"Let’s lean into the fact that we have no money and do it up!"
City Wide Fever director Josh Heaps on taking the DIY ethos of mumblecore and using it to making his delirious, wonderfully entertaining, shot-on-video giallo film.
On October 16 at 8pm, Bleeding Edge presents the Canadian premiere of Josh Heaps’ City Wide Fever at Market Video. Message us on Instagram for instructions on how to get to the venue.
Shot with a tiny budget on digital video, Josh Heaps’ City Wide Fever is a loving homage to the deliriously irrational pleasures of giallo films. Heaps’ first foray into filmmaking demonstrates an impressive grasp on the genre. Not only does it capture the dreamy, off-kilter tone of giallo, but keeps the audience entertained with killer shot-on-video visuals and an endearing sense of humour.
Heaps’ debut feature follows a young film student in New York City as she tracks down the whereabouts of a forgotten Italian horror director, embedding herself in an unsolved mystery surrounding his disappearance.
Having just premiered at the Downtown Film Festival in New York on Oct 13, Bleeding Edge is proud to host the Canadian premiere at Market Video. We had a chance to chat with Heaps about his film, shooting it on a shoestring budget, and using the same camera that David Lynch used to make Inland Empire.
Bleeding Edge: What is the origin of this movie? Why did you want to make it in the style of giallo movies?
Josh Heaps: I was getting my PhD in film studies for many years in North Carolina, and then I dropped out. I was introduced to this company that was doing PR distribution in New York City, and academia wasn’t doing it for me, so I moved back to New York, where I’m primarily from. I was starting this job and I was meeting a bunch of people, and then there was this Dario Argento retrospective at the Lincoln Center. I was going to a bunch of them, I’d always loved giallo and Italian cinema, and I was buddies with Mike Bilandic already, and his movie Hellaware was really inspiring to me. I was like, what if I took that low-budget ethos and tried to do an art Euro sleaze movie? Instead of doing the mumblecore route that so many low-budget films go for, why not try to do something bigger?
So I saw these Argento movies, and I got really stoned after, and I came up with this plot of a girl looking for this director who she finds in a USB in an alleyway off of Canal Street in New York, whatever. Weirdly, the next morning, I saw this print of Dog Day Afternoon. I was walking through Brooklyn, and this old woman was giving away these books on her stoop, and I was looking, and she had this book that was The Films of Pupi Avati. He’s this obscure Italian filmmaker who made this film called The House with Laughing Windows, this really weird giallo movie that’s only getting rediscovered now. For some reason, I took that as a sign that I had to make this movie. What are the odds that I would see this woman?
I’ve never filmed anything before, but my friend Ethan is a very talented cinematographer. I wrote a half-page treatment, and we just started shooting. There was never a script for the movie, really. I think you can tell that when you watch it. The lead actor left the movie halfway through, which is why we have two different actresses in the film. Then I met Dilly [Diletta Guglielmi], who’s the blonde Italian girl, and she is Italian, and I was like, oh, that’s kind of funny. Anyway, the movie took a year and a half to make, two years, and a lot of crazy shooting on weekends, and doing this and that. Then we finally got it done in January, we finished all the sound mixing and shit, and then it got rejected from every festival, and now I’m here!
BE: What kind of camera were you shooting it on? Because it’s got a very shot-on-video look to it.
JH: Yeah, yeah, we shot it on the same camera that Mike Bilandic shot Happy Life on, that David Lynch shot Inland Empire on, the Sony DSR-PD150. I don’t regret using it, but I don’t think I’ll use it again, because for my friends who aren’t into really obscure shot-on-video stuff, who aren’t in production, they see it and they assume, oh, this is the best he could do, which is something that I’ve had to cope with. I’m fine with it, but Ethan owns a Sony Venice, he owns Red cameras. We had the option to shoot in 6K or whatever, but I really wanted this grungy look and I didn’t want to go film, I couldn’t afford that. So how else to make this stand out?
