Michael Mizerany is best known in San Diego as a choreographer, and recently started writing and directing his own plays. Now, Mizerany is trying his hand at screenwriting with his first short film, "Deadfall," screen next Wednesday as part of FilmOut San Diego’s monthly program at Landmark’s Hillcrest Cinemas.
Horror fan
Michael Mizerany loves horror.
"I think the first horror film I remember seeing was 'Frankenstein,'" Mizerany recalled. "My first horror movie I saw in a theater was 'Halloween' and that scared the bejesus out of me. I must've jumped a mile every time The Shape (a.k.a. Michael Myers) came on the screen."
Mizerany still jumps and covers his eyes at horror films. I know because I have sat next to him and delighted in his pitch perfect response to a scary movie. Yet he loves them.
"I think it started when I was a little kid. I was a gay boy in the city, and I spent many a night at home alone, and I watched scary films," Mizerany said.
He also recalls identifying with the characters. "I was always the one who survived. I was the final girl or final boy. And I beat the big bad killer, and I won out. And so I think that's why I love them, because I'm always the winner. I'm always the final girl."
His love of horror developed into a passion for writing horror plays and now movies. He has a sharp eye and wit when it comes to dissecting horror tropes and using them for sport.
"For some reason, I find horror funny. I find if I can be scared and then laugh about it, then I'm better about it," Mizerany said. "But if I can make the audience laugh and then scare the crap out of them, that's also good. I really want to make people think that they're going to see something and then by the end, the whole thing has turned around. You're like, 'oh, that's not what that meant, and that person isn't that person, and that's not what that person's there for.' I feel like if the audience is laughing and they're relaxed, then I can scare them."
That is what he has successfully done in a trio of horror plays that he refers to as his "thrillogy." During the pandemic, I recorded condensed versions of two of those plays for a Cinema Junkie podcast called "Halloween Double Dare."
For his newest short film "Deadfall," Mizerany has taken a small section of the play "Die Already" and crafted it into a screenplay. He has been writing and directing his own plays for a number of years, but he did not feel ready to direct a film.
"I had to find a director, because I don't direct film at all," Mizerany said. "Travis Land loved the script. We cast it and then we found a location. We got funding first. Thank God I have an angel who funded the entire film. So I actually got to pay everyone, which was great. And then we filmed over two days. But one day we had to cancel because (Tropical Storm) Hillary came. And so we had to cancel that day. And then we shot the next week and that was a twelve-hour shoot of all the interior stuff, which was grueling. I found out that film work is hard."
But he managed to turn the film around in a remarkably short time frame, to have it ready to screen next Wednesday at FilmOut's monthly program. Fittingly, it will precede the 1970s, American giallo style thriller "The Eyes of Laura Mars."
He hopes the short can serve as a proof of concept for his feature length screenplay that he wants to get financed and made. Since I have gotten to experience his full plays, I hope the feature film gets made because the short film is really just a teaser for the kind of horror Mizerany can deliver.
