Steve Tsapelas talks THE BIGFOOT CLUB

I first came in contact with Steve Tsapelas on Twitter a decade or more ago. We'd follow each other's exploits and comment on them. When Steve made his first feature, THE UFO CLUB, I jumped to review it. I loved it.

Despite being in internet contact I didn't meet him in person until a few months ago when Ken Frank had a screening of HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION for friends and family. It was at that screening Steve told me that he had his new film BIGFOOT CLUB close to being finished.  He sent me the film, I fell in love with it and it's story of friends new and old, and asked for an interview.

Steve is an interesting man. He's made TV shows of his own, written for others, written for Marvel Comics and done enough things that I need to do another interview with him just to cover all of the things he's done away from feature films (And that is before we talk about how he shoots his projects). While talking to him about BIGFOOT CLUB he kept referencing these other projects that he did and which I couldn't fully explore lest I get off the topic of his new feature. As it is I had to do some trimmins so that what follows is primarily focused just on BIGFOOT CLUB and not all over the place.

A couple of quick notes:  

First Steve is part of the the kick ass collective In The Garage Production. Founded by Ken Frank and Chris Mollica, In The Garage is a tight knit group of people who just want to make movies. They have honed their craft and are able to make micro-budgeed feature for very little money.  They are one of the best studios out there today and their out put of films, from Steve, and Ken and Chris and others, is as consistently good, in it's way, as Pixar or Ghibli. (No, really.) Because Steve mentions Ken several times I wanted to give context. They are best friends. The pair met at the Long Island International Film Expo years ago and they became friends and co-consprirators in cinematic confections. (BIGFOOT CLUB is premiering this year's edition of LIIFE this weekend).  

Second, because two Steve's were talking to each other I had to list my side of the talk under UNSEEN.

I want to thank Steve for taking the time to talk to me. Hopefully we will talk again soon.

Stev and his wife, Ana.

UNSEEN: How did you how did you  come to meet Ken Frank? 

STEVE:  Ken's movie FAMILY OBLIGATIONS was playing at the Long Island Film Expo and I had a TV pilot the self-produced called HOT AND NERDY that was also playing there And I saw him on a panel and I thought we had similar attitude towards filmmaking. Then I was the awards ceremony, which is a very long ceremony, a lot of films get awarded. It's like a really great showcase. The clip that really stuck out to me was the clip from FAMILY OBLIGATIONS. I just I loved the tone of it. I could tell right away that it was well-made and that he had a great sense of how to make a movie that was independent, but didn't have like the kind of trappings of an independent movie It it felt really real and it had a point of view So after the the awards when he actually won Best Picture, I contacted him on Twitter and I was like, "hey, I was at the award ceremony You know, your movie look great Congratulations" He immediately responded and sent me the link to the movie and like we've become friends

 UNSEEN:  You've had an interesting career. You've had an interesting career. You've written for Marvel, TV stuff, and you've stalked David Duchovny from the X-Files.

STEVE: It's my wife [Ana Aflorei] who is a huge, like gigantic X-Files fan. She has a podcast about the X-Files. She's a big X-Files person. I just go to be supportive and to keep her from kidnapping him. You know like there's a community around the show  and  they're really nice people So when we go to events we see all the same people.  

UNSEEN: Were you always the Bigfoot guy, the UFO guy? 

 STEVE: I wouldn't say I'm like the world's biggest UFO or Bigfoot fan, but I thought it was a good way to frame a personal story around a genre It had a little bit something different.  By doing that with Bigfoot with the with Bigfoot Club you have a community You now have a starting point and then you you can work out from that into all sorts of directions

 It's kind of a true story, in some ways. I was in a UFO club in high school. Someone did come and raffle off a tape of a UFO crash on Long Island and a girl did drop her own name In the raffle and then the guy was arrested for trying to kill local congressperson

 UNSEEN: That's the Smithpoint Park crash...

 STEVE: Yes. The funny thing to me was that like my friends and I were gonna if one of us got it we were gonna hang out together and watch it. But once the girl got it, we're like, oh man, we're never gonna see this tape There's no way a girl's gonna invite us to her house, so that was kind of a funny jumping off point. 

As a kid, like most kids, I was obsessed with like Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster and would read books about it and like the Patterson Gimlin film and then you know, I wanted to tell another personal story and I needed some sort of element and on the set of UFO Club. We were joking like Well, what's the next one's called Bigfoot Club, why don't we make a sequel called Bigfoot Club?

So I had that in my head and I was like, well if I was to make another movie I want to incorporate Bigfoot. How would I make it?

