IN CONVERSATION WITH BREA GRANT & ED DOUGHERTY

Tackling the current financial and employment crisis in America, Brea Grant and Ed Dougherty, skewer the issues through a horror-comedy lens with their anthology film GRIND. Over the course of four loosely connected stories such issues as worker exploitation, late stage capitalism, social content and the ever widening wealth divide slide in neatly with an otherworldly, demonic mega corporation, curses and a monstrous sea creature. Gore In The Store sat with writers and directors Brea and Ed to chat about the project's genesis, topical relevance and the film's starry cast including comedian Rob Huebel and horror royalty Barbara Crampton.

GORE IN THE STORE - What inspired you both to tackle the gig economy through the horror genre?

BREA GRANT - We wanted to make a horror anthology, and the idea was to do it around something that we just felt like people were actually scared of. And the thing that all of our friends were talking about was how to make ends meet and jobs and the economy and a lot of our friends and people in our lives are doing these kinds of jobs and it just felt like the thing people were scared about was making money. So we wanted to kind of tackle that sort of late stage capitalism hellscape that we live in, and the best way felt like doing it through these side hustle gig economy jobs.

And where did the inspiration for the bird come from?

ED DOUGHERTY - For a long time, I wanted to do a horror movie about MLM (Multi-Level Marketing), but I couldn't think of what the threat would be, and I kept pitching Brea different ideas of what the horror could be…

BG - Wait, you have to go back because we started working together in a park during the pandemic and we started feeding all of the wildlife there because there weren't that many people there so we would bring big bags of like peanuts and feed the squirrels and the birds so that was sort of the setting when we were writing, if you can imagine that.

ED - So I came in one day after pitching a million different MLM horrors, and I was like, "What if it's an escalating series of curses? Like, her husband's dick turns into a bird.” And Brea was like, "Yes! I like it, and the dick part too!” I love the bird dick, and it's like only four minutes into the movie, and it always gets like a good reaction. So then we can relax, like, okay, we're going to be safe in this screening.

Has anyone taken issue with the film or any issues that it raises? 

ED - Jeff Bezos showed up at my door. No, not really. I think the only real pushback has been due to the CONTENT MODERATION sequence, some of the videos some people find upsetting.

BG - Also, I don't think we're saying anything radical. I mean, we're like, oh, the economy sucks. No one can pay their bills, and these companies are exploiting people's labor. And I don't think that at this point in time, that feels like a radical statement. I think everyone's like, “Yeah, that's right, that's correct!” You know the movie is still in festivals. We don't actually release until next year. Maybe at that point, you know, certain coffee companies will come after us. But until then, we feel like the audiences have been really accepting.

ED - I would say the only audience pushback we've gotten just a tiny bit has been some people have been saying we don't offer solutions, but I do think we offer solutions in the final segment, which is organize and unionize.

How far did you take your research for the CONTENT MODERATION segment?

ED - Oh, I've been living that my whole life. I read a ton about basically every upsetting video that exists. I didn't necessarily watch them, but I read a million Reddit threads that were like, "What's the most fucked up thing you've ever seen?” And just kind of worked our way back to what are interesting videos that could flash by, and you would get it instantly. But yeah, I've seen quite a lot of horrible videos in my time.

Were you expecting a certain amphibian based character, also popping up in his own double bill at this year's FrightFest, to pop up in the footage that your Second Unit sent back to you for the segment?

ED - Yes. I don't want to say it was my idea, but I think it might have been. But the funny part was that we were originally trying to get like a porn star to be it. There was all this rigmarole about where is the Frogman outfit and who will bang Frogman? But yeah, that's been a very fun side benefit of this, having Frogman in there and the reaction to that.

BG - We've decided that he's part of the GRIND Cinematic Universe.

Touching on that, the film does have quite a bit of a mythos built into it with the Dragon Company. I was wondering how you built that out in your own heads, and is that something that you would want to return to in future works?

BG - We spent a lot of time writing this movie and thinking about what the rules of the world were, what the big bad was and what the mythos of the world was. The lore was really important to us. I think it's a great movie for multiple watches. I think when you watch it one time, you'll get the idea, but then you watch it and you learn that the entire world is all connected. The website here is connected to the other segments. Everything is all in the same universe because we wanted it to feel like its own. We wanted to create the GRIND Cinematic Universe. Like when we write, Ed always says, this is more of a GRIND segment. We keep thinking about it for future versions.

ED - The great thing is that there was a lot more lore about the Dragon Company in earlier versions of the script that were just cut for time, basically. But I feel like the texture kind of still seeps in. So yeah. I was also reading a book about the computer game company Sierra, while we were working on this, and so some of that slipped into the Dragon mythos.

So maybe, from a creatively selfish standpoint you’re not really looking for economic stability in the U.S. in the near future?

ED - I don’t think we need to worry about that!

BG - it’s not looking good. I mean, jury's out, but it’s not looking great.

Chelsea Stardust has also directed a couple of segments here, but how did you choose among yourselves about who got to direct each segment?

BG -  Ed and I wrote the whole thing together, and then we actually shot MLM a year before the first segment as sort of a proof of concept. So I did that one, and then I don't know. We kind of just decided Ed was always going to do the CONTENT MODERATION segment. I really didn't want to do the DELIVERY segment, but I ended up doing it because I hate shooting in cars. But that's what we did. And then Chelsea came on to produce for the main when we're shooting three of the segments, and when it came to shoot the opening and closing little intro and outro we asked her to direct those. It kind of just made sense because by that point we were doing reshoots and knew we needed to shoot those opening and closing segments. 

You've got quite the cast here, with Barbara Crampton, Rob Huebel and James Urbaniak among others. How did you rope these talents in?

BG - Barbara and I have been friends forever. I believe the first movie we did was BEYOND THE GATES, but then we've been in several other movies together since. I've always wanted to work with her as a director. So when we were like, who would be the head of this multi-level marketing cult, it made sense to have Barbara in it. A lot of small movies don't do this, but during production we hired a casting director, so we knew we had a few roles that we wanted to fill, and we only have so many friends, so we had a really great casting director who found a lot of these people, especially for CONTENT MODERATION. A lot of those actors were from the casting director.

ED - We always knew we wanted a big comedy guy like Rob Huebel, but we were thrilled to actually get him. I was afraid of him at first, but he’s a very nice guy.

You have both had previous experience with FrightFest before. How important is it as a festival to you compared to other festivals?

BG - I think internationally, it's a really well-respected genre festival. It's not easy for us to travel to a lot of festivals, but we’re both going out to Fright Fest because I felt like it was just like such a cool place. I mean, I think the vibe is very cool. The theaters are very cool. I love that they do it on that big screen. I mean, it's just such a cool space. And then it just was really nice when I went a few years ago just to go to the bar afterwards and to talk to people and it was a good vibe. But then also I think they just have really good taste. Obviously, we think that, because we've been programmed there.

Iain MacLeod

GRIND - UK PREMIERE 

TUBI MAIN SCREEN - SATURDAY 29TH AUGUST, 6:30 PM