By the early 1990s, Debbie was working with multiple theatre companies in NYC including The Tribeca Lab where she played multiple characters in Stephen DiLauro’s play The Secret Warhol Rituals. In 1993 Debbie began her career in radio co-producing and co-hosting Oblique Strategies on the terrestrial channel WBAI. 1994 was the beginning for Debbie to land lead roles in film. Abducted II: The Reunion would be the first and in 1995 she co-stared in her first Troma produced film Tromeo and Juliet co-directed by James Gunn and Lloyd Kaufman. This would also be the year Debbie would be given her first writing column which appeared in The Job Bob Report, published by Joe Bob Briggs. She would also pen for numerous genre publications including The Phantom of the Movies’ Videoscope magazine which she still writes for today. Of the multiple roles she would portray by decade’s end it would be Hellblock 13, co-staring Gunnar Hansen, that would begin the wheels turning for a new type of role she would soon be known for. During the 1996-1998-time frame Debbie would co-produce and co-host Illumination Gallery for the internet’s first on-line radio station Pseudo Radio.
In 2000 director Jon Keeyes cast Debbie in the now cult classic American Nightmare which garnered much acclaim with legit reviewers and audiences alike. Her role as Jane Toppan would solidify her as a go-to actor for roles of the off-kilter and intense kind. By 2002 Debbie began working for Full Moon Entertainment, starring in four feature films with the company. She continued to write for genre publications and contributed chapters to horror themed books. In 2005 Debbie joined forces with what was then known as Scream TV. The company bought Fangoria magazine and Debbie began producing short documentaries including Fangoria Presents Slither Behind the Scenes. In 2006 they launched Fangoria Radio for Sirius/XM where she co-produced and co-hosted the show with Twisted Sister front-man Dee Snider until 2010. The following year Debbie was granted her own column in the magazine called Diary of the Deb, the first column written by a woman for the publication, it was nominated for three Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards for best column, winning the esteemed statue in 2014. During this decade Debbie also gave critically acclaimed turns in works inspired by some of her favorite classical writers; The Tell Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe), Mark of the Beast (Rudyard Kipling) and Colour From the Dark (H.P. Lovecraft).
Debbie appeared on the VH1 reality TV show Scream Queens as a guest judge in 2010. In 2012 she served, with Mira Sorvino, Gabrielle Miller, Tamar Simon-Hoffs and Lana Morgan, as part of the first all-female jury at the Oldenburg International Film Festival in Germany. The same year Debbie had her directorial debut with the extreme body-horror film Model Hunger. ETonline.com hailed Debbie as one of the “40 Top Scream Queens of the Past 40 Years” in 2018. Debbie’s current writing column, Debbie Rochon’s Bloody Underground, appears in the Italian published magazine Asylum. She is currently acting in feature films, writing her book and prepares for her sophomore directing project.
By the early 1990s, Debbie was working with multiple theatre companies in NYC including The Tribeca Lab where she played multiple characters in Stephen DiLauro’s play The Secret Warhol Rituals. In 1993 Debbie began her career in radio co-producing and co-hosting Oblique Strategies on the terrestrial channel WBAI. 1994 was the beginning for Debbie to land lead roles in film. Abducted II: The Reunion would be the first and in 1995 she co-stared in her first Troma produced film Tromeo and Juliet co-directed by James Gunn and Lloyd Kaufman. This would also be the year Debbie would be given her first writing column which appeared in The Job Bob Report, published by Joe Bob Briggs. She would also pen for numerous genre publications including The Phantom of the Movies’ Videoscope magazine which she still writes for today. Of the multiple roles she would portray by decade’s end it would be Hellblock 13, co-staring Gunnar Hansen, that would begin the wheels turning for a new type of role she would soon be known for. During the 1996-1998-time frame Debbie would co-produce and co-host Illumination Gallery for the internet’s first on-line radio station Pseudo Radio.
In 2000 director Jon Keeyes cast Debbie in the now cult classic American Nightmare which garnered much acclaim with legit reviewers and audiences alike. Her role as Jane Toppan would solidify her as a go-to actor for roles of the off-kilter and intense kind. By 2002 Debbie began working for Full Moon Entertainment, starring in four feature films with the company. She continued to write for genre publications and contributed chapters to horror themed books. In 2005 Debbie joined forces with what was then known as Scream TV. The company bought Fangoria magazine and Debbie began producing short documentaries including Fangoria Presents Slither Behind the Scenes. In 2006 they launched Fangoria Radio for Sirius/XM where she co-produced and co-hosted the show with Twisted Sister front-man Dee Snider until 2010. The following year Debbie was granted her own column in the magazine called Diary of the Deb, the first column written by a woman for the publication, it was nominated for three Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards for best column, winning the esteemed statue in 2014. During this decade Debbie also gave critically acclaimed turns in works inspired by some of her favorite classical writers; The Tell Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe), Mark of the Beast (Rudyard Kipling) and Colour From the Dark (H.P. Lovecraft).
