Andrew van den Houten: Age is always a label that holds people back. I strongly believe that if one gripes about their age, it doesn’t matter how young or old they are, they ultimately can find a problem with it. I think I’m about a million years old sometimes when I wake up. Other days I feel like I’m seeing daylight for the first time with my eyes squinting in painful disbelief.

I remember being a kid growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan always seeing these films being shot in my building or on my block. I always found a way to sneak over to the craft services table and finagle a bagel, candy and a pop. I loved growing up in New York City. It’s in my bones, blood, and skin. Everyday you feel the glow and kinetic flow and nothing can stop you if you have your mind set to it. Access is everything New York City is about.

That’s what motivated me the most in New York growing up, getting to be near the cutting edge of tomorrow’s ideas and creative process. My first fore into the industry was not by choice. In fact, I chose NOT to be in this business after being dragged around from audition to audition as a kid. I didn’t want to work at that age and disliked the pressure. I remember my agent asking me at eleven if I wanted to continue and I said “NO.”

So the reality was that I got into the business on my terms, when I was ready to. It happened after I was kicked out of a really overly conservative prep-school in Kent, Connecticut. So as you can imagine, I had enough fodder when I returned to the big city to crack some big jokes. Having a couple of divorces in the family and a wacky older sister helped too. I ran across the street and starting doing stand-up comedy.

Stand-up led to a feature film and commercial work as an actor. One of the most interesting gigs I booked as an actor was being directed by Doug Liman for a “Mellow Yellow” spot. I had no idea that they still had that drink and then I got booked to be in the commercial and Doug Liman (director of Swingers and Bourne Identity) was directing me. I was actually inspired by his free-flowing style in directing. At one point he was so unpleased with the framing of one of the shots, he took the camera away from the camera operator, threw it up on his shoulder, and shot it himself. One other highlight as an actor was being the “Token White Boy” in a United Negro College Fund commercial…So cool because Spike Lee was directing.

After running around the city working professionally for a year, began film school in Boston. It was during film school that I got my start directing and producing. I booked an indie feature called Alma Mater, as an actor, and then I was brought on as an Associate Producer. This film was great because I learned all the ins and outs of making a feature on a low budget. In film school, I started my company MODERNCINÉ as a Junior. I had to incorporate to work under the SAG contract I wanted to in order to make my thesis film.

The company really has grown since then! I’ve been lucky so far…it all seems to keep moving forward in a positive motion. During college working forty hours a week and going to school fulltime forced me to be focused when I was doing film activities. It was kill or be killed. It’s a crazy speculative business so you have to be aggressive and go for it full force. So that’s in short how I got started making films.

HYB: You are the president of ModernCine’ productions. Tell me what type of films you plan to produce.

AvdH: Filmmaking is an amazing art form because you are only as limited as the ideas you and those around you can come up with. Of course, budget is always a reality check, however. Keeping that in mind, we currently have been producing psychological horror films as well as films that deal with human horror. Thrillers are exciting and the horror genre is so amazing because the low-budget constraints actually help the filmmaking. You are forced to think outside of the box and many times have to come up with a different approach to a problem. This many times leads to an original, exciting nuance for the particular picture that leads to something many people will say, “That was soooo fucking awesome.” For example, we didn’t have enough money to green-screen Sean Young’s head, when we blow it away in HEADSPACE, so we were forced to use an older mold of her head from one of her earlier pictures. In my opinion, that effect is one of the coolest in HEADSPACE. I am heavily influenced by Cronenberg, Carpenter, and David Lynch. I think these filmmakers are all extremely artistic and incredibly talented in handling the story, while creating very atmospheric films.

In the future, William Miller and I really want to keep pushing the envelope. JACK KETCHUM’S THE GIRL NEXT DOOR does a fantastic job in doing that. In many ways that film is a dark drama and less a horror film, however, it has many horrific elements in the way the story is shot and revealed. I think it would be great to do a comedy one day, however, I don’t think we will ever stop making films that deal with the macabre. Dramas too are wonderful, however, it’s hard to find really excellent material. If I showed someone the hundreds of scripts we’ve passed on in the last several years due to the lack of quality in the material, you’d wonder if everyone and their mother were sending us their stories. It’s a hard job to find well-written, original material. Another genre that would be fun for us to delve into as well would be action and eventually a children’s movie too. As I see it, I want to do the material that is a little less conventional and a little more out there.

HYB: I saw that you made a few short films before going into production on your first feature film. Was this to build a demo reel or used as a promo tool to get funding to extend them to feature length?

AvdH: I never thought that I’d produce and direct so many short films before I started working in the feature film world. It kind of just happened. I really didn’t know how I was going to use my film school degree after I graduated. I was waiting tables for six years, right through the summer after I had graduated college. It was a mystic surprise when all of a sudden my thesis film that I had finished my senior year at Emerson led me to being hired to make by other directors and producers to make purely art films. For several years, I lived at home and made enough money to chip in on the utilities and some of the other household bills, while building my company’s reel with other peoples’ investments in my abilities. It was a very unique situation. Whereas, many of my contemporaries were working in low-level positions at studios in Los Angeles, I was at home with my mother making art films. It wasn’t the most glamorous thing for my dating life, however, I was creating a foundation that soon would lead to my freedom and chance to go at the world of feature filmmaking. Feature filmmaking became possible because anyone and everyone who knew someone with a little extra loot to throw to a young ambitious filmmaker, was introduced to me. The rest was my job. After meeting these potential investors, following up and getting the check to clear in our bank account was the hardest part of the job. We stopped HEADSPACE three times to raise more funds to complete that film. If it weren’t for HEADSPACE I would never have been able to get JACK KETCHUM’S THE GIRL NEXT DOOR OF THE GROUND.

