TIM
        SULLIVAN #2

Since his last visit to the Colonel's Crypt, Tim Sullivan has proven not only to be a filmmaker to look out for in Hollywood, but he's attacking other medias as well.

Tim pulled a double punch with the release of DRIFTWOOD on DVD from Image Entertainment earlier this month simultaneously with the first issue of 2001 MANIACS comic book courtesy of Avatar Press. With the sequel to 2001 MANIACS in pre-production as well as numerous other projects, Sullivan has quite a busy slate.

Sullivan requested to enter the Colonel's Crypt again to celebrate the release of both DRIFTWOOD and the MANIACS comic, and also gives his no holds barred thoughts on horror and the internet today. Like his films, this is uncooked, uncensored, and unfiltered.

COLONEL’S CRYPT: Is this Mr. Sullivan?

TIM SULLIVAN: Is that the Colonel? How are you my friend?

CC: I am doing very good.

TS: You know DDP makes me call him the Captain, I’ve got to call you the Colonel, I don’t know what the fuck I am, what am I, am I a foot solider?

CC: You are the General because you are the man in charge.

TS: I don’t think so. I think DDP is the man in the charge.

CC: I don’t want to get a Diamond Cutter so I’ll agree, he’s the man.

TS: I have to tell you something, that Rod Stewart thing you did, oh Jesus, sweet Jesus. I sent this to my other producer and he was very upset with me because he nearly split his gut and he almost had to go to the hospital from laughing so hard. I’ve never seen that before, I’ve never seen something done to an audio interview that is so goddamn entertaining, and it was so fast paced the editing, the “What the fuck,” it was genius dude! Genius!

CC: The thanks are to you for telling such a funny story. When you said it, every time I heard it I felt people had to hear the way you tell the story and it was much better to be heard than be read. Out of that, I wanted to do a podcast and the visuals came to mind. I’m glad you like it.

TS: I love it, I absolutely adore it. I tend to get in trouble a lot with these interviews. This is kind of a new experience for me and a lot of people out there are going that Tim Sullivan is going Hollywood. It’s not that I’ve gone Hollywood, it’s just that I’m going out of my mind because every day of my life I feel like a one man band. I wonder if people make these films just for tax write offs. I’m constantly conversing with fellow filmmakers about the lack of support of the people that do the films. Alright, you put all this money into it, you wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone in the editing room, you stood over my shoulder every step of the way, and now’s the time I really need you. I didn’t need you on the set saying that color should be blue, that hairstyle should be like this. I kind of have that down. I’m the artist, I’m the writer, I’m the director, you’re the producer and the distributor. They were all around when it was time for the nude scenes and all this, but when I need them to market, distribute, and promote, they go AWOL. I don’t get it. I often feel do some of these people make films surely to make tax write offs? The answer is YES, they DO! This is a really sad fact but a lot of the companies need to have failures so they can offset the profits of their successes so they don’t have to pay the residuals and that’s why we get things like this WGA strike. It’s a very harsh reality of the film business.

CC: Are you a member of the Writer’s Guild?

TS: I am not a member. My sympathies lie with the writers, but I am not a member of the writer’s guild. MANIACS 2 and CLOWNS, they were written before the strike, and also as the director and writer, there’s a provision where if you are directing a script you wrote, you can do polishes but I can go forward with MANIACS 2, CLOWNS, and BROTHERS OF THE BLOOD without stepping on anybody’s toes because these were all projects that were sewn up pre-strike.

CC: Since the last time we spoke, DRIFTWOOD came out on DVD today and how has the reaction been?