Debbie appeared on the VH1 reality TV show Scream Queens as a guest judge in 2010. In 2012 she served, with Mira Sorvino, Gabrielle Miller, Tamar Simon-Hoffs and Lana Morgan, as part of the first all-female jury at the Oldenburg International Film Festival in Germany. The same year Debbie had her directorial debut with the extreme body-horror film Model Hunger. ETonline.com hailed Debbie as one of the “40 Top Scream Queens of the Past 40 Years” in 2018. Debbie’s current writing column, Debbie Rochon’s Bloody Underground, appears in the Italian published magazine Asylum. She is currently acting in feature films, writing her book and prepares for her sophomore directing project.
Speaker 1 (11s): A quick, thanks. Before we start the show. Filmmaking Confidential the book is getting rave reviews from readers, filmmakers, Film professors, and even people in creative fields. Other than Filmmaking. I just want to say thank you to all of you who ordered it and for your support, if you haven't yet picked it up and you want to learn more Filmmaking secrets Filmmaking Confidential is for you. It's available. Wherever books are sold in most countries around the world, order it by visiting audible or Amazon to find out more, check out Filmmaking Confidential dot com and Steve Balderson dot com. And thank you.
I'm Steve Balderson and your listening to the Filmmaking Confidential podcast each week, we meet with filmmakers writers, actors, artists, and other notables. Many episodes include questions or commentary from other film makers, listening to the conversation. Today's guest is cult actress. Debbie Roshaun with numerous awards honoring her roles in over 250 films. Debbie is often referred to as the Meryl Streep. of Horror.
Speaker 0 (1m 18s): Your secret's safe with me. You have a lot of people can't point fingers
Speaker 1 (1m 27s): Named one of the Top Scream Queens of the Past 40 years By Entertainment tonight. Debby is also an accomplished director. When we sat down, I asked her what happened on set for a 2003 Film. She was acting in that changed the way she approached Filmmaking forever.
Speaker 2 (1m 48s): I was on a film set and I was given a live machete and it was the first one I was given was a prop, but it didn't look good on, on camera. So we had done the scene a number of times, then they said, Oh, there's another prop. Just take that one. Let's keep rolling. And we're losing the son. It was literally my last shot in the whole film I was done, but they wanted to redo it with a better looking on camera machete. So I was like, yeah. Okay, let's go.
I know the scene different. They switch to the prop, the prop master, and did the scene grabbed the machete, walked over to the fake dead corpse. And you know, there's no hitch on a machete, right? So just waled down, like jumped off the ground and whale down onto this, you know, fake corpse. And my hand just slid right down the blade and it cut off my fingers except for the bone.
And I had to have two operations to get it to be at this point. So safe T yes, safety. That was horrible. Horrible. It took me about five years to feel safe on a set. Again, took me a couple of years to really do anything substantial. I think it was a couple of months after the accident. I did a movie with Lloyd ironically and I just, but it was a really small thing. He was on long Island.
It was just a couple or what was it over for a night shoot in a video store. And I still had my hands in the cast. I just had my first operation and I just spray painted the whole thing black. So it wasn't so like, you know, standing out white and I did like small things as time went on, but took a long time to feel like really comfortable with weaponry. You know, even though the fake or, or there, you know, you have a stunt people like not stunting people working for you in Indy movies, but a safety people working with you.
But I mean, from that moment on, I never would just completely take somebody's word for it. Not because they didn't believe them or trust them. It was because mistakes happen, you know, they happen and you know, and we've seen it in other movies, you know, Brandon Lee, a perfect example. Everybody brings up that wonderful actor who was also a Model Eric. Oh, I forget his name now. Oh my goodness.
But it was, it was also like he jokingly put a gun to his head that it had like a fake bullet in it and he would just, he was on set and he just pulled the trigger. And that was it. I mean, it really, so, I mean, mistakes happen all the time. You know, people have passed on the walking dead. There's been stunts on the walking dead where some stunt people have lost their lives and it was nothing to do with them. Oh, that makes it a bad show. Oh no, no. And it means that it's not, you know, you don't assume that everything you see is completely safe.
