Film-maker Ruben Pla has been popping up as an actor in genre films for the last decade or so. He’s had parts in films such as Big Ass Spider, Cheap Thrills, Lavalantula, and Insidious, and has worked with some interesting names in the horror world. Now Pla has turned his hand to directing, having created new documentary The Horror Crowd. The documentary sees Pla hang out with a wealth of genre filmmakers and stars as he seeks to uncover the people behind the names. It’s an incredibly personable film that captures what makes horror so great. The world premiere will screen on Saturday 29th August as part of this year’s Arrow Video FrightFest digital event.
We caught up with Ruben ahead of the premiere to discuss the project in a little more detail.
How did you get into film-making?
My early career was as an actor, so in New York I started doing a lot of stage, off-Broadway shows, and so forth. After a few years of that and doing well in that, I thought, ‘let me go to LA, and check out the film and television world, and make some better money’. So I did that and started hitting it right away, doing a lot of TV shows etc. That was mostly general films, not horror at all. Then I met Mike Mendez who directed Big Ass Spider, and he put me in that and a couple of other films, and he was doing a promotional video for a film he was trying to get off of the ground, Overkill , which is talked about in The Horror Crowd. From that, I met a lot of the Horror Crowd people who eventually became my friends in that promotional video, including James Wan. Three weeks later, he asked me, ‘you wanna be in Insidious, my new film?’, so I said, ‘okay’, and it just took off from there, I started meeting more and more people in the horror circles.
So when did you decide that you wanted to take a stab at directing and how did that lead to this documentary?
Recently I had been doing mostly acting, but I directed stage stuff too back in New York, but when I got here I said, ‘let’s try a couple of shorts and see how it goes.’ I did a couple of shorts and I liked them, and I liked the way it looked. They got into festivals and things and I thought, ‘ I wanna do a feature now. I want to do a feature about these people, these wacky people that I know, the horror crowd’, and started putting it together.
How long was the shoot? There’s a lot of people in it, there’s a lot of interviews, I’m guessing that took a lot of time?
Thirty-eight people that I interviewed. So we had to wrangle that and schedule that, so that was challenging, but very enjoyable. As far as how we did it, we just started asking people, ‘hey you wanna be in this? Be interviewed, tell us about your horror love, life and family etc.’, and pretty much everyone said, ‘yeah, let’s do it.’ Then I started interviewing them.
The actual interviews, it’s going to be hard to believe, but it was literally a few weeks. One day we did twenty-three people in a studio, thirty minute segments. Just knocked them off. After that we went to people’s houses, met people in parks or wherever, and interviewed them. But pretty much in three weeks we had all the interviews done and started editing. Now that was a monumental task. I had over thirty, almost forty, hours of footage, which I had to bring down to ninety-two minutes. It was monumental, but it was so enjoyable because I love editing a lot too. We finally got it down to ninety-two minutes and I think it’s tight, it moves quickly and fast-paced. That’s what I wanted. I don’t like long drawn-out documentaries, or any kind of film, but definitely documentaries that go on and on. I wanted it to be – within the confines of a documentary – action-packed.
How did you go about cutting your footage down? Are you sat there in interviews where you hear them say something that makes you think, ‘that’s got to be in the movie’?
You nailed it. That’s pretty much what happened, ‘that jumped out at me, that’s gonna stay in; wait that jumped out at me and it works perfectly with this’, and then tie them together. As you can see, I don’t stay long on any one person. A couple of times yes, but I cut between when people are saying or talking about the exact same thing, no matter what it is, I like tying those things together.
Did you have a particular favourite interview?
They were all…you saw it, there are such great revelations, they’re such intriguing people and things people say. Mike Mendez says, ‘the first horror movie I saw was The Hills Have Eyes, at age three.’ I mean come on! Lin Shaye says, ‘I have a dark side too’, so a lot of great revelations. I can’t say there was a favourite. There were bits of each person that I liked a lot, but not, ‘this person’s interview is the best of all.’
The Horror Crowd is getting its world premiere at the first ever FrightFest digital event. How are you feeling about the screening?
I’m super excited about it. Obviously they had to do what they had to do because of the virus, so we couldn’t do a lot, but I’m not complaining. It’s a wonderful festival and they love the documentary. All of them have told me how much they like it. They’ve also had a lot of the people in the film at FrightFest over the years with their projects, so they said, ‘oh my God, they’re all here! Let’s do it!’ So I’m hoping it leads to distribution and getting a lot of eyes on it and so forth. I’ve also got it submitted to a lot of festivals next year, 2021, so I’m hoping then it’ll be live and people can see it live in the theatre. I can then go do Q&As or whatever. But I’m very excited about FrightFest, it’s a wonderful, wonderful festival, and the people are great.
Within the indie horror scene, there seems to be this real sense of community, everyone feels more like collaborators than rivals. Why do you think this is?
I agree, like Shakered Benson in his interview in the documentary, he says that the horror community is very different from the rest because in festivals they support each other. They go to each other’s screenings. When someone else gets an award, they cheer them on. I found that to be the case too. Just doing this documentary they just chip in. In the documentary, Lombardo Boyar, the actor who was in Big Ass Spider, Planet of the Apes, and a lot of other stuff, he says, ‘I love doing this! I love coming in and just doing the movie. There’s hardly any money, or no money at all, but the people love what they’re doing. The crew and the writer, the director, the producers, they just love doing it, and I love being called back, and they appreciate you.’ Which is true.
Insidious kick-started your career in genre movies. At the time, did you know it was going to be so well received?
When I first met James Wan, he sent me the script and asked me if I wanted to be the doctor. I thought it was a really tight script. Leigh Whannell did a great job with that. But I didn’t know it was going to be what it was going to be. I knew it was going to be successful in the horror world, but then it became this thing that crossed over and made so much money. That’s the type of film that I like. A great tight script, well done, good actors in it, and I enjoy it so much. There’s nothing worse than great dialogue spoken by not-so-great actors. It just ruins it. I think Insidious worked on all levels, writing, producing, directing, acting, and that’s why it’s the success that it was. And it led me to meet so many other people in the horror crowd because they started seeing me and calling me for their movies. Then I started interviewing a lot of them, like Lin Shaye.
FrightFesters are in the midst of selecting their films for the festival, why should they take a chance on The Horror Crowd?
First of all I think the list looks really good. I went through it and one of the interviewees Brea Grant has film in FrightFest, and a couple of other people who I’m aware of. But there’s nothing on that list that compares at all to the other films. You’re getting thirty-eight horror, some of them icons, but horror filmmakers who work consistently and you’re getting the inside scoop on their lives, their loves. What they like, do they like trivia, do they like comic books, do they like Halloween, costumes? You’re finding out so much of their personal lives and they were all so open and ready to give it up. The audience in general, whether they’re horror fans or not, are going to find out a lot of revelations here. There’s a lot of inside info going on here that they won’t get in other films.
Have you been using your pandemic time wisely, have you been working on what is next?
Besides literally spending eight hours a day promoting The Horror Crowd; pitching it to other festivals etc., I shot a short during quarantine, a horror short, which I just finished and will be editing that together then sending it out to festivals, including FrightFest.
The Horror Crowd screens next at Grimmfest. You can buy tickets for the screening here.