And then we decided to use this Sony camera, and Ethan was so good about it. I think he brought things out that I’ve never seen someone bring out in that sort of camera before. It was literally me and Ethan who did the movie. We didn’t have a crew. We had different sound guys every time and Ethan lit everything. The fact that we used such a shitty camera, it’s pretty impressive what we did in terms of the colors and stuff like that. I bought it for $150 online. So, I’m glad I used it. It definitely makes it look distinct.
BE: There’s an out-of-the-box digital look that basically every short film you see, if you go to a film festival, they all kind of look like that, so it’s nice to get a different texture.
JH: Dude, one hundred percent. The way I sold it to Ethan, was saying that there is a general sheen that low-budget movies have, where you can tell they’re trying to look pro, but in doing so, they’re relegated back to this. I was like, I want to avoid that entirely. I don’t want to look like a cheap digital trying to emulate 16mm grain or whatever thing. Let’s fucking lean into the fact that we have no money and do it up!
BE: Did you want to say anything else about having two actors play the main character, and what were some of the difficulties around that?
JH: I thought of several films, like Persona, obviously, but the one that I was really thinking of was The Obscure Object of Desire, which is a wonderful film in which the actress is switching throughout. But yeah, I found Dilly, she’s fantastic. She’s the exact opposite of Nancy [Kimball], the other actress. I think Nancy played really sullen and Dilly, just because of the person she is, is very bubbly and happy all the time, so there is this nice counterpoint, and it is funny to me that she’s Italian, and that there’s a scene where her mom is a New York Italian, an Italian-American.
And by the way, the mom, if you didn’t know, is Carolyn Farina, who, the star of Metropolitan. Honestly, I think the movie’s better because of it. Not because Dilly’s better than Nancy, but because it brings it to that dreamy, otherworldly, bonkers thing. Certainly, though, we did have to do a lot of things like, she’s gonna open her eyes here, and then that’s gonna transform it from this character to this… you know what I mean?
BE: You said it took a year and a half to shoot, so can you talk about planning or trying to shoot over this long of a period?
JH: Yeah, I had a full-time job and Ethan is a cameraman. He works a lot of union jobs, so he’s busy, and then, having to figure out locations, I did all of that stuff. So we had to figure out, first of all, what the next thing we were shooting was gonna be about, because the plot, like I said, was very loose. So, okay, we want to do this scene where they meet Rutania Alda, this old Hollywood actor. How are we gonna do that? So, Ethan and I would spend the weekends driving around upstate New York. Okay, now we have to find an Airbnb that I can rent that’ll look like a place that can be within our budget range. It took a long time because this was a two-person operation. It was literally me and Ethan, and then we brought on a producer around halfway who was very helpful, Chenzy [Vincent ‘Chenzy’ Graziano].
Doing it all ourselves was really difficult, but I’m glad it took that long. It was something to look forward to. A lot of sleepless nights, me getting excited for what we were gonna do, long fucking shoot days. Sometimes Ethan and I would get very angry at each other, but we had a really good time. For the first time in my life this past summer, I actually was on a set for a movie that was straight through. It was a 15-day shoot, as they normally are, but I preferred my method, because I really got to plan in a better way. I never want to shoot like that again, but it was a real learning process.
BE: You mentioned that you had never shot anything before, so I’m wondering why you wanted to jump straight into making a full feature.
JH: No offense to people who make shorts, but I’ve worked in distribution, I’ve worked in PR, I’ve worked for film festivals, I worked for Telluride for a while, I’ve been someone at festivals who watches submissions and stuff like that. Shorts are a road to nowhere, you know? Of course, if you have a passion for short filmmaking, and it’s a wonderful art form, I think you should go for it. And by the way, since wrapping City Wide Fever, I’ve made several shorts for fun while I’m trying to raise money for a feature. I was talking to Mike Bilandic about this once, and he was like, dude, if you’re gonna make a short for $10,000 or whatever, find $20,000 and make a fucking feature. It’s gonna be cooler. And he’s totally right. I think people should make more features. Seventy minute features, by the way, that’s the sweet spot. At the Downtown Film Festival, where City Wide Fever is playing, I think all the features playing are in the 75 to 90 minute range, which is really cool. I like that length of movie.
