by Matt Thurm
ROVER (www.ROVERthemovie.com), which premiered this week in Narrative Competition at Slamdance 2014, tells the story a hopeless hapless cult leader who, losing control of his flock, fakes a prophecy instructing them to make a movie in hopes of bringing them together.
But the real story of ROVER is how it came to be. The film was entirely reverse-engineered from the question: “what kind of story can you tell with a beautiful – but broken-down – 19th-century church and $50,000?”
Tony and I met for coffee in February around the corner from “the church” I’d heard so much about.
Tony had come across a 19th Century church and parochial school that were recently bought by a developer who had designs to turn them into apartment buildings, and Tony and friends arranged to lease the church from the developers while they waited for plans and permits to clear
When Tony and his friends took control of the church in February of 2012, the place was a shithole–little school desks strewn about, piles and piles of mildewed bibles.
But in just a few months, they had cleaned it up and were holding art events, throwing parties, and renting out old classrooms in the parochial school as artist studios.
By August, there was enough money to hustle together a movie and enough of a reason to rush — there were rumors that the plans would go through and they’d lose the church on December 1.
Three months to write a script, get a crew, and make a movie.
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So we had money and a location, which was a good start. But now, for the story.
Whatever the story, the church had to become a character in its own right, not only for sentimental reasons (it did afterall make the movie possible), but also because it added production value – people paid thousands of dollars to rent the church for a day for a music video and film shoots, so we had to showcase it.
Tony had always been interested in cults, and the germ for this story was one particular “exit video” of the Heaven’s Gate Cult. Before meeting their untimely deaths timed with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, they recorded testimonials for posterity. In one, there’s a pitch for a sci-fi script they had written about the history of their beliefs and the universe.
A sci-fi epic based on the origin myth of a cult? Hilarious.
Water that germ with David Mamet’s STATE AND MAIN, and you’ve got a movie about a cult making a movie.
But budgetary constraints make it sort of hard to make a movie about a cult, since cults normally have lots of members, (and even with just a few SAG actors, it would be our costliest line item, and a non-qualifying cost at that.
BUT what if they offed themselves in waves? And this is the last wave? And the remaining members are growing weary and anxious awaiting “the signal” that it’s time to leave this world for the Venusian paradise? And what if, in an effort to regain control and re-invigorate the remaining members, the disciple left to lead this last wave fakes a prophecy saying that they have to make a movie and leave something for posterity before they can leave?
Now we don’t need too many actors and the dilapidated decaying church has become a metaphor for the former glory of the cult.
We know we need a day on a NYS qualifying soundstage to qualify for the tax credit, so the outside help they bring on to direct the movie will be making a hyperstylized music video on a white cyc (with a build) before he joins up with his new “crew.”
So what kind of story can you tell with a beautiful – but broken-down – 19th-century church and $50,000?
ROVER may have been a case of reverse engineering, but the question it raises is how do you engineer a situation that lends itself to reverse engineering?
Check out our trailer
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*Official Trailer* ROVER (or Beyond Human: The Venusian Future and the Return of the Next Level) from tony blahd on Vimeo.
Matthew Thurm is a New York-based cinephile-turned-producer. He is a former Creative Executive at Double Hope Films. His first feature, ROVER (or Beyond Human: The Venusian Future and the Return of the Next Level) will premiere in Narrative Competition at Slamdance.
