy something at Goodwill or something. 

I've SEEN the Growth. Motivational Growth.

So I haven't been around the blog much lately, I realize. I hope no one's missed me... and I realize probably no one has. And then the cutting starts.

I cut out sugar cookies. And bake them. And then I eat them. With my awesome family. And I don't care what the internet thinks about me. So huh.

Be that as it may... I have recently been allowed to view the movie directed by Don Thacker, "Motivational Growth" that I blogged about a while back. It was... an experience.

Let me tell you one thing: This is not your average horror movie. It's actually a stretch to even call it a horror movie (in the traditional sense) at all. It has horrific events that happen throughout, and it will almost certainly make your skin crawl and maybe even trigger your gag reflex in a few sequences... but it seems more a surreal exploration of existential crisis. With... a story going on. 

The movie opens on Ian, a depressive shut-in who hasn't left his apartment in months. He has pretty much given up on life, hygiene, the universe, and everything. 

So pretty much my average Saturday night. 

It appears Ian has a deep emotional attachment to only one thing in his life: His television. It is a dinosaur of a television set, handed down to him from his parents. Ian has named the set Kent. Well, as we see the story open, Kent dies. Kent's death elicits a... strong reaction in Ian, to say the least. 

Goodnight sweet prince.

So strong in fact that he appears to begin addressing the viewers of the movie directly. As he does this, he begins explaining to us the ins and outs (sometimes literally... painful... outs) of his current existence, while preparing to end his own life. This action is the one that sets up the series of events that make up the rest of the film. 

What a 16-bitch.

Ian's world for the rest of the movie seems to be counter-balanced by two different forces: Kent and the numb escape that he represents... and the rampant, aggressive force of life that is The Mold. A hard-talking yet motivational-speaking mold growth in Ian's bathroom. There are a series of bizarre encounters with people visiting Ian's apartment, strange visions where Ian participates in the shows on his television, and of course, interactions with The Mold... which may or may not be responsible for the more... psychedelic sequences of the film. 

These guys are adorable.

The whole thing could have turned out to be a wreck of a film if it weren't for a few very important factors that hold the whole thing together like crazy (literally crazy) glue:

1. Jeffrey Combs. Jeffrey Combs is the voice of The Mold that begins interacting with Ian and trying to get him to "clean" up his act. Combs is of course quite a prominent voice actor these days, what with his appearances in shows like Transformers Prime, and the new Nickelodeon TMNT show. His voice performance in Motivational Growth is no less epic, and shows us a side of the actor that I'm almost 100% certain we've not seen before. He oozes (sometimes literally) charm and chutzpah. A street-tough, silver-tongued master of manipulation and influence. He feels at times sinister, and at other times we wonder if that's just a part of his front. His motives are not entirely clear in why he tries to help Ian... but the fact that he wants something is crystal.

2. Adrian DiGiovanni. The man we spend the entire movie wondering what the hell is happening to this guy? is played by DiGiovanni. His Ian is fractured, raw, and vulnerable. He's given up, but he desperately wants a change. He wants to be rebuilt. He wants to change, but he doesn't have a clue how to go about it. He spends scenes speaking directly to the camera for extended periods of time, and other scenes careening wildly through various different television show realities like a pinball. He must make interacting with a sentient mold growth in his bathroom seem realistic, shocking, and mundane all at the same time. He also spends a huge amount of his time exuding anxiety, depression, agoraphobia, xenophobia, and then in equal measures he has to make the various climbs in and out of that emotional pit seem believable.

You try selling this.

3. The WTF Factor. Don Thacker's film is paced in such a way that it never really gives you the time to contemplate the batshit insanity that is being perpetrated from one moment to the next. What could easily have been viewed as a seizure inducing chain of images, characters, dialogue, genies, 16-bit animation, breast-spores, death scenes, unreality, and puppetry... all coalesce into something that feels like it actually has a deeper meaning, a story to tell, and themes that actually matter. It's just the kind of movie where one viewing is not necessarily enough to suss that all out. It's a testament to Don Thacker's ability to write and direct a compelling if disturbingly confusing film.

Like this compelling if disturbingly confusing thumb.

Overall... I enjoyed the hell out of this film. I genuinely wanted to see Ian rescued from the brink. I loved the interaction of forces throughout. I thought for a first feature-length film that Don Thacker and his cast made what is destined to be a cult-classic on the same level as Rubber or yes even my beloved Bubba Ho-Tep. It has its weaknesses. Some of the performances from the supporting cast could have been tweaked and in some cases... eliminated altogether. Some of the confusion seems to be played for the sake of confusion itself. Some of the television sequences were definitely stronger than others, and the 16-bit animated sequences, while clever and beautiful... don't really seem to support the rest of the film in a real way except to create a feeling of heightened reality.

This happened.

