EPISODE BONUS: Queer Horror at the End of the World
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(Please note this is an automated transcription.)
BETH ACCOMANDO
Horror has always been queer.
MICHAEL VARRATI
Horror by its nature is queer because horror is the genre of subversion and otherness. And who understands otherness better than people who are marginalized by society? Who are treated as subversive more than people who are marginalized by society? There is a queerness both in the macro and micro sense inherent in horror that I feel like it has always belonged to us, and we're just kind of leasing it to people who are telling us what they think it should be.
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BETH ACCOMANDO Welcome back to listener supported KPBS Cinema Junkie, I'm Beth Accomando.
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BETH ACCOMANDO
Get ready to talk about queer horror and indie filmmaking with Michael Varrati and Brendan Haley – they are the filmmakers behind a new apocalyptic, supernatural horror tale called Scorch Marks. Their film will have its world premiere at FilmOut, San Diego’s LGBTQ Film Festival plus they will be hosting a panel on Queer Horror and the modern market. We’ll discuss their film and find out what it takes to bring an idea to life on the screen.
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BETH ACCOMANDO I need to take one quick break and then I will be back with filmmakers Brendan Haley and Michael Varrati to discuss Scorch Marks and queer horror.
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BETH ACCOMANDO Welcome back to Cinema Junkie. I’m Beth Accomando. Scorch Marks will be having its world premiere next week at FilmOut, San Diego. Joining me today to discuss the film and queer horror are writer-director Brendan Haley and producer Michael Varrati. When I watched Scorch Marks, it brought me back to pandemic times. It has an end-of-the-world vibe, a single confined setting, a sense of isolation. So I asked Brendan, where did the idea for this come from? And why he wanted to make this film now.
BRENDAN HALEY
The story really started out in the aftermath of pitching a bunch of other projects, but I really was drawn into this idea originally of sort of unknown person walking in the desert, and there's always this force following him or this entity following him. And as everything I tend to do, everything that Michael tends to do in our personal projects, it was always meant to be a queer story, but it needed a little bit more than that. So I think over time coming up with that story during the pandemic and during those years probably is what you're talking about right there and picking up on. It did develop into what you see now. So there's a little bit more story, there's a little bit more backstory. At one point there were two other movies that were included in this cinematic universe, and I was— maybe some call it delusion, but I, I choose to call it ambition. At one point in time, I was trying to pitch all three to be financed and made at the same time. And then obviously when Dekkoo came in and financed us and picked up the movie, we worked really hard to keep everything a little bit more untethered and isolated so each movie could have its own bells and whistles, essentially.
BRENDAN HALEY
But yeah, to bring it back to the pandemic of it all, I think you are clocking me right out the gate by, by noticing that it was definitely started during pandemic years.
BETH ACCOMANDO
The pandemic years had a real-world horror vibe to it that I think we all sort of like were tapping into.
BRENDAN HALEY
Oh, absolutely. And I think there's also something to be said about having lived through an experience like that, but also living as a queer person in everyday life. There is sort of— the big theme of the movie is this cataclysmic storm that is going on everywhere else in the distance but where we actually are. And I think that sort of works really wonderfully with the narrative that queer life is isolated. And, you know, we can use the lens of a pandemic or an apocalypse to highlight that. But there was something very interesting about those two themes and sort of playing in that sandbox for me. So that's where a lot of those ideas come from.
BETH ACCOMANDO
I've described this as a little bit as like end of the world kind of vibe, but you bring some additional elements into this that go beyond just your kind of run of the mill mill end of the world. I don't know how much you want to reveal, but if you want to talk a little bit about the storyline.
BRENDAN HALEY
Yeah. So in short, Scorchmarks is about a man, an unstable, emotionally drained, desperate person named Beckett, who is currently trying to navigate a very bad breakup, for lack of a better term, in social life and becomes a recluse in the fringes of society when, by coincidence, the apocalypse also happens, isolating him further. And then we start to see supernatural elements come into play, like the spirit of his ex-husband starts showing up and tormenting him. Becca, you all right? Why is this all happening to me? Which part?
