There Is Always Some Madness In Love

There is also some madness in an ambitious and unique dark fairy-tale movie made at a 5000 foot elevation, in a dark and freezing March shoot, entirely at night, with cougars, rattlesnakes, spiders, blood, stunts, fire, ravines, rockslides, cliffs, and car wrecks (scripted and not), while weathering sudden hailstorms, snow, and flash floods, during a mere 3 weeks of production.

Hopeful Monster

The first task of producers Devin DiGonno and Erik Rodgers, along with writer-director Robert Beaucage, months before their scheduled production start date, was to find the perfect FX designer to bring the movie's creature -- whose closely guarded description in Beaucage's screenplay was unlike any other movie monster in history -- off of the page and into flesh and blood. A main character in the movie, "Spike needed to be palpably real," says Rodgers. Agrees Beaucage, "I don't want audiences to think about special effects while watching Spike. I want them to think, 'What happened to him?'"

Acclaimed creature creator Jordu Schell came on board and began an extensive research and development process to determine how to accomplish the character's unique design (a design which eventually required in excess of 4 hours on set each night to apply to the actor).

"I will always love monsters," says Schell, "but I'd been hoping a project would come along in which my creativity would be used in a more subtle, moody way. Spike became a satisfying opportunity for that."

Meanwhile, Beaucage and DiGonno's next priority was to find the best actor to strike the lightning bolt of life into Schell's design.

Casting a Dark Fairy Tale

Countless talented young actors read for Spike's title role in a painstaking audition process that began more than 3 months prior to shooting. "If Robert had his way, we would have put the casting notice on trees in the forest hoping that Spike would show up," DiGonno deadpans. "I'm not certain he didn't!"

Finding an actor who could embody Spike's inherently odd qualities while remaining believable was a challenge ultimately met by talented newcomer Edward Gusts, who was able to make an already creepy character even creepier through his naturalistic portrayal. "Spike's really just a poor, normal guy who happens to have this horrible condition," says Gusts, his eyes glinting wickedly.

"The only thing more amazing than Jordu's creation," says DiGonno, "was the man who embodied it. I cannot say enough about Edward's amazing resilience in 40 degree weather with no hope of warming himself due to the makeup FX that could not be removed once applied. And, watching his performance, you know he used every bit of it to help make Spike who he is."

The rest of the cast fell into place relatively quickly after finding Gusts -- with the exception of the "love interest" (more precisely, Spike's obsession). Beaucage and DiGonno read even more actors for "The Girl" than they had for Spike, in what often seemed a hopeless quest to find someone with the combination of beauty, talent, strength, vulnerability, and athleticism necessary to pull off the role, as well as a palpable, if mysterious, innate connection to the monster.

Weeks passed, and the search continued. ("Such a horrible ordeal, a seemingly endless cavalcade of beautiful ingénues, all eager to please the director," mourns Beaucage dramatically.)

When Sarah Livingston Evans walked into the casting room, her connection with Gusts and the material was immediate and electric, DiGonno and Beaucage agreed. But Beaucage still made her audition twice more before offering her the part.

The talented cast, rounded out by Anna-Marie Wayne, Nancy P. Corbo, and Jared Edwards, rehearsed with Beaucage while DiGonno and Rodgers assembled a crew for the rapidly approaching production, set to shoot in the wilds of the Angeles National Forest.

Into the Forest

The production of Spike was fraught with genuine physical peril due to the ruggedness of the location and the schedule of 12-hour night shoots, 6 nights a week. There were many unrehearsed spills of crew and cast, on camera and off; fortunately no injuries resulted. "Robert's need for reality took the film to the edge of the precipice, both literally and figuratively," says Rodgers. "It wasn't always a question of how do we create the 'movie magic,' but of the whole cast and crew standing around thinking, 'Okay, we're really here, so now how the hell do we film it?'"

The night on which a hailstorm and flash flood started washing production equipment down a ravine marked a low point. Spirits remained high however, as (after the equipment had been recovered) the actors and director skipped through the hailstones, entertaining any curious nearby forest creatures with a boisterous rendition of "Singing In the Rain."

"This was definitely a love project for Robert," says Rodgers. "He approached even the most harrowing of circumstances with a kind of unflagging, lovesick desire. It was this unflinching commitment that made all our crazy challenges seem a bit more possible." Adds DiGonno, "Not sure if it was sleep deprivation, unbelievable conditions, or hypothermia, but what I remember most of the shoot was laughing with the cast and crew."

"Ultimately the difficulties made the movie stronger," says Beaucage. "We could have shot in a park in Beverly Hills, but the trials we endured lent the characters' onscreen struggles a verisimilitude that helped keep the story's fantasy elements grounded in gritty reality."

When the champagne corks popped at the end of the final night of the grueling principal photography, it was hard for the cast and crew to believe the nightmare had ended. (In fact, it hadn't: key remaining scenes weren't committed to film until a brief "pickup" shoot a month later.)

Spike's story, completed, would now look forward to being a collective nightmare for audiences to enjoy.

Once Upon a Time...

"Spike is a love story," says Beaucage. "Then again, so is Psycho."

A Joseph Campbell devotee and perennial student of folk tales and oral tradition, Beaucage has always wanted to, as he puts it, "f*** up a fairy tale." In addition to that noble aim, his writing of Spike was heavily influenced by classic gothic fiction such as Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as well as, from mythology, the stories of Hades and Persephone, Cupid and Psyche, and the like. Says Beaucage, "The age-old archetype of a Beast falling in love with a Beauty stems from something within all of us, something universal. We have all felt, at some point, ugly and unloved by the object of our desire, and we've felt the supreme unfairness of it. How can you not love me while I so clearly and unalterably love you?"

"The challenge with Spike," adds Rodgers, "was to combine this fairy-tale story with a modern and realistic milieu without losing the magic or compromising the viewer's sense of reality, since both of those elements constantly frame one another throughout the movie, sometimes in harsh and unforgiving ways."

Both the thematic universality and the grounding of fantasy in reality make Spike, the movie and the character, while monstrous, still relatable, which helps set the character apart from most movie villains.

Gusts, after spending almost 6 months (from the time of his casting until the end of the shoot) in Spike's thorny skin, certainly found himself relating to Spike even more than he expected to. "I think Spike is nicer than I am," Gusts said in an on-set interview, a quote he will no doubt come to regret! "I like becoming Spike," he added. "But I think that's because I'm a masochist."