In 2005, two ambitious young men rented a spooky old warehouse on 14th Avenue and set off to explore the dark secrets of making a low-budget horror film, and just as they started their work on an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "Shadow over Innsmouth," the Capitol Hill Times caught up with director Dan Gildark and screenwriter Grant Cogswell to talk about the experience.
Nearly two years later, the movie "Cthulhu" received its world premiere at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival. Meeting up once again with Gildark and Cogswell at the festival, we talked to the two filmmakers about shooting in Seattle and Astoria, working with Tori Spelling and the cost of setting a man on fire.
CHT: So, when we last spoke, you were just beginning to work on "Cthulhu." If this was an H.P. Lovecraft story, by now your minds would be mush from exposure to eldritch horrors and we'd be doing this interview in the Arkham Asylum rather than the W Hotel.
Cogswell: That's not far off.
Gildark: Sounds about right.
CHT: The original idea was that this movie, even though it is based on a story set on the East Coast, was going to be very Northwest-centered.
Cogswell: It is definitely Northwesty!!
Gildark: [Director of photography] Sean Kirby is becoming the eye of Northwest through his movies "Zoo" and "Police Beat." He really captured that look for our film.
CHT: And you updated the story for our times?
Cogswell: Lovecraft's work was always set in [what was for him] the very recent past. Which meant that things could fall apart at any moment in the future. If you set this movie in the 1920s, there would be no suspense, because we know that things were relatively fine...
CHT: And there's a gay love story subplot now?
Cogswell: In the original, this guy gets stuck in this weird town and gets chased by this cult. He gets out and calls the government, who kills everybody. Then, months later, he does this research and finds that he's related to the cult master and he's inherited the priesthood of this cult. And what that reminded me of was gay friends...
Gildark: Or artists...
Cogswell: ...who escaped from a small town and then 20 years later had to go back for some reason and make connections to a life that really wasn't theirs any more. That idea just fashioned the story for me.
CHT: Still, Lovecraft fans will want to know: Are there Cthuhlian tendrils?
Cogswell: We don't want to give any spoilers.
Gildark: But it does remain true to Lovecraft's horrors...
Cogswell (laughing): It is an apocalyptic gay family drama! That's what it is.
CHT: Why did you want to film in Astoria and Seattle?
Gildark: We used Seattle pretty extensively, but mostly for interiors. The exteriors were set in Astoria.
Cogswell: When we decided to base it on "Shadow over Innsmouth," I immediately thought of Astoria. And there's this guy, Diabolus Rex Church, who grew up there and is the son of Satanists. He showed up at one of the early readings of the script and told me that Astoria was Innsmouth, and he had all these parallels.
CHT: Did it worry you that guys named Diabolus Rex showed up at your readings?
Cogswell: I'm a materialist guy and I don't believe...
Gildark: But it is a little creepy that so many weird things happened during the filming...
Cogswell: Three of the houses were destroyed by a storm after we filmed in them.
Gildark: A mudslide came through one.
CHT: When we last spoke in 2005, you were just heading off to Hollywood to add some "name actors" to your cast-and you found them?
Gildark: Yes, Cara Buona from the "Sopranos" and Tori Spelling, to start. Cara had a very specific look and a sweetness of character that was hard to find. I feel that Tori is just underrated as an actress-but the fact is that she's been acting since she was 6 and she's really good.
Cogswell: [Tori] just took that role and ran with it.
Gildark: She took the part because she wanted to have a racier role-she's the seductress-and she usually is cast in "good girl" parts.
Cogswell: And Scott Green. We'd seen him in Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" and wanted him for Mike, the love interest.
Gildark: But Green didn't have an agent; he's very low-key and he's hard to find. Finally, someone called me and said "Gus Van Sant is having coffee across the street from the Harvard Exit." So I hopped in the car, drove down there and got Green's contact information from him.
CHT: Once the cast was assembled, how did the shooting go? Back in September 2005, you were going to start filming in two months and be done in six months. So here we are in 2007...
Gildark: It just took this long to get everything in place. Honestly, we could have got this film out in the world earlier if we hadn't cared as much about how it looked, design and color correction, editing, making it perfect. All those details...
CHT: What was the toughest thing about making this movie?
Gildark: Money...just the ongoing struggle...we're totally off the grid from Los Angeles, so we are constantly looking for money.
CHT: Was there anything that you had to give up in the movie to make the finances work?
Cogswell: The burning guy!
Gildark: Yeah, we wanted to have a guy on fire...
Cogswell: But it was going to cost $100,000!
Gildark: No, no, it was $1,000.
Cogswell: Just a thousand?
Gildark: Maybe a little more.
Cogswell: So why didn't we do it?
Gildark (ignoring the question): But that was about the only thing that we didn't get that we really wanted.
CHT: Burning man aside, you believe that this is the film that you wanted?
Cogswell: It's not what I had in mind originally, but it's real.
Gildark: It's pretty awesome.
Cogswell: It's very unique, strange and compelling. People love it or they hate it. Nobody says "it's just O.K."-and Tori Spelling kicks ass!
CHT: Can people track where you are showing the film next by checking www.cthulhuthemovie.com?
Gildark: Yes. We'll keep the Web site up to date.
CHT: And are you working on another film?
Cogswell: We have a couple things going. One is a story of a 12-year-old boy coming of age several hundred years after a nuclear war-that's our high budget one. And the other, the low-budget script, is imagining the life of John Keats in the lifetime of Kurt Cobain-all the 1990s alternative rock figures have switched with the poets from the Romantic era.
Gildark: We're just trying to keep it going. We really hope that this is the start of doing several films in the area.
Rosemary Jones writes about arts and entertainment for the Capitol Hill Times. She can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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