Brian Clement
Interviewed by: Lizzard Willy
LW: How
did you fall into filmmaking? BC: Like a lot of people my age, when I was a kid living with the parents it was fun to go and "make movies" with the home video camera. After a long while it became more serious, doing simple storylines, adding effects and so on. I think because of my love for art and writing stories, this seemed like a natural progression, to create a piece of art that would tell a story. After I came back from living in Japan for a year, equipped with my first professional video camera, I started doing more complicated shorts, until I began working on feature-length pictures, the earliest of which would be Meat Market. |
 |
 |
LW: What are some of your favorite films? BC: The 1949 version of Gun Crazy (aka Deadly is the Female), White Heat, Sunset Blvd, The Empire Strikes Back, Libertarias (a Spanish film about women anarchists in the Spanish Civil War), Dai Bosatsu Toge (aka Sword of Doom), Evil Dead 2. Those are the ones that immediately spring to mind. I really like grand melodrama. I don't care if people want to call things "cheesy", for me if it's not sweeping and melodramatic, what's the point? Life is an adventure enough, for a fantasy-style
movie, I say it has to top the adventure of everyday life. |
| LW: You've done some of the best underground films
in recent history with MM, MM2, and Binge and Purge. What made you want
to try something like Exhumed? BC: Best underground films, eh? (*cough* interviewer is crazy *cough*) Well, if you say so... Really what made me want to do Exhumed was a need to top the previous pictures, to prove that I could do something different and unique, and to show that I could really stretch this low-budget filmmaking, and myself, to a greater potential. I realized life is too short to not give it all I've got and I needed to aim higher! |
 |
 |
LW: Exhumed is
like very few other micro budget films in that it looks BC: Yes, definitely. I made this to show
just what I, or any filmmaker with drive and creativity, could pull
off. I wanted every aspect to be great - right down to the tiny detailing
of a map or newspaper that show up on-screen for a few seconds. Things
that the audience could only notice subliminally, but that in the end
add up to a greater, fuller movie experience. |
LW: Where did you get the inspiration to write 3 different tales based with undead themes? BC: I got tired of the formula
"shambling zombies stalking and eating people". It gets old.
I know there are filmmakers who can do what's been done before and really
do it right, but I wanted to try something newer. I thought, what styles
of movie really hadn't explored a storyline involving the undead, and
the power of resurrection? So I went with three of my favourite genres
- film noir, samurai, and post-apocalypse. The post-apocalypse is probably
the closest to a standard living-dead picture, with the most gore, but
at its center is a pretty crazy love story between imprisoned immortal
gang members. I don't think too many people have noticed that - that
I snuck in all these things you would never ever find in most horror
movies, and especially zombie movies. Romance, mystery, motorcycle gang
feuds, a 1940's burlesque club, complete with singer...yeah, it's all
there! Visit Frontline Films - Production Company of Brian Clement Read Lizzard Willy's reviews of Exhumed and Binge & Purge |