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All of it. Oh, why not you?Despite the odds, you're still here, right?
BRENDAN HALEY
We have ancient deities from folklore showing up and imposing their own form of terrors or destiny upon him. I leave you to draw your own conclusions when you see the film.
CLIP
Your world is spent. Too many bad choices accumulated. I herald the final choice, one that only few must make. You healed my injuries, didn't you? What are you? A familiar.
BRENDAN HALEY
But there is a lot of elements at play, as you highlighted. And I think at the core of it all is this story of relational trauma. I have had a lot of weird proximity, whether working for queer couples that were bad to each other or being in social spheres with queer couples that were bad to each other. I've had this proximity to a number of relationships where I've seen people behave badly, and I think that's always fascinating for me because in my mind, as queer people, we get to explore non-traditional forms of love and relationship and connection. So how do you mess that up, if that makes sense. And I think that sort of influences the supernatural elements, but in our own unique way.
BETH ACCOMANDO
And you mentioned a deity. And again, I don't want you to give away too much, but talk a little bit about the makeup and the design of this character and who you have playing her, him, them.
BRENDAN HALEY
Absolutely. So Tiamat, I can reveal a little bit about the character. Not too much because again, I want to leave that for the audience to, uh, experience in full on the screen. But Tiamat is this real-world folklore Mesopotamian goddess frequently associated with the creation of the universe and the mother of all monsters. And sort of bringing it back to this idea I talked about previously about 3 movies set up in this cinematic universe of queer horror stories, Tiamat was sort of the anchor for all 3 of them. So that character really influenced a lot of how those stories were shaped, including Scorchmarks. But as with Scorchmarks, when you see it, it's not necessarily a matter of antagonistic. It's a character that sort of exists in this kind of Clive Barker method of thinking of villains, like, or antagonists, traditional antagonists. You have the Cenobites in Clive Barker's work, which are clerical workers, and that's sort of the same tone with Tiamat here. Tiamat's methods maybe are not always the most sound or moral, but Tiamat exists outside of the scope of human existence, so who are we to really judge? But yeah, Tiamat is this real-world character that was brought to me by the way of Dr. Emily Zarka on PBS's, uh, Storied Network.
BRENDAN HALEY
Emily is an amazing professor who has a doctorate in monsters and creature lore and investigates the real-world development of these things that go bump in the night that everybody is fascinated by, whether it be werewolves, vampires, Tiamat. And I came across a video of hers on this particular character and immediately clicked. I felt like it worked really well with the story that I was trying to tell, and Emily came on board as one of our consulting producers and helped us really craft the, the look of this character, this goddess, along with our drag performer Vander Von Odd, who is the first ever winner of the Bully Brothers Dragula. And that makeup and creature effects that you are talking about were really sort of hammered out with all of us, all of our team, but especially our makeup and effects designer and applicator, Mia Tamlin, who comes from many, many different movies and television shows doing creature work, most notably The Manor on Amazon Prime. And it was really just a labor of love working with all of these amazing people, amazing performers, amazing designers, amazing scholars to bring this folklore figure to life.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Now, you mentioned Clive Barker and Cenobites, and I know that you and Michael are both fans of horror. So I did notice that the film had— I don't know if I'd call them Easter eggs, but like little homages to other horror films that you might possibly love. And I didn't know, like, how much you put into that.
BRENDAN HALEY
It is no secret I am a very big fan of Clive Barker's work. Obviously writing this, it felt very akin to Hellraiser or Nightbreed. But in addition to those references, which are very tongue in cheek, I would say, I think at one point we even parody a line, the famous line from Hellraiser, "Angels to some, demons to others." But again, in our own unique way. More than even the horror of it all, a lot of the homages in the movie are from plays and theater. And that's where a lot of the dialogue inspiration comes from. That's where a lot of the tone comes from. I grew up in Los Angeles theater. I worked for a slew of companies here, repertory companies and regional, and I had a really unique opportunity growing up to read and work on productions by Samuel Beckett or different playwrights that have nihilistic tones that really fit into this movie. So when I was writing Scorch Marks, I referenced Samuel Beckett and Clive Barker in particular. Their work sort of has a symbiotic effect with Scorch Marks. There's, there's a lot of darkness, a lot of nihilism, but also a lot of comedy because they're just larger than life in a very unnatural way.
