Interview with John Adams and Toby Poser About Hell Hole

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Here's my interview with writer director stars John Adams and Tobey poser about their film hell ho. [00:00:18] Speaker B: John was hiding Christian. Philip had a gun. He wanted to shoot John. I tried to stop him, but I accidentally. I shot Philip. And I know you won't fucking believe me, but a monster shit started coming out of John's face. I tried to shoot John, but even before I pulled the trigger, he just meat everywhere. But why were you trying to kill yourself? Because when John exploded, I heard something under the car. It was like a. Like a bowl of jelly or a squid. And then, like, an umbrella. It just jumped on me arms and slimy shit all over me. And. And in me. It is now in me. Can you smell me? Can you smell me? It is now in me. Smell me. Smell me. [00:01:38] Speaker C: Did you see that? [00:01:40] Speaker B: I saw it. It's inside him now. [00:01:44] Speaker C: No shed. Did you see what happened? [00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah. You kicked his ass with a fucking monster in him. [00:01:50] Speaker C: I didn't lift a finger. It's true. Whatever's inside him has very little interest in me or you. [00:01:59] Speaker B: Emily, please kill me. It's okay, bud. We're gonna help you. No, you're not. Yeah, we're gonna get it out of you. In me. Out of me. I'm a dead man. [00:02:11] Speaker A: Okay, so let's begin. [00:02:14] Speaker C: Hey, Sean. Hello. [00:02:15] Speaker D: Nice to see you again. [00:02:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:18] Speaker A: So what was the genesis of hell? Home. [00:02:23] Speaker C: Driving through Alberta, Canada. [00:02:26] Speaker D: We were driving through, we saw there's just frac central up there. And so we were thinking to ourselves, all these man camps, all these men out in the middle of nowhere, what kind of horror movie could we make? And we thought it'd be really fun to make a movie where a drill head hits a monster and wakes it up. And then when we were on the Joe Bob show on Shudder, that production team, who were all from Troma, said, hey, do you have any ideas? And we were like, we've always thought it would be kind of fun to mix an Adam's family film with a trauma esque type thing because it would be fun for us. We said, yeah, we got a monster movie about a bunch of frackers that hit a monster and wake it up. They were like, great, let's make it. And one thing led to another, and we all ended up in Serbia making a monster movie. [00:03:19] Speaker A: Okay, so you're inspired in Alberta, but you decided to shoot in Serbia. How did that come to be? [00:03:26] Speaker C: Producers have been. Had really good connections with people, and I think I'd shot four films over there already, and they knew they could do it. On a budget and. And with a great crew. So we were just like, sure, why not? And then we rewrote it for Serbia, and it kind of really liked. Worked for the story thematically. [00:03:47] Speaker A: And so, like, the bulk of the cast in the film is serbian. So how did you approach casting for the film? [00:03:55] Speaker D: So the production crew from America teams up with a production crew in Serbia called Red Productions. They basically got hired a casting director, and we sat out there. We were there about three weeks early, and we just met a lot of serbian actors, and we got to choose the ones that kind of. We had the best chemistry with, and that was a really great process. And, in fact, everybody we met there was really wonderful. We could have worked with anybody we had met, but I think we chose well because I think our serbian actors were really terrific. I love what they've done. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is actually a very effects heavy film for you. So what was it like working with, like, the creature effects and masters effects? [00:04:41] Speaker C: Oh, my God. I mean, I'm wearing his t shirt today. We're such fans of Todd masters, his team, but also the man. He's, like, such. He's the nicest guy in the world. It was so cool to be out there working with him on the ground. You know, he's there with his little iridescence and his Ky jelly and. And his teammate's. Such a beautiful monster has pieces of it. In the animatronic version, it's pieces from the monster, something used to men in black. So it was fun knowing, like, oh, my God, this has come a long way. And then our guy trade, Lindsey, who we often work with, was out there with us, too, which felt great because he did a lot of beautiful tentacle work as well. [00:05:22] Speaker A: So what was the balance of practical and digital effects? [00:05:28] Speaker D: So everything is actually shot real time. There's no digital effects. Like, everything is really Todd's monster or Todd's tentacles. And Todd made Trey a miniature version of the monster so that Trey could do stop motion filming. So anytime you see the monsters really running and you see the full monster, it's Trey's work back home doing stop motion photography, because both of them loved Harryhausen. So there was a lot of just joy in bringing back stop motion photography. [00:06:03] Speaker A: Were even, like, the bloody explosions practically done. [00:06:07] Speaker D: Yes. We had a meat cannon over there in Serbia, and a great guy. What was his name? [00:06:14] Speaker C: Duda. [00:06:15] Speaker D: Duda. And Duda was in charge of all