PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Over the last year, I’ve gotten even more involved in the indie horror community and have met a lot of amazing people. One I’m delighted to know is Blair Hoyle. Blair is a brilliant director and writer and each film of his stands out from the one before. You can see his talented and experience growing with each story and that is why I respect him as a filmmaker.
I recently got a chance to talk with Blair about his career including how he got his start, his inspirations, his films Happy Endings Are A Rarity, Five Wild Animals, Grimmwood, and more!
PopHorror – It’s so great to finally chat with you, Blair. How long have you known you wanted to be a filmmaker?
Blair Hoyle – I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker since I was a young boy, but the first time I was like, “Oh, I should actually be making movies” was during my first semester of college. I was an education major and I never went to class because I was way more interested in hanging out with all of these weird, fascinating people around me than learning about fractions or whatever. I just wanted to tell stories, but I was hesitant to actually pursue it. After I failed basically all of my classes, I had a long conversation with my parents and they talked me into it.
PopHorror – I’m glad to hear they were supportive. At what age did you start making films and how did it begin?
Blair Hoyle – I’m 26, and like most people my age, I grew up with access to video cameras. My parents had a DV camcorder, and I would film lots of stuff with my older brother and my cousin. We were really influenced by CKY and Jackass, so we shot a lot of stuff in that vein — like skits and stunts. We had a backyard wrestling organization. I grew up on a farm, so all of this was even more dangerous than it otherwise would’ve been. It’s a miracle none of us ever got seriously injured.
We all kind of gained other interests in our teen years, but I came back to the idea of making movies my senior year of high school. I started writing a lot and one thing led to another.
PopHorror – That’s awesome! Who are some of your favorite directors or ones who inspire you?
Blair Hoyle – I think I’m most influenced by John Cassavetes and Joe Swanberg. I’m so inspired by their way of tackling these real-life problems that everyone can relate to. I try to utilize that style and add a genre element to it. I hope it works. I think it does.
Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantik 2 was also incredibly influential to me, especially when directing my first feature, Happy Endings Are A Rarity. You may not be able to see that influence directly, but I’m still in awe of the way he takes this grisly subject matter — this woman who is sexually aroused by death and decay — and uses it to tell a completely sincere love story. It honestly changed the way I approach genre filmmaking in general.
PopHorror – Oh believe me, it shows. How did you come up with the Slash Gang?
Blair Hoyle – The name was actually given to us almost as an insult, but we thought it was charming and embraced it. We were all accepted into film school at the same, and quickly gravitated towards each other due to our love of genre. We were way more interested in slasher movies than Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan and, you know, the film school movies that everyone is supposed to like. None of us had Pulp Fiction posters on our walls, ya know? Since then, people have left the gang and people have joined the gang. It’s this evolving thing, and it’s become a much more positive group.
I don’t want to speak for everyone else in the Slash Gang, but I feel like most of the people we went to school with thought I was a complete idiot [laughs]. We were definitely the last people anyone expected to actually make movies following graduation. Thankfully, Jack Sholder (who directed The Hidden and the criminally underrated Alone in the Dark) was our primary professor, so he understood the appeal of slasher movies. He was kind of hard on me because I think he saw that I had potential. He’s a really good guy, though. He taught me a lot.
PopHorror – I love it. What was the first film you ever made?
Blair Hoyle – The first real movie I ever made is a horror-comedy anthology titled Night Whispers that was released back in 2013. I was a writer-producer on that one. It was made by a bunch of teenagers and, honestly, it looks like a movie that was made by a bunch of teenagers. We were all still in school, still learning how to frame images and construct stories, and we definitely hadn’t found our voices yet. Still, it somehow managed to win numerous awards on the festival circuit. Go figure. We’re releasing it on VOD this Halloween. It’s not good, and I don’t recommend that anyone watch it, but come this October, at least you’ll have the option if you want to see what we were up to before releasing Happy Endings Are A Rarity.
PopHorror – Oh, I’d love to check it out! Happy Endings Are A Rarity received a lot of love, where did you come up with that idea for that?
Blair Hoyle – My friend Bobby Canipe and I wrote the short story that would later be adapted into Happy Endings Are A Rarity on my phone one night while we were driving around. To be honest, I never intended to adapt it into a movie. Michael Bardon and I were actually planning on directing this really outrageous slasher movie, but when eight different cast members dropped out of the project for various reasons less than a week before the shoot, we didn’t have time to recast. So I wrote the screenplay for Happy Endings Are A Rarity in two nights— specifically for the cast members who didn’t drop out of the other project —and we shot it over the next three weeks. The fact that it turned out as well as it did, and that it’s received positive reviews from the media, is such a miracle.
PopHorror – The praise is well deserved. One of your upcoming films is Five Wild Animals, tell us about that?
