Dead bodies, Paris Hilton, and a thousand No’s — this is how KILLER MOVIE happened. by Jeff Fisher They don’t cover this in film school: sometimes your first feature gets born in a frozen cabin in the woods, fueled by fear, a very good dog, and strangers who really want to tell you how their relatives died unbelievably brutal deaths. For me, it was February in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. 17 degrees below zero. No cell service. No internet. Just me, my dog, howling wind, a ren

by Jeff Fisher I still get PTSD driving past that old Agency building on Wilshire Blvd. It was 1994, and I was making $325 a week as an assistant at one of Hollywood’s major talent agencies. My mornings looked like this: arrive, make sure the call list — two hundred names deep — was updated, and get ready to roll calls for what felt like the rest of my natural life. The occasional stapler got hurled across the office to get someone’s attention. The vibe was The Devil Wears Pr

by Jeff Fisher I arrived in Los Angeles the way most people do: broke, optimistic, and dangerously underinformed. I had two phone numbers in my wallet. One belonged to a game show publicist whose Dad played poker once a week with my Dad back in South Florida. The other was a young associate producer I'd met on a show I'd PA'd on— a warm, funny young woman that might best be described as a Long Island Princess with absolutely zero interest in sugarcoating anything. She picked

by Jeff Fisher My living room looked like the inside of a UPS truck. Movers were coming Tuesday. I was leaving for a shoot in Chicago on Wednesday — a thriller that had its own set of complications, including the fact that until very recently, it had a different director. This job came in the middle of moving and I had a lot of packing to do. And at the moment, plenty of production hurdles I needed to help solve. Meanwhile, a friend of mine went out to dinner on a Friday nigh

How to get inspiration from the things that scare you the most.