* I made a movie and I wanted to talk about it, but it felt weird rambling on, so the always wonderful Erin Callahan offered to interview me, which feels slightly less weird. Here’s Erin’s interview*

Troyson -- Can I call you Troyson? -- you’re about to release a feature-length film titled Corpsey’s Cheap Chillers, which will be available to stream on YouTube or buy through Gumroad bundled with a bunch of extras. How are you feeling? Anxious or drunk with glee?

Since we’ve been besties for two decades, I think you already know the answer is overflowing dread. You spend a solid year obsessing over art then throw it out there in the world and it’s like, “Is my child going to die on impact or have legs?” To further muddy the metaphor, I get my kid is weird and “artsy” and not going to be for everyone, but I just want him to find his people.

Has it already been two decades?? No matter, we’re still young and hip. Speaking of hip, Corpsey’s Cheap Chillers is a queer, campy, modern take on hosted late-nite horror movie shows like Elvira’s Movie Macabre. How did this idea find its way into your brilliant noggin?

I love horror anthologies (look at my totally healthy obsession with Are You Afraid of the Dark?), but I hate when they’re just shorts strung together. I need a wraparound to tie them into a neat anthological bundle. I used to love watching MonsterVision and USA Up All Night as a kid, so that seemed like a fun fit and the tone of the shorts are all over the place so having them presented as short movies made sense.

Corpsey is played by NYC drag artist and YouTuber Danger von Danger. How did you connect and how did the two of you work together to develop the character?

Initially, I was going to play Corpsey and I had no idea what to do for the makeup, so I thought about asking Danger to consult. I’d been a fan of Danger’s since watching him compete in on-line drag competitions Cutthroat Drag and Dragshowdown Season 1. He was my favorite on both shows so I started watching his YouTube vids. He does drag, he does news, random fun things. Check out his YouTube and support queer content creators.

My original idea was Corpsey hosting three half hour movies, but it shifted to nine shorts, which meant I had to play more roles. I didn’t want the whole movie to be me, so instead of asking Danger for advice, I was like, “Hey, why don’t I just see if Danger will play the character himself?” Up until then, I’d commented on his videos, and we followed each other on Twitter, so I wasn’t a complete stranger, but I was a complete stranger. But when I contacted him, he was fantastic, enthusiastic, and we just communicated back and forth online for a bit until he was able to shoot all that material. Honestly, I was working about non-stop for a year on these shorts, so I was basically burned out and having him play the character and record himself doing it was a massive relief.

The short films featured in Corpsey’s run the gamut from funny-creepy animation to truly unsettling live-action. Did you find yourself learning new skills and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to explore new styles?

No. Next question. Kidding. Yeah, I came into this knowing how to edit video. I’m confident in my writing and being able to composite a shot, but there’s so much more to making a movie. I taught myself two different styles of animation. At one point, I wanted a really homemade, unsettling score, so I looked up videos on how to play the spoons and taught myself the basics. I also realized that I don’t use close up shots so I pushed myself a few times to change things up. I could have spent thousands of dollars hiring a dozen people to do certain things for the movie, but I don’t have thousands of dollars, so I taught myself everything necessary to make it happen.

You learned to play the spoons!? Did your newly acquired spoon skills make into any of the shorts?

Just for the score for “Altogether Alone.” Although now I’m eager to portray a spoon-playing maniac on-screen someday.

The world absolutely needs a spoon-playing maniac. Can you give us a quick teaser for each short featured in Corpsey’s Cheap Chillers?

Heck yeah, here we go:

“Missing Presents” is a narrated text conversation between a dude and his girlfriend, a teacher who’s worried that one of her students is in trouble.

“Manners” follows a housesitter with allergies.

“Raw Footage” is a found footage short about a YouTuber profiting off his dead neighbors.

“Expectant Emo” is an animated short about a lonely teen who gets a late-night visitor.

“Haunted Sights” is a second screen and POV tale about a magazine editor covering up a murder.

“Altogether Alone” follows a cat lady in quarantine going stir crazy.

“Ingrozitu” is an animated silent film in the style of a 1920s classic about socialites throwing a party against better judgement.

“New Neighbors” is a quirky tale about a widower and a young woman clashing during power outages.

What was your budget?

Corpsey’s Cheap Chillers cost me a whopping $500 to produce, and when you watch the movie, you’re going to say, “Wow, this looks like a solid $650!” Seriously though, I spent so much time color correcting and tweaking the sound and image and doing so much animation, I think it still feels cheap, but the production value is a couple notches above total amateur. And I put “cheap” right in the title. It’s not meant to be pretentious; it’s fun.

