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kevinsreviewcatalogue · 8 months ago
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Review: The People's Joker (2022)
Just because I left Fort Lauderdale, and with it Popcorn Frights, behind when I moved to Boston last year doesn't mean I have to give up on horror festivals. And just as I managed to sneak in a trip to the Telluride Horror Show amidst my adventures in Utah back in 2022, so too did I find that -- where else? -- Salem, Massachusetts hosted the annual Salem Horror Show in April and May. Tonight was the first night, and they screened one of the festival's token non-horror films in The People's Joker, a queer Batman spoof made without any official approval from DC Comics or Warner Bros. (They originally had a screening of Hocus Pocus planned with Kathy Najimy as a special guest, but Najimy had to cancel at the last minute.) How was it?
The People's Joker (2022)
Not rated
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<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/04/salem-horror-fest-week-1-day-1-peoples.html>
Score: 4 out of 5
The People's Joker exists in a place very similar to that enjoyed by Escape from Tomorrow. In both cases, you have independent filmmakers making unlicensed, unauthorized use of American pop iconography, Disney in the case of Escape from Tomorrow and DC Comics in the case of this film, as a way of satirizing and critiquing it with a particular focus on its corporate ownership and its role in the modern economy. Unlike Disney, which permitted the release of Escape from Tomorrow, DC Comics and Warner Bros. actively tried to clamp down on this film, which was ultimately saved by fair use laws protecting parodies like this. And of the two, I'd argue that this film pulls off what it was trying to do a lot better. While both films are elevated by a particular psychedelic edge and punk-rock attitude, Escape from Tomorrow was too incoherent to really stick the landing or even really convey what it was trying to say, while The People's Joker manages to successfully pull off being not only a dark parody of Batman in which the Joker is the hero, but also a hilarious comedy in its own right, a queer coming-out story, a satire of the entertainment industry (especially stand-up and sketch comedy), and a film that manages to get its message across loud and clear. For obvious reasons, I don't expect this to be more than a cult classic, but it's one I enjoyed and do not regret watching.
In this take on Batman's most iconic villain, one that's most obviously based on the movie Joker but draws on many versions of the character (as well as elements of Harley Quinn), the Joker is now a trans woman who leaves her disapproving mother in Smallville, Kansas for Gotham City in the hopes of becoming a comedian like her idol, UCB Live star Ra's al Ghul. There, upon being exposed to the gatekeeping and hypocrisy of the world of mainstream standup comedy, which here serves largely to prop up a corporate-run dystopia even as it still claims the legacy of those who once spoke truth to power, she starts her own underground "anti-comedy" troupe in an abandoned carnival that comes to be comprised of many of Batman's traditional baddies from the comics. (Her trademark gag is inviting people onstage to tell the world their saddest experiences and then huffing Smilex and laughing her ass off at their misery, because after all, this is still the Joker we're talking about.) This eventually puts her on a collision course with Batman himself, who's depicted as not only the jackbooted thug that more cynical deconstructions of superhero comics have framed him as, but also a perverted closet case on top of it. (Let's just say, this film gets a lot of mileage out of all those jokes you've heard about his relationship with his sidekick Robin.)
The film ain't exactly subtle in what it's saying. UCB Live is a clear-cut parody of Saturday Night Live, right down to the fact that Lorne Michaels is a character in the film, and moreover, its initialism is lifted straight from the famed Chicago comedy troupe the Upright Citizens Brigade that played such a major role in the development of standup and sketch comedy in the '90s and '00s, including producing multiple SNL stars. And while the film never names him so directly, you also get the sense that its writer, director, and star Vera Drew really isn't a fan of Joe Rogan or the standup circle he's built around himself, either. The Joker's introduction to UCB Live's casting has her body being scanned and her being deemed a potential comedy superstar because she has a small penis and is therefore mistaken for the kind of insecure man who the industry is built upon. Her comic idol Ra's starred in a Borat-like film whose main joke was making fun of foreigners. The whole reason Batman, an avatar of the elite if ever there was one (being the CEO of Wayne Enterprises and all), comes after her is because she directly criticizes and threatens the ruling class in a way that the corporate, sanitized world of UCB Live merely pretends to. Drew is somebody who clearly has experience with comedy and the people who inhabit it, and is very much writing that experience into the meat of the story, a metaphorical representation of an entertainment industry that, in her view, only cloaks itself in populism and progressive language enough that it can fend off criticism without actually making any meaningful changes.