There are some people taking some big chances look at like mad max when there was no CGI, there was none, all the car flips and motorcycle flips and all of this insanity was beyond the real, also Australian, which, you know, those guys are crazy back then. So they were doing everything. But anyway, yeah. So that's what happened to me.
Speaker 3 (5m 27s): That's insane. Yeah. I feel like you have had nine lives or 24. So have you ever been pronounced legally dead? Well, actually ironically,
Speaker 2 (5m 43s): A couple of times I came so close. I was never pronounced dead. So, you know, it was, I've never gone into a casket and, you know, clawed my way out of the only done that in the Movies. So there was a couple of times in real life when it was really, really close when I had my head cracked open with a tire iron, that was a real thing that was in a movie. These two things are real things in our movies. And I had lost so much blood.
I couldn't stand up for a month, but I couldn't go on to the hospital. Because at that time I was just a kid living on the street and it was a runaway. So if we went to the hospital, then the police would be called. So I ran out of the hospital after they stitched up in my head, but I couldn't stand for over a month and I probably should have been in the hospital probably. Right. I mean, you would think so. I mean, something could of happened there didn't I was too young and dumb, I guess, or innocent. There you go to know that.
Probably about three years ago, I had, I went into septic shock and came very close to dying, very close to dying. And all of my organs were shutting down in my blood pressure was so low and the whole time it's so funny because when you're in that head space, the whole time I'm telling them everything is going to be okay. My blood pressure is going to come up. It's low.
Naturally. I thought they were crazy. Like that's how Gunn I was, because something happens to your mind. And I wasn't one of these people is freaking out. No, because I was looking at a whole lot of the plane and I was just like, you know, in my mind, you folks are so overreacting. You just got to calm your shit down. Like everything's going to be fine. But you know, at the same time I knew something was really weird because I saw like Rondo Hatton was in my doorway and the hospital.
And it was like, he's not really there, but like I see him three di that's a very interesting, like your mind is like so close to being gone. And there was this one point where I saw this guy, young guy in a hoodie and it was a black hoodie just, you know, zip up. And he had a camera on the shoulder and he was walking down the hall towards my room and I thought you was not real, but that's interesting that he has a camera probably why I'm hallucinating that. And then my doctor said to me, well, it was kind of like a modern day, a grim Reaper, if you think about it, because you know, it had the black thing on.
And I mean, that was his interpretation, but it did make a lot of sense. So yeah, there's been a couple times it's been pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (8m 35s): I love that he had a camera, like he was going to film it and document it.
Speaker 2 (8m 40s): It was like, like those old big ones, like a VHS one, you know, not, not a Film one, but like one that said on a shoulder. So, yeah. Interesting. Okay.
Speaker 3 (8m 51s): Interesting. Okay. So you have, you were a street kid. And at what point,
Speaker 4 (8m 56s): How did you get from the street to an actor in New York city?
Speaker 2 (9m 1s): Because I spent three months as an extra on a movie, that's the short answer and they gave me $300 cash back then this is like 1980. So this was like a trillion dollars to me. And I was just a, it was a first time that was ever acknowledged at all in a positive way, like good feedback. The assistant director who was directing the extras, which is what I was, you know, was the same group of people that were there for the whole three months.
You know, we were obsessed with Diane Lane. She was in a rock group or a punk rock group in every, all the other, the girls that fascinated me because they were just, just couldn't care less about the movie. They just wanted. They thought it was going to be exciting. But in fact it was a lot of sitting around and they weren't interested. But on the other hand, myself, I was like the assistant director, Tom, he would say, okay, now look like this. And that's all I would do is just obsessiveness, tried to do what he was saying.
And so the day that he came over and said, that was really good. That was like the first time in my whole life I'd been acknowledged. It wasn't about ego, but it was just about being someone even noticed I was alive. And so I just was like, wow, okay. So I want to repeat this. Like people acknowledge that and also being drawn. So that's what drew me into Film, but being drawn into a Horror I've always had, like, I always felt like the, the roles are just so much better and I always say that, but, but also we all have different things to express.
Like we can all do various roles, you can direct various movies and, and have your input, but you are drawn to certain types. You know what I mean? Like w we all have like, thinks that we prefer to express. So within me lies, you know, this endless pit of stuff for me to draw from that just seems to suit cult and horror movies. Best.
Speaker 4 (11m 14s): Would you say that the surroundings of your world is it, is it filled with all things Horror or as Horror and escape place?
Speaker 2 (11m 23s): Kind of both. Like, I do have a lot of things because I've been sent a lot of things throughout the years and I have, I really do like Halloween versus Christmas if I was to choose a, to B, but at the same time, I mean, I, what, what do I value? I value character. I value peace. I value of hard work. I value the things that are very different than it was just like, you know, you know, hail, sate, you know, all this kind of, where is it?
