When I was seven, my sister Wendy introduced me to that vampire soap opera DARK SHADOWS. The TV vampires and witches scared and mesmerized me. My parents assured me these are merely actors, earning a paycheck play-acting on a set, following a script. Play-Acting for a living? Now I was hooked!
PICKING UP A CAMERA
A few years later, I used my father's Keystone Regular 8 camera to make claymation animated shorts. Silent, three minutes long. I soon elevated to making short suspense thrillers, staging chases in famous New York locations like Grand Central Station and LaGaurdia Airport- becoming a self taught filmmaker.
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE STREET TRASH
My first real professional job on a film was working on the cult shocker STREET TRASH. I watched how a film's budget and filming schedule was successfully maintained, and how in a split second, an on-camera mishap can become an improvised gem. I also got to perform my own falling-off-a-high-place stunt.
THAT FIRST FILM
After graduating with a BFA in Film Studies at New York's School of Visual Arts, I got everything together to make my first feature film- VAMPIRE'S EMBRACE. Filmed on 16mm in twenty days. Outside Producers came in to cover the post production of the film. It was a tough lesson, not taught in film school on the business end- how outside control can get the film out there, but how other elements can hurt it as well.
ON MY OWN
There were other producers in Florida, where I lived for a while, that wanted to team with me on feature film-making. They didn't want to make an actual "porno" but they wanted lots of un-needed nudity in the films. They didn't care if the "skin scenes" did not help the story. I told them: "If we were going to remake PATTON, you guys would want a strip club scene!" I decided my next films would be my own creations, no matter what it took.
TEAMING WITH PAUL KANTER
After making one film on my own- NIGHT, I started working with Paul Kanter, an accountant with a knack for sensation along the lines of Barnum or William Castle. Paul believed heavily in the power of publicity, and felt his involvement in a film would create a lot of "news ink" and promote his business. Paul helped to put together my next six films.
