Oh, I guess I should mention that I’m not talking about SHAUN OF THE DEAD. That one, I’ve seen multiple times over the past few months (thanks to the magic of well-connected readers and their VCD collections). And I really loved it. But in this case, I’m talking about a little zombie comedy called HIDE AND CREEP. Which I liked even better than SHAUN. Technically, yeah, SHAUN might be a better movie overall, with a bigger budget and some name stars and distribution and everything that goes with that. But so what? HIDE AND CREEP is better to me because I feel like it’s partly mine.

Now, when I say it feels like it’s “mine,” what I mean is, I had absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of this movie and yet I still feel territorial about it. HIDE AND CREEP is the product of our own Alabaman (Alabamian? Alabammer? Albanian?), Chance Shirley. Chance, as I’m sure you know, has been documenting his efforts to make this movie in his bi-weekly column, THIS MOVIE AIN’T GONNA SHOOT ITSELF. Now, I’m happy when anyone involved with the site is able to parlay their work here into other ventures—One of our Web comic artists is now drawing the Image comic INVINCIBLE; Matt Singer had his recent shot on MTV; D.K. Holm has put out a few books; others here have varying degrees of outside projects that’ve developed through their work on this site; and now, Chance Shirley has done what he set out to do, finished the movie he’d been chronicling at the site for the past .

Since we turned this place “legit” about thirty months ago, the most popular column idea thrown my way has been a piece that documents an amateur filmmaker’s efforts to shoot an indie movie. I’d resisted for a while, as much as the idea made sense here. I mean, Kevin’s career started because he stopped thinking about making movies and instead picked up a camera and just got it done. And yet… most of the pitches didn’t really seem to have too much behind them. For every person who was serious about making a movie, there were ten people who wanted to do the column solely as a means to garner interest in their idea to make a movie. I didn’t want the site to serve as another way to have people talk about making a movie rather than doing it. I feel the same way about those screenwriting books that litter everyone’s shelves—they’re a way to stall while making you feel like you’re moving closer to your goal. You’re not. Chance wasn’t—he’d already done his share of screenwriting, producing and co-directing on short films before. He had a definite plan for this movie. This wasn’t going to be a column that talked about how this was something he wanted to do. For whatever reason, his pitch really hit me as a great idea and a good project to chronicle. Like all of these things, it’s a crap shoot—maybe the movie will never happen, maybe he’ll get too busy with the film to put together a good column. Luckily, neither of these was the case.

Instead, his column exceeded even what I hoped it’d do. At the same time he was shooting HIDE AND CREEP, the column discussed everything aspiring filmmakers would be able to learn from. So far, Chance has covered how to work with small budgets, assembling a crew, permitting locations, the technical aspects of shooting, like cameras and sound, make-up and effects, editing and more. In addition to covering all these aspects of the moviemaking process—and he’s not done yet—Chance has also offered up the occasional piece that looks at various aspects of indie films in general, and some other recent small films he’s seen. It’s effective on a lot of levels, and what’s more, it’s been damned entertaining to read, I think.

Even more rewarding than seeing another good column here? Seeing the finished product. Now, Chance finishing his movie isn’t exactly like our Matt Singer getting a shot on a MTV movie-review show. Like I say, he’d already accomplished other film-making goals in the past, and this movie was going to happen whether he did the column here or not. Yet I still feel a sense of pride that it’s all worked out so well thus far. He’s one of ours, you know? So even though I had nothing to do with the movie itself, seeing things get to this point has been incredibly gratifying to me.

Chance had to hurry to assemble a cut of the film for the Sidewalk Film Festival, which took place at the end of September in Birmingham. The film made its debut on September 23 to a packed house of over 700 people. He chronicles the festival here, and also offers up links to coverage from FilmThreat, Ain’t It Cool News and other places.

The film made its debut at my household last week. Typically, I’m working on the site most nights, meaning anything I watch is typically viewed on a small screen on one half of my computer while I work on the other half. It’s an incredibly inefficient and unfair way to view people’s hard work, of course, and this time, the film grabbed me from the start and earned “full monitor” status for the hour and a half that it ran.

I grew up in Southern California, so I don’t know Alabama from, well, Arkansas (a mistake I made to Chance a few weeks ago). But I’ll say that it was nice to see a movie set in this part of the South that played up some of the interesting characters in the town without being stereotypical.