I'm religious. I believe in God, my kind of God not, I don't go to church, so it's not like that. So that's weird. That's not something that I talk about because most people not at all, but a lot of people into horror movies are like, you know, all about, yes, Satan man, Satan, but I can't relate to that because I know just putting it simply that there's good and evil. So I mean, like, you know, I know there's good and evil in people in the world, but in people and I would rather be around good.
And then, you know, do all my friends, like horror movies now, did they have to know, but some people are really hardcore and like everything has to fall into place. You know, it, it has to be the same music, same movies, same, you know, all these kind of stuff. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I've a wide variety of stuff that I like actually above horror movies by far. I would say that I love cult movies, way more than horror movies. I love horror movies, but cult movies that that's really where it's at.
Like in true indie cult movies.
Speaker 3 (13m 8s): My favorite cool. Your work ethic is incredible. Has it always been
Speaker 2 (13m 16s): Yes and no, it's probably been, well, it just changed really. I mean, it always has been intense in some way or another. I find since the starting of the writing of the book, having to deal with like a lot of stuff that we kind of, like, I had no writer's block at all. Like it does not exist, but it's dealing with the elements very, very, very hard, very hard.
I wrote something for a book that just came up and it was just a small, tiny piece. And it was just like, Hmm, like not easy, but I just, as quickly did it, I was just, I knew what I wanted to say it. And I, you know, what I love doing it. And I was just like, boom. Okay, there it is. But the book that's been my, you know, air's rock, we were in Australia. It would be been my, you know, Everest or, or my something because even writing any book is going to be hard.
But when you're talking about, okay, you have to go to all the places that you pretended four, at least for decades didn't exist. So now, hello. How far along with the process are you quite far? I mean, it depends on if I use everything that I've written. So, I mean, I hate to use percentages because on one hand I'm I'm, I am far along because I've been, you know, I work on it almost every day, but to different degrees, even if it was just a half an hour or it could be four hours or it could be so hard to say, I, I don't really like to say yet because there's some pieces that are not necessarily necessary to, to be in there to be able to tell my story 'cause at the end of the day, it has to be completely pure and, and nothing but the truth.
But you have to kinda decide that it's the small things in the big things. Like you don't have to use everybody's name, for example. And by that, I mean, people that you never have heard of, I just mean people who, I don't even know if they're alive, still, that I knew as a, as a teenager, but it it's unimportant whether it's been or Lynne, like it just not important. You know what I mean? So it's just, there's, it's, multi-layered, multi-layered in multi emotional.
I don't even know if I answered your question, but
Speaker 4 (15m 49s): You did. And then halfway through, I realized that there is really no way to answer that question because you'll, you're telling a story. And when you're finished telling this story, you'll know you're going to be telling the story.
Speaker 2 (15m 59s): Yeah. That will. I know. The funny thing is one of the first things I did was write at the ending. It's not even, I believe is some of my style. I don't do that and never done it before, but that just seemed to be like the thing that I just had to get out. Cause I knew it. I saw it in my mind. I just saw exactly where it ends. And so that was easy. That was actually an easy 30 pages. I don't know why, but I, I saw that the other pieces are they're harder.
And then it gets really technical and probably not that interesting to listen to, but it gets more technical. Like you really have to be very, very careful that you're, you're telling things in the right order. So quite often, my source of after so much suppression after so many decades of that's the only way I've been able to deal with it seriously. But my only way to rip out when did this happen is I think to myself, what song was playing, okay.
Now I can go in the computer and I can look up, what year did that song come out? And then I'll have like a rough estimate because maybe I heard it a couple of years after. Right. We're not sure, but at least so I'm using music as, as kind of like this weird guideline, we all get our AR that imprint from something in pop culture. Okay. What year did that toy come out of that song or that movie or something? Whatever triggers, because it's all about triggering, you know, how a song or of Of anything in an object is a commercial on TV or everything can come kind of flooding back.
So a lot of times I'll I'll want to listen to like a classical music or something that just makes me feel that's really dramatic. Mind you, but it makes me like really feel like, you know, the power of the writing in the background, but then what really is
Speaker 0 (17m 57s): Capture the moment it's like, you're on some clash. That's what was going on then
Speaker 1 (18m 4s): Debbie, Rochon another great guest is Academy award nominee and golden globe winner, Sally Kirkland.
Speaker 0 (18m 12s): Yeah. And my girlfriend had told me, Sally, you're going to have to fuck him. You're going to have this. This is the lead role in the godfather. And I said, but I've been celibate for however many months I can, I'm selling it. And she said, Sally, this is Francis Ford Coppola. You're going to have to come.
