Unbalancing and Horrifying Transmissions

One of the more creative & original horror films I’ve seen/ reviewed recently is Transmission, a 2023 film which, a few months ago, received a DVD release on Jinga Films. It’s focused on a lost/ cursed movie & a missing horror director.  The picture is structured/ presented in a rather creative manner- as if someone is channel hopping late one night- blending true crime mockumentary, news reports, several films with the film, parody adverts, etc. I caught up with the film's writer/ director, Michael Hurst, for an email interview

M[m]: Do you recall any films or TV shows that stuck in your mind from childhood? And did any of these inspire you to want to make your own films?

Michael: I distinctly remember seeing Jaws with my Mum and brother when it first came on British TV - my younger brother Andy was traumatised and my Mum had to keep repeating the famous line: "It's only a movie"! That really impressed me, the way a film could affect an audience like that. By the time we were 10 or so, we were making little films on VHS with our friends, often just remaking the last good movie we'd seen. I think we "remade" The Terminator about 5 times! 

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M[m]: Please talk about how & when you first started being involved with film production, and how your career progressed from this point?

Michael: Instead of going to college like we probably should have, my brother and I, along with our best friend Robin Hill, decided we'd make our first "proper" film, a self-financed sci-fi horror movie that ended up being called Project Assassin. It took 4 years and all the money we had at the time, but we ended up taking it to the Cannes Film Festival, sleeping on the beach as we gave out 200 VHS copies of our movie. 198 people never even responded, but one German producer did, and it turned out he worked with Roland Emmerich (and this was just as Independence Day was coming out). So they bought our tiny 20,000 dollar feature film for half a million dollars, transferred it to 35mm film and released it in Germany. This gave us our start in Hollywood. I was 24 years old.

 

M[m]: Do you still have any of the early VHS films you made?, If so, any thoughts of releasing them, as there’s a lot of interest in SOV these days.

Michael: I don't have any copies of our VHS efforts, nothing from before our first "feature" Project Assassin, and we probably couldn't release them anyway because most were literal but very, very unofficial remakes of Hollywood movies, often a rehash of the last good film we'd seen.

 

M[m]: The first feature-length film you directed was 1999's New Blood, which featured John Hurt- what was it like working with this legend?

Michael: Using the "heat" we had from Project Assassin, my brother Andy managed to get financing for his first "real" movie, a 6-million-dollar crime caper called You're Dead, and it starred John Hurt. I did second unit work on the movie, over in Germany and became friendly with John Hurt as he was acting for my brother. When I had my own script, I gave it to John, and he agreed to star in it so I managed to raise 2.6 million for my debut movie. We ended up also casting Carrie Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano from The Matrix as well as Shawn Wayans and the star of the recent British smash hit Lock, Stock, a brilliant young actor called Nick Moran. John Hurt was fantastic to work with, a true legend, very friendly and able to elevate my clumsy dialogue with his talent!

 

M[m]: A good chunk of the six features you’ve made thus far feature elements of either sci-fi or horror- what is it about these genres that appeals to you?

Michael: I have made quite a few films in the sci-fi and horror genres, I think I've directed 6 of them and written about 18! I think sci-fi and horror blend together very well, and think Alien, Aliens and Terminator are among my favourite films of all time. Sometimes, though, to be honest, you write and direct what you get paid to write and direct!

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M[m]:  Your last/ most recent film is Transmission, which regards a cursed film/ lost director- please talk a little bit about how this project came about?

Michael: Transmission was my attempt to do something radically different. Apart from a couple of low-budget shorts made just for fun, I hadn't self-financed anything in a long, long time, and so all the films I made in the meantime, as much as I loved doing it, were always somewhat compromised by the fact that I had to make sure I made the investors' and production companies' money back! I worked for some great producers like Lionsgate and the Syfy Channel, HBO, the CW, etc, but there are always rules, as there should be. I knew nobody would ever be crazy enough to give me an actual multi-million dollar budget for a channel-surfing TV "screenlife" horror flick, so I financed it all myself, mainly using the money I'd made from writing a script for the absolutely legendary Roger Corman!

