Be sure to check out GEP pal Motell Foster twice before the Thanksgiving holiday in 2 different works:
Alonso Ruizpalacios’s LA COCINA unspools today & tomorrow at Angelika Village East. Starring Raúl Briones, Rooney Mara, Anna Diaz, Oded Fehr and Motell Foster. Get your tix!
Amy Berryman’s WALDEN at the Tony Kiser Theater in NYC. Catch the performance before it’s gone! On stage until Nov 25. Get your tix.
Glass Eye knows Foster well, lending his talents in Jack Fessenden’s FOXHOLE and Larry Fessenden’s BLACKOUT. Now streaming and available on Blu-Ray.
Larry Fessenden is a producer, director, and the founder of Glass Eye Pix. Above all, he is a lover of cinema and not afraid to get involved in the technical process and do the work. In fact, he prefers it. A performer in his own right, when Larry isn’t making films, he’s starring in them. In many ways, Larry is a local legend and icon of the horror genre. His career spans over 40+ years and 20+ films throughout which he has earned a spirit award and acknowledgment from the Criterion Collection. His production company Glass Eye Pix, has not only been a film school of sorts for successful directors like Ti West, he’s even invested in their earlier work. Larry is a fascinating case study of what it takes to make your film when you’re up against all the odds. His process is his and he doesn’t claim to have the right one either but he’ll fight you tooth and nail for it. Literally.
Thanks to the folks at Wrap Drinks for having me on— LF
On Sunday, October 20, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival honored Larry Fessenden with the Leviathan Award. The ceremony took place before a screening of his 1997 film Habit and a post-show Q&A. The award is BHFF’s only tribute award, created in 2023 to honor the luminaries of horror for their contributions to the genre. The event was moderated by filmmaker Jennifer Wexler. Wexler previously worked at Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix and fell into an effortless rapport with the man of the hour.
Upon receiving his award, Fessenden explained what it meant to be recognized by the festival. He said, “It is a struggle making these movies. My films are not quite horror, and they are not quite fancy indie movies. They have never been to fancy festivals. So what matters is you guys…the audience, and the fans. It means a great deal to be recognized by the Brooklyn Horror Festival. It is really meaningful to me.”
He joked, “I am not really getting emotional, but in concept, I am very touched by this.”
Always one to share the spotlight, Larry Fessenden told the packed theater that he accepted the award on behalf of all the great people he has worked with over the years. He explained, “The word mentorship is thrown around a lot, but what really happens is I find people with great passion, with a vision of what horror can be.”
Fessenden cited Wexler’s seven films made at his company. He then continued, “I accept [this] for all of the people who have come through our pipeline. We are there to celebrate individual voices in the arts. The individuality to go up against the sort of corporate blandness…and get everyone out the door so they can go make some money.” Fessenden and Wexler were then handed Blood Bags, the specialty drink Nitehawk Cinema conjured up for the event, before leaving the audience to watch Habit on the big screen.
Habit sees Fessenden step up as writer-director-star, which is not uncommon in his work. In the film, he plays a down-on-his-luck guy named Sam who just lost his dad and is still navigating a recent breakup. As he self-medicates at a party, he meets a woman named Anna (Meredith Snaider), and sparks begin to fly. However, it soon becomes clear that Anna wants Sam’s body in more ways than he bargained. This sets Sam spiraling even further as he realizes love bites, and that he might be hooking up with a vampire.
This indie movie set in 1995 New York has all the markings of a Larry Fessenden project. It’s a no-frills film that feels personal and is unafraid to explore sexuality and violence. To further set it apart from most movies, it denies the audience the traditional boring happy ending. Habit also has a monster that is a person first and foremost, which is another signature of the filmmaker’s work. Instead of going for over-the-top creatures, Fessenden is known for using monstrous traits to investigate the human condition.
Jennifer Wexler brought clips of the 1984 short Habit to compare with the feature-length version, allowing the audience to see how they differed. She used the short version as a jumping-off point to ask Larry about his knack for using monsters to explore real-world issues. He acknowledged that the short film was not great, but it was the seed he needed for what has become his personal mission. Fessenden explained, “It was the beginning of my instance that you can make monster movies, in the every day, in a personal way about personal problems. I have been on that mission ever since.” He elaborated, “My films are philosophical horror movies dealing with some of the old questions through a modern lens.”
Because Wexler has known Fessenden for years, she knew how to get the good stories out of the beloved horror icon. Between the two of them laughing like kids who snuck into the adult table at a holiday meal, he told the packed theater scandalous stories. For example, Larry shared that they saved filming the scene where he dangled from a window for the last day. Just in case it was the last thing he ever did.
