Interview with Travis Stevens: Revitalizing the Independent Horror Scene One Film at a Time

While the name Travis Stevens may not be familiar to horror fans, the films he’s shepherded over the last several years should: A Horrible Way to Die, Little Deaths, The Aggression Scale, The Thompsons, Big Ass Spider!, Cheap Thrills, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Starry Eyes, and the upcoming feature, We Are Still Here, which debuted at the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival.

As a producer over a relatively short amount of time, Stevens has made a huge impact on the horror genre and still works tirelessly to bring engaging and unique independent projects to life. We recently chatted with Stevens about his background, his approach to producing, the state of independent horror and the one thing he recommends to aspiring filmmakers.

Thanks for speaking with me, Travis. You have done such an amazing job throughout your career finding interesting and thought-provoking films to work on that also feel different from each other. There’s a lot of variety going on there.

Travis Stevens: It’s not an easy way to go; I could have done things a little more safely and tried to repeat myself, but I’ve just never found that approach interesting on an artistic level at all.

For our readers who may be curious about how it all began for you, let’s go back to the beginning and hear a bit about your background before you got involved with the industry.

Travis Stevens: Well, I grew up and went to college in Vermont. I got my degree and thought that was it – I had my degree, so you just go to California and then you make your movie. I thought the doors would just be wide open for me when I got there, but that first year I lived here, it taught me that I didn’t know anything at all. What I did know was the kind of movies I enjoyed, but I never realized just how complicated making movies really was. So I just worked for whomever I could, a lot of times for free, and then I worked in script development too, but that didn’t get me any closer to my dream, either.

Then I was introduced to foreign sales. Foreign sales are how a lot of indie movies end up making their money and it really came into its own during the 1980s and ’90s. I saw the types of films different territories were looking for, which actors would catch their interests, the kind of money they’d be willing to pay – and that was so invaluable. It allowed me such a greater understanding of the marketplace and genre films and from working in sales for 15 years, I got to the point where I was able to look at projects and reverse-engineer them for the market. I finally understood how to make interesting movies that could also make money and be profitable in a sensible way.

So what was the catalyst for you to really get started in producing?

Travis Stevens: I had become really friendly with a lot of great festival programmers over the years and they always had a lot of invaluable input about the kind of films that can be impactful. And over the years, I became friends with guys like Brad Miska, Simon Barrett, Evan Katz, and Adam Wingard. We’d have these informal movie nights and bring screeners for everyone to watch. I started talking with Simon and Adam about us making a movie together and found a great script that we all knew would be perfect for the festival scene. We got it made and after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, it immediately led to bigger opportunities for all of us. And that’s what the filmmaking process is: finding new opportunities that also challenge you in new ways, and being able to do it with your friends is really cool.

Does having that friendship at the core of the process make you that much more invested in it overall?

Travis Stevens: Oh, for sure. When you work on something for almost four years – which is the case a lot of the time – the last thing you want is to be stuck making a film you don’t believe in for that amount of time. You have to be fully committed or you shouldn’t be involved in the first place.

For me, the process tends to be somewhat organic, so I think it’s just easier for me, personally, to work on films with friends. You have to enjoy the people you work with, so it seems easier this way. That’s how Starry Eyes came about; I had been watching UFC fights with Dennis [Widmyer] for a year before we ever talked about making a movie together, and then it all just came together after a conversation one night.

The same thing happened with Ted [Geoghegan] and We Are Still Here – I’ve worked with him so many times over the years at different fests and we finally found the perfect film for him to direct, which is great. It’s so much more rewarding for me this way, and there’s nothing cooler than seeing your friends go on to achieve their dreams and continue to do greater things in their careers.

There is a lot of pressure when you’re making a film and it can put a lot of stress on your friendships, so you really have to be prepared when you’re going in because we are working with limited resources, which always makes things difficult. But if everyone just keeps in mind the final product, in the end it all works out.

Is there any added pressure on you to meet the demands of making a successful movie?

Travis Stevens: For the second movie I did, the pressure was really on. Steven [C.] Miller and I were making this tongue-in-cheek action film called The Aggression Scale, which I knew was going to be a big moment for both of us. We also went into it knowing we didn’t have a huge budget and that we had to make the best possible decisions in order to make the right kind of film at that budgetary level. So we just had to be clever about everything and the film would succeed. And we were right, too; it wasn’t an easy film to make, but it did extremely well and pushed everyone to the next level, especially Steven, who’s now off making movies with Bruce Willis [laughs].

To me, one of the coolest projects you’ve been involved with so far is the documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune. Can you discuss how that all came together and how you became involved?

Travis Stevens: I was friends with Stephen [Scarlata] and Frank [Pavich] for years – in fact, I think I met Stephen when I first moved here [L.A.]. We’d watch bootleg VHS tapes, back before you could find things like Corey Haim’s comeback on the Internet, and they were always into watching the weirdest shit. Steve started doing research on great masterpieces that eventually fell apart and he reached out to Frank about doing the film together once he discovered that [Alejandro] Jodorowsky had tried to make his own version of Dune. Then they eventually reached out to Jodorowsky for an interview and he agreed, so that’s how it took off.

I helped navigate them through everything, although some of it was unfamiliar water for me too; we started with getting the financing lined up and that was a challenge because we had to figure out just how a documentary like this could also be profitable. The sci-fi aspects helped, and the fact that it was a somewhat popular property also helped us out too, but overall we knew this was a film made for and about film lovers, so that helped inform some of our decisions along the way. I knew it wasn’t the kind of project I normally get involved with, but when in the hell would I ever get an incredible opportunity like this again?

Do you feel it’s easier now more than ever to make a name for yourself as a filmmaker in the world of indie horror?

Travis Stevens: At a certain level, the infrastructure on how the industry works is becoming more and more apparent to aspiring filmmakers out there. There’s an understanding of the horror ecosystem and people are aware of the steps they need to take in order to make a successful film: promoting it, releasing stills, getting it into festivals. A lot of it comes from copying what you see working for other people and their films, really.

Filmmakers also need to realize that things aren’t always going to be so easy when you make your first movie. You really need that first film under your belt for people to take you seriously and you should be aware of that going into that first project. Approach it the right way and you can learn so much about the true process of filmmaking from that experience. Find a way to make it stand out to fans, to festivals, to the media – that’s the first step towards getting your work on the right people’s radars.

What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received during your career?

Travis Stevens: I don’t know if I’ve gotten that one piece of advice, but what I can recommend to anyone is to keep a hard copy of everything you ever do that’s related to the business. I once worked with Pierre David and someone was looking for information on the rights to Scanners for a proposed remake, but with all the companies involved, no one could quite figure out just who held the official rights on it. But Pierre, a man who saves every single last piece of paper, had tucked away in some file folder deep inside a storage room this one singular document that could answer this mystery. No one else even thought of keeping track of all that, but Pierre did and that taught me something. So even now that we’re in this digital age, my advice is to make hard copies, because while it may not be important now, it very well could save your ass down the line.