A GRIP'S TRUNK, A RED CARPET, AND THE WORST THING I EVER READ IN THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

How I Got My First Feature Film Made (Part 2)

by Jeff Fisher

You can read Part 1 of this story here.

After a thousand “No’s,” a last-minute financing miracle, and some casting luck, I landed in Minneapolis ready to shoot my first feature film.

There was just one problem: the snow — the entire reason we picked Minneapolis — was gone. “Dead of Winter” was going to need a new name. But that turned out to be the least of my production hurdles.

TWENTY-TWO LOCATIONS, TWENTY DAYS

First order of business: scout locations for a twenty-day shoot, which, looking back at some of my more recent schedules, sounds kinda luxurious.

We did catch one awesome break early on. The Coen Brothers had been prepping a movie in Minnesota and ended up relocating it to Michigan, which meant their local A-list crew suddenly became available. We lucked out and scooped up a bunch of them.

Our headache was the school — one of the movie’s main locations, and where the big final showdown/who-is-this-masked-killer-anyway? reveal was to take place. The script needed a location with a “boiler room” that doubled as the killer’s lair, a hockey rink, a shop class with a buzz saw, maze-like hallways, a pool, and a cafeteria kitchen that read as scary at night. One school, all of that.

Turns out that school doesn’t exist. Between actual school schedules and our budget, we ended up shooting at six different schools and cutting it together to look like one campus. One school for the lair. One for the hockey rink. One for the exterior. You get the idea.

By the end of the shoot we’d racked up 22 locations in a 20-day schedule. I remember thinking I wanted to smack the screenwriter around for doing this — except the screenwriter was looking back at me from the mirror. Lesson learned: know what you’re actually asking of your own production before you write it.

SUMMER CAMP WITH A KILLER ON THE CALL SHEET

The best surprise of the whole shoot was that the cast just... really seemed to like each other. It had almost a summer camp energy from day one.

Day one of shooting, we started with the school exterior — Paul’s character Jake arriving and meeting Gloria Votsis’s character Keir. Watching that scene come together, I remember thinking: we might actually have something special here. It just flowed.

Torrey DeVitto arrived a few days after everyone else — she’d been sensational in her audition for the character of Phoebe, and Paul Wesley had already clocked how good the cast chemistry was before he’d even met her. The first scene with Torrey was at our diner location, a few days into production. It was pretty clear, pretty fast, that Paul and Torrey had, uh, hit it off.

About a week into shooting, I was down at the front desk of our Marriott, asking directions to the nearest CVS for dog treats for my Jack Russell Chase, when I saw Paul heading out to grab food with Torrey. When Torrey excused herself to the restroom, I asked how it was going.

He looked at me and said, “I think I’m going to marry that girl.”

A year later, he did. And not long after that, they were co-stars on “The Vampire Diaries.”

PROTECT THE VIBE

Here’s one hard lesson that came the first few days of the shoot.

One of our actresses — coming off a supporting role on a big, splashy TV hit, our swing at a bigger name in the cast — arrived. She didn’t seem happy. It started with the trailers. We didn’t have the budget for the tricked-out, A-list kind. And we were shooting in Minnesota — and unlike Los Angeles, this was not a town where you can just order another bunch up. When the trailers weren’t cutting it, our solution was a rented house near set with bedrooms and a common area the whole cast could use. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was what we could actually afford.

The trailer complaint didn’t stay a trailer complaint. It got back to me that she was going around to other cast members airing that grievance, and others. Her reps started calling constantly. And the thing that really got me: we’d had this great, easy, summer-camp vibe running through the whole cast until she arrived, and it visibly shifted.

We had a full schedule and no room to lose momentum, so between takes I huddled with the producers, and we made the call: we had to part ways before shooting any more scenes with her. This was my first feature. She had a hit show on her resume. I did not have a hit show on mine. But I trusted what I’d seen with my own eyes on set, and it wasn’t heading in a direction I liked. The producers called her rep and parted ways. I went back to figuring out how to make a shop-class buzz saw look convincingly terrifying. We’d already shot her scenes, which meant recasting and reshooting.

It wasn’t easy. But, ultimately, it was the right decision.

Her replacement, Cyia Batten, had been one of our top choices from the very beginning — a former Pussycat Doll who’d since proven she could act, with credits on the “Star Trek” reboot and Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” Cyia played our villainous reality producer, someone genuinely unpleasant on the page and genuinely the nicest person on set. She knocked her first scene out of the park, and the ship felt righted immediately.