He also joked, “I really want to stress, I never wanted to exploit anyone. So, we did not pay anyone one single penny because I never wanted them to feel they were being underpaid.” However, when he won an award that gifted him $10,000, he gave it to the crew that made Habit possible.
Wexler also asked Fessenden how advertising Habit landed him and a friend in jail. This is when Larry Fessenden told possibly the funniest story of the evening. He began, ”We’re postering, as you do, on the street, and the cops come up. It was illegal to do that. So, they grabbed us and said, ‘Is there anything you want to get rid of before we bring you into the station?’, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck is he talking about? Oh shit, the reefer in my pocket.’”
Fessenden continued, “We were already handcuffed, but they kind of [knew]. So, we are driving around, and they say, ‘So…we have an idea for a Sundance movie.’” When the laughter died down he continued, “They threw us in jail, and at the time, I had Habittrading cards, which was my way of promoting the picture. I gave them to all the inmates, as we were all in the cell together. I even got the cops to do a selfie.”
As a fan of Larry Fessenden’s movies and video games, I love hearing him talk about his work at festivals. This time was extra special because I finally crossed Habit off my watchlist. He’s worked in the genre since 1979, so many millennials are playing catch-up with his back catalog. I know I’m not the only one who was geeked to see it for the first time with Fessenden in the building to talk aboutthe process of making the film. Because Fessenden has never been afraid to lay bare his personal feelings in his art, the film holds up. It is also still remarkably timely and relatable all these decades later. I highly recommend you catch Habit, which is currently free to stream on Sling TV and is available to AMC+ subscribers.
I am still riding the high from this evening with Jennifer Wexler and Larry Fessenden. However, you can catch me at @misssharai if you watched Habit for the first time this year and have also been changed for good.
Fessenden and Shudder’s Sam Zimmerman with Tony Todd on the occasion of TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE LIVE in Montreal JULY 27 2015
HIDDEN RECORDS
A troubled teen is haunted by the memory of his musician father and the vinyl record that speaks from beyond the grave.
Cast: Kevin Cline, Tony Todd, Susan Corbett, Alexandre Lazarre, Esinam Beckley.
Crew: Doug Buck (Writer and Director), Silvano Mercado (Music), Tom Mennier (Piano), Philippe Battikha (Trumpet), Chris Skotchdopole (Live Foley), Tessa Price (Live Foley), Glenn McQuaid (Live Sound Design), Graham Reznick (Live Ambience), Lee Nussbaum (Live Mix and Tech).
BARRICADE
A couple honeymooning in rural Pennsylvania is visited by two desperate men fleeing legions of tiny creatures they’ve unleashed from underground.
Cast: Roxanne Benjamin, Jeremy Gardner, Tony Todd, Samuel Zimmerman.
Crew: Larry Fessenden (Writer, Director, Live Foley), Just Desserts (Music), Chris Skotchdopole (Live Foley), Tessa Price (Live Foley), Glenn McQuaid (Live Sound Design), Graham Reznick (Live Ambience), Lee Nussbaum (Live Mix and Tech).
FAMILY PORTRAITS: A TRILOGY OF AMERICA & THE ACCIDENT – 35MM + Q&A
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 8:00 PM DIRECTOR: Douglas Buck CAST: Sally Conway, Larry Fessenden, Beth Glover Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America (2003, 103MIN) From acclaimed director Douglas Buck comes an unflinching, disturbingly beautiful look at the underbelly of American family. Three separate narratives (including the shocking film festival favorite “Cutting Moments” as well as “Home” and “Prologue”) combine to create a unique trilogy of life today that will leave you devastated… and begging for more.
The Accident (2011, 11MIN) a mother and young daughter drive along a mountain road and come upon a fatal collision between a motorcyclist and a deer.
Q&A with Douglas Buck following screening.
SISTERS – 35MM + Q&A
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 8:00 PM DIRECTOR: Douglas Buck CAST: Chloë Sevigny, Stephen Rea, Lou Doillon A reporter witnesses a brutal murder and becomes entangled in a mystery involving a pair of conjoined twins who were separated at birth, one of them forced to live under the eye of a watchful, controlling psychiatrist.
ALSO SCREENING before the feature: Electric Blue featuring Fessenden. A brand new short from Douglas Buck for “One-Way Ticket To The Other Side,” a series of short films centered around the debut album of the musical duo Pornographie Exclusive (Severine Cayron and Jerome Vandewattyne).
Q&A with Douglas Buck following screening.
Fessenden served as actor in Buck’s Trilogy of America and Producer with Edward R. Pressman on Buck’s SISTERS remake. Buck’s THE ACCIDENT is perhaps his crowning achievement.
