FACTS ABOUT "FICTION"

Ryan describes the movie like this: "It's basically me trying to exorcise a lot of different cancers from my mind. I know that sounds a bit heavy-handed and pretentious, but, well … it's the truth. It deals with my own fears and anxieties about death, and love, and friendship. How it feels to be a "best friend" to someone you love, how it feels to be scarred and volatile. It also deals with watching someone you care about lose their grip on reality, which I've seen happen to a lot of my friends (and, to be honest, they've probably seen happen to me.)

"I won't apologize for how dark and brooding the movie is. I like a good fun horror flick just as much as anyone, but that isn't what came out of me this time around. Horror can be fun, but it can also be heavy and hard. That's why it's such an eclectic, versatile genre. It encompasses every facet of the human spirit, the human mind, the human body. Horror, as a genre, leaves no stone unturned. It makes us face the corner of life, and of our own minds and bodies, that we normally try not to think too much about."

Ryan, a self-admitted Movie Geek, and lifelong Horror Fan, approached his brother, Josh, sometime in February of 2001 and told him about his desire to make a good old fashioned, low-budget, guerilla-style, pulls-no-punches horror story, and told Josh that he had the seed of a story planted in his head that was growing on an hourly basis.

"I told him to finish the script," says Josh, "because I really loved the idea. I thought it had a lot of potential to make a great little horror movie. If I liked the script, I said I'd be willing to throw a bunch of a money at it see it made."

Wasting no time, Ryan began hammering out the script. As the pages rolled by, he and Josh began assembling a crew to help make the movie once it was ready to roll before the camera. Sometime in March they began auditions. The script was coming along slowly but surely, but they didn't want to wait for it to be done to get the project started.

"We were making a low-budget, VERY low-budget movie," Josh said. "Who cares about the rules? We just started getting the thing going right away because we're impatient and wanted to see this thing done. Ryan and I have always wanted to make movies. We HAVE been making them for years, in our parent's basement with friends and cheap props. We have boxes and boxes full of movies we've shot. But now we're both at a point in our lives where we want to start making a career out of this, and so when I read what Ryan had of the script and I thought it was great, we decided, Why Not? Let's the just do this."

Ryan concurs: "We are just making this up as we go along. I mean, I went to film school and everything, but I've learned so much just from my lifelong obsession with movies, and with how they were made … I tell you, I must've watched every Making Of feature that came on TV as a kid, even if it was something like The Making of On Golden Pond or something. I was, and still am, obsessed with movies, both as an entertainment, and as an art form. I have never been one of these cinema elitists who think art is not synonymous with entertainment. You can show me all the Godard and Fellini films you want, but if I don't enjoy watching them, then you've lost me."

Ryan makes no illusions about the kind of movie he wants to make: "A horror film, pure and simple. A lot of people, when they hear HORROR MOVIE, they think of garbage. They think of guys in masks stalking naked chicks and haunted houses and vampires. And that's fine. Those things are all valid tropes of the horror genre. But there's so much more to it than that. Horror can go anywhere, do anything, say anything, push any boundaries away that it wants to … horror films are SUPPOSED to do all that. They hold a mirror up to us and what they show us is truth and pain. There I go again, sounding heavy-handed and pretentious. Hey, I don't know. Horror films are supposed to scare us, disturb us … and life does a pretty good job of that on its own, so this is how I deal with it. It may never make sense to some people, and if it doesn't, then who cares. I like peeking under the rocks to see what's going on. I like peeking through the windows I'm not suppose to peek through. I'm a voyeur, I'll admit it. I'm a curious little cat, you know, and I think horror movies and books are a safe place to go with that curiosity, so it doesn't kill me, right. Besides all that, being scared is just fun.

"The kind of horror film I wanted to make was the kind that really stuck in my mind after watching them. The ones that leave a residual dread lingering around in my head for days, weeks, after. Like Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Shivers, Suspiria, Cannibal Holocaust, Last House on the Left … those kinds of movies. I'm not saying the one we're making will be in the same league as those, but those are my inspirations. I'm also very inspired by Fulci, and his sort of nightmarish, excessive brand of horror. Zombie, The Beyond, House by the Cemetery … those films are all very powerful and scary to me. They are often very absurd, confounding movies, but there's a strength to them, a vitality, a creeping sense of unease … that, and a lot of blood and guts!

"Of course, it's not just horror films that inspire me. I have always felt that horror works best when infused with other genres. Drama, romance … I love Woody Allen, Steven Soderberg, Bergman, Kieslowski, Jane Campion … those directors have all crept into my head over the years and they're there, in this movie. This movie has it all, I tell you."

Familiar Studios hopes people see this movie for what it is, and enjoy it on that level. It isn't big Hollywood. It isn't cute and cuddly. It makes it's own rules and it's own world. It's a philosophical journey just as much as it is a visceral assault on our comfort zones.

"What it really boils down to," says Josh, "is a search for God, and for meaning. A search for love. It just so happens to have a lot of screaming and blood in it ... and zombies."

- Peter Grubb