MRH:   Blair Witch Project (1999) and Man Bites Dog (1992) are iconic films that were made very cleverly for very little money; they were feted by critics at film festivals, garnered buzz from audiences, and then the filmmakers either disappeared altogether, or it took a while before they got back on their feet again.

I wonder if that’s something that happens because the filmmaker has difficulty not necessarily trying to top themselves but find a project that is in line with the previous film and live up to audience expectations, or whether it’s just a strange business reality of enjoying a big success and then hitting a brick wall in trying to get a second project made?

MD:     I read a lot about the guys who made Blair Witch, and I know for a fact that they got a huge amount because they were like a co-op group of filmmakers; there were about five who were direct profit participants in the film, and they were all close to 29-30 years old, and they got each $2-$5 million dollars, and what they said is that after working and striving for so long, they just sort of all got married, got families, bought houses and sort of ‘lived’ for a few years.

So their choice to not necessarily jump right in and making other movies is because they didn’t have to, mostly because of financial security. Now, within the last 2-3 years, both the two main directors came out with 2-3 films each. They just took their time, but in the case of many other films, a lot of times what happens is that unless the film is given a theatrical release and everyone knows it and it’s a big commodity, the filmmaker doesn’t make any money from the film, and unless he’s hired for something else, it might take him years to make another.

A friend of mine from Vancouver did this very low budget, and signed a deal with a US distributor, then it’s available in every video shop in the States because the distributor did a marketing campaign mimicking the Freddy vs Jason cover for my friend’s vampires versus zombies film. His film made a lot of money for the distributor, but my friend got only peanuts back from that deal, and since then he’s only made other self-financed films, so the success of that film only profited the distributor.

If you go back twenty years, a movie like mine would’ve probably have gotten a theatrical release, because there were less films being made on the indie side. Today there are so many that get made that even if they’re not really any good, distributors pick them up for nothing and just put a nice cover on it. For video shop owners, because they haven’t seen the films, they have no way of knowing if that film or that film is any good. All they can base their decision to carry a title is the cover.

It has also given more power to distributors who now have the pick of the litter, whereas just a few years before they had to shell out better money to acquire certain films. Now they can just say, ‘If you’re not willing to give it to us for nothing, we’ll just wait for the next guy who’s gonna make something, and is more naïve, and he’ll give it to us.’ So it’s become easier to make films, but harder to be a working filmmaker making a living at it.

MRH:   Lastly, from the experience of making your film literally from scratch and using your own money, what did you learn the most about yourself, either as a filmmaker or as a person who’s able to handle so many different duties? And how you regard your next project?

MD:     Well, I don’t think I learned anything new about myself; I think it only confirms stuff that was there from the past, which is that I’m made pretty solid; I can deal well with whatever life throws at me and still stand on my feet.