THE CREEPER STILL CIRCLES HIS 3RD AND BIGGEST FILM

It's hard to believe that Memorial Day Weekend at the end of this summer, marks the ten year anniversary of the first JEEPERS CREEPERS film.

Are the exploits of Trisha and Darry and their most unfortunate run-in with a creature who only comes out every twenty-three days, every twenty three years, really a decade old now?

For a film that takes place on a lonely country road in middle America USA, central Florida, also known as "the heart of horse country" might have seemed like a strange choice.

But back in 1999, after scouting locations in Canada and looking at pictures from states all over the country, the pictures that came from the sunshine state, particularly places just north of Orlando, gave us long roads, arching trees with Spanish moss and just a terrific, isolated feel.

A feel that seemed perfect for what I wanted to be my first-ever real monster movie, but more than that: a new and unique kind of film in that genre. A kind of "nightmare in broad daylight".

(If you look closely at this production still you will see that Gina and Justin are actually their stunt doubles, getting ready for another take of the Creeper truck wreaking havoc on them. Why is the Creeper truck's door open? To let out the toxic fumes and smoke it filled with each time it had to run)

Of course, since I had never seen TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, I didn't know there already was quite an effective "nightmare in broad daylight" Film. Most people think JEEPERS is some kind of an homage to Tobe Hooper's film -- and were surprised to hear that I had never seen it.

I did, years later finally see the film, and in the presence of Tobe himself. It was much scarier and much less gory (almost no gore at all) than I was expecting. And the filmmaking was really great - something else that took me by surprise, since I had been lead to believe I was about to see the great gorefest that spawned all the gorefests to come.

There was so little -- and the film so scary and the storytelling so strong, I began to see people who thought JEEPERS CREEPERS was a child of CHAINSAW, were paying me a compliment.

Meeting Tobe himself was also a great pleasure. To my surprise he had seen both Jeepers films and told me that the scene in JC2, when the Creeper is hanging upside in a school bus back window, pointing out his intended victims -- was one of the truly scariest scenes he'd seen in ages. Praise from Caesar!

(John as the soon-t0-be headless trooper taking direction before we roll cameras on the discovery of dusty fingerprints on the handle of the kids' car)

But back to Florida: It was the pictures of the old abandoned church on the outskirts of a small city called Ocala Florida, and our consequent scout of the surrounding areas that made us decide we were off to the east coast to shoot the boyhood and lifelong dream of my own little monster movie!

Almost eleven years ago, a bunch of filmmakers from Los Angeles, California decided to take their very serious monster movie, to central Florida. Delayed financing had the production starting six months past the date they were supposed to hit the east coast, throwing us into a freak heat wave at the end of the summer of 2000.

Sometimes as hot as 110 degrees, the brutal weather that always included ninety percent humidity -- would be difficult on most of the cast and crew but it would be the toughest on the young actor playing The Creeper, Jonathan Breck, who would be acting each day under layers of latex and heavy coats and pants.

The other member of the production the intense heat was most difficult for, was the heavy set writer/director (almost four hundred pounds back then in 2000) yours truly.

(Big as a house back in 2000. Not a comfortable body to be in generally -- let alone in a hundred degree weather and with all that humidity. I was a massive, breathless wet tea bag for my entire Florida stay)

I have to be honest here and say that the first time I got off the plane in Orlando Florida, the first time I had ever been to the east coast actually -- and the first time I had ever experienced severe humidity -- this California country boy actually had to sit down after a few steps off the plane.

I had to sit down and try to breathe. The air was so thick with water, it felt like there was no air going into my lungs. Maybe you haven't experienced the kind of humidity I'm talking about. It's not just the heat, it actually feels like someone is sitting on your chest for the first twenty or thirty minutes or so that you enter this environment.

I sat on an airport bench with my producer Barry Opper and acclimated slowly, thinking but not saying, that I would never shoot a movie here in a million years. "There isn't even any oxygen!" I remember thinking to myself.

Little did I know, that a few months later I would be bringing my entire cast and crew here for an extended four month stay while we put JEEPERS CREEPERS before the cameras.

(Jonathan Breck as the Creeper had it a lot tougher than me during the heat wave we shot JEEPERS CREEPERS in. Buried under cloth and latex, the ninety percent humidity couldn't have been fun. Here he is getting a beauty mark or two on one of those long Florida roads we shot on)

I am asked a lot of questions about that film, and since I am sitting here on Fourth of July weekend, still waiting to shoot ROSEWOOD LANE, and getting feedback about how much the blogs about the Jeepers films are enjoyed, I thought I'd revisit the shoot for that first film, though I think I have probably told you everything there is to know.

