Virginia Yapp's blog

Saturday Morning Massacre: Ashley Rae Spillers Gets a Debut (and Workout)

Virginia Yapp — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:00:18 +0000

This is the last in a series of four interviews related to the Austin-shot movie Saturday Morning Massacre (Jette's review), which recently premiered at Los Angeles Film Festival. Don't forget to read about our chats with producer Jonny Mars, screenwriters Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo, and director Spencer Parsons.

Austin-based actress Ashley Rae Spillers stars in Saturday Morning Massacre as Nancy, the plucky young leader of a group of amateur ghostbusters working their first paying case... and things don't go quite as planned. This is Spillers' first feature-film role, following her appearance in a few short films, including a segment of Slacker 2011. Slackerwood sat down with Spillers before the film's LAFF premiere. Though this was her first feature film role, she's been busy ever since, working with a long list of Austin filmmakers.

Slackerwood: How did you get involved with the film?

Spillers: This is the first feature I'd ever done. Maybe a year before, Jason Wehling called me up and had me do some voiceover for an animated feature he was doing. That's how I got to know Jason and I'd see him from time to time, and I met Spencer [Parsons].

Saturday Morning Massacre: Spencer Parsons Channels Corman and Argento

Virginia Yapp — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:00:07 +0000

This is the third in a series of four interviews related to the Austin-shot movie Saturday Morning Massacre (Jette's review), which recently premiered at Los Angeles Film Festival. Don't forget to read about our chats with producer Jonny Mars and screenwriters Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo, and look for the fourth interview later this afternoon.

Before he moved to Chicago to teach at Northwestern University, Spencer Parsons spent over a decade making movies in Austin. His first feature film, I'll Come Running, premiered at LAFF in 2008 and also screened at Austin Film Festival that year. Despite the move, Parsons hasn't been able to escape Austin completely. His second feature film, Saturday Morning Massacre, shot locally, earned Parsons and crew a return trip to LAFF earlier this month.

Jette and I sat down with Parsons and talked horror, the Austin film scene, his move to Chicago and (of course!) breakfast tacos.

Slackerwood: So we've been hearing from Jonny Mars about the six-week wonder production.

Spencer Parsons: It's really crazy. When I got the call about it and they were pitching it to me, I thought, yeah, it sounds great. In large part, just because as an overall fan of the genre, and also as a filmmaker, I've always read stories about how things were actually made, and so I've read so many stories where you've got [Roger] Corman going, "Hey, you've got a set still standing. Charles Griffith, you go write a script." And lo, two weeks later, you have The Little Shop of Horrors. For real, that really happened.

So under those conditions, I said, "Let's do that, it sounds really fun. Let's do an exploitation movie." We have this opportunity… and not in a grindhouse way, but let's do it under these constraints, and let's do it Corman-school.

Saturday Morning Massacre: Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo's Marathon Writing Sessions

Virginia Yapp — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:00:46 +0000

This is the second in a series of four interviews related to the Austin-shot movie Saturday Morning Massacre (Jette's review), which recently premiered at Los Angeles Film Festival. Check back for the others in the next couple of days.

As Saturday Morning Massacre's producer Jonny Mars told us, the writers were brought in after the producers developed a treatment for a horror movie based around the Perry Mansion. Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo, longtime writing partners, have the details on how the script came together.

Slackerwood: Tell us how you guys got involved with this film.

Aaron Leggett: We'd been writing with Spencer [Spencer Parsons] for a couple years. Spencer had a short playing at SXSW and he was crashing on my couch since he lives in Chicago now, and he came home one night and said, "I might be working on this crazy horror movie." We're like, "Hey Spencer, we just finished writing a horror script. You should try to get us on board." So he talked to Jason [Jason Wehling] and Jonny and a couple of days later we were on it.

Did they give you a premise?

Jory Balsimo: They had a core story that was already pretty much set in stone. They wanted "Scooby-Doo-ish."

Leggett: We kind of came in and filled in the details. I think there was one big night where we got to see the house.

Balsimo: Yeah, we walked around the house and hashed some ideas at. And then we went to Spider House.

Leggett: It was like a marathon. We got the bones taken care of that first night and then we fleshed out a 25-page treatment based on on those notes we had.

Saturday Morning Massacre: Jonny Mars Finds a Movie in a Mansion

Virginia Yapp — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:00:28 +0000

When life drops a creepy old mansion into your lap, you've got no choice but to make a horror movie out of it. And so, within weeks of the fortuitous real estate deal, producer Jonny Mars and crew got to work on the Austin-produced, Scooby Doo-inspired horror film Saturday Morning Massacre (Jette's review), which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival earlier this month. The ornate, menacing mansion serves as not only the primary location for the film but is one of its biggest characters.

We sat down to chat with Mars (The Happy Poet, Hellion, America's Parking Lot), a local actor and filmmaker, about how the movie came together, and what it was like acting and producing Saturday Morning Massacre. Mars discussed the intricacies of "run-and-gun" filmmaking, gave us the lowdown on some of the other locations seen in the film and talked a bit about the plethora of upcoming projects he's involved with.

This is the first in a series of four Saturday Morning Massacre interviews, involving many of the people in the above cast and crew photo -- keep an eye out for the other three in the next couple of days.

Slackerwood: How did you get involved in this project?

Jonny Mars: I got a phone call from Jason Wehling. Jason, myself and Jesse Lyda produced this movie. Jason got a phone call from Jesse a year ago at SXSW and he said, "Hey, we just bought this property [the Perry Estate], but we think we're gonna flip it very soon so we've got six weeks, but we think it'd make a great horror film location." So Jason's like, "Whatever." Six weeks isn't a lot of time.

ATX Television Festival Wraps

Virginia Yapp — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:00:13 +0000

ATX Television Festival came to a close last Sunday afternoon with a music showcase at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel, capping off a weekend full of screenings, panel discussions and sneak peeks. The event's organizers managed to round up a pretty spectacular group of industry insiders for the inaugural event, bringing together writers, producers, actors and more from shows like Game of Thrones, True Blood, Friday Night Lights and Childrens Hospital.

The festival's low-key, very Austin vibe meant panelists could speak in a much more relaxed manner than you might see even at the city's more established film festivals, and there was a lot of interplay between those on stage and those in the audience. Cougartown creator Bill Lawrence remarked that the ATX Television Festival was awesome for all involved; after all, how often do those in the TV industry get to travel and talk to fans about their craft? Oh, and also, it's a great excuse to hang out in Austin for a weekend.

I started the Saturday morning of the at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, where things were fairly quiet at that hour. First up was a sneak peek at the pilot episode of the Vince Vaughn-produced Sullivan & Son. The show, which will premiere on TBS July 19, should fit nicely into that channel's lineup given its old-school sitcom style and broad humor. Not AMC or HBO-quality stuff -- or even Cheers, the show's most obvious reference point -- this is TV comfort food in the vein of Two and a Half Men.

Alamo Drafthouse also hosted a screening of the latest episode of the KLRU-produced show On Story, now in its second season. Barbara Morgan and Maya Perez from Austin Film Festival were on hand to discuss how they put the show together, plumbing nearly two decades' worth of AFF panel footage, and the legal issues involved with piecing together this type of series. Hint: It's a whole lot of work.