I was given the opportunity to speak with two exciting filmmakers known as Holden Andrews and Ivan Asen. Two of the men behind the new film Dead List. A film they worked on with Victor Mathieu. Check out our conversation below.
RONN!E: You guys have worked together before, I believe Scary Nights is what you and Ivan and Holden worked on before, right?
Holden Andrews: Victor and I worked on Scary Nights together. Ivan and I have done a few projects together and Ivan and I actually met when we were at an awarding winning digital tech company, Digital Domain. We’ve known each other for quite some time now, but that’s how Ivan and I met. And Victor and I met in film school at USC while we were studying there, so Victor and I have been friends for a long time. The three of us are friends now, obviously, so we started to band together to make this film, and we said, “Let’s all work together on it.” Something something.
RONN!E: How was the Dead List created?
Holden Andrews: How was it created? That’s a great question. So how it came about is Victor, Ivan, and I, we all live in Los Angeles, and we’re filmmakers, so we work within the Hollywood system, and we live here in L.A. and we’re like, you know, it would be really great to tell a story about the dark underbelly, the seediness, the dark side of Hollywood. We wanted to tell that story and we wanted to frame it around actors, so we thought it would be really cool to show actors and Hollywood and this dog-eat-dog world that truly does exist, where people will do anything to get a role and also kind of backstab their friends. We thought that since we live here and we work in it, we can tell truth to the story and make it horrifying to watch. So that’s where the story came from. We’re like “Let’s tell a story about L.A., and Hollywood, and actors and frame it into a horror movie! It’ll be trippy and kind of fun!” We partnered together and we thought it would be cool to tell it as an anthology show, but we wanted to put a twist on that so instead of having different chapters and make up an entire feature-length film, we’ll have the chapters connect to one another so it’s actually a full, arcing narrative, that has a singular story that goes from A to Z, and that is really the thought process, and how we structured and built the Dead List together.
RONN!E: Interesting. I’m curious as to what kind of inspiration you had while you were writing this.
Holden Andrews: So, inspiration, we knew that we wanted to make it a horror film and we knew that we liked the idea of anthology films, and we wanted to do a twist on the anthology genre. So thought, let’s make an anthology, but have those chapters tell the same story, and having it go from A to Z. We all work in the film industry, we’re all film fans, we’re fans of the horror genre, so since we have different chapters we have a monster for each chapter, so that allowed us to really play with the horror genre, so we could have these monsters that are an homage or nostalgia for the genre of horror. Witch horror, or ghost horror, or psychological Twilight Zone type of horror scenarios. We really had a lot of fun and were able to play a lot with inside of horror, because we made an anthology-type of film, so we were able to touch on these genres that live inside of the horror genre itself. And because it’s an anthology story with one cohesive plot the stakes are a lot higher because when you’re not in the anthology parts you’re in the actual main story so the anthology parts can come out and get the main characters. There are a lot more stakes for everybody.
RONN!E: How much did you guys work together on each segment? Did you do each chapter separately or…?
Holden Andrews: We worked very closely together. We wrote each of the chapters separately, but when we were filming there was a chapter that I was directing, that Ivan was directing, that Victor was directing. We would kind of just trade seats, and let the person whose chapter it was drive, and we just creatively held each other up when we needed to step in. It was really a great workflow, which is unusual because you don’t usually have three creatives that are all directing together, but we worked really seamlessly. We just knew when to take the back seat or to be there for support or the ??? is off and we would drive and it was musical chairs when necessary.
RONN!E: With the casting process, did you already have actors in mind or did you have a blank slate?
Holden Andrews: That’s another great question. We wrote the film, not with actors in mind, but we wrote it with the importance being the story. We knew that with a good story an actor would be able to really add the foundation and bring life to the words, so we weren’t too concerned with someone, essentially, being in it. We would cast and find the right person to bring life to the characters that we wrote. We had a great time casting. Victor helped out a lot with that aspect because he’s had a lot of experience. He’s worked with a lot of play actors. He worked specifically with a show called “Delusion” which is a live-action horror theater. It has a run here in Los Angeles every October and November. Since he’s worked a lot with these character actors, we were able to pick and choose from them and have them come in and read and find people that worked really well for the roles, in addition to people in our network. Victor and I went to USC together and we have a lot of friends who were in the acting programs there. Some of them came in and were key roles in the Dead List. So we didn’t think specifically of one person here or there for each character, we just knew that if we got the story right, an actor would be able to come in and give life to what we wrote. And we were very fortunate with the actors that we cast, because they were A, really talented, and B, phenomenal to work with, and C, it was a good collaborative process because they brought things to the characters that we didn’t even think about sometimes, that made it all that much better.
