Over the past 10 years, the name Jeremiah Kipp has popped up across multiple projects.  From writing, to producing and directing, it seems that Mr. Kipp has found ways to keep himself occupied and creative.  He has worked on such projects as; I SELL THE DEAD, SATAN HATES YOU and AUTOMATONS (just to name a few). 

Among the many projects Jeremiah Kipp has been attatched to, he is quickly becoming known for his independant endeavors throughout the horror community.  Recently, Kipp has released his short film CONTACT for online viewing.  Filled with nudity, drugs, and a very odd gore sequence,  Benevolent Street was able to chat with Kipp regarding CONTACT and more.

Benevolent Street: Taking a look at your credits over the last decade, you seem to be a very busy individual.  What is it about the Horror genre that keeps bringing you back?
 
Jeremiah Kipp: Horror is my favorite genre; it reminds me of those wonderful fairy tales we heard when we were kids. Hansel and Gretel is a story of poverty, mired in the grim details of starvation and sacrifice, and then it takes a leap into the otherworldly when they encounter a gingerbread house and a witch. Without that element of the supernatural, the story would be too painful to accept—but it takes an eerie turn and becomes larger than reality. It’s analogous to David Cronenberg’s movie about a man slowly dying from a disease, and how harrowing it is to watch a human body corrode, but what takes that movie into something poetic is that he evolves into a giant fly. Horror allows us to comprehend dark emotions in a powerful, magical, cathartic way.
 
BS: Your new short film CONTACT takes an unflinching look at drug use and mixes it with nudity and violence.  What influenced you to create such a strange brew of horror?
 
JK:  It’s a very good question, but also theoretical. I find my interests work more based on intuition. Have you ever seen the image of “The Kiss” by Edvard Munch? In the image, two lovers kiss and their faces seem to melt together, which elicits a kind of horror. If you wanted to escape from that, it might rip your entire face off, and yet the painting is also incredibly sensual, very mysterious. If you start from an image like that and build backwards, you can cook up quite a story. CONTACT was also a way for me to reexamine themes of my previous movie, THE POD, written by a very good screenwriter named Carl Kelsch. That film is also about a hallucinogenic drug, which opens up great visual possibilities, but our reasons for creating that project had more to do with feelings of desire, love and connection, which can often be the source of great pain and fear.
 
BS: CONTACT has very little dialogue and displays a unique black and white aesthetic.  What inspired these choices for the film?
 
JK: The fewer elements there are within a film, the more powerful that film can become. We were interested in paring down to the essential, which meant reducing the plot, characters, dialogue, down to the bare essential—and this gives the feeling of pure cinema, so nothing is left but the intensity of what is happening before you. The black and white is another way of keeping the film spare; but it’s also quite romantic, don’t you think? Some people claim to dream in black and white.
 
BS: What inspired such bleak and surreal feelings that CONTACT seems to elicit?
 
JK:  You’re speaking now from the perspective of the audience, which is great. It’s important for filmmakers to consider the audience when they make their film, and the effect they want the movie to have on them. If we are to look at the construction of a movie in the way we would build a house, then we ask ourselves where we want the audience to live. I like to keep the viewer in a state of tension, where even a middle aged couple setting the dining room table feels like a bomb is hanging overhead, and when there is a knock at the door, the characters look to each other for strength. If you play out such a scene before the audience, they start asking questions: who are these people, who are they waiting for, and why are they uncomfortable? We start projecting on them, and feel uncomfortable, too—and then when we cut to two lovers running, we ask ourselves how these pieces of the movie are connected. This, to me, is good drama—a sense of heightened anticipation about what might happen next… Even when the movie starts becoming otherworldly, it reminds me that the surreal is just an extension of reality—it is reality distorted, which creates a sense of horror. This answer sounds awfully pretentious; my director of photography Dominick Sivilli would tell me to simply say, “Because it looks good!”
 
BS: How would you compare your experience on CONTACT to your work on something like I SELL THE DEAD in terms of budget and limitations?
 
JK: It’s funny, because I SELL THE DEAD (which I assistant directed) is a period movie with elaborate costumes, gigantic sets including a gravedigger’s tavern and a town square with a gigantic thirty foot guillotine in the center, with big stars like Dominic Monaghan and Ron Perlman surrounded by almost a hundred extras, but once all that money is spent, we’re still left with having to race against time before the sun goes down, fighting to get all the shots in the can, and it doesn’t feel much different than a no-budget film. We had the great fortune of having a great leader in our executive producer Larry Fessenden, who established himself on very low budget movies and understands where to spend the money to maximize the production value.

