DAVID
STAGNARI

David Stagnari is a rare breed of someone who isn't afraid to say what's on his mind, and has the talent to back his words up. Featured in HORROR BUSINESS, Stagnari observes a culture on a decline and professes a love for cinema that was reintroduced into his life after a stint as a successful DJ and record producer where he went by the name of DJ Slave. Channeling his fears into a four year, $7000 project, CATHARSIS, Stagnari created a seminal film that explores the psyche of an artist who can't let go of the past. Autobiographical, CATHARSIS, completed in 2003, has come full circle for Stagnari. With the anticipation of EXIT SIGN, a new filmmaker with a powerful voice is ready to emerge in the world of horror.

I recently spoke with Stagnari in his hometown of Huntington, New York, where he reflects on CATHARSIS, the significance of being in HORROR BUSINESS, his continuing journey with EXIT SIGN, and his brutally honest approach to the current horror scene.

Colonel's Crypt: Dave, thanks for your time. How are you?

DAVID STAGNARI: I’m good how are you?

CC: Doing pretty good. I just wanted to start off by saying, as in my review for CATHARSIS, I absolutely loved it and I feel that it’s a film that everyone who considers them an artist should see. Where did the original idea for CATHARSIS come about?

DS: Around 1998. I was in the music business for about ten years. I produced this band called Bile, programmed and produced their first two records and got a song on the MORTAL KOMBAT movie soundtrack.  I left that band and started to release twelve inch dance records on Roadrunner Records and they offered me an album deal. The people that I got involved with that record deal all dropped the ball simultaneously. The guy at the label was unnecessarily abusive, screaming at me like I was his son and I had done something wrong, totally unnecessary. The Two guys that I had selected to be in this project, I had offered them ten thousand dollars each and they had this attitude like they couldn’t sacrifice their dead end jobs to be involved in the project and I got so fucking frustrated.  My father was sick at the time, my sister was taking care of him, and it was very difficult of her. I had to step up to the plate to leave where I was living to take care of my dad. I walked away from the record deal. I walked away from everything. During that time when I walked away, I wrote this screenplay that was about 13 pages called CATHARSIS. It was different because it was very angry. I was pissed at those people. It was a very bleak, angry piece but once I removed myself from the situation, I rewrote it so it didn’t have to do with just me but with anyone who had a sort of trauma that they weren’t prepared to deal with or trying to deal with. That’s where it came about.

CC: How long did it take you to make CATHARSIS and what was the budget?

DS: It ended up being $7000 but it’s not like I started with $7000. I started with nothing and whatever I had money wise I got. I got lucky because I rekindled my relationship with Bryan Singer in the middle of making this movie. We had gone to film school together years ago. He was sweet enough to write me a check for $2000 without me asking. It was so very kind of him to do that. That’s why I thanked him in the end credits. It was just very kind of him to do that.

CC: School of Visual Arts?

DS: Yes, School of Visual Arts, 1984. We all left that school after two years because the school was a terrible experience at that time. I was very depressed when I went there. It actually turned me off to making films from that experience. I’ve had arguments with Chris Garetano about this because he went to the same school but years later when it was a better school. That’s a whole other conversation but at the time my experience was very depressing. I made movies when I was a kid. In 1980, I was making these horror movies. At the time, nobody was interested in making movies. I was the only one in my school. I was the only one in my fucking neighborhood who was interested in making movies; everyone thought it was a peculiar thing at the time.

CC: I want to continue on with CATHARSIS but being you mentioned Chris Garetano, how were you first introduced to Chris and how did you get involved with HORROR BUSINESS?

DS: It was a very, very chance thing. We had a mutual friend, a very unlikely mutual friend. I was a DJ for many years and one of the bouncers at the first club I ever worked in was this guy Dennis, and he knew Chris’ uncle. When I was making CATHARSIS, he said “You should meet Chris, he’s really into movies.” I didn’t know who he was talking about and I said “Sure, I’ll meet him.” I was looking for an editor at the time. Chris came to the house, we were talking about movies. This was way before HORROR BUSINESS, this was even before ARE YOU GOING magazine, this was in 2000. He did ARE YOU GOING magazine and I thought it was awesome. I supported him. I was like “This is fucking awesome, you did this in your room?.” Every issue just kept getting better and better. He asked me to write for it and I said of course. I totally loved what he was doing. I wrote a few articles and then Chris started to do HORROR BUSINESS and I’m very, very thankful that he included me in it because I don’t think CATHARSIS could’ve had a life at all without HORROR BUSINESS unless I had made a feature film and people would be curious to see what I've done before it. But because of HORROR BUSINESS I’ll always thank Chris for giving CATHARSIS some attention.

