Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Slamdance Horror List

I want to give a shout-out (or is that a blood-curdling scream?) to all my fellow semifinalists.

Congrats!

You're awesome!

I haven't read these scripts (other than Red Wedding), but I know you all worked extremely hard on your screenplays, and I wish you continued success in your writing careers.

Here's the list from the Slamdance Film Festival site:

SEMIFINALISTS:

Blood-Sucking Leeches and Flesh-Eating Maggots by Adam Balsam
Cage by P.A. Landa
Crave by Paul Kramer
Crimson Highway by Daniel G. Payne & Tony Lopez
Dare by Bob Sinnott
Dead in the Water by Irad Eyal and Ron Eyal
The Dead of Winter by Roger Rousseau
Desecrated by Sean Paul Murphy
Dig by Marc A. Samson
Highway Cold by Mark Lovely
Hunger by L.D. Goffigan
Porn Star Zombies by Keith Emerson
Red Wedding by David Wisehart
Scalp Peeled Forward by Jud Cremata
Shady Acres by Justin Chinn & David Greenspan
The Shop Teacher by Joel Watson
Slaughter by Bobby Darby & Nathan Brookes
Torn Apart by Shaun O'Sullivan
Tunnelman! by Adam Nadler
Vampire Strippers Must Die! by Keith Hartman

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Bite Me by Cowen Bailey & Dan Diprima
Check-Out Time by Christian McLaughlin & Terry Haley
Eaten Alive by Zachary Henderson
The Fall of 59 by Eric D. Schneider
Suffer the Children by Michael Strode

If you're a Hollywood agent, director, producer, or development exec looking for talented horror writers, you might want to contact Slamdance immediately and start calling some of the people on this list.

11 comments:

Paul Kramer said...

Hey, just stumbled upon your blog while searching for Slamdance Horror Screenplay Competition material. I'm going a little crazy while waiting to hear word back about the final results. Congratulations to you too, David.

Your screenplay, RED WEDDING, sounds like a great idea. Have you read the book, "Going to Pieces," by Adam Rockoff? It chronicles the life and supposed death of the slasher film. If you haven't, I recommend it if you are a fan of the sub-genre. They also made a documentary last year with the same title that aired on the Starz network, but I haven't yet seen it.

Anyway, good luck to you. Let's hope those nice Hollywood folks do give us a call.

Best,
Paul Kramer
writer of CRAVE

David Wisehart said...

Paul:

I have not read "Going to Pieces." Looks interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.

Yes, the Slamdance announcement has been long in coming. I choose to believe it's because the top 20 scripts were all so incredibly brilliant that the judges found it difficult to decide.

Hopefully, we'll find out today.

Good luck with CRAVE and all your other projects.

- David

Bobby Lee Darby said...

Hey David

Well just waiting for the results of Slamdance like yourself.

Thanks for the mention on your blog. (Im one of the writers of "Slaughter")

"Red Wedding" sounds interesting, the way in which you went about writing it with a low budget in mind brings back memories, its precisely what we did.

Best of Luck

Bobby & Nathan
writers fo "Slaughter"

Paul Kramer said...

Hey, Bobby and Nathan, congrats to you guys too. And good luck in moving forward in the competition. I look forward to seeing both SLAUGHTER and RED WEDDING, as well as the other semi-finalists, on a movie screen in the near future.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I love all genres of film. In fact, after completing CRAVE, I wrote a drama. But horror is my favorite. Horror is like the black sheep of genre, the way I see. Many people look down upon it, or turn up their noses up at it from an artistic standpoint. Perhaps that is why I'm attracted to it, the rooting for the underdog mentality. Also, when I was young, my parents wouldn't allow me to watch horror films, which of course made me seek them out all the more. Fear is one of our strongest emotions, which is why the people that do enjoy it, enjoy it without risking death.

Where do y'all stand on the genre? And are you directors as well?

Sorry for rambling, I'm not much of a blogger.

Best,
Paul

David Wisehart said...

Bobby:

Thanks for saying hi.

Love your title. Short and to the point.

Good luck.


Paul:

Your parents banned horror movies?

Mine did too.

So what the hell happened?

I may need to write a new post on that.

- David

Bobby Lee Darby said...

Yeah Paul we're both directors/writers, I've just graduated from uni so just trying to get stuff off the ground here in the UK, I think that there's at an 8hour time difference between us or something.

