Interview with writer/director Ryan M. Andrews

Interview with writer/director Ryan M. Andrews

December 11, 2015 0 By Jeff Fountain

Recently, we had a chance to talk to writer/director Ryan M. Andrews about his movie Save Yourself while it made its Canadian premiere at The Blood in the Snow Film Festival.

Could you tell me a little bit about your film?

Sure. The film is called Save Yourself and it’s about five women on a road trip who cross paths with a deranged mad scientist. It’s kind of like the road trip gone wrong, similar to The Hills Have Eyes or Wrong Turn, that kind of thing. I wanted to switch it up a bit instead of the usual mutant redneck hillbilly kind of thing, I wanted to bring in the mad scientist character. I grew up with the idea of the mad scientist, Dr. Phibes, Dr. Caligari that sort of thing and it hasn’t been done much lately, other than Human Centipede which is more of a shock kind of story. I wanted to bring back that sophisticated mad scientist. When Vincent Price was doing his thing he was so suave, so calm and I wanted to incorporate that with the road trip gone wrong type of horror film.

Was it always your plan to have such a big cast of well-known names from the horror genre?

It was always my plan to have a big cast, especially because we play the women in horror aspect of it and I didn’t want the fan knowing what was going on right away. As a horror fan, when I watch a horror film within the first five minutes, you know who’s going to live, who’s going to die, you know the order they’re going to die in and who’s going to have the goriest death. So I wanted to have a big cast where anyone could be the sole survivor at the end and you find yourself rooting for different people at different times because everybody was such a likeable character. The fact that we had such a great group of actors play all the roles was never anything that I consciously thought about. I wanted to work with certain people and then others did great auditions and then all of sudden you look at in on paper and you’ve got all of these people who’ve done all of these big genre films so now it’s thsave-yourself-featured-imageis great big ensemble cast of the who’s who in the indie horror scene. It was a big honor when I realized we had that for the film but it was nothing pre-planned.

The combination of Ry Barrett and Elma Begovic in the film made for an incredible disturbing and intimidating couple. What was it like working with them on their characters?

Ry Barrett is a friend of mine, I’ve known him for a while now, in the scene here and over a few beers I pitched him the movie, the character I knew would be great for him and just like that it was done. He is a big presence on screen, not just his size but his character and he really gets into his role, so I wanted something opposite of that. When we paired Elma with Barrett we knew that along with being the opposite of his character, along with being quieter, there had to be this cold, calculating woman. Behind every successful man is this angry, mean woman poking him on the shoulder, directing him to work harder and that’s Elma. No matter how mean or evil Ry Barrett is, the wife who’s poking him on the shoulder, continuously getting him to do more, she’s the one with the whip so you know she’s going to be twice as bad.

How difficult was it to get Sa59Gg-iS4ve Yourself made? 

Every indie film no, every film has problems that arise and it becomes a testament to those involved in how the deal with these problems. I must say, we overcame everything with grace and ease. It was a twelve day shoot and we weren’t doing twenty hour days, we were doing twelve hour days and we stayed with that schedule, we were very disciplined with it and still, things would happen. There was a flood in the basement of the farmhouse we were shooting in, there was a huge rainstorm, and it happened to be on the same night that it was Jessica Cameron’s last day of shooting, we needed to shoot in that basement so six a.m. rolls around and it’s like ok, we need to be shooting in here by the end of the day and so we had to overcome that and we did. The crew was so great, they worked very well together and any problems that arose on set never became an issue. At the end of the day we had the film shot in twelve days, no pickups, no reshoots, everything went great and I’d have to say one of the best film shoots I’ve ever been on.

So what is the big attraction for you when it comes to the horror genre?

I grew up in horror, loving horror. Music wise, my first introduction to music was Alice Cooper and the Welcome to My Nightmare album. It was this record my brother had and I remember listening to it, to the first song Welcome to My Nightmare and that was great but then the second song, Devil’s Food and Vincent Price is in it and Vincent Price is a voice. That really pulled me in because his voice was so calm, so cold, so sophisticated but so evil and so cool and that made me go, I want to know who this is. My dad grew up on horror films, monster films and so he thought that was ok to see, so as I kid I’m watching that, getting into it and my brother and his friends would have copies of Nightmare on Elm St. and Friday the 13th and now as it kid watching horror it became the danger element of it, oh I’m not allowed to be watching this, that even makes it more appealing.

2tNW_mlo    I mean, you watch a movie to escape life, I don’t want to see a movie that’s closely resembling real life. I want to see something that’s a little fantastical, a little crazy, like that could never happen in real life because it’s a movie, it’s fun, it’s make believe. I always thought the horror world was the best for that because when you watch comedy it’s just real life situations that are funny but with horror films you have monsters, you have demons, you have giant battles between heaven and hell and you have all of these things that could never really happen in real life and that was the appeal of it, the fact that it was a fantasy world and I love escaping to that. I was so blown away by the visual aspects of storytelling, it really spoke to me. I’m a writer and director but I don’t consider myself either of those, I consider myself a storyteller and the medium in which I choose to tell my stories is film. I just started writing scripts and I like the collaboration of it, working with all these different people who come together to tell one story. I’ve never veered outside of horror, I’m not afraid to if the opportunity was there and felt right but I have no personal interest in doing anything outside of horror because horror is my life.

Horror fans are a very loyal and committed group. What is it like making films for fans like that?

I think the horror community and the horror fans are the most passionate of fans, kind of related to music. People get into whatever is popular each year except for metal fans. I mean, it’s not like you just spend one year listening to Slayer, if you like Slayer, you like them for life. Metal fans are passionate fans of that genre, they’re always going to be loyal to it and I think horror fans have that same level of loyalty. For me, I’m not interested in the big summer blockbuster and honestly, do people even remember what the big summer blockbuster was say fifteen years ago? No, but if you talk to a metal fan or a horror fan, they remember what was out ten or fifteen years ago. For instance, horror fans have John Carpenter’s Halloween on VHS, then on DVD, then Blu-ray, and then the special thirty fifth anniversary edition comes out and they buy that too because they want it. I don’t know how many copies of Night of The Living Dead I have but there’s a lot because I love horror and every other horror fan shares that same passion, we live everyday like it’s Halloween, we live this life.

I want to thank Ryan for taking the time to talk to us