Interview with “Cheerbleeder” Writer/Director Peter Podgursky
Written by Dana Davidson
Cheerbleeders is a short horror film who’s story takes place in Blackfoot, Idaho amongst the high school sect. When Penny magically turns her best friend, Devon, into a popular kid all kinds of chaos results, including blood and death. The movie itself is a fun watch and a great time.
I’m obviously not the only person who thinks so since Cheerbleeders has gotten into at least nine festivals including Shriekfest 2008, Spookyfest in Washington D.C., Eerie Fest in Erie, Pennsylvania, the Sacramento Horror Fest, the Tabloid Witch Awards and the Phoenix Fear Festival. You can check out more about the movie at: http://www.cheerbleeders.com/
Upon meeting Peter Podgursky, an Idaho native, he couldn’t understand why I would want to interview him. He is after all, just a guy doing what he loves, and, might I add, doing it well. One of the most down-to-earth and humble (while still having a great sense of humor) people I’ve had the pleasure to meet in the movie industry, I was more than happy to sit down with him and chat about life, horror, and how one person with drive and ambition can accomplish their dreams. I give you, an hour with Peter Podgursky.
Dana Davidson: What does your family think about your career choice?
Peter Podgursky: They really dig it cause originally I have a bachelors in theater from Idaho State University, you know, the really prestigious, Idaho State Theater program, (chuckles), so they were pretty jazzed that I got into a good film school, they thought ok, maybe he can actually do something. ‘Cause right after I graduated I was like, what the fuck am I gonna do, am I gonna work in a factory, you know, just be a minimum wage guy trying to be in plays or something…?
Dana: How did you come up with the idea of Cheerbleeders?
Peter: It’s partially based on my high school experience growing up a punk rock kid in a Mormon town and partially influenced by Euripides The Bacchae, a play I read as an undergrad. Euripides is famous for writing Medea, The Bacchae isn’t really well known. Cheerbleeders is a Bacchae story, it’s a Greek myth where women infused with the power of Dionysius… they do weird shit like kill men and kill live stock. Crazy mean.
Dana: Was it difficult to put a production of that size together?
Peter: It was my USC thesis film, I’d produced two USC thesis films before I directed my own, so I had already helped some of my peers and ended up trading a lot of favors. Now that I’m out of school I don’t think I could put a production together of that size for how cheaply I did it. I ended up cashing in a lot of favors. It’s all favor based. I did four days on their thesis film so they owe you something on your thesis film. So I ended up paying back a lot of similar favors to the people who worked on my film.
Dana: Where did you shoot the scene with the big football game?
Peter: All the really impressive stuff, like the crowds… I knew I was gonna shoot the film over spring break at USC, but all the football games happened in the fall. So, I got a camera and I went to my high school and talked to the principal and asked if I could shoot the homecoming football game for the crowd and for the football scenes. They said yes that would be cool. And, I already had my lead actress cast ’cause I went to high school with her, and so, it was like if we bring you up here we can put these huge crowds behind you and it will help create the illusion that there are all these people. It will help sell the fake. ‘Cause you actually have her standing there with a bunch of people, which was probably one of the cheapest things cause it only cost the gas to get there, which at the time, was not that bad. Plus the film stock and the processing. So we shot all that stuff. Went back over Christmas break, contacted both the high school football teams and said, “remember when I shot that thing and they lent me some of the football outfits and I brought them down and kept them in my room ’til spring break?” I shot all that stuff in the fall waiting for the spring. Then we had to find a football field that matched and we found one in Oxnard, CA and that’s where we shot the pickup shots of things I knew we needed to do like break the urn in the football field. I wasn’t really comfortable breaking the urn. It was the last thing I wanted to do so we shot that later on a baseball field at the USC campus.
Dana: You used so many locations, Oxnard is incredibly far, how did you find the Oxnard football field?
Peter: We just drove all over and Oxnard is pretty far, it was kind of like, I think it’s fairly seamless. I don’t think you’d be able to tell it’s two different places because we went to every single football field that we could think of to find one that would match.
Dana: When we first met you told me a story about prepping for the movie, something about writing a bunch of letters to people in the industry and how they responded. Will you tell me that story again?
Peter: There were people in the past that were able to get industry mentors at USC and it’s always pretty cool ’cause you see like, Wolfgang Peterson is the industry mentor on blah blah blah thesis film. I thought, “that is really cool.” I want to do that. A lot of people don’t really focus on that. It’s so hard making a movie in the first place. I wrote about one hundred letters. I got a two week trial to IMDB Pro and looked up anybody who I thought was cool at all and wrote them a letter. The letter was about a paragraph long that said like, “hey I’m Peter, this is my USC thesis film. I really admire you, give me like half an hour of your time and I’d be eternally grateful.” Something along those lines… really small and simple. Mailed them out and figured if I mail one hundred of them someone is going to respond. I didn’t pick super duper famous people I just picked people I really admired. Anybody that I thought, “I would love to meet this person, what a great excuse to meet this person.” I think I had about an 8% return but the people who responded back were, like, incredibly huge and some people responded and just said I can’t do anything.
