PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Holy shit, The Cramps: A Period Piece so fucking good! Premiering at this year’s Fantastic Fest, The Cramps: A Period Piece is a dark horror comedy – and literally a piece about periods – about a young woman who’s dealing with debilitating menstrual cramps while trying to fit in at her new job at a beauty salon and landing a date with a boy. It’s campy and witty and is the perfect vehicle for newcomer Lauren Kitchen (Agnes Applewhite) and writer/director Brooke H. Cellars in her feature film directorial debut.
Agnes defies her strict family by working at a salon, but her newfound independence is challenged when her menstrual cramps manifest as actual monsters, merging her real and nightmare worlds.
To celebrate the film’s premiere, I chatted with Brooke about what inspired her, casting, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I loved The Cramps: A Period Piece so much. You perfectly captured what it’s like to have a period and how much it so fucking sucks.
Brooke H. Cellars: Thank you! Wonderful!
PopHorror: I really felt that. I thought, that’s exactly what it’s like. What sparked the idea for the film?
Brooke H. Cellars: The idea for the film came from a little joke saying, “What if we had a period piece movie but it was about actual periods, about menstruation?” I thought that was funny but then I was like, well, maybe it could be an actual thing. The reason being was because for the majority of my life, I had endometriosis from when I was a teenager up until I was 40 and it was like a creature eating me from inside and taking over my life completely. I didn’t get to live an actual life. I waited tables for 20 years because I tried to get a real job. I had to miss so many days because I was in pain all the time. I grew up in a very religious, traditional family. You couldn’t even talk about periods. My mom wouldn’t take me to the gynecologist. It was just fucking crazy. I knew that I wanted to tell this story because it’s such a huge part of my life and my existence and kind of almost stopped me from living my life. As soon as I decided to finally get mad enough to figure out what the hell is wrong with me, that’s when my life started developing. I got to go to school. I got to start making movies and I was so grateful. In dealing with this fucking monster, I got to finally be unsuppressed and just come out into the world as myself and get to be the person that I finally wanted to be. I wanted to connect with people and make sure this doesn’t happen to other people and make sure they can talk about periods whenever the fuck they want. It’s so stupid. Like something so natural and that happens to every woman worldwide. Every body with a uterus bleeds and it’s okay. It’s okay to talk about. Don’t suffer in silence just because you have this instilled shame put upon you for no reason and something you can’t even control.
PopHorror: I love that. I have to say that I’m lucky being postmenopausal and if just kind of stopped. I’ve had to miss work and events. I liked how you said it’s like a creature eating you from the inside out because it felt like a band wrapped around me. And yes, it’s natural, but it’s so hard to talk about. Not everybody understands and it makes it a lot harder to talk about and people don’t take you seriously. Was there anything that you were adamant about keeping in the film, no matter what?
Brooke H. Cellars: Hmm… With my family, I wanted to tell the truth of how my family is because I grew up thinking I had a normal family. Growing up as an adult and self-reflecting and everything and why am I like I am, realized how not normal my family was and how growing up, it kind of instilled things in me that I don’t want to be. Like I don’t want to be afraid of things and having all this anxiety and OCD stems from the fact that I couldn’t do anything. I was always ashamed. The way my parents were, I wanted to put that out into the world because for a long time, they kept me in a box and kept me suppressed in not being able to speak my mind. Now that I can, I want to tell the truth about how I grew up and how it really is in my house. The performance is over because this is what really went on so I really wanted to put the fact that my dad died and my family still lives up to his traditional values and doesn’t know that my mother can do all the things that she wants to do now because my dad’s dead. He’s not here to tell her what to do, because I know she’s always wanted to do things, but she doesn’t. She puts him up on a shrine. My sister died the year after and that was her favorite. It’s like they’re not there but anything that I do, it doesn’t matter. Everybody else is always going to be better than me and I have to live up to those values, or you get the cold shoulder, just like my dad used to do to me.
PopHorror: The entire cast is just superb, but Lauren Kitchen is the standout. I couldn’t find a lot about her online. It looks like this is her first film.
Brooke H. Cellars: This is her first film ever!
PopHorror: I’m just in awe because she was amazing! What was casting like?
Brooke H. Cellars: So, I knew Holiday, Teddy, and Laverne were all written already because I worked with them before and I wanted them to be in the film, so all those parts were written for them. The rest of the cast, we had open auditions. Every part was open to any gender, any ethnicity. Even if it said Agnes is a female, I wanted anybody to be able to play them. They just had to be around the age for this. That was my only stipulation. We had in-person auditions for the first time. I’d never had in-person auditions. Those are really fun. We had them at the local library and we had a bunch of people come. We also had video auditions. We were going to cast Agnes as somebody else but that fell through. Something happened and that person couldn’t do it and so we had a callback with Lauren because she just stood out as me in my 20s. That’s how I was. It’s so funny, even my husband says that Lauren is little Brooke, like y’all are just alike in real life. She is me. When we did a callback, I still wasn’t sure about casting, but she said something to where she actually connected with the story from her own family life and I was like, “You got it!” She was such a joy to direct because she was just there. She was the one actress that was there every day. Like every single day that we shot, she was there the whole time. Never complained. She was just so in it. You could tell that she wanted to do it, she wanted to grow, and she wanted to be part of this movie so much. She was so wonderful to work with and so much fun. She’s adorable, on and off screen. She’s just wonderful.
PopHorror: I love that, and I was so enthralled with her that I can’t wait to see what she has coming up. I hope that she does more horror. She was just amazing so I’m really glad that it worked out. She was the perfect choice. I enjoyed how relatable she was. I have just one last question for you today. What’s your favorite scary movie?
Brooke H. Cellars: May! May is my favorite movie of all time. Ever since I watched that movie for the first time. I always show it to all my friends, and I love their reaction to the ending. I remember I showed it to my ex-roommate and at the end, he turned to me and said, “Brooke, what the fuck is wrong with you?” and I was like, “I love this movie!” I connect with it so, so much.
Thank you so much to Brooke for taking the time to chat with us. The Cramps: A Period Piece is currently in its festival run.