TS: It’s funny. It’s a film that I found people are watching over and over. MANIACS is a film that people watch over and over and DRIFTWOOD is turning into the same type of film but for a totally different reason. I think with MANIACS it’s a stew of all kinds of crazy stuff and every time you take a taste there’s a different spice to enjoy. With DRIFTWOOD, this has been pretty much the average reaction: “Well, I wasn’t really sure about a movie with a wrestler, a Disney kid, and a reality star. You make all these bloody movies and I was hesitant going in. The first ten minutes were kind of slow and I was thinking to myself ‘Where’s the tits, you know? Where’s the sheep fucking?’ Then once I got over the fact that this wasn’t part of the movie, man you really know how to tell a story. You really are a good director, you really could work with actors.” It’s wonderful and I made the film for that reason. All my life I’ve tried to never be predictable. Once you think you know me, I’m going to throw a curveball. I’ve said this before, I know it’s a cliché, the greatest Kiss album of all time is DESTROYER. On the same album, you’ve got “Shout It Out Loud” and you have “Beth” and they’re totally different songs but they’re from the same band. If MANIACS is my rock and roll anthem, then DRIFTWOOD is my power ballad. MANIACS was made out of my way for honoring the exploitation films that I loved growing up, that shaped me in terms of my humor and my desire to shock and amuse. DRIFTWOOD was made because I needed to get this story out there. Having hosted a youth group and having met a young individual who was sent to a place like this which led to me discovering and researching that such places as attitude adjustment camps exist post Columbine, having seen what this experience did to this young man who was robbed of two years of his teenage life, and then came out of it and had to spend about five years just readjusting and reclaiming his identity, I had to tell this story. I am the type of person who the worst thing you can do to me is try to force me into a mold of what you think I should be, and that started when I was a kid with my dad, then through teachers, through producers, through authority figures. For better or for worse, please don’t tell me who you think I should be. As long as I’m not hurting anybody, causing pain, please, if I want to listen to Kiss, don’t make me listen to the Carpenters. If I want an earring, if I want a tattoo, don’t tell me who to like, who not to like. How dare you? So many people in the world feel the need to do that. When it is parents doing that to underage kids who legally have no choice but to be chained by their parents’ expectations, that is the worst horror you could actually face.

CC: Without giving away any spoilers, why did you decide to remove the alternate ending from the film, because it felt more polished to me and completed the arc?

TS: Well a film writes itself three times. It’s written on the script on the page, it’s written on the set during production, and then it’s written for the final time in the editing room. Especially on a film with a challenged budget and schedule, we shot this movie in fifteen days for a million bucks, which I still don’t know how we did this. One of the reasons we did this was because we had these amazing studio Hollywood veterans working on this film coming down from the higher echelons to work in the trenches on a project they believed in. I had Robert Engleman, a producer who produced THE MASK and one of the original ELM STREETS, but I also had Bud Smith, who was William Friedkin’s second unit director, and also was his editor. He edited THE EXORCIST, SORCERER, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A, and CAT PEOPLE. He was a friend of Mike Richardson from Dark Horse and he agreed to do this film. I learned more from him in the four weeks of production then I did in four years at NYU and one of the things that he really impressed upon me Scott was that the film reveals itself. On the first day of editing, he said to me “Tim, leave your script at the door.” I didn’t quite know what he meant, and as the process unveiled itself with Scott Smith, Bud’s son who was the editor of THE CROW. Even on MANIACS when we went in there to edit, you have a blueprint and you just try to edit the film to the blueprint. Sometimes you often don’t get all the puzzle pieces you need on set due to all kinds of things, and rather than try to make what you have into what you intended, you’ve got to look at what you got and shake that. There was a bookend. We originally had an eight minute opening that we never got to shoot which showed the Raviv Ullman character in his day to day life. It showed him getting in trouble and stealing car radios, getting drunk in a cemetery with his friends toasting his brother’s grave, then getting abducted from his home. We never got to shoot that and the intention was to always edit the film and then go back and shoot that, but as we were watching the process we realized we didn’t need that. It was like in the first five minutes of the film, it just would’ve told too much. Now it’s sort of a mystery of everything unveiled. Why is he there? Who is his brother? What happened to him? Why did his parents put him there? I always loved that ending and it was always tough. We spent an entire day shooting that ending and we had this magnificent crane scene and all this. We’re watching the film and we’re sitting in the editing room, and this is the moment that Bud Smith calls when the white light comes on. You’re sitting in that chair under the white light, and I could sense people watching the film that this is an exclamation point. the film has reached a crescendo. The main character delivers a certain line and it was like wow, everybody was on edge, and then the next six minutes came to play and it was sort of felt like it was a dot, dot, dot. I had everyone in the audience on this exclamation point, this highly charged emotion and then it just sort of just faded away. Quite honestly, Bud said to me one day, “Timmy, what’s the name of the film,” and I said DRIFTWOOD. He says “Wait, you’ve sewn it up. You wrapped it up with a neat bow but the bottom line is it’s DRIFTWOOD and every single one of these characters are drifting, and it’s like you said, they’re all unsure of life, you don’t know where they’re going. By putting in the ending you shot, you are actually contradicting your title and your theme. He felt that rightly so, those characters, after all they’ve been through, to have this STAND BY ME like moment where they’re all standing around, the sun is shining like THE OUTSIDERS, all talking about where they are going to go, I believe in the ending but I felt we lost the audience at that point so I thought just leave it where it is. It was so hard to make that choice and so hard to realize that it was best for the film to cut out six minutes of stuff that I really loved, but what helped me make that decision was knowing that it would be on the DVD. The interesting thing is a lot of filmmakers that I’ve talked to say in the days of DVD and deleted scenes it’s much easier to be more brutal with editing your film knowing that it will coexist on DVD.