Speaker 1 (18m 31s): You can hear my full interview with Sally at Filmmaking Confidential dot com or by subscribing for free to this podcast coming up Debbie Rashaun on Cinemax Horror and directing her first feature film. Model Hunger I'm Steve Balderson. And your listening to the Filmmaking Confidential podcast back after this I'm Steve Balderson and this is the Filmmaking Confidential podcast.
I'm back with Debbie Rochon
Speaker 2 (19m 10s): Oh, on a dam set 'cause everything was shot in film. There wasn't many movies being made at any given time that were in Dee that weren't like so big that, you know, it would almost not impossible. It's never impossible, but really difficult to get in on that. So in the meantime, do you still want to work while you're, you know, attempting your thing and going to class and everything? So yes I did. So these were your choices, Roberta Finley.
And I worked with her, working with Chuck Vincent, worked with all these people that, you know, back for the majority of their career, they did porn and then they went into horror movies or exploitation Movies, stuff like that. And that was in a Chuck Vincent's. I think it was his I'm pretty sure it was his last movie or second to last movie party incorporate it. And I just had like a comedic role that was throughout, but it was Marilyn Chambers, first non porn movie, where she sang a song, even like she sang a damn song in a mall she's in a mall shopping in, she bursts into a song and that, you know, music's coming on.
Weird, weird, but still like, so I mean like the interesting stuff you got to meet, a lot of people who, you know, were really unusual people and people that were more like me and the sense that there in their whole lives they're were really push to the side by the majority. They were really marginalized and a, you know, we, that, that's a word that's thrown around a lot, but it's really, really true.
So, I mean, you had to say, and now you can look back and you say, Oh, well, you know what, I did this, I had fun. I have no regrets, but you know, in a perfect world, maybe I wouldn't have done that or that, but F it, okay.
Speaker 4 (21m 4s): I agree. I don't have any regrets because I feel like every, every choice that I made has led to me being here today, and maybe there was a bad experience or I could, it could have been a mistake that I learned something.
Speaker 2 (21m 19s): Yeah. Always, always, even, even if you learned what you didn't want to do, you learn something, right. I mean,
Speaker 4 (21m 28s): Totally. That's my favorite thing is that like, okay, we can make a decision, we can make a choice. And then if whatever happens, if we don't like that, we can choose again.
Speaker 2 (21m 39s): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just that's it. And you know what you oftentimes on the shittiest situations or in the shittiest situation, you can meet somebody who then you're like, wow, okay. I parlayed This into this really cool thing because you know, they were doing this. And I thought of me because they met me on that crazy thing. And you just don't know. And certainly back then now, of course, today to, to a lesser extent, but back then, unless you would have got in front of people, literally in front of people, met people, there was no way to be called or considered for anything.
You know, that was it. That was it. You just, you had to, you had to show up and to show up,
Speaker 4 (22m 32s): Had you always written, or was there a point where you started writing?
Speaker 2 (22m 36s): Well, I always had a journal to a certain degree now and again, and the funny thing was, I am so self-deprecating, but I will say this, I had written something. I was in living in London. I had written something and I had gone back to Vancouver at this point and I had read what I had written and I was like, Dee I wrote that. That's, that's pretty interesting. It was pretty cool. Yeah. And I didn't know what I was doing, of course. I mean, but I, but I liked it and I remember liking in and I thought that's interesting.
And then, and then many years later I started writing like the early nineties. I started writing a book for various magazines and then I had a column in the Joe Bob Report and stuff like that. So in the nineties really is when I started to, to write. And that was at first it was like very, just so saccharin and everything is just so fantastic. And, and, you know, just the most soft ball, you know, made of like, you know, I would say fake for a fake Mo soft fake for all questions that you could ever come up with when I would interview people just like night and day, I mean, but that's how I started.
Like, you just didn't want to offend. And then I started like really writing more and more based in, in what was really going on. And nobody was doing that 'cause it was very like a very sycophant type of, of world. Like everybody's very outspoken now on social media anyway, and on a lot of websites too, like, they're just, they have no problem. Just smacking down.
Somebody's entire, you know, 30, 40 years in the business, just in one sentence, just poo-pooing the whole thing, because whatever, but, you know, then it was, it was far more, you know, you just, if you got covered, you would be pretty much treated with, with kid gloves because I don't know why really. I think we just really liked each other. And, you know,
Speaker 3 (24m 54s): When did you know you wanted to direct it?