Sam Raimi responded and said, “I can’t, I’m making Spider Man 3 but why don’t you come and hang out with me for a day on Spider Man 3?” So I was like, yeah! Sure! I went and hung out and I made a complete ass of myself in front of Sam Raimi and it was fantastic!
I ended up having dinner at Musso and Frank’s with John Carpenter. That was really an interesting experience ’cause I was so nervous because it was a week before I was shooting and the last thing I needed to be doing was going and having a sit down dinner because I had things to do…. but it was a sit down dinner with John Carpenter and you DON”T not do it.
I got to Musso and Frank’s really early and Jessica Bendinger, who wrote Bring It On, called me up and said, “I have some script notes for you.” And so, I am writing down these script notes which were really good and then I had dinner with John Carpenter and the cool thing was, I didn’t ask him to make me famous or give me a job. I was like, “I really need advice.” They all gave me really good advice here and there. Things that really changed how I made the film or the structure. Jessica Bendinger gave me fantastic script notes, she does script doctoring and getting script notes from Jessica Bendinger probably costs around one million dollars. My film was probably 14 pages, but the kind of information I was getting from her was at least $30,000 worth and it was great. John Carpenter was so funny because I was a blithering idiot. I am so much more put together than I was right then and he said… I feel like he looked at me like I was a kid. He told me to sit up straight and you need to be more focused. He gave me two pieces of advice that were so helpful. One was, when you are on the set and you are getting all your shots and you don’t think it is working for some reason, get another shot from a different angle. I thought that was really practical advice and I used that advice. Instead of sitting there and worrying you get the same shot from a different angle and then move on. The other thing, I guess what he does, I don’t know, he said, when you go to sleep, right before you go to sleep at night close your eyes and just watch your movie in your mind. I did and it calmed me down. Instead of being nervous of production stuff and all kinds of things going on, I mean you’re a wreck, and sometimes lose sight of what is important.
Stuart Gordon was awesome. He read the script and he had some notes on the short that he informed me were not financially feasible. The other thing he said to me, he called me the day before I was going to shoot and he said, “sit down whenever you can and drink a lot of water.” That is great advice, that is real advice from a guy that has directed a ton of movies. So I took his advice. There were times when I didn’t and I wish I had.
Chris Carter was super cool. I got him as one of my last thesis mentors. I was in editing and he responded to the letter and was like, “I don’t know if you are still making this movie but, sorry, I would have done it, I didn’t get the letter.” I was like, no, I’m in editing, and so he watched a couple cuts and gave me some music notes and was super supportive. That was right before he was going to gear up for the X-Files movie.
Eric Kripke, he does Supernatural, he gave me a lot of encouragement, he was a USC guy too and actually got his start doing shorts. He really understands the short film, so about a week out he said, you know, it would be better if this beginning was this, so I changed it. So they all had a real impact. Gosh, this interview is going to be a laundry list of people I talked to, I don’t want to leave anyone out but I know I have. I’m gonna sound like a dick.
I know everybody and I really do appreciate it. It just sounds like I’m really connected and I’m really not. I spent like 42 cents on a letter. Oh! But Joe Dante came to my set and hung out for like 20 minutes to see how I was doing and it was so funny cause he was like, how’s it going, and I’m like, I’m doing good, I’m totally worried ’cause I’m in my friend’s house and I’m afraid I’m going to break something. And, I’m like my friend’s mom is going to freak out. He was like, I did notice there was a broken tile outside, and I’m like, oh no. So we go outside and he bends down and says, you know I can get some glue and he starts shifting around the shattered tile pieces back together and I’m like, no, no, it’s fine we’ll figure it out and I’m thinking, the director of Gremlins is trying to help me out by scheming how to glue this tile back together so I don’t get into trouble. How helpful is that! There is really fantastic transition in The Howling that I’m totally in love with and when I met him in his office he asked, “how are you going to transition from this scene to this scene?” And I told him and he said, “ok, that’s good.” He was a good cheerleader and really nice. A lot of the horror guys I’ve met are so incredibly nice.
Mick Garris is another guy who I got a little later on and I showed him a cut of my film. I went to Masters of Horror and I watched the Masters of Horror he was reviewing and we talked about the movie and he invited me to this film festival that he was showing his film at. He said he’d read stuff if I sent him something. I try not to send him crap. I try not to send him anything but he said, “yes you can bother me,” basically, and that’s super cool.