Much of this is told through a mix of a riotous and raunchy comedy and the Joker's romance with her fellow comic Jason Todd, aka "Mr. J", a trans man who's envisioned here as a mix of Robin and the edgelord Jared Leto version of the Joker from the DC Extended Universe. The gags came flying at a mile a minute, and often had me busting my gut in laughter. The whole cast is game for the material, with Drew making the Joker a compelling anti-hero not just as a comic presence but also as somebody whose journey from a Midwestern girl-trapped-in-a-boy's-body to a flamboyant Clown Princess of Crime was one that I found myself genuinely invested in. Kane Distler as Mr. J was also an interesting presence, somebody whose relationship with the Joker starts promisingly only for him to turn emotionally abusive and self-centered (complete with a "gaslighting" pun that had me cracking up), indicating that, when he transitioned, he wound up embracing the most noxious forms of hypermasculinity. And as for the style of the film, Drew goes for an exaggerated feel that combines live-action filmmaking, highly stylized CGI, what appears to be a mannequin representing Poison Ivy, and very crude animation both 2D and 3D to create a feeling that reminded me of watching Adult Swim or surfing Newgrounds back in the 2000s. There clearly wasn't much of a budget here, so Drew instead leaned on creativity, both her own and the dozens of artists worldwide who each contributed to the film. It was as unique a film to watch as it was an entertaining comedy, one that demonstrated a lot of talent and commitment on the part of everybody involved.
The Bottom Line
There's no way in hell that The People's Joker is ever getting a wide release, but if it plays near you, I highly recommend seeking it out, as a twisted, countercultural sendup of everything from superheroes to mainstream comedy to who gets to call themselves "the counterculture".
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fuckyeahbreagrant · 4 years ago
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telluridehorrorshow
Enjoy a conversation with 12 HOUR SHIFT director @breagrant, moderated by @fangoria’s @xymarla!
Live at 12PM MST, Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Conversation will be recorded and made available to those unable to tune in live. Included with film rental: Link in bio. 
@magnetreleasing / @magnoliapics
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yourvirtualgame · 6 years ago
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oneunderproects · 3 years ago
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1339 Telluride Horror Show
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mountainmavensandmuses · 7 years ago
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Stay on their Twitter to stayed Tuned into the Tulluride Horror Show  Let’s go! wooooot
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horrorsociety · 5 years ago
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The 10th Annual Telluride Horror Show Film Festival is This Weekend in Telluride, CO Read More Here: https://www.horrorsociety.com/2019/10/08/the-10th-annual-telluride-horror-show-film-festival-is-this-weekend-in-telluride-co/
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randomluck-ofthe-universe · 2 years ago
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"Chalamet gives his best performance since his last collaboration with Guadagnino and shows his maturity as an actor since their last project. His work as Lee leans into the best qualities of the young actor, as he is safe, inviting, and subtle until his former life's secrets unravel and he becomes defenseless and opens up." 💖💖
"... The biggest strength of the film rest on the shoulders of its two lead actors, Russell and Chalamet, whose chemistry is raw, sexy, vulnerable, and earnest in such a way that we've yet to see from either performer in their young filmographies. Russell, best known for her breakout role in 2019's Waves, brings Maren full circle, from a naive, scared teen to a confident, passionate woman who realizes that she can't fix who she is, much to the chagrin of her absentee parents. She embraces that she is an eater who happens to feel the best when she is around Lee, and in this, Russell proves she is a force to be reckon with. As for her counterpart, Chalamet gives his best performance since his last collaboration with Guadagnino and shows his maturity as an actor since their last project. His work as Lee leans into the best qualities of the young actor, as he is safe, inviting, and subtle until his former life's secrets unravel and he becomes defenseless and opens up.