Warning: This is extreme cinema to suit the mood of the day
CONTEMPLATING THE MYRIAD DISCONNECTS THAT HAVE LED MODERN SOCIETY ASTRAY
An attempt to reset the national conversation through the defiant naïveté Fessenden employs in his horror movies; For if we shy away from idealism, we have no mechanism to make change.
Whoever wins this election, we cannot respond if we don’t have principals with which to find common cause or build resistance.
I was speaking to my Mom who is 97 and who gets so upset and emotional about the upcoming election, I have to make sure not to talk about it too close to her bed time. Luckily, the other night she texted that her heart was beating so hard watching the television. I put two and two together that there must be something going on. I tuned in and after chit chat that might make you want to turn your TV back off, Kamala gave a great speech. Well, I thought it was pretty great. I thanked my Mom for getting me to tune in.
This isn’t a think piece. It may well be an elegy. I can’t help but see another Trump presidency as just another extended, ongoing natural (unnatural) disaster. However it was also interesting reading how Republicans and Democrats hold a similar view of each other’s complete incompetence. So this is democracy – the will of the people will be expressed in whatever dysfunctional way the electoral college allows.. Que sera, sera. Live by the ballot or swing state, die by the ballot/ swing state.
I pine for the wise words of Noam Chomsky who has issued a consistent message ever since the sixties and now has trouble speaking due to a stroke – a man revered in other nations for his wisdom on intellectual thought and the moral responsibility to speak against injustice and clearly antidemocratic agendas. I relisten to George Carlin on Instagram and realize he was an angry, funny, caustic, very smart and enlightend man. I heard it when he was alive and I laughed and I nodded. I hear it now, and I’m like this guy was tapped into an understanding I didn’t fathom back then that only certain really smart outsiders have. They see the patterns, the absurdity, the inside job.
On the other hand, a ton of people really like Trump, and when I think of the masses voting for him, I’m upset. But when I think of a few individuals I know who I really like that I suspect will vote for him, that are lovely people that I might give a kidney to, I feel like, que sera, sera.
But I really do hope he doesn’t come for your neighbors, friends, family, or you, due to being or formerly being, a suspected non-resident alien, or whatever classification he comes up with.
Or that he doesn’t keep a list of every woman’s reproductive activity as if this was now a responsibility of the government to safeguard the life of a fetus, nor that he imprisons a woman who does not follow the said guidelines.
I also hope you or your neighbors don’t happen to get arrested while being black, brown, asian, latino, south asian, filipino or only whiteish, (you get the drift) because due process of law is going to be up for grabs and the guy had swastikas hanging in Madison Square Garden. That is the opposite of virtue signaling.
He’s coming for you. And that’s who ever he chooses, whenever he chooses it. That’s who you’ve chosen to have in power. Crazy, no checks and balances, totally disinhibited, openly states he wants to be a dictator, that elections are stolen and he likes Putin. He might wake up and want to round up people who like candy or those who smoke cigarettes, or maybe just the women who are lactating, or maybe just the people eighty and older who can’t walk so well.
And he doesn’t really like Social Security and Medicare because it smacks of socialism despite the fact you paid into it your whole fucking working life. You see, he’d like to cut the tax burden a bit more so the companies could rape and pillage the country a bit more thoroughly with even fewer taxes while the poor and working class die by the dozens. You know, because that’s how it was in the good old days. And he’s making America great again. Racist. Radically polarized between rich and poor. Attempting a new ethno-cleansing despite the pesky problem of America being a country of immigrants (rats), so he has to toe that line carefully.
And as in the days of old, raping of the land is also back in vogue, so have at it in anyway you see fit to fuck, suck, and felch the earth. Environmental protections will be eliminated, drilling, fracking, deforesting, dumping, release of sewage, nuclear waste, animal waste, will be rampant. Earth probably has less than five years.
So, this is the guy to close the show – final act – last looks every one – he is apparently what the populous wants. That and lower bread prices. So eat up, butter cup.
I mean, soon prices are really going to drop. Hope you have a big appetite. It’s going to be clearance, long time. Everything must go.
Including you. Bye Bye.
And while Trump is doing all this crazy shit and there is a ton of yelling and screaming, also from the people that voted for him who are now upset and want their money back, do you think the country, the economy, our position in the world, our environment, anything, is going to be better? More money in your pocket? More jobs for hard working Americans? More lube for the ass fucking? That he’ll give ya.