CC: You are getting ready for the sequel to 2001 MANIACS. What’s the status on the sequel as of now?

TS: It’s looking good for the beginning of the year. We have a big meeting at Lionsgate with Robert, it’s very exciting. Robert has come on board as a producer, he believes in the franchise that much. He’s never been actively involved in any of his other projects to this extent. Freddy was pretty much an actor for hire but here on MANIACS he’s become part of the whole process. We have a comic book out now, 2001 MANIACS versus the Confederacy and it’s actually a prequel to the movie. The second film will be a sequel while the comic book was the prequel. Robert was so involved in it literally I sent him the pages and had him approve the dialogue to the point where we say the comic book stars Robert Englund. I feel like the comic book is a MANIACS movie that hasn’t been shot yet. It’s pretty much a screenplay with storyboards and it’s been great because despite the success of MANIACS it still has taken a while to put the second one together with trying to get people’s schedules and trying to work it out, time has gone by, so I’m glad the comic book is out there to sort of insatiate the MANIACS fans’ desires for new MANIACS material. We’re going to be shooting that at the top of the year, early 2008 and hope to have it out by October or November of 2008. I have to honestly say that I really do believe that this is even better than the first. It’s all new boobs, all new laughs, all new blood (laughs).

CC: MANIACS started a trend with a term I think you coined perfectly where the marketing came very well is that you promoted it as splatstick.

TS: Yes (laughs).

CC: What I like about that is that way you present yourself is that you’re very honest with your marketing, there’s no bullshit involved, this is what you’re going to get, enjoy it, unlike some other films I’ve seen recently. With the comic book and everything else, what else are we going to expect with MANIACS?

TS: It’s really cool. The comic book was such a liberating experience because unlike shooting a film in fifteen days with a finite budget, the sky is the limit with a comic book. William Christiansen of Avatar Press first of all gave me no restrictions with censoring the material. He in fact encouraged me to be as politically incorrect and as over the top with the sexuality and the gore and the social commentary. I had no restrictions in that regard and there were no restrictions in terms of the comic book, it’s just a pencil and an imagination. You can stay up all night blowing up the world and you find that it’s just a person sitting in a chair talking. It sets so much telling the prequel and the origin because that has never been told. We knew from Herschell Gordon Lewis’ film that there were a bunch of Northern soldiers who massacred and burnt down Pleasant Valley, but why, how, and whom? When I did the remake I added the eye patch to Robert Englund, well how did he lose this eye? In the sequel there are some new characters, Doc Tickles, Scarlet Red, and Jim Crow, so we give their origins. Now, the first issue takes place in 1864, the tail end of the Civil War and that’s when the massacre at Pleasant Valley occurred. Basically I got a hundred and forty some odd years of guts and glory jubilee to talk about. The great thing about the comic book is that one issue could take place in 1967, it might be a bunch of hippies on the way to Woodstock and take the detour to Pleasant Valley, we’ll have the MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR versus Buckman. Maybe we’ll do one in the 1920s and have some James Cagney type gangsters heading up there, or maybe we’ll do one now where it’ll be Al-Qaeda terrorists who are on their way to blow up the White House by giving Dick Cheney an explosive lap dance, you’ll have Buckman versus Bin Laden and see if Buckman can do what Bush has failed to do.

CC: With the success of the MANIACS comic book so far, I know you have a lot of scripts, have you thought of taking one of those scripts and adapting it into a comic book?