CC: One of the biggest aspects in HORROR BUSINESS was you grew up going to drive in films. I was too young to experience it. There was a big section devoted to the Warwick drive in which I know you went there recently for SON OF HORROR BUSINESS. What was that experience for you and as a kid what was it like going to the drive in?

DS: The Warwick Drive in is the closest drive in thats open to Long Island.  I had told Chris about it and asked him if we could do some interviews for HORROR BUSINESS at this drive in.  I think a lot of people who e-mailed me think that I’m just this drive in fanatic and that’s all I give a fuck about. It’s definitely a past time.  It’s the place where I saw all these great exploitation, blaxploitation, horror, sex, all kinds of films at a very young age and it turned me on to being a filmmaker.  Obviously, it’s never coming back the way it was but I still have a soft spot in my heart for it because it’s where I spent my youth.

CC: I was kind of hoping GRINDHOUSE would get an interest in it but it looks like with the box office, that’s not going to happen.

DS: Well GRINDHOUSE, I knew whether I liked the movie or not, the experience would just bring me back and there were a couple of moments where I got a weird flashback of my youth. I’m not trying to glorify the past, but if you’re talking about movies or what got me inspired to make movies, it was the drive in.

CC: Back to CATHARSIS, that final shot of Dylan walking out of the door and into color; it reminded me of THE SEARCHERS. It’s a terrific shot and was it inspired by that movie?

DS: No, honestly there was no inspiration from The Searchers. It was the first thing we shot for the movie. October 1999. It was so fucking cold and it was just a miracle that on that day it turned out to be 75 degrees. It was pure luck, because I knew he had to be naked.

CC: And you didn’t want him freezing his ass off.

DS: Yes. It’s funny because the cops came. Someone had seen a naked man on the top of that hill and called the cops. We had to shoot that scene, there was nothing around, and it was this secret undiscovered property. The bathroom wall was a set we built and transported there. When the cops came we had to run and leave it there. They probably found this doorway to hell just left in the middle of this field.  We ran out and lucked out and the cops came just as we got out of there.

CC: It was a perfectly framed shot.

DS: And there’s a secret. Nobody’s ever noticed it without me pointing it out. If you really watch the end of that, a cloud forms over Dylan’s head out of nowhere. It’s a blue sky and this perfect little cloud forms when Dylan gets to the top of that field. I would’ve never used that take because a bee came and flew in front of the DP and he moved the camera a little bit. But I had to use that take because of that cloud. If you watch it again, it’s so bizarre to see this cloud out of nowhere form over his head. It was very symbolic to me. It was like a very positive feeling. You know how they say about cloud bursting, you create clouds which creates water which creates life, and that’s the kind of feeling I had for it.

CC: I had to wrestle with this question, because I’m not sure I want to know the answer for it but I figured I’d ask, and it involves the effects sequence in the bathroom. I was curious in how you made it but part of me likes that I don’t know how you made it.

DS: David Lynch never talks about his film secrets, not that I’m David Lynch, but he never talks about it. I understand that but I also never wanted to keep secrets about filmmaking because it’s like snobbish.

CC: It’s done very well.

DS: Which part in the bathroom?

CC: The rebirth scene where you see the bile coming out of him and the cocoon underneath the stall.

DS: I gotta thank Luis de la Fuente for that. He’s a great friend of mine, a great production designer too. He and Tom Denier did the effects. Tom is also a great effects guy, but Luis taught him everything he knows. Luis is a very intelligent, really talented guy who was this undiscovered chunk of gold. I’m thankful he wants to work with me on future projects. He created the membrane and the umbilical cord, using tons of reference books about stillborn babies, and really created amazing effects for that scene.

CC: Where was that scene shot and how long did it take you to create that scene?

DS: We shot at a bathroom that I promised I wouldn’t disclose. It was in a catholic school and they initially didn’t want me to shoot there. I think I discussed this a little in the ICONS OF FRIGHT interview. It’s a great story to know after you see the movie. It’s a long story but basically it was at a catholic school and they didn’t know the scene was going to be shot like that. The whole time I was terrified that a priest or a Brother would walk in and see this and kick us out before we got it. We asked for three days and we only got one, and it was on All Saints Day, the day after Halloween, in 2000. We had to shoot three days worth of shit in 18 hours. We pulled it off and afterwards it was the greatest night of sleep I ever had. I honestly didn’t believe we would finish that complicated amount of work in one night. Are you also asking about the materials used for that scene?

