Film Name: Take Your Bible and Run
Director: Alexis Wawerka
Writer: Alexis Wawerka
Starring: Flore Labrot,Urfé Koupaki, Pascal Jarlat, Eric Ducron, Fabrice Colson
Shortly after the passage of an extraterrestrial emissary who came to warn humanity of the coming of a terrible danger, a meteorite shower containing a terrible infectious parasite transforms the population of a small town in the Somme in Picardy into rabid cannibals. From then on, colourful survivors and a humanoid alien monkey playing bounty hunters try to survive by all means, even the most unexpected.
In a new Exclusive Interview on Blazing Minds ahead of Horror-on-Sea I got a chance to ask Co-Writer/Director Alexis Wawerka a few questions about the film ‘Take Your Bible and Run‘
Take Your Bible and Run will play at Horror-on-Sea on Saturday 18th January at 10.30pm
Q. Your film has been selected to play at the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival. Can you tell us what we can expect?
A. At first please pardon my English, I am French and nobody’s perfect. If Joan of Arc had been burnt earlier, the English wouldn’t have been pulled out of France and the Froggies would have been English. We would have better music, better films and good tv series. Lol.
With Take your Bible and Run you can expect cheesy humour, gory sequences, and above all a big melting pot of underground pop culture influences. A big patchwork of all I have loved since my childhood, and made with the budget of toilet paper for a normal film production.
Q. What were some of your influences when writing the script?
A. All the 70’s and 80’s horror films that made me. Films like Return of the Living Dead, Creepshow, Troma productions. In the beginning I had a script, but the movie was growing like a fungus. I wasn’t really writing anything, but 12 years on the movie grew by itself.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
A. I wanted to have a very colourful patchwork of sequences, I wanted a comic book style, and above all I loved the grindhouse movie look. Even giving a grindhouse dusty style to my film. The way this film was chaotically made, with so many different filming supports, in so many conditions over the year, with absolutely no sound correctly recorded after a while. I figured that with that Grindhouse film style, I will drown the fish. all the imperfections of the film are totally consumed.
Q. Did you make any changes from the original script during filming?
A. Oh yessss. This was supposed to be a short film, the first part of the shooting in 2012 was made with a real film crew, but it was too big and I miscalculated a lot of things. I had eyes bigger than my belly. After the first week of shooting, I was lost and unsatisfied by the film and above all myself.
I decided to do reshoots one month after, and weeks after I still wasn’t satisfied. And bit by bit I decided to add scenes and pieces to my film. It took 12 years in the making because I had no money and time to shoot with more regularity. The time passed and in the end we have this… thing.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
A. Tricky question. in fact the filming was a real hard walk in the desert. Of course I was well helped by many wonderful people that supported me in all senses of the term. I met great people that became very close friends because of this film. But the best moment for me was when I first opened the crate of DVDS that my distributor sent me. It was the end of a long chaotic punishing road. I had to finished it by all means. to go to the end of this tunnel of development hell.
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
A. Yes. All the filming and post production was an issue. Even if I had good moments on it, it was tough and I tricked myself by being to greedy with my filming, and creative desire without a real production configuration.
Q. What makes it stand out as something different in the horror genre?
A. I think it is the mix of many genres that is original. The imperfections and the conditions of the making of it that film, gives it this Frankenfilm style. The different genre, supports, styles are contributing to the strange look it has.
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
A. Fun only fun. And many good beers to spread on it.
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?
A. I think I will do. Not now or soon, but in years. I want to do a small film, a short. Well prepared before,
with good lights and cinematography. Something not gory, not vulgar and not improvised to fill the blanks. Something that I can be proud of in the end. Even if I am now proud and happy of “Take your Bible and Run”, I was really marked by the looooonnnnnggggg gestation of it. For now I will work on writing my film ideas in books with a lot of illustrations.
Q. If someone was looking to write and direct their own film what advice would you give them?
A. Prepare, work and do not do something that is out of your league in terms of budget. But work work work. Be humble and do not act like a blind mad dog on speed.
Take Your Bible and Run will play at Horror-on-Sea on Saturday 18th January at 10.30pm
You can find out more about the festival and purchase tickets here
Published in various websites, Philip is a reviewer who is best known for his interviews and media coverage of independent projects including; films, books, theatre and live events. Always on the lookout for something different to cover!
