PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SGA-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Hundreds of Beavers being covered here wouldn’t exist.
It’s my favorite time of year! No, not Halloween or Christmas. My other favorite time! It’s Fantasia International Film Festival time! And just like always, the fest if chock full of goodies for me.
My next interview for this year’s fest is with Mike Cheslik and Ryland Tews, (both of Lake Michigan Monster – 2018), the filmmakers and co-writers behind the silent slapstick action/adventure flick, Hundreds of Beavers.
In this 19th century, supernatural winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.
To celebrate Hundreds of Beavers playing at Fantasia this year, I chatted with both Mike and Ryland via zoom about how they met, the inspiration behind the film, what’s up next, and more!
PopHorror: I watched Hundreds of Beavers last night and I had a lot of fun with it so I’m super excited to speak with you both. You guys have worked on several projects together. How did you two meet?
Mike Cheslik: We met in high school. Oh boy, we could tell the actual story of being in mass comm.
Ryland Tews: Oh sure.
Mike Cheslik: We went to high school in the Milwaukee area, in the suburbs. And we met in a class… No, it wasn’t called mass comm.
Ryland Tews: Oh, no, we did digital music.
Mike Cheslik: There was a class at that high school called digital music. Was that a full semester of a class called digital music? Looking back, that was a waste of time. We got partnered to make digital music together and I said, “I just hate making music so much. I just hate what a pure artform this is. I’d rather do a much more convoluted art form. Who in this room could be my partner?” And Ryland said, “I’m also bad at digital music and if the two of us got together, maybe we could create something that wasn’t a digital music piece at all.” Oh, you know what happened? You had an unfinished film in high school.
Ryland Tews: Well, yeah, that’s true. And Mike was already a movie guy. And then our paths crossed. Was that junior year?
Mike Cheslik: He had a secret movie that he hadn’t told anyone about. It was like an hour long. It was like a feature, but it was in high school. It was called Dark Chocolate, and then I had a movie I’d made on video, like these mini-DVD videos, and mine was called Death by Cookie. Ryland was like, “I’m interested in your work, Death by Cookie,” and I was like, “I’ve got to see this Dark Chocolate.” Then we watched each other’s movies and then we wound up making a promotional video for the principal of our high school and we made it funny, and that just started a series of videos that we would make together. During college – we went to different colleges – we kept working together, NYU and UWM. Now after college, we’ve done two features together.
PopHorror: That is amazing. I love that you guys met in high school and look at you now! What inspired Hundreds of Beavers and how did the project come about?
Mike Cheslik: Probably we had a lot of ideas, but you sort of pick the idea that fits your resources that you feel like you could do. And Ryland is willing to do a lot of things physically that other people aren’t willing to do.
Ryland Tews: Yeah, and again, it’s just one of those things where it’s like what could we possibly do that other people aren’t doing? So like Lake Michigan Monster, no one’s going to do this black and white grainy 16mm esthetic because it looks like crap. Everyone else is doing this nice color 4K whatever. Let’s do the complete opposite thing and that was the thinking for Lake Michigan Monster. We said, “Well, they liked Lake Michigan Monster I guess, so let’s do another black and white movie, and this time let’s make it a slapstick winter epic with no talking. No one’s going to do this!”
Mike Cheslik: We have all these friends from Wisconsin going up there and they’re down to like shoot it in the snow
Ryland Tews: We’re all from up there anyways. We just call up our buddy who is more of a hearty, blue-collared guy who is willing to get into a beaver outfit and fall down in the snow, and he can take it. So basically, we had some actual film professionals on the movie but for the most part, all the people you see on screen are just our friends from grade school, high school, college.
Mike Cheslik: The other thing about Beavers is that you can swap in people without having to arrange the cast. The shoot was 12 weeks but if it’s all Ryland and beavers, then it can just be a rotating group of favors coming through, but Ryland’s the only one that has to be consistent except for the brief scenes with Doug (Mancheski – Appleton 2015), and Olivia (Graves), and Wes (Tank – StoryRaps 2021), which only took 3-4 days to shoot. It’s like the writing was built around logistics, and around the resources.
PopHorror: You’re right. It is nice to see something different. I went in completely blind. I hadn’t watched any trailers or read anything about it so it was really nice to see something really different. How did you convey your vision to your cast and crew?
Mike Cheslik: Boards. It was all storyboarded and we were holding the boards on set at all times.
Ryland Tews: Mike just drew all these boards. We had no script. There were like three binders full of boards so at any time we could show the cast and crew like, “This is what we’re doing! Flip through the pages because this is what we’re doing today.” So they could visually see like, “Okay, I got it.” Then we would shoot during the day, and then at night Mike would bring the footage immediately into the edit and start editing. So we would see, “Oh okay. I guess that made sense what we were doing today in the woods.”
Mike Cheslik: And it helped us earn trust from our buddies to have a plan so we weren’t being artistic or creative on set, it was just doing the work. If you have a plan and everyone says, “Oh they look like they know what they’re doing. There’s the big binder full of boards,” then people will put up with cold, weird temperatures. The days didn’t get too crazy long because the sun went down at 3pm, but it was still a hard shoot. You need to have that trust from your team and the boards were very helpful. Obviously, we had great people. Our buddies, but also even with your friends, you have to earn their trust.
Ryland Tews: Yeah!
PopHorror: Hundreds of Beavers has had a very successful festival run. I’ve seen nothing but rave reviews. It has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, which is pretty rare. When I posted online that I was watching this, people are super pumped for this movie. How does that feel?
Mike Cheslik: The reward of people reacting has been wonderful and it’s motivating during the shoot, so having things like the online comments or festival reactions, we’d experienced some of that with Lake Michigan Monster. It becomes a motivating thing in your head during the shoot, so in that way, all these people that have public reactions, are helping the filmmakers.
Ryland Tews: Oh, yeah. Totally. All the reactions from Beavers now have been amazing. We worked very, very hard on it but still it’s so nice to see that everyone… Obviously, other people work very, very hard on their movies too. It’s nice that people can see what we see and we set out to do a certain thing and I think we achieved it pretty well. It’s nice that the general public sees that as well and has been reacting to it and loving it, and have been coming up to us after screenings at film fests and just being so enamored with it. So that makes it all worthwhile really. It’s been terrific.
PopHorror: I think it played last year at the film festival here in Phoenix and some friends went. They were talking about it for days. Word of mouth goes a long way.
Mike Cheslik: That festival rocks! Phoenix rocks! And that was really fun.
Ryland Tews: Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
PopHorror: What is up next for you?
Mike Cheslik: We’re going to do something with… We’ve made a development, a technological development called color. And talking. We’re going to add color and talking to the next film and will have a lot more kung fu.
PopHorror: Just one last question for you both. What is your favorite scary movie?
Mike Cheslik: In high school, Evil Dead 2 blew my mind, and then more recently, we hadn’t seen Dead Alive until we were a little older. Dead Alive blew my mind.
Ryland Tews: I’ll say, and nobody ever brings it up, but I love Signs! I love Signs, especially now since people are now saying that aliens are, in fact, real. But I love Signs because it’s very spooky and atmospheric. And when that alien walks across the screen with the found footage look, and it appears, it’s so jarring and gives you a heart attack.
Thank you to Mike and Ryland for taking the time to speak with us. Hundreds of Beavers is currently in its festival run.
