THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAUGHTER AND SCREAMS
COMEDY. TRAGEDY. HORROR. AND FUN. PLUS: A MINI-INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF OUR STARS!
So yesterday was a sweet return to the land of the living, after a brief but excruciating health scare that had me out of commission since Tuesday. (All better now! But YOWCH!) Freed up from my room for the first time in days – and kind of annoyed by the three days I’d lost – I grabbed a big handful of flyers for The Great Divide and started hangin’ ‘em up all over the place.
First stop was Movie Madness, Portland’s premiere video store and museum of motion pictures. That was an obvious maneuver, and I only wished I’d gotten there sooner. (I’m not saying that EVERY movie lover in Portland goes there on a regular basis; just that everybody who goes there is a serious movie lover. And therefore our audience of choice.)
Then I did a serious raid on Hawthorne Ave., an area I love, just above and below Cesar Chavez. Hitting the New Seasons high-end grocer, then the magnificent Powells Books, then Straight From New York Pizza (grabbing an excellent slice in the process), before nailing roughly a dozen already-festooned electrical poles all up and down that choice stretch of hipster road.
From there, I hightailed it over to Reed College and graced their great library bulletin board with a flyer, front and center. Then did the same at the public library just up the street on SE Woodstock. There was another New Seasons there, also kindly accommodating. So I put one on their wall, then left a couple by the free press and weekly health publications.
It was really fun. Kinda like being in a rock band again, hustling crowds into a show. Only different, because…honestly?
Just LOOK AT OUR WEBSITE! It’s adorable, right? It’s the most wholesome-looking promotional material I have ever been personally involved with. And I love it, because it’s completely accurate. This is a very sweet, good-natured film.
Of course, that said, all kinds of crazy shit happens, cuz I wrote it and am directing it. So it’s definitely not normal. But it’s made entirely out of fun, with occasional bursts of sorrow. Lotta laughs. Lotta head-spinning what-the-fuck surprises. Periodic chomps of satirical teeth. But mostly kind-hearted, complicated love for its characters, most of whom are one kind of hot mess or another.
And it made me think about horror: that substantially rougher genre where I’ve spent the bulk of my adult creative life. And how much less likely the nice people at New Seasons would have been to happily hang the creepy-ass posters for my last film, Doppelbanger.
But humor and horror have an awful lot in common. Which is why I’m so comfortable doing both. They are, in fact, flip sides of the same coin, airborne on the wings of malfunction and misfortune.
For example: in comedy, somebody slips on a banana peel, and everybody laughs. In horror, somebody slips on a banana peel. But they break their backs, and just lay there, screaming. Then darkness falls. And the shadows come with teeth.
In both cases, things go horribly wrong. It’s just a matter of degree and perspective. Not to mention hilarity!
Or, in the words of Horace Walpole: this world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
So for those of you wondering if I might have gone soft, or given up on horror, no worries. The next piece I’m writing – and yes, there are already cards taking shape on my walls – is full-on nightmare fodder, just as dark as it gets, a near-total flipside of what we’re doing here. Because balance is everything, and it’s good to keep shit lively.
But it will still have laughs, and love, and heart, and complicated people who are going through some shit.
Because otherwise, it just ain’t real.
***
Finally, here’s the first of many micro-interviews with the cast and crew of The Great Divide I’ll be posting in the days to come. And as it turns out, this snippet is right on point!
The question is: USING COMEDY TO ADDRESS DISTURBING THINGS: GOOD OR BAD? And here to thoughtfully answer is an outrageously fine actor by the name of Jesse Benefield, who plays the hell out of “Jack” in our film, and who I would cast in anything because he’s that fucking good.
I loved his thoughts on the subject so much that I wanted to let him lead off. So here ya go!
And for more on Jesse, here’s our website’s custom Jesse Page!
https://thegreatdividemovie.org/jesse-benefield
And, of course, the campaign is here! As always, THANKS!!!
https://thegreatdividemovie.wedid.it/campaigns/12069-the-great-divide
Video stores aren't dead, at least in Portland. Yay.