Small confession on that character: she was based on a real, actual, Douchey (with a capital D) producer I’d worked with on a reality show — some of her lines were direct lifts from things I’d heard him say. Taking a page from the Taylor Swift playbook before I even knew that was a playbook, I worked my frustrations with him straight into the script. When guys auditioned for the role as written, it played too broad. We flipped the character to a woman, and suddenly the comedy landed. Or maybe Cyia was just that good.

THE APOLOGY I STILL OWE ROB AND KALEY

Our six-school Frankenstein location also came with a pool, where Kaley’s character Blanca and Robert Buckley’s character Nik were supposed to meet one of the creepy coaches who may or may not be the killer. It would’ve been one of the few scenes where we saw some skin, and honestly, it would’ve been a great trailer moment — Rob and Kaley had both been training and dieting to shoot it.

The whole time, I fully intended to shoot it. I figured we’d find the time somewhere.

Then a stunt sequence with Al Santos — the killer chasing his character from the gym, through the school and into the cafeteria kitchen — ran long, the sun started coming up, and I kept hearing that students would be arriving soon. I talked it over with Dino, my DP and friend, and it was clear: pulling off the pool scene too was too big a swing, this late, on this schedule.

I told Rob and Kaley we were cutting it. That conversation sucked. I still regret it. If I could do it over, I would.

A GRIP’S TRUNK SAVED THE DAY

The killer’s mask arrived from Los Angeles the same morning we were scheduled to shoot his first scene — the cheerleading coach, played by Jennifer Murphy, meeting the killer alone in an empty shop classroom.

We tested it on camera. It didn’t work. I was aiming for the iconic register of the “simple” masks in “Halloween” or “Scream” or “Friday the 13th” — no offense to the very talented effects team who built it. If we’d had another few days, or if I’d known then what I know now about giving hyper-specific visual references, we might have fixed it. But it needed to work that morning.

One of our grips said, “I have a mask in my trunk left over from a Halloween party.” It was a plain white theater mask. We stretched a piece of pantyhose over it, paired it with the killer’s gas station repairman uniform, and put it on camera.

It actually looked right. That’s what we shot.

I MISSED THEM BEFORE WE EVEN WRAPPED

Honestly, the thing I’m proudest of about “Killer Movie” isn’t a single scene — it’s the cast. They got along, they brought real, honest work to every character, and they made a genuinely hard schedule fun. We’d watch clips together between setups for reference.

For example, in Halloween, I’d pitch that what made that movie scary isn’t just Michael Myers — it’s that you believe Laurie Strode and her friends are actually fighting for their lives. They were terrific actors who really sold it. Everyone took that note and ran with it. There’s a shot of Torrey DeVitto running from the killer outside our mini-mart location where I was genuinely scared for her. She sold it that completely.

In Kaley’s case, she was patient enough to watch clips from “The Poseidon Adventure” with me for inspiration for Blanca’s final escape. She too nailed it.

On the last night of shooting, I was proud of what we’d pulled off as a team — and a little sad it was over. That cast had become a real friend group that hung out together. I was going to miss seeing them every day.

CASSIAN ELWES AND THE RED CARPET

At the time, I was repped at William Morris — but in the non-scripted department, because my credits were still almost entirely reality TV. Reality still felt like the red-headed stepchild of the industry back then, and I didn’t know many people who’d made the jump from reality to features. So when I asked my agents to introduce me to Cassian Elwes, a WMA agent with a serious reputation for selling indie films, I honestly didn’t know what to expect.

He screened the movie. He said yes to helping. It felt enormous — the kind of thing where you can’t stop yourself from fantasizing. What if a studio likes it? What if this is the thing that actually gets me directing movies for a living? Cassian introduced me to Brad Krevoy, a sales agent and producer, and his senior sales agent Francisco Gonzalez. (Small footnote for the universe having a sense of humor: fifteen years later, Brad’s company MPCA would produce two features I directed, “The Image of You” and “The Stranger in My Home.”)

Two months after that, we got the news: “Killer Movie” would premiere on opening night of the Tribeca Film Festival.

