I liked Buchanan's first movie, The Naked Witch, made for six or eight thousand dollars around 1960. I think that was about the price of a new Cadillac at the time. If you can figure out the cost of filmstock and lab costs and subtract that from the eight thousand, you can figure out what the budget might have been on digital video.
A couple of things I found interesting: Buchanan said that he would surprise audiences by having someone say something intelligent in his horror movies. And he said he would, no matter how short his schedule was, take one day to take his time so the film would have one scene that would be flawless. He said that he watched his own movies, he would just watch his flawless scene and turn it off. But I don't know if that changed audience reaction to the film.
Larry Buchanan died in 2004.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MUA6xwB5kw
I don't know how enviable his career was. I truly like The Naked Witch but disliked other movies of his I've seen. He talks in the interview about this a little, that even filmmakers who pretend they're in it only for the money regret not being able to make better movies.
There was an episode of Incredibly Strange Film Show about Ray Dennis Steckler. A couple of times in the show Steckler catches himself taking his films too seriously. It can be embarrassing, but you have to take your own work seriously even if other people don't.
Great interview! Watched it this morning. I learn so much from these low-budget filmmakers, lots of good advice I try to follow with making my own low-budget short films. Haven't seen THE NAKED WITCH yet but will check it out.
ReplyDeleteI've seen that Ray Dennis Steckler interview before -- I loved his comment that he'd often start on the film without a finished script, because by the time he got everything together he needed for the script, it was already too late to make the movie. Clearly the approach worked well for him, because he certainly made some memorable movies on a low budget.