BRENDAN HALEY
It's hard to describe how I sort of pull inspiration from both of these figures, but plays and Clive Barker are definitely the pillars upon which Scorchmarks exists.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Well, you named your character Beckett, and I think there's the line about, "There's nothing funnier than someone else's unhappiness," which I think is a Beckett line. Yes, yes.
BRENDAN HALEY
Endgame in particular. I've had a very unique, many decades long love affair with Endgame. I was fortunate enough to work on multiple productions over the years, but one in particular in 2016, with Center Theater Group here in LA that remounted the show with the living members from the original cast. So I consider myself very lucky to have that experience and sort of take in all of these lofty ideas that Beckett was playing with and in my own small way, create a loving homage to a show that shows up in my life in very bizarre fashions. It's always been there when members of the family have unfortunately passed on. It's been there for very significant life moments of mine. So it made sense to sort of pay my respects in a small way.
BETH ACCOMANDO
And Michael, you produced the film, so talk a little bit about the challenges of making an independent horror film at this particular moment in time.
MICHAEL VARRATI
Well, one of the things that you really look at when making an independent horror film is just how are you going to do it and why this moment. And I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that just because Brendan is my partner, that we work together all the time, but we don't actually. There are many things that we do separately and there are many things we do together. And Brendan had brought up Scorch Marks very early on and it immediately spoke to me. And it was something that I took to my production company co-founder, Brandon Kirby, at June Gloom Productions, because our mission statement is queer horror and queer social commentary pieces. And Brendan wrote a feature that really hits both. This is a social commentary piece. It is a horror piece. It's the kind of thing that we want to get behind. And it was really, really the script that made us feel like, hey, we gotta do this. And luckily, the ability to make it happen came via Dekkoo financing the film, but also through Brendan having a really brilliant script that made someone want to finance it. But as you know, making movies at any time, especially queer movies, is not easy.
MICHAEL VARRATI
And so a lot of it does come from cumulative background of doing this ourselves. We've never really, through June Gloom or Brendan's Lonely Specter's production, had the opportunity to have huge budgets or huge studio backing. We've been very fortunate with the production companies and streamers that we've paired with. But when it comes time to make the movies, we have to kind of pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and do it ourselves. And we all wear many hats. Brendan is a brilliant writer. He is a brilliant director. He's a brilliant production designer. I have produced, I have directed, I have voice acted, I have built the props, he has built the props, we have done the craft services. We are so used to doing it all of ourselves that the challenge when doing a movie like Scorch Marks is how do we do this one ourselves and how do we do it in this moment in time? And it was not without its challenges, but I think had we not a background of making the thing happen, then this thing wouldn't have happened the way that it did. But I do believe in every one of the artists that we worked with in the way that we all just show up for each other.
MICHAEL VARRATI
And you'll find that our cinematographers, yes, shot the movie, but they did more than that. The director and the writer wrote and directed and co-produced the movie, but he did more than that. The producers produced the movie, but we did more than that. This was such a group effort to make sure that Brendan's vision got across the finish line because that's the world we come from. And that's what queer filmmaking should be. And I think that's what independent filmmaking should be. None of us are on the set of a movie of this size because it's just a job. It's also in our heart and we want to see it through. And so, yes, there were challenges, but I feel very lucky that the challenges were met because we had artists who wanted to see this happen.
BETH ACCOMANDO
And in addition to screening your film, both of you are going to be on a panel at FilmOut, uh, Queer Horror in the Modern Market. So what can people expect to have addressed at this panel?
