July / August 2009

Project Greenlight winner Kyle Rankin lights up the Maine International Film Festival.

Kyle Rankin’s role as a pioneer in Maine’s growing independent film industry has translated to major studio success. His new insect screamer film Infestation, released by Mel Gibson’s Icon Films, just hit the screen at the Maine International Film Festival. Recently, Rankin divulged some sources of inspiration, including Maine’s black flies and Twin Peaks actor Ray Wise.

Your North American premiere of Infestation has created a lot of buzz at the Maine International Film Festival. Surely these nightmare insects have been conjured up from your upbringing in Maine…

I’ve no doubt Infestation exists because of my experiences with black-fly season. My family has a century-old camp in Oxford–a rustic cabin between two lakes. There’s no plumbing, no electricity. It’s truly wonderful there, but if you take the canoe out at the wrong time of year, you’ll be eaten alive. I remember having a profound realization as a kid–that we’re all quite helpless in the face of a bug swarm. My film has giant insects in it, but Maine bugs don’t even need to be huge to make you beg for mercy.

Tell me about this homecoming of yours at the MIFF. It must take you back to Reindeer Games, regarded as the first truly independent film produced in  Maine.

I’m super proud of Reindeer Games, the feature I produced with Efram Potelle and Shayne Worcester in 1996. It was seriously down and dirty. The cast and crew worked for free, we shot on 16mm short-ends and ‘re-cans,’ we saved up food stamps to feed everyone, and our set was the house we were renting in the West End. I was 23, and it was life-changing–film boot-camp. Shayne came up with our ‘Adopt-a-Roll’ film program, and we managed to raise $6,000 from friends and family. To my great joy, it was recently released to Blockbuster (and Videoport!) under the title The Girl in the Basement. The DVD contains a ‘making of,’ a commentary track with Efram and myself, and a tribute to Shayne Worcester (who was killed in 1999). Reindeer Games [premiered at Portland Museum of Art] in 1997, followed by Pennyweight in 1999, which was huge for us. After all that work, it was wonderful to have people enjoy it.

Which leads us, naturally, to Bulgaria…

We filmed Infestation in and around Sofia because it’s one of the few places left where the American dollar is still strong and you can find talented local crew. Bulgaria is a gorgeous country, with verdant hills, awesome red wine, and people willing to do anything to help. We flew in key crew and cast from Los Angeles, but the rest were Bulgarians.

The best part about being ‘on-location’ is you bond quickly and stay focused. It’s nice to have actors who can’t be on their cell phones between every shot, or have their friends and significant others easily visit. It’s like summer camp. Total immersion.

My favorite memories involve us hitting all the restaurants as a big company and traveling to the provincial towns. By the time I flew back to LA three months later, I knew 47 Bulgarian words and phrases, most of them shocking insults.

Your short film Insex was a great sneak preview for the amazing effects and massive bugs in Infestation.

Insex was made first for fun, but also as a way to show a studio that realistic digital bugs could be produced on the cheap (the budget was $5,000). We shot it in the town I now live in (Topanga, California) over the course of three evenings. Efram then spent two months bringing the giant bug to life and did a hell of a job. He brought that skillset to Infestation and oversaw a team of a dozen digital-effects artists. I’m very proud of the ‘look’ and motion of the bugs in both of those films. Now as far as which came first, the insect or the larvae? My mind just exploded.

What was it like, working with Icon while Mel  Gibson has been mired in controversy the last few years?

I had a wonderful experience. I’ve heard the horror stories about nasty executives ruining scripts, but the Icon gang is very intelligent and creative. Put simply, they made the movie better. I did about ten drafts of Infestation and actually looked forward to getting their notes. I’d work with Icon again in a heartbeat. They understand entertainment. I never met Mel, but whatever was happening in his personal life never affected business matters. As a general rule, I never look at any kind of tabloid news. These people are now my collaborators, so I steer clear of gossip.

It’s becoming clear that actor Ray Wise is a muse of yours.

The best way to get a short film noticed is to cast a famous face. Efram was a huge Twin Peaks fan, and he brought Ray to my attention. We wrote Ray a letter, and, to my complete amazement, his manager said Ray  read the script, laughed a lot, and wanted to do it. Ray agreed to fly to Maine and act in Pennyweight for free. Not only do I still feel indebted to him, but Ray’s an awesome talent. He’s the scariest and funniest actor I know–which is not a common combination. He’s since been in everything I’ve been involved in, and I hope he’ll accept a role in my next.

You and Efram were thrust into the spotlight by the HBO series Project Greenlight and your filming of The Battle of Shaker Heights. What can you share about your perspective on the Hollywood spin cycle compared with your life and work now?

Project Greenlight was a huge break and great exposure. Several people I now make movies with were involved in The Battle of Shaker Heights, so I can’t complain. Did we look like idiots at times? Absolutely. Was the series edited for maximum drama? Totally. Did the editing even fabricate things that didn’t happen? Affirmative. But I wouldn’t trade it. I learned a ton about myself and how to make major motion pictures. Did it strain my collaboration with Efram? Yes. But only in the way that more options opened up and we started focusing on different strengths.

If you think of us as a local rock band, Greenlight was like a huge record contract. It was bound to shake things up. In the years since, I realized the idea of ‘making it’ was kind of a falsehood. As a professional writer/director, there’s never a time when you stop running the marathon. I now have all the things I hoped for: powerful agents, my own production shingle, studio connections…but it still comes down to me sitting at my computer and writing. The best gift Greenlight gave me is I can now walk into studio meetings and the executives know me. The details are gone, but they know I was on a 13-episode HBO series and co-directed a film for Miramax starring Shia LaBeouf.

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