TS: Funny you should say that, yeah absolutely. One of the things now is that so many people are using comic books as a tool to set up their projects but they really cross promote. I got a project with Diamond Dallas Page that was initially a writing assignment for Tobe Hooper. He had hired me to write a script for him called CLOWNS. He just basically gave me the title and said “Write me a script called CLOWNS,” and I did. I fell in love with it so much and once DDP read it, he felt he had to play this character. Once that happened, it sort of became obvious that I was the one who needed to direct it. Tobe was gracious enough to allow me to step in as director, he will be the executive producer, and Diamond Dallas Page will be the star. It’s a very wild ride, how can I describe it? THE SOPRANOS with clown creatures with Diamond Dallas Page playing a very twisted, bizarre clown version of Tony Soprano, and that’s going to be a comic book too. It’s exciting and what’s really cool is there’s this whole origin on how these characters became these clown creatures, and we talk about it in the movie, but rather than the comic be the adaptation of the film, it will be an origin story. I didn’t want to adapt the MANIACS script and I don’t want to adapt the CLOWNS script because people already have that story. I use the comics as a way to tell supplemental material about the movie that people already love. I don’t think there’ll be a DRIFTWOOD comic though. Next issue, see David Forrester gets beaten for listening to Manson.

CC: How about 2001 MANIACS MEETS DRIFTWOOD?

TS: Actually that’s not really a bad idea, maybe Buckman and Granny can figure out what to do with Hucklebilly, he’s killed a lot of little pigs, and then you can have Hucklebilly trying to get straightened out by Captain Kennedy, that would be interesting. You never know, that’s actually not a bad idea Colonel.

CC: Just remember where you heard it from. I expect royalties.

TS: You can have a hundred percent of my royalties and still end up with nothing. By the way, to see how your site has grown in the past few months, I’m glad to be a part of it and that you continue to support indie horror. I think it’s very important to support indie horror. People, if you want to see original films that aren’t just rehashes of something you saw, if you don’t want corporate studio horror directed by some guy who did a commercial produced by the guy who did ARMAGEDDON, support indie horror. Buy these films, rent them, do not just download them for free. You can download the studio crap, but the indie films, go out and spend fifteen bucks. Get 2001 MANIACS on DVD so there can be a sequel. Read the Colonel’s Crypt and stay away from some of those websites that are just back biting and nasty, who says things like Rob Zombie must die because he decided to remake HALLOWEEN.

CC: Thank you, about HALLOWEEN, I recently had a discussion with someone about the picketing on the set of Rob Zombie’s film. They’re picketing Zombie’s version of the film, did they see the one before it?

TS: That’s the thing. It’s like would you rather have HALLOWEEN 12 or HALLOWEEN: THE NEW BLOOD? The thing is when I grew up reading FAMOUS MONSTERS, the magazine was a sand box that all the outsider kids could play in. All the kids who knew more about monsters than sports, FAMOUS MONSTERS was a place where everybody came together and felt like they could be safe, you could make a movie and whether it was KING KONG or EQUINOX, a little independent film, everybody got coverage. Rick Baker was featured in the magazine when he was 18 years old doing little makeup on SCHLOCK, and Forrest J. Ackerman never editorialized. He just went “Here kiddies, here’s the new movie and here’s the guys who made and here’s how they did it.” Now we live in an era of the internet because people are so brave hiding behind a fake name like Jabba The Hutt. It’s so much fun to be some 35 year old fat, smelly virgin living in your father’s garage going on the blog every day and just shit talking everybody who’s actually doing something with their lives. Whether you like their film or not, they’re making something, they’re creating, you’re critiquing. They’re standing up, you’re sitting down. It’s so easy to just shit talk and be negative and get some perverted delight to think that something you say will prevent somebody from going to see someone’s film. The bottom line is you can hate my film, it still might make money, you can love my film, and it still might not make money. All you bloggers out there, you don’t have the power you think you have to make or break a film and I don’t really care what those types of people say. Nonetheless, to have such hate and venom, we’ve got global warning going on. We’ve got a president who should be shot. We’ve got wars going on and people dying, and the fervor that these fanboys get over the fact that Rob Zombie had the audacity to remake HALLOWEEN, get a fucking life guys. Grow up or shut up!