BRENDAN HALEY
Oh, nothing but insulting all of our colleagues. No, I'm kidding. Um, it is, it, I, I think Michael and I can agree, uh, we deal with the nitty gritty, the sometimes very ugly realities of working and pitching creative content and original content in a queer space in this industry. Which is basically just a Russian nesting doll of niche after niche after niche. So the odds are more often than not stacked against us. And I feel as though it is our job whenever given the opportunity to speak to some of the things we go through, some of the things we're able to get across the table and how we were able to do that. Because at the end of the day, it's a miracle when queer content, queer movies, queer television happen in any form. So if we can help someone else out there, horror or queer horror or whatever, across the table, that's the goal in my opinion.
MICHAEL VARRATI
Yeah, and I, I think doing a queer horror panel in San Diego, of course, is very special to me because I've been doing the queer horror panel at San Diego Comic-Con International for close to two decades now. But I think the difference between a panel that you would see at San Diego Comic-Con versus the one that Brendan and I are doing with our colleagues at FilmOut is that is more of a generalized discussion about queer artists' connection to horror and how their horror can— and how that horror connects to their queerness. Whereas this is a roundtable, we will be leading the discussion, but we are talking to and among a group of people who have faced the challenges of trying to sell these things and trying to make these things. I think that we all have stories about taking a pitch somewhere, even up to a place that claims they're looking for queer material, and then when you pitch it, it's like, "Oh, that's a little too queer," or, "That's not the safe queer that we want." Or what's it like when you're trying to present something authentically as an artist and you are being told by somebody who's only looking at your queerness as a commodity?
MICHAEL VARRATI
And every one of the people on this panel that we're doing at FilmOut, we have stories to tell. Brendan and I I know has pitched things that were pushed aside for one reason or another. I've had things that were pushed aside for one reason or another, or we have fought in the room to make something happen. David M. Buer, who's on the panel, is not only a first-time filmmaker at the festival this year, he's also an award-nominated comic book writer who makes queer comics, and he works with the big publishing houses, and I know that he's navigated stuff like that. Vander Van Odd is joining us on the panel, and She certainly, as drag artist who travels the world, has met resistance and how using her drag, she has fought to make it more visible. And I think that it's really important to talk about the challenges at a festival like FilmOut that celebrates both film and the filmmaking process, because it's good to let people know you can do this. It's not always gonna be easy, but you can do it. And that's what we're aiming to do.
BRENDAN HALEY
It's also worth noting Scorch Marks, to tether the film and the conversation with this panel, Scorch Marks wouldn't have happened if not being passed over by a non-queer studio first. It was a completely different story in origin. It was with a studio for about a little less than a year that said that they wanted queer content, and ultimately because it was too gay for them, too queer for them, passed on it. So that inspired a whole rewrite, a bit of soul searching. So I think that speaks very intimately to the experiences Michael and I are talking about. And despite those odds, we still made the movie and it's coming out this year.
MICHAEL VARRATI
So yeah, and it's just as queer as ever.
BRENDAN HALEY
Exactly.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Well, you know, you talk about the film being queer and being too queer for some studios. But at its heart, isn't— hasn't horror kind of always been queer on a certain level? Like, it's always been about being sort of transgressive and about the other. And like, it just seems like it's kind of embedded in its DNA.
MICHAEL VARRATI
Oh, yeah. I mean, if you read or watch or listen to me talk at any point, invariably it comes up where I say the phrase queer horror is in itself sort of an oxymoron because horror by its nature is queer because horror is the genre of subversion and otherness. And who understands otherness better than people who are marginalized by society? Who are treated as subversive more than people who are marginalized by society? There is a queerness both in the macro and micro sense inherent in horror that I feel like it has always belonged to us, and we're just kind of leasing it to people who are telling us what they think it should be.
BETH ACCOMANDO
And you are also, Michael, on the Troma panel every year at Comic-Con.
BRENDAN HALEY
Yes.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Troma has to be the most, like, low-budget outsider studio ever. What do you feel you've learned from them or, you know, are able to use when you are, you know, going out and producing your own films?