 Also when I was younger my friends and I made a web series. It was successful and we sold it to a network and then like, you know when success happens different people have different feelings about it and  different dynamics blow up. That was kind of in my head. It was pretty personal and everyone has a different angle and reason why they wanted to make something, like why we wanted to make our own TV show.  And I turned 40 and I started to reflect on my life and my   friends who had gone away and I wondered what was the cause of that? And so I was exploring that but through the lens of cryptid just as I wanted to find  a different element so it wasn't just a straight dramedy. 

UNSEEN: It seems like you were the sort of person who like spent too much time watching TV. Because watching  the film I could see where you lifted  the pieces. It feltit wasl like a real PBS show. This the sort of thing that would have run on PBS.

 STEVE: When I was a kid, I think I watched from like 6 a.m. until I went to bed.  I was obsessed with TV And you know TV never let me down. It was like my best friend and I felt connected to it. When I was making this I was glad that I edited it because I was such like a maniac for those details That I couldn't explain like the way like those commercials should be paced or like those TV show inserts should be edited or or things like that. I had to be very hands-on with it because in my head I could hear the beats of those commercials But like to explain them to someone else would have taken way too long So it was just very second nature for me to like dive in on that

 UNSEEN: When I was talking to Ken he said you two have a simpatico. You'll tell him what you want and he's thinking "I don't know what he wants But he tells me what he wants and I know that's  what he wants" And you don't have to explain it beyond that  he just goes with it. And it works. I've only rarely heard of that really working among filmmakers.

STEVE:  Understand that Ken and I talk all day long. Our friendship like really developed quickly. We have a lot of like similar touch points.

We're both total movie nerds. He is a Criterion collection kind of guy. I love that too,but I leave more room for other genres. But I do think we have these connections that like we can shorthand it with each other. We were both the kind of kids who are watching like the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. We have a lot of like touch points that aren't necessarily even like normal for guys our age, but like it's a real connection and I do appreciate that even sometimes he thinks I'm crazy when I say these things like that I want to recreate an old commercial that he always like goes with it and trust me. That's really great. And why I think we work together so well is that Even though he thinks I'm nuts. 

I don't I don't think I would be making features had I not met Ken. He was the one who really talked me into it. So I feel very fortunate that I met Ken and Shauna. They've made this possible. Otherwise, I would not have known how to do this without them and their whole infrastructure that they built.

UNSEEN: I'm gonna ask this even though it is none of my business, how how micro are your budgets?

 STEVE: So you have a UFO CLUB was about ten thousand and BIGFOOT was almost fifteen thousand And that's all from our executive producer David Rheingold who is very generous and also a huge movie fan, and very supportive. So like he gives us these funds.  I like making the film for a much smaller budget, I think there's less pressure, even if it does have its limitations.

 UNSEEN: I find it  interesting thing because I just saw a film for Tribeca It's a six-minute film It cost $40,000 and it looks good. But I'm sitting there and I'm aware that both your and Ken's films cost considerably less than that and you've actually got a feature. Everyone wants to make a short that will get them a feature and you guys are making that feature.

 STEVE: Making it look really pretty and like making it like a calling card is nice, but  I'm so frugal about money that  I just think if I have this kind of money and if I can really dedicate it to a feature I'd rather do that. Because at the end of the day we don't make any real money off of it. It's just kind of us telling the stories that we want to tell And I'd rather do that for less knowing that I won't make any return.  I think that's the sensible way to do it

 UNSEEN: I say this as a guy who sees a couple thousand films a year, your films do not look as though they were made as economically as they are. I can't tell you how many films I see where they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars that just look terrible. Your film looks like you spent a lot of money, or to refer back to what I said earlier, looks like a PBS series.

 STEVE: Ken is a master with camera. We also had a great color correct person Andrea Dove, who did an amazing job  making this movie look really cinematic.  We were very fortunate with actors I think our cast is always really strong and that also gives you the sense that it's a bigger budget than it is  because like their performances are so rich and they all do such a good job.

And Ken and I like are meticulous planners before we film. We don't want to waste anybody's time. We don't want to waste any of part of our budget. So like we go in with these very detailed shot list. We've talked about it for months before we shoot. And we work pretty efficiently. I think most actors and crew can tell stories about working on films for ungodly hours and for no money and  terrible catering. We really try not to do that. We try to keep our schedules very tight and keep people happy. We respect that they're doing this for not for not a lot of money., so we don't want to push it and make them suffer.

UNSEEN:  I want to ask you a quick question because you're talking about the meticulous planning that you do.  I've read about Hitchcock who said that at times he would plan and plot everything so detailed That when he direct it when he got to the set he just was sort of just sitting around.He didn't have to worry about anything. Do you do you ever feel like? You know, that you've done it all in the planning and you don't really have to worry when you're actually shooting

 STEVE: The cast was so good that once we set up the shot they just went and it was incredible to see like they'd all done so much character work. They just had had planned it all so well  on their own, but it  just it made what we did so much easier. They didn't require a lot of takes It's just like they all had their own unique vision for their role and it just made It just made all so much smoother. 