Yeah I’m a big fan of the horror genre as well as the action adventure genre, although myself and Nathan have written scripts mainly based within the horror genre, simply because of they’re marketability and horror never seems to go out of die, so to speak! But we've also got a high concept action thriller, "Fade Out" and crime thriller "Feint" and probably writing a comedy next.

In response to both your’s and Paul’s lack of horror movie viewing when you were younger, I never had that problem, my parents let me watch pretty much anything – all the big hitters “Nightmare On Elm Street” “Evil Dead” “Halloween” “Friday 13th” and so on, although Nathan’s parents were alittle stricter in what he watched!! But all of these so called “video nasties” never did me any harm - I hope!

Paul. I was just wondering what your logline is?? Ours is “Young actresses unknowingly find themselves hired for a snuff film”.

Paul Kramer said...

SLAUGHTER sounds good, Bobby. Here's the simple logline I have for CRAVE:

"In present day San Francisco, people have developed peculiar cravings for the flesh of other people."

CRAVE, in a way, is like a zombie film exept its evildoers are living, breathing people instead of zombies. And its structure, I'm positive, is unique to the genre, as I chose to use chapters for dual storylines in order to get a glimpse from one the "cravers" points of view. There definitely were some films/filmmakers that influenced some of my choices: Cronenberg's early films (SHIVERS, RABID, THE BROOD, VIDEODROME, SCANNERS), Phil Kaufman's 1978 version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (which is also set in San Francisco), Carpenter's THE THING, and Romero's DEAD series, of course.

Anonymous said...

Hey guys,

Shaun O'Sullivan here, writer of "Torn Apart." Congratulations to you all, my fellow slamdance horror writers. Continuing the thread here....

I have always been a massive horror fan. My parents never censored my film and tv viewing, and in fact were always quite supportive of my love for horror. In fact when the original "Salem's Lot" mini-series aired (decades ago when I was knee high to a grasshopper!), I was unable to view the second part the following night (this was before we had a VCR!) and my parents felt so bad that I was upset at missing it, that my mom bought me a copy of the original steven king novel the very next day! Which then began my lifelong love for everything King has written!

As for Horror Movies, you name it, I've probably seen it!

My script "Torn Apart" is a zombie movie. I've always loved the zombie sub-genre. It perfectly lends itself to metaphor and allegory for broader societal concerns and issues. And I am thrilled that the year my script was written is the same year that my idol Steven King put out his first full length Zombie novel ("Cell"), and my other obession, Marvel Comics, also put out their very own zombie story with the release of "Marvel Zombies." (Spider-man web-slinging from building to building... awesome. Spider-man munching on human flesh... priceless)

"Torn Apart" is at it's core a dysfunctional love story about a divorced couple trapped in their old house while outside the dawn of the Zombie Apocalypse has begun. Can their marriage, like the blood crazed zombies intent on destroying them, come back from the dead?

In a nutshell, it's "28 days later" meets "Open Water"

best of luck to everyone! I hope all our films get produced!!

Shaun O'Sullivan

Anonymous said...

Hey Shaun, welcome to the party. (to anyone who's wondering, I introduced myself in a more recent post: Horror films? Oh, No! Save the Children!)

My script, THE DEAD OF WINTER, is also a zombie script. The genre is pretty popular now, and it's exactly for the reason you mentioned, "it perfectly lends itself to metaphor and allegory". Some people might say that there are too many zombie films out there, but I think that there aren't enough.

I thought that Marvel Zombies was pretty funny (bone breaks through Hulk's stomach when he reverts back down to Bruce Banner, heroes clamour to eat Galactus) but I wasn't impressed with the series overall. If you enjoyed that series, you should read Robert Kirkman's THE WALKING DEAD (that is, if you haven't read it already) which is just amazing.

Roger

Paul Kramer said...

Welcome, Shaun. TORN APART sounds good, and perfect for a low budget scenario. I liked King's CELL. Though, it could have used more scares troughout, especially after that heart-pounding beginning. And, that business about the virtual dream was a bit of a mess, as though King backtracked in a half-hearted attempt to fix the climax (sans ACTUAL platforms and all). Hopefully Eli Roth and the writers realize these things before it's too late. They're a talented bunch, so I'm sure they will.

David Wisehart said...

Apparently Shaun is too modest to mention this, but let me be his PR guy for a moment and point you all to the website for his other upcoming film, which he's producing:

Truth About Kerry

Cool site.

Best of luck with the film, Shaun!

- David