AMBUSH BUG (BUG): I’m here with Jim Mickle from STAKE LAND. So I wanted to talk to you about the film. I saw the film a while back and reviewed it on Ain’t It Cool. I thought it was a pretty cool film.JM: Awesome. Thanks!
BUG: Can you fill in people who haven’t seen the film yet about what it’s all about?
JM: Sure, yeah. It takes place in an alternate future for the country and we follow a kid named Martin whose family is slaughtered by vampires. He’s saved by sort of a rough and tumble vampire killer who takes him under his wing and teaches him the art of slaying vampires and the two of them end up on a journey to a maybe stable place called New Eden, where there are politics, no vampire outbreaks, and on the way they pick up some different characters and we get to see what happens in this world.
BUG: Yeah, it’s definitely a kind of road movie. I think with a name like STAKE LAND, I think people are going to rush to think that it’s a vampire version of ZOMBIELAND, but it couldn’t be further from that film. Have you gotten that at all so far with the film?
JM: Yeah, I think a lot of people…they either say “It’s like ZOMBIELAND without the jokes” or “It’s THE ROAD with vampires.” (Laughs) I enjoyed both of those movies. It is nice to hear people say like it’s its own movie, it’s in its own place, and couldn’t be further from those movies in a lot of ways. That’s cool.
BUG: Definitely. Within the first five minutes you realize that it’s definitely not going to be like that other film. I imagine this film not a multi-million dollar budget film.
JM: Not at all…
BUG: What was it like filming a future apocalypse on a limited budget for you?
JM: Wel,l I think we tried to make the aesthetic that the future was going to look more like the past than anything, so I think we made a very wise decision, because…we didn’t want to make it super slick, so I think it was more interesting to say it feels more like a western or it feels like a depression era movie and so we combined a lot of that.BUG: There’s definitely a western feel to it, especially with the main vampire killer. He is definitely like a “Man with no name” sort of guy.
JM: Absolutely and I think that become the main goal, “We are making a western”, and yeah it’s coming of age and yes there are vampires, and yes it’s a road movie, but at the end of the day it’s a western first and foremost, but also I think when you are trying to do that kind of stuff on a budget, a lot of those things fortunately exist all around you, especially in small towns where there are a lot of small mom and pop gas stations that are out of business and there are so many shuttered business and crappy looking areas of towns that you know fortunately it can be easy if you know the right places to look for that stuff.
BUG: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the main characters. The main character, Mister, did he also have a part in writing the film?
JM: Yeah, he really wrote the film. I did back and forth and cheerleaded or cheer led, but really it’s his baby. The same with MULBERRY STREET, our first film together. Yeah, he cooks this stuff up. (Laughs)
BUG: And he did a great job. He kind of has a Liam Neeson kind of quality about him.
JM: That’s funny.
BUG: Like a scruffier Liam Neeson.
JM: That’s funny. BUG: What’s he like? What is it like working with him?
JM: He’s great. He is…he’s everything from Bronson to Snake Plissken to now Liam Neeson. That’s cool. (Laughs) He’s very much like that, but what’s cool is when you meet him, he’s like this 13 year old kid who still refuses to grow up, which is really sweet. I always joke that there was probably a day in his life where he was in class like drawing pictures of vampires in his notebook and his teacher was like “You’re not going to grow up to fight vampires!” So he finally got to make the movie to tell her off…
BUG: He showed HER!
JM: (Laughs) Yeah, but he’s also incredibly creative. One time I went down to his house and he had sculpted this whole scene from KING KONG and he’s got it hanging on the side of his kitchen and so he does have this strong silent type sort of thing going on, but he also writes beautifully and he’s always writing little songs and they are always great. He’s this really unexpected, beautiful creative streak, so that’s really inspiring, because he’s done a lot of bit parts and stuff, but he wrote a play that turned into a movie that he was the lead in like 12 or 13 years ago and…
BUG: What was that called?
JM: It was called FAST HORSES. I don’t think it ever got released, but he floats around and kicks these things out.
BUG: Okay and it seems like he has a really nice arc in this film where I don’t want to give away the ending or anything, but he starts out and he’s taking care of this kid and then along the way he’s basically just teaching him how to survive without him. It seems like that’s the heart of the whole film, him looking after this kid.
JM: Yeah, I think the thing that we tried to go for with him was really to just really let his arc unravel without him really having to say much of anything and he’s got a lot of classical traits and characteristics and you know we wanted to sort of do “the man with no name” character, but really give him a rich character backdrop, especially with Martin and who they pick up along the way.