Speaker 2 (24m 58s): I had always wanted to direct, however, I always knew I was always okay. Never directing, because I said to myself, if the right project comes along, I will know it. Right. And whether I, I do great or I bungle it or I fall somewhere in between. Great. But I will know it. I am not just going to do it for the sake of doing it. I had two or three people who came to me over the years, like in the two thousands, I think with scripts and a paycheck.
And they were like, and it was, it was such trash. It was just women getting naked women getting killed all the time. It was just like, it, it was nothing to get Behind even, you know, regardless of Of a paycheck, I mean, it was just, it was nothing to give Behind. And I knew that if I was to only ever do it at once, that is not it like, you know, that is just not it. And so like, if I was to do at once least of all, I wanted it to be something I truly, truly believe in.
And so that was that script. And so it was like, okay, now is a time, but I was willing to never do it if I never found that script, I meaning the one that I got the wheels turning.
Speaker 3 (26m 18s): What was the process of like, of that, like being far on that end of the world, the film?
Speaker 2 (26m 26s): Well, it was, you always think, you know, it's how, how it's going to go, because you've been on so many sets, right? You think, you know how it's going to go. And for the most part it did, but there were certain elements of wrangling people, right? That on an indie film that you have to do that you would not have to do say on a really big budget film, if you do on a big budget film, it's a very different, you know, Each departments probably wrangles themselves sort of like compartmentalized and they're not going to like be bothering the, the director with the little shenanigans going on and so-and-so's fighting with so-and-so, which has nothing to do with the movie.
That stuff gets more suppressed on shore. I'm sure it does. Whereas on an indie movie, if there's any, you know, having nothing to do with the movie, keep in mind, but if there's any issues going on, it's like you are so here for this site, the square, what is it in the square or what is happening in that square? That's all that matters. And to wrap your brain around there could be anything else of interest to people kind of blows your mind.
Do you know what I mean as a director and how many things that you've directed? Like it just blows your mind that people are just not on that same page. I don't know to do also produce your movie. I did not produce it. I didn't lie and produce it. I didn't like, you know how it goes. I had a lot of say, Greg Lamberson did like a lot of the location scouting in Buffalo. All we did the line producing James Morgan did the executive producing.
So I did the producing in the sense of what ends up being called producing in today's day and age of, you know, the casting and the going through all of the special effects with a special effects people and getting sort of putting all of the building blocks together. Of of who's going to be on the team, those sort of elements, the, the money element. No, the day to day line producing. No. So the rewriting of the script, thank you.
James for allowing me to do that. VH not, and nothing was like changed dramatically, but just hit that. He allowed me to, to have fun with the script was everything because he was not only paying for the movie, but he wrote the movie. So it could be exactly what he wanted, but all he said was, you need to make your movie, like, this is, you need to do this. And he just said, I just had this feeling that you need to do this.
And he was right. And so when I would take something like a 10 page monologue and just take it out and then just tell the actor, Michael Thurber, sorry, but I call it, it was amazing to invasion that you're going to say in New York, so excited to do it. Now it's just in one image, seeing we're doing cinema Of you just handing something to somebody with a look on your face, and that's going to say all of that. Everybody was good with it. So, I mean, that's collaboration.
I mean, that's, that's Filmmaking stuff as to change. It's a visual medium. It's not a talk, talk, talk, talk to much talking sometimes
Speaker 3 (30m 2s): As you worked with me and I read them for
Speaker 2 (30m 4s): Not in person, she was in like two or three movies that I was in. Never at the same time we were on set at different times, but Britain. Yeah. I had never worked with her before in person and I certainly never directed her before. It was that ever directed before directing her amazing, amazing. Because when we were on the exact same page that she was in fact, I'm like a Tennessee Williams character in a horror movie, if that makes sense.
Yeah. She was like,
Speaker 3 (30m 40s): It was, it was basically a horror writer. I mean, to some degree.
Speaker 2 (30m 44s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she was blanche Dubois put in this horrible situation. I mean, and that was just like the, the magic of like that concept just, and just going with it. And it was just perfect. She was amazing. Amazing. And that movie really unbelievable. Unbelievable. Really just, and is it not exciting when somebody does so well in something that you've made that they're asked to do so many other things because of it, and I don't even give a shit what the directors think of.
Model Hunger I don't care. I love the fact that they could love it or hate it. I love the fact that they say Lynn Lowrey. Wow. You know, Oh my God. Dee and think of roles for her from it. So, I mean, that is like the biggest compliment
Speaker 3 (31m 44s): Debbie first feature film. Model Hunger
Speaker 5 (31m 48s): No, what a young woman, such as yourself should not be a child that a little old lady, Jenny, one of those next door to search from Melissa Wallace in Katherine, McGovern continues on why don't you girls come on inside and we can discuss what you have to go off on me. I go, I've always got the role.
