THE BLUE DIAMOND Interview with Sam Fox, Desiree Staples, and Barbara Crampton

Now available as one of Screambox's latest Bloody Bites, The Blue Diamond is an 80's set sci-fi, horror, comedy short film that is well worth your time! Directed by Sam Fox, written by Addison Heimann, and starring Desiree Staples and Barbara Crampton, I caught up with Fox, Staples, and Crampton to discuss the making of the film:

Sam, how did this project come together?

Sam Fox: Backstory is: Desiree and I were on our fourth year of the film festival circuit and yearning to have the party keep going because [otherwise] we had to go back to our sad, dull lives once it was over. So we were talking over lunch, saying, "What can we do really easy, really quick, on the snap, on the fly?" A cabin in the woods, is of course, easy. But as I was coming up with a story that I wanted to tell, which was kind of piggybacking off of my previous film...

This one [is] focusing on my relationship with my father, who was a narcissist and passed away 15 years ago. And I wanted to talk about the story of being at his funeral and having it be just so bizarre because no one seemed to have the same experience of him that I did...

...And in my way of being able to talk about my trauma and things that have fundamentally fucked me up, I wanted to use the guise of comedy and horror, and this team helped me and many more bring it to life.

Barbara, can you talk about how you got involved in this and why you thought this was an important project to be a part of?

Barbara Crampton: I've been wanting to do more comedy in my life as I've gotten older. I was introduced to Sam by a mutual friend, and we had lunch together, and I just thought it would be a fun and weird tale that she wanted to tell. And then she told me that it was based on her relationship with her father...

...Knowing that made it much more real for me and gave me more of a foundation which to launch off of. It's a personal story for Sam, even though it's a comedy, so I felt emboldened and responsible to tell the tale of her relationship with her dad, and also to create moments of levity in there and see how those two could go together.

And working with Desiree: She's a comedy genius, and I was like just, "Wow!" I wasn't on set when [she] did [her] speech, but then I saw it in the movie, and I'm like, "That's so good."

So I'm just really happy to be involved with these young, really exciting filmmakers who are just working really hard. I just thought that when I read the script, there was something really special and unique about it. And you want to work with people that have a unique vision.

Desiree, can you talk about working with Sam and taking on the lead character, knowing that this story came from such a personal place for Sam?

Desiree Staples: That's why I love working with these ladies because everything that Sam does has such emotional stakes and has such important and fully fleshed out characters. And Sam's such an actor's director; you really get to delve into the role, and [oftentimes] they're based on people or experiences in her own life and it's a dream. It's a dream to get to work with a director that really helps you put together your performance like that. You don't often get that luxury.

Sam, can you speak to the onset experience and making sure that you got that '80s vibe while doing something that's all your own as well?

Sam Fox: Yeah, the on-set experience is always what all the hard work is for. I am a prep psycho, and also, when I'm crewing up, it's very important for me to hire the best person for the job. So it was such an exciting experience bringing together the team with the costume and the production design because they get it.

When I walked into The Blue Diamond set in the big white room that Barbara lives in, I started crying and they were so excited because they'd been working on it and I hadn't been able to [see it]...

...Taylor and Keith, our production designers, they put themselves into it; really, really backbreaking work and negotiating to get all the free stuff because it's insane that they could do what they did. And our costume designer, Penelope, hand bedazzling all of the ski suits before we put them on. It's a testament to hiring passionate people who love film, who also get what you're trying to make. And yeah, it's the biggest joy in the world.

Even when you're filming overnights and you haven't slept because you have insomnia and you're stressing out about the scenes and having panic attacks, and even then when you come and you show up and you do it, you're so high off of everyone else's energy and talent that it just makes the whole thing exciting.

Barbara, can you speak to your on-set experience and working with them and taking a trip back to the '80s for this?

Barbara Crampton: Yeah, I mean, I love the '80s. I'm a child of the '80s, obviously, and just showing up on set and seeing the enormity of how cool it was and how fully realized it was, was great. The costumes were amazing. Everybody was in ski outfits and I was bedazzled in a beautiful ski outfit, and they had a special person who made that. They had their costume designer, but also the ski outfit came from somebody in Aspen.

There were so many details that made this world fully realized. And then my makeup, my hair... the makeup artist they hired was fantastic. You want to work in a world where everything comes together, the production design and the costumes and the makeup, and it really did.
It just felt fully realized. So it makes your job easier as an actor to also have those support elements in place so beautifully.

(Spoiler Warning)

Desiree Staples: We have to give Barbara a huge shout-out for being our horror tentacle master. Because, again, "independent filmmaking," we didn't really have a plan of how the puppet of the tentacle was working. I was bolted in the chair [with] the ski poles in my hands. They were in these gloves that were glued to the poles...

...then also, we were trying to figure out the tentacle, and Barbara totally saved the day. It ended up working so much better because I was able to actually strangle myself with Barbara's help so that I could really know [how far to go]. Because otherwise people could be worried about, "Oh, are we really strangling Desiree?" And I knew how far I could pull the tentacle so that it looked sick, but then I also could still breathe enough. It was great, so props to you, Barbara, for saving the day on that!

Barbara Crampton: You're welcome. The importance of being a horror actress is being able to sell the gag whenever there's one. You got to help the special effects team... you got to sell the gag.

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"Bloody Bites, the streamer created in partnership with Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting, has acquired the rights to the horror thriller The Blue Diamond and will debut the film on the service on June 5th. The award-winning film was directed by Sam Fox, written by Addison Heimann, and produced by Geenah Krisht and Desiree Staples, with a cast that includes Staples and Barbara Crampton.

After the death of her toxic mother, a cultish 80s après ski club is the setting of a grieving daughter trying to find closure, but as usual with 80s ski clubs, nothing is as it seems (aliens).

The Blue Diamond won multiple prestigious awards on the genre film festival circuit including Best Short Film at Grimmfest, Best Editing at The Beverly Hills Film Festival, and Best Ensemble Cast at FilmQuest. Distributed by OUAT Media, the film has previously secured distribution with Canal+ and Kanopy and is now in feature development.

The team behind The Blue Diamond – Fox, Staples, and Krisht – are in development on Sam Fox's debut feature film Eveningstar, written by Charles Pieper. They will be taking the project to the Cannes market to complete financing. Cast attachments to the project are Ethan Daniel Corbett and Desiree Staples.

Fox’s latest jazz-horror short, Open Wide, is currently on the festival circuit (Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest). Previously, she made the horror-comedy Fck’n Nuts with MovieMaker Magazine (Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest, Brooklyn Horror), which won jury and audience awards across major festivals, and the psychedelic short Bad Acid, which earned her Best Director at Nightmares Film Festival."