First Glance Film Festival: An Interview With the Director & Producer of Calendar Girl

Last Saturday morning over coffee, I got to chat with Derek Linderman and Jake Matthews the director & producer of Calendar Girl. The film will be playing at the First Glance Film Festival October 13^th at 8pm at the Franklin Institute with a fresh new edit.

I had a lot of fun getting to know these guys who are definitely doing some great things in the Philadelphia film scene. I hope you enjoy what started out as a simple Q and A and turned into a great conversation about films and real indie filmmaking in the City of Brotherly Love.

So why make a slasher film in Philadelphia?

Derek Linderman – The script came from a great writer named Faith Brody. Our producer John Guarnere had pitched this idea to her about this girl that falls for this serial killer, and she did this great thing where she wrote it as if it were herself when she was a student at UArts, and how she would react to it.

It just fit so well and its not just about the setting, its about the characters as well and it just so happens that the setting itself proved to be so fantastic; the city itself almost becomes a small character. Also, filming anything in the city logistically is great for us, because it’s such a great community.

If you behave properly and keep everything clean like when you showed up people will let you come back. So we have a great love affair with making movies in Philadelphia and fully intend to do everything here.

Derek, I saw on the IMDB page that you’re also listed as co-writer on the project.

Derek Linderman – I did a small re-write because originally Faith wanted to get in the Wanamaker building, she wanted to get here, she wanted to get there and we couldn’t afford any of that. So we stripped away a lot of the settings and replaced it with a lot more characters. So instead of having this photography studio lets replace it with a photographer.  That was kind of what we did.

It was originally written as college kids but we fast-forwarded to what they were doing after college because nobody cares about college kids. You can’t make a movie about actors because no one cares about actors, nobody cares about writers, so you make a movie about people just starving to death and that’s a good movie because people care about that person. (Laughs)

So we said lets get them out of college when they have their loans taken care of and they don’t have anyone to send them money and let’s see where they are at.

I think you really captured some of Philadelphia’s characters in the film. I really recognized a lot of the characters on screen from my day-to-day life.

Derek Linderman – Locally we get a lot of people who relate to our characters, but when we play in other parts of the country they just love the idea of almost just wanting to be there with these people.

Were you a genre fan coming into the project?

Derek Linderman – I like anything that can tell a story and a lot of times you get that with horror and a lot of times you don’t. Because horror films can get made just on a great idea, a great concept, a great performance and a lot of times the storytelling can take a back seat to that fantastic performance by a lead, a fantastic script or a new way of killing someone.

As far as just the actual genre of horror, romantic comedy or anything that is boilerplate that someone just plays it safe; that I am not a fan of.  But if you’re using that genre to tell an interesting story, that I am a fan of.

You were telling me earlier that Calendar Girl had originally started out as a romantic comedy but then you introduced horror elements into it, which I think really made the film work on two completely different levels.

Jake Matthews- Basically, starting with that structure of a romantic comedy and almost like putting the muscle of horror on there, makes it so I am doing a movie; but its one my mom can see. Because it has those universal aspects, that horror movies as great as they are just gloss over. Because it’s not as important to the genre.

How did you raise funding for Calendar Girl? Because for being low budget the film definitely looks polished.

Derek Linderman – In October of 2009 we shot our first feature, it was the first large production we tried to do called Booted, it will be coming out next year. It stars Alan Ruck from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Ryan Dunn in his last film actually, and Colin Quinn from Saturday Night Live.  That was our first dive headfirst, in trying to do something other than just us with a camcorder, trying to grab our friends on the weekends.

Through that we just sort of found out how you raise money is you just sort of guess what you think you can get.  You get as many people around as possible, and you ask how much do you think you can grab? Then you come up with a figure. After you get a number you work backwards you write your script according to that, then as Jake would say you just get people to do you a lot of solids.

Celebrities are always great too if you can grab a name or two to sign off. I mean if they just do what’s called a letter of intent which is not a binding contract by any means, it’s just a signature and a headshot.  A guy like Colin Quinn is how we raised a lot of money for Booted. Some one will see that and it will be real to them, you then take what they see on their television screen and you then enter it into their world and that is exciting.

Jake Matthews- You might get your money back, but you will definitely will have your name on something and you can frame a poster in your office.

So what has the reaction to Calendar Girl been like?

Derek Linderman – Its been doing really well at Festivals. We also get fantastic local feedback, we did our first test screening of a rough cut a year ago at The Troc today almost. Then Cinefest was the first time anybody saw a finished copy of it. Jake and I were actually on set, shooting a gang fight for our other film.  But I heard it played excellent.

I have yet to personally be in a done screening of the movie in Philadelphia and that should happen at First Glance.

So what are you plans for Calendar Girl after the festival circuit?

Derek Linderman – Theatrical most likely won’t happen. Maybe there will be a small limited theatrical release where they will play it in the city just because. But more than likely it will probably be a Netflix or Redbox sort of thing, where it will be readily available to get it right when you want it.

Where it costs millions of dollars to make a film, it also costs millions to let them know it exists. So we are just going to throw it out there where the word of mouth is really going to spread. You now can tell someone a bout a film and they can pull it up right then and watch it on their iPhone.

Whatever distributor understands the film, that is what we want to do with it. The film has an audience they just don’t know it yet. Then god willing we can make a sequel, because you always have to have a sequel.