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Vice Blog

JASON EISENER'S GOT LOTS OF FIRE BARRELS

Jason Eisener is not fucking around. The debut feature of the young Canuck writer/director, this month's Hobo with a Shotgun, is an immensely entertaining affair. And it's making a mark in a year when airborne limbs and decapitations are indie-trendy, arty bloodsport (I Saw the Devil, Rubber, Catechism Cataclysm). As DIY production stories go, Hobo's back-story is fascinatingly complex and prolong, weaving together YouTube, movie blog chatter, Quentin Tarantino chatter, Austinite tastemakers, and the Weinstein Bros' wallets in a way unimaginable just a decade ago. In 2007, Eisener's original incarnation of Hobo with a Shotgun, a scrappy two-minute faux-trailer, won an online contest married to the release of Grindhouse, the now-infamous $50 million double-feature homage to 70s exploitation flicks (flicks that cost less than QT's annual weed allowance). That pricey three-hour indulgence, the American Idiot of genre splooge, was a unique dud. But in a few theaters Eisener's trailer was screened with the pros. It got his name out, got him some, uh, Internet chips. In the four years since, Grindhouse has continued to serve as an unlikely launch pad for merchandise, a lackluster spin-off feature (Machete), and an upcoming RZA kung-fu film. Most importantly, with the conversion of Hobo to a full-length indie, it's now the illegitimate grandpappy to an authentic punk hellraiser.

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, Eisener and his dedicated crew of friends smartly did away with the fake reel scratches and crackling damage associated with the original trailer and grindhouse revivalism. In what proved to be a goddamn casting miracle, Eisener was able to convince Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) to play the titular, rail-riding Ronin to America's disenfranchised. Their initial discussion happened over Skype. Soon enough, Hauer was on set in Nova Scotia, where the production had a fully-stocked "blood truck" revved to paint the streets red until they became Scum Town, the movie's hyper-80s NYC setting. I feared Hauer's performance would play like a favor, but instead it's invested and enthused--and it's matched by nearly every cast member. Saturated aggressively in color, Hobo somehow wears its several bandoliers of influence less so---The Running Man to Django to Bad Dudes---without being worn by them. For instance, I can't tell you what about the film reminds me (in a good way) of Predator 2, it's just there, like one of a thousand fingerprints on a fast-food window or VHS rental. After speaking with Eisener about directing and his planned follow-ups, I get the impression this was no poutine-fueled, trash-happy accident.          Vice: The film went above and beyond my expectations based on the original contest trailer. How important was it for you, in making the feature version, to avoid the gimmicky or self-aware trappings typical of a new "grindhouse" movie?
Jason Eisener: Even when we put out the original trailer, peoples' expectations for the feature film were in the back of my mind. The original trailer didn't really tell people what the film would be about. Clearly, yeah, the film is about a hobo with a shotgun; delivering justice one shell at a time. Blah blah. But even when we released the real trailer, I was worried that people who liked both were building up their own ideas, imagining what the film should be. That was our drive: we have to be creative, without a huge budget, and really surpass everyone's expectations. For me---while I love Black Dynamite, and a few of the recent films that have spoofed exploitation movies from the 70s and 80s---I wanted to stay away from that. Those films where a boom mic pops up in the frame or have reels that are "missing." That stuff takes me out of a film. Especially now, it's been done so much. Even the fake scratches that we put in the original trailer, I feel like that belongs in, only like a Scary Movie film: a Hollywood spoof. Whereas, we wanted to make a film that came from a world that I could pull off a VHS shelf. The world of Hobo with a Shotgun is a very insane, surreal world, and so whoever we cast in the title role had to play it straight. Rutger Hauer got that immediately. Instead of his character being as crazy as this world, he's almost a voice of reason. You can almost view the film as though his character is imagining this chaotic world around him.

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Do you even consider Hobo part of the "grindhouse movement"? Whatever that means. It seems like you guys took RED cameras and decided to pay appreciation to John Carpenter and scuzz entertainment from the 80s. 
I honestly don't even agree with the term "grindhouse." I know people use that term to categorize films like this, but to me a "grindhouse" still means the theaters themselves, not the films. The original trailer definitely had more of a 70s vibe, though. For our first feature film, we wanted to get our voice out there, to make a statement. We grew up in and best know the 80s. Our movie starts out in the 70s and then quickly dives into the 80s. And beyond 80s films, a huge influence was 80s cartoons, watching shows like Bravestarr, Transformers, He-Man, and Ghostbusters--Ninja Turtles especially. I love high concept ideas, my eye is attracted to those visuals. And with Hobo we were really looking back to our inner 13-year-old. This film should be familiar to those who grew up then. At the same time, I felt like I was exploiting, I dunno, like a YouTube audience. A new generation of audience members. That was also my mindset. Online success with the trailer is what helped us make the feature a reality. It was that audience's support. That was central. So, I wanted to make a YouTube-style film; meaning I wanted every scene to have a high concept idea that could be uploaded online separately and be its own viral thing. I think audiences today process information so quickly, so we just filled Hobo with them. But, you know, that being said the story was definitely first. [laughs] Definitely.

