I have a really good interview with WILLOW CREEK director Bobcat Goldwait. Nothing really about Alexie except for the mention she’s in the film. Enjoy.

How to Scare People

Willow Creek: Bobcat Goldthwait Has a Bigfoot for You

BIGFOOT ARE GIANT APE-MEN who live at the fringes of our so-called civilization, and when one eats you, no one will believe it. So learn Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) and Jim (Bryce Johnson) in Willow Creek when they visit the notorious “Patterson-Gimlin site,” where, in 1967, two men claimed to have filmed Bigfoot.

Willow Creek is a mostly improvised found-footage horror movie that was shot on location—combined with the talents of Gilmore and Johnson and director Bobcat Goldthwait, that sparseness lends the film a surprising level of intensity. Goldthwait’s mostly known for comedies, but his past directorial work (like World’s Greatest Dad and God Bless America, along with episodes of Chappelle’s Show and Maron) boasts a keen eye for discomfort. He uses it to excellent effect in Willow Creek.

MERCURY: How did the project get started?
BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: Well, I knew I wanted to do a Bigfoot movie, and then when I actually went to Willow Creek, I changed my ideas. Originally I was going to do a comedy, but then it just seemed to lend itself to doing a suspense movie.

I didn’t want to do a movie that was making fun of people who believed in Bigfoot. I consider myself a weirdo and an outcast, so I’m not about to pick on other people who are perceived that way. The goal was to try to make these people believable and characters you empathize with before terrible things happen to them. I think a lot of [horror directors] almost seem to resent the characters, and I wanted you to care about them.

How remote were the locations? Were you out in the middle of nowhere?
Oh my god, we actually went to the Patterson-Gimlin site, so we were. The town [Willow Creek] is 11 hours from LA, and then when you get to Bluff Creek, it’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive down a 17-mile dirt road. So there’s nothing around. We saw mountain lions when we were filming. There was no craft service or hotel or anything like that.

I thought, “Why are we filming this out in the middle of the woods? We should just do this in a hotel parking lot.” But I knew that in order to get the audio right that we’d have to do it out [there]. A lot of the sounds you hear in the movie were recorded live. Subconsciously, you’re not even aware of it, but the absence of planes or faintly heard traffic really added to the suspense.

There were only about 70 edits in the whole movie. There’s always someone turning the camera on or turning it off. I always have a problem with edited found-footage movies, because who “found” this? Just a creep who said “Hey, that’s sad your family died, but if we re-edit it there’s a tremendous picture here.”

Coming from a comedy background, what did you learn shooting a horror film?
That making people laugh and scaring them are really similar. There’s the misdirect, you know? You laugh at something because it’s not happening the way you’d perceive it would happen. Your mind tries to jump ahead. Turns out scaring people is the same thing. You set ’em up and then you make a twist.

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A really good review on Alexie’s film WILLOW CREEK. Read on.

Willow Creek Well-honed horror from former stand-up Bobcat Goldthwait

Source: The List
Date: 29 April 2014
Written by: Matt Glasby

They say there are no second acts in American life – then there’s Bobcat Goldthwait. A stand-up comic most famous for playing helium-voiced punk Zed in Police Academy 2 (1985), Goldthwait has since been busy making sly, often filthy, indie films such as World’s Greatest Dad (2009) and God Bless America (2011). And for his next trick? A found-footage horror about Bigfoot, of course.

Willow Creek is also a film of two acts, the first sunny and (seemingly) loose, the second precision-tooled for maximum creepiness. Holidaying couple Jim (Bryce Johnson) and Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) are on a sasquatch hunt around Bluff Creek, California (where the famous 1967 Bigfoot footage was shot), capturing their findings on camera.

To begin with their trip follows the format established by The Blair Witch Project (1999). Encountering eccentric locals (often non-actors) aplenty, they – and we – mock their small-town superstitions, while ignoring repeated warnings not to venture into the woods. ‘It’s not a joke,’ says an angry local. ‘You shouldn’t go there.’ But go they do and, well, you know the rest.

