Where Have All The Fans Gone? A Streeborama Rant about Fandom & Filmmakers.

Where did all the fans go? It seems like over the past few years whenever a new and exciting release is upon us – there is an outcry from the so called fan community about how displeased they are. I never understand this way of thought because when I was growing up – being a fan meant ENJOYING the things that you love – not spending every day loudly proclaiming how much you hate everything. So before I get going too deep into “too long, didn’t read” territory – may I ask all of you whiners, complainers and outright posers to shut the hell up? Log off and stop complaining. Leave the genres for the fans that love them and go watch the latest Channing Tatum and Katy Perry movie instead.

Ever since we started Mutantville Productions in 2003, I’ve watch genre entertainment rise to new and dizzying heights. Due in part to the accessibility of digital cameras the years 2004 to 2009 saw the marketplace flooded with new filmmakers trying to make it big. From across the country and even the globe – the internet has been inundated with indie filmmakers trying to make their mark – but there was one major problem. Too many of them were satisfied with doing middle of the road pabulum. Vampire chick movies, zombie movies and brutal slashers assailed viewers from every turn – but so few filmmakers were willing to challenge themselves to try to make something different.

One would think that making something new and unique would be easy and exciting. You just look at your genre and it’s history and try to find a new form of expression that hasn’t been done before. Sadly it is much easier said than done. It’s hard enough coming up with an idea or rather a take or spin on an idea that seems new and refreshing – and then it’s even twice as hard to get people to support it. Even here at Mutantville where we pride ourselves on doing original new takes on genre works – it is hard to get everyone on the team on board with new ideas. For every project we put out there is usually an alternative middle of the road – seen it a thousand times before – idea or script that someone wants to push through – avoiding the challenges of creating something new and unique. Too often everyone wants to settle for rehashing what has been done a thousand times before and find they are unable to see outside of the box to dare to create something new.

If you think it’s hard to create something new at the indie level – don’t even think about Hollywood. In Hollywood if it isn’t a tried and tested idea or literal rehash of a popular idea – then it won’t even get looked at. Hollywood has made it clear over the past decade that they are no longer interested in taking chances on new products. They want marketable brands and the stories can be damned. The suits run the studios now and they are not fans of genre works. Their idea for how good an idea is – is currently based on how well said idea can imitate the stylings of Twilight. With all due respect to fans of that particular franchise – we deserve more than that and we can do better than that. Twilight has come and given of itself to its fans – now let’s let it go and find something new. Let’s find a new story that needs to be told – not rehashed and resold.

With the recent release of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and subsequent fantard backlash– it has become apparent that even among the so-called fans – there are no more fans left. Instead of fans celebrating what is one of the most fully realized science fiction stories to come along in decades instead we are left with know it all blowhards that want to debate the legitimacy of what happens when an unknown alien biochemical weapon interacts with the human form. It’s a movie about freezing people, traveling impossible distances through space, has talking androids and you want to lecture me on morphology? Let me explain something to you – movies need mystery and a touch of the unexplained to keep them intriguing. Don’t believe me? Why was Lost considered the greatest drama of all time when it left viewers guessing week after week? Why is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Oddessey debated outside of film school? It’s not because it explains the mysteries of the Star Child and the Monolith at the end of the movie. It’s because it left behind more mysteries than answers and continues to make us ask questions – even forty years later.

Science advances every day and old answers are deemed obsolete as new layers of quantum mechanics reveal new and endless possibilities. If you want to understand exactly how an engine works –then watch a documentary on the Discovery Channel. If you want to be amazed and have your mind driven in directions that you’d not thought possible before –then you want to see a work of high science fiction or fantasy like Prometheus. Fans understand this – but the rest do not. Go watch the 2005 remake of The Fog where it goes to great lengths to explain every one of its mysteries and makes one of the most mind-numbingly boring celluloid efforts of recent memory. Yet – it plays true to morphology. That should make you happy right? That makes it a good movie right? Wrong.