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Where did the idea to use a homeless guy for a hero originate? And do you think being from Canada, the detachment, lends itself to the film's comedic bent on poverty in the United States? Canadians love to project America back at America. They are arguably the best at it.   
The original idea for a hobo as the protagonist came from when my buddy--the film's co-writer--John Davies and I were hanging out in a pizza shop in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It's where we go to pitch one another ideas for movies. At the time, we were hanging with my buddy Mojo. He had really long hair and he had just bought this Airsoft Shotgun. I remember he had on this stained shirt, and he's listening to us one day and says, "Why don't you make a movie about me?" And offhand, John said, "What, like a hobo with a shotgun?" It clicked. Then outside the window--it's one of the greasier streets in town--we saw a strip club, a triple-x video store, a couple pawn shops, hydroponic stores, etc. The other big inspiration is a guy named David Brunt, who played the Hobo in the original trailer. When I was working at a comic book store, he would come in a lot. And Dave's one of these guys who's on disability and spends a lot of time on the streets. We just had a strong bond. He'd come in and tell me stories, share these adventures. And he said he was interested in becoming involved in making movies with us. He's not an actor, never had a camera pointed on him a day in his life. But when the trailer contest came around, we went out with him and shot for a couple days. And what you see in that trailer, that's for real. [laughs] That's pure anger. I'd bring up Dave's life to him, his position, how he ended up like this [after being hit by a drunk driver operating a semi] and he used that frustration. And when Rutger came to town, Dave was beside me at the monitor the entire time during filming. And Dave and Rutger hung out. He's the biggest inspiration. If you know him, you can totally see Dave in Rutger's performance.

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The world economy helped fill in the gaps for inspiration too, I'd imagine. 
Yeah. A lot of what was going on in the world as well was leaking into our script. Just turning the news on everyday. In the first cut of the movie, there's a lot more stuff about people getting kicked out of their homes and the Hobo witnessing that. And then in creating that world, we drew from dystopian movies like RoboCop and Class of 1984. Two other big ones were Vice Squad and Brain Trenchard-Smith's Dead-in Drive-In. Those were big as far as deteriorated streets covered in graffiti.

One sequence that carried over from the trailer was the Hobo targeting the makers of Bumfights, and vice versa. What about them got you fired up? 
When we were writing the script, I was thinking, what's the equivalent of a super-villain for a homeless person? [laughs] I had heard about Bumfights, so I looked at a video clip and it just made me so angry.

The way the film serves them up is similar to how Piranha 3-D had it in for Joe Francis. I guess the Bumfights crew is like the Joe Francis of homeless people, though from seeing interviews with them, they may disagree. 
Absolutely. They are. Yes.

Rutger Hauer was your number one choice. Why? And what about Hauer suits the role of badass loner for genre films? He's played a few. Your hobo sort of combines his amazing street-fighting skills in Blind Fury with the mystery of his drifter from Eric Red's The Hitcher. 
Well, Hobo is very much like a Western. It's similar to The Man with No Name, this guy who just walks into a town one day. We approached it like a Western. And Rutger, he even refers to the film as a "Graffiti Western": a Western with no rules. Growing up, he was the first actor who grabbed the attention of [cowriter] John and myself. The first film we both saw Rutger in was probably The Blood of Heroes, which is this awesome post-apocalyptic Australian film…

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That's sort of a crazy movie, too. Because, with no budget, it invents and depicts its own sport. That's one of the hardest things to do believably in a film or book, in my opinion. 
It's funny because both of us used to play that sport, the Jugging game, when we were kids. But not with skulls. [laughs] For me, Rutger caught our attention in films like that because you look in his eyes and he can either have great mystery behind them or be really inviting. Or he's like a mad dog. He's got incredible presence without saying anything. That's who the Hobo was to us. I wanted to direct him as if he was a grizzly bear; I wanted the audience to never know how close they can get to this character. Not know how far to stand back. Rutger's just… he's an amazing presence.