CC: I think a lot of bloggers are not creative and they get jealous of the creative process.

TS: I’m sorry but creativity requires a sacrifice. You can be creative but still never get your voice heard because you’re not afraid to take a chance. I still gamble on my life and my creativity. There’s a reason why I don’t have a family. You can’t have the wife, the kids, the dog, the cat, and think on the side you’re going to be a filmmaker or a writer, it’s a full time job. It often means a lot of sacrifices, so there are so many people out there who want it but don’t want it bad enough to give up their X-Box or their CREATURE COMFORTS, and they get jealous of the people who actually did it. My own father was that kind of person, I can speak from experience. I’ll never forget one time I said to him when I was ten years old, “I’m going to write a book someday,” and he said “That’s great son, just as long as daddy gets his book published first.” From a little kid, every step I took was to be in the position I’m in now. My own father was jealous of me because he wanted it but wasn’t willing to try it. He would discourage me from doing it just simply because he didn’t want me to try to succeed because that would put a spotlight on his own failure. Not the failure of being creative but failure of taking a chance on himself. I think that so much of this venom towards other people that has became the staple of blogging, is really just a big mirror being held up to their self doubt and self hatred, and let’s be honest, it does hurt. You don’t think Rob Zombie read that stuff? He did, he’s a friend of mine and it hurt. You know what, next time you guys write that shit and then want to come to the set, take pictures on his new movie, or come to his premieres and eat his food, he knows who you are and you’re not invited!

CC: The one thing I’m finding out is that it’s a very small community, as you like to call it, “Horrorwood.”

TS: As Rob Zombie aptly put it: Big mouth, small town. Again, everybody has the biggest mouth in the world when it comes to sitting in the safety of their home behind a computer keyboard. It’s amazing to me how free people feel to be hateful and negative in the anonymity of their own cocoon.

CC: I gave a positive review of HALLOWEEN and I took a pounding. That was only for a review. I could only imagine what Rob was getting.

TS: I was part of an e-mail group of supposed horror fans who support each other by going out on the weekends to support horror and go see horror movies. It started out as a social event. The weekend came to go see HALLOWEEN, and all these people who are supposed to be friends and fans are sending out these nasty things like “I’d rather suck my own dick than go see HALLOWEEN,” and I stood up and instead of people saying “You’re right, maybe we got a little out of hand,” I got ostracized, I got asked to leave the group because how dare I tell people that they should be positive. “What, we’re not allowed to speak our opinion?” Guess what, somehow Rob Zombie caught wind of all these e-mails and he got in the group and he just told everyone to go fuck themselves. Oh my god, it’s so amazing, these same people all of a sudden go like “I’m sorry, I really love you Rob. Can I get tickets to your show?” But I was the bad guy, Colonel, I was the bad guy. First of all, I do like this film, no it’s not because Rob is my friend. I actually think the film is good and I guarantee that HALLOWEEN is going to be a film that will be a classic once people give it a second go and watch it for what it really is versus what they wanted it to be. It just floored me that instead of saying “Hey, maybe Tim’s right, maybe we’ve gotten a little negative, maybe we’ve gotten a little gossipy, maybe we’ve sort of steered away from why we like horror in the first place.” Here I am, supposedly part of the horror scene, and I’m taking more of a beating from my supposed colleagues than I ever did from the fucking jocks in the high school parking lot who gave me shit for having long hair and listening to Kiss. Rob got better reviews from the New York Times and the L.A. Times on HALLOWEEN than he did from all these horror sites. What the hell’s going on? The thing is you can say you don’t like a certain film but you certainly can’t say that a filmmaker should die. It’s interesting, just saying something sucks, it’s shit. That’s very articulate, but why? “It didn’t honor John Carpenter.” Well did you want him to do a frame by frame remake of the first one, they did that with PSYCHO and THE OMEN and that sucked too. What would you want Mr. Zombie to do? “I don’t know.” Did you think it should’ve been like HALLOWEEN 5? “I don’t know. Rob Zombie sucks! He’s a sellout!” Would you feel more comfortable if his movies never make money and he’s a struggling artist like you? What the fuck? There’s no articulation of an opinion, it’s just this negative “It sucks,” but why?

CC: I don’t know but we’ve kind off went off on a rant here.

