Judge David Johnson talks to the guys behind the cult flick Effects

Judge David Johnson

November 3rd, 2005

Judge David Johnson talks to the guys behind the cult flick Effects, writer/director Dusty Nelson, producer/actor John Harrison, and cinematographer Pasquale Buba about grassroots filmmaking, seeing their long-lost baby resurface on DVD, and some other "snuff."

DVD Verdict: Describe how Effects came to be.

Dusty Nelson: Effects grew out of a novel written by a friend of ours, Bill Mooney, that was about a cameraman who gets hired to do a low budget horror film that turns into a snuff movie in which everyone, including the cameraman, is killed. I added the film within a film and hidden cameras, and then elevated the director's character accordingly.

John Harrison: The three of us were in Pittsburgh, and had formed a small production company, filming commercials and the like, and during that time we worked with George Romero and became friends. He soon became kind of like a godfather for us, and from our experience working with him, we decided to get into filmmaking.

We had a script that Dusty had adapted from a friend's book so the next step was to raise the money. To do that we just went door-to-door asking friends and relatives to help us make this movie.

Once we had raised enough, we set it up legally so that everyone involved with the film, us and the donors, became owners. We then cast local actors and hired local technicians, went up to a friend's house and shot the film.

DVD Verdict: How did it come to be a "long-lost" film?

Harrison: We had entered it into some festivals, won some awards and got involved with a distributor with no money to promote it. After its initial run it just sat on a shelf. Finally, the advent of DVD has enabled us to release the film again and maybe introduce it to more people.

Pasquale Buba: It's interesting to see the effects that technology has on a film made that long ago. First of all, the whole conceit of Effects is more accessible today. Back in the 70s, the technical feasibility of Lacy hiding so many cameras to cover so many angles was a fairly big stretch. (they were video cameras by the way, Lacy was shooting on video tape...and Lacy's final film "Duped" gets released on film...long before that was as common as it is today). We only had Candid Camera as a cover. Today in the age of all the reality shows, lipstick cameras, real life and taxicab confessions, what Lacy pulled off is much more believable which gives the film a firmer foothold. Secondly, there is now the ability to see the film. When we made Effects, there were no VHS or Betas, Netflix or Blockbuster type rental outlets for watching movies. The only venues were movie theaters or TV. Now the world of DVD has made it possible to see many films that otherwise would have never been seen or discussed. When Effects did not get a theatrical release, we all thought that was that...it would forever sit on a shelf somewhere in a lab and exist only in our memories. Now after all this time, it comes back from the dead, gets reviews, and is available on Amazon. It's all very interesting, somewhat bizarre, but a lot of fun.

Verdict: What were the challenges of making a film with such a low budget?

Nelson: Small budgets are a fact of life for most filmmakers until they become A-list, which is to say for most of us, all of our careers. I've been very fortunate to work with bigger budgets on commercials, but feature films are usually very tightly squeezed. But Effects was really low budget. Frankly, I don't think we realized how low budget, because we were so new to the process, so we just rolled up our sleeves and did it. And, we did it with cooperation and planning.

Everybody showed up every day ready, willing, and able to work. There were no egos. There was a common goal. And, my job was simple, really. I had to know what we needed to get in the can, which meant working very closely with the editor, Pasquale Buba, and the producer, John Harrison.

I knew I didn't have much film or time, so I structured scenes accordingly, rehearsed the actors, who all showed up knowing their lines, and covered it as cinematically as possible. Sometimes we did scenes in one shot. Other times we knew how we wanted to cut, so we shot what we needed. It was all about preproduction and discipline. You gotta make your day, and if you're lucky (as the director) everybody's on the same page with you.

Harrison: Well, we didn't have the equipment or the resources to some the things we could have done, but the positive of that was it forced us to be more creative.

There was no margin for error. We couldn't just wing it. If something went wrong we couldn't just throw money at it--there was no money! Basically, we would marshal the troops, say we can do something good here, we've go a great story and a great crew, and we don't need $50 million to do it.

Buba: We were pretty disciplined by the time we did Effects. We had done a number of industrial type films and our commercial jobs never had large budgets. Our profit margins were small, our pockets were not deep, so we were accustomed to working within defined limitations, but we would always push the envelope when we knew it was possible. There was never a lot of room for error, so we were always prepared. We always had to solve problems from within whatever we had, as opposed to the more common solution of throwing more money into fixing the problem. We just didn't have that kind of financial freedom. The three of us also trusted each other's instincts and opinions, so we never had to waste time or money keeping each other happy. We knew what we wanted, knew what was needed, had the technical chops to get it, and just did it. Dusty was also very disciplined in writing the screenplay, keeping the story alive without expanding beyond the boundaries of what we knew we could do with the resources we had. The big key was knowing enough talented people who were willing and able to work within our limitations and for not a lot of money. We couldn't have done it without them.

Verdict: John, your performance as the filmmaker Lacy was particularly chilling. Talk about that.

Harrison: I wasn't initially going to be in it, but I had done some acting before, so I read for it. Dusty thought I should take the role, so I agreed. The thing about Lacy is he's so cold and clinical, because he's a voyeur, and he's involved in making a voyeuristic film. My tendency was to go big with the character, but Dusty told me to restrain it, and that was effective, and chilling.

