MELISSA
BACELAR

For New Jersey native Melissa Bacelar, her rise as a scream queen of independent cinema has been one of perseverance. Starting at the age of 17, Melissa has spent the last decade honing her skills to become a force on the independent scene.

From working at the famous Coyote Ugly to becoming a Tromette, Bacelar has taken her experiences to form her own production company, LOST ANGELES FILMS, which will release its first film, a zombie hooker tale called EAT YOUR HEART OUT, very soon.

The Crypt had a chance to talk with Melissa on the eve of the release of EAT YOUR HEART OUT, as well as the forthcoming PINK EYE, her latest collaboration with Joshua Nelson, and her acting studio, which helps actors go through the audition process.

COLONEL’S CRYPT: How are you doing Melissa?

MELISSA BACELAR: I’m good. How are you?

CC: Pretty good here, thanks for entering the Crypt. What started your interest into acting?

MB: It’s pretty simple. I was an only child and I always liked being the center of attention and one day I realized “What can I do that will keep me the center of attention and get paid for it” and acting hit me, so that was it.  I like being funny and having people laugh at me.

CC: You grew up in the New York/New Jersey area. How was the process of auditioning in the tri-state area when you were starting?

MB: New York is a great place to get started. There’s a lot of theater obviously but there’s also a great independent film community. I’ve been in Los Angeles for four years and the differences I’ve noticed are in New York people are super passionate. They’ll have a script that they wrote, they’ll have friends who are actors, they’ll have a camera and go “Screw it! Let’s just make a movie.” In LA, everyone’s trying to get distribution deals and money. If you tell people you’re making a movie for $10,000, they’ll laugh at you. If it’s not under a million they don’t even want to talk to you, so those are the differences. I started auditioning for a lot of little films. There’s a lot of things that you do for free. There’s things like you’re the lead actress and you’re holding up a boom mike. You’re doing your own makeup and bringing in your own costumes. That’s how I literally started. I’d look through the trade papers like Backstage and Craig’s List just looking for roles, and that was the beginning.

CC: One of the jobs you had in New York was you worked at the famous Coyote Ugly bar.

MB: I did (laughs).

CC: What was the experience there?

MB: That was amazing. Anyone who watched the movie and thought that was crazy, it was tame. The movie was tame compared to that bar.

CC: I had a feeling there.

MB: The grittiest, dirtiest, most intense job you can have. There’s night where you’re bartending, barbacking, and bouncing all by yourself (laughs). It’s hard work. It was a ton of money, a lot of fun, I met a lot of cool people. You work for every dime you make at that place. Actually, it was one of my favorite acting roles because the way they put it to you when you get the job is that you’re the host of the party and make sure everyone’s having a good time the entire time that you’re there. You have to do everything possible to make sure that everyone is drinking and laughing. The best thing about New York is that nobody drives so they can get as drunk as they want, so every night was interesting at Coyote Ugly. The one thing I did a lot of that they don’t really do anymore was body shots. I used to stand up on the bar and get on the microphone and say “OK, who wants to lick me?” You’d get a few people who’d wanna lick you and you would do these crazy body shots on the bar. I would pour cheap shots of tequila down guys’ throats. I don’t even know how people walked out of the place when I worked. Come to think of it, I don’t even know how I walked out of the place at the end of the night either (laughs). It was a great year of my life.

CC: You got your break with Troma and worked with Lloyd Kaufman on a few projects. What was it like being a Tromette? 

MB: Lloyd is one of these people you HAVE to meet. He is so insane, brilliant, funny, and out of his mind. I remember I auditioned for Will Kenan who was in TROMEO & JULIET and he was casting TERROR FIRMER. I didn’t know anything about Troma. My friend Joshua Nelson was a big Troma fan. He saw the ad and he told me I had to audition and that I’ll love it. So I went to audition and the part was for Sara which was the Toxic Avenger’s girlfriend. She’s blind, she’s having sex with the Toxic Avenger and she’s having an orgasm.

CC: God bless Lloyd.

MB: So I acted it out and in my head I had just come out from this intense, method style training where everything had to be super organic and real and get really into the character. I never saw a Troma film at that point so I thought that’s what they would want. I do this thing but I wouldn’t do nudity, so I couldn’t be a lead in a Troma film because there’s a lot of nudity. They gave me this smaller part and that was my first experience with Troma and meeting Lloyd. I went in and do this role. As I walk in, it’s freezing cold and Lloyd says to me “Cold girls and tube tops make for good cinema!” That’s pretty much his motto, so all my training goes out the window at that point and they just want you to be over the top and funny. So that was a cool learning experience and it taught me that the director was your boss, so you have to do what they want even if you don’t agree with it. So then he started to bring me to conventions with him and I really started to love horror films. He has this fan base and he enjoys them. Lloyd’s an insanely intelligent man. He speaks seven languages, he went to Yale. He was trained in film very extensively and he turns around and makes these films that are pure fun, purely for the fans, and totally off the wall.