Speaker 3 (32m 13s): That was a sound bite for Debbie is Film Model Hunger starring Lynn Lowrey. Did you make your second movie or how has it not been filmed yet?
Speaker 2 (32m 22s): I haven't filmed it yet. I have a script and it kind of worked out that it kind of worked out better because this way it gives me time to raise more money and do the book so that I can finish the book. And then as things are, which they will soon now finally be able to do torment road. So, you know, whether that's 20, 21 or early 20, 22, I don't know.
But it's a lot sooner than if things didn't go to the way they did.
Speaker 4 (32m 59s): Yeah, exactly. It was such a civilized way of saying that what's the title for your book.
Speaker 2 (33m 7s): Yes. From the underbelly to the Underground good title. Yeah, the true it's truthful.
Speaker 4 (33m 14s): My first experience going to a convention where people are vendors and actors are selling the merchandise and it was just this whole wide opening aha. With how to market and sustain your career as an independent artist today. Have you always been active in that aspect of marketing yourself?
Speaker 2 (33m 42s): Well, I've always had to market myself from the day one, I mean, because nobody else is going to do it. So that was always a big part of why I would see things and see opportunities and try to put, say, I work with a director on project a year and I knew this person over here was doing either a write-up or something on that type of movie. I would just immediately put them together. Wouldn't have to be literally me, but if it was something I was involved with, it benefits everybody.
And so, you know, unlike a lot of people that I really don't care for in the business that are like, so self-important, and they have to be male or female is just a term Bel of the ball really don't care to work for that type of person or with that type of person. My favorite type is like a, anybody who's a team player, anybody like's unsolvable stuff, anybody who like likes to create together, you know what I mean? That's my favorite thing. I went off on a tangent, but it's really important because often when you make a movie and you know, it, it didn't go that way.
And it was kind of for whatever reason, and there's many stories didn't go well that you just kind of, you know, move on. And then you find somebody that you're like, Oh my God, they're like, they're pure of heart. Or they're, they're, they're good people. And they're, Movies great. And it was such a good experience that they just to go to bat for them. You just like call to everybody that, you know, come on, man. I know you have a zene that reaches five people, but dammit, put this movie in there, you know, do a page thing on it.
I don't care. And just keep throwing spaghetti at the wall and just keep at it, ad it. And that was, you know, I guess that was our days social media. Yeah,
Speaker 6 (35m 38s): For sure. Yeah. Yeah. What was the best advice anybody ever gave you?
Speaker 2 (35m 44s): Ah, well, the best advice anybody ever gave me, I didn't take So pretty bad on my part, but not there is the best advice I was ever given was I'd made a few movies with Gunn or Hansen and he said to me Debbie would you stop underselling yourself? Meaning whether it's pay or anything like it, it was at a convention that the price to, to me, it was just happy to like promote.
So if I was able to, I would love, I would love to give things away. I wasn't into like soaking everybody and he wasn't either, but, but there's a fine line. I mean, you have to have a sense of a good sense of self worth so that other people have it for you because apparently people won't have it for you if you don't have it for yourself. So, which is kind of sad because it's, it's too bad that we all can be just a little bit more S I don't know, soft or whatever, but it's really true.
It's not the most talented people that make it. It's the ones that are just voraciously, relentlessly in even, you know, easily, sometimes not everybody that go after it. Those are the one's that are successful. So there is something to be said for both sides, but that was his advice. He, he would, he would say, I mean, he, he got me a role, which was the highest paying role I had, he got it from me.
Of course he did. Of course he did. That was his advice to me. And he said, okay, we're gonna do these pictures of this was for one particular movie Hellblock and he's like, okay, but I'm telling you right now. And it's got nothing to do with me. He said to me is in him. He said, but I'm signing all of these for you to, so, and you're not going to sell them for less than X, because you need to make a little bit of money for your time and effort and, and all this stuff.
And again, it wasn't about gouging. It wasn't about that. It, it was just about, come on, you know, got to get your self worth up there because you can, From like none, none. So, you know, you put in all the work you put in a couple of decades and in enacting class in and starting out of working for free in student films, I probably did a 150 student films, probably did a, a, a 150 stage plays for free, like, come on you. And it's like any career, I mean, sooner or later, a banker should probably get paid.
If he's been like an auditor for free for 30 years, at some point his or her wife will say, honey, one day, maybe you should probably think about getting paid for it. So it's like that really in like 19 to say, I went to my first convention and I was invited at a table, blah, blah, blah. I would think it was the first chiller convention and New Jersey that existed. And I was there and Bruce Campbell was there, but it was fun.