It is nice to see here in 2012 that independent genre works are becoming fewer and further between. The pretenders and posers are slowly working their way out of the genre and heading on to whatever their latest money making scheme is. They’ve found that it takes more work than they were willing to put into it and there is no guarantee of a reward – ever. This leaves the genre for us- the fans that have been here all along. It doesn’t matter if the spark started when you were watching Star Wars at the Sunday matinee for the fortieth time or if you were watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the drive-in with your parents. Whatever you saw ignited a spark of imagination inside you that can never be denied.

It sent you on a lifelong quest to devour every iteration of horror, science fiction or fantasy that you could find. And once you had found every tale of knights vs. orcs and slashers chasing virgins and lesbian vampires fondling each other – you had to go outside of the box to find something new that brought that excitement back. Maybe you went from Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th to Seth Brundle in David Cronenberg’s The Fly or from Star Wars you found Blade Runner or THX-1138. You devoured everything you could find and in some cases you went back and studied the history of the genres and learned where each story played a part in building not only the past but a bridge to the future. If like me – you are a creative individual you might have eventually become driven to discover how you can create something new that fits into the overall picture. Also if you’re anything like me you know how daunting of a task that can be. To create something new when all the stories have been told before is a thankless task. Few can understand new visions and even fewer are ready to support them. Why do you think Wes Craven’s script for A Nightmare On Elm Street circulated Hollywood for five years being rejected by every studio? It made the rounds for so long that other scripts stealing it’s ideas were greenlighted long before it (I’m looking at you Dreamscape). It wasn’t until Bob Shaye at New Line studios took a chance on Craven’s vision that Wes’ script was able to leave development hell. A Nightmare On Elm Street went on to become one of the most profitable horror franchises of all time but before that – no one wanted to take a chance on it because it was too different.

Do you have what it takes to drive on past disappointment and heartbreak – through success and even failure? Can you follow that call to wherever it leads to find your new expression of the genres that we so love? Again it’s easier said than done.

At Mutantville – the answer is always yes. Of course we always have one eye toward how we can turn a profit and make some kind of money off our labor – but at the same time we are dedicated to the task of paving new trails and finding new forms of artistic expression to show genre works in a new light. How can we do this you ask – – because we are real fans. We have been here since before we knew that science fiction was a genre and that there isn’t sound in space. We’ve been here because we were called to this life.

We’ve been here ever since that spark first ignited and even if we walked away from it all there would be no walking away. The movies we see, the books we read, the websites we visit all pertain to the genre works that we know and love and have pursued – for as long as we could walk and talk and form independent thoughts inside our heads. We cannot walk away because even if we never walked into another theater again or opened another issue of The Walking Dead we would still see visions of the Otherworlds dancing in our dreams. We heard the call long ago and can not be denied. Many hear the call but so few are chosen. At MVP we chose this way of life because the natural order of the universe is to go with it and not resist. We chose this way because it is the path we were sent down. We chose this life – because like so many of you we are fans and we love every minute in a dark theater, or on the set covered in blood or at conventions talking to every fan and friend we meet along the way.

We have accepted the challenge of creating something new and different and we cannot wait to see where this great adventure takes us next. The long awaited DVDs of both G.H.O.S.T. and Tales from Mutantville are coming soon featuring our attempts to bring people stories that are just outside of the norm. They are so outside the norm in fact that they are most likely never going to be accepted by the general public – but that’s perfectly acceptable. We didn’t make middle of the road – easily understood pabulum for the masses. We tried to make something new and exciting and challenging – for YOU our fellow fan. We’ve all been on this road together for a long time and we will continue down it for a long time to come.

Our next stop in the road is the Back Alley Film Series screening of Beyond the Black Rainbow tonight at 7:30pm at the Charlotte Crownpoint Theater. We’re barely two weeks out from our exhausting road trip to Kentucky for the Fright Night Film Fest and we’re still going out and supporting the genre. Why – because we love it. Why – because we are real fans and so are you.

At the beginning of this article I asked the rhetorical question – where have all the fans gone? Tonight the fans are going to BAFS to see Beyond the Black Rainbow. After that – the future is wide open and the answers are uncertain. At MVP, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is a quest that never ends. Buy your ticket and take the ride or sit on the sidelines and watch us go by. See you on the other side of the Rainbow.