I met Jesse Griffith in college.
We both were undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz and he had just made a no-budget sci-fi feature film (the third in a series, if I recall correctly).
It was amateur. It was corny. Everything about it looked like ultra-cheap student filmmaking. But it was a powerfully delirious experience to see a fellow student make a feature film, inspiring my own "don't ask permission" approach many years later.
Jesse now works in the movie industry professionally and continues to make movies on the side -- films that look every bit as polished as any Hollywood blockbuster.
Check out the trailer his latest short film, Cockpit: The Rule of Engagement, and read our exclusive interview with him.
Just starting its festival run, this new short film is incredibly polished and clearly demonstrates his ability as a confident and imaginative sci-fi director.
From the Cockpit website:
“Cockpit: The Rule of Engagement” is a standalone chapter from the same universe [of a feature screenplay also written by Jesse] which follows a Carrier Captain who must decide if it is worth risking the security of Earth to save a suffocating pilot who may or may not have been corrupted by the mind controlling aliens.
HMSF
How
long did it take to shoot?
JESSE GRIFFITH
1 & 1/4 days.
Basically, this whole project started as a two hour test shoot. But rather than shoot meaningless different angles, I wrote a 1 page
script. The results were so good that that page became the middle scene
of my movie, and I wrote two more scenes to take place before and after
the scene I had already shot. We then spent a day shooting those
scenes and had a short film.
HMSF
What's the running time?
JESSE GRIFFITH
11:35
Actor Ronny Cox (who appears in Cockpit) is your uncle, right? I remember him best from Total Recall -- what other big name roles would we know him from?
JESSE GRIFFITH
Ronny Cox is best
known for playing the guitar in the famous dueling banjos scene from
Deliverance. He's the villain in Robocop, relieved Picard of command
and captained the Enterprise D for two episodes [of ST:TNG]. Played, Lt. Bogamill
in Beverly Hills Cop. Played the Colonel in Taps (with Tom Cruise and
Sean Penn). Pretty famous in the sci-fi community these days for his
role as the evil Senator in the Stargate series. Lots of stuff. Over
100 films.
How else did you find -- and pay -- your cast and crew?
JESSE GRIFFITH
Everyone worked for
free and had worked with me in the past. Hellena Taylor was an
excellent actress who played a bit part in my feature 10 years ago and
who I had always wanted to put in a sci-fi film and hadn't had the
chance until now.
HMSF
Anyone else famous
in it -- and what else were they in? How did
you get them?
Hellena plays the voice of the new hit video game Bayonetta. Karl Champley is the host of several home improvement shows. They did it because they see potential in the feature I assume.
HMSF
What was the budget for the short?
JESSE GRIFFITH
About $3,500. Most
of that went to hard drives and software upgrades.
HMSF
What's your budget on the feature?
Currently $5-7 million.
HMSF
What's your day job?
JESSE GRIFFITH
Graphics/ FX artist
for Jimmy Kimmel Live and a proud member of the Art Director's Guild.
HMSF
When and how can people see the full short?
I'm trying to get it out there! A lot of festivals seem to disqualify you if your film is online. So it won't be on YouTube until I've run the festival circuit. So tell your local film festival that you want to see "Cockpit: The Rule of Engagement" and I'll show it there if they let me. For example, tell Comic-Con you want to see Cockpit. I haven't heard from them yet!
HMSF
And anything else you want people to know?
JESSE GRIFFITH
Cockpit
the feature, is the story of a squadron of fighter pilots, stranded in
their cockpits deep in enemy space, struggling with reality and delusion
as they are hunted by an alien race that controls minds. The screenplay is a finalist in the Visionfest
Film Festival. 96 pages of the feature take place in one location: the cockpit of a spaceship. This is a project rearing to
go and can be made on a practical budget. I hope to literally
"take-off" with it soon. Oh and people can check out the website for
weekly updates and concept art and graphic novelizations from the
feature.
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