Credit also goes to Guadagnino and his co-writer David Kajganich for their difficult task of adapting Camille DeAngelis's novel of the same name, mixing the right amount of emotion and violence. In doing this, they find a tone that blends heart and danger, as well as a sense of wonder as our duo travel around the middle of the US in the 1980s over the course of one summer. Throw in a spellbinding, almost entirely acoustic score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and this is horror, romance, travel tragedy leaves you flawlessly with a pit in your stomach and a tear in your eye."
~from the 2022 Telluride Film Festival.~
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schlock-luster-video · 2 years ago
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On October 15, 2016 Terrifier premiered at the Telluride Horror Show Film Festival.
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100gayicons · 5 years ago
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“For most of my life, I've been afraid to embrace that truth about myself...”
Augustus Kenworthy as born in England to an English mother and an American father. In 1993, at the age of 2, Gus moved with his family to Telluride, Colorado. Originally a gold mining town, Telluride became a major ski destination in the 1980s.
Gus became an avid skier, emphasizing in freestyle. Before graduating from high school in 2010, he took a year off to ski. He began skiing competitively. Kenworthy won AFP World Championships overall titles in 2011, 2012, and 2013. He won a Silver Metal the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
A year later he made news again by Tweeting, “I am gay.”
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He also posted on Facebook, “For most of my life, I've been afraid to embrace that truth about myself... I've gotten to the point where the pain of holding onto the lie is greater than the fear of letting go, and I'm very proud to finally be letting my guard down."
He is the first “freestyle medalists... sports star to come out."
Of course a nude appearance in ESPN’s 2017 Body Issue was inevitable.
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In 2018, at the Winter Olympics in South Korea, Kenworthy’s boyfriend kissed him before his qualifying run in the men's slopestyle. The moment was caught on live TV - a significant moment for Gay athletes and gay people everywhere.
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In addition to campaigning for gay rights, he has also raised funds to fight AIDS ($250,000 during the 2019 AIDS/Lifecycle campaign).
Gus has explored an acting career, with appearances on 2 reality shows, and a role in the 2019 season of “American Horror Story”.
Having skied for the US in the 2014 & 2018 Winter Olympics, Kenworthy announce he will compete for Great Britain the 2022 Olympics. (He maintains duel citizenship.)
“I am also doing this for my mother who was born and lived in the UK for much of her life, she has always been my greatest supporter throughout my career. She taught me to ski when I was three years old and is the reason I compete today.”
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iris-jaxx665 · 5 years ago
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What’s been your favorite day with your Master so far?
Oooooo another thinky question.... i dont have just one favorite, so here's a few!
(NOT IN ORDER)
The day i first saw him and hurridly scribbled my number, my facebook, my snapchat, my email, my kik, EVERYTHING down on a piece on paper in case he talked to me.
Our first fuck, when i stripped in seconds and threw myself into his bed
Our "first" date to see Rocky Horror Picture Show where we both dressed up and it was freezing walking to his car and he gave me his cloak.
The day i moved in.
The day we watched Princess Bride and he fucked me 6 times straight in the course of 5 hours, fucked me unconscious and kept going.
The day of our wedding, where he collared me.
The day we finally moved into our first home together.
The day i found out that my parents like him more than all of my exes combined.
The first time we truly made love.
Our long drives to Breckinridge, or Aspen, or Telluride, or who the fuck knows where every weekend.
The one time we had a "pregnancy-scare"
The day he told me he couldn't wait to see me swell with our children.
The first "I love you's"
The first time I called him by a Title, and he felt so amazed because he earned it.
Writing our first contract last year.
Rewriting our contract last week.
The first time he felt safe enough to cry in my arms, and i felt so lucky to belong to such a brave man.
The first time he carried me to bed and tucked me into his arms.
