Currently available on VOD and arriving in limited theaters on May 9th courtesy of Magnet Releasing is Jerome Sable’s wonderfully manic horror musical Stage Fright. Daily Dead recently chatted with Sable and co-composer Eli Batalion about the inspiration behind their ambitious debut feature film project, working with their talented ensemble of actors and singers and much more.
I really enjoyed Stage Fright, guys- I really thought you guys showed a ton of ambition and ingenuity and loved the fact that you embraced a subgenre we don’t see very often, horror musicals. What made you guys decide to go this route for your first feature?
Jerome Sable: Yeah, I can probably count the number of horror musical movies on both of my hands so I think that was a huge appeal to both of us from the start- to be able to do something different and to do a film that represented both of us as fans. Eli and I both go way back; we’ve been working together for a long time, even doing some theater stuff, so Stage Fright is really up our alley.
Around the early 2000s, I was really getting into horror stuff and discovering what I enjoyed about the genre and just thought combining horror with musical comedy would be something we’d both be up to watch as fans. The short film we did, The Legend of Beaver Dam, was the first time Eli and I took a stab at making a horror/comedy musical and it was so much fun, we knew we had to do it again.
One of the things that I loved about Stage Fright is that you guys had a really nice blend of veterans, but also a ton of new talent as well that showcased everyone nicely. I also thought it was great that the veterans you had, Minnie Driver and Meat Loaf, were given real, and very original, roles in the film and not just used to ‘sell’ a movie which is something a lot of indie features do. Everyone just seemed to really have a lot of fun with the material and be on board for anything you were going to throw at them.
Jerome Sable: I totally understand what you mean in regards to the name thing and that was something we didn’t want to do. This was always about us trying to get the right people for the project, which we did. Both Minnie and Meat were just absolutely perfect too; they are both icons in their own right on stage or on the big screen, so there was very little doubt they’d be anything less than perfect though (laughs).
But they both really got what we were trying to do and just responded to the script with a ton of enthusiasm. I think we also sold Minnie on Stage Fright after she saw Beaver Dam; I think she was game for that wry sense of humor we infused in it because that’s totally her sense of humor. Plus, she was also in the film version of The Phantom of the Opera, so there was this organic connection there too. Meat was a different story and I think he responded to Stage Fright because, while it was another musical, it wasn’t a character he had done before. We just let him go at it and I think his performance is really incredible. I think Meat’s fans will definitely be surprised by how different he is in Stage Fright.
Let’s talk about the music in Stage Fright because that’s such a huge aspect of the film. Can you guys discuss your process and talk a bit about the different styles of music? I loved that you guys played it very traditional, but the killer got these really rad heavy metal tracks that made for a nice contrast.
Jerome Sable: I think that for us, Stage Fright was truly a composer’s wet dream because we got to make the music we wanted to make, which gave us so much freedom. We had the freedom to do some rock music, but also the freedom to go the traditional route too. It was a lot of fun playing with all these styles.
Eli Batalion: Even though we had a lot of freedom, we still had to use the lyrics as a way to support the story and the characters though. We had to make sure that every note was balanced perfectly against everything that was happening on the screen which has its own set of challenges to it.
Well, speaking of challenges- Stage Fright, being as ambitious as it is, seems like it would be a challenging film to do, regardless of how long you’ve been a director. Were there aspects of production in particular that put you guys through the wringer?
Eli Batalion: I think I had the biggest challenge out of anyone on that set- growing Oleg’s beard (laughs). It is nearly impossible for me to grow a beard intentionally so it was rough, man. No, in all seriousness though, this movie has a lot of complicated elements to it which we knew from the very start was going to challenge us in insane ways. We were working with kids, a huge cast, and there was a ton of violence and gore too, so Stage Fright was a tall order.
Jerome Sable: We made this movie in 23 days and there was an immense amount of prep work that we did before we started shooting. We were supposed to do a 22-day shoot, but even though you try to be as prepared as possible in every single way, things happen so we ended up having to add a day. But that’s because there's so much that goes into making film like this.
Something else that we did while filming was that we had everyone actually singing live on set, which added another level of preparation for everyone. Every single person had to be always on their game and that’s a lot of pressure. We also wrote the music in different phases, so there’d be times where we were still figuring out songs as we were going along. That was a lot of pressure but it caused us to really get more creative than usual, which was ultimately a good thing.
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