[INTERVIEW] Scare Package II Director Aaron B Koontz
CB: Congratulations on the launch of Scare Package II. Very exciting.
ABK: I'm very nervous because it's about to come out, you know, we make a lot of movies. But this is the one that is honestly the hardest to make, and takes the most time and need to put the most effort in and I'm even putting my own money in this one and everything. So you know, I'm nervous to get it out there to the world and see what happens. But I'm excited at the same time.
CB: I'm a massive fan of Scare Package (2019). It's basically the movie that got me back into horror. So thank you.
ABK: Oh, my goodness. Oh, that makes me so happy. That was a movie created out of frustration in the industry, honestly, were my first feature. They never released my cuts. And I was like, What am I doing? Is this even something I could do? And that's like, we had raised a little bit of money for that feature that didn't happen. And so I knew I could use it. And I was like, well, let's just make something stupid and silly with my friends. And like, if it makes me laugh, that's it. Because my first feature ended kind of depressingly, and I was, like, let's just do the opposite, you know, and I had no idea if anybody was going to connect with it truly, like, we made it all private funding. And then all of a sudden, you know, it became this thing. And now there's people who dress up Halloween, and they have tattoos, and there's fan art and all this stuff. And I'm like, Oh, my God and it's been, it's been the best thing, the best feeling in the world to connect that with.
CB: For those who aren't aware of who Rad Chad is can you give us an introduction?
ABK: Oh my God, He is the worst part of me when I was in high school. Just the horror nerd who worked at a video store. And would be like, no, you don't want to rent that you want to rent this. You know, that's what I did. I was that guy a little bit, I mean, it's a heightened, ridiculous version of that. But you know, I think it's a person who loves horror and is looking for connection. And both within film, but also I think he just wants to find friends that he can watch horror movies with and you know, wants to find his father as well.
I think there's like an optimism but what happens when, you know, especially coming out of the first film, you know, I was getting frustrated with some horror fandom. I think it'd be a little toxic at times, and that was kind of frustrated me. Then at the same time, I was getting frustrated by that elevated horror and I'm like, there's comedy, there's no elevated drama. Why are we like making horror less than and then that clicked? And I was like, wait a second. What if these people who you know are trying to find connections, but they can't find that connection?
It's this commentary on like, toxic fandom and what that can become and horror gatekeeping that I'm not a fan of at all and that kind of world that that, you know, how do we what's what how can we comment on that? And that just became a really fun thing to play with. But it started with this like sweet natured character who just wanted a friend, you know?
CB: I love him in the first one because of that. It's kind of amplifying the things that we find really cringe about horror fandom.
ABK: Yeah, completely. One of the mottos that we have with our company is horror with heart, you know, and that started with honestly, Emily's segment ‘Cold Open’. It was a really good example of that. John, Michael's character there, who played Mike Myers, and who's just like, so desperate for connection. That's why it made sense to bring them (Mike and Chad) together at the end of the first film, and what's there so we're trying to do the same thing, you know, we're playing with. There's horror with heart here that even if he can go astray, it's coming from a place of love, you know, we are making fun of these horror tropes, but we're also kind of bear hugging them and loving them at the same time and finding that balance.
CB: I find that in horror movies, it's generally overly criticised when directors and writers use tropes, that Scare Package is known for explicitly using these horror tropes and the ones that we really love.
ABK: Yeah, well, I mean, the original title of scare package was tropes. But what happened was I realised, well, if I'm going to call it tropes, then the title should be a trope. So then Scare Package becomes this Saturday Night Deadly Night, Chopping Malll style, trope title. The poster was a trope, so every so everything is a commentary on horror tropes, literally everything. The idea is that, and, I think that people I think rightfully, there's a reason to say, Hey, you're just using a word or using a trope to move your story, but here, if we're using the tropes, and we're commenting on them, and they're used for narrative structure, so it's like, the references allow us to move the story forward. That became like a fun way. So we had rules on how we need to do it. Like I don't want to have a cutaway scene where you leave, and then you're just doing a reference joke the whole time, like an episode of Family Guy or something like that, you know, we wanted to be like, this needs to be integrated into moving our story forward. Once we kind of settled on that, it worked well, but yeah, tropes are the lifeblood of all this.
CB: I have one more question. And it is about the selection process for the segments. Do you have a pitch process? Do you approach these directors? Or have they kind of said, Hey, I would love to be involved in the next edition?
ABK: A little bit of both, you know, so like Alex Barreto, who did “Welcome To The 90s” she is best friends with my producing partner, Ashley Sneed, and I loved the short she made at Tribeca. I thought it was hilarious. And then she's like “by the way, she's a diehard horror fan”. I was like, wait, what? So I went after Alex and recruited her to do this. Then, you know, we obviously brought Anthony back, for a very specific reason for kind of what he was doing. But we did at one point talk about bringing everybody back. Logistically, it wouldn't have worked out. They're just everybody's kind of off doing their own thing. And it would have been really hard to do.
On Scare Package for the directors, we usually start with a big list of people we want to go out to, but then people definitely do pitch. And then Jed, in particular, we had lost a director, for We’re So Dead, and then this other director fell through so then I have two segments now that I need to get figured out and I'm like, venting to Jed. And he's like “I'm right here, Aaron.” He's just wonderfully talented. I love Host and the idea of getting all the Host girls back together in a riff. But we wanted him to go a little more serious in tone and kind of play with it to kind of have had a little bit of a reprieve from like the craziness.
I love working and I love producing so it's fun to to work with these super talented people and learn from what it is they're doing and find an impact there. So it's been been really special. People are already pitching me for number three.
CB: Thank you so much for your time today. I can't wait to see how everyone else feels about film.
ABK: No, thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate your time. It's lovely to meet you. Again, thank you for coming in the middle of the night to talk with us.
