Writer/director Ari Kirschenbaum discusses his new horror comedy.
Available to rent/buy on Amazon this Halloween, Live-Evil is a horror-comedy that mixes elements of Ghostbusters, The Twilight Zone and Return of the Living Dead as it rolls out the tale of a small-town rallying against some glowing-eyed zombies!
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Where did the idea for the film come from?
One scene, the opening, a small-town deputy walking into the end of the world.
Did that general idea change much as the development phase progressed?
Yes, it evolved. I usually write myself into a corner. To get out of that corner involved raising the dead. I always try to keep the budget scope down, but even still this got whittled down.
What about the script? How did it change, if it all, in the time between that initial draft and the shoot?
It didn’t change all that much. The way we shot it did. We shot everything in the script but not as envisioned and not at the same scope.
Did you have your actors onboard first or did financing fall into place first? I guess it’s a bit of a chicken or the egg scenario, that one?
We tried to get a much larger budget with names. Just to illustrate how close you can get, Katee Sackhoff and JK Simmons were interested, but the money fell through and then we went solely with what we could afford. We ended up with great picks never the less, but we definitely started in the name equals budget game.
Who of the cast do you think are closest to their characters?
Great question; unfortunately I have a shitty answer. I think most of the characters ended up pretty close. Characters that were changed by casting - Really Rosie, The Pastor, George, Edwin, even Evil. The main characters were almost literally as written.
Is there a particular moment in the film you really, really enjoyed shooting?
Oh man, it was all rough, day one to wrap. I suppose filming the plane taking off or the cop car shoot out were the most enjoyable because those kind of things make you grin like a little kid - hey this plane is taking off just for me and my little film or this downtown street is being blocked off by cops so I can have corpses shoot at a cop car with AK-47s. Is this really happening? Why are all these people doing this?
George Lucas was likely offered science-fiction movie after science-fiction movie after the first Star Wars. Have you been approached to direct similar projects to yours since?
Ha! I wish. Seriously. Someone please offer me a movie. Any movie. Anything.
Any chance of a sequel?
We joked about that endlessly. It would be Mr Eleven and Mr Twelve crash land in South America. Spin off.
What’s next for you?
Trying to get an animated Sherlock Holmes project going and a horror TV series, but slow is the boat I ride on and the tickets are free.