 

M[m]: Transmission has a rather creative/ original channel hopping late one night structure- blending true crime mockumentary, news reports, several films within the film,  & parody adverts. What came first, the idea of the director/ film, or the way of structuring the whole thing?

Michael: Honestly, in the case of Transmission the "form" came first, the idea of doing a channel-hopping narrative came long before the actual story - in fact I'd written 2 entirely different stories for it first, one was a take-off on Larry Cohen's The Stuff and the other was a take-off on the old radio broadcast version of War of the Worlds (which I actually, somehow, managed to option to Fox and worked on it there for a year before they decided it was too weird!). So I scaled back the scope of the idea and made it about a haunted, evil film by a strange director - and then I had the bones of what became Transmission.

 

M[m]: The film features two great/ key performances-Felissa Rose as a TV reporter live at the scene, and Vernon Wells as ruff and ragged-faced horror director Frank Tadross Roth. Please talk a little about how these two came to the project?

Michael: I used to teach at a film school here in LA and met a few enthusiastic film students during my time there. The best, and most horror-obsessed by far, was a guy called Pat Kusnadi, so I asked him to help me produce the movie. I paid for everything but Pat and his partner Robbie Dias were responsible for finding the cast, as they know EVERYBODY in the LA horror film community. They put me in touch with Vernon Wells and Felissa Rose (and Sadie Katz and Dave Sheridan), and I was thrilled they agreed to be in my weird experiment of a movie

 

M[m]: The film within the film element clearly nods towards the work of John Carpenter- what do you see as your favourite film from the director, with a brief explanation of why?

Michael: There are definite and deliberate nods to John Carpenter throughout. I'm a huge fan. I, of course, love The Thing and Halloween, but I took more inspiration in this case from Halloween 3 and In The Mouth of Madness, both of which I think are brilliant and underrated. 

 

M[m]: To date, you have eleven directorial credits to your name. what do you see as some of your best work?

Michael: Honestly, everything I've directed is something I'm reasonably proud of, but I'm clear-eyed enough to see the flaws in all the movies and TV shows too. I think my script for Paradox (a time travel movie that starred Zoe Bell) was really pretty damn clever and I think one of the episodes I did for the show Femme Fatales (The White Flower) came out pretty well, especially when I did a "directors cut" for the DVD and turned it black and white! I once wrote a script that became the film Re-Kill and that was a GREAT script, honestly, but the final film didn't come out as I'd hoped (and was the single worst experience of my otherwise blessed life!).

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M[m]:  You mention you're now based in LA. When did you make the move out to the States? As I believe you're originally from the West Sussex coastal town of Shoreham. And do you miss the UK?

Michael: I do miss the UK sometimes, obviously, especially as America slides into chaos and fascism! But I came over here in 2005 or so, just to do one movie (House of the Dead 2) but I met my soon-to-be wife on the set of that movie (in fact we first really bonded as we worked through a lunch break scrubbing fake blood off a tiled wall!) and we ended up married with a (great) son so I guess I became an honorary yank at that point.

 

M[m]: What are you presently working on?

Michael:  I am presently working on trying to make my first-ever graphic novel, a horror story set in Hollywood, 1949. I have taught myself, well, I am teaching myself, Photoshop and am currently writing the script for it. This is another passion project, like Transmission, so I don't know if I'll ever get paid for doing it, but that's okay. I also have an action thriller script set up at Millennium that they are trying to get cast for.

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M[m]: What has impacted you in the last six months or so- be it film, music, books, or art?

 Michael: Lately, I have been reading a lot of graphic novels and really digging the work of Ed Brubaker. I saw Weapons and really liked it, and I finally caught up with the movie Last Stop In Yuma County, and I was really impressed.

Thanks to Michael for his time and effort with the interview. Transmission has seen a recent DVD release on Jinga Films.

Pic credits- on-set selfie, cover artwork for the DVD release, spacecraft, Felissa Rose as Sienna Moran, Vernon Wells as Frank Roth.