I learned a great deal from working with him, in terms of leading a cast and crew, using creativity and ingenuity instead of throwing cash at problems, and thinking cinematically, since he himself is an innovative filmmaker. He gave first-time feature director Glenn McQuaid a rare opportunity, and Glenn ran with it. CONTACT is a different horse in some ways, shot with a crew of four on a $600 budget. That said, we filmed in widescreen (2:35) and used directors like Steven Spielberg and photographers like Gregory Crewdson as a visual reference, with intense rays of beautiful sunlight coming in through the window. I don’t think I would have been so daring, or so aware of how much you can do cinematically with so little, if I hadn’t worked with an artist and a craftsman as great as Fessenden.
 
BS: Your lead actress Zoe Daelman Chlanda was great at bringing her character to life with no dialogue. Can you tell us how it was to work with her and how you’ve come to work with her over multiple projects?
 
JK: This was a very meaningful collaboration for me. I remember being so impressed by her work in Alan Rowe Kelly’s cult classic I’LL BURY YOU TOMORROW.  She and her co-star in that film, Jerry Murdock, could really be the Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy of independent horror films, since they remind me why I enjoy watching movie stars. What strikes me is that they are incredibly glamorous people in real life, and their charisma lights up the screen, but they have such a lack of vanity when it comes to playing a role. Zoe is a bit of a chameleon, in that Lon Chaney way, where she transforms herself. In I’LL BURY YOU she got to paint with many colors, because hiding underneath her character’s wallflower exterior was an axe-wielding, explosive psychopath. She has such intensity about her as Delores, and also in person. But I find this a very attractive quality. Underneath, Zoe contains such warmth and vulnerability.

Our rehearsal process on CONTACT was fantastic because we’d worked together before on Alan’s THE BLOOD SHED and Scott W. Perry’s INSATIABLE, and she appeared in an episode of a Web series that I directed as work-for-hire, so she knows how much I enjoy her work. When I see good acting, I am filled with a sense of beautiful awe because it doesn’t even feel like acting; it feels closer to being. It is more difficult to shoot a bad actor than a good one. When you shoot a scene with Zoe where she awakens on the floor in a state of panic and moves into a nervous breakdown, the camera has the freedom to follow her anywhere and it has nothing to do with cinematic tricks; the camera is directly responding to what she is giving us, and an actress like Zoe gives so much. Movies are comprised of moments in time, and the camera reads every thought—and an actress of Zoe’s caliber—wow, it’s like watching an emotional hand grenade! She generates a feeling of palpable heat. That is Zoe’s raw talent, and it is a source of great inspiration for me; she truly is an astonishing creature. I can’t wait to work with her again.
 
BS:  With CONTACT being a low budget endeavor, and with the subject matter it involves, were there specific people you wanted to work with in bringing this project to life and what did each of them bring to the process?
 
JK: I was incredibly fortunate to have Alan Rowe Kelly and Bart Mastronardi as producers. Alan was instrumental in surrounding me with a fantastic team of actors, including the dynamic Katherine O’Sullivan and our romantic lead, Robb Leigh Davis, both such generous and giving actors. Alan has a great eye for talent, and he himself has such a strong presence as an actor. He so rarely gets to play a leader, which he is in real life—I loved casting him as the nefarious drug pusher, who reminded me of great asexual villains like The Toecutter in MAD MAX, or maybe a little like the rock star Morrissey wielding a bicycle chain.
 
There was also a great crew who had worked with Alan and Bart before, like Dominick Sivilli, my cinematographer and editor. He was truly a brother, a soldier and, along with Zoe, my closest collaborator on realizing this film. I think when you have a good partnership, you don’t know where your sentence ends and theirs begins. It’s great having someone who understands the visual language of cinematic storytelling. But the secret weapon of the movie is Tom Burns, who handled our sound design, mix and music—sound has to be the most underrepresented department in the horror genre, and yet the aural soundscape has such a powerful effect on the viewer. Often, we find it difficult to pinpoint why we feel such a sense of uncanny dread, and it’s usually because the sounds have crept in under our skin.
 
BS:  Aside from your behind the camera work, you have also been part of the journalism field.  How has being featured in such things as FANGORIA and your role in journalism as a whole influenced your directing/producing career?
 
JK:  I found it a very useful profession, since it enabled me to speak with some very inspiring film directors. I really enjoyed my conversations with Abel Ferrara, drinking malt liquor in the Chelsea Hotel, and sitting in Tom Noonan’s theater space in the West Village talking about his auditions for Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER and John Cassavetes’ GLORIA. I learned a great deal by listening to them, but of course the best lesson is to throw away all of your preconceived ideas about what filmmaking is every time you start a new picture. You make new discoveries every time, and the collaborators you surround yourself with expand the possibilities of what that movie can be. Did you know my FANGORIA editor Michael Gingold might be directing a feature film this year? I can’t wait to see where he goes with it; he has one hell of a good script.
 