The last person I need to mention is this woman, Elizabeth Allen, who I used to intern for. She’s not a horror movie lady but she is a really good filmmaker. She did this kids movie Aquamarine, it’s like ET for girls but with a mermaid, and she was really cool. She really wanted my film to do well, and she is a working director, and she came four nights in the editing room and we would go cut-by-cut through my movie. She used to be an editor. I got a whole lot out of these people, it’s really cool. I feel like these are people I can go to who have been there and can give me solid advice. I have people who are way smarter than me to talk to.
The last cool thing that has happened is that Patton Oswalt was doing these screenings over at the New Beverly last month and I thought maybe I’ll give Patton Oswalt my movie. Which is such a dick move, but I figured he was showing films at the New Beverly, and you figure when someone puts themselves out there like that they will accept that weird film students may approach them. I approached him between the double features, I was like, “hey Patton, I’m so sorry this is such a fucker move but this is my USC thesis film and if you could watch it and tell me what you think and give me a blurb that would be really fucking nice of you and I’d really appreciate it.” He was like, sure thing, I’ll watch it. I was thinking, cool at least he is nice even if he doesn’t watch it. Then he was like, “oh, I’d like you to meet Carl Gottlieb the writer of Jaws,” and I was like…I talked to the writer of Jaws for a while. I thought it was a cool night no matter what ends up. He responded to me on MySpace and gave me this really kick ass quote for my movie. He ended up showing it at something. That is like a totally random thing. I guess the moral of the story is to approach famous people and bother them… I don’t really have horror stories, I’ve definitely have had it go amiss but I totally understand where the other person is coming from. I mean, I’m really just some weird guy who went to the New Beverly and people I’m sure get approached with terrible things all the time.
Dana: Let’s talk about your music choices…
Peter: Ian MacKaye, from Minor Threat, let me use two of his songs. He hasn’t seen the movie yet.
Dana: How did you get into contact with him?
Peter: I emailed him. He runs his own company so I went to the Minor Threat page, Discord Records, and it had an email there. I’m like, Minor Threat has been around for a thousand years how can they… so I wrote, I don’t know whose email this is but I’m a big Minor Threat fan and I’m making a USC movie and I really want to use this song. The nice thing about Ian MacKaye is he owns absolutely everything about his songs. So he can say yes way easier. Some of the other people were like, who can say yes? Nobody even knows.
Dana: When did you get into horror? What influences you?
Peter: My favorite movie growing up was Ghostbusters. I had a pirated VHS tape of Ghostbusters 1 & 2. I liked Ghostbusters so much. Ghostbusters 2 came out at the very same time as the Tim Burton Batman Film so I became a real Batman hater because how dare people be more excited for a Batman movie than Ghostbusters 2. I remember my aunt bought me a model kit of a Batmobile and I returned it. I’m like, I’m not having any of this, I hated Batman for a long time after that. It was such an unreasonable hate, but it was because I loved Ghostbusters. I was a Ghostbuster for Halloween at least three times. I remember one night in high school, I think it was my junior year, I was always weird, I remember one night my friend Bill, who was way cooler than I was, you know there is always someone who gets you into whatever you identify with… Bill was that guy for me, he got me into punk rock and all sorts of cool stuff, and we watched Evil Dead 2 and Clockwork Orange. A double feature in his basement and I was like, holy shit, these are the coolest things ever. I had seen Army of Darkness before but when the blood hits the light bulb in Evil Dead 2, it was like, how cool is that! I’ve always identified with weird stuff. I mean, everyone feels like an outsider in their town, but my home town is 80% Mormon, and I’m not Mormon, and my mom was in the news every now and again cause she would do all kinds of crazy stuff because she has manic depression. I remember one time when my parents were going though a divorce, this was also during Columbine, so I was dressed in a leather jacket, in a punk rock band, then Columbine happened and my mom went crazy and she dyed her hair blue, shaved it into a Mohawk, and rode her horse into the county court house and got thrown in jail. I lived by myself for a summer, went to summer school, had to take care of myself. I lived on a farm so I had to take care of all the animals and stuff and so everyone was looking at me like… I was always sort of weird-looking, anyway, and after all this other stuff happened people were like intimidated by me because these other kids who look like Peter went and shot a bunch of kids in Colorado.
I was really into comedies as a kid, John Candy comedies. I can always watch that. I switched over to horror around high school time. I was into theater but I was also into dead baby jokes and punk rock music. One thing that sucks about being into horror movies is that people think that you are into bad movies and that is not true. I think most horror movies are bad movies, most romantic comedies are bad movies. Name a genre and most movies are bad movies in that genre because most movies are bad movies. I guess people make a lot more horror movies than other movies because it’s financially viable, so there are a lot more bad horror movies. I always get so offended when someone hands me a piece of shit movie and goes, oh it’s right up your alley, oh, you are gonna love this movie… and you see it and you realize that people have terrible taste and that is incredibly frustrating.
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