CC: Mainly going into making it what your idea was.

DS: Everything was heavily storyboarded, every single thing. Every shot in the movie was drawn out ahead of time, which is funny because I never once looked at them after they were drawn. But it was great for the director of photography because he could see what we were shooting for. It’s amazing how I look at the storyboards now and it looks like every shot in the movie. It’s beautiful, even down to the cross dissolves, it was all thought of ahead of time. When something comes to you fully formed it’s fucking weird to then see it on the screen. For CATHARSIS, there are no digital effects whatsoever, nothing. All I wanted to do was create a film where people would be like “How’d he do that,” and I love the fact you’re saying “I wonder how you did that” because that’s the beautiful part of the illusion from filmmaking.

CC: That’s the same thing I want to hear from people with my projects.

DS: Oh yeah, definitely.

CC: I’m working on a project right now where I’ve had guys who’ve made featured film looking at my short script and asking me “How are you going to do that” and it brings such a smile on my face like “I got’cha!”

DS: Exactly. If you know how you’re going to do it and you pull it off, it’s the best.

CC: Is there anything you want to talk about EXIT SIGN in particular?

DS: It’s just been a process of writing and writing and rewriting. Been looking for financing, I’ve had a ton of meetings with people. All of them fell through and that’s OK because the time while I was waiting I wrote eleven drafts and took the screenplay to a whole other area it would never have gone to. It feels like a really good time right now and I feel like I’m going to get financing and get to make the movie. Now’s the time to do it and I’m totally prepared to do it. I want people to be like “How the fuck did this guy do this movie,” and you get that confidence from preparation and preparation, and really knowing the material. I’ve wrote it so many times, and there’s so many underlying themes about abandonment and about the dangers of living in the past, thrown into the middle of a really creepy horror movie. I like the idea of those different layers and if you’re not interested there are creatures or creepy spirits, there’s all that underlying themes thrown in. If you’re looking for something intelligent, it’s in there, and I think CATHARSIS is that way too. It’s different layers for different people to absorb.

CC: I do think CATHARSIS is a horror film, and it’s the worst kind of horror in terms of not realizing your true potential.

DS: Or the horror of having to face things you don’t want to face. That can be a terrifying ordeal for people. Case in point, the original director of photography that I was interviewing before we started shooting CATHARSIS read the screenplay and got physically violent, threw shit on the floor going “What the fuck is this shit,” and I was shocked. I didn’t know if I had to rewrite the screenplay, I didn’t know. This guy was angry. It turned out that his sister was killed by a drunk driver and he was in total denial and the screenplay was forcing him to deal with it. He wasn’t ready to deal with it and that was his reaction. A few people had reacted that way. Steve Panariello, who shot CATHARSIS, such a talented guy, he read the screenplay and threw it in the garbage can. He liked me, he wanted to work with me, and when he read the screenplay he got angry that THIS was the project and threw it in the garbage can. In the middle of the night he woke up, picked the script up out of the trash, read it again, and said “I have to make this fucking movie” and I was so happy he did. His contribution was so great; I wouldn’t have been able to make the movie without Steven. Dylan Murphy too. Dylan was really a non actor at the time who did such an amazing job.

CC: I said in the review that it’s harder for actors to convey emotion.

DS: That’s a great point.

CC: And the one time he spoke on camera, there was this rage.

DS: A lot of people misunderstand his performance at that moment and felt his acting wasn’t good. The reality is he was supposed to be bullshitting himself into delivering this anger, it was fake anger. That was his last attempt to gain control and it wasn’t working.

CC: There’s so many of us that go through that, we just want to let it out. We don’t feel that way, it’s more like relief anger, and we just want to let it out of us.

DS: Yeah.

CC: And most times we let it out on the wrong people.

DS: You can’t bullshit yourself. You can, but deep down you can’t. It’s going to come out no matter what. It’s OK to face these things. The ramifications of facing these things aren’t life threatening.  You think they are but they’re not. It’s part of the process of healing and growing and achieving things you want to achieve.

CC: Where do you see the horror genre going in a few years?

