Pig Hunt: A Horror Flick to Look Out For

Straight from fangoria.com, look out for this new film that's in the works. A good friend Bryonn Bain, New York lawyer-activist-poet and now actor plays a key role in this movie. We're all very proud to see his talents rise up to the big screen. . .

With Jim (SKINWALKERS) Isaac’s latest horror romp PIG HUNT wrapped, the director sent Fango a slew of exclusive pics from the flick, which details the exploits of a massive (and massively) homicidal boar known as “The Ripper” and the various eccentric denizens of the remote northern California town it terrorizes. Bloody good stuff, to be sure, and PIG HUNT screenwriter/co-producer Robert Mailer Anderson assures us there will be even more on display in the finished film.

“One of the goals of PIG HUNT is to examine death, and why people kill, so there will be a fair amount of gore,” Anderson tells Fango, “but it isn’t ‘torture porn.’ PIG HUNT is old-school terror, like DELIVERANCE or STRAW DOGS—except, of course,” he notes playfully, “for the ‘Abu Ghraib’ setpiece, and our 3,000-pound wild hog, and the dead emus, and the decapitation, and the gunplay.”

Filmed from April 23-June 6 in Boonville, CA “and three days in San Francisco, including a day at Kerner Optical [formerly ILM Special Effects],” PIG HUNT also employed the talents of 2nd-unit director Justin Sundquist and “action heroes Spiro [MANIAC COP 2] Razatos and Igor [BOURNE ULTIMATUM] Meglic, who made our ROAD WARRIOR-esque action sequences doubly intense,” Anderson says. “Rex Reddick rode his dirt bike like a man possessed, or a meth addict redneck hell-bent on revenge—like the script called for!”

Anderson, who graduated from Boonville and who went on pen BOONVILLE: A NOVEL, says of the locale (population 715), “It’s the same chaotic outpost [that it has always been]. Shooting there was like being a chain-smoking gas station attendant; you can’t quit lighting butts and waiting for something to suddenly go boom.”

Regardless of the regional unpredictability alluded to (anyone who’s ever visited Boonville will understand), Anderson adds, “On set, there was an amazing feeling of incredibly talented people all pulling for the same purpose of making something exceptional—the best aspect of collaborative art. They all got our vibe of ‘hands-on anarchy.’ Jim [top photo below], Zach [Anderson, co-producer] and I asked everyone to dig deep and give us their craziest, and it became a wide-open dialogue that ended with each person trying to push their specific job to the max, from [Academy Award nominee] Geoffrey [CHILDREN OF MEN] Kirkland’s production design and Aggie [RETURN OF THE JEDI] Rodgers’ costuming of the cult girls to scenic painter Dale Haugo’s work.”

The actors, including Les Claypool, bassist and frontman of the prog-rock outfit Primus, apparently (and literally) went for broke as well. “They got down and dirty,” says Anderson. “Les continued to work after breaking his finger in an amped-up scene, and subsequently he had to scratch a couple of performances from his music tour.”

Claypool, who stars alongside blues/jazz harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite, New York activist-poet Byronn Bain and local Northern California talent, wasn’t the production’s only casualty. “During one stretch while shooting at ‘Big Wallow,’ ” Anderson recalls, “we lost a grip every day to a wrenched back or blown knee, and they kept coming back to work bandaged, or on crutches, like soldiers on the battlefront. Because everyone was committed to the project, liked each other, were tough sonsofbitches and wanted to win the war of making our movie our way: what we eventually called ‘the PIG HUNT way.’ ”

Currently being edited by Graham Wilcox and scored by Davis Russo (with additional original musical compositions by Claypool), the production is unsurprisingly “aiming for a theatrical release,” Anderson says. It’s his desire for a unique debut, however, that’ll give die-hard genre fans a nostalgic smile. “We have been contacted already by a few distributors, and we’d like to open it at every drive-in left in America [there are still well over 350 in the U.S.], before a national release that includes art houses. Being Nor Cal boys, the San Francisco International Film Festival also said they were interested in showing it drive-in-style at the Presidio.”

Anderson’s uniquely northern Californian outlook is further evident in his plans for international distribution when he says, “Because of its left-wing politics, it would be great to land on the French at Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, San Sebastian, and let the world know the U.S. isn’t all in lockstep with the Bush administration…or with Hollywood.”

Looking further forward, Anderson is reteaming with much of the PIG HUNT team on THE DEATH OF TEDDY BALLGAME, which he scripted. “Jim will direct, Geoffrey will be doing the production design, Aggie’s back on wardrobe and PIG HUNT cast members Jason Foster, Trevor Bullock and Travis Aaron Wade are also slated to return. It takes place in one location, a coffee shop in San Francisco not unlike the historical Caffe Trieste, as the apocalypse or end of the world nears. It’s kind of a cross between Mamet’s GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS and an old episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE; think of some intense shit with some other intense shit, and you might have a loose idea what we are up to!” —Sean Decker

Bookmark/Search this post with:

| | | | |