> March 11, 2004 > News > Cover Story

BY WAYNE WISE

They smoke, they drink -- War seems pretty obsessed with the video poker machine -- and they discuss relationships. See, Death has a new girlfriend, and she's having a little trouble with his vocation. As a result he's more of a melancholy reaper than a grim one.

So goes the premise of Grim, the new short film by Pittsburgh filmmaker John Paul Nickel. Nickel is no stranger to strange concepts in his films. His first feature-length film, Why We Had to Kill Bitch, was a cacophony of convoluted plot devices and random asides. Bitch follows the misadventures of a group of friends one Friday night as they attempt to help a friend make contact with the girl of his dreams. The entire film is seen through the camera of film student Kevin Spilker (Anthony Bishop). Ostensibly he is filming a documentary for his final project, which is due in class on Monday. It's Friday, and he has done nothing. His half-assed plan is to follow a friend around, film his life for the weekend and call it a documentary. He chooses Eugene (Greg Caridi) as his subject, because Eugene is the only one of his friends who's willing to be his subject. The problem is that Eugene is a loser; his last girlfriend was imaginary and even she cheated on him. He once dated Karen -- or Bitch, as his friends refer to her -- and still feels controlled by her.

The action, or lack thereof, begins at the movie theater where Eugene works. Nothing is happening, to Kevin's dismay, until a beautiful woman comes in. She is the girl of Eugene's dreams, and the rest of the film follows his attempts, aided by his friends Stanley and Quentin, to find her after she leaves the theater. Along the way they encounter drug-addled George, play strip-pool and are attacked by a samurai-sword-wielding madman. The action is interspersed with short flashbacks to prior escapades, which include a dead hooker and an encounter with the Mob. It all ties together and makes sense in the context of the film.

"I'm a man of bad ideas," Nickel laughs when trying to explain the source of his inspiration.

That may be, but Nickel's bad ideas seem to be catching on. Last summer saw the premiere of Bitch at Loews Waterfront Theater. The response, and the size of the crowd, surpassed everyone's expectations.

"Nobody believed that this would be a landmark event until it actually happened." Nickel says. "No one in Pittsburgh has ever done anything like this -- only because they never tried to, not because it was impossible. People just couldn't wrap their minds around having a spectacular, Hollywood-type premiere here in Pittsburgh, and that's a shame."

Nickel rented rented Loews' largest theater and it still wasn't big enough. With a crowd of at least 1,000 people, a pre- and after-party, local sponsorship and an encore showing, the world premiere of Why We Had to Kill Bitch was the biggest world premiere of a movie in a Pittsburgh movie theater. Ever.

Nickel hopes to repeat the accomplishment next Tuesday, when he hosts a DVD release party at Loews, featuring a screening of Bitch and the official premiere of Grim.

"I didn't want to do this event at Loews unless it was sure to be as big as, if not bigger than, last time," he says. "And I couldn't do that without funding." Bar Louie, which was happy with but under-prepared for the business that came their way after last June's premiere, is the event's exclusive sponsor.

Bitch's success goes beyond the confines of Pittsburgh. Film Threat magazine gave the movie a glowing review, referring to the film's "screwball antics, pop-culturally savvy dialogue, and wicked humor."

"What really won me over though," the review continues, "was the sheer energy and manic wit on display both in front of and behind the camera. For a cast of unknown Pittsburgh players, these guys (and girls) were uniformly hilarious. Think Dante from Clerks meets Jack from Cinemania, with a hint of Woody Allen at his randiest."

Since its premiere Bitch has been accepted into a number of film festivals. In September it was shown at the Great Lakes Independent Film Festival, where it was the only narrative feature to show twice during the festival's main schedule. It had one of the largest audiences for an afternoon showing in the festival's history, and that evening's show had the largest turnout of any movie that day. In November it had two showings in the Southern Exposure Film & Video Festival in Charlotte, North Carolina. That same month it won Best Feature Length Comedy in the Motion Picture Commission of Pittsburgh's 2003 Fall Film Festival. It will be screened in late April in Muskogee, Oklahoma at the Bare Bones International Film Festival, which gives an award for Shameless Self-Promotion, and bills itself as "the world's friendliest film festival."

"We actually have groupies from Erie," Nickel says. In February he showed the movie at the Screen Visions Series at Penn State Behrend. "They refer to all their friends as characters from Bitch. There's a woman there who goes by the name Mistress Mary on her weblog. She named her cat J.P. after me. They're bringing a carload of people down for the DVD release party."

The Behrend audience was also treated to a test screening of Grim.