Since I'm not sure where to begin, maybe the easiest way to talk about the shoot is to answer some of the questions that come my way through this blog.

HOW DID YOU FIND JUSTIN LONG?

Long story but here goes: Justin I had only seen briefly, and that was in the film GALAXY QUEST. He only had a couple of scenes, as a sci-fi nerd who is about to save the world --right after he takes out the trash for his mother.

To say he was brilliant in the time the small part allotted him would be an understatement.

He had also been on an NBC series called "Ed" that I didn't get a chance to check out till after we had hired him and we were all in Florida shooting. But from what I saw in GALAXY QUEST, I knew he had to be one of the boys we needed to get in and read.

(Justin Long and my producer Barry Opper between takes of the car and Creeper truck chase scenes.

Coincidentally, Justin had been working and hanging out with Sam Rockwell (I think they were in a play together) just before Justin trekked out to Florida, so I remember thinking there was some kind of weird or at least twisted symmetry going on in all of this.

(A rare photo of Justin in Creeper garb. This was the first of two times we would shoot the final scene of JEEPERS CREEPERS. Here, we are in Florida in an old abandoned slaughter house where the Creeper's other lair was built)

I think JEEPERS CREEPERS and Justin Long met at just the right time in each of their journeys. Justin had never had the lead in a film before and jumped into the part of Darry Jenner with both feet. I have never seen a better or more convincing performance in a horror film ever, nor had I ever seen an actor who so consistently gave me great take after take regardless of the scene we were shooting.

The hardest part for me, as the shoot went on, was not to take Justin for granted. In fact, halfway through the shoot I got tired of saying to him after each set-up "good job" or "terrific Justy" -- that we formed a running gag where before the shot I would simply walk up to him and whisper, "Try not to f*** this one up."

(Justin's chemistry with the talented and beautiful Gina Philips was that perfect balance of affection and irritation that a director could only dream of getting when writing a relationship film about a young brother and sister stuck in the same car on the way home for Spring Break.)

People often ask why I chose Justin when we had so many other, and larger names read for the part. It was simple. Guys that age (late teens) have a certain way of carrying themselves. Actors that age especially. Guys want to be cool and sexy and puff out their chests with that rather funny but utterly fabricated bravado that simply would have killed the energy I needed from my Darry Jenner.

Trisha and Darry (or Gina and Justin) would basically be playing the audience in my film. In much the same way Roy Sheider plays the audience in Jaws, I needed a Darry who would play me and the rest of the audience for maximum shock, terror and vulnerability.

Most teenage guys who came into read for me, kept their cool, stayed sexy and in control -- no matter what the scene they were auditioning for me. In other words, their portrayal of a real college boy -- suddenly facing death, and being terrorized by something that isn't supposed to exist in real life -- rarely felt real to me.

Justin came in and really lost his shit. Really got scared. Like someone really would if the facts of Jeepers Creepers suddenly became a reality. With Justin I got something I completely believed. Not a posturing, junior James Bond who was too cool for school, or worse, too cool to be scared.

(The Creeper at last makes a grab for his main squeeze. I loved the idea of counting on the audience's expectation for the lovely Gina to be the object of the Creeper's hunger -- and then to surprise everyone by making it Justin's eyes that were the focus of the Creeper's obsession)

I deliberately chose scenes from the script for the actors to audition with, that were ones with the brother and sister really freaking out. Justin was the boy who had the depth and the honesty to really convince me he was scared.

The great Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci says an actor has to seduce the director when he auditions -- and I understand what he means: the actor has to throw a spell over the director. Not a sexual seduction, but it is definitely a flirtation, hinting at a love affair -- not so much with the director, but with the character he is creating for the director.

This relationship the actor creates, is especially important if the director is also the writer. The writer has created characters, both light and dark, and has a very intimate attachment to them. Speaking for myself, my characters are my children. And like any parent, you want to see your children grow to be strong, happy and healthy creations.

It is scary sometimes to entrust your characters to the actors you choose (or sometimes someone else chooses) to take them from you and make them their own.