The first time i felt safe enough to cry in front of him and he sat down in the running shower, fully clothed with me, just holding me as i waited to calm down.
I love every day with my Master.
I love him
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trash-gremlin420 · 4 years ago
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Still bitter that Telluride Horror Show used this as a promotional photo for YEARS and literally only gave me credit once. Telluride October 2015
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letterboxd · 5 years ago
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Human Resources.
Kitty Green talks to our London correspondent Ella Kemp about “putting the audience in the shoes of the youngest woman in a toxic work environment” in her new film, The Assistant.
The long-undervalued job of a Hollywood assistant has come into stark relief thanks to recent events, and the stories that are being told of assistants’ experiences, working conditions and pay rates are jaw-dropping. (Episode 422 of the Scriptnotes podcast is well worth a listen.)
Filmmaker Kitty Green was well ahead of the conversation; her first narrative feature, The Assistant, quietly premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last August (and the Berlinale in February). Dubbed by many as ‘the first post-#MeToo movie’, it is a remarkable portrait of a young woman navigating just another day in the office. Except this is not just another office, and so many things are wrong about this day.
Starring Julia Garner (Grandma, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Electrick Children) as Jane, the assistant to the predatory head of a New York-based film studio, the story zooms in on the details of her routine—the tedious tasks, the belittlement from her colleagues, the oppression from her mostly faceless boss—with such laser-sharp vision that by the end we feel we know Jane deep in our bones.
Green has previously directed the documentary features Ukraine is Not a Brothel (2013) and Casting JonBenét (2017), the latter a meta-documentary that also hones in on the neglect and exploitation of young women, albeit under a different light (it is now streaming on Netflix). While Green’s documentary experience bears fruit in her attention to detail, the narrative form of The Assistant allows for a focus on mundane tasks and micro-reactions that documentary might not have access to.
Various Letterboxd reviews mention the anxiety-inducing way The Assistant allows us to watch Jane “probe her place in the established, tacit system of complacency… knowing that everyone around her is motivated by self-interest to pretend it doesn’t exist” (Josh Lewis). “Green encourages her viewers to pay close attention to what’s really going on beneath the surface,” (KristineJean) in “a horror movie of soul-sickening ambience” (Scott Tobias).
Though The Assistant’s film festival run was cut short, and the closure of cinemas around the world hurts for a lot of us, there’s something about the claustrophobia of social distancing and the intimacy of the small screen that maybe suits this picture. Nevertheless, seeing the film in a cinema in ‘the before time’ highlighted for Alyssa Heflin the ocean of different opinions that can come from misunderstood subtext: “Watching this in a room where you can hear people snickering at the girl and asking what the point of all this is adds a certain extra… incendiary level to an already deeply angry viewing experience.” Indeed, discomfort and crossed wires seem to define the messages at the core of The Assistant.
Kitty Green talks to Ella Kemp about the influence of Chantal Akerman, the infinite watchability of Julia Garner, and the oddness of growing up with a Nazi-free edit of The Sound of Music.
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Jane (Julia Garner) takes another call from the boss in ‘The Assistant’.
The Assistant is your first fiction feature. The subject matter feels so immediate—what made you choose to not make a documentary of this, given your track record in that realm? Kitty Green: I went to fiction film school, and I made fiction short films. I then found work in documentary, so I made two feature-length docs. With this one, I was looking at exploring the micro-aggressions, the tiny moments, gestures, looks, glances, behaviors that often go overlooked when covering the #MeToo movement. We often talk about the bad men and the misconduct, but this is more about a cultural, structural problem. So I was hoping to amplify the more quietly insidious behavior that we need to address if we really want things to improve. A fiction film allowed me to hone in on details—close up—and the way you can take an annoyance through the emotional experience, putting the audience in the shoes of the youngest woman in a toxic work environment.