BE: I think it was actually Eugene Kotlyarenko and Mike Bilandic on Eugene’s podcast, who were saying that when you’re making a film, it’s like you’re putting together a business, and if you’re gonna put all that work into it, whether it’s a short or a feature, a lot of it’s the same amount of work. So you might as well do a little bit extra and make the feature.
JH: For that talk between Eugene and Mike, Mike was in my house in North Carolina. I got money from the school to fly Mike down to do a retrospective and the tagline was “Real New York Director Mike Bilandic!”
BE: Can you tell me how the Guy Maddin connection happened?
JH: Yeah, I worked for a PR company last year, and I worked on Rumours at Cannes, at TIFF, and at the New York Film Festival, so I got to be friends with Guy and Evan and Galen [Johnson]. So last year, during a press junket in New York, which is Guy, Evan, and Galen, the directors sit in a room and you shuffle in journalists to ask the same fucking questions, and we were talking about City Wide Fever, which I hadn’t finished yet, and they were like, Oh, cool! That’s independent filmmaking! That’s fucking awesome! And I was like, Guy, you should fucking just give me your name to hop on the movie! And he was like, I would! So I fucking went on ChatGPT, asked it to make me an executive producer form, I went to the hotel front desk, they printed it out for me. Three minutes later, I was like, Guy, I have it, and he was like, really? And then they were like, Guy, you gotta sign it now, and then he fucking signed it, and I was like, sweet!
He’s the nicest guy, a true lover of indie cinema, so cool and so sweet. Too kind. Sometimes I feel like I took advantage of him, but he’s the homie, I love him, and he’s been really supportive and helpful still. I do think having his name on has opened doors, and it was so easy for him to do. I really owe him a lot.
BE: You also have Mike Belandic, obviously, but Larry Fessenden also shows up in the movie, so I’m wondering with the whole New York indie filmmaking scene, what’s your relationship to the other stuff going on there.
JH: Yeah, Mike’s the homie. I’m buddies with Mike and that whole clique. I really love those people, and they’re doing cool stuff. Mike is doing the Q&A for this movie with me at The Roxy for the world premiere. And Larry… how did I meet Larry? Well, I’m buddies with Doug Buck, who played the other sex shop owner with Larry. He lives in Montreal, even though he’s American. He did the Family Portrait trilogy, but he did a movie called Sisters, a remake of Brian De Palma’s movie with Chloe Sevigny in 2006. Last year, because Doug had a print of it, I hooked Doug up with the Roxy, and they played Sisters, and Mike was there. I did the Q&A with Doug, and it was really cool. So Doug and Larry are buddies. So he connected me with Larry, and Larry did it. It took two hours.
There’s some other notable people, like Ian Fidance, a pretty well-known comedian, he’s in it. That took half a day. Stan Oh, who runs Posteritati here in the city. He’s the guy who dies. Onur Tukel, I feel like he’s a New York guy. He plays the professor.
And then some cool bands we got… I’m really into hardcore, so there’s this band Criminal Instinct, this band Angel Dust, and we got some cool tracks. And for the score, there’s this great company called Four Flies Records in Italy, who have this huge, massive back catalog of 60s and 70s Italian crime movies and horror and shit, and I became friendly with them via email, and they gave me a really great deal on buying tracks from them. So, that’s why so much of the score in City Wide Fever is interesting, because it’s old 60s and 70s songs that I’m repurposing.
BE: One last question, you have a lot of interesting costumes… like the visually striking ski mask thing and all that stuff, so I’m wondering where that stuff came from.
JH: They came from sex shops! I used to live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, and the last real sex shops in New York where we shot in are on 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. It’s this really grungy place with jerk off booths in the back and owned by dudes who clearly don’t care about the things they sell
So I spent a rainy afternoon going to all of those, and then I went to Manhattan, and I went to all the bougier ones that are the kink-positive ones, or whatever, and I spent way too much. It’s at my parents’ house, but I have so many masks right now that weren’t used in the movie, and so much weird kink stuff. I spent way too much money on these fucking weird sex masks, and I would bring them to work. There are so many photos of me at my old distribution PR film job, sitting in a corner on my computer wearing the masks, freaking people out.