On Sunday night Logo (our parent company) is premiering a gay supernatural thriller called In the Blood, which deals with a college student (Tyler Hanes) struggling to come to terms with his sexuality as bodies pile up around campus and strange visions begin clouding his thoughts. (Check out the wonderfully creepy trailer for the film after the jump.)
I caught In the Blood at NewFest (NYC's LGBT film festival) and loved it. The setup's clever, the acting (particularly Hanes) is solid, and it's a completely fresh take on both the "coming out" film and the psychic thriller. I had the chance to ask director Lou Peterson a few questions about the film...
AfterElton.com: So what gave you the idea to do a gay supernatural thriller? Have you always been a horror fan?
Lou Peterson: I've always loved the supernatural thrillers of the 70's, especially the psychic ones -- like Carrie, The Fury, Don't Look Now -- and I wanted to do something similar, but with an interesting take on it. Those stories haunt us in a deep way because they are grounded in real world anxieties. Carrie really captures the turmoil of adolescent awkwardness and Rosemary's Baby is as much about the anxieties of pregnancy as it is about the devil's baby. Early gay experiences can have that same level of anxiety, and t hat seemed like a good starting point for a horror story. And all the Queer Fear stuff first came onto my radar while I was conceiving this, so I tried to tie it all in.
AE: The film manages to be a new twist on your traditional 'coming out movie' while also playing by the rules of a thriller. Was it tough to combine the two genres?
LP: It really just grew organically from the original idea for the story. The main character, Cassidy's sexual ambivalence is disrupting his psychic powers so his 'coming out' became the device around which the thriller plot revolves. So it wasn't necessarily a matter of fusing two genres, but of balancing elements of each one.
AE: Films set on college campuses are always fun, but I can't imagine it was easy to shoot. Did the school give you full access? Did they have any concerns with the gay content?
LP: Columbia, and maybe all schools, is definitely more accommodating to its own student filmmakers than it is to "outsiders." So by shooting In the Blood as my thesis film for Columbia film school, we were able to get access to some really interesting parts of campus. But it was still hard to get access to certain places. They're very protective of the main library and some cool rooms we thought we had access to were locked up on the day of shooting. That really sucked. Also, in the gym, where the climax of the movie takes place, they were very worried about us getting blood all over everything. Which we did, of course. But we thoroughly cleaned it up. And I don't think we got a single comment on the gay content.
AE: It never hurts two have two gorgeous guys as leads in your gay-interest movie, but in this case they can actually act, too -- which is sadly often not the case with gay movies. How'd you find them? Were you clear from the onset that this was a gay film in the casting process?
LP: We were very clear from the beginning that the main character would be gay and have a sex scene with a male prostitute. Every actor who auditioned knew that before they showed up and no one we saw had a problem with it. We had a terrific casting agent, Donna DeSeta, and she showed us a lot of great people. Some had the perfect look, but didn't really click with the other actors. We tried to pick people who had chemistry together – as well as being hot. For call backs we auditioned in pairs with a scene where Cassidy has just arrived for his meeting with the hustler and is pretty anxious about what's going to happen. It was important that this played as "I'm gay, but not ready to admit it to myself" and not "Hey, I'm straight and I really don't want to kiss a guy." AE: What's harder to shoot: sex or violence?
LP: Sex, no doubt. No one has a problem with the bloody stuff because it's so hyper real, like Halloween. The only challenge is fight choreography, but that's just like doing dance moves. To film a sex scene, you have to have people touching erotically – there's no way around that. When we shot the sex scenes – of which we have 3 – we would clear the room and try to make it the least awkward as possible. But there's always got to be a camera, a microphone, and someone saying, "Action!"
AE: What's next? Any new projects in the works?
LP: I have 2 scripts that are pretty far along – another psychic horror film and a psychic action thriller. I obviously like the psychic genre, where ordinary people discover they have unique gifts. But what I find interesting is that, unlike superheroes who use their power to save the world, some people might not be able to handle those kind of remarkable talents and end up destroying themselves and the people around them. Like Carrie.
AE: And since it's the season ... what are your Halloween plans this year?
LP: I may go to a friend's party, but most likely I'll just wander around NYC like I usually do on Halloween -- it's like one big party. And I have a removable artificial front tooth, so I just take it out and I have an instant costume!
In the Blood premieres Sunday, October 28th at 10PM EDT on Logo and will be released to DVD soon after. Check out the film's official site for more!