So fun! How did you manage to accomplish this with such limited resources?

I started with absolutely nothing. It was like, hey, I’ve got no equipment, no local actors, and no money, I should definitely make a feature length movie! For equipment, my birthday was coming up, and then Christmas, so I told my family all I wanted was a microphone, a digital camera, a tripod, etc. I bought editing software for something like $40.

You worked with family, old friends, new acquaintances, and people you’ve never met in real life to make this film happen -- any unique challenges presented there?

Absolutely. It’s so much easier to see someone and communicate as opposed to emails. Yes, I’ve written emails to people in my life saying, “I need you to record yourself grunting a few times for me,” ’cause you got to spice up that fight scene or whatever. A two-minute conversation that would lead to me recording someone’s audio in person could take a month or two of back and forth emails and waiting for the person to get around to it. Thankfully I was almost always working on two or three shorts at the same time so if I was waiting for material from an actor, I still had plenty of work to do.

You have the patience of a goddamn saint. Though I wonder if your approach, which you developed out of necessity, well before the pandemic, will become more common. Any advice for filmmakers looking to create something while maintaining their social distance?

Oh yeah, I put a good chunk of this together before COVID-19 was a thing, so when it hit, I just kept on trucking. If you want to assemble a movie with performers who aren’t in the same room (or state), it all comes down to plotting the story. I couldn’t write a short with two people in the same place, so I animated a short and had you photograph your hands for it. I wrote in a dream sequence that I put together by having a few actors record themselves against a blank wall and edited it together. The effects wouldn’t work unless it was a trippy dream. Not all quarantined shorts have to be haunted Zoom meetings. Those can be fun, but think outside that self-isolating box.

So all the music kicks ass, especially the theme song -- how did that come together?

Thanks! I’m a big music fan even though I can’t sing or play any instruments, but I put as much music as I could in this. Thankfully I know talented people, so that sure helped. There’s a cover of “Ain’t We Got Fun” in this (part of the voice acting done by GaylyDreadful’s own Terry). My friend Michael Brown has an original song. There’s this hilarious improvised song two of my performers messed around with and I was able to edit into something coherent. I thought opening the movie with a really cool theme song would help sell the whole Corpsey Show aspect.

You’d mentioned that your kickass boyfriend used to be in a band so I decided to run with that. I wrote up some lyrics and kind of told him to make me music, and it blew me away. Then your kickass friend Nicky recorded the lyrics in a few different ways and Aric mixed it all together and made something amazeballs.

I totally got goosebumps the first time I heard it! Quality music is a key piece of quality horror. Speaking of, you’re a lifelong horror fan. What were your major influences with this project?

Oh man, what isn’t an influence? Nosferatu, The Last Broadcast, Lady in the Lake, Tales from the Crypt, Bad Ben, and on and on.

On the flip side, I was influenced by what not to do. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of amateur films, low budget indies, cheap found footage flicks, etc. You pick up what not to do by learning from others’ mistakes. And also, I challenged myself not to be repetitive. Every short had to have a point. There needed to be at least one aspect of each that I’d never seen before. I was always throwing out ideas because I’d think, “Well, that’s sort of like something out of X movie.”

On the other flipside, I wanted to make this movie to potentially inspire others. How cool would it be for someone to stumble on Corpsey’s Cheap Chillers, and say, “Well, that’s cool, but you know what? I could make something like that!” I’d be thrilled if any indie filmmakers saw this and decided to make their own movie.

What are you going to do next, Troyson??

The $500 question! In many ways, Corpsey’s Cheap Chillers is a proof of concept. “Hey, look, this random dude made something cool out of absolutely nothing. What if he had $5,000?” I’d love to produce a sequel – help other indie filmmakers make crazy art and put together into a cool package. Besides all that, I’m currently working on Corpsey’s Comic Chillers, which is a comic book spin-off that’s in the vein of the old EC comics like Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. It’s collection of four tales I’m writing and illustrating.

All the congratulations, my friend! I can’t wait for the world to see your queer, campy, funny, scary masterpiece. And for them to see me in a blonde wig! Tell the people where they can see Erin in a blonde wig!

Corpsey’s Cheap Chillers is now on YouTube.

If you like what you see and want more, or if you’re interested in supporting indie filmmaking, the movie is available as a digital download (Closed Captions included), bundled with a forty minute behind the scenes/blooper video, a commentary track, a special edition recut of the “Ingrozitu” short that’s really fun, PDFs of some of the scripts and fiction the shorts were based off, and more. You can check that out right here.