(Justy getting ready for a take in the diner sequence. His focus before an intense scene, his silent prep, very akin to Sean Patrick Flanery's focus when he prepared for a scene as POWDER, was something that impressed me)

When Bertolucci says the actor needs to seduce the director -- he was probably trying to be provocative on purpose, but he was essentially saying that the actor has to come in and convince the director that he has some magic to give this character.

That he has something to add, to help the character lift off the page and rise up to the screen -- as corny as that may sound. This magic to me, includes the actor's ability to create something real out of this paper and pen creation.

(Justin in one of his best moments in the film (IMHO) At a small diner, after witnessing the Creeper's carnage in The House of Pain, Darry tries to plead his case to a disbelieving State Trooper)

I saw a lot of talented guys during casting for Jeepers, but young Justin was the one who really gave me everything I wanted. And everything I needed the audience to feel through him.

I also got a very unique mix of humor, charm, goofiness, vulnerability, honesty and, one of the most important emotions in a film like Jeepers: balls out fear and terror when the moment called for it.


There was no doubt that I had found my Darry. Too bad the studio didn't want him.

See the money guys don't care how talented or right someone is for the part, if the name isn't big enough (meaning their credits aren't high profile enough to give them what the studios call "marquee value") the part will always go to some more well-known if less talented, or less right for the part, person, that the director has to accommodate in order to get his film financed.

How did Justin Long, an unknown end up starring in my film? The same way the equally talented and beautiful Gina Philips did. Francis Coppola (who had suggested some names himself that were much more well known for Darry and Trisha) asked me who I wanted -- and I said Justin and Gina.

Francis told the studio to give me the actors I wanted. I think it's one of the smartest things I did in making choices about Jeepers, and often when I hear from Jeepers fans that how much they love the brother and sister in the first Jeepers, the more I know it was smart to trust my instinct and fight for my kids.

(Justin was about as sweet, cool and unassuming as any actor I had worked with. It's always great when the truly talented ones haven't let the fear and insecurity that comes with being an artist - take over. It makes them a joy. And a fellow adventurer, and a talented ally in the great journey of putting a story on film.)

WILL JUSTIN LONG BE IN JEEPERS III?

Justin has told me that he really wants to be in the third and final film in the trilogy. If his busy schedule permits, I have a place for him and it would be great to have him.

WILL GINA PHILIPS BE IN JEEPERS III?

The third and final film, currently titled JEEPERS CREEPERS III: CATHEDRAL is built around Gina Philips and her character Trisha Jenner, who twenty three years after the first Jeepers film, is a wealthy business woman. Trisha is a single mom who has a teen-aged son of her own, who she has named after her long lost brother Darry.

(The equal parts talented and beautiful Ms. Gina Philips between takes at the Creeper's pipe in the old church yard in the original JEEPERS)

But Trisha Jenner businesswoman has a life that isn't all roses and fancy cars. She has been having dreams just like psychic Jezelle Gay Hartman, and in these terrible dreams, Trisha sees her son Darry being destroyed by the Creeper in the same way her brother was twenty-three years ago.

Determined to make sure this doesn't happen, Trisha puts all her money and power behind a plot to protect her son and destroy the Creeper once and for all.

IS THE CHURCH FROM JEEPERS CREEPERS REALLY GONE?

It was reported to us a year or so ago, that the church had mysteriously burned down. Locals who I am still in touch with, told me they suspect it was horse rancher, and owner of the New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner, (who just recently passed away) whose property borders the lonely two-lane country road the antique church sits on.

Again this is speculation that it was George, but the tale goes that whoever it was, got tired of people driving out there (it is a particularly quiet and remote part of Florida) asking to see "the Jeepers Creepers" church - so it conveniently burned down.

To me, that's a bit of a stretch. Who would burn down a classic, even historical old church that had been part of the state's history for so many years, simply because it had become a point of occasional curiosity or movie memorabilia?

(I am not supposed to share this rare picture taken at the church, but here I go, for my die-hard Jeepers fans. Why is this picture verbotten? See the bodies and the open doors of the truck? See how clean and sterile looking they are? They were not painted or dressed to ever be seen)

Why? Because the director promised that the inside of the Creeper truck -- would never be seen in the final film. It was one of many cost-saving measures that helped us get our budget down, and so, the interior of our Creeper trucks where never painted, dressed or made up to be screen ready.

The days of shooting at the church are some I will never forget. This was one of those parts of Florida where we were in such deep country that the insect population not only outnumbered us, but they made shooting sound a special kind of challenge.