DS: It’s a hard question because the horror genre’s big but where is it now? It’s lost in remake land and all that’s doing is making people lazy and go “Why write something new when I can take something I liked from the past and change it around." I wrote a review on the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake for ARE YOU GOING magazine. It never got printed but it’s hidden on my website. I wrote “Attention, this is NOT a fucking remake, it had nothing to do with DAWN OF THE DEAD other than there are zombies.” I hated it. I remade STAR WARS and I’m not going to include Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, I’m not going to include any of those characters, is it a fucking STAR WARS remake? It isn’t. You can’t kill off all your characters and add a Starbucks to the mall and throw zombies in and say its a DAWN OF THE DEAD remake?  And they’re not zombies, they’re acting like the T-1000 from TERMINATOR 2 running at full speed, I mean what is this?

CC: The main problem I had with it was the title because I thought it was a well made film. It shouldn’t have been called DAWN OF THE DEAD, if it had an original title I would’ve been more OK with it.

DS: They bought the title. The whole point was to buy the title because it’s about money. They could’ve remade DAWN OF THE DEAD and really improved it. It was possible.

CC: DAY OF THE DEAD is next.

DS: Just the fact that they’re remaking DAY OF THE DEAD is disgusting.

CC: I understand they’re not considered zombies in it.

DS: You know what I want to do, I want to remake 300 and kick Zack Snyder in the ass because if someone remade 300, he would be personally offended because that’s his project that he’s a success with.

CC: On the Deadpit show I was on in October, I had just seen the new CHAINSAW film, and I call it THOMAS HEWITT, because to me it’s not CHAINSAW. I was so frustrated that I said at the end that we should remake ARMAGEDDON, BAD BOYS, every Michael Bay film so that he gets the point.

DS: The only way people will understand that reality is if somebody ripped off something that they created from scratch and cashed in on it, anybody would be angry. We were trying to come up with remakes that were improvements and THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS remake is one of my favorites.

CC: Carpenter’s THE THING.

DS: THE THING is a totally different take on it.

CC: Cronenberg’s THE FLY.

DS: Definitely. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was a great remake, a different take on it. Most of them just want to make money, that’s fine. If you have a way that you can make a buck, then by all means do it. Even though it’s shit, and they’re bastardizing and raping the originals, whadaya you gonna do?  More power to you.

CC: It is a little bit of a lazier society now. When you did CATHARSIS you shot on digital, which is relatively new, but now it’s accessible to everybody. Do you think part of that has to do with the laziness of some people who feel that having that camera and they’ll just point and shoot and have a great looking movie?

DS: It’s the same thing when I was in the music business and people were buying the latest equipment thinking they’ll be able to write the best song. We used to joke that just because you have the best typewriter doesn’t mean you’ll write a great novel. It’s just a tool pure and simple. I wanted to shoot CATHARSIS on film. I didn’t have the money. Nobody wanted to give me the money. I didn’t want to shoot on video but it was the only thing offered to me. Steve Panariello and I did some test footage and realized that a cloudy day evenly lit everything which allowed a film look to really shine. So we had to wait for clouds every time we shot... every time. Four years is a long time to wait for a fucking cloud. Sometimes we’d show up, the clouds would never come, so we went home.  There was nothing you could do, so we went home. Shooting for years also presented other problems. There’s edits where Dylan walks out of frame and when he walks in frame it’s three years later. It’s a miracle that he just happened to look the same. I had a great editor too, I just want to say his name, John Balcom. He worked for MTV and he worked for free. We edited everything at MTV, he was great. He was the last rung in the ladder that really made that movie what it is. Great editor. There are a lot of illusions in CATHARSIS that I’m blown away that it worked out, and that you can’t tell. John Balcom is responsible for some of those illusions.

CC: That wraps it up. Thanks for your time Dave.

DS: I hope my contribution to your site is worthy of your great review of the film.

CC: You can pick up copies of CATHARSIS at your website which for those reading this is http://www.catharticcircle.com/cathorderpage.html. I hope you make more pressings, because people really need to see this film.

DS: That’s such a huge compliment and I can’t thank you enough for it. Like I said, Chris Garetano should be thanked because if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be having this interview. I have to thank him, he’s been very supportive. He was one of the first people who saw CATHARSIS and it affected him in a positive way. When I was making CATHARSIS, I wanted to give up a bunch of times, and there weren't many people that were  supportive. At the end of the day, I felt I was spending years of my life making a movie that’s never going to be released and never going to be shown. Horror Business is making it all worth it for me. I’m very thankful and feel very lucky.  I hope to make EXIT SIGN and just concentrate on making great movie.

CC: We’ll leave it there. Thank you very much.

DS: Long live the Crypt!
 

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