HYB: Headspace (2005) strikes me as an ambitious venture for your first feature. How did you get the idea for this script?

AvdH: It was actually submitted to us via the internet. This young writer who was twenty two at the time, named Troy McCombs from West Virginia, emailed the script to William Miller. It was like winning the lottery for him and a really exciting chance at creating something original for us.

HYB: How did you get great genre actors such as Olivia Hussey (Black Christmas), Dee Wallace-Stone (The Hills Have Eyes), and Udo Kier (Flesh for Frankenstein)?

AvdH: The casting started by having William Atherton attach himself because he was good friends with one of the writers, Steve Klausner. Then I was in Los Angeles screening one of our short films SURVEILLANCES, directed by Jay Weisman and Udo Kier’s entertainment lawyer mentioned he wanted to talk to us. Soon after Udo was attached. From their Udo’s manager introduced us to Olivia Hussey. Dee-Wallace I cold called the agent and then they packaged Sean Young into our film. It was really all sequential to be honest. None of it was planned out either. It pays to go with the flow…especially in the case of HEADSPACE.

HYB: What was it like working with them? Any interesting stories?

AvdH: They were amazing to work with. None of them were a headache or problematic on set. If anything they were all trusting me and asking me what I wanted and how they could make my vision as true to how I saw the film in my head. A funny anecdote…well, there was a day when Udo Kier and his driver, Dan Abrams got side swiped in their Escalade, driving around Manhattan. I get the call that Udo was outside the vehicle chasing two dudes driving away in a black Nissan trying to get them to clean off the scratched Escalade. It was intense. I laughed pretty hard and when I was told what really happened, Udo was actually in the car the entire time telling Dan to chase after them. Nonetheless, Udo and I rehearsed a scene

Udo’s favorite thing about our experience working together was probably when he got to play the possessed preacher in the church. Everyone laughed so hard.

Another crazy story was when a dead body was found in the church where Udo’s character dies in our film. It happened only a month later too. It was pretty crazy. We were even blamed for having brought the evil into the church.

HYB: Ahaha, well these things happen. After completing your first feature film, What would you say is the most important thing you learned? What advice would you give novice directors?

AvdH: Get all the money for your film before you start shooting. There’s nothing more frightful than having to question whether you will complete your film or not.

I would also strongly suggest to NOT produce and direct the film if the two producers on the film are also the Director of Photography and the Director. Bring on a third producer or a co-producer! Too much management gets in the way of the creative flow.

My third piece of advice would be to get the best catering and craft services possible. We did a great job on that and our crews kept coming back just for the grub!

HYB: What made you sign on as producer for the adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s “Girl Next Door”?

AvdH: The book’s powerful commentary on child abuse was unnerving and so real I couldn’t pass on the chance of bringing it to the big screen. Jack Ketchum’s writing seeps its way into ones cranium. He finds the cerebral wavelength and sits there letting his words penetrate. I find his craft in telling stories to be so engaging I am anxious to read more of his work and do another film based on one of his novels in the near future.

HYB: Did you initially want to direct it or were you satisfied filling the producer role?

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AvdH: A movie that calls for a cast of children, nudity, and adult situations, including abuse-all set in the 1950’s; is not one where you go, “let me do it all”. As a director the hardest challenge for me was figuring out how I would bring this story through fruition without turning it into an exploitation film only. I knew that my skills as a producer would be better used to make this film, especially if I found a director who had a solid vision about the project. Only producing allowed me to keep a close eye on the quality and logistics of all aspect of production, while also working to help bring the most to our director’s vision. I knew with this film that I had to end up with a product that was true to the book and something that would not look cheap. To produce and direct this film would have been a huge mistake and everyone, including myself, would have suffered for it.

Gregory Wilson was a fine choice to helm this project and his vision as the director was so on par from the beginning that I was invigorated to work even harder on the project. He saw the film as three things: 1. An unfulfilled love story. 2. A coming of age story. And finally: 3. a social horror film.

When he pitched the three elements at play in the film as he saw them, I knew we had the right guy for the job. Not only did he get the most important parts from the novel but he understood the importance of David’s and Meg’s chemistry. Greg’s signature is on this film and will forever be a way for people to remember the atrocities of the 1965 case that it is based on. It’s pure, multi-dimensional, and unforgiving.

HYB: Speaking of director Gregory Wilson, but I could only find one previous director’s credit for him, which was Home Invaders (2001). But not only could I not find it anywhere to purchase, I couldn’t even locate a synopsis of the film.