Verdict: Speaking of chilling, how about that "snuff film" sequence?

Nelson: Ahhh, the "snuff movie." Quite simple, really. I just tried to make it as down and dirty as possible. One light from above. No set. A girl. A knife. A razor. And a very bad man. To make it look very real, we messed with focus a little, and had Tom bump the camera (which I actually panned as he brushed by), and then come back to straighten it. We scratched the film a little, and even dipped it in water, I think, just to make it awful. But, the two actors, as always, sell it. I just kind of set it up and then got out of the way.

Harrison: It's a very disturbing scene, as you said. And it was disturbing to do. Our on-screen reactions are live, filmed while we watched the movie. We knew what was coming, but it was still off-putting.

Buba: Filming the scene wasn't too difficult. We knew that because of the circumstances we could only do one take (conspiracy theorists, think what you will). What has occurred to me seeing it again after all these years is how different it would be to do the scene now because of all the changes in technology. For example, we needed to "age" the projected film. Today with all the digital goodies you can use, there are many ways to do this. There is even an "old film" preset in a lot of digital workstations. We didn't have the technology or budget to do anything exotic, so we sent the film (if I remember, we shot it on B&W reversal) to a local Pittsburgh lab. We knew this lab well and knew they were great people, but not always consistent in quality. Sure enough when we got it back, all those water stains that you see on the film were put there by the lab's slightly inadequate drying process. We also knew that because of the content, they probably would "need" to screen the footage in their timing room more than once. So a lot of the scratches in the film were there when we got the dailies back. We put more scratches on it in our cutting room by standing on and pulling the film under our shoes. We spilled beer and coffee on it and let it roll around on the floor. I put a number of jump cut type splices in it to make it look like a film that has been screened a lot of times in many different... and not necessarily ideal... circumstances.

Verdict: How did the audiences react to the scene?

Nelson: The audience reaction is always the same. Some people think it's real and won't believe us when we tell them it isn't, and everybody finds it very disturbing. I just watched it again the other night when I was checking out the DVD, and I found it very disturbing, too. But, the reaction shots, the expressions on the faces of the characters watching it, are really what sell it. I don't think it would work nearly as well without that.

Harrison: We took a lot of shit for that. The people who understood the film understood why it was in there, but others were horrified. At the film festival in Utah where it screened they wanted to throw us out! And one guy wrote to me from a film festival in Sweden where it was playing and told us that they had found a man up front masturbating during the sequence. Talk about disturbing.
Thematically, we wanted to ask the question: "What is real and what isn't?" And having that question so graphically shoved in people's faces affected many of them.

Verdict: What was it like getting together for the documentary AfterEffects?

Nelson: Michael Felsher, the filmmaker, did a great job. For me it was just a chance to get together with some very dear old friends, and reminisce about the fun we all had doing the movie.

Harrison: Yeah, it was great fun. We've been good friends all this time, so it was great to reconnect and do it that way. I had been asked to put together some extras for the release, so I filmed a few interviews and had everyone over to my house (that's my pool in the background) to talk about the experience. Then I dumped it on Michael Felsher and he put it together.

It was really touching to finally see it. It was a very special time back then, when there were a lot of independent filmmakers doing their thing, Wes Craven in New Jersey, Tobe Hooper in Texas, Sam Raimi in Detroit.

Buba: That was a real treat. AfterEffects forced us to relive that period of time... around the time of Martin, Dawn, and BuDuDa (our production company). And, as I mentioned about doing the commentary track, it provided us an opportunity to remember how much fun it was back then. Who could ask for anything more than an excuse to sit around with your friends, talk about the past, and not feel you were just forcing a "Big Chill" type moment? A lot of credit must go to Michael Felsher who put the whole thing together with a lot of style and grace. When my wife Zilla (who was the line producer on Effects, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and a bunch of other films during that period) and I saw the first cut of AfterEffects that Michael sent us, I must say it was pretty emotional. It was a fairly innocent time when the filmmaking process seemed to be much more pure and far less jaded then it seems to be for me now. Perhaps that's just age, but I don't think so.

Verdict: Now that Effects has finally been unleashed on the unsuspecting public, how do you feel?

Nelson: We all worked very hard on it, and even though "unleashed" is probably the operative term here, Effects was a labor of love. All of us involved in it love film and filmmaking. And, to have the chance to work with our dearest friends in such a creative and free environment, was probably a once in a lifetime shot. We got it. We took it. So, I just hope it works for people. That's why we made it. I hope, as Lacey says in the last line of dialogue, that they "get it." That would be very cool.

Harrison: It's great to see. You know, we were just a couple of mooks in Pittsburgh who worked hard to make a movie--and we did it.

Buba: Formerly I was a musician and I can still remember specific rehearsals and performances that always stand out in my mind. Making films is quite different. There are days that end in frustration and days that end in a feeling of accomplishment, but it's kind of a never ending process. We had a couple of good screenings for our investors, family and friends, but since the film was never really distributed there was never a kind of emotional release. I have to say that probably the best experience of Effects took place just last year, in a dark room somewhere in Santa Monica, sitting with my two best friends doing a commentary track for a film we made some 25 odd years ago and that we thought never would again be seen by anyone. It certainly brought back a lot of happy memories, but did make me feel a little old.