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HORROR LABEL GLASS EYE PIX CELEBRATES ITS 25TH
Our favorite NYC-based low-budget horror mega-studio, Glass Eye Pix, celebrates its 25th anniversary with a two-week retrospective series of screenings at reRun in New York that begins today. They include founder Larry Fessenden’s first picture, No Telling, his excellent and quite movie Wendigo, and films by its roster of artists including Ti West and James McKenney, whose Satan Hates You, says Fessenden in the New York Times video below, is an “oddly serene and pious Christian scare film.”
In Fall, 2009, Filmmaker celebrated Glass Eye Pix’s 24th anniversary with an article and interview of Fessenden by Lauren Wissot. From her piece:
Whereas other production companies move up the food chain, signing union or studio deals that force them into specific production models, Glass Eye has retained the freedom to allow each film to develop in its own organic way. “We try to keep an open mind about how to shoot a film,” Fessenden says. “Habit shot over the course of 45 days. I Sell the Dead was shot over the course of eight months. Stake Land is being shot in 27 days over three months. Bitter Feast was shot in 14 days plus we owe one more.” But try to pin him on financing and you’ll get the weary, stream-of-consciousness response of, “Every film is different. Habit was self-financed. Jeffrey Levy-Hinte’s Antidote Films financed Wendigo and The Last Winter. The original Scareflix were financed by me, and the first ones doubled their money, so there was more in the kitty to self-perpetuate. A film like Liberty Kid was financed with equity investors, raised by my co-producer Roger Kass. Wendy and Lucy also was financed by a group of equity investors. I was the primary investor in I Sell the Dead along with one other equity partner; our recent films are financed by MPI/Dark Sky. I’ve been the primary benefactor of Glass Eye Pix over the years, which makes it an unsustainable enterprise.”
“There is no illusion that we should all carry on working this way,” Fessenden continues. “Glass Eye Pix is a fertile starting point where a self-motivated filmmaker can learn about every aspect of making movies from script to promotion. I have always encouraged people to move on as soon as the Glass Eye approach becomes oppressive or limiting. My own career as a director has led me to bigger budgets, more mainstream opportunities. I would expect the same of the stable of directors, producers and crew members that pass through the Glass Eye boot camp.”