The biggest difference for me between horror films and the regular films that I do is that on a horror film, everyone there on set is so excited about every special effect and every scene. When they’re not in the scene, they’re watching. When you’re doing a normal film, and someone’s not in that scene, they’re not there. They’re in their trailer taking a nap. They don’t care about the rest of that film. There’s just not the same excitement as there is in a horror film.

CC: I agree because every convention I’ve been to, I’ve always seen that wherever Troma is set up, there’s always a line waiting to meet Lloyd and I see that he genuinely does love his fans.

MB: He does, he enjoys his fans. He’s always someplace, whether it’s a bookstore or meeting at a college, he’s always meeting people. He’s excited about it and people pick up on it for sure.

CC: You worked on ONE LIFE TO LIVE. From an acting standpoint, what are the main differences between working on a soap compared to working on a horror movie?

MB: Soaps are completely their own thing. I’ve worked on a few television shows and soaps are very quick. They never do another take unless there’s a technical problem. They change the script that morning. So people always give soap actors a bad name. Those actors have to be so talented to get any kind of emotion across in the scene. It’s unbelievable. You have to get up in the morning, they hand you the revised script, you have a couple of hours to look at the script, get in makeup, get to set, and they shoot the scene once. That’s it. With horror films, you’re going to have a script for a while. The characters are more out there than a soap opera. In my last film, EAT YOUR HEART OUT, I play a zombie hooker. That’s not what I do in my everyday life believe it or not so I had to find that character and figure out what I was going to do, how to do it, and I was able to play with that before I came on set. Even if you screw up or can’t find that emotion, it’ll always be done again. That’s the nice thing about film is that you have a little more time. However with horror films on a low budget you usually do things pretty quickly as well but if you need to do the scene again, you can.

CC: Explain your relationship with Joshua Nelson, who you’ve worked with on a few projects as of late.

MB: This is a story I’ll never forget. I saw an ad for a play, the play was called DANGER SPICE. I’m not a big theater person but something compelled me to audition for this.  Joshua asked me to come in on a Saturday morning to read for a character named Cindy. It was a three act play and Cindy was the role of a hostess. I was around 17 at the time. I remember I woke up totally late and I got to the building. It was the 20^th floor of this gorgeous building on Madison Avenue, all marble floors. I felt like I totally didn’t prepare for this audition at all. I get the lines that I’m supposed to read and it’s this long monologue. As soon as I read it, I felt “I got this.” I understand this chick, the writing is brilliant. I love it, it’s so funny. It’s this crazy chick, blond hair with pigtails, sucking on a lollipop talking about how she loved to stab men in the balls but in a sweet kind of way.

CC: How lovely (crosses legs).

MB: So I go in and there’s all mirrors on one side and this long table. On the other side is Josh and I do the monologue for him. His eyes go very bright and he goes “Can you hold on a second for me?” and leaves the room. I’m standing in this room with all these mirrors and I felt that someone was watching me. Anyway, I just sat down and waited. Josh comes back in with a script in his hand and he says “This is never going to happen in your career ever again, but you’re perfect. I’ve seen 30 people and I know nobody’s going to do that better than you so I want you to have the role.” My head’s spinning so he continues with “And don’t worry, I have five people watching you from behind the mirror.” I’m like “What” and again he offered me the role, and I just said “yes.” So that’s how we met. I did the play for him and we didn’t talk for about six months after the play closed. He wrote a one act play that he wanted to enter into a competition and he sends me an e-mail saying he has a role for me. We ended up winning a festival I think called the Strawberry Festival and then from that point on, every time Joshua wrote something he’s like “I have a role for you.” We became really good friends and it wasn’t until I moved to LA that we decided to start doing more films together, the production end for me anyway. I’ve always been in Joshua’s films or plays that he’s been doing. We’ve been friends for ten years now.

CC: Speaking of Los Angeles, you formed your own company Lost Angeles Films. Why did you form it and what is the mission statement for Lost Angeles Films?

MB: Why I did it is I moved out here and as I was saying before, no one out here has fun with filming. Nobody out here just grabs a camera and shoots.

CC: That kind of confirms my suspicions.