MICHAEL VARRATI
Well, whether it's writing and directing a movie of mine or producing someone else's movie, I think what I learned from Troma is that every story does matter. And one of the things that I really appreciated early on, seeing what Michael and Lloyd did with the company, was that they felt like if you got out there and you made your art, it deserved to be seen. Now, they also recognized that sometimes that audience may be in the tens and sometimes maybe in the hundreds, and sometimes it may be in the thousands or the millions, But for somebody, if you get that art finished, it's crucial. And if you as an artist have the conviction to make something, then you deserve the support to get it made. And so from trauma, I really have come to value when an artist like Brendan with Scorch Marks, him telling this story, you know, he had this, this vision that was too queer for one company, but Some folks would've given up. He didn't wanna give up. And to me, that's all I need to know to be like, let's make this happen. And that to me is the Troma spirit, probably even more than what the world considers the Troma spirit of like, you know, the guts and the gags.
MICHAEL VARRATI
It's the raising up and celebration of the artist. I mean, they say it every year in some capacity, it's the celebration of reel, R-E-E-L, independence. But that's what it is. It's putting your whole self behind the art, whether it is as a creator or as a viewer, and supporting it in the moment and always. And so, yeah, I'm grateful to everything I've learned from Troma because I think it's helped me as a producer and as a creator.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Now, if people are not familiar with both of you, you guys do podcasts about horror, documentaries about horror, you make horror films, You present horror films like you love the genre across a lot of places and just embrace it in so many ways. So what is it about the genre that you love so much?
BRENDAN HALEY
Oh gosh, I don't think there is an easy answer to it all because for a number of years growing up, I was very frightened of horror and these icons that we— it's a tale as old as time, as you know, you see the Freddy Kruegers of the world or the Jason Voorhees of the world. On television and they scare you to the core. But then as you get older and you start to get a taste for these things, you start to fall in love with them. I think it's not necessarily those characters in particular, but it's finding your corner of the genre. For me, that's a lot of the movies from the 1970s. A lot of 1970s horror in particular really speaks to me. Uh, Scorchmarks itself, takes inspirations and cues creatively from folk horror of that time, like The Wicker Man or Pendesfenn. And these are movies that have given me a new understanding of queerness in art and how that lives with me, how that lives with me professionally, both, but also personally. I know that Michael's experience also is a little different from that coming from the world of late-night television hosts and getting his taste for movies like that.
BRENDAN HALEY
We both have bonded in our personal life about our deep love of the, uh, Killer Tomatoes movies, repping both you, Beth, as well as, uh, the city of San Diego in full.
MICHAEL VARRATI
Yeah, I think to Brendan's point, there is something about horror that always brings me back for many of the reasons, like what I said earlier, horror's ability to address the subversive, to address the otherness, is appealing. But I think if I'm honest with myself, I grew up specifically during the Reagan era of horror movies. That was the most formative. And that time period when everything was at excess and there was this moral majority trying to dictate what was good and what was not, We were told that this genre was nothing but brain rot, but we know that so many of the movies, even the most populist ones of that era, were reflecting things that were going on at the time. And there's enough of a bad kid streak in me still that when tells— when, when the world tells me you're not supposed to like this, I think to myself, well, I'm gonna anyway, and I'm gonna appreciate this anyway, and I'm gonna champion the trash anyway. Because it's not trash. I think that horror, when really looked at— yes, of course there's the gratuitous and the excessive and the things just made to shock, and that has its own place and its own value.
MICHAEL VARRATI
But this genre consistently over the centuries, when even before the screen, when you look at Gothic literature or whatever, it is the most powerful because you can use that otherness, that lens of the fantastic to talk about all the stuff that nobody wants to address head on because it's too polite in society. But if you do it with a monster, if you do it with gore, you can call out the bad behavior. And that's the thing I think that scares them the most. And I always will love that for that reason.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Can I ask if you can, if either of you can remember the first film that scared you?
BRENDAN HALEY
Oh, not to bring it back to Troma, but I have a very distinct memory of being in, I grew up in Pasadena and there used to be a soda shop in Old Town Pasadena that my family used to go to. And I remember being there having like a burger and fries with my family. It was probably about 6 or 7, I think at the time. And Monster in the Closet was on television.