But warts and all, I want to see this film again. I want to see other people, seeing this film. I want so see this film become more than a film. I want to see it ingrained in the sub-culture the same way great cult classic films do. I want message boards online where fans argue over the meaning of this film, the different forces at
play within it... and just what the Hell is actually happening.

What.

After seeing the film thanks to Don Thacker's incredible generosity, I also rattled off a list of questions via e-mail for Mr. Thacker. He took the time out of his busy schedule promoting his film to... well promote his film some more, but he answered my lengthy list of questions anyway.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Academy... Don Thacker.

Those questions, broken up into two parts will be featured on the blog very soon. He gives us some really interesting insight into the history of the movie, working with the cast he did, and some of his own personal observations on... just what the Hell is actually happening.

That's it for tonight though. I'll be back soon with more Goodwill Goodies. Until then, Happy Hunting!

More on Motivational Growth... and the surreality that is my life.

So... a while back I posted one of my lazy "Hey, here are some movie trailers to movies that look interesting because I can't be bothered to actually post anything today..." posts.

That post included the teaser Trailer for a movie called "Motivational Growth". At the time I wrote this about the preview:

"This just looks insane. I mean, there's a talking pile of foul looking mold... and someone obviously having some sort of existential crisis, and then reality blends with whatever messed up crap is going on here and... well I just want to be a part of whatever this is going to end up being."

Wow.. That's quite the write up.

And I still stand by that. In the same post I mentioned Quentin Dupieux's new film "Wrong" and honestly, watching the trailer for Motivational Growth, I see some of the same weird abstract storytelling at play, with some obvious body horror influences. Movies like "Jon Dies at the End" and "Detention" come to mind, or even Charlie Kaufman films like "Adaptation" or "Being John Malkovich". I'm wondering if the future of horror... or movies in general... are going to be more and more surreal stories that try to take the movie-viewer out of their comfort zone (I know it's horror, which is all about not being comfortable... but traditional horror movies can be a sort of worn-smooth comfy spot for horror fans expecting a certain "kind" of movie) by turning traditional story-telling conceits completely on their ear.

But what about the three-act formaaaaaaaat!!!!!????

Well... yeah. Anyway... I posted those youtube videos without giving them another thought and went on with my life.

That was on February 10th. Since then I've posted some other stuff. I've gone out for Valentine's day to see one of the other movies in that post (Silver Linings Playlist) and I spent my vacation off from work catching up on some other Netflix viewing. I had a payday Friday visit to Goodwill and I've participated in a couple of  League of Extraordinary Blogger posts. My life just sort of... went on.

And then on February 20th I was contacted by e-mail by Don Thacker, founder and director of Imagos Films... and the writer and director of "Motivational Growth".

And I was like: "Huh. I do not believe anyone who has written and directed a film watched by more than 3 people has ever contacted me via hotmail before."

Me. Totally normal, just checking my hotmail.
"Don Thacker? Huh. Cool."

He told me that he'd noticed my sharing the preview on my blog and that he wanted to reach out to me with more promotional information about the film. He showered me with informational links about the film, including one leading to the IMDb page and the one that leads to the Motivational Growth official website. He also mentioned that the film won the Boston Science Fiction Festival's "Gort Award" for Best of Fest.

That's... actually pretty awesome. 

And for good measure he threw in a link to the official poster for the film:

There was also a link for Vimeo containing a different trailer for the movie and an interesting treatise on the subject of "panic". I also learned that the type of mold featured in the film is Aspergillus which according to wikipedia is not known for it's powers of speech... but can cause all kinds of horrific invasions of the human body. 

Don't know who they cast as the mold but he's going full Stanislavski method here.  

Now, with all this being said and shared. I should tell you all that I was extremely flattered by Mr. Thacker's interest in my blog, and the fact that he took the time to contact me and give me the information he did. He's really taking the time to promote his film by hitting the (figurative) bricks and knock on (metaphorical) doors to contact folks showing interest in this venture. 

I was not offered any kind of financial incentive to help Don promote his movie. I was happy to do it because I genuinely think the movie looks great and I cannot wait to see it. I did let him know that there was no guarantee that I would be writing a favorable review for his film after I'd seen it (believe me, this blog has defined the box-office takes of many a film project with only a few deft words so... I can't even finish this ridiculous sentence) but that I was looking forward to seeing it whenever I was able to. He remained unfazed by this information... as he should.

So that was something that happened to me once. I posted a youtube preview of a movie I wanted to see... and the writer and director e-mailed me and contacted me due to my interest in his film. I found it surreal, and less a bit of proof that this blog is anything more than what it is... and more just that the internet is a big, weird place, and full of people doing fun things and working their asses off... and that I should never take that for granted. Also don't tell people you want to be a part of something amazing-looking unless you mean it, because the people responsible may contact you and give you information on how to help promote it. 

Thanks for your e-mail Don! Can't wait to see Motivational Growth at some point! It looks like a total mind-f**k!

That's it for today guys! I'll be back real soon with more Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!