But I think it kind of depends. Sometimes you can play it is as tightly as you think you have and all of a sudden it's like you're two hours over schedule and you're cutting things and trying to make the day work, and then other times, it's moving very smoothly and and you wrap exactly when you said you'd wrap and and everyone goes home But it's good. 

Yeah, it kind of depends. I think like the more you plan it the more you can be flexible when something is not going a hundred percent.  

UNSEEN: You were saying that the cast did the character work.  Did you did you like have everything set  when you started shooting? Were they allowed to improvise? How much input did they have into their roles?

 

Kathryn Mayer, the star of BIGFOOT CLUB

STEVE: We did a couple of table reads, virtual table reads before we started. And it kind of just depends on the person. Some people just went off and did their own thing. I will say our lead Kathryn Mayer  is just incredible. She did so much homework. So much character research. She like zoomed with me months before we even started just to start asking very specific questions. And kind of asking like " am I allowed to...." 

So I kind of let her go off and make her own choices.   I was like "look this movie is right on your shoulders, for better or worse. So you go off and make any choice you want. You  need to feel comfortable in this role. You need to make this your own. So whatever that takes, you should do that." e She just really did so much homework and it was when she came to set it was like seeing this Character come to life.

It was just amazing to see, and then everyone else worked so well off of her.  I mean, it was just from top to bottom like everybody was perfect So I just felt very very lucky and I felt like we made all the right choices in this cast.

UNSEEN: How do you cast?  I mean because  you talk about making the right choice, but with this and UFO CLUB you've put casts together where everybody fits, and not only do they fit when they're giving their performances, They're not nobody's phoning it in and nobody's bad.

 STEVE: Different methods. 

Paolo [Kossi], who plays the mystery man and who was also in HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION  and UFO CLUB, I had worked with originally seven years ago on that pilot that I made where I met Ken. He is such a unique character and  such a hard-working actor. So when you find someone like him you keep him around; and you  want to keep working with him. So I try to work with him on everything. Most of the cast of people that we worked with before in some capacity. There were two new cast members, Kathyrn, who was the lead.  I found her on backstage and it's again. I just poured through  hundreds of people's profiles until you find someone who looks right and I emailed her and told her about this and asked her if she was going to audition.  When I watched her audition tape and I knew instantly that this was it, this is the person She got it. 

Then Olivia [Hellman] as well. She played the fan, was also from Backstage and again similar. She's ended on the tape And she had the character and I don't think we had a single conversation about it she just showed up  in the wardrobe and  had made her decisions and they were all right and Yeah, you know it's a little bit of like holdovers and a couple of new people.

 UNSEEN: How long does it take you to put a project together?

STEVE: Pretty quickly after I wrote the script. I want to say I started writing it like right after UFO CLUB. So like 2021 And we didn't shoot it till September 2024 so that took a little while But yeah, I mean it kind of varies this was a couple years To kind of get it going, but I'm kind of glad that that this one took longer because I was able to refine the script more and more it was like a huge benefit.

UNSEEN: What's next and how long do you think it'll be before you we see that and whatever whatever comes next? 

STEVE: That's a good question.  I joked about TIME TRAVEL CLUB at the end of this one.

This was a very draining production As smooth as it all went there were like with the cast and everything There was a last-minute changes that happened that like, you know Locations dropping out and and people's schedules changing last-minute At certain points get to be difficult and So, you know part of you is like you want to put yourself through that again, do you want to go through all this?

 But yeah, I get this.  I need to like hunker down and think of  an idea that's worth really really pursuing Something that I really really want to make. And so then if that's the case probably a couple years before that happens before it's done. 

UNSEEN: After making movies for so little money how would you react if somebody  handed you say a million dollars, would you you either  make the million-dollar film or did you say would you make say ten hundred thousand dollar films or would you make a lot of little films?

 STEVE: That's a good question. I remember when my friends and I we were making that web series and we were making it for $150 an episode and then at one point we were gonna sell it to My Space when My Space was a thing and they would give us $10,000 an episode as a budget and we were like, what would we spend it on? Like how do you spend $10,000 on a seven-minute web series? 

So like are we gonna like rent a train or something? We just had no idea how you could spend $10,000 on anything But I will say, when we make these movies we're doing everything. We're going and picking up food. We're driving actors back and forth. The crew is three people. So there is something tempting about having more money and making it a real production, and letting other people worry about those things. When you don't have to worry about them and can just focus on the creative. I think that would be the appealing thing of it.  

But yeah, I think if there would be a million dollars to make a movie, I think I'd spend a million dollars on on a movie And just make it the best I could make it.