exploding meat. And he had literally a cannon that he shot it all over the place every time. I wasn't shooting be like, John, come here. I shoot meat against three. So it was really great. [00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that literally starts the film off of a bang. [00:06:39] Speaker C: Sure. Yes. [00:06:41] Speaker A: So were there any specific influences for this film? [00:06:47] Speaker D: Which kind of influences? [00:06:48] Speaker C: Any specific. Yeah, I mean, of course we love the thing. Who doesn't love the thing? We love basket case. You know, there's a fun vibe to that. I love cephalopods in general. We had watched creature from the black lagoon this past year, and that was really cool. [00:07:07] Speaker D: Yeah. I think we wanted to take, like, the idea of 1950s horror movies because there's always a scientist, there's always a young woman there, and then there's always a crew. [00:07:21] Speaker C: Right. [00:07:21] Speaker D: And, like, for example, in creature of the Black Lagoon, and then the creature falls in love with the woman, and we want to just put a modern twist on it and have our creature basically fall in love with the men on the. In the man camp. And. And so it's. And we had the science, and so it was like, it was a really, for us, a fun way to give a big shout out to 1950s horror monster movies, but with a new modern twist and a little bit of social commentary. [00:07:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:55] Speaker A: So you mentioned the scientist, so I kind of, like, described it as there's the creature vendors like the villain for science. So in this case, it would be Nikolai. So what do you think is going through his head over this whole ordeal? [00:08:13] Speaker D: I love villain of science. This is great. I'm stealing, I think I'll say real quick, we love talking about issues that are present day environmental issues, sexual issues, gender issues, all these kind of issues. But I think one of the fun things about horror is you don't have to assign blame. You can kind of, everybody's in the same can of horror soup. And so, you know, instead of being like, science is bad or science is some part of political party, you just make the scientist have kind of unethical behavior. And he was really fun. But in fact, everyone's a bit unethical because everyone's dealing with something that scares the shit out of them. [00:09:02] Speaker A: So if the budget allowed for it, would you have had more than one creature in the film? Because I think it's actually alluded to at one point that this was just a baby. [00:09:13] Speaker D: Yes. And we would. Yes. What would be really fun with this creature is because Toby's written, Toby has the mythology of this creature down eventually. What happens with this creature? Is it. What do you say? Amalgamates? Is that a word? [00:09:31] Speaker C: Evolves. [00:09:32] Speaker D: Evolves and crosses over into humanity. So if actually you looked at the hellhole poster. Yeah, that's. This monster is headed. So, yeah, if budget wise, you would need a budget to pull that off, but it would be one hell of a fun monster. [00:09:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:09:50] Speaker A: Well, I think next is kind of more like a Addams family. Question is that your daughters were very conspicuous with their absence in this film. I think I saw in the fantasia description that Zelda was in college at the time. So how would you think that they would fit into the film if they were available? [00:10:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a fun question. I mean, Lulu helped us write it. She knocked out the first draft, so that was cool. And a lot of her DNA is in there, especially in the teddy character and in the french scene, because she speaks almost fluent French. I think Zelda, if this were shot as an english speaking film, like in Alaska, as it was written, I think Zelda would have been a neat scientist. [00:10:36] Speaker A: She would play Sophie. [00:10:38] Speaker C: I think that would have been really neat. Yeah. Although there's a lot of Lulu in Sophia as well. You know, Sophia has a playfulness, and Zelda is neat. Now, she's almost 21, and it's been cool to see Zelda evolve as a director. She has great ideas, so I think she would have been great on the. Wearing the director's hat as well. [00:11:01] Speaker A: Okay, so what's next for you? [00:11:05] Speaker C: Two cool things. Yeah. One called Slug, which is almost in the can, and the other one, we're toying with the name mother of flies. Does that sound good to you? Mother of five. [00:11:18] Speaker A: That sounds interesting. Yeah. [00:11:19] Speaker C: Okay, cool. Because that's the one we're kind of Jones for. [00:11:24] Speaker D: Yeah, they're super fun movies. We learned a lot on hell hole, so we're applying all the kind of practical effects that we learned on hell hole to our new movies. You know, one's about a man who has a truck accident and wakes up with a demon inside of him. And the other is about a father and daughter, and the daughter has a fatal illness, so they go to a witch doctor who Toby's going to play or has played because we've already filmed it. And there's always a price to pay when you mess around with a witch doctor, even though you might get what you want. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Okay, well, thanks. [00:11:56] Speaker C: Thank you, Sean. Good to see you again. Yeah.