April 29, 2004
The Zombie Legacy: Filmmaker Mike Watt joins the club of the living undead
By Dan Eldridge
“I was always a big horror freak,” admits Mike Watt, a Pulp contributor and now the most recent member of a long and storied club of Pittsburgh-area monster-movie directors. “The bloodier the better. And I was a really morbid kid. I liked the idea that there really are monsters out there.”
Watt, whose muffled Pittsburgh accent makes him sound a bit like a younger Myron Cope, is talking on the telephone from his Waynesburg home. He very recently put the final touches on what may soon be considered his career high: a full-length futuristic zombie movie called The Resurrection Game, complete with government conspiracies, a wonderfully convoluted plot line and, like all the best amateur horror films, bucket loads of fake blood and a profusion of gratuitously violent fight scenes. But don’t bother searching your TiVo for Watt’s film. As far as monster movies go, The Resurrection Game is pure B-grade kitsch, and its world premiere is scheduled to take place, appropriately enough, at this weekend’s Comicon at the ExpoMart – not even a mile from the Monroeville Mall, where George Romero famously directed 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, easily one of the most respected zombie films of all time.
“I saw Night of the Living Dead as a kid, and it freaked me out and I loved it,” says Watt, laughing. “So I knew who Romero was. And [Tom] Savini – he lived down the street from my grandmother, so I saw him all the time. He was always a hero of mine. We used to make the joke,” Watt continues, “that if you’re making a movie in Pittsburgh, there has to be zombies in it.”
In The Resurrection Game, well, let’s just say the zombie quota is clearly filled. The story takes place in the not-so-distant future, when a would-be cancer cure instead turns its patients into – what else? – a nasty horde of flesh-eating living dead. Watt’s wife, Amy Lynn Best, co-stars as a vigilante zombie-killer who slays the beasts in a Seneca Valley basement, among other locales. And because the film started its life in late 1998 and has been finished since mid 2000, nearly every scene features a wonderfully dated localism: zombies sporting mullets, for instance, or faded Pittsburgh Penguins T-shirts. Even a jaw-dropping colloquialism or two finds its way into the script: e.g. “I need those zombies got rid of!”
But the real beauty of Watt’s film may prove to be the simple fact that it managed to enter the hallowed halls of Pittsburgh horror history in the first place. Watt, in fact, admits to being such a poor student during his time at Pittsburgh Filmmakers that he came close to giving up on making movies altogether. And The Resurrection Game, predictably enough for a shoestring-budget film, was riddled with troubles from the start. “We got about a quarter of the way through,” Watt remembers, “and our original lead actress moved to Greece. So we kinda had to start over.”
Watt isn’t entirely sure what the future holds for his film career, although it certainly doesn’t hurt that several other movies are already in the planning stages at his privately owned production company, Happy Cloud Pictures. “We don’t expect to make money on any of our projects,” Watt says. “But we’re trying to be smart in the marketing, to see if we can at least make our money back. I don’t see us living in penthouses or jet-setting to Europe anytime soon. Low-budget films are a crapshoot anyway.
“But if you can make enough money to make the next film,” he says with a long sigh, “that’s when you’re really successful.”
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER
October 16, 2003
Best of Pittsburgh 2003 issue: Best Local Video Store – Heads Together
By Dan Eldridge
For the typical Friday night DVD renter, a video store is a video store. You go in, perform the clockwise rotation around the new release wall, plunk down six bucks for the new Ben Affleck and a jumbo box of Mike and Ike’s, and call it a day. But what would the Friday Night Renter do at Heads Together, Squirrel Hill’s home for all celluloid things subversive, underground and unexpected? According to Matthew Quayle, a regular customer who is browsing the racks contentedly tonight, you revel in it.
“They go out of their way to get better stuff,” Quayle says, when asked why he made the trip from his home in Regent Square. “It’s as simple as that.”
“And it’s more homey,” adds Steve Zupcic, who’s also shopping the new releases. “Plus they have an incredible gay selection.”
That incredible gay selection, as co-shop owner Dee Sias is quick to point out, is also the largest in the city. (Just look for the little rainbow stickers on the spines.) And as for being homey, it’s true that a spin through Heads Together feels something like a visit to your best friend’s apartment. The Pink Flamingos poster that’s mounted and displayed in the bay window, for instance, is draped in blinking Christmas lights and sitting next to a bubbling red lava lamp. The decades-old carpet is affectionately stained here and there, and the thrift-store couches (“Thirty dollars for the pair at S. Vincent’s!” Sias announces) are threadbare and patchy, but comfortable. And even though the store keeps a decent-sized stock of pornography in a hidden back room, the effect is somehow more playful than sleazy, especially with a cheeky poster of Drew Barrymore beckoning from the room’s entrance.
But as any old-hand Pittsburgher probably already knows, it wasn’t always this way for Heads Together. Originally, the store was located up Murray Avenue, in an underground mall across the street from Giant Eagle. Sias, who managed the shop at its old location, bought the store with employee Sam Ippolito when the original owner decided to leave town for Cincinnati. In its first life, Heads Together also sold used books, but embarrassingly, the porno room was separated from the rest of the store only by a pair of miniature saloon-style swinging doors.
“I like places that are light and have personality,” Sias offers, as an explanation of the new shop’s pop-culture personality. “And it’s nice to know you have someone honest who’s watching the place for you when you’re not here,” she adds, nodding towards employee Ryan Dean, a Pitt student. There’s an impressive collection of Simpsons action figures and novelty candy surrounding Dean’s cash register, and as Sias explains it, sometimes customers get sticky fingers. “Some of the other employees we went through weren’t up to snuff, to say it politely,” she notes. “One time a customer walked out with a VCR!”
Tonight, however, things are fairly calm. Two bookish-looking young women with short brown hair and glasses are silently studying the foreign film section. In the next room over, a clean-scrubbed couple is having a tough time with the new releases. “I’d see this one, or this one, or this one, or this one,” the boyfriend says, holding up DVD cases for inspection.
“I think deep inside I did feel a little worthless about myself until I got this place,” Sias says, smiling and surveying the scene. “I’ve had a pretty weird life and I don’t know what I’d be doing if I wasn’t running a video store, but I can certainly tell you this: I wouldn’t be happy.”