MICHAEL VARRATI
Looks like we're gonna catch us a little monster. You're not going to—
BRENDAN HALEY
And I remember, for whatever reason, probably because they're eating a burger watching children my age get eaten by a monster—
MICHAEL VARRATI
Oh my God!
BRENDAN HALEY
Absolutely terrified. Nightmares for weeks. Also, the creature design in that movie is grotesque and goopy and, and sticks with you even when you're not really paying attention to the movie. Yeah, that lasted a long time. That particular terror lasted a long time. So thank you, Troma, for distributing that movie right to little baby Brendan.
MICHAEL VARRATI
You know what's funny is I can't quite pinpoint one because I early on was someone who didn't want to engage with horror stuff when I was really young. And then it actually was a USAF all-night screening of Killer Tomatoes. It sort of shifted my focus. And I've told this story many times, but like from that baptism into cult, even though Killer Tomatoes was a comedy—
BRENDAN HALEY
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
MICHAEL VARRATI
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! I was able to understand there was a different kind of movie, and I was fascinated by that sense of the forbidden. But I do feel like early, early on, before I completely understood what they were doing, When I saw the first Evil Dead, that original Evil Dead, that movie's so— —dirty. And I probably saw it on VHS, where it was like a muddy print. And so it felt like you were really seeing something horrifying that you shouldn't be seeing. I remember there were a couple of sleepless nights. So I'll give it to Sam Raimi for that one.
BETH ACCOMANDO
And Michael, you've had your film screened at FilmOut before. What brings you back to the festival? I know Michael McQuiggan, the programmer, loves horror. So is that part of the— the appeal of coming back here?
MICHAEL VARRATI
You know, I am so thrilled anytime I get the chance to come back to film out. What Michael does with the festival is great. He's also been very good to me as a filmmaker and to my production company by programming things that we have been behind as well. Of course, I want to come back to the festival to support Scorch Marks and Brendan and this amazing thing that he's done. We also, through June Gloom, produced David Buer's short film Get Into the Spirit. So I feel doubly proud to be at the fest this year. But what What keeps me coming back to FilmOut over and over again, not just the selfish reasons of being an alumni and getting that rush of getting to screen your things, is that it truly is a festival that you can tell loves movies, that loves filmmakers, and feels like family. I really do not say that lightly. When you do this, especially as an indie filmmaker, you travel to a lot of places, and it's always great to have your movies screen, no question. But the places that you go that really feel like coming home are few and far between.
MICHAEL VARRATI
And it always feels like coming home when we get to come to FilmOut.
BRENDAN HALEY
I have to reiterate exactly what Michael just said. There is a quality about FilmOut that we both have had the opportunity to work with many festivals over the years, queer and horror and beyond. And there is something incredibly special about playing a festival or simply just attending a festival that champions artists first and whatever they need to succeed. One of my fondest memories was, uh, when Michael and I went down for his film a couple years back, There's a Zombie Outside. We had a line around the block. Yeah, for people who wanted to see this movie, and people still talk about it in San Diego and still come up to us when we are down visiting the city, asking questions about it. And you don't get that kind of homegrown quality from just any festival. That, that takes work. And I think what McQuiggan and the entire programming team behind FilmOut have done is cultivate this space that is safe but also celebratory, and that is worth its weight in gold these days. All right.
BETH ACCOMANDO
Well, I want to thank you both very much for talking about Scorch Marks and queer horror and FilmOut.
MICHAEL VARRATI
My pleasure. Thank you, Beth.
BETH ACCOMANDO
That was Micheal Varrati and Brendan Haley. Their film Scorch Marks will have its world premiere at FilmOut.
That wraps up another bonus edition of KPBS listener supported Cinema Junkie. If you enjoy the podcast, then please share it with a friend because your recommendation is the best way to build an addicted audience. You can also help by leaving a review.
Till our next film fix, I’m Beth Accomando your resident Cinema Junkie.