Blair Hoyle – After Happy Endings Are A Rarity, I knew I wanted to make something slightly more energetic, with more of an ensemble cast. Five Wild Animals is about a group of friends reuniting for the first time after graduating from college in order to attend this massive Halloween party. They’re all at different stages in their lives and the realities of adulthood have changed their relationships.If that didn’t make things awkward enough, they’re quickly given reason to believe that there is validity behind the rumors of a monster-worshiping cult in the area.
We shot the entire movie in four days. People would rush to set after they got off work or out of class and we would work our asses off to get everything we needed. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was extremely stressful, but everyone really rose to the occasion for it. For 90% of the shoot, the cinematographer Jason Miller and I were the only crew members onset. It was just us and the actors. It was extremely intimate and helped me grow substantially as a director.
PopHorror – That’s awesome to hear. How did the casting process come about?
Blair Hoyle – I’m not a fan of the traditional auditioning process. In the case of Five Wild Animals, I knew I wanted to work with John Lineberry and Tyler Stafford from Happy Endings Are A Rarity again. We’ve been friends for years and I knew they’d be up for it. Neither one of them are trained actors, but they both have this presence onscreen.
Everyone else, I just had conversations with them over FaceTime. A lot of the cast members are friends in real life, which is something I often try to utilize when I can. I’ve been so impressed by the entire cast. I’ve never worked with a group of actors that were more excited and passionate about making movies.
I’ve already worked with many of them again on another project we’re keeping sort of under wraps, and I plan on working with all of them again soon.
PopHorror – That’s a fun and unique to go about it. Any scenes you’re excited about?
Blair Hoyle – There are a lot that, in the interest of keeping everything spoiler-free, I can’t dive into. Ian Scott, who is one of the actors in the movie, choreographed all of the fights and action sequences and they’re so good. I really can’t wait for everyone to see them.
I think the scene that I’m most proud of is, there’s a scene where Devin (Briar Boggs) and Clarissa (Autumn Cravens) are having this sort of dual meltdown inside of a car. They’re both crying and screaming. It was the scene I was the most nervous about shooting because it’s more emotional than anything I had ever directed. I was having dinner with the two of them right before we went to shoot the scene and Autumn looks over at me and says, “I should probably tell you now, I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to cry onscreen.” So I’m kind of nervous, thinking, “If I can’t get her to cry, it’s going to be really difficult to make this scene work.” But we got to the location, and they got in the car, and we talked about the scene for a few minutes. I just backed off and let them get in their space, and within two minutes they both had tears streaming down their cheeks. They maintained that level of intensity the entire time and it ended up being a really great scene. I’m so proud of it. I’m proud of the entire movie, though, to be honest.
PopHorror – You also have another film coming out called Grimmwood, which I’m totally psyched for! Tell us about that one.
Blair Hoyle – I wrote that screenplay for Matt Kiser to direct. His style and entire process is so different from mine, and I think you can really see that onscreen. We shot Grimmwood and Five Wild Animals back to back, and it’s kind of crazy how different they look and feel, given that fact. It’s much a lighter movie than anything we’ve released thus far. It’s about these high school kids, and it really feels like a Goosebumps episode at times. It’s a lot of fun.
PopHorror – I seriously can’t wait to see it. What inspired you to create this one?
Blair Hoyle – Matt was the cinematographer on Happy Endings Are A Rarity, and one night after we had wrapped, he walked over to me and said, “I wanna make a movie about a witch.” We came up with the basic premise that night. Two years later, I wrote the screenplay and he directed the movie.
PopHorror – I love how a simple idea can become something big. What are your goals as a director?
Blair Hoyle – To express myself in an entertaining way, and to succeed without being a dick to people who don’t deserve it.
PopHorror – Is there anyone you would love to work with if you got the chance to?
Blair Hoyle – I have a long list! Isabelle Huppert, Gabrielle Union, and a lot of actors that I feel are extremely underutilized in Hollywood at the moment, like Catherine Mary Stewart, Michael Jai White, and Rachael Leigh Cook. There’s a Korean actress named Kim Min-hee that I think is just a genius. Kier Gilchrist, definitely. He’s the best actor of my generation, and I think his style of acting would blend so well with the kinds of movies I’m interested in making. I would love to work with that guy.
On the production side of things — Jason Blum, Larry Fessenden, and Mark and Jay Duplass. I can’t imagine how much I could learn from that group of people.
PopHorror – All brilliant people. Anything else you would like to talk about? Any other upcoming projects?
Blair Hoyle – I also just directed a quasi-erotic thriller titled The Scarlet Pointe Siren Song, which I look forward to showing people.
The horror community has been so great to us over the past year. It really means a lot to everyone to have such a strong support system. So,thank you for doing this, Tori. These small, independent movies like ours really need a voice in order to be seen, so I greatly appreciate everything you do to support the genre.