The timing could not have been better. Kaley’s pilot, “The Big Bang Theory,” had just been picked up by CBS and was already looking like a hit. Leighton’s brand-new show, “Gossip Girl,” was too. When Leighton hit the step and repeat opening night at Tribeca in a dress that could’ve walked straight off that show, the flashes were firing. The whole cast was, frankly, ridiculously good-looking, and it didn’t hurt one bit. Standing in that press line, knowing a sold-out theater was about to see this movie for the first time — it was surreal. Wow, wow, wow.

And then — even better news — a distributor was interested. Smaller company, but genuinely into the movie, wanting to put it out on Halloween that year.

“Wow, wow, wow” turned into “Yes, yes, yes.”

THE WORST THING I EVER READ IN THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Keep in mind: this is May of 2008. The stock market was about to fall off a cliff. And it did.

Back then — before everything moved online — I was still a physical-trades guy, reading the Hollywood Reporter and Variety every morning, hungry to find out what was going on in the business. That’s how I found out, in October of 2008, right before our release, that the company that bought our movie had gone bankrupt.

I remember skimming the story and thinking, huh, that’s a similar name to our distributor. Then: wait, that’s not similar. That’s the exact same name. Then: you have got to be f*ckin’ kidding me. The financial crisis was everywhere in the news that fall, but this was the first time it hit somewhere that wasn’t abstract — it hit my kitchen table.

I pitched hard to the company that ended up buying the bankrupt distributor’s library, trying to sell them on how these young actors were clearly on the rise. It didn’t matter. They were a straight-to-DVD outfit, and that’s what “Killer Movie” became. No theatrical release. At least we’d had that one big screen at Tribeca, a packed house, and most of the cast in the room. That part was real, and it was awesome. The following year, Paul Wesley landed “The Vampire Diaries” and became a bona fide TV star in his own right.

With the library sold off to a Canadian DVD company, my dreams of a wide theatrical release quietly evaporated. And I found myself, once again, needing to take whatever job I could get — not unlike Jake, the character I’d written. That job was back in reality TV, shooting the first episodes of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

So: from a Tribeca red carpet to a parking lot at Lenox Mall in Atlanta, waiting on a housewife who shall remain nameless, two hours late for a Day One lunch scene. I stood there watching the clock, seriously questioning my life decisions. I’d poured all my actual, real frustrations about reality television into that script — and here I was, back in it, amplified. I’d thought getting a feature in the can would open new doors. It did, eventually. Just never on the timeline, or in the order, you’d expect.

Like the song says… I got knocked down. I got up again. Eventually I got hired to direct another reality-adjacent movie for Lifetime, ironically titled “Killer Reality,” where I met Parker Young and other actors I still love working with today. That led to another movie. And, luckily, more after that.

What I Learned:

→ Protect the vibe at all costs. Recasting that actress was nerve-wracking and expensive, but it was the right call on my first feature — and it’s still the right call now. Trust what you’re actually seeing on set, not what’s on someone’s resume.

→ Some regrets teach you forever. I still wish we’d shot that pool scene. Now I know: when it really matters, you push through and find the time.

→ Solutions are everywhere — even in a grip’s trunk. That pantyhose mask worked because we stayed open to a weird answer instead of a perfect one.

→ Cast chemistry is everything. You want it to feel like throwing a dinner party where everyone actually gets along great. That energy is on the screen, every time.

→ External forces will wreck your plans, and that’s not on you. A global financial crisis taking down your distributor two weeks before release isn’t a filmmaking mistake. It’s just filmmaking.

The journey isn’t a straight line. It’s a series of knockout punches and getting back up — Tribeca one month, a mall parking lot in Atlanta a few months later. Every bit of it ends up in the next thing you make.

If you’d like to watch “Killer Movie: Director’s Cut” on me, click here.

Need help navigating the industry?

Whether you’re prepping for a pitch, an audition, a big meeting, or a job interview in a genre you’ve never tackled before — I offer one-on-one coaching and consulting sessions. Reach out at reeltalkwithjeff.com and let’s get you ready.

Jeff Fisher is a director and writer whose credits include Paramount Pictures’ “The Stranger in My Home” and “The Image of You,” Hallmark’s highest-rated film of the year “My Christmas Love,” and reality hits spanning from “The Simple Life” to “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.” Visit www.jefffisherdirector.com to see his work and www.reeltalkwithjeff.com for more industry insights. @jefffisher_insta

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