Fans, last week we introduced you to terrific trailer. It was for a documentary about the Honobia Bigfoot Festival in production at Dense Films. This week we would like to introduce you to director behind the effort. His name is Bryce Holland, he is a director, editor and writer. Like many aspiring directors he cut his teeth on the horror genre. Many modern directors we now enjoy started in the horror genre; James Cameron of Avatar did Piranha II, Sam Raimi of Spiderman did EvilDead, and even Peter Jackson of The lord of the Rings did Braindead.
Bryce Holland's newest project, The Town That Bigfoot Built, is a slight departure from his earlier short films. Its a documentary and he takes an open approach to the subject. You can tell from the trailer that this guy can edit, his pacing is so good I think this documentary will be a hit out of the ball park. He put three years of his life in to this, we can surely give him three minutes of ours. Without further ado here is the trailer again for your pleasure followed by our interview with Bryce Holland.
The Town That Bigfoot Built TRAILER from Bryce Holland on Vimeo.
BLC:You say your primary interest was this neat festival tucked away in OK, but did you also have a strong interest in Bigfoot before the filming of the documentary?
BH:Absolutely. My dad has always been really into stories about weird phenomena and conspiracies and things like that. While other kids were watching cartoons, I was usually watching old re-runs of "In Search Of" or the latest episode of "Sightings" or "Unsolved Mysteries." So, naturally, this led to a huge interest in the "unknown" that just continued to grow as I got older.
BLC:We assume after 3 yrs your opinion of Bigfoot had to have been shaped in some degree or another. Has it? and how?
BH:Well, for the longest time I would say that my opinion of the whole phenomenon was really just shaped by a love of the mysterious. I mean, I'd never had any type encounter or anything remotely like that. I just loved the idea of a weird monster or animal lurking in the woods. But, as I got really into filming, and I began spending time with these Bigfoot researchers and began to hear stories about encounters they had had, my opinion began to shift greatly. The way these guys would talk, with just the utmost conviction and absolutely no care whether I believed them or not just really sat with me. I think there's this stereotype that a lot of these researchers are just looking for attention, but getting to talk to them really showed me that most of them are incredibly passionate individuals that have clearly experienced something extraordinary. That's something I can really respect. I still can't say that I have any kind of encounter, but after the things I have heard I definitely keep my ears and eyes open when I'm in the woods.
BLC:Was Jeff Meldrum as nice to you as he was to us?
BH:He was amazing. Just one of the nicest guys that we got to meet. We actually didn't have anything scheduled with him, but at the last minute, after one of his lectures at the festival, we just walked up to him and he gave us one of the most incredible interviews. Hearing him talk about Bigfoot is what I imagine it's like to have heard Einstein talking about physics.
BLC:Like you, we are huge fans of David Lynch, what are some of the other filmakers you enjoy.
BH: I'm actually a huge fan of horror movies, so some of my favorite filmmakers in that realm are people like John Carpenter, George Romero, Dario Argento, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, and a lot of more modern horror masters like Eli Roth, Takashi Miike, Neil Marshall, Greg McLean, and Ryuhei Kitamura. Outside of horror though, some of my favorite filmmakers include Guillermo Del Toro, Park Chan-Wook, Kevin Smith, the Coen brothers, Sam Raimi, Stanley Kubrick, Mario Bava, Quentin Tarantino,James Gunn, Edgar Wright, and so many others. I could really go on forever talking about filmmakers I love. I've got pretty eclectic tastes.
If you get a chance you can visit Dense Films here
And you can see some other clips Bryce is responsible for here.