It will all be putting out fires because the guy is a fucking nightmare, like trying to guide Godzilla through the Louvre – but I guess that’s why many people vote for him. He’s so fun to watch. He’s the wrestler (or green lizard) in the ring that makes you laugh and keeps you engaged. Stokes outrage and releases dopamine. It is a bit like the Twilight Zone where part of “US(A)” has slipped inside the Entertainment Box and is no longer truly cognizant of the difference between what we see on screens and what is actually real.
Trump is a hologram, a logo, a hat, a bumper sticker, a decal, a meme, a video clip. He’s vapor. But I still don’t get the con. Or maybe it’s a performer/audience love fest that has no center except self interest and self adoration, entertainment and self satisfaction. However, clearly the Donald has nailed the connection with his audience who will seemingly forgive him anything.
Personally, I don’t understand that because instinctively I see the bully in him and believe every woman who has come forward saying he raped/assaulted them. I believe humility is an admirable quality and that braggarts are never people you want to be around. Lastly, I used to always assess people by who you’d want to go on a hiking trip with. Nothing elaborate, just a basic couple of days in the mountains, but it can rain, you have to get fire wood, there’s limited food, people get blisters, etc. And there are people that really suck to have on camping trips. Donald Trump would be one of them. A simpering, entitled pile of a human being.
Now to be fair, initially, I think Kamala might be a little annoying on the camping trip; too perky, too talkative, maybe too much of a “know it all”. But she’d end up being a “go-to” or should I say, the person you were “going to”; kind of the natural leader; and you might be sharing a cigarette and a swig from the flask around the campsite with her too. Unlike some fools, she’s disciplined with that stuff, so keep a confidence.
A week from today maybe we’ll know the outcome. I think what is painful is feeling like you and some of your other fellow citizens have come to such a different judgement call given basic facts. The irony of a democratic country electing a president who plainly states he wants to be a despot, a king, despite the USA ousting British royalty 250+ years ago and establishing its own independence, seems like a stunning display of amnesia.
And yet it feels like it’s done with a shrug of the shoulders. Come, kiss the godfather’s ring and he’s gonna take care of “your problem”. But what you learn, is this is just the beginning of a very bad deal. It’s not kindness, relief or mercy. It’s opportunity. For him. In your moment of weakness or deference or god forbid, belief in the Donald, where you buy his bullshit, the three card monty, you will now pay for that paycheck loan in perpetuity.
I suppose a handful might profit before the earth caves in. Elon is already planning to live on Mars, that fucking wombat. Have you seen pictures from Mars? And A/B’d them with Earth? Does that seem like a place anyone would want to go to?
Can you imagine Elon and the Donald on Mars together? They’d be dead in three hours. Donald would insist on going for a walk to survey for building sites, too impatient to be outfitted with any gear, and Elon’s space suit would only be Gen 3 and fail as he tried to rescue Trump’s freeze dried body pulling him back onto the Mars pod. I guess it would be a robot that would finally recover them from that deliciously freezing, inhospitable, rocky and sandy surface.
It seems like it might be a better idea to preserve the much better place that we are destroying, namely the earth. And just saying “No”, to two year-old geniuses, future tech bros, entrepreneurs, narcissists, neurodivergents, spoiled brats, princesses, influencers, star performers, athletes. It might not be the worst thing.
My bias is greatness is grounded in being completely average, being connected to the experience of the life around you and the people who live there.
I would hate for unchecked ego to be the downfall of the republic. I do think “old school” Republicans do not like Donald Trump. My Dad was a Republican for most of his voting life, but like my Mom, he would be appalled by Trump in every way imaginable. He would not care about the financial benefit, however alluring, and my Dad disliked taxes.
I also think he may have been moved by Kamala’s speech the other night, especially near the end, where she said I’m going to be your President even if you don’t vote for me, I’m going to be working for you, because its about one country and not division, and something to the effect that I care deeply about this, I will fight for this, I’ll work hard for this. I’l work hard for all of you.
And that’s what it’s about.
And that’s not what Trump’s about.
I don’t think he’s ever used the words ‘work’ or ‘care’.
And the final point is, I think people know he isn’t going to work or care while in office, but they still will vote for him. I can only imagine this mirrors their experience of not working or caring about their prospects, their job, their future, their life, their town, their world. Call it a type of slow burn out, an American nihilism, but it’s no longer subtle.
This is becoming a choice for the dark side, however ill-defined. I just don’t know if the reality of this choice has truly set in. It’s like Trump devotees are pushing the button without having a firm idea about what the explosion will look like.
I think they’ll be surprised about what gets set into motion, and like good audience members, they’ll watch in horror and fascination while taking zero responsibility for having helped create this monster.
Glass Eye Pix is the fierce independent NYC-based production outfit headed by award-winning art-horror auteur Larry Fessenden with the mission of supporting individual voices in the arts. Read more...