How did you decide to keep the timeframe to just one day in Jane’s life rather than fleshing it out over a longer period? The lead character is in such a complicated position. It’s such a difficult set of circumstances, the machinery that this predator has created around himself. I wanted to untick that, to discuss how difficult it is to be a young woman in that environment. So the day, the routine, was really important. What she was experiencing, how she was experiencing it; every task she did I gave equal weight to. Whether she was photocopying, binding something suspicious, you experience it as you would if you were in her shoes. That was important to me.
I had my fists clenched the whole time, when she’d be eating cereal, or washing up mugs, waiting for something awful to happen. Totally. It’s exploring misconduct, but it’s also looking at a whole spectrum, from gendered work environments, toxic work environments, through all these environments that support predatory behavior. I was interested in what the entry points are, without conflating those issues and being able to explore all the cultural systemic things we need to unpick to move forward.
The film is so focused on Jane, played by Julia Garner. How did you choose her? The script is pretty bare when it describes who she is, she’s just Jane. I didn’t have anyone in mind, really. I told my casting agent that we’re watching this character do the most mundane tasks, so it was important that she was striking. I said I needed someone infinitely watchable. I had seen Julia in The Americans and I remembered being struck by her, so I immediately wanted to meet her. She really understood the script, it worked out beautifully. We got to create the character together, we had a month of rehearsals where we really went through where she was emotionally at any given point, and Julia is wonderful so it was great.
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Matthew Macfadyen and Kitty Green discuss a scene in ‘The Assistant’. / Photo: Ty Johnson
And Matthew Macfadyen—his character feels so crucial and his performance so pivotal, even in just one scene. What were you looking for when casting him? I’ve been a fan of his for forever, but I hadn’t seen Succession. Apparently the character has some similarities? I’ve only watched Succession in the past week… Somebody had to send me a clip to prove he could do an American accent! Matthew really brought something to that character and took it to another level. It’s so insidious what he does. He and Julia worked so beautifully together, it just got better and better every time.
How did you feel watching Succession now and seeing Matthew as Tom Wambsgans? Tom still feels different somehow. But I’ve had a good time watching it, he’s so great. There are parallels for sure!
The language you use in the film is so careful, so much is in the subtext. How do you build tension from these empty spaces? We had a great visual team who were lighting it in an interesting way. There was a lot of oppressive fluorescent lights. The sound was also very important—we had an amazing sound designer, Leslie Schatz, who does a lot of Todd Haynes’ stuff and Gus Van Sant’s. He’d done Elephant, which I thought was phenomenally sound designed. He sent out a team to record every kind of buzz, hum, whir, and we created a lot of tension in that soundscape. It heightens these moments when you can really feel the hum of the fluorescent lights or the alarm of the copier. Things like that are authentic to the world, so it doesn’t feel like you’re manipulating an audience, but they do add a dramatic tension.
During The Assistant’s various film festival screenings so far, audience reactions have been quite varied. Some people find it uncomfortable, some have found it funny. What would you hope an audience member would take from it? Who found it funny…? That’s a strange reaction, and a little terrifying. I think it makes some men uncomfortable and maybe their reaction is to laugh as a way to hide that discomfort. I get a lot of men come up to me afterwards and say, “There are things in that film that maybe I have done.” Those conversations are really important. There’s a scene where the men lean over Jane’s chair and correct her email, little things like that which can be quite patronising even if a lot of men think are helpful. But there’s a point where they cross a line, where maybe it isn’t helpful anymore and it’s a little insulting. I’ve had a few people who are bosses with their own assistants who have watched the film and have said they’re going to treat them a little better, and that maybe they’re wrestling with their own guilt. I think those conversations are great.
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Julia Garner prepares for a take on the set of ‘The Assistant’. / Photo: Ty Johnson
What is your favorite one-woman-show performance, where one female actor entirely carries the film? A big influence on The Assistant was Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. It’s just one woman going about her housework. I remember seeing that in film school and being bowled over by it, I’d never seen anything like it.
Do you have a favorite scene that has ever taken place in an office environment? Offices… I mean, I love The Office? I watched it in preparation for this, even though there’s seemingly nothing in common except for the ways of the photocopier…
It’s important to inhale that kind of comedy while working on something more intense, right? For sure, that helps.