Meeting and working with Hauer, did anything about his sense of humor surprise you? Because he has that steely look in his eyes, like you said. His eyes are almost like Steve McQueen's. But more alien. Even in like Blind Fury, he showcases this eccentric comedic timing. You can't predict what he'll do or say next. 
It's weird because we discovered that he sort of has the same sense of humor as us. He told me when he came to Halifax that he felt this was an opportunity for him to act like a naughty kid again. And he did. He was on set and he was always saying that he wanted to "stir shit up." He'd go so far as to make a stirring motion with his hands. [laughs] And he'd find all the gags and language in the movie really funny. I was so nervous having him come to Halifax because I'm a film fan before I'm a filmmaker. I was pretty worried during prep. But in the first three days after he arrived, we just bro'd out. We watched clips or movies, talked about our lives, listened to music. We were always on the same page. I mean, he's worked with some of my favorite directors. I was worried I'd be a chump to this guy. He treated it as an opportunity to just get crazy.

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Did you and Hauer discuss how to walk the line of the Hobo's mental health? One thing I dig about the film is that I was unsure how sane this guy was. His sense of morality in Scum Town, his resilience for being good, it's possibly a… delusion unto itself. And in one scene, we see him struggling to write out a simple donation sign. "I'm tired. Need money for lawnmower," I think it says. And then the best, to me, is when he randomly takes a swig from this clear plastic flask. You stop and wonder: Has this guy been fucking wasted the whole time? Or is he drinking water?
It's like having an unreliable narrator for a hero. No one's asked that about the alcohol. And it's really interesting because the drinking thing came from Rutger. Especially weird since he doesn't drink himself. At that point, I had never thought of the Hobo as someone who would take a sip of alcohol. But Rutger did it, and it was like, 'you know what? That will make some people wonder what the reality is here.' [laughs] There's a scene where the Hobo talks about having fights with his own mind, how he treats his mind like a brother. And that stuff, word for word, came from Dave Brunt. He was hit by an 18-wheeler when he was 20, it completely destroyed his hip. He talks about how, when you deal with pain all the time and you're alone a lot of the time, it can make you crazy. I liked adding a topsy-turvy feeling to the movie. The Hobo gets so caught up in the craziness, he becomes a killer. And it's interesting that people get so stoked on him using the shotgun, because for me, it's tragic. He even tells these babies that they will grow up to be junkies or murderers. Or just like him.

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The only film that came to mind with a comparably bold use of color to your film was Punisher: War Zone. The color is really well done, but was there ever a point where your experimentation with color gels and saturation felt overindulgent?  
Experimenting with gels is something I did all through growing up. At school, in the film program, I remember my teachers getting mad at me for playing around with color. They thought some of my work looked ridiculous. And my inspirations for color come from Italian film-making, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Going back to the cartoons and being subjected to the 80s, I remember seeing a lot of great full-on prime colors. I even tell aspiring filmmakers: track down exactly how you perceive the world and use that in your film. For me, whenever I see certain color combinations, my mind instantly goes back to my childhood. Like, a certain red and yellow, my mind instantly goes to 80s wrestling and Hulk Hogan. I went back and studied 80s wrestling image for Hobo: how the WWF put together these combinations that would grab kids' attentions and eyes, what combos would make for cool posters and great action-figures. I applied that to the costumes and the production design. Months before pre-production started, I went around to every location with my director of photography, who's on the same wavelength as me, and we decided where to put all the lights and what gels to use for each scene. And so, in pre-production, I handed a script to my production team that already had little cut-out squares of gel on each scene. They could match colors for costumes, really go from there.  That's pretty rad.

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Is this use of color a signature for you? On your follow-up film, do you plan to dial it down?
No, man. If anything? I'm just gonna go off more. [laughs] The next film is very much in the style of  The Wanderers, Class of 1984, and Rock 'n' Roll Highschool. And I'm just going to push that look further.