BUG: And some of the other cast members, I did not know it was Kelly McGillis until the credits rolled and I saw that that was Kelly McGillis. Do you get that a lot? JM: I do. Yeah, I do. I mean after a while people sort of go into it where they have read something about her being in it, so not as much any more, but I love that, because I think it’s tough to play that kind of role. So often you can very easily screw it up, like putting some shades in it where you are like “Really? She’s playing a nun?” It was kind of cool, in a way you almost get this fresh “Oh, I’ve never seen her before, but she’s awesome.” (Laughs) The Golden Globe nomination and 20 years of experience…
BUG: “Where did you get this unknown actress?”
JM: Exactly.
BUG: And Danielle Harris, how about her? How did she come on board?
JM: She...that’s a good question. We did like a FANGORIA radio show at some point and she was a guest on it and…I’m a horror fan, but I actually…like a lot of the sequels and stuff I haven’t seen and so I didn’t even realize that she was sort of a scream queen or horror fan, I knew her more from like TV shows and LAST BOY SCOUT and those kinds of things. By the time she came on I was looking her up to see what was going to be on the show and I’m like “Right, her! Fuck yeah, she’s great.” And so that sort of prompted it and I think we made the offer before we even did the show with her and then a couple of days later it was all over and she came back and said that she was in, so yeah.
BUG: Great. And the guy from FRINGE, Michael Cerveris, my God he is so good in this and he’s so different from his role on FRINGE. Who knew he had that much range?
JM: Yeah, I haven’t even seen him on FRINGE, but even apart from that he’s best known for his Broadway. He was Hedwig and Sweeney Todd. Most people probably know him from the last incarnation of Sweeney Todd with Patty LuPone, so it’s cool. By the time we started everyone was like “Oh, that’s the Broadway guy” and now it’s really sweet to hear now, like “Oh that guy from FRINGE” and hopefully the next thing will be like “Oh, the creepy guy from STAKE LAND.” (Laughs) BUG: So the vampires in your film, they kind of have evolved after a while where some of them are much tougher to kill as they have evolved into having natural armor over their hearts so that stakes can’t kill them. Where did that idea come from?
JM: That was Nick. I think we wanted to really break it up and originally it was a web series and that was originally how we wanted to do it and sort of each episode centered on a different type of vampire and we kept trying to one up what the vampires were, so they were really different and really give a sense too of this idea that throughout time and history and culture every culture sort of has the vampire, but they can range very wildly from what they are. In some cases they are zombies like WALKING DEAD and in some cases you’ll end up with the TWILIGHT and TRUE BLOOD sort of thing, but I think we wanted to make something that shows that there are many different kinds of vampires and in this case we wanted them to be their own in a way.
BUG: You said this started out as a web series. Do you think you’ll continue…will you do a web series from this? Where do you go from here with STAKE LAND?
JM: On the DVD we have the character prequels on there, that was intended to be webisodes actually or like a webseries. That was meant to come out before it almost like extended trailers and it’s seven different short films with different filmmakers, but each a different character and part of the world. So that was sort of our way of hanging on to the web series idea, but also allowing it to expand into a community quilt idea with different filmmakers and styles and voices. So I don’t know, at some point we had a comic book that was ready to go and I guess we are still waiting to see if that will happen. With Nick, he could keep writing just tons and tons of these things. We have hundreds of pages of material that’s folded down into this and there’s still a lot left over that I think would be pretty fun to explore.
BUG: Would they still have “Mister” in it or would it be other characters in there? JM: Still with the same characters, because we had done a lot…I think one of the reasons why some of the characters feel like they have a history, even those they are not talking about, it is because there all of these episodes kind of earlier in their lives, so I think the actors were pretty well informed of where they came from and that’s why we left a lot of it out, because I think they played a lot of it really well. So yeah I think there could be stuff about these same people and where they go from there and also where they have come from and you know the comic books were sort of a back story to some of the characters, but it’s also kind of nice to just let it be what it is.
BUG: What’s it say about films…there used to be all of these films about an initial outbreak and now there seems to be an evolution to “what happens next?” Personally I prefer those films, because I have seen the outbreak film way too many times. What are your thoughts on that?
JM: I love it. I love it and you know I’m a huge I AM LEGEND fan, the Richard Matheson novel not the movie, but you know I just love that vibe and I’m like a kid in a candy store with all of these movies coming out and unfortunately there are not that many great ones, but I think especially now where there’s some real reason about how the world is going to end you know? Now it’s like the debt ceiling and all of this stuff. I think we are in this perpetual phase of “Could this be the end?” I kind of dig it, because I think it heightens the drama. In our case I think we use it to heighten the drama of an otherwise small and intimate family story in a lot of ways. I think there are a lot of different ways it can be used, but I think more and more it just becomes relevant, because whether it’s politics or the economy we are always sort of heading in that direction it seems. (Laughs)
BUG: I also wanted to talk about just the one scene where they get into the town and they think they are safe and then all of a sudden these vampires are dropping in like bombs and that’s all pretty much one take is that correct?
JM: Yeah, it’s like a two and a half minute, three minute take, yeah.