What is your favorite on-screen argument? I watched a lot of them to prepare for the HR scene, as it’s a confrontation between two characters. There’s a scene in Steve McQueen’s Hunger, which is a seventeen-minute dialogue. It’s an incredible scene. It’s not an argument but still some sort of confrontation. I was interested in scenes like that which are really long and stand out from the rest of the movie. James Schamus, one of my producers, made a film called Indignation, which has a confrontation between two characters, which also influenced the structure of what I was doing. I also just watched the latest episode of Better Call Saul in which there’s a sixteen-minute confrontation, which I thought was pretty remarkable.
What was the first film that made you want to be a filmmaker? To be honest I’m not sure. I got a video camera when I was eleven, and I started playing with it in our backyard, making little movies. It wasn’t that I saw a film and tried to replicate it necessarily. But I do have a strange story…
I had a copy of The Sound of Music in which my father had edited out the Nazis, because he was worried I’d be scared of them as a kid. So I have this strange 40-minute version of the film that ends at the wedding scene… And I always thought that was The Sound of Music, and then in high school I figured out there’s this whole other storyline I never knew existed. I guess that taught me the power of editing! I had to go back and rewatch what I’d seen, and it definitely made me think of the craft more as a viewer.
‘The Assistant’ is available to watch on VOD platforms (including Hulu) as of late July.
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fuckyeahbreagrant · 4 years ago
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shawwillsuffice · 7 years ago
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I and Mr. Shaw describe the plot(?) of “Zarr-Dos,” the strangest short film we saw at the Telluride Horror Show this weekend. I’m considering this a review even though we don’t express any opinions about it one way or the other, because I feel that to pass judgement would be to allow this movie to troll me.
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nightmareonfilmstreet · 7 years ago
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World Of Death Duo Release New Teaser For THIRD WHEEL
New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/world-death-duo-release-new-teaser-third-wheel/
World Of Death Duo Release New Teaser For THIRD WHEEL
“It’s such a different film for us, in terms of style and tone, but that’s what made the project very exciting to everyone involved!” -Daniel Delpurgatorio
Daniel Delpurgatorio and Anthony Williams have joined forces yet again in their latest horror project, Third Wheel. From what we can tell in the latest teaser trailer, the film follows a man (played by Andrew Goetten) and a woman (played by Kristen Magee), who discover that their newfound relationship is being imposed upon by something menacingly pink. The title of the film suggests that a dividing presence is infringing upon their relationship and is there till it gets what it wants. The Third Wheel teaser is visually reminiscent of The Blob (1988) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).
Daniel Delpurgatorio who is known for his short, horror film Body(s) (2015) and Anthony Williams, known for his writing on Dark Hunger (2016) have teamed up with FX legend Robert Kurtzman (From Dusk Til Dawn, Tusk, Pulp Fiction). With Kurtzman on the bill, we can expect some dynamic and awe-inspiring monster makeup. A lot of excitement has been built around the continuing trend for 80’s horror aesthetic in modern horror and it looks like we’ll see just that in Third Wheel.
Daniel Delpurgatorio and Anthony Williams discuss how the festival scene has impacted the making of Third Wheel…
“The festival scene has been changing since we first started submitting films years ago and we wanted to make something that fits nicely into the shifting landscape. We wanted to make something short and sweet, with a fun payoff,”
  “It’s such a different film for us, in terms of style and tone, but that’s what made the project very exciting to everyone involved!”
  Delpurgatorio and Williams will be premiering the film at Celluloid Screams, but if you happen to miss that you can catch Third Wheel at Telluride Horror Show, and Nightmares Film Festival. Head to their site for more information.
Stephen thought the evening was going well when he was invited back to Susan’s place, but he never expected the skeletons in her closet to get in the way.
  Third Wheel Poster
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mdhart68 · 2 years ago
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Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Telluride Horror Show hat.
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