Chasing our personal muse is something artists are always working to do. Once you have captured your muse, what do you do if she wants to be free? Jonagold is one man's struggle against his muse. They face off one-on-one in his reclusive home.
I watched Jonagoldat the 2019 FilmQuest film festival (website). It was nominated for Best Actor (Edward Ventura) and Best Sound.
I recommend Jonagoldfor those who like their horror based on psychological struggles reflecting what many of us are working through. In this case, it could be imposter syndrome.
Synopsis: A reclusive country-music artist engages in a duel-of-words with his musical muse.
Michael Bizzaco, codirector with Michael Higgs, Shares some additional information about their film, what inspired them and where they would like to go from here. They also share some personal thoughts of why they chose to pursue a career in film making and some of their favorite movies.
What was the inspiration for Jonagold?
The roots of Jonagold can be traced back to the spring of 2018. Producer, Cory Santilli, and myself were having meet-ups to discuss and critique film concepts that the two of us were trying to get off the ground. It had been nearly three years since Michael Higgs and myself had made a film, and we were eager to reclaim the inertia and satisfaction of being on set and shooting something—anything. Airing all this to Cory, I decided I would start developing a short that would cost very little to make and center on one character and one location; a project that would get Mike and I back into the swing of things and prepare us for our next feature.
Believe it or not, up until almost the final days of pre-production, most of the film took place in the hallway of a home, in front of what was to be a basement-door. Buckeye would sit slouched against the adjacent wall, eating his plate of food and conversing with the "muse," who was nestled close to the other side of the cellar-door. It wasn't until we found the actual house that we used in the film that this idea was transformed into something much more elaborate and certainly more visually appealing.
The old farmhouse we shot in (located on the south shores of Rhode Island in a town called Wakefield) was perfect in every way for Buckeye's story; our only struggle was finding a suitable door to fake as the basement-entry, as none of the doors in the home actually led to the cellar. But, the house had this amazing looking bulkhead right in the backyard.
After the scout, Michael Higgs and myself went back to the drawing board and rewrote a core of the dialogue between Buckeye and the muse to account for the farmhouse's geography; while also introducing the microphone and speaker-system that can be seen at various points throughout the film—a glorified tin-can-and-string between Buckeye and the muse.
In terms of conceptualization, we really owe so much to the house. You could feel the history in the walls and floors, and especially that grand staircase—which plays a major part in the film.
What project(s) do you have coming up you're excited about?
We have been developing a feature-film over the last several months that we are eager to get off the ground sometime next year. It's a dear passion project that has been gestating for quite some time. We are also writing several new films; one of them being a feature-length version of Jonagold.
What was your early inspiration for pursuing a career in film?
This might sound like the most formulaic answer we could give, but there's nothing that's more true—horror movies. Michael Higgs and myself have been a creative collaborative for over ten years because when we were in 7th grade, we would riff about horror films that we were discovering to each other; the primal and most disturbing films that we weren't allowed anywhere near until our parents backs were turned (or they just finally decided to cave in). At times, it was almost like Higgs and I were trying to one-up each other. Who could see this horror film first? At the time, some of the fruit was relatively low-hanging and pretty rotten—the Halloween: Resurrection's and Jason X's of the apple-orchard. But the schlock and camp was our gateway—then we found the real stuff.
The Exorcist was our golden goose-egg.
After our minds were melted by the sheer madness of Friedkin's masterpiece, we wanted nothing more than to grab whatever camera was lying around and make our own rip-offs of the wicked genre films we were sinking our teeth into. And in the beginning, our films were just awful. We went for full shock value, which just amounted to lathering scenes with as much cheap gore and profanity as humanly possible.
As we got older, our tastes and understanding of the genre evolved—as did our own style (we certainly hope).
In many ways, whatever chops we've established over the last several years in our filmmaking careers are not long throws from the minds of those two 12-year-olds that gravitated towards the grizzly, wrong, and weird.
What would be your dream project?
Doing a modern-day road film with a stellar cast. We're huge fans of this amazing sub-genre; from the stellar, cream-of-the-crop monuments like Wenders' Road Trilogy and Bergman's Wild Strawberries; to the gleaming fart-joke knee-slapper that is the Farrelly Brothers' Dumb and Dumber.
We've had an idea for a little road-film kicking around for awhile, and it'd be awesome to see it come to life someday.
What are some of your favorite pastimes when not working on a movie?
Michael Higgs and myself are both musicians. He's way better than me—in all the ways. Both he and Richard Farrands (the amazing composer of Jonagold) are in a band together called Crowded Rooms and they are fucking unbelievable. Higgs sings and plays the keys.
I'm more what I call the "closed-bedroom-door guitar-player." Guitar is more a meditation for me; but over the last year or so, I've been trying to play out a little more. My dad has a punk-rock band called Vague Perception that has been around for over 35 years, and I'll play live with them from time-to-time.
My wife and I also just bought our first home, and I spend way too much time watching YouTube clips of Ask This Old House; to the point that I am becoming dangerously confident with loud tools I should not be touching.
What is one of your favorite movies and why?
Dumb and Dumber!
Quotable lines that last a lifetime. Funny faces and funny sounds. That toilet scene with Jeff Daniels. Lloyd Christmas' dream-sequence! Not to mention, an amazing cruising-down-the-highway soundtrack and one of the best buddy-comedy dynamics ever depicted on the silver screen. Sometimes it's the simple ones that shine the brightest. And between me, Higgs, and our good friend and star of Jonagold, Edward Ventura, there's enough Dumb and Dumber fandom to keep that Farrelly Brothers-classic glowing forever.
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