MB: It’s really weird. If you don’t have a studio behind you, nobody wants to talk to you. It’s a totally a different vibe than New York.  Everything here is done for appearances. People just don’t have fun with it. Even when going to clubs around here, in New York you went to a club, you got drunk and had a great time.  You’re dancing, you’re partying, just having a good time. In LA, people are just in a corner seeing if anybody is looking at them. What I noticed is as I was auditioning and booking things was that there just wasn’t the same type of passion. Trust me, when you’re doing a film that somebody’s giving you three to four million dollars for, there’s a lot more pressure than doing a film done out of your basement for five grand, so it’s a different feel. After doing that and auditioning for about two years, I felt why not form my own production company, get some funding, and do my own films. Knowing Joshua and how brilliant he is as a line producer and a writer, I knew he could make good films for a lot less money than four million dollars. So I developed Lost Angeles Films and started talking to Joshua about a project that I wanted to do. Joshua said “That project sounds good but I have a script that I wrote for you a few years ago that I never had the money to do it so do you want to do it?” That was EAT YOUR HEART OUT and obviously I said yes so that’s how we did our first film together.

Now the mission statement, that’s a tough question. It started where I wanted to do horror films because I know and love horror films. I wanted it to be a company that let women have strong positions in film. I love nudity, I think it’s great. I think horror films need lots of boobs and lots of blood. However, I think that there should be a point for the nudity and that horror films need to have a storyline. They need to have good acting and something that people enjoy watching. Not just “With blood, with boobs,” and such. I think it’s leaning towards that now which I’m really happy about and originally I wanted to make horror films with women in strong, powerful roles and that was the statement. As I move forward and different projects are given to me, I get around 10-15 scripts a day. I can’t even keep up with them. I get so many great scripts that aren’t all women based but I just want to make good cinema that people enjoy making and enjoy watching. I won’t do a film where it’s a horror film and a woman is screaming while topless. At the same time, I’m not saying we’re just gonna stick to horror in the future, but we’ll see. It’s a new company and we’re taking baby steps right now.

CC: But you feel your loyalties are in the horror genre.

MB: Yeah, I enjoy it and I think it’s important that when you’re doing the film you know the formula and you are a fan, so that’s why I’m sticking with that.

CC: What is EAT YOUR HEART OUT and who do you play?

MB: EAT YOUR HEART OUT is a very interesting love story about a zombie hooker. It’s also about a lonely guy, Jeffrey, whose mother dies and he inherits her home. He’s looking for love but he can’t find it so he ends up hiring a bunch of hookers and it all goes very badly. He eventually stumbles upon Pandora, who’s my character. Pandora is a zombie and when she turned into a zombie she realized that she needs to eat and she needs to eat humans. So why not use her sexuality to lure men that don’t deserve to live into different hotels and such and kill them? She meets Jeffrey and falls in love and it’s about how far you will go for the person you love and how much will you accept in them. It’s cool that she gets to eat men and it’s such a fun character to play. I got to be sexy and scary and dominant, it was great. It was a really fun role.

CC: What were the challenges as executive producer for this film?

MB: We were lucky because Joshua had produced so many films up to that point and he is very good at organization. He’s one of the only people in the independent world you could work for where if he says that he’s shooting from nine to noon, you will be out of there by noon. I would be shocked if you were out at 12:15. He is just super organized and super together. I don’t know how he does all of it but he does somehow. I had a really pretty easy time. Aside from a few decisions being made, I didn’t have a difficult time with anything.

CC: It’s very hard to find people like that.

MB: Everybody on the set from the makeup artists to the special effects person to the producers, everybody, we all got along well. We all worked together. Everyone did their job. We had a lot of the same opinions, and that’s good too. We worked together. We did it again six months later.

CC: Would that be PINK EYE?

MB: That would be PINK EYE, with the same crew.

CC: What is PINK EYE and who do you play in this film?

MB: PINK EYE is a more complex story. I read it and I was scared reading it. It’s much more of a thriller. I sort of play the victim although she’s not a weak victim. Basically, there’s two storylines in this. The main storyline is about a guy who escapes from an insane asylum that’s a government funded project, this place where they are doing tests on people they consider freaks. Anyway he escapes and he sees my character. My character is moving away from everything she knows, moving away from her boyfriend, her life, her alcoholic sister, and her two children. He sees her and thinks she’s his long lost love so he stalks her and kidnaps her. It’s a twisted, interesting, scary film. The guy who played the escapee, Edgar, he’s played by Joshua James, he is so phenomenal. There are scenes where I’m tied up to a bed and he’s coming over me and I was really scared. There was no acting necessary. He was just great. The special effects were phenomenal. Monsters In My Closet are who does all of the effects and they are just awesome. We don’t have huge budgets on these films and you look at the effects and they look unbelievable.

CC: When will we see EAT YOUR HEART OUT and PINK EYE?