TS: It’s good to go on this rant because I’m serious. When there was only one game in town, FANGORIA, it was yeah I think there should be a democracy and I think that there should be all these horror sites but now you have all these different sites and they’re all trying to out scoop each other and be the first person to say that so and so is remaking this film. And suddenly, what used to be a way for fans to have a place to rest feel that they’re with like-minded individuals has become gossip rags, and everybody being nasty to each other, and I understand because so many of these people who run these websites it has become their life and they really don’t make much money from it so the way that they survive is by having something that other people don’t have, and sadly enough Colonel, negativity does sell. What can I say? I’m sure that you and I will be nailed to a cross for having this conversation.

CC: I think that’s why we get along so well, we both have that never say die mentality. We are going to do whatever the fuck we want and we don’t care if you don’t like it or not. The way you promoted MANIACS, it’s such an honest campaign and I have seen a lot of films that are not that honest with their campaigns. Then you follow it up with DRIFTWOOD, which is a more intense horror, it’s showing two completely sides of you.

TS: I’ve been very lucky that the distributor has allowed me to write an introduction that’s included in the DVD. I think it’s important to set the audience up for the experience they are getting. In the DRIFTWOOD DVD, I talk about how the film was written and how it came to be, and I address that this film is going to be different than MANIACS, so get ready. The other thing that’s been gratifying about DRIFTWOOD, it seems to have as I hoped opened a dialogue and honesty in that I was afraid of saying “Tim’s got soft, he’s such a pussy.” Instead you have guys like Uncle Creepy from DREAD CENTRAL who are starting their reviews with “I gotta admit when I was a kid I was a bit of a wild child and this film really hit home.” My motive of the film was very pure as were the motives of everyone who was involved. It’s been awesome because I think the people who have been reviewing it have been equally honest and open in their appraisal and talked about the issues of the film in addition to the craft of the film. That to me is the main thing I wanted out of it and I thank God that it has happened.

CC: It’s always a good thing, as long as that fight is there, and there are so many people that are not believing in what they’re doing. You have it on your coast and I see it on my coast. You show two different aspects of horror with it and some people, they like one and go “How dare you do the other,” are we in the minority to think that horror is such a defining genre and there are so many great things about it. there’s not enough embracing in my opinion. Enough with me!

TS: (Laughs) Just the fact that DRIFTWOOD exists is fucking amazing. The fact that coming off of 2001 MANIACS I had people from Barry Levine to Mike Richardson to Image, I got them to say that for my second film, they let me do something completely different. I thank all those involved for that as much as I rant and rave about corporations. I have also to give credit where credit is due because after MANIACS everybody wanted me to just do the same old thing. Barry Levine, who I did DETROIT ROCK CITY with, another film about being true to yourself, he got it, and now it’s funny cause now I’m doing the sequel to MANIACS and I’m getting people going “We want another deep story with you,” so I think I’m going to go back and forth between deeper, more elegant horror like DRIFTWOOD and more splatstick fun. Sometimes I feel like Shakespeare and sometimes I feel like Herschell Gordon Lewis. Not that I think that I’m Shakespeare, I need to clarify that.

CC: We’re going to get “lynched” for sure.

TS: Well you can do another Youtube video on this. Maybe you can take some of the pictures from the MANIACS comic. You know that would be cool to scan images from the comic book and get Robert Englund and Lin Shaye to read the dialogue.

CC: That’d be fun. My people will talk to your people.

TS: What people?

CC: You got me there.

TS: Well now that DRIFTWOOD is out in the world and the comic book is out in the world, I can take off the promoter’s hat and just sit back and read scripts and get going on what is next.

CC: Do you have a set date on the MANIACS sequel?

TS: Not yet, Probably in March I would say. I think Robert’s available and I would say October or November is when people would be looking for a sequel. You’re always invited to the crazy stuff that we’re doing.

CC: That’ll be very interesting. Captain, meet the Colonel. Colonel, meet the Mayor. There’s not one fucking military guy here and we’re calling each other Captain and Colonel.

TS: They call me Timmy and that’s not really cool.

CC: Mr. Sullivan, how’s that?

TS: I like that.

CC: Thanks so much for your time again and for everything.

TS: Keep it going, I’m there with you.

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