Debbie Rochon to be honored with Ingrid Pitt Award,

The very first Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award represents a tip of the hat to a horror star- and its recipient is Debbie Rochon.  Much like Pitt in the 1970’s with films “Countess Dracula” and “The Vampire Lovers,” the award acknowledges a person that has supported the horror genre and embraced it overcoming many obstacles, breaking barriers and being a leader in its industry.

Pitt starred in over thirty films. She co-starred with Sir Christopher Lee in the cult original “The Wicker Man” (1973) and “The House that Dripped Blood” (1970). She also starred in Hammer’s “Countess Dracula” and, with Horror legend Peter Cushing, in Hammer’s “The Vampire Lovers.”  She passed away too soon in 2011.  The Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award is presented in conjunction with The Estate of Ingrid Pitt, filmmaker / producer Kevin Sean Michaels and event coordinator Stacy Pippi Hammon.

Currently, a long-form documentary film about Ingrid Pitt’s life and career is being produced by Michaels (“Vampira; The Movie,” “The Wild World of Ted V. Mikels”), which will be a combination of live action and animation with contributions from student animators and renowned professional animators all over world. It will be released in installments. The first installment was called, “Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest,” animated by 10-year-old Perry S. Chen, with storyboards by two-time Academy Award nominee Bill Plympton. The short film qualified for an Academy Award nomination last year in its long-list.

Last October, a film festival in the Old Town Quarter of Hastings, England, UK in memory of Pitt was organized by Ingrid’s husband Tony Rudlin, and The Official Ingrid Pitt Fan Club. It was also the official launch of Ingrid’s novel “Dracula Who…?”, published by Avalard. A “Queen of Horror” was announced, Sarah Bones, who will be the ambassador and host for future events, including an event in the spring in New York. The Ingrid Pitt Memorial is in the series of such tributes.

“I spent five years with Ingrid herself discussing her life’s work and legacy. She was an actor’s actor.” said Michaels. “That meant the most to her. She always felt that her work in genre films was not highlighted enough. She wanted to be remembered as an artist. It’s all about taking risks and new ground. This award honors that memory and its spirit.”

“We are presenting to a horror star, as Ingrid was, to celebrate women in the horror movie genre, keep her memory in our hearts, and to aid further projects to come that have that same energy and positivity,” Michaels added.

Rochon is a veteran actress that has appeared in a multitude of films including “Tromeo and Juliet” (1996), “Terror Firmer” (1999), “American Nightmare” (2002), “HP Lovecraft’s Colour from the Dark” (2009), “The Theatre Bizarre” (2011), “Sick Boy” (2012), and “Rudyard Kipling’s Mark of the Beast” (2012).  2013 will see the release of “Exhumed”, “Wrath of the Crows”, “Solid State”, “Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart”.

Rochon also co-hosted the Fangoria Radio Show from 2006 to 2010 with Dee Snider and Tony Timpone, covering horror news in a talk show setting.  Her writing credits include her current column in Fangoria Magazine, “Diary of the Deb”.  She is currently in post production on her feature directorial debut, “Model Hunger” starring Lynn Lowry, Tiffany Shepis and Carmine Capobianco.

“I think there is no doubt whatsoever that an award with such qualifications as the Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award represents should be established by honoring the woman whose name is associated with the very definition of the award’s purpose to a T.  Debbie Rochon is that woman”, said Hammon.

“They both experienced incomprehensible hardships during their childhoods and have a shared passion for their work, both acting in the horror genre and writing”, Hammon added.

“Being honored with such a prestigious accolade is a truly humbling experience. I have long admired and respected the contributions Ingrid Pitt has made to the genre and to be a recipient of an award attached to her name is the highest form of recognition for any woman in this field to achieve”, said Rochon.

The Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award will be presented on Saturday, January 12, 2013 at the Cella Art Gallery, 11135 Weddinton Street, Suite 112, North Hollywood, CA 91601.

The Cella Art Gallery is a contemporary fine art gallery centrally located in the NoHo Arts District that loves to support the independent art and horror communities.

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Spying on “Neighbors”

I’m excited to bring you a guest article from Ron Judkins, a close friend and my producing partner on True Love, the feature I use as a case study in my No Budget Film School class.  While this is a first for me, I hope to have more guest bloggers in the future. 
 

