P.M. Lipscomb, Filmmaker: It's such an interesting tale but I have to ask one quick question?
Film Courage: Sure.
P.M.: Is the audio going?
Film Courage: Why do you give your characters their birth date?
P.M.: Well early on when I when when a character births out its name because at some point the name
comes to me but it feels like they've declared it to some degree like that's the notion I'm
trying to feel in my gut when something is said I'll choose a random birth date out of the sky
I'll look up all the facts all the zodiac all the horoscope stuff I can find about this particular
day and my belief is the reason we read horoscopes and zodiac and say that it's similar to ourselves
is because I think we are that zodiac sign in the womb and then elements of your childhood
alters parts of that zodiac sign which gives you billions of different personalities because we all
live different backgrounds and little tiny things start to shift even though we have
all these similarities so I'll look up a character's birth chart and I'll begin to
decide yeah but this character was abused or this character went through this and so that
would alter this and that would alter that and at some point the character will just
start to come to life and I'll forget about it and they'll just kind of find their footing hopefully
and you'll be able to follow that path so in Clowning what were the two leads birthdays well
Clowning is an interesting tale because here's how Clowning came about it's a little different my
best friend producing partner Jonathan Gaietto he told me that his girlfriend was pregnant
Paige is her name and they're pregnant with their first baby so immediately I know I want to make my
friend a little film I'm thinking maybe like a little documentary taking a documentary subject
putting into a narrative structure maybe filming them while she's pregnant so I have that in my
head I'm thinking about that as a movie I go to bed and I have a dream and in the dream you come
when you come to in the middle of a dream and you already know what's been happening
I come to in the middle of this dream and I'm driving through the desert and I know in my
head that there's something in the back of the van that I had nothing to do with but everyone's after
me because of this thing so I start to feel that tension and that stress and as it begins to bubble
I suddenly hear a giggle to my right and I look over and I see this female clown and it makes me
wince and fear and when I do this I suddenly see that I'm wearing a clown outfit and I look in the
mirror and I see paint and I woke up from a dream and said that mixed with my friend's real life
is a neo-noir crime film i've never seen and in his real life he was making lip balm called
mama earth and I always have a stick of lip balm called Mama Earth that because he's got his own
company and and I put it in the movie so he had to give me lip balm for life for free so it's
not product placement you don't need to buy Mama Earth but that's his job right and then he gets
into yeah then he becomes a clown for hire and before he's wanted for murder and trying to prove
his innocence so and you had never had a job as a pro you know some in LA there's all these
princess parties and these different things where you dress as different
no no but my Grandma Lil she loved clowns her whole house was covered in clown paintings and
and clown sculptures and I always wanted to do a movie with clowns that wasn't about clowns
and I like the idea that clowns are so embedded in the horror genre today
and I wanted this movie to be a crime romance film and not and and just know that when they watch it
they're going to be thinking these this feeling there's all this horror feeling in the picture
but it's just because of where clowns are today in our society but the film itself is not a scary
movie sure and some of the crime stories that have happened with individuals who dressed as
clowns right yeah yeah yeah yeah and so do these two characters let's say the male clown and the
female clown do they have birthdays and what birthdays are those well so the male clown in in
milo is his name in Clowning that's closer to my friend so so so that was more based on
Jonathan Gaietto in his reality so there wasn't necessarily a birthday for that particular
character now Pele I didn't pick a specific date I just knew she was an Aries I knew that she was
going to be have this dominance about who she is and I knew that she would be an Aries son with a
rising Taurus and so then I started to read about those two zodiac signs early on and I began to
learn more about who she is and then she woke up pretty fast so there wasn't a particular birthday
for that one that was more of a broad stroke but that's because that character has a lot more going
on than what you realize in the beginning so she was built differently but most characters I'll
give that that's a way I'll give an actor some direction early on as I'll give them a particular
birth date and their horoscope and start feeding them stuff every week just to get their minds
like i'd be like here's your horoscope today and here's how your character feels about that based
on his or her life and so it'd be kind of some ways that we start talking about and eventually
they take that over too and eventually I stop doing that and the actor will just start doing it
so it's sounds like it's Pele's way or the highway and she's never wrong that's that that should be
the tagline okay how does this deep understanding of the character help you develop the story the
character is the story so unless your film is plot driven and say it's Friday The 13th
and perhaps in that picture the characters being teenage regular teenage early 20’s
people then maybe their characters aren't necessarily driving that tale
but in general the more you understand about your character the more you comprehend it