RONN!E: Interesting. It’s unusual to see three directors who are also writers on the films, so I’m learning a lot here. I asked what the inspiration was behind making the Dead List, but I also want to know, individually, what was the inspiration behind your story, or your chapter?
[Related: Check out the trailer for Dead List. A list you definitely don’t want to be on.]
Holden Andrews: Sure! I don’t know if I can speak for Victor, but the chapters that I directed, I wanted to have one have some subtext as to what is happening in our society today, especially the first chapter of the film, it’s a chapter where the character is driving to meet–he’s actually cheating on his girlfriend to go meet his side-hustle–and he ends up being pulled over by the police and they confuse him for someone that is profiling for a robbery, and they end up using excessive force and killing him. You know, we have a big issue in America with police when they can, and often do, use excessive force, and unfortunately some of those times result in the death of the person that they have the encounter with, so I wanted to have a little social commentary there, and use that as one of the chapters. Another chapter that I directed was the “kush” chapter with the “hippie surfer/stoner” guy. I’ve always been a fan of films like The Blob and I love creature horror and gags, the kind of evil two. This is one of the grossest chapters in the movie and we took out all the stops on it. We really got dirty, grimy, gooey, completely disgusting with it. So that was just better, opening the floodgates and letting us get as sick, weird with it as possible.
RONN!E: Just gotta have one in there, right?
Holden Andrews: Yeah, you’re right, exactly. We didn’t have anything that was over-the-top gory, so it was “alright, this chapter is going to be that” and I know Ivan’s always been a huge fan of series like The Twilight Zone and he can speak more on the chapter that he directed; it’s one of my favorites, too.
RONN!E: It’s “Scott” right?
Ivan Asen: Yeah, so I wrote the second chapter where Scott, and again, like Holden said, I’m a huge fan of The Twilight Zone, so basically we take someone’s flaw and we amplify it, or their flaw, like them, talking too much and he loses the ability to speak, and it’s a psychological thriller from there on in. Whatever I write, for a thriller or something dramatic, I always look at The Twilight Zone because they really go beyond just horror and sci-fi and really ?? the human condition, and the ability to have them speak for 25 minutes. There’s not much action in The Twilight Zone but think about being able to hold someone’s attention for these huge scenes with a very minimal setting. I always thought that was fascinating and I think it’s more like a play and that’s why they were able to do it so well.
Holden Andrews: I love that scene.
Ivan Asen: The music is always great, too. They have great music. I think all writers should look toward The Twilight Zone for inspiration. I know a lot of–like M. Night Shyamalan, he makes two-hour Twilight Zone episodes, basically. They don’t work out as well, because, to hold someone’s interest for two hours of suspense, it works better for 25 minutes.
RONN!E: Yes, I have to completely agree with you on that one. What are your hopes of having another Dead List? Is there hopes to continue this?
One of them: Yes, as soon as we put Dead List in the can, we already started talking about a sequel. I think we did a really good job on Dead List and it got picked up by High Octane Pictures for distribution, it releases on May 1st. Video-on-demand is on June 5th for DVD. I think it speaks to the quality of the film and the idea that we created. We have really interesting ideas of what we can do with the sequel, so by all means, if people want one, we had such a good time making Dead List that it’s at the drop of a hat, we can make a sequel. We’re down for putting the pieces together.
One of them? Same one: ?? a sequel, and it might be as soon as this year, so hopefully everything works out. I know we would all love it, we had such a good time on this one it would be like the best thing to go back and try to redo it.
Another one?: We’d get to do it bigger and better on the sequel, which would be a lot of fun.
RONN!E: I hope you get that chance and you’ve definitely got to make sure we know about it.
Holden Andrews: Absolutely, we will, for sure.
RONN!E: So what else do you guys have going on, besides Dead List? Are there any other projects you’ve got coming out soon?
