David Hartman was a brilliant animation director and illustrator and had been a key collaborator on the visual effects of Bubba Ho-tep. He was responsible for the amazing and hilarious animated hieroglyphics that tumbled out of the mummy’s mouth. “Eat the dog dick of Anubis!” He and his artistic wife Kathleen also created the massive Ben-Hur–like art title sequence for the movie. I had always admired Dave and his work, especially the fact that he seemed to go out every weekend with friends and relatives and shoot a new short film. He had an artistic work ethic that inspired me.
One day Dave rang me up and asked if I would be amenable to him shooting a short film based on Phantasm. He had an idea in which Reggie would meet a young woman hitchhiking and things would not end well for her. I had so much fun working on the Phantasm Forever table read that I sparked to Dave’s idea right away. I immediately called up Reggie Bannister and asked him if he would be up for shooting an experimental short film and he said to count him in. His wife, Gigi, who had worked on Phantasm Oblivion supervising makeup effects, volunteered her services as well. I checked in with Brad and he offered to come along and shoot it using his brand-new 1080p HD video camera. So along with my son and a local friend of the Bannisters this was our entire crew. Six people!
The weekend’s shoot took place far up in the San Bernardino Mountains outside of Los Angeles. We actually shot in the mountain cabin where Reggie and Gigi lived as they were kind enough to volunteer their own house. We had so much fun! It was as if I had been transported back to my student film days with this tiny crew and a small cast working together.
Everybody did everything. I did the lighting, sound, logistics, and helped out with the blood work. We had one major sphere-drilling/blood-splattering sequence, which we shot not only in the Bannisters’ bedroom, but right in their bed. God love ’em! These were some of the truly fun aspects of filmmaking that had been denied me once I started directing larger productions.
I have always treasured the student film mentality in which a small group of creative, like-minded filmmakers come together to collaborate on a creative work. In this manner, in addition to being creatively satisfying, filmmaking can be a joyous experience. It’s typically not like that in the traditional American union process of filmmaking. Job descriptions are legally stratified and woe be to the energetic crew member who attempts to help out a crew member from a different department. Sadly, it is just not allowed. I remember being stunned my first time on a studio set when it was explained to me that the Teamster drivers are responsible only for driving the trucks to location, and once parked there, they must sit and wait for the entire shooting day to pass and are not allowed to join in and work with the rest of the crew. Of course they are very capable in moving around the big rigs, and paid very highly for that service, but I couldn’t help but feel sad that they were not allowed to experience the fun of filmmaking: painting a set wall, helping with a camera rig, or even throwing out a creative suggestion to the director.
The weekend shoot was so much fun that a few weeks later we did it again. And then again, and then again. When we finished up the first series of weekends, Dave was able to edit together almost twenty minutes of footage. But what could we do with it? It did not seem feasible to shoot an entire feature this way, nor did we ever really have a script. The process was more, “Let’s go out this weekend and Reggie picks up a cute hitchhiker on a road.” Then it was, “Let’s shoot a scene where they talk at the hitchiker’s cabin and she’s killed horribly.” And then on to, “Reggie encounters the Lady in Lavender.”
While he was directing these weekend shoots, Dave held down a day job as supervising director on a Disney cartoon series entitled My Friends Tigger & Pooh starring young actress Chloë Grace Moretz. As we went on hiatus from shooting Phantasm Ravager, Dave embarked on a new job creating the 3D-animated Transformers: Prime series for Hasbro. Around this time a robot came calling …