Hobo has a really strong and risky hierarchy of villains. At the top, you have The Drake, this psychopathic boss and 80s showman. He's almost a political figure like Jack Nicholson's Joker. And then you have The Drake's sons, who are these prep-goons. And [semi-spoiler] at the end we're introduced to The Plague, these supernatural henchmen who date back thousands of years. How difficult was it to make all three types of villain gel in the script and film? Because by the end we believe a mortal like The Drake has pull over The Plague… but just enough to be cool yet still make you go, "hey, wait a second." How did you find the balance? 
To me, the balance wasn't very difficult. My favorite film of all time is The Warriors, which is filled with new and different groups of villains all through the movie. With The Drake, he's such an interesting character, and I feel like maybe we should see more of him. He only has four scenes in the movie. [laughs] But the combination felt natural. And I keep mentioning it, but Class of 1984 has five or six different villains running around rampantly throughout. Now, in my mind The Plague are on a higher level than The Drake. The Plague for us---you hire them, they do their job, but you don't have power over them. They can leave whenever they want. [laughs] People might not get that from the movie, maybe, but that's what we're thinking. Even at the end, one of The Plague, Rip, just walks away from the situation. The Plague have a moral code, which is really weird. And both of The Plague characters have been kicking around in our minds for a while. The very first inspiration was the Bounty Hunter in The Muppets Movie with the harpoon. At the beginning of the movie I put a credit, "Creator of 'The Plague,'" for my friend Jason Johnson, which is a pretty weird credit for people to see. And Jason builds costumes, basically out of junk. And he's very inspired by post-apocalyptic films, especially The Road Warrior. I fought very hard to get him on the movie. He didn't have enough credits to get on the film, to be part of the Union. I told the Union, if this guy can't help create these costumes, I'm just not going to make the film. That simple. Rip and Grinder [aka The Plague] are literally made out of car bumpers and scrap metal. He really went for it. He'd go out and work on them under a full moon. He cut himself; his blood went into these characters.

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Can you talk about the relationship, the dynamic, between The Plague itself? Is one dominant? Are they siblings or best friends? You don't hear them speak to each other yet you sense a work ethic solidified over time. Two dirty cops on an infinite beat.
[laughs] I like that. I felt like I didn't have enough time to shoot their action scenes. But the idea is that whenever they enter a place, they just move like a plague, they keep moving. Lights turn on. Storms start. They just kill everything that steps in their way. In a way, they're like C-3PO and R2-D2. [laughs] Rip is the guy who can talk and Grinder is the smaller guy who just makes weird noises, or like Jay and Silent Bob in a way. And they're definitely buds. They've been together for, probably, hundreds of thousands of years. And even their octopus, he's like their pet. You see Grinder back there hammering it, but that's just their way of playing with their pet.

Were The Plague intentionally positioned to become fan favorites? Because they really are taking off and the movie hasn't been out very long. What is the premise of the rumored spin-off film?
We always knew. That was our drive. I wanted to make sure their designs were perfect. I wanted people to totally dig on them. You know, my thought was, if the movie sucks, at least those characters rock. [laughs] The spin-off film will start off with a bit of their history and certain bounties they've captured in the distant past. And then it becomes a modern road-chase movie that's very much inspired by Race with the Devil, where these two ambulance drivers pick up this person—basically an unconscious victim—and then all of a sudden they're being chased by The Plague. The victim is a bounty of theirs. And then the drivers come to find out that there's more to this victim than they know. So, it's these two young kids using whatever is in the ambulance… defibrillators [laughs], to fend them off. It's a lot of fun. And the setting will totally be a dystopia, firing down graffiti streets, lots of fire barrels.

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With The Drake's sons, I find it impossible that you weren't aware of their similarity to Tom Cruise. You know your shit. C'mon. You don't associate cheesy smiles, privilege, and Wayfarers with Risky Business?
I just tried watching Risky Business the other night. I fell asleep half-way through but, yeah, I guess I can see where some people think that. [laughs] When I saw the cover, I was like 'Holy Shit.' For me, if you look at The Drake's sons, Slick and Ivan, their designs are very much inspired by Captain N. I don't know if you're familiar…

Like Kid Icarus? Yeah, sure.
Yeah, so those guys come from that world. They were actually named after characters in River City Ransom, which is my favorite Nintendo game.

Let's talk about the actual Hobo with a Shotgun arcade cabinet and how that came to be. In the film, there's an arcade game for The Plague, so I'm guessing it spawned from that. But it's a pretty impressive and original tie-in for an indie film, for your first feature. 
The guy behind that was Justin Ishmael from Mondo Tees in Austin. One day, I wrote on my Facebook that I bet Hobo with a Shotgun could make for a really cool old school video game. Then I got a message from Justin, like, 'let's do it'. So, he hooked us up with a game company in Austin and they went to work with a bunch of artwork, images, and a film screener. Even the structure of this film is inspired by video games. Going back to the villain question, the villains are basically bosses. And when we put The Plague arcade game in the film, we never thought it would become a reality for the film itself. The Alamo Drafthouse guys have the Hobo cabinet. Tim League from the Drafthouse was a big help with making that happen too. And my producer has The Plague cabinet, he's down the street from me.