Holden Andrews: Sure, so I can elaborate on that. Definitely stay tuned for a sequel to Dead List, because I think there’s a high chance of that getting off the ground. As you and I were saying earlier, Victor and I worked together on a TV series called Scary Nights, which is basically Goosebumps meets Tales From the Crypt. It’s a really fun series. We shot it in 360 virtual reality, so it will be a completely immersive experience, which will be really interesting for the viewer. We haven’t really ever seen something like that and we’re really excited to release that. It should be releasing by the end of this year. Ivan and I actually wrote a script together called Cat House and it’s a road trip movie, a college road trip movie in a horror genre. Basically, without giving too much away, these kids go on a road trip, they stop off at a bordello to have some fun, and the bordello turns out to be not what they thought. It’s really really really a wild ride. It will give From Dusk Till Dawn a run for its money. Victor directed a feature that released this year called The Monster Project. He’s been working on that, and he’s been working on a few other projects that he’s been asked to direct. I wish he was on the call, because he could elaborate more on that. But it seemed really cool and hopefully we’ll be able to see those come out in the next year or so. And Ivan, you’re working on stuff?
Ivan Asen: Yeah, I just finished a script called–it’s not a horror thing, it’s a teen comedy called ??Teenaged Car?? and it’s like Clueless, or Mean Girls. I just finished that script right now. It’s very different than ???. But back to our script to Cat House, it’s basically Road Trip meets From Dusk Till Dawn. These guys, these college kids go to a legal brothel in Nevada, like a bunny ranch, and it’s run by succubi. And also there’s a U.S. senator who frequents the place, so there’s a lot of cool characters. There’s also this Buffy-type of character that comes and saves the day, but ???(garbled).
RONN!E: How soon do you guys hope to film that?
Holden: That’s a really good question, it depends on the deal we can strike. It’s a well-written script and it’s got a lot of potential. If we find the right partner with the right production and marketing, we’ll go. It just comes down to who we partner with on it. Hopefully sooner than later. We’ve had the idea for a minute and it would be really cool to get that off the ground because it’s really fun. It’s a fun while, a hilarious, horrifying adventure.
Ivan Asen: Also, to give you more of a backstory, the Senator is based on John Edwards, so you can see how lazy he’s going to be.
RONN!E: (laughs) I’m liking you guys.
Ivan Asen: One of the main characters, these guys are frat brothers, and one drags these guys to a brothel. One of them has a very hard-ass girlfriend who would never let them go and one of the characters is a virgin so they want him to lose his virginity at this brothel. There’s a lot going on besides the succubi.
RONN!E: It sounds really fun. I can’t wait to see this, actually. I did skip over one question about the Dead List that I wanted to ask. I’m curious because you did this as three directors and three writers. How long did filming and post-production take?
Holden Andrews: We shot it over the course of a–did we shoot it over a month or two months? I forget.
Ivan Asen: We shot it in April and May of 2015.
RONN!E: Oh wow.
Ivan Asen: It was a long time ago. So basically we developed the idea in February of 2015, wrote the script in March, shot April to May, had an editor who, unfortunately, dropped out in like, September of that year. And we finished the post in like, January 2017.
Holden Andrews: Post took a long time.
Ivan Asen: We only shot on weekends because of our jobs and things like that.
Holden Andrews: We shot weekends and nights.
Ivan Asen: It was like fourteen days, in all.
RONN!E: I was curious, with three directors, to know if it took longer.
Holden Andrews: I don’t think three directors made it take longer, or it being shorter. We shot it very fast. The longest process was post-production, but that’s just because post-production takes a long time. We had to lock the edit, and find a sound designer, and we had to sound design the film, we had to mix it, we had to have it scored. There are a lot of moving pieces and, unfortunately, those pieces take some time. It took a lot of time to have the post-production finished to a professional level, where we could actually market and distribute the film.
RONN!E: When it came to filming, were all three of you always there?
Holden Andrews: Yes. There were only a few instances where someone wasn’t there, and it might have been work-related. On a few days, I came late because I had work, but that’s the nice thing about having three people because if you’re not there, you still have two people to run the show and get results.
Ivan Asen: And we were also lucky because we broke it down into chapters. The character who plays Cal–Deane–she only shot like four or five days, and most of the actors only had one or two days. It was broken up that way so we didn’t really stretch anyone’s schedule and it was really special for everyone to work on, which was nice.
RONN!E: Well, that’s it and I want to thank you guys for speaking with me. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to watch it soon.
Holden Andrews: Let us know what you think about it. We had such a great time making the film and to hear of people truly enjoying it, is a reward in and of itself. It makes us so happy that people have a good time watching what we had such a great time making.
*Special thanks to October Coast and Cheryl Dyson.
See Dead List now on VOD from Amazon.
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