the more they begin to take over the story the beginning they begin to make choices
and if they're making choices and that's playable actions that actors can embody and a lot of times
there's a lot of films that are put together where actors don't have playable direction coming out
of the screenplay because plot's happening to them when really the character plot should be happening
because of them so I think at the end of the day if there's a moment you're writing something
and you don't have a deep understanding of the character then you're probably writing too
prematurely you probably need to take a second and start writing in that character's diary because
why tell the story about let's say Scarface with Al Pacino imagine if that character wasn't as
developed as who he became well the movie Scarface is Scarface because the character that he plays
is that psychopath that builds up into having this huge momentum this monumental moment
at the end but that's all coming from character so if you're sitting down to write that story and
you don't know who that character is or you're not fully alive with that individual then they
can't make choices and then in my opinion then maybe the story could die or fall flat
be boring do you think horror dictates the k I mean you said that the story is dictated
by the character but is that always true with horror films well in the horror realm
you have a lot of different types of genres sub-genres in that in that in that realm
like for instance the shining that is a story very driven on character choice
and character needs that lead them into that realm right but if you look at nightmare on
elm street versus Friday The 13th let's say as two comparisons of similar genres even
nightmare on elm street you actually have kids that have more developed their characteristics are
more developed in nightmare on elm street to where they actually have goals and they have things that
they're trying to conquer in their personal lives with their inter with their relationships amongst
each other where Friday 13th they're mainly just hooking up and then getting slaughtered
with all of that said what I'm hoping to bring into the horror genre is a thematic idea for
instance and my film Bickle that we're going to go into making the theme of the movie is
how far would you go for your family and what I love about that is the theme in horror films
doesn't generally translate into the realm of like from the characters like the characters who are
innocent and getting injured throughout the piece they might have a thematic idea
attached to them but it doesn't usually go to the killers usually the killers are
these mindless people just attacking and this film Bickle what I'm excited about is
the thematic idea of how far would you go for your family even translates over into their world
where the two killers in the film they are family and they're trying to protect each other
so hopefully we go into this Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind of genre and kind of turn it
on on its head a little bit sure and that was somewhat similar in that she necessarily wasn't
the bad guy in the beginning but in the end she becomes that as a result of what happened
yeah right so so yeah it's driven by her story but did Carrie ever become the bad guy though
I don't think she was but yeah I mean no Carrie that particular picture is really about
when you say that Carrie is more about a young woman becoming a girl becoming
a woman and maturing into adulthood and wondering the differences about her body
and trying to figure out grounding herself and her reality
and trying to find her place amongst her peers and then really it went into the horror genre
because this is the worst it could be this is like like the way that they treat it like
that opening sequence in the shower is the worst thing that can happen to you
in that smaller microscope of a being a teenager that is the worst thing that can happen to you
being stuck in that shower having your period and everybody being like oh my gosh look at her right
so it's an interesting movie I think it's it's there's so much there Brian De Palma was a master
it's interesting to bring up Carrie and Scarface all in the same yeah and then he did Blowout oh
George yeah absolutely and it's a filmmaker sort of you know yeah maker in the film and oh no
I mean sound designer I love the way like the sequences first off the way that Brian De Palma
always used the split diopter and he would have different parts of the frame in focus
and like do these split screens like in his movie sisters this amazing split screen sequence where
someone's being murdered and the other person ends up seeing them and I don't know he's such a master
at the split screen and really using the frame in those kind of ways I'm also moving the camera I
suppose too because he moved the camera a whole lot of crane shots and very complicated stuff
there's a great documentary on Brian De Palma everybody should go see it oh what's it called
I think it's called De Palma I believe I think it's on Netflix oh great you'll have to check
it out yeah I saw the the making of Carrie and I'm trying to think of what there was another
one behind the scenes I saw but yeah I'll have to check that one out like like The Exorcist
The Exorcist is a great film because it's about a little girl dealing with the fact that her
parents are divorced and it's really about a little girl coming to terms with the fact that
she doesn't have her father figure anymore and I think that's what tugs at our heart so deeply
and then she becomes possessed and then we're not in a scary movie we're in a
drama and I think that that's where the departure is between certain scary movies
and other ones that are more a little but they're all great though in their own ways.