Interview: Ryan Bellgardt – Director (Gremlin)

Hi Ryan, How is everything going?

Ryan- Hi Janel

Okay, so “Gremlin” was such a fun horror film! Great scares, good story. Tell me where the idea manifested from?

Ryan- “Gremlin” is a story about a box from the uncle and inside of it is a creature that turns out of the box and one by one it starts killing the people in the family. Dad is the one that has the box and its attached to him and he has to pass it along to someone he loves because that is the only way to get rid of it. So the story is about this guy who is going through this horrible situation to try to figure out how to get rid of the box, pass it along to somebody and take the curse off of his family.

You wrote and directed “Gremlin,” why did you decide to direct?

Ryan- We had done a movie called “Army of Frankenstein” and it did pretty well and we wanted to do something else. That movie was fun and campy and we decided to try and do something that was a little more dark and sinister so we came up with this idea about a monster in a box that is mean so we just went with it. I have a film company and we do all kinds of projects. We do everything from commercials to corporate videos. It started as hobby, you know something for us to do that was fun on nights and weekends. It started to grow wings and it took off so now we are doing a lot of cool projects including “The Jurassic Games,” that is a dinosaur movie that we are working on. We have a lot of talented people working with us.

You have a lot of variety in the work you do. Did anyone inspire you professionally?

Ryan- That is a good question.  I grew up loving popcorn movies, I am a kid of the eighties. I love Steven Spielberg movies and John Carpenter’s movies! I grew up with “Jurassic Park” and “Alien.” They are two of my favorite movies. I kind of like big blockbuster movies that have to do with monsters, robots or dinosaurs. I like Horror and Sci-fi. There’s a lot of different things you can do within those genres. You can do something that is really sinister and dark horror movie or you can do something that’s kind of campy with dinosaurs or robots. I wanted to challenge myself.

Ryan, what was it like working with the cast? Did anything crazy happen on-set?

Ryan- Oh, I am super proud of my cast! I mean those guys brought it one hundred percent. A lot of times they had to run away from something that’s not there at all. I had a little puppet that I could show them so they could see that this is kind of what it is. I thought Adam Hampton did really well and Kristy K. Boone did really good as the mom Julie. I remember when we filmed that scene in the basement and it was a pretty emotional scene. She was able to go to a place (I won’t give anything away!) I remember when we finished filming that scene and she had to really bring it. She came over and gave me a big hug and had to cry it out and I was patting her on the back and saying, it’s going to be okay. They were all great!

The effects in the film were great. What types of effects did you use?

Ryan- Thanks. I’ve been doing CGI work as a hobby for about ten years. I was finally at the point where I can try and put it into a movie. Part of what started with “Gremlin” was when we were coming up with the concept and everything was like how can we do something that we can utilize what we learned over the past ten years as far as digital effects. I appreciate you saying that because we worked really hard. It was a small team. It was me and one other person named Stephanie who is a really great animator. We sure learned a lot. Real effects or practical effects, CGI effects. They are all tools and I like them equally.

Right, they are all useful in different ways.

Ryan- Yes, for our budget and what we were trying to do would have been very difficult to build a little puppet that could run up and down walls and do the things that our creature needed to do so we decided it would work better for us to do a CGI creature.

That is a good way to look at it.

Ryan- Yeah, you’re right, they are tools. They are just tools to tell your story. My favorite I think is when you mix them together.

What do you want to say to the audiences that will be watching “Gremlin?”

Ryan- First of all, thank you! A lot of people worked really hard to bring the movie together. We are very appreciative. We hope that they are entertained by it. I want them to be creeped out and have fun watching this monster kind of terrorize this family.

What are you working on next? You said you are shooting now. So what’s next?

Ryan- We just finished shooting and we are shooting some pick-up scenes right this very moment for “The Jurassic Games.” In the future ten death row inmates are playing a virtual reality television gameshow where they have to fight dinosaurs. It is “The Hunger Games” meets “Jurassic Park.” We are really excited about this one.

It was an honor to speak with you and I apologize for my Bella barking!

Ryan- It’s okay and thanks for talking to me!

Thank you! It was an honor.

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