"It wasn't really finished yet," Nickel says. "The sound wasn't right, and I knew I wanted to do some more editing, but I needed some feedback. I was watching the audience and it was pretty apparent they didn't know who the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were. I mean, if you don't get that, the film is pretty much done for you."

As a solution, Nickel added quotes, real and fictitious, that serve as scene breaks in the film. "Do you know how hard it is to find actual quotes about all four of the Horsemen together?" he says. "Even the Bible didn't have anything specific."

He says that making Grim was easy compared to the two-year genesis of Why We Had to Kill Bitch, which included a complete rewrite and refilming, a lawsuit with his former director, sound and picture problems and apocalyptic weather on the first day of shooting. The final version of Bitch was shot in 13 days in June 2002, and postproduction ran from July 2002 through February 2003.

"Grim started as a creative writing exercise," he says. "I didn't know it was going to be a film at first, but it came together really quickly. We shot it in two days last fall."

The process was entirely different from the full-length film. The script for Bitch was open to interpretation on the part of the actors. Nickel would shoot a scene on-script, then do a second, "fun" take where he let the actors improvise their way through the scene. Many of these unscripted antics, especially those of Stanley and George -- local actors John Yost and Jason Steele -- made it into the final cut and contribute to the anarchy that makes the movie work.

"Grim was tighter," Nickel says. "We pretty much stayed on script. In a short there's not as much room to tell your story. In Bitch some of the best parts are the digressions the characters go off on. In Grim everything had to be more focused."

Grim reunites Nickel with some of his cohorts from Bitch. Anthony Bishop and Greg Caridi appear as War and Pestilence. Jim Manley served as director of photography on both projects.

"The success of both films is all Jim's," Nickel says repeatedly. "I can't give him enough credit for the way the films look. I'm getting all the attention, but he's the real guy behind the curtain making sure everything works."

While shooting Grim, Manley rented a dolly track with his own money to help with the shoot, an example of the dedication Nickel inspires. Nickel surrounds himself with a talented cast and crew. The core of it grew out of his affiliation with Point Park College, where he graduated in 2000 with a degree in theater. These people are his co-workers, but watching Grim with a roomful of them, it becomes evident that they are also his friends. There is an easy camaraderie, a sense of fun and commitment, between them. Each seems willing to go the extra mile to promote the films, to do anything to insure their success. Part of that comes from Nickel's genuine and infectious enthusiasm and sense of humor. It's obvious that he believes in what he does. That belief infuses the movies and the people he works with.

The cast of Grim is rounded out with Todd Betker in the role of Famine and Dalla Andracchio as Sally Roth, Death's confused and angry love interest. Nickel steps out from behind the camera to play the role of Death.

"First and foremost I consider myself an actor," Nickel says. "With whatever success I'm having as a filmmaker I would love to be able to simply act. That's my first love."

To help free him to act in the movie, Nickel enlisted Joanna Lowe to serve as co-director on Grim. "It was my job to make sure he didn't mess it up too bad," she says.

"She failed," Nickel teases.

"Bite me," she replies.

While Nickel may see himself as an actor, he also serves as writer, director, producer, editor, media contact and all-around P.R. person. Much of the success Bitch has garnered is due to his tireless and shameless self-promotion, making him a shoe-in for that award at the Bare Bones Festival next month. Nickel has spent hours on the phone and in person rounding up sponsors, talking to the media and making sure everyone hears about his projects. Before the premiere of Bitch he and his crew covered the city with flyers and posters and coupons for free admission. They have done the same for every showing in every city the movie has played in. Nickel's personal charm and sheer unmitigated belief in and enthusiasm for the project go a long way toward selling people on its merits.

"When I met with the photographer for this article," he says, "she wanted to hear my ideas for what would make a good cover for Pulp. I thought a simple picture of me holding a placard that said 'Buy my DVD' would be perfect.

"She didn't go for it," he laughs.

His two films aren't the only production credits Nickel has under his belt. He won the Regional 10-Minute Play award at the Region II 2000 American College Theatre Festival held at Clarion University. As a regional winner, Nickel was a guest of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. at the National 2000 American College Theatre Festival, where all the regional winning plays were given staged readings. In 2002, Nickel had stage plays produced locally by the Unseam'd Shakespeare Company, Gemini Theater and he Penn Avenue Theatre.

Nor will Grim will be the Nickel's last project. He and his production company, Five Cent Productions -- founded in 2000 -- have a number of schemes on the drawing board.

