MRH: You mentioned Karl Hardman who, during the course of the documentary becomes a really interesting figure.

He started out wanting to be an actor, he had aspirations to work at RKO, and I guess when that didn’t work out, he decided to take an independent path, which is kind of rare for the time, and set up his own company with his wife (Marilyn Eastman) where they did a lot of commercial work during the fifties and sixties.

Jeff Carney: I think he always had in the back of the mind that he wanted to get into the film industry and wanted to do something, so I think that’s one of the reasons when the idea for NOTLD or “The Flesh Eaters” (which was the original title) came up from Latent Image, I think that’s probably why he jumped at the chance to do it.

He had been doing commercials, he was a very successful radio actor in Pittsburg, and that’s really what he was known for and all the commercial work he was doing. I think it was a chance for him to kind of go after one of his dreams, which was acting in a film.

MRH: Does Hardman Associates still exist, or is it long gone at this point?

Jeff Carney: It’s long gone. Karl sold the business (I think) in the early nineties. [The original studios] have been converted into office space; it’s been completely redesigned from how it looked back in the sixties and seventies. It’s actually a lawyer’s office now.

MRH: The basement that was used is in the Pitt Building?

Jeff Carney: Yeah, that’s right underneath The Latent Image. That’s the actual location. That’s the first time that Kyra had been back to the location since film.

MRH: The other thing I was struck by is the veteran talent pool that was used by the filmmakers.

Romero had a lot of gifted vocal artists, radio artists that went back to the early days of radio and live television, and in a way I think your documentary also presents a snapshot of the kind of media sophistication that developed in a lot of urban centers which helped ensure that television would be at the same technological level all over the place.

You had community news and local original programming, and they illustrate it wasn’t just New York City, Chicago or Los Angeles that had their own strong talent pools.

Jeff Carney: Exactly. It was a time when the news was still being shot on film… Now everything is shot on video, but then you had to do it the old fashioned way, and that was to shoot it on film, process it, and cut it on film. You don’t do that overnight. You have to really work at it to do it right, to do it good.

The people at The Latent Image were great at what they did, the people at Hardman Associates were great at what they did, and when you took all that talent pool and combined it for a low budget film, it’s not surprising to me that they were able to do it

I think the real story about the film – and it’s what any independent filmmaker should look at today - is they all focused on one goal, and that was to make the best film they could at any cost.

They really went out and they really worked together as a team to get that film made. At one point, Vince Survinski was on the verge of mortgaging his house to make sure they had enough money to get the film made right. That was the dedication they had: every person on that set when you talked to them were willing to do anything they had to get the film made, and they were all following the leader, which was George Romero.