INTERVIEW: DEIMOS FILMMAKER
KYLE BOGART
Off Radar sat down with Kyle Bogart — 1 ⁄ 2 of The Bogart Brothers film duo — to discuss the filmmaking process and the brothers’ short horror film DEIMOS that premiered April 8.
Interview by Kyle Turrubiate and Katie Karp
Off Radar: When did you decide to start making movies?
Bogart: I've been making films with my brother Cliff since late in high school. We were both looking for some direction in life. We were both big movie buffs. Cliff is a bit older than me and was actually an aerospace engineering major at UT, studying to be a rocket scientist when I convinced him to jump ship on that. I said there was no future in rocket ships in Texas, which I was obviously wrong about. We ended up going to UT's film school.
Off Radar: What is your favorite part of the filmmaking process?
Bogart: I spend most of my time writing. My brother and I are constantly getting up, sitting down, and workshopping ideas. We've always been drawn towards eccentric material, so we've always written that material for ourselves. Every couple of years, whether it's a short film or a feature film, we end up exploding into a kind of fury of activity and pulling together a bunch of actors and people we haven't seen in a long time. Then, it becomes much more social. While it occupies most of your time, the writing process is very lonely. When you quickly bring the cast and crew together to film, it's like a wedding where you bring hundreds of people together. Then, you retreat off to your cave to work on something else. So, I would say my favorite part of the process is actually bringing together the people involved, but the writing is where the work gets done.
Off Radar: Are you guys from Austin?
Bogart: We're from Dallas, but we've been here for 20 years.
Off Radar: Who are some of your influences?
Bogart: That question has changed a lot over time. But in film school, I obsessively read a lot of David Mamet, and he was very important to me. Robert Altman was someone who I did not necessarily respond to as a filmmaker when I was young. Yet, if there's one influence who speaks to me most nowadays, it's pretentious, but it's Robert Altman. His second film, Images, tells a haunted story of a woman going crazy in a house in Ireland, where he uses these long zoom lenses — just like we do in DEIMOS — to play the role of the ghost. It's as if this woman is alone, and the camera plays an interesting role in bridging the world between her and the ghost.
Image courtesy of DEIMOS
Off Radar: How did you get into horror?
Bogart: Starting in third grade, we rented tons of horror movies on VHS from the local video store and had a subscription. We subscribed to FANGORIA, a big horror magazine we would get every month. The magazine was full of color, gore, and all the terrible things horror movies offer. My first short film in 2006 was a serial killer slasher called Room 314. We took it to SXSW. Then we made lighter, more romantic films for a few years. In recent years, we returned to making films about werewolves, demons, monsters, and all that stuff.
Bogart on DEIMOS set with lead actress, Katie Folder
Off Radar: You make a lot of short films. Do you ever want to make full-length movies?
Bogart: The last several years have been very challenging for the movie industry in general, so I've been on the verge of making a feature film probably three times in the last 10 years. Then, one thing or another has led to it not coming together because it's tough to get a whole feature together outside of the very, very low-budget film we did 12 years ago. Hopefully, we'll get another low-budget feature done this year, whether it’s with DEIMOS or something else. DEIMOS began as a feature script and project we were trying to get going in LA a few years ago. It's went through a few rewrites since turning into a short film. But my brother and I just finished up a feature script version of that that we're hoping to get made this year. It will be really cool.
Off Radar: When watching the film premiere at AFS, what was your favorite part of DEIMOS?
Bogart: We shot the whole first scene in one shot. It really does its job of intriguing the audience, teaching them that the painting is alive as it whispers at this one guy. My favorite part had to be feeling the quietness from the audience as everyone dialed into the concept.
Image courtesy of DEIMOS