AvdH: I am working with Greg to help get his film released this year. Unfortunately, he had several distributors who owned the film for several years and did nothing with it. Currently, my goal is to have it released before “Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door”. When I watched “Home Invaders” for the first time I was very impressed by Greg. To be honest his relationship with William Miller and that film is what got him into the pitch meeting to direct. He did the rest and I am so glad he stepped up to the plate. I cannot wait to do another film with Gregory.

HYB: How well does “The Girl Next Door” material from the book translate on screen?

AvdH: Inevitably you never adapt every scene for the screen; however, Daniel Farrands & Philip Nutman did a fine job extrapolating the most important scenes from the novel. In fact, they did such a great job that Jack Ketchum himself said I had to use their script before I had even read it. I knew at that moment I would be making the most original film based on the book. As a producer those are the moments you live for. It is rare a novelist can even bare the translation of their baby to come to another medium. I guarantee the Ketchum is still in our film. In fact it is now called “Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door” because he feels exactly that way.

HYB: How much does the film adaptation vary from the book? Are there noticeable differences in the story?

AvdH: I will let the audience watch the film and see how true it is to the novel. To go through a page by page account of accuracy to the book would be detrimental to any audience members’ first time experience of watching the film.

HYB: The movie required working with child actors. Due to the nature of the film, How difficult was it shooting with the children? Were there any stipulations made ahead of time by their parents and by the union?

AvdH: Indeed. All the agents and parents were told by Cindi Rush, our castingdirector, before the auditions that this was very controversial material. She made sure that everyone received the entire screenplay before they showed up to the auditions. After we had made our casting decisions, the parent and agents noted the questionable scenes and then had conference calls with the director and myself to work out the specific details as to how things were going to be shot. Gregory was amazing with the children and their parents. He brought such a peaceful and safe energy to our production that we were able to make the film as real as it is. It actually was quite strange because you’d never guess hanging out on set that the film was so heavy. Everyone was always smiling and running around having a good time. To be honest, I used to be a camp counselor and a boating instructor and this film was as fun to make as doing those high-school summer jobs!

HYB: Actress Blythe Auffarth appears to be 21 years old, but is playing a character that was only 16 by the time she was found. Why Blythe and how did she pull of this age difference?

AvdH: Blythe was the ONLY actress who came into the auditions and floored our director and my producing partner William Miller with her stunning performance. She actually was the only actress that I didn’t get to see audition. I was out of town that day and Gregory and William picked her. I trusted them totally and boy were they right in their instincts.

She really reads like a sixteen year old onscreen and because she was not, brought the material and character to entirely new place. Her maturity as an actor helped set the tone for the rest of the younger cast. I think half our crew and at least all our younger male cast were completely smitten with her through the entire production. She would show up on set and everyone followed. It was a gift that Gregory new exactly how to translate his vision through her character. She really has a career in front of her and I can’t wait to see what films she does in the future.

With Blythe, I think the strangest thing was having an alcoholic beverage with her and her friends in Los Angeles at a gathering recently. I was so used to her being so close the Meg character; I forgot she is really one of my contemporaries.

HYB: I saw this is rated ‘R’. How did it pass through the MPAA without a NC-17 rating?

AvdH: We barely got the “R” rating. The only reason we were approved for that rating is because the majority of the rating board on our film felt the movie had social value. The impact of this film on a young mind in the company of a parent could help make a positive change for our culture. The conversation it can start about mores and social values is something that is priceless. Not in those exact words but a version of them is why we are rated “R” instead of NC-17.

HYB: How do you feel people will respond to the content of this film such as the child abuse and molestation?

AvdH: With empathy and understanding about the case and about those victims in our world that deal with these issues. It is undeniably a problem and will always be as long as people push them under the carpet. I think people will feel the impact of the story, however, leaving the theatre with the need to learn and know more.

HYB: You seem to be interested in projects that explore the human mind. For instance, the short Inherent Darkness and Enlightenment (2002) focuses on snap judgments based on appearance, while Headspace (2005) deals with a growing intellect & suppressed memories. Where does this interest stem from and will it continue to be a reoccurring theme in all your films?

AvdH: I think it will. The mind is such a strange and unlimited thing. Our usage is so small and the greatness it really has is quite astonishing. I think about all that we have done so far as humankind and then think about the vast openness of the universe. Our minds are reflective of this vastness; and, that in and of itself, intrigues me to want to know more and explore the possibilities.

HYB: You have 2 acting credits in addition to your behind the camera work. Both of the characters you played were named Charlie. What is the significance of that name?

AvdH: It was the first lead character I ever played in a feature film. Charlie Greene was his name and he was going to Harvard in 1963. It’s my way of staying in touch with where the journey for me in the indie world really began. Playing the Charlie Greene in Hans Canosa’s first feature film gave me the confidence to step out and direct as well as produce features. If it weren’t for Charlie Greene, I wouldn’t be here.

HYB: You mentioned you were working on a Graphic Novel. Can you give any details?

AvdH: Make sure to be at the Comic-Con in Manhattan in February. We’re announcing some details on that and other projects as well. We indeed have a comic book and graphic novel coming soon!

HYB: So what projects do you have lined up after finishing the Girl Next Door?