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Slim pickings, but gun-to-head what's your favorite video game adaptation?
I guess Scott Pilgrim wasn't based directly off a game. I still haven't seen one that's captured the spirit. The one I've watched the most is probably the first Mortal Kombat, but even that's, you know, it's not the greatest. [laughs] And it still pisses me off, the Street Fighter movies. That's my favorite game, I have a Street Fighter 2 cabinet at my house, and that would seem to be the easiest game to get right. And they fuck it up every time. I would love to do Double Dragon 2. I think I would rock Double Dragon 2 pretty hard. I dunno. What's your fave?

It's not an adaptation, but by default, I gotta go with Crank 2. I was going to ask if you knew [Crank writers/directors] Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. You seem to share a mentality with them, as far as a hyper-immersion in action and violence. 
That's funny. Absolutely. In the spirit of a video game, I'd say that Crank 2 and Wayne Kramer's Running Scared are definitely the best. I love Crank 2. Like, I had a good time with Crank 1, but Crank 2 for me was like The Evil Dead 2 of the series. I saw it, I think, six times in the movie theater when it came out. I do think I share a similar mentality. I actually interviewed Brian for a pilot of a show we were doing called Cinemapocalypse, with Zack Carlson from the Drafthouse. We interviewed him. I only mentioned a little bit about Hobo to him because the focus was on his work. So, no I haven't talked or heard from those guys since, but I'd love for them to see it.

You briefly mentioned your next film earlier. But isn't that about a fighting tournament? And you're setting it inside a high school?
  Yeah, I brought up earlier that it's inspired by The Wanderers. But also Riki-Oh, Bloodsport, The Karate Kid. The way I'm designing the movie is as if I'm designing my own Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter universe. I'm spending a lot of time on character design; the fighting styles have to be wicked. I want it to be to the sickest fighting tournament movie of all time. The primary fighters will be students and the ring will be set inside the high school. [laughs] Right now, we're in development writing the treatment and the script with the same producers we worked with on Hobo. Hopefully, we'll be able to shoot that next year.

And then there's a dream project about hockey right? The working title is Red Ice…  
Yeah. Wait. How did you hear about that? [laughs] I can't say much about that one. But hockey plays a big part in the high school movie we're making as well. The main character ends up getting his hand cut off, and he takes his hockey glove, hollows out the padding compartments and fills them up with lead. And so, he has this sewed up hockey glove and he's able to full-on crush people with punches. And that film, I'm saying this now, the fighting will be more practical than Hobo. Some of the violence will be similarly fantastical, but the fighting will be played straight, more realistic. Like, the main character won't be able to punch a guy's head off with his metal fist, but he'll be able to crush a face.

Would you consider having Nardwuar as a sports commentator in either of those films?  
[laughs] Maybe not a commentator. But I'd definitely love to work with him. I was just talking about Nardwuar yesterday, that's funny, because I watched his interview with Lil B. It was awesome.

I'm out of notes. Anything else we need to discuss for Vice?
Well, one thing I haven't talked about anywhere yet is the influence that skateboarding and skate videos have had on my film-making. In Hobo, it's something I hope people can sense, the editing style and the shots. Maybe you can see it. The way I scout locations for films, I'll go to them and just sit around and envision the action and places to set up. Making skate videos, they taught me the magic and importance of marrying music and film. To cut to the beat and tempo of the song, like Jamie Thomas, the way he used to cut videos at Zero. He was telling a story. And something like Welcome to Hell from Toy Machine, the style of the cutting tells a story, the music fits the emotion of the skater being introduced perfectly. Stacks and stacks of skate videos were my inspiration when I was editing this film. Talking to security guards, knowing what to say, knowing when they're around and not around. That's why I wanted to shoot it in Dartmouth, because I knew every alley, nook and cranny from skating. It just felt right.

Speaking of security guards. What level of hell was involved, logistically, in the sequence where you shot a school bus on fire full of kids?  
That scene was the thorn in our side through the entire process. I mean going back to script writing and raising money. People literally backed off financing solely due to that scene. We probably could have shot the film two years ago if we nixed that. But I felt it was necessary [for The Drake's sons]. So, we bought an old bus for $500 and instead of CG'ing a flame on the flamethrower, we used a real one. I hate CG. We all do. And on the first day, the flame goes 30-feet. So, we scale it back. [laughs] Get the actor back on the bus, and fire it again. And instantly it turned the bus into an oven. The ceiling warped. The guy who plays Ivan, the hair products in his hair caught fire and he had to put it out quickly with his hand. It was a little sketchy.  
HUNTER STEPHENSON