Welcome to the Unfilmable.com interview with Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath director:

Edward Martin III

The following interview was conducted by Gavin Smith.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What I (Gavin Smith) have here is essentially an interview with Edward Martin, Genius Monkey and all-around cheeky devil. I hauled off and flung a bagfull of questions at him and he responded most kindly, even when they covered territory he had already sketched out in his press release materials. I couldn't be more stoked at the prospect of seeing his work.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is very likely my favorite book, not by virtue of being my idea of the perfect book, but just because I first read it so early in my life, when I was about 12 or 13 years old and plucked the Ballantine paperback from the newsstand rack. It was the wraparound cover art by Gervasio Gallardo that pulled me in, but the story was so exotic and the writing so hypnotic that I can think of very little before or since that has effected me as profoundly. It gave me a taste for exoticism and stylistic mystery for its own sake that has directed my further reading and literary taste ever sense, putting me at odds with nearly every teacher of literature I ever read for and forming what amounts to a subversive literary aesthetic which responds to and requires weirdness the same way Lovecraft's did.

Gavin Smith: "I would be interested in hearing you describe your own take on Lovecraft and the Dream-Quest. Jason's experience with it is on record, but how did you come to this project?"

Edward Martin III: First, sorry about the delay in responding. The new computer crapped out, killing 320G of files. Most are Dev files, which aren't critical, but massively annoying. Still trying to recover data.

Hm. Well, this is in the Press Kit, but I can quote it here, I suppose:

Making "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"

by Edward Martin III

Since Day One, it's been a nutty project. I had just clocked one of the shortest shorts ever at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival ("The Call of Cthulhu" -- about forty seconds) and was announcing that my next project was going to be a feature film. An animated feature film. Furthermore, an animated adaptation of a novel by H. P. Lovecraft that had never been adapted to film before. It was nutty!

Previously, my most prolific work had been a series of exceedingly popular animated stick figures, whose odd motions reminded some of the more lascivious among us of things we all do, but rarely admit. I was, truth be told, in the mood for animation. It was fun!

Because "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" has actually been one of my favorite guilty-pleasure books for so long, I was already inclined toward it. I played around with the idea of doing just a single scene -- Randolph Carter's terrifying fall into the Vale of Pnath, chase by a dhole, and subsequent "saving" by hungry ghouls -- using clay animation techniques. Never done that before! Then, my friend Aarron, who plays the most unfortunate scholar in a Guerrilla Productions tiny movie "The Call of Cthulhu", and who was an ardent supporter of naughty animated stick figures, suggested doing it using stick figure animation. It was at least a technique I knew and Aarron, having spent some time in the employ of Will Vinton Studios, was probably telling me in as gentle a way as possible that my eyes had exceeded my stomach's capacity.

Within a few days of thinking this, I remembered Jason Thompson's amazing comic book adaptation of the novel. My recent success on "The Testament of Tom Jacoby", which was a voiceover narrative with pans and zooms on stills, led me to believe that it was possible to maybe do a similar thing for "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". I contacted Jason, we started talking and it came together very quickly.

image © 2002 Jason B. Thompson

"The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" became much more animated than we had ever planned, including in some scenes hundreds or thousands of independently animated elements. Jason volunteered to redraw a few panels and ended up redrawing basically the entire book, as well as providing multiple images, separated frames, etc. Also, as the project gained momentum, it gained more volunteers, all eager to help however they could. Soon, the thousands of scanned images were being cleaned, separated, and in many cases animated by eager Lovecraft enthusiasts from around the world. The process lent itself naturally to distribution and may be one of the first volunteer distributed animation features ever. In fact, "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" basically became a Learning Laboratory for anyone who wanted to help, to learn a little more about animation, a little more about the tools, or who just wanted to spend a few evenings having a fun time drawing pictures in exchange for a promised copy of the movie and screen credit.

