Slash Night shorts, December 2019

As I write this on Sunday, December 15th, 2019, last night was our third ever, monthly Bremerton, Washington "Slash Night" shorts at the Historic Roxy Theater. With the exception of this month, it is being held on the first Saturday night of each month.

FYI, for January 2020 Slash Night it will be held on January 11th due to conflicting events at the theater.

We really have to thank the crew at the Roxy for being so supportive and awesome. This is an event for local indie filmmakers and fans of horror and well, local and indie filmmakers. We had some interesting attendees in the audience.

Kelly Hughes at the front door lobby and vendor table area.

Slash Nights is an inclusive and pleasantly positive arts event conceived of and executed monthly by local indie horror director and event imagineer, Kelly Hughes. This is in support of our annual Gorst Underground Film Festival coming up next year in September for our third annual festival. It is also very much in support of our local and indie filmmakers and all fans of indie horror.

Here are some video links from the LgN Production Youtube channel for the Q&A's Kelly did.

First up is the introduction and welcome Kelly gave at the beginning of the night's events. This was just after the Bobby4Bobby performance that opened the event. Then came the first block of three of the films we showed (see the list below).

Q&As

Of the Q&As, first up was mine, JZ Murdock, regarding the five minute recut Kelly did of my film, "Gumdrop, a short horror", which is about fifty minutes at this point in post-production.

Next up after the second block was William Stancik and his Laslo Films crew.

Finally, it was Travis Darkow and his crew.

As usual, we have a vendor table in the lobby. The event begins at 9PM giving people time to mill about, meet one another and meet the filmmakers, and for them to network with other filmmakers.

Roxy screen, from filmmaker Travis Darkow

The MCs

Kelly has had an MC at each event. First up was drag MC Helen Bedd. Last month was drag MC Poppie (seeing a theme here?). This month he is taking over as host and allowing performers to focus on performing. We had the exquisitely entertaining, Bobby 4 Bobby, composed of Bobby Lee, and Bobby Rae, local Kitsap County drag performers. They pulled out all the stops last night with a Christmas werewolf themed performance that came off in a rather amazing fashion to the celebratory screams and applause of the audience.

Bobby Rae and Bobby Lee on left

Filmmakers

Among filmmaker attendees and their films were long-time favorites of mine (well, three-month-long anyway... which is how long we've been doing this event), the Laslo Films crew (whom I've mentioned in a previous blog on this event). They are always a real crowd-pleaser with their quirky, bizarre films. More on them in a moment. 

Darkow crew on stage with Kelly Hughes

The Darkow crew with their film "Deadcember" was also a real crowd-pleaser. As was Jackson Cooperman's "Happy Birthday", a grindhouse kind of faux trailer that was pretty funny. But the Darkow film I was warned, that you'll never look at another Christmas elf the same again. That was so right. I won't go into detail as one really needs to see it, to understand.

The audience lost it laughing and at times a bit reticently out of anticipation and perhaps, a pleasant form of anxiety. This was a great way to end an evening of unusual and entertaining films.

Travis Darkow with..."The Elf"! You'll never see the Elf the same again.

The Laslo Films crew with filmmaker William Stancik with their surreal and hilarious film, "Dead Hooker Hotel". Both films brought waves of joy and laughter (and at times, appropriate groans) from our audience in the same vein as their last two submissions. Like last month's, "Snow and Oranges" and our first month's event with their "Amphetamine Trucker's Lament 2". I do love their films!

The MC for the show was Kelly Hughes, but the live entertainment and raffle callers (yes, with your $9 ticket you get a free raffle ticket for our several raffles over the evening, with extra raffle tickets a buck)... was Bobby4Bobby's, Bobby Lee and Bobby Rae. Full disclosure, I'm "Bobby Lee's" dad. I may, therefore, be a bit compromised in my judgment, but on the other hand, I'm a pretty critical judge and I wouldn't lie. 

Fab.Dragestry "Ray Gun" on their vendor table

Bobby4Bobby also had available some very interesting sellables.

Bobby4Bobby's FabDragestry theater lobby vendor table

Bobby4Bobby rehearsal while crew (friends Andy and Z) work on stage

Anyway, it wasn't just me, but the entire audience loved their performance. Especially when it kicked out of the cute segment and into the dark in an extremely tasteful and rather beautiful exhibition of the horror genre and the wolf-in-the-woods story.

The Films

We had three blocks of short films and between each block was a Q&A with one of the filmmakers in that previous block. I was up for the first block. Then the Lazlo Films guys and finally the Darkows.

BLOCK 1

Happy Birthday - Jackson Cooperman

Perturbado - Fernando A. Fisher

Gumdrop (plus Q&A w/director JZ Murdock)

BLOCK 2

Good/Evil - Kelly Hughes

The Springs County Psycho - Christopher Stem

Dead Hooker Hotel (plus Q&A w/director William Stancik)

BLOCK 3

That Very Special Night - Mark Pollock

Green State - Kelly Hughes

Pencil Me In - Scott Ennis

Deadcember (plus Q&A w/director Travis Darkow)

If you noticed Kelly had a couple of films in this, no, he's not abusing his power. There were some technical issues including one of the films dropping out last minute so he simply made up for it with some pretty entertaining replacements.

My film as I said, was "Gumdrop". I'm currently in post-production on "Gumdrop, a short horror". A fifty-minute short horror film based on a true truly horrible serial murderer. Last month the trailer for my film was shown. What happened was, and in the consideration of filmmaker collaboration, Kelly offered and I jumped at the chance, for him to recut my film into a very short film. He got it down to five minutes with music by Postvorta, an Italian band. 

Part of the reason for this event is to lend a place for local filmmakers a place to network and meet and share and view on another's works. And for fans to also have access to this as some very interesting things tend to happen at these events. 

In that vein I allowed and Kelly took on the task of cutting my film through his experience and sensibilities. And it was interesting to see on the big screen. For any filmmaker to allow that can be terrifying. But if one takes the risk you get a chance pre-release to see a different version of your film. Considering I'm still in post-production, I still have the opportunity to tweak my film and hopefully add something to it I may have missed. Or to utilize a form I hadn't considered, known about, or realized I could do. 

Filmmaking, is collaboration. It benefits us as filmmakers to utilize that in every way possible, whenever the opportunity arises. In that same vein, Kelly has taken the chance and opportunity for a filmmaker in South Carolina to show a screenplay of his, which was to wrap this past weekend. 

Slash Night 1, was admittedly a kind of disaster. But we pulled it off and everyone had a great time. Slash Night 2 was last month and was also fun, and everyone enjoyed themselves and was much better. Slash Night 3 this past weekend was bordering on amazing and people are definitely looking forward with great interest to next month's event.

IF you have a local event like this and are into film...go. Support your local filmmakers, and yourself. 

We don't know where this is going. But we do know, we can all now see...this is definitely going SOMEWHERE!