Except you don’t. Unlike most found-footage characters, Kelly and Jim are a charming, convincing couple. They’ve also brought a tripod, so their film is surprisingly easy on the eye. Goldthwait has some tricks up his sleeve, too, not least an astonishing 19-minute static shot of the couple in their tent, becoming increasingly terrified, as something stomps around outside.

It’s at this point you realise that nothing here is accidental. Though it feels improvised, this is a well-honed work, with details laughed off in the daylight becoming spookily significant once darkness falls. Funny, scary and over in less than 80 minutes, Willow Creek is so much better than it needs to be; it might be the start of a second act for the genre itself.

Limited release from Fri 2 May.

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Bobcat Goldthwait is showing WILLOW CREEK at the Syracuse Film Festival. The film stars Alexie as part of a couple who go into the infamous woods to try to find proof of the bipedal creature. The article to fallow.

Bobcat Goldthwait shows ‘Willow’ Creek’ at Syracuse film festival

Writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait’s movie “Willow Creek” is screened during the Syracuse International Film Festival on Saturday, October 5, 2013, at the Palace Theater. Appearing on screen are actors Alexie Gilmore and Bryce Johnson.

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A really good and positive review of Alexie’s film WILLOW CREEK. I like those. Enjoy.

FEARnet Movie Review: ‘Willow Creek’

After films like Shakes the Clown (1991), Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006), World’s Greatest Dad (2009), and God Bless America (2011), you surely know what to expect from writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait by now, right? Loud, colorful, perhaps even garish social commentary and raunchy farce from a stand-up comic turned actor turned surprisingly good filmmaker. Wrong!

The man’s latest film is a refreshingly matter-of-fact horror/thriller called Willow Creek, and to my eyes, it’s the best sort of “homage” you can do. Based solely on Willow Creek it seems plainly evident that Goldthwait is a fan of A) “found footage” horror films in general, and B) The Blair Witch Project in particular, and so he packed up a few (very good) actors, a handful of cameras, and hit the road to make a low-key scary movie that works for all the reasons I just mentioned.

Right off the bat I’ll “warn” you that the 78-minute Willow Creek is what’s widely referred to as a slow burn. As in, the first two-thirds of the movie are spent setting up the (simple) plot, the (cool) setting, and the (refreshingly cool) lead characters. Jim (Bryce Johnson) is an amateur filmmaker who wants nothing more than to document a trip deep into “Bigfoot” territory, and Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) is his sweet, smart girlfriend who comes along to help out.

That’s it. Two people, one camera, one goal: dig up some dirt on Bigfoot!

At its best moments, Willow Creek feels like someone (probably Goldthwait) was watching Blair Witch and thought, “Hey, that’s cool, but what if we tried a new angle, or went in a different direction, or what if we (I dunno) made the characters likable?” (I’m just kidding around. I love The Blair Witch Project, and the fact that it still inspires good filmmakers is a testament to its overt coolness.) Johnson and Gilmore bring an effortless chemistry to the film, which (it must be said) elevates Willow Creek beyond so many of its “found footage” ilk. For a horror flick in which, frankly, not a whole lot happens for 45 minutes, the actors do make it interesting enough.

The patient horror fans will certainly enjoy what the third act of Willow Creek has to offer, and soon there will be a lot of geeky discussions over the film’s one “super-long” (almost 20 minute!) take, but speaking as a guy who sees a lot of movies in which two people point a camera at dark shadows, I say Willow Creek is a calm, cool. creepy little winner. It coasts on the skills of the lead actors, and then it transforms into a powerful cauldron of legitimate suspense. Lots of indie horror flicks can steal a scare or shock you with some gore, but Willow Creek sustains actual suspense for an admirable amount of time. Straightforward, simple, scary. I like it.

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