(Here we are with the crane and the crew for another day at the Jeeper's church. Under that white tent top is "video village" or "Victor Village" we called it. Where I and my faithful script super Patti would sit and watch the shots on the video assist)

The bleets, blurts and chirps and whatever else insects make, was like shooting next to a babbling brook. I'm not kidding, the air crackled with the sounds of all these bugs and secadas that were everywhere in the surrounding woods and fields that peninsula-ed the old church.

When we were about to roll sound, someone would fire a vary pistol into the air and the insects would all go quiet - usually just long enough for us to get a take where the dialog wasn't swallowed up by choruses of crickets and whatever else was out there.

Believe me, the insects you see in California in no way prepare you for the insects you're going to see in central Florida. They are bigger, faster and more exotic. To me it was like shooting in the rain forest -- and discovering big bugs and creepy crawlies you never knew existed.

FROM CLOWNHOUSE TO CAT HOUSE

To say we had many, many adventures making the first Jeepers film would be putting it mildly. I still remember finding the perfect house for Eileen Brennen's cat lady. And that house was an adventure all it's own.

There was a very kind and sweet old cat lady actually living in it. And she had her share of cats believe me. Some of them, while still adorable and cute, clearly looked like they had been inbreeding a generation or two.

The cats that appear in the film in the Cat Lady sequence by the way, are not the cats that lived at the house. Eileen's cats were trained and brought there on the day of shooting …

The house itself was old and unkept -- and since in the original version of the script, much much more took place inside the actual house -- we had plans to refurnish and dress several of the rooms.

I remember walking into the living room and seeing that the owners had the couch pushed tight against the fireplace. It was musky and smelly as you might guess, but when I said, "what if the couch were out in the middle of the room?"

Steven Legler and another of the scouting party each grabbed an end of the couch and started to pull it away from the fireplace, when the owner shouted "Don't move that!"

We understood why -- something behind the couch, and inside the fireplace ruffled and scuttled in a way that was truly creepy as she explained, "That couch is keeping the bats from coming in down the chimney…"

A CHILLING INSIDE THE CAT LADY'S HOUSE

Since I've opened that can of worms (or shall we say bag of cats) let me share with you die hard Jeepers fans, the original plan for the kids' stop over at the Cat Lady house. It was meant to be one of the creepiest and most surreal chapters in Trish and Darry's cross country nightmare and the first leg of the second act finale.

(One of the great joys of my directing career thus far: watching Eileen Brennen work her magic as an actress. She made me laugh so hard in between takes -- with her uncanny sense of comic timing, she ended up being a pleasure on and off camera)

When budget nightmares from production mis-management suddenly demanded we cut about a million dollars out of our shooting budget, the Cat Lady sequence was immediately trimmed by pages and all the interior scenes were scrapped.

The outdoor scenes, the ones you see in the film are really the condensed beats of a setpiece that was much longer and more frightening than what made it onto the screen.

(Shooting a moment inside the kids' car at night)

The race from the Cat Lady's house flowed into a scary nighttime chase down the country road and up to a railroad crossing, where the Creeper truck forces Trisha and Darry across the tracks and being hit (or nicked actually) by the moving train, sending their car spinning, as the Creeper vaults over the moving train -- a larger version of the car hopping he does at the Cat Lady's house in the final version of the film.

This sequence was the second of three scenes with moving trains that had to be cut out of the final shooting draft of the script -- the third scene was the finale where Darry driving the Creeper's truck sacrifices himself by driving into a moving train to destroy the Creeper -- and himself in the process.

I have bitched and moaned about not having a third act in the first Jeepers so much, that I don't want to do it again, here. If you follow this blog or listened to any of the talk about the original Jeepers script, you know that story already.

(Don Fauntleroy lines up a shot of the Creeper about to reveal himself to the kids -- shortly after a severed head hits the hood of Trisha's car)

CAT LADY SEQUENCE VS THE TRAIN SEQUENCE

Sitting in my hotel room at the Hilton in Ocala Florida and trying to figure out how to lose about ten to fifteen pages of script was a particularly stressful and nasty thing to have to do, to what I knew was a very strong and wonderful horror screenplay.

But when the budget came up short by around a million -- and the bond company was called in to oversee the picture, before we had even had a day's shooting, a company that was there basically to make sure the script we were shooting was the script I could afford to shoot -- added to the duress.

How does a film about to shoot suddenly realize it doesn't have enough money to shoot the film? It should never. The budget was either mismanaged or f***ed up by men who were supposed to be letting me know how much we had so I could decide on how much we could do.

Why this didn't happen I am still unclear. But it never happened again, nor have I ever depended on any one single person to look at the budget, my schedule and my storyboards and decide if we can stay on schedule.

I learn something on every film -- in fact, I learn many things on every film, and on Jeepers Creepers I learned that not everyone knows what they pretend to know and they can be a serious liability regardless of what wonderful human beings they might be personally.

Now I only put people in those positions of money and power on my films who I know I can trust to tell me how much of a movie we can afford to make.

(Don Fauntleroy my director of photography on JEEPERS and JC2)

After thinking I had made the right cuts and changes to accommodate our new and unexpected financial crisis, it was my DP, Don Fauntleroy who told me, I think after the picture was finished, that I should have cut the Cat Lady sequence and kept in the third act and the train finale.

Back when I first heard this, I rejected the idea completely. Now I think Donnie may have been right.

Who will ever know?

WHAT IS THE CREEPER?

I guess that's the question I get asked most of all. And the answer in my head is never one I would share with fans or critics or anyone. It's not that I don't know what the Creeper really is, it's that I don't think my idea of the creature's origin or identity, is any more powerful or clever than an idea you might have yourself.
I add to my creature's mythology in the third film, and fill in some more history, but I don't see the pay off, for you or for me, that is better or more powerful -- or more creepy, than having it all be a mystery.

The idea of making a monster movie, and a monster movie in the year 2000, I thought needed to be a careful mix of everything that had worked for me over the years in my long and early starting love affair with movie monsters.

I also knew what paths I wouldn't go down with my creature: I wouldn't have him wisecrack to the camera like the modern day movie monsters we were being given. These were creatures, monsters and killers that I felt played more like jokes or just cheap plot devices that weren't well thought out.

(Brian Penikas and the Make-Up and Monsters family that transformed young Jonathan Breck into our flying demon each shooting day)

I wasn't interested in making a monster movie that made fun of monster movies, and I wasn't interested in making a monster movie that apologized for being a horror film. I wanted to make the kind of monster movie that worked hard to create a very real world that feels true and familiar -- and populate it with real characters.

Not just items on the menu, or hot boys and girls that are their to shake their asses and make a bunch of wisecracks before becoming special effects fodder.

So while I have made some fairly mysterious comments about the origins of the Creeper, I think fans secretly enjoy the frustrating but delicious mystery of the Creeper's true identity and enigmatic history.

THE INSERT CAR

I learned many very important lessons about filmmaking on Jeepers Creepers, and one was, never write a script where twenty pages take place in a moving car. There are only a few ways to shoot scenes in a moving car, and one of them is take a real car out onto a real street and put the car on what is called an insert car.

(Here is the kids' car on the insert car. As you can see, the car is actually on a platform where lights and cameras and camera operators can sit around the moving car (towed by a truck (also called the insert car) where the director and others sit in the back and watch the video assist screens)

The insert car separates the actors from the director, because the director is in a truck that is actually towing the car the actors are in. Communication is minimal because the director wears headphones and tries to hear the dialog on a wireless system that is usually more static than anything else.

Since traveling car scenes (call them insert car scenes) are mostly dialog, hearing the actors is pretty damned important when you're shooting. It's just the worse possible scenario for creating scenarios.

In the original Jeepers Creepers, we spent days, probably weeks on the insert car, both for night and day scenes. It ain't fun, friends. Some of the toughest filmmaking I've ever tried.

OTHER THINGS I LEARNED ON JEEPERS CREEPERS

(Gina Philips checks out the framing of a shot before cameras roll)

I learned that it's good to encourage actors to look and see the frames I am putting them in. It helps them modulate their energy, mannerisms and movement within the frame, and within the scene they are playing.

I also encourage my actors to come into the editing room when the film is being assembled, so they can see the process of picking the best parts of every take and putting them together to make the final scene.

I find if they see how every take doesn't need to be perfect, and that it is sometimes a matter of one part from this take and one line from this take -- it may take the edge and pressure off them the next time the camera is rolling.

When the pressure is off of an actor -- sometimes wonderful and miraculous things happen to that performance.

I also learned that making movies is sometimes some of the most difficult work a man can take on. Don't get me wrong: I know that moviemaking is a priveledge -- and for me a joy -- but it is not glamorous. And the biz, to quote actress Bette Davis, "ain't for sissies." You work, and sweat and fret your ass off making a movie. And don't let anyone tell you any different.