It was fun. Just F U N fun. That's it. Then over the course of, and I wanna say with the, I love this show and I keep bringing it up and these bad ways. And it's so funny because I do love the show, but since the walking dead that's, that was kind of like a turning point for conventions because people could see that in a kind of like the Jamie Lee Curtis only convention appearance. That first one she did. I think it was a Horror hound are something to raise money for charity, mind you, but it was kind of like everybody woke up and said, these, these promoters said, Oh my God, they can make a fucking boatload of money.
And then it was only the walking dead. Only the, the big movie or the Netflix or the special, you know, supernatural, very few had the smaller reunions from Movies like return living dead was, you know, that was a good movie to have a Reunion, but that was a lesser that wasn't the main, you know, reason to come up to the convention because we have, you know, the, the stars of whatever is number one, and that kind of changed the whole convention experience.
That convention is turning into nothing but a prophet place. Yeah. You could still see people that you liked and have to have some fun to talk with them and stuff. But a lot of people thought it was super easy to have a convention. I saw more people put them on and go into a massive, like 50, a hundred thousand dollars debt. So it was a one off. So it like did a lot of people under in that regard. And on the other side of it, if it was too big, the Indies would not get invited.
So, whereas it used to just be a fun place to meet people. And if someone got something from your table bonus, just a bonus, just fun.
Speaker 7 (41m 7s): It asks you, you said that you were a street kid or that you knew the street lights and stuff. And I had that in common with you. I wanted to know how the raw things that we'd probably both seen. So I know what you've probably seen, how the raw things that you experienced out on the streets affected your ability to act in realism and such things as that. Right?
Speaker 2 (41m 31s): Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking and it's funny because at first it's the very thing that stopped me from being able to, and I even had acting teachers in the very beginning, mind you, but still they said to me, this is going to be harder for you than anyone else in this room. And I was so, you know, blocked and locked in and shut out. I didn't even know really what she meant. I heard the words, it made sense, but I didn't know why I didn't understand what she was talking about so many years later I do.
And I think that once you get in touch with some of that really horrible old stuff, that you actually have more stuff to give than anybody else, because you've just tapped into the well of all, of everything of humanity, you've tapped into that. And if you can harness that and express it and use it and get the kinds of roles where anything like that is required or, or something that is an unexpressed rubble, in words, you're going to be able to express it in just being just through the eyes, just through, through movement, because it's just it's in your cells.
But the only thing I would say from a to B to be aware of is when I was going through that process. I, and just in the very beginning, like when I just started to like open myself up to myself, because as an actor, you have to be insanely in touch with your emotions. And it was my job to survive, to not be in touch with my emotions. So they were like polar opposites. So when I started with the breathing classes and letting go and acting and all this, it was a tsunami.
And I literally had a Gore, a phobia for at least a year, at least a year, because I was so everything was just, it was so too overwhelming. I mean, I probably need needed 10 therapists really to deal with all that stuff. But it, it Past, I had, you know, massive anxiety attacks. And that was just me. I, you know, I'm not saying, Ew, that's a horrible, I hope not. But I'm just saying, like, it's not a bad thing.
Even if that does happen, even if there is anxiety that comes up, because that is the gateway that you have to cross to get in touch with the gold. And nobody else has that level of gold. A lot of people go into acting or directing or writing, and they have no experience. They've never experienced hardship in any way, shape or form. And so they don't have anything to sort of like draw from, and you've got like the gold. So you were S you you've been given such a gift you'll never know until the day comes where you use it and people see it.
So it's actually a wonderful thing. Even, it may not seem like it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 (44m 51s): Actress writer, director, Debbie Rochon, you can learn more by visiting Debbie rashaun.com tune in next time for more Filmmaking Confidential, it is totally free to subscribe. And when you subscribe, you'll get upcoming new episodes automatically, and you'll have a free access to all our past shows. Please remember to rate and review the Filmmaking Confidential podcast is a production of tikanga audio and produced by myself and Ella Spencer.
Our theme music is composed by Kevin Robless for more of the Filmmaking Confidential podcast, head over to Filmmaking Confidential dot com. If you have a question about Filmmaking, you'd like answered on the podcast, send me an email using the contact form on the website to learn more of my Filmmaking secrets. Be sure to pick up a copy of the book Filmmaking Confidential available on audible, paperback and ebook, wherever books are sold.
I'm Steve Balderson thanks for listening and spreading the word until next time. Keep making, keep doing, keep going.