May 10, 2010 Tainted Filmstrips
Drew Bolduc as Phil O'Ginny
By Alexander Chang
With James Cameron’s Avatar estimated budget peaking at $310 million and worldwide gross revenue hitting $2.72 billion, it’s hard imagining where local Richmond films such as, “Puberty: Benji’s Special Time” and “Bigfoot vs. The Indian vs. ZZ Top” lay in the spectrum of Hollywood blockbusters.
“The Taint” directed by Dan G. Nelson and Drew Bolduc, follow suit of these movies with rage infected men brutally smashing women’s heads with boulders and the use of over a hundred dildos during the making.
The Taint is a locally produced, independent film that centers on the survival of Phil O’Ginny and his heroine counterpart, Misandra, after a water contamination turns the minds of men into “raging misogynists who want nothing more than to crush women’s heads with rocks and transforms society into a land of sadistic violence and horrible brutality,” according to the film description. “The Taint” premiered at The Byrd Theater in Carytown on April 17 with a near-capacity audience, unaware that they were applauding an unfinished film.
“We were almost complete failures,” said Nelson. “We exported [the movie] at 11 in the morning and so we finished it at 11:15 and we put it out on like a fast encode. But I’ve never exported a feature film before, so it was like fingers crossed. I think there was like a 15-minute leeway between when we finished burning and we got to the theater. We thought we were going to be a little late.”
Bolduc, co-director, explained that there were no pre-screenings of the movie beforehand, so essentially, he and Nelson were part of the audience that Saturday afternoon. One of the noticeable quirks in the film was loud single tones placed on certain action segments and were actually maladjusted sound outputs.
“There were scenes I had spent a lot of time working on and everything that was changed wasn’t in the movie,” said Bolduc. “The sound was really messed up; part of it was because we had the entire sound effects library on an airport so we were getting all the sounds from over a wireless router. Everybody thought those tones were part of the movies. They were actually severe f**k ups.”
The minor setbacks did nothing to harm the purpose of the feature. The film was conceived a year prior from its premiere while Bolduc sat on the rocks at Richmond’s Belle Isle and realized that the area would be a prime location to film a horror movie. At the time, Bolduc and Nelson did not know of each other until a mutual friend and co-worker at Starbucks introduced each other. Bolduc e-mailed Nelson the script and waited for a reply.
Concept sketch for the film by directors
“A month went by and I sent [the script] to him and I was like, he’s not going to want to do this, no one would want to do this,” said Bolduc. “Then he like compiled this thing off the Internet of like all these, ‘How to do special effects’ and things, and sent it to me and I was like, ‘Damn like he took all this time to do this and then I said, ‘Okay I guess we’re going to do it then’ because at that point I was pretty sure that the movie wasn’t going to happen.”
As an independent film, “The Taint” is an example of artistic freedom and the neutralization of commercialism and censorship. Nelson graduated from VCU’s filmmaking program and Bolduc took a leave of school and became embