By BILL REICK
Don’t miss Part 1 of Bill Reick’s interview with Joe Begos.
Rejoice, fans of neon alien blood splatter. Your new favorite movie is here.
Joe Begos returned to the big screen this summer with his sixth flick, JIMMY AND STIGGS. And we’re emphasizing “the big screen” here, because this movie is the first in a slate distributed by The Horror Section, an independent studio dedicated to making and theatrically distributing unrated, no-holds-barred horror films for theatrical release globally. The company, founded by filmmaker Eli Roth, is focused on building a robust intellectual property library and creating the world’s premier horror brand. If JIMMY AND STIGGS is any indication, the company is off to the races, as this first release is one for the ages.
Following fan favorite fright flicks like Bliss (2019) and VFW (2019), Begos began the cosmic journey way back during the pandemic, only to hit pause to make Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022). Here’s the crazy part: He filmed it all in his own apartment. Throughout the years-long production, he pieced together an instant crowd-pleaser, as JIMMY AND STIGGS might be his most fun, raucous horror movie yet.
Read on for Part 2 of RUE MORGUE’s conversation with the splatterpunk director.
Joe, where are you from? Before LA, were you in the woods in Rhode Island?
I grew up in Rhode Island, yeah. And besides Providence, 90% of it is kind of foresty.
Do you feel that living in the woods influenced the art that you make?
I think we’re all inherently influenced by stuff that we grew up with. But the alien aspect of it – when I was a kid, I would watch Unsolved Mysteries and X-Files and stuff like that. The theoretical “real” aliens that abducted people were always in the woods, and they were always grays.
When I was a kid, I wasn’t necessarily frightened of the Xenomorphs or Predators. It was the actual gray aliens, because that’s what theoretically actually abducted people. I feel like whenever people make alien movies, they’re trying to design or build some sort of new alien, when the gray aliens, the iconography is so strong. That’s what everybody relates to. If people were in fact abducted by real aliens, they would be gray aliens. So, I thought it would be interesting to do something like that, because that was what frightened me when I was a kid growing up in the woods. Shooting out in the woods definitely influenced my first couple of movies – we’re influenced by what we grew up with. I think it’s just inherent.
Do you want to believe?
Yeah, it’d be cool if there were aliens out there abducting people.
Hell, yeah! Did you grow up with metal music?
Obviously. My tastes diversified a little bit as I get older, but when I was, like, fucking 7, White Zombie and Alice in Chains and Sound Garden were my favorite bands.
And the title Christmas, Bloody Christmas is pretty close to the classic 1973 Black Sabbath album Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath. What about JIMMY AND STIGGS? I know there’s a Robert Altman movie called O.C. and Stiggs. Where’d the name Stiggs come from?
Joe Begos, mad auteur and honest cinephile
It might have been influenced by that, but I don’t know. Names just kind of come out of nowhere; it’s so weird. The working title for the movie was always JIMMY AND STIGGS, just because it was a buddy movie, and I’m a big fan of Beavis and Butthead and shit like that.
We were always like, “Oh, we’ll come up with a better name.” But every other name we tried felt like a SyFy Channel movie. So, I thought keeping it was just stronger as a buddy two-hander. A lot of people are like, “Are you influenced by O.C. and Stiggs?” It’s like, well, I don’t really like that movie, but I feel like the title sticks in your mind, so maybe inherently. Or not.
I saw a Reddit AMA where you said that your three favorite movies were First Blood (1982), Terminator 2 (1991), and Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996). I had never seen somebody so perfectly distill their, I don’t know if you’d want to call it your aesthetic, maybe essence, in three movies.
I think when people are asked what their favorite movies are, they’re hard-pressed to seem like serious cinephiles or whatnot. I love all that shit, but I feel like a lot of people are lying when they talk about their favorite movies to seem like more of a cinephile than they actually are. You can right through that bullshit.
I got no problem saying Terminator and First Blood are my two favorite things because they fucking rule, you know? That’s probably why – because I’m being authentic in my description and not trying to elevate myself.
I’ve seen you mention Cronenberg and Carpenter as influences, too. Do you have any unexpected inspirations – either inside the world of film or not?
I feel like there’s a lot. It’s funny. I was talking on a podcast a couple of weeks ago, and they asked me about influences specifically for JIMMY AND STIGGS. A lot of people think of The Evil Dead (1981) or Bad Taste (1987). And I mean, it’s hard to avoid bringing those movies up, but when I set out to make this movie, it wasn’t necessarily like, I want to do that. I think they’re ingrained in my blood.
Oliver Stone is such a huge influence on me. We ended up watching all of Oliver Stone’s filmography throughout filming, and you look at something like Nixon (1995), and it’s so ridiculous to say, but Nixon is a huge influence on JIMMY AND STIGGS because he uses multiformat photography. There’s black and white 8mm, black and white 16mm. And he’s using it to encompass the paranoia of Nixon, who’s going through this drug-addled fucking situation where everything’s crashing down around him, and he’s abusing pills and doesn’t trust anybody around him.
Stone’s using multi-format media and different altered performances from different realities to show his comedown. You watch Nixon and JIMMY AND STIGGS, and there’s a DNA there. Of course, the same thing is said of JFK (1991) or Natural Born Killers (1994). Talk Radio (1988) was also a huge influence, because that whole movie takes place in a fucking radio station. Robert Richardson and Oliver Stone worked so hard to make the photography in that movie evolve with the paranoia of the character. Is this person going to come kill him? Is he going crazy?