Instead of a single narrator, I scripted this to be immediate, with individual voices and scenes. The original book was entirely narration, with the exception of a monologue by Nyarlathotep. Jason scripted much of this in his comic book adaptation and I thought that a lot of that was just too cool to pass up, so I ran with his and scripted the remaining caption/narration. We still open with narration from the book, but once Carter descends the Seventy Steps to the Cavern of Flame, it's all dialogue. Eighty-three characters, in fact, are voiced in this movie, and I shook every tree I could and a couple I ought not to have to get people to record voices for me (don't panic at keeping names straight -- a lot of these characters have only one or two lines). Again, all volunteers, all wanting to have a good time and contribute to a fun project, people showed up. We eventually used about twenty-five different people for the various voices.

Through absolute luck (on our part!), Cyoakha Grace became interested and involved and fell for the story as well. Her music is haunting and beautiful and wicked and mysterious. This was so much the flavor for "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", that there was no way I could have refused. Well, I could have, but I would have been an idiot. No stringy strings here -- no clichés to lead a viewer by the hand. Other than requesting that the music be made with an otherworldly quality (by which I meant no obviously identifiable musical instruments), Cyoakha had free rein to create as she wished and the result is just an amazing tapestry of music, coating, spicing, and just generally making weirder every weird minute of this movie.

Now, almost two years to the mark after deciding to do this movie (actually, after my lovely Producer agreed to fund it), it's done. It's wrapped up and pretty and ready to show. It's gorgeous and terrible and awesome and -- finally -- it's done.

So, what's next? I have been instructed by my family to take some time off so that they can get to know me again. According to them, they're running out of sticks with which to poke raw meat into my office.

But there will be another movie. Not a sequel, though. Randolph Carter finds his Sunset City. That's what I've always loved about this story. A happy ending.

In a Lovecraft story.

Nutty!

Gavin: "You told us of other film projects you have that may be included on the Dream-Quest dvd: are they Lovecraftian in theme or content?"

Edward: Well the two for-sures are "The Call of Cthulhu", which is a small comedy piece, only about a minute long, and "The Testament of Tom Jacoby", which is my own work, but thematically similar to such Lovecraft pieces as "The Cave", etc. The two possible things will be "Innsmouth Legacy", which is another short semi-comedy (although I may play it straight), and "Sundog", which is my own and very Lovecraftian and short. I've actually performed "Sundog" live on a number of occasions.

Gavin: "I would bet that you have many plans that are along completely other lines."

Edward: Lots of things we're thinking about. Shorts, features, some prose writing. Catching up on two Lost Years. I have several scripts (seven, I think) done and a few more plotted out. They include lots of different genres. A lot will depend on if I can get a REAL budget for the next projects. As of last night, Dream-Quest's current budget has reached approximately $3200. So, getting money for the next feature might not be too difficult. The big issue, of course, is time.

Gavin: "For practical reasons alone, to devote one's career in filmmaking only to the further representation of Lovecraftian projects would be too narrow an application of your technical expertise."

Edward: Oh, yeah. Besides, there are craploads of stories to tell. A couple of years ago, I got a wild hair and wrote 150 stories -- all in a row.

Gavin: "I am interested in hearing your personal experience of Lovecraft and especially the Dream-Quest. Had you already read it when you began your project with Jason?"

Edward: Heck yeah. And I loved it! Read a lot of Lovecraft as a kid and started back up about six years or so ago.

Gavin: "How old were you when you first read it?"

Edward: Hm, late teens, I expect. Can't remember.

Gavin: "You're the guy, the Dream-Quest man, so I am keen to know how you first got into it."

Edward: Er, I'm just one guy. While working on this, I ran across two other fellas working up scripts for Dream-Quest. They seemed disappointed that I had already started, but I told 'em what I tell everybody: "Just make the damn movie!" I figure there's a different way of seeing Lovecraft's work for every set (note I didn't write "pair") of eyes looking. Filmmaking is cheap enough now that everybody who WANTS to make movies SHOULD make movies.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~