MB: EAT YOUR HEART OUT is at distributors and should be out very soon. PINK EYE is actually in the last part of post production right now. We’re doing the last pickups that we needed to do and it’s completely done. After that, I’d say the next couple of months the screener should definitely be ready.

CC: You founded in 2004 the Network Studio Acting School. What is it and how has it grown since its inception?

MB: When I moved to LA I realized that everything in this town is who you know. I had a pretty impressive resume of credits even before I came here for New York standards. Literally casting people here were saying to me “Well, you’ve been on a soap for three years. That means you’re pretty and you can memorize lines, we don’t care.” So I realized that I was going to have to start meeting people and I opened the network. I hired casting directors from different shows, everybody from THE OC to THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS to feature films to come in and teach workshops. I don’t think the casting directors teach actors to be better actors but they teach them to audition, which is important to know. It’s all about networking, hence the Network. I started out really slow and did a couple of workshops a week. Now, two and a half years later, we have three studios here in LA and we’re opening a studio in New York which Joshua is heading for me. It’s a great place where actors can learn from casting people. People are going to hate me for this comment, but in acting schools, acting teachers are actors that didn’t make it generally speaking. They’re teaching actors things that didn’t work for them. The reality is everything I’ve learned and I’ve taken acting classes at some of the best studios in New York, and I don’t use anything I learn when I audition professionally, anything. It’s about timing, it’s about technique, about knowing the type of script. There’s definitely a difference in auditioning for a Troma film than there would be auditioning for a Rob Zombie or a Quentin Tarantino film. There are different techniques and you learn it from watching these films, and you learn it from the casting people because they’re telling you what they want to see in an audition. We’re not teaching acting but we are teaching how to teach jobs.

CC: You started with one workshop a week and now you do 30 a month?

MB: Yeah, it’s a little more than 30 a month. We just opened up a kids division in Los Angeles and Joshua’s doing an adult division here in New York with New York casting agents and directors.

CC: I don’t know if I should talk about this because your identity will be revealed but in the shadows of night, you turn into Canina?

MB: Yes and it’s safe, I can talk about it. Canina is a superhero animal avenger that I created a year ago and it’s funny because every time I put her aside, someone contacts me about working with her. Craig Boldman, who is the creator of Archie, is going to be making a comic strip on Canina, so that’s exciting. We’re in the beginning phases of what it’s going to be out so we don’t want to get too political with her. I’m a huge animal lover. I have six dogs, four bunnies, all my dogs are rescues. I literally every day of my life find an animal. All my neighbors have dogs and cats. It’s something I feel very strongly about. The shelters here in LA are becoming non-kill shelters which is amazing. I’m really happy about that because 25,000 animals a day get euthanized in California, a DAY. California’s a big state but people have to learn to be more responsible and spay and neuter, without getting too much on a soapbox. That’s the message I want to out forth but in a fun way because I think when people feel strongly about something, they tend to focus on the negative aspect of it. I don’t think that’s the way it should be handled or done. When you try to make them feel guilty or feel bad about the decisions they make when it comes to animals or anything in general, they get defensive. That’s what we do as human beings, we get defensive when people tell us things or try to make us see things their way so as opposed to be another bad guy I want to make her fun and positive and still get the message across.

CC: In your opinion, where do you see the horror genre within the next five years?

MB: It’s blowing up so insanely. Every studio in this town are making horror films. They’re even taking the films that are slightly horror oriented, like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and they’re pushing limits to the genre. I think Hollywood is noticing that it’s a great place to be and they’re so many fans. They’re jumping on the bandwagon which is cool but I think the true horror fans will want to go to the true horror movies which will lead them to the indies. I think because of this wonderful thing called the internet, movies are easier to get. You don’t have to go to a convention to get. I’m hosting a website called the Underground Horror Movie Network, or www.uhmn.com. It’s basically a 24 hour convention. What’s really cool about this is you can download films to your iPod and such to keep on your computer and you can watch it on your computer, your iPod, or your big screen TV. The quality is crisp and clear, so I think a lot of sites are going to do stuff like that and people are going to get independent films out there without distribution and filmmakers will be able to see their films all over the world, not just at conventions and film festivals and such. Horror’s going to blow up, the independent world is going to get bigger. It’s pretty exciting where it’s going because the mainstream will be aware of what’s going on independently. 

CC: Melissa, I leave you the last word for the horror fans.

MB: You can visit me at my website, www.melissabacelar.com. I answer every e-mail I get. I will be attending a lot of conventions, I’ll be at Fangoria Weekend of Horrors on June 29- July 1 in New Jersey. Come on down and visit me, I love meeting fans and talking about the movies I’ve done, and just keep on watching independent films, support the indies.

CC: Alright, that’s it Melissa. Thanks for stopping by the Crypt.

MB: Thank you, Scott.

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