You are spending sometimes a hundred thousand dollars a day of someone else's money and making more crucial desicions in an hour's time than most people have to make in a month.

I'm sorry if I protest a bit here, but I guess years later I am still sensitive to the idea that my father never thought writing and directing movies was a real job, or a man's job.

Though ironically, I doubt he could have ever put up with the hours, the conditions and pressure and "the unrelenting 24/7 for months at a time with no breaks with not even a weekend off" schedule of getting motion pictures.

And in the case of JEEPERS CREPERS, try it in 90 degree weather day after day.

He'd of been drunk the first time someone told him he was behind schedule a day and was threatening to fire him. I have made seven feature films in the past fifteen years -- and not one of them, with the aid of drugs or alcohol.

So I already feel like I have proven myself more the man than he ever claimed to be.

Whew! Sorry about that -- not sure where that came from. Isn't it funny how the judgements of our parents, even when they are long gone, seem to still trouble us in the corners of our minds we thought sure we had cleaned out.

And people ask me why so many of my films are about troubled relationships between a father and son.

ONE OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT BEING A FILMMAKER

And that's that it never really gets boring. Sure it's a grind like most jobs because day after day you have to go to work. But since each film is different, each 'job' as a director brings something new to accomplish.

(What was supposed to be a football field of bodies - a Sistine Chapel's stretch of human bodies sewn together, turned out to be these few on our limited budget and rapidly injurious budget cuts that kept flying at us)

New problems to solve, new actors to deal with, new tricks to create ... the job is always different. And that may be one of it's saving graces. (That and a healthy paycheck if you rise to the position of a well-paid filmmaker) Nice work if you can get it, as they say.

(Shooting the Creeper crawling down the wall toward Jezelle)

If it looked real in the film -- it's because it was. None of this CGI bull**** for us (we couldn't afford it anyway) We had to devise a way for our Creeper to actually crawl down the wall!

(Shooting the pipe sequence. You can click on the picture and get a bigger version)

Most folks don't understand that to build a real Creeper lair underground at the end of a long corrugated pipe would be too costly -- so the pipe was erected in our JC warehouse, where we also built the jailhouse cell block, and the subterranean part of the House of Pain.

How much of a great puzzle that was to put together. I think eventually we had to have three separate pieces of pipe of varying lenghts to create the final illusion. Two were in the warehouse - the long one seen in the picture above.

And a shorter one for shooting Justin and the rats that allowed us to get our close-ups before his great slide. The third pipe was also a shorter piece and was on the actual church location -- built to look like it descended far down into the earth, and anchored to the ground so Justin could crawl into it and Gina could try and stop him.

It occurs to me just now, that Justin did his own "stunt" slide down the long pipe. The full scale size pipe built in the warehouse. I remember it was the last thing we shot in the entire picture.

Less than an hour after Justin slid down the pipe -- we were suddenly drinking champagne, giving out gifts and then I was back on a plane for my home in Southern California -- and a climate where I could breathe. I didn't even stay for the wrap party -- something I would almost never miss.

But the climate and the stress of the shoot had really taken its toll on my four hundred pound body. I needed to get home and only heard about the wild shenanigans of the JEEPERS CREEPERS wrap party -- from those who had survived it and returned to Los Angeles to tell me about it.

Well, it looks like I have gone on about nothing for long enough here. Thanks for all the feedback and questions. Thanks for following the blog. You can contact me through the address supplied in my profile if the spirit moves you.

That's me just about all blogged out. Lots to tell you about projects that are still nearing prep, but maybe next time.

JC3 still circling its funding, ROSEWOOD LANE looking for cast so it can go roll cameras, and the always developing projects like ALCATRAZ, THE WHITE, THE WATCH and DARK DELCACIES (both as a movie and as series hopefully)

If there were more to report on any of these projects I would. But money is scarce in the movie economy and I just have to be patient and see what happens.... hoping as most filmmakers do, that the money muse will smile on them and they can go tell another story.

For now, memories of JEEPERS CREEPERS as its ten year anniversary approaches -- maybe with the third and final film of the trilogy in sight.

Here's my deepest wishes of appreciation to the many people who went on this adventure with me, both in Florida and Los Angeles -- and to the many more who watched it in theaters and on Sci-Fi Channel and IFC (where it airs unedited thank God) and on DVD.

Onward and upward everyone,

best,

Victor