Werebum was a grueling experience behind the camera- the production literally spanned nine months from the first weekend of shooting until the last, and the cast, crew and script were all in constant flux as the months wore on. Here's two different perspectives on Werebum, from its director Jay Holloway and cinematographer Torey Haas:
Jay Holloway:
"Werebum is no doubt one of the weirdest films I’ve worked
on. With no script and a film crew that ultimately consisted of myself, DP Torey Haas and star/special effects creator Ricky Hess, it taught me a lot about filmmaking and that
I could bring a group of people, whom I now call my good friends, together to make
a fun movie!
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| From left to right: Nathan DeRussy, Torey Haas, Jay Holloway, Steven Fichtel and Ricky Hess |
Werebum, or Curse of DA Werebum as it became affectionately known behind the scenes, is an homage to one of my
favorite directors Frank Henenlotter. It follows rising executive Mick
Feathers (Ricky Hess) after he gets bitten by a deformed man-creature in an abandoned parking lot and slowly transforms into a bum-like monster.
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| Ricky Hess applies the Werebum make-up to Robert Thompson. |
Werebum was shot on weekends over the span of nine months, which at the
time I thought would not interfere with any of the crew members' personal lives.
However, it didn’t work out that way. At the time I was single and thus had a lot of free time to devote my
weekends to making a movie. Torey, on the other hand, became annoyed with the
film’s staggering production commitment and the effect it had on his personal life. At times I would
call him up and say “Hey T-Man, do you want to bring your date to the set this
weekend and shoot some scenes for Werebum?" I could almost hear the pain in his voice over not wanting to
drive down to Georgia State University and spend his weekend shooting but as a true
friend he always made the sacrifice to help me finish the movie.
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| Ricky and Jay goofing off |
Working with Ricky Hess was a blast! He showed great
dedication in helping out with the production and he was always cracking jokes to keep us
from loosing our minds. He would drive a hour and a half from Calhoun to
Atlanta to help out, and I couldn’t have asked for a better actor and friend.
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| Keyla McClure (First Date) was the only actress brave enough to set foot on the Werebum set. |
At times a few other friends would drop by to get a laugh at the
production of the film like Brandon Jolley (who got trapped in the elevator
while filming a scene with Frank Fuller and my brother Corey Holloway), Matt
Wong, Eddie Mattison, Keyla McClure, Rickey Boynton, Hsiang-Ming Wen, Brian Hardison, Nick Lauinger and Steven Fitchel.
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| Rickey Boynton can't believe what he's gotten himself into. Most of his scenes were later cut because at Jay's own admittance "they don't make any sense." |
I remember feeding everyone nothing but Pizza Mia (the
poor man’s pizza, as Torey and Ricky would call them) and Big K grape soda for
lunch because it was all that I could afford. I switched the menu a couple of times, with the most memorable experience being when Nathan DeRussy, my friend and one of Werebum's lead actors, tried
ordering Domino’s pizza only to end up accidently calling a sex chat line. Afterwards he was bombarded with trashy text messages and advertisements, and he had to call his service provider to get his number blocked to stop them.
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| The end result of a Pizza Mia and Big K diet. Ugh. |
In the end I was overall satisfied with the way the film
turned out and I got a chance to make a fun movie with my
friends!"
Torey Haas:
"Werebum is a really weird movie. It's been recut multiple times by now, and there's whole scenes and subplots on the cutting room floor. The very first cut of Werebum was something like 40 minutes long (I thankfully never saw it), and the version we screened at the MonsterBuster Film Festival was 20 minutes. We got it down to 16 minutes for the encore screening at GSU, and this current Grindhouse-style cut on YouTube (which I think is the best version) is about 13 minutes long. When I watch it now it's very apparent to me that there was never a complete script during production, and I remember getting really frustrated with Jay while we were shooting because he was incredibly disorganized.
Still, I look back on the experience very fondly. Werebum was one of two movies (the other was First Date) that really solidified MonsterBuster Entertainment as a team, and Jay has grown leaps and bounds as a director since then; comparing Werebum to his follow-up film Crowscare (both as a movie and as a production experience) is like comparing night and day. I also learned a lot as a cinematographer shooting Werebum; while I don't want to pursue cinematography as a career (I'll leave that up to Nick) I never would have been able to shoot Crowscare, Tilt or Katelyn Brammer's Harmony at the level I did without the experience I earned on Werebum. I'm excited to return to cinematography later this month for Jay's next project Werehooker, a sort-of sequel to Werebum. Yes, you read that right.
All in all, without Werebum there never would have been Crowscare, Mario and Luigi, The Red Herring trailers or Making the Cut, and we certainly wouldn't be in pre-production on Invasion of the Undead. For this reason at the very least I'm proud of Werebum and it's place in MonsterBuster history. Oh, and looking back that salt water prank was pretty awful; I hope no one really drank that."
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| Rickey Boynton, Jay Holloway, Torey Haas and Eddie Mattison bond as shooting draws to a close. |
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