Chance turned in a great script—the movie’s a horror comedy, and a lot of the comedy comes from the fact that, like in SHAUN OF THE DEAD, the zombies just really aren’t threatening. They’re slow-moving, mindless walking dead who are mostly just an inconvenience to the townsfolk. At first. As happens in most any zombie movie, the action ramps up as the film progresses. But beyond the main cast’s annoyance with the zombies, a lot of the humor is found in the dialogue. The film opens in a video store in Thorsby, Alabama, where Chuck, the annoyed video store clerk (and the movie’s hero) is discussing the merits of other zombie flicks with a caller. A zombie soon ambles in and, following the conventions he’s seen in other movies, he takes care of it with relative ease (thanks to an old VCR-to-the-head. In one of many visual gags in the flick, the VCR hits the ground and out pops an old tape of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD). When Chuck can’t get the local sheriff or his deputy to come collect the body, he drags it to his truck and dumps it at the station before heading off to get some food.

You ask me, there’s just no way for the world to produce enough zombie flicks. But where some go wrong is, they either try to explain the cause of the zombies in a plausible way or they betray the expected zombie movie conventions. HIDE AND CREEP does neither of these things. Sure, there’s a fed cruising around the town and it’s implied that a UFO in-town might have been responsible for some of the citizens’ undead status, but that’s really all we get, and all we need.

Soon enough, as with any good zombie flick, a small band of survivors (and the government agent) are banding together to fight zombies, but it’s the small bits in the movie that really make it work—Chuck gets into it with a café waitress over the merits of Coke versus Pepsi. Finally, someone doesn’t just accept the old foodservice refrain of “We don’t have Coke. Pepsi okay?” because, let’s be honest, the two aren’t interchangeable. The dialogue is funny throughout, and subtle enough in places that you could miss some good lines if you’re laughing too loud (a throwaway line about anal sex had me cracking up). Even visual gags like the government safety pamphlets (as seen in the poster below) are used to funny effect.

The movie offers the other elements you expect from a zombie movie, nudity (including some brave full-frontal scenes from one of the male cast-members, who has a funny arc throughout the movie, worrying more about his restored Mustang than his missing girlfriend), a lesbian-zombie kiss and a fair amount of graphic violence. I love graphic violence in low-budget movies because it’s obviously fake, which means it can be even more graphic than if it were hyper-realistic.

The movie feels like an indie movie, which is to say that, while budget limitations are evident in places, the movie is infused with an independent spirit and innovation that can’t be restrained by lack of cash. Chance and his co-director stage some nice scenes and the camera work throughout is mostly solid. Some static camera shots are off-set with clever editing. One thing that really stands out in the movie is the sound work. The sound is superb—when branches crunching under-foot is noticeably well-done, well, you know something’s gone right. I loved the music that they used throughout the movie, too—lots of acoustic guitar in places and then nice, overly dramatic “horror-movie” cues at the right times. Chance said the music has since changed a bit but I really liked what I heard in the cut I have.

As much as the movie pays homage to other zombie movies, it’s also a nice little love letter to Alabama. Some of the in-jokes probably play better to people born and bred in towns like Thorsby but I didn’t feel like I missed much. Rather, it was all just evident how much affection the filmmakers have for zombie movies and Alabama alike.

Chance has submitted HIDE AND CREEP to the Sundance Film Festival, and it’d be great to see it make the rounds at that or other film festivals. Last year at the Hamptons Film Fest, we caught Dwight Ewell’s low-budget horror flick PAGANS at 11 PM, and it was a great way to end the day’s moviegoing. Something like HIDE AND CREEP would be perfect in that same spot, a good, fun, funny horror flick to watch as the midnight hour rolls around.

So there it is—another of our guys done good. After reading Chance’s columns for the past eight months, it was great to see the finished product. And it’s gratifying to see that he’s as good as he is at making the movie as he is chronicling it. Still, stick with the column—another one is due this Thursday—and see if you’ll someday get a chance to check it out, too. Hope so.

Next Week: A conversation with the creators of the upcoming Comedy Central animated reality show parody, DRAWN TOGETHER, and a look at the pilot episode. And coming soon, a return to the Hamptons Film Festival.

/chris

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