I met Ron about 15 years ago when I was at Next Wave Films and he was finishing his feature directorial debut, The Hi-Line.  Next Wave ultimately repped the film when it premiered in Dramatic Competition at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.  Made for around $500k, this beautiful film went on to play many festivals and helped launch the career of then-unknown Rachael Leigh Cook.  (Incidentally, it was shot by none other than Wally Pfister, whom we introduced to Chris Nolan in Park City when we were repping Chris’ film Following, which was playing at Slamdance that same year).  Though The Hi-Line was Ron’s first feature as a director, it was by no means his first time on a film set.  Ron is a two-time Academy Award winning production sound mixer and a four-time nominee.  He has worked with filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Gus Van Sant, Alan Rudolf, Stephen Frears, Barry Levinson, and most notably Steven Spielberg.  In fact, he has been with Spielberg on just about every one of his films over the last 20 years, including the upcoming Lincoln. 

Ron is an incredibly knowledgeable guy and the insights he shares below about the making of his new film Neighbors  ring very true to me.  His experience represents an excellent example of Embracing Your Limitations, the first rule I teach in my class.  I hope you enjoy this piece; I look forward to bringing you more guest pieces soon.

- Mark Stolaroff, No Budget Film School

NEIGHBORS WORKING TOGETHER

by Ron Judkins

I’ve worked in the “industry” for a good long while, mostly as a production sound mixer on movies that you may have heard of.  I’ve even won some awards.  But I’ve also enjoyed lurking on the fringes of the independent scene as well.  I directed a movie called The Hi-Line that went to Sundance in 1999.  Mark Stolaroff and I were business partners when he was formulating the ideas for his No Budget Film School, so I’m pretty familiar with what he’s up to.

And while all of the No Budget theories make perfect sense, in reality it’s often hard to make a movie and completely keep to the guidelines.  Mark would probably be the first person to admit that.  On every project it seems that there’s something that you want to do that causes you to break the rules.  You either want a different look, a higher profile cast, more interesting locations, or something.  And often that something either prevents the filmmaker from making the film, or otherwise creates a huge fly in the ointment during the process.

In the years since I made The Hi-Line, I’ve been in “development” on a variety of projects.  I took a lot of meetings, weekly phone calls, and strategy sessions.  But no films got made.  So finally I decided to gather what resources I had to just go out and make a film.  I asked my across-the-street neighbor Judy Korin, and my wife Jennifer Young (very close neighbor) to produce…Neighbors

Neighbors is a comedic drama about a middle-aged guy (Michael O’Keefe) who, with the help of his neighbors, faces down a mid-life crises to re-connect with both his creativity, and his marriage.

When I originally visualized the film, I wanted to set it in an upscale urban Los Angeles neighborhood.  I was thinking Silverlake, or the Hollywood Hills.  But the film had specific requirements in terms of locations.  As it was written, we needed three houses in a row on the same side of the street that had sight lines and easy access to each other. That is a huge task to find when you have a very limited budget. 

I wanted to make a classic “L.A.” movie with lots of light, windows, palm trees, and maybe a vista of the distant Pacific. We looked long and hard—canvassing the people that we knew, and the people that they knew.  And lo and behold—we found it!  One of Jennifer’s long time friends had a house in the Hollywood Hills that was perfect.  He loved the script and agreed to let us film there.  And across the ravine from him was another artistic couple that might be sympathetic to our cause.  An introduction was made, and incredibly, the second couple was very open to having us shoot in their house as well.  It really amazes me what opportunities can open up for you—if you only ask.  Often we just don’t ask.  But I was so excited!  These locations were a dream come true. 

But then we turned our attention to the logistics.  While beautiful, the house had very limited parking.  We would have to set up a shuttle.  We weren’t sure how the other adjacent neighbors would react to us filming in the ravine.  One was rumored to be “not sympathetic.”  And then we couldn’t find a parking lot that was affordable—or even a side street with good parking.  And because we were committed to working only twelve-hour days, we had to think about the time lost to parking and shuttling.  With all of that, we would be lucky to be able to actually be shooting for ten hours a day.  It seemed really difficult. 

Judy and Jennifer kept gently suggesting, “Why don’t we just shoot it in our own houses?”

I was so resistant to that.  I didn’t think it would work—well, I knew that it wouldn’t work in the way I had imagined.  A big concern of mine was that I didn’t want the scope of the film to be reduced.  Houses in our neighborhood are small, and I was concerned that the locations would feel confining and claustrophobic. 

But we inched ever closer to our start date and everything started to cost more money than we had budgeted.  So it really came down to the fact that there was no way we could pull it off if we tried to shoot up on the hill.  And Judy and Jennifer brought up a good point (do you see a pattern here?!), that it was more than just a question of where to shoot the movie.  That maybe there was an opportunity to involve our neighborhood in a very organic way as a kind of a partner in the making of the movie.  And once I got off my position of the way I imagined the film, I began to understand what that could be.  Wouldn’t it make sense to shoot a movie called Neighbors in our own neighborhood?  We had so many resources there, but it wasn’t just about resources, it was about embracing a philosophy where so many other people in the neighborhood were able to come on board and collaborate on something that became very meaningful to them—for many different reasons. 