"I'm trying to turn Grim into something bigger," Nickel says. "The first draft of Horsemen is almost done and I can't wait to make it. However, I think I'd need a real budget to do it justice. But it'd definitely be biting off more than I can chew. That's a good thing and makes it worthwhile -- if it's not something I'm sure I can do, then it's not a challenge and I won't learn as much."

When asked for details about Horsemen, Nickel describes it as "a little bit like Pulp Fiction meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There will be four different storylines, one for each of the Horsemen, interwoven and presented out of chronological order. Each one will be filmed as a different genre. One is a silent film; one is going to be a musical. Really.

"I like to look at genres and give them a twist," he says.

Bitch, for example, is a comedy that both adheres to and defies all the rules of Hollywood romantic comedies. It follows the formula pretty faithfully. It's in the details that the movie diverges and takes the viewer into unexpected territory. The form sets up the expectation, and then Nickel proceeds to deconstruct it while playing within the boundaries of the genre.

"I'm also working on the very dark drama, Family," Nickel continues. "It started out as a play, but I think it could be a powerful, thought-provoking, possibly even scary, movie. And it's only a three-person cast, with no extras. And most of it takes place in a house. I think it's definitely doable."

He's also toying with shooting a short adaptation of a one-act play called The Sign. It would be a vehicle for Greg Caridi, who originated the role in the play. Also on the back burner is a project called Three Guys, which Nickel's calls his "funny script." "Everybody who reads it laughs out loud," he says. "But I think I'd need a budget for that, too, what with setting the bowling alley on fire and shooting on top of the Cathedral of Learning."

Even with all of this on his plate, his primary focus at the moment is the continuing promotion of Bitch. Much of his time is spent submitting to festivals, tracking down sponsors and setting up events.

"The title has caused a little bit of trouble," Nickel admits. "Why We Had to Kill Bitch is the perfect title for our target audience, and it does get us noticed. However, make it makes it a difficult sell to the larger public." Some of the alternate titles that were seriously considered were W.I.M.P. (White Intelligent Male People), The Wimps, Stupid Monkeys, Karen Slap and Kevin Spilker's Amazing, Fabulous, A+++ Documentary.

Some potential sponsors pulled their support due to the title. They feared a negative association for their business. Some have even accused Nickel of using a deliberately misogynistic title.

"It's such a common word in daily usage that it's easy to forget that some people still find it offensive," he says, laughing. "In the movie, it's certainly not misogynistic." The character of Bitch, played wonderfully by Kristin Pfeifer, doesn't refer to herself by that name. It's telling that she is perhaps the only character in the film who has any degree of personal power. She gets what she wants and as a result, and as is true for many powerful women, she is called Bitch by those around her -- in this case, primarily by a group of fairly pathetic men who allow her presence to control their lives. In fact, the only other strong characters in the film are women.

So, is the film a commentary on feminism and men's reaction to it? Maybe, but it isn't Nickel's intent to make any sweeping political statements on the war between the sexes. He just hopes it's funny.

Much of what makes both films funny is Nickel's attention to detail. In addition to the main action on the screen, there is a lot going on in the backdrop, some of which is hysterical. In Bitch -- and in Grim, which has a much more limited cast -- there is the sense that minor characters are much more than simply stage dressing. They have lives of their own, subplots and background stories that have nothing to do with the central plot.

"That's where a lot of my ideas come from," Nickel says. "I'll write a small piece about some background character, or one of the actors will do something and I'll want to know more about it. There are many more stories about all of these characters."

Both films were shot on DVCAM with a Sony PD-150 attached to a Glide Cam 2000 Pro. They were edited on a Macintosh G4 with Final Cut Pro 3 and Pro-Tools LE.

"Most festivals accept digital films these days," Nickel says. "Originally I thought, if there's enough interest, I would have Bitch transferred to 35-millimeter film so I could submit it to those that don't. But that's prohibitively expensive. It's like 200 bucks or something per minute of film. At that rate it would cost three or four times the entire original budget of the movie."

Both Grim and Why We Had to Kill Bitch were shot entirely in Pittsburgh, with a Pittsburgh cast and crew, Nickel says, making the evening "a celebration of Pittsburgh's vastly untapped creative and technical talent in the area of film production." In addition, the music for Bitch was provided exclusively by local bands, such as Salena Catalina, Voodoo Babies, Crisis Car and Simon.

The DVD release party is Tuesday, March 16. Admission to the event is free. Doors open to the public at 7:15 p.m. The evening will include live pre-show music from the band Xara, free giveaways and the premiere of Grim at 8, followed by Why We Had to Kill Bitch. A huge after-party will be staged at Bar Louie immediately following the movie.

It's safe to assume the Four Horsemen will be somewhere near the bar.