BUG: So how did you orchestrate all of that? JM: Good question. Well, we knew we were able to shut the street down, which was very cool. Luckily it was a small town and a lot of people were involved, so we had a lot of extras and that was great, but I think for me I wanted it to feel like it does for the characters and there was a version of that that we wanted to do that had a lot of setups and it was going to be a much more sort of classical Hollywood action movie and I think as time went on it became much more about it actually being emotional where you go from sort of the peak of optimism to the depths of depression within one shot. I thought that was an interesting idea. We really wanted to add to the confusion and catch things at the same speed that the characters did, so you know it was kind of fun. It was like putting on a play. We rehearsed it a bunch, so we knew…we had planned this for a couple of weeks about where things were going to happen and how we were going to pull some of the things off, but it’s really cool. It felt like a play where everyone had their cue, everyone had their mark, and it was sort of a domino effect. It was also a day where the investor decided to come (laughs), so it was one of those like staring at the heavens and just being like “Why?” Everything was piled onto this one day. We had this 15 year old girl who had to come out and do her cue and it was just…it was one of those things where it’s like “Okay, if we can pull this off, we can pull of anything” and fortunately we pulled it off.
BUG: So how many takes did it take?
JM: I think that’s like the fourth take in there.
BUG: So it took about four takes? That’s good.
JM: Yeah, yeah.
BUG: Okay, so are their plans for a sequel to the film?
JM: We’ve talked about it, there are no plans. Who knows? Nick and I talk about coming back to it ten years from now and seeing how the characters have changed. I’m not a huge fan of sequels that just sort of capitalize quickly on the first ones just to capitalize on them, I think it would be…a lot of this is not just characters, but the world and what state the world is in and it’s changed already so much from when we started writing that who knows where we will be in ten years.
BUG: (laughs) Well, we might be taken over by vampires by then. JM: Exactly.
BUG: And you said you are a big horror fan, what is something that you can recommend to some people who are going to be reading this? Anything that’s been released lately?
JM: I loved MONSTERS. Do you know that film?
BUG: Yeah, that came out last year?
JM: Yeah. I love that film. I saw that when we premiered STAKE LAND. That’s sort of been the one that I tell a lot of people and now it’s come out. Even when it did come out it felt really overlooked, but I just thought that was a great example of low budget filmmaking, but also in balancing the genre with a small character story, which I think always makes for really interesting results and I came out of that movie being fascinated from a genre standpoint, but also from the characters.
BUG: Definitely. Yeah, I love that film. Okay, so is there anything else that you would like to say to the readers of this interview?
JM: Just definitely check out the DVD. We always felt we were going to get a bigger release, a wider spread, and I feel like this is our chance now to really come to fruition, so I’m really proud that we packed the DVD with a ton of stuff. As a film fan, I like to see DVDs that have a ton of material, so we packed this movie with as much as we could fit on there and I hope people check it out and the BluRay and the two disc one also has everything on there.
BUG: That sounds great. Well I’m definitely looking forward to checking it out with all of the new material. What’s next for you now?
JM: We are working on a book adaptation that’s not a horror movie, it’s sort of a dark suspense thriller and hopefully we will be shooting that right after the New Year.
BUG: Can you say what that is yet or no? JM: It’s called COLD IN JULY, it’s based on a Joe R Lansdale novel. Joe wrote BUBBA HO TEP back in the day and what I like about him is he has his over the top zany side and then he also has this really hard boiled, really dark side to him and I think BUBBA HO TEP was the zany side obviously and this is more hard boiled Joe.
BUG: Great. All right, well thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. It’s a great movie and I can’t wait to see it in DVD form.
JM: Yeah check it out. Check out the BluRay, it looks great.
BUG: Definitely. All right, well thanks a lot. Thanks for talking to me today.
JM: Thanks again. Have a good one.
BUG: STAKELAND is out this week on DVD and BluRay. I definitely recommend you check it out for both a fun vampire film and what sounds like some truly awesome special features!
Here’s a preview of the film.
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole / wordslinger / reviewer / co-editor of AICN Comics for over nine years. Mark is also a regular writer for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and will be releasing FAMOUS MONSTERS first ever comic book miniseries LUNA in October (co-written by Martin Fisher with art by Tim Rees)! Support a Bug by checking out his comics (click on the covers to purchase)!
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Going to be in Chicago this weekend? Chicago’s got two conventions of note worth checking out! FLASHBACK WEEKEND CHICAGO HORROR CONVENTION will be at CROWNE PLAZA CHICAGO O’HARE, 5440 N. River Road, ROSEMONT, IL 60018! Join Robert Englund, Malcolm MacDowell, Sid Haig, Lance Henricksen and more to see all of the sights, frights, stars, and nightmares there are to see at this Chicago’s premiere horror convention this Friday-Sunday! Be sure to click on the image to the left for ticket info, a full schedule of events, and more goodies!
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