BS:  What other projects do you have in store for the horror community in 2010?
 
JK:  I have found it best to remain somewhat elusive with such questions, since some projects gestate for years and are never realized and others, such as CONTACT, literally come into existence two months before the film is to be screened in front of an audience. That said, there is a feature length monster movie I am very passionate about making as well as a vampire segment in an creature feature anthology and an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, which was inspired by Bart Mastronardi’s upcoming production of A TELL TALE HEART starring Alan Rowe Kelly and Debbie Rochon. I recently had the opportunity to associate produce NO REST FOR THE WICKED, which was shot by cinematographer Dominick Sivilli as a segment of executive producer Marv Blauvelt’s PSYCHO STREET. What can I say, other than that work begets work.
 
BS:  Do you see yourself continuing to visit the horror genre as your career continues to spread out and grow?
 
JK: I have loved the genre ever since I was a child. One of the earliest pictures of me is next to a drawing I made of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolf Man. I believe that as long as we stay true to ourselves in terms of the stories we want to tell, the genre will take care of itself. I look forward to where the road takes me.
 
BS:  Horror movies have managed to deliver some strong box office figures over the past few years.  What, in your opinion, are some of the best features to hit the big screen or DVD shelf in recent memory?
 
JK: I’ve enjoyed the movies that have emerged under the banner of Larry Fessenden, who has been like a Roger Corman in terms of drawing out talent from the independent horror community such as Graham Reznick (I CAN SEE YOU), James Felix McKenney (AUTOMATONS), Douglas Buck (PROLOGUE); Ti West (THE ROOST), Jim Mickle (MULBERRY STREET) and others. Larry’s own films are better than all of the rest of us combined; he should be spoken of the way we herald someone like Jim Jarmusch. I love the work of Dante Tomaselli, who directed SATAN’S PLAYGROUND. He’s a huge inspiration for me. And on the west coast, Jim Van Bebber needs to make another film, since THE MANSON FAMILY was one of the great underground films of our generation. I also really love the work coming out of France, such as Bruno Dumont’s TWENTYNINE PALMS and Claire Denis’s TROUBLE EVERY DAY and the completely unnerving INSIDE, and Japanese horror films from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (PULSE)ˆand Takashi Miike (AUDITION).  One of my favorite directors is Andrzej Zulawski, whose mad Polish cinema of the 1970s and 80s is re-emerging now on DVD, such as POSSESSION starring Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani. And let’s not ignore mainstream horror titles like 28 DAYS LATER and 28 WEEKS LATER, or Steven Spielberg’s terrifying WAR OF THE WORLDS.

BS:  For anything you may be working on in the future, are there any specific individuals you would most like to work with (actors or otherwise)?
 
JK: It would be fantastic to work with Tom Atkins, who is an absolutely great actor. I loved his work in NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, THE FOG, HALLOWEEN III, and he’s done some outstanding work in little seen dramatic films, such as LEMON SKY as Kevin Bacon’s domineering father. I’m also a big fan of Adrienne Barbeau. There was a brief time when she and Atkins were scheduled to star in Dante’s movie THE OCEAN, which got knocked off the rails somehow, which was pretty disappointing. Wouldn’t it be great to see the two of them headlining a movie together? 
 
BS:  When it comes to directing, producing and writing, what has been the most rewarding aspect of the film business for you?  Do you prefer one over another?
 
JK:  Producing films is a way of showing support to filmmakers I believe in, and I have no regrets about involving myself in the productions of Jim McKenney’s SATAN HATES YOU (where I got to work with Michael Berryman and Reggie Bannister) and Preston Miller’s GOD’S LAND. Those films were made with passion, sweat and tears, and both were rewarding for me. Directing is easily the best job anyone could ever have in the world; it’s where my passion lies. I find that I am happiest when I’m directing, and CONTACT was truly a banner experience.

BS:  Coming from someone that has experienced the movie making process through writing, directing and producing, and dealing with small to larger budgets, is there any advice you would have for anyone wishing to start a film career?
 
JK: Remain humble; listen to the movie. Choose the members of your team well, knowing that the role of the director is “the person who helps everybody”. Listen to your mentors and then boldly take the plunge. Fail often, and don’t be afraid of failure. Do your homework, but be open to throwing it all in the garbage when you arrive on set and discover new possibilities. Don’t come crying to me, or to anyone, because nobody cares about your problems. And love what you do, because the life of a filmmaker is not easy; but if you love the work, you’re in for a life of wondrous adventure. As the great director Andre Gregory once said, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line.

Make sure to stop by here: http://contact.shroggle.com/Home and check out CONTACT for your self.  You can also find more information about CONTACT’s lead actress here: www.zoedchlanda.com.