We ended up shooting the bulk of the movie in Judy’s house.  We were able to shoot in the house next door to hers, which had a guesthouse behind.  It was such a fortuitous choice.  When we needed to shoot a real-time Skype conversation in two locations simultaneously—our neighbors down the block let us shoot at their place. When we needed high-speed Internet in the guesthouse next to Judy’s, we just ran long Ethernet lines across the backyard.  Our own house, across the street, became an additional location as well as the production office, the hair and makeup department, wardrobe, and actor’s greenroom.  This was not without its awkward moments.  Judy had to move out of her house for the duration of the shoot.  When Jennifer and I had to vacate our bedroom so that it could be repainted, we had to sleep in the living room among the wardrobe racks. When hair and make up arrived an hour and a half early to start work, they were knocking on our front door.  We were SO sleep deprived!  Judy’s back yard was perfect for craft service and for catering.  She kept the interior of her house set up the way we had it in the film, so that months later when we came back for pickups, the house was ready to go.

Looking at the film now, it’s not that light and airy send up of Los Angeles that I had first imagined.  But there is an authenticity to the locations and to the look of the film that is pretty unique.  It really is another side of Los Angeles. 

So the no-budget filmmaking rule of “use what you have” really did work for us—and in ways which were exponentially more important and meaningful than just the savings in dollars.  Because the fact is, when making films in this manner you HAVE to engage with and inspire some kind of community or larger group of people to aggregate the kinds of energy and resources to pull it off.  For whatever reasons, people have to want to be involved with your film.  Your currency becomes your goodwill and your integrity and how these both can manifest and take root in that community.  It can be a community of three or four, or three hundred, but it is the combined energies of the individuals in that group that will allow you to make your project.  In our case, when our filmmaking community was largely populated by our actual neighbors, the project really sprouted wings.

I don’t know what kind of film we would have if we had been able to shoot up on the hill.  But I do know that by fostering win-win relationships close to where we live, we created an experience that was extraordinary.  Very few times did I feel that our limited budget seriously affected the way we made the film.  The only exception was our schedule.  I really would’ve liked to be able to shoot a more relaxed schedule.  And I have some ideas about that.

So the other day I told Jennifer, “Next time I want to make a movie with even less money.”  I have some hunches about how to pull that off in an amazing way.  Of course it has to be the right film, and the right people.

She rolled her eyes and told me to shut up!

—Ron Judkins

To learn more about Neighbors and to watch some great videos about the making of the film, check out the current Kickstarter page at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1614136198/neighbors-not-your-daddys-mid-life-crisis-movie

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“Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies”

If Mary Pickford is known today outside of film fan circles, it is merely as “The girl with the golden curls” or “America’s Sweetheart”.  Behind her delicate beauty, Pickford was a woman with razor sharp business acumen who rose to become one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood.  She wrote, produced and starred in her own films wielding complete creative control over every aspect of production.  She also co-founded United Artists along with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and husband Douglas Fairbanks.  Her life, career and legacy are explored in the new documentary “Mary Pickford: Muse of the Movies” by Nicholas Eliopoulos which is now out on DVD from Cinema Libre.


The film discusses Pickford’s meteoric rise, her box office drawing power and how she helped to shape acting in film as we know it today.  This is made all the more effective by the use of rare archival interviews in Pickford’s own words.  Her life seems in many ways to be defined by ambition.  While the public loved her in the “little girl” roles, she sought to stretch herself as an artist by tackling new challenges.  In the film “Stella Maris” she played a doomed orphan.  She transformed herself so completely for the role to that she was rendered unrecognizable.  Pickford brought director Ernst Lubitsch from Germany after WWI to direct her 1922 film “Rosita.”  They clashed during production and never worked together again.  Even so, Pickford was not one to shy away from taking chances. 


She eventually began to feel confined by the “little girl” roles and felt they were artistically suffocating her.  After her mother’s death in 1928, she had her curls chopped off which made the front page of the New York Times.  This transition came along with the arrival of sound.  Pickford’s “talkie” debut was the film “Coquette” which won her an Academy Award.  Unfortunately fans were confused seeing her play a flirty socialite with bobbed hair.  It was not the Mary Pickford they were used to.  Her career began to fade along with her celebrated marriage to fellow Hollywood titan Douglas Fairbanks.  They would only make a handful of talking pictures each (including a clunky adaptation of “The Taming of the Shrew” together) before retiring from the screen.


Pickford continued to produce and remained involved with charity work until the end of her life.  She blazed countless trails for women in Hollywood and left an indelible mark on film history. 

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