How "A Cadaver Christmas" came to be...
Joe Zerull

In 2005 Dan asked me if I would help him shoot a short silent movie about a robot searching for love in the streets of Chicago. The shoot lasted only a weekend, however it was one of the hardest weekends of my life. The movie was called "Skippy Love Chicago," and after climbing that "Skippy" mountain we felt that we could handle anything.

I tell you this story first because it was "Skippy" that eventually led us to make "A Cadaver Christmas."

"Skippy" was one of the characters Dan played while street performing in Chicago. While riding the bus back to his apartment, Dan (dressed as Skippy) was confronted by a strange man who told him he was making a 48 Hour Film Project movie that weekend and wondered if Dan/Skippy wanted to be a part of it. Dan received a card from the stranger and proceeded to call him to find out more. The 48 Hour Film Project is an international film challenge started in 2001. The objective of the project is to make a short movie, no longer than 7 minutes, in 48 hours or less. Sounds easy enough right? And it could be easy if you got to pick your own genre and had indefinite preparation time, but the 48 Hour Film Festival makes you draw a genre from a hat along with assigning your team a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue. All these things have to appear in your short movie in order to qualify. (For more information about the 48 hour film project visit www.48hourfilm.com it is a great tool for young filmmakers to get their hands dirty.)

Once Dan found out about the 48 Hour Film Project, he immediately got a hold of me and told me I should get involved. The following summer we did, and this time unlike "Skippy," people from where I work (Silver Oaks Communications) all wanted to be a part. We entered under the name Presto Video just in case we failed miserably (we didn't want to make Silver Oaks look bad). The anticipation for that weekend to arrive was at a boiling point. We entered into the Des Moines leg of the competition. Dan traveled from Chicago to help out. It really was a great team collaboration which earned us Best of Show in Des Moines in 2006 for our short, "Man Eating Dumpster".

During the creative process of that 48 Hour film, Dan came up with an idea that we all seemed to like but it just would not work for the genre we pulled. We decided to make it on our own for fun. Again we received support from Silver Oaks, and we produced "You're It." It was a lot of fun to make and it was accepted at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival. (Side note: “Skippy” was also accepted at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival and won Best Professional Short.)

The significance of shooting "You're It" came in the last shot of Dan emerging from the cave covered in mud. I remember joking around telling Dan that he is going to be my Bruce Campbell. Shortly after that we were asked to participate in the first annual 48 Hour Film Fall Shootout, where the winners from all the cities make another movie to compete for different prizes. The difference was that these films could not exceed 3 minutes, and not only did they have to feature a character, prop, and a line of dialogue (like usual), they also had to feature a brand of beer provided by the company that sponsored the shootout. Each team was given a different beer, and each beer was given to the teams a week or so before the event.

The beer our team received was "Old Feeziwig." It is a Christmas beer named after the character from Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol." So we knew instantly we had to do a Christmas movie and we reserved a bar as a location assuming that would be the place where we would show the beer. And after seeing Dan covered in mud during "You're It," the natural progression, if I wanted to compare him to Bruce Campbell, would be to cover him in blood. Once we received our genre it all fell into place and "A Cadaver Christmas" was created.

The response was mixed; most people didn't get it because it ends where it really should begin. It did poor in the Shootout, winning absolutely nothing. Of 33 teams that entered, approximately 12 or more won prizes, and we didn't get anything.

So who would want to turn a movie that was proven during competition that it was a dud into a feature film?

I blame Dan.

He must of really enjoyed being covered in blood, or maybe he just figured he owed me for making me shoot that romantic "Skippy" movie of his. Whatever the case, he asked if he could write a feature to "Cadaver," and I was not going to object.

After a few months, Dan turned in a first rough draft which was unfinished. The draft seemed ambitious for us to accomplish with our limited crew. We went back and forth for a few weeks before I let Dan borrow a bunch of my favorite horror movies such as the Evil Dead series, Dawn of the Dead, Dead Alive, and more recently Shaun of the Dead, Planet Terror, and Death Proof. (For more great horror films, check out Joe's Top 10 Horror Movies.)

We went back and forth bouncing ideas off each other. Hanlon also got involved, mainly developing his character. It was a very strange writing process until we were finally happy with a script that seemed do-able to us. We only kept about 3 percent of Dan’s original first draft.

Creating the movie has been an entirely different process than any of our other films, and it is still on going. We are fighting schedule conflicts with actors, crew, and locations. Our movie has been a labor of love to the people involved--even if this type of movie doesn't appeal to them.

I am a big fan of independent horror films. Every year I get together with friends and put on our own little Horrorfest (a term we have been saying way before they started doing it theatrically). As the years have moved on, the caliber of production value of these movies seemed to be getting worse and worse--sometimes un-watchable. But I can't stop watching these movies, I'm always hoping for a hidden gem. In recent years I have found great independent horror movies such as Murder Party, Versus, and Hatchet but I had to dig through some pretty awful stuff to make it to movies like those. I am not going to mention any of the trash horror films that I have watched in fear that I am going to be no better, but behind every independent horror movie, no matter how bad, there was someone or a group of people who really made an effort to get their movie made, no matter how small, and that is respectable.

Please keep an eye out for our little movie, maybe even purchase a poster, T-shirt, or donate money to help our production costs. Any donation is greatly appreciated. Donations over $20 will receive a free copy of one of our previous shorts, and donations over $50 will receive all four previous shorts along with a Special Thanks credit at the end of our movie. Go to the merchandise section for more information.

Thanks,
Joe Zerull (Director)

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