about / history / director's statement
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
The “revenge film” is a familiar premise for any casual moviegoer. From DEATHWISH to MAD MAX to KILL BILL, it’s a premise that continues to be made and remade for new generations. While many great stories have been written in this vein, filmmaker Matthew Glasson and fellow film fanatic Scott Greene wanted to take the formula, grab it by the horns and throttle it a bit. And so was born THE FAMILY TIE, a short featurette about a young man – a “boy with no name” - who witnesses the destruction of his family at the hands of John, a psychotic business partner of his father’s. Swearing vengeance, the boy seeks out to destroy John and will stop at nothing to mete out justice, even at the cost of his own sanity.
While THE FAMILY TIE was working with a limited budget and a fairly inexperienced crew, the enthusiasm and grass-roots style of the production is reminiscent of the comic excess in Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD series and the brilliant ROBOCOP as well as some of the stylized violence of Italian splatter cinema of the '70s (Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento). If you're a fan of exciting and inventive cinema, where the onscreen action translates into a visceral audience experience, then you will want to try putting this FAMILY TIE on for size.
DEEP INSIDE THE FAMILY TIE: A "Family history"
Sharing writing and producing duties, Glasson and Greene based the script
on a short video they made while attending school together. Glasson had
come across the never-finished short some years later, hitting upon the
idea of expanding it into a feature. "It wasn't great a great piece
by itself, but it had potential," he said. "Scott’s performance
as the maniacal villain was certainly inspired, so I knew we could build
on the characters we had sketched out and develop a compelling story out
of it.”
As they wrote, the two longtime friends incorporated ideas and half-jokes
they had bounced back and forth over the years. Glasson had developed a
fascination with Asian cyberpunk cinema and Italian splatter movies, seeking
out films that portrayed violence in a far more graphic manner than most
mainstream American films dared. Greene: "He would come up with these
really horrible, third-generation dubs of zombie movies and serial killer
flicks, usually by directors like Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento. A lot of
it was hard to stomach, but I've always found Matt's writing to be very
funny, so I figured it was worth getting involved in. We were going for
laughs, so the idea was to try for an EVIL DEAD-type over the top-ness."
Assuming the role of director, Glasson kept expenses low by shooting in
the homes and workplaces of both friends and family, and casting many of
these same people in various roles. For the leads, Glasson selected Phil
Anzelmo, a co-worker from his day job to portray the vengeance-fueled teen
and Greene reprised his role as the villain from the original short. Principal
photography took place over several long weekends in ‘97/’98,
but several ambitious FX shots could not be completed before Glasson's move
from Chicago to New York.
Both pursued their own projects in the years that followed, but in 2004,
Glasson and Greene finally resumed work on the film. With Greene sending
Glasson script notes and narration ideas via e-mail while Glasson took on
the editing on his Powerbook laptop. “The editing style of FAMILY
TIE was something that I knew required a computer to execute, so unfortunately
that meant playing the waiting game,” Glasson says. “It goes
without saying that it’s an exciting time for young filmmakers everywhere
as the technology to do these things has become more affordable, but I had
to wait about 6 years for that ‘affordability’ to come around
for me.” After shooting those crucial FX shots and several months
of obsessively editing down the 14-plus hours shot into a finished form,
Glasson completed the featurette in April of 2007.
The “featurette” is an unusual running time as it doesn’t
fit in the traditional time slot that a television show or a feature-length
film provides. It is a short burst of energy and spectacle, stirring up
whoever tries watching it and giving them a good ride along the way. But
finding a balance between caustic satire and over-the-top splatter requires
a delicate balance of extreme worlds, and THE FAMILY TIE manages to be a
sharp, merciless comedy while also maintaining a hyperkinetic energy to
its violent camp.
THE FAMILY TIE is an ode to grass-roots gore shot within The Windy City
and its northwestern suburbs. "Frankly, I wasn't sure it'd ever be
done," Greene commented, "but now that it is, I know it was worth
it. It's a real joy to hear people gasp and howl during the screenings."
Glasson also expresses pleasure with the end result. "This took a ridiculously
long time to finish and put to bed. There are a lot of excuses I could make
about why it took so long, but the overriding fact is that we set the bar
pretty high for ourselves. And when you’re trying to make an epic
film on a shoestring budget, things take a bit longer then you would if
you had a paid crew and producers to help move things along. Even so, seeing
my baby finally come to life makes it all worthwhile."
Director's Statement
I came up with the idea for THE FAMILY TIE in the spring of 1997, mainly as
a frustrated creative backlash. I was living in the suburbs, working a depressing
corporate job at an ink manufacturer and had just come off the heels of a
film collaboration that had crashed and burned. I wanted to shoot something
quick and easy, something that could be shot on video for little money but
could compensate by packing an unapologetically wicked punch. Little did I
know that this "quick and easy" idea had such a long and sinuous road ahead.
In high school, I had done hordes of short videos with my film buddy, Scott
Greene. One day while re-watching a short we had done in high school called
"Just Vengeance”, I was wickedly delighted by the villainous role of Scott
Greene’s performance. Scott Greene's acting in "Just Vengeance" had a hilarious
manic energy - one that was very calculated in its choreography but completely
broad in execution. Immediately, my mind started spinning with ideas to bring
his character back and to push the original short's story to the next level.
Thus was born "The Family Tie" with Scott Greene and myself co-writing and
co-producing the endeavor.
At my heinously boring office job (I was a “contract administrator” which
is even more dull than it sounds), I had a friend in co-worker Phil Anzelmo,
whose twisted sense of humor and love of ‘70s/’80s exploitation cinema could
keep up with my own. Even though Phil had had no real acting experience, he
possessed the right sort of energy I wanted for the protagonist in "the boy."
The role called for a certain youthful naivety, but also a wild and untamed
energy that the character evolves into as the story progresses. I knew he
could tap into these moments of hilarious craziness when we would joke around
together on the job and elsewhere. With Phil and Scott in place, we had our
two leads, and that was enough for us to get started.
We shot the bulk of FAMILY TIE on weekends and holidays from July of '97 to
August of '98 in Chicago and some of its northwestern suburbs. As any low
budget filmmaker can likely attest: when you're not paying your actors or
whatever crew you can muster up (i.e., friends), you have to work with a flexible
and accommodating production schedule. This often means that a "simple"
production schedule tends to drag on as there are last minute cancellations,
drop-outs and other acts of god that make filmmaking so much fun.
We wrapped principal photography in summer of 1998, and within months I was
moving out to NYC to start a rock band (this wasn't as impulsive as it sounds
here, but is a story for another website). Knowing the complicated editing
job ahead, it was necessary for me to cut the film digitally. But, this being
the year 1998, editing digitally was still something reserved for post houses
and TV stations. And so with The Family Tie "in the can" (minus a few 2nd
unit pick-ups and FX shots) and with my new focus being on starting up this
band, the film was put to bed for a long winter's nap. An eight-year winter's
nap, to be exact.
With the release of Final Cut Pro on the Mac, it was finally becoming affordable
for the common people to edit video on their computers. Armed with a Powerbook,
I began the enjoyably arduous task of whittling down 15 hours of footage into
a 40-minute whiz bang joy ride. After a year of editing and tweaking, THE
FAMILY TIE is finally ready for general consumption. I hope that you are able
to enjoy experiencing this ride it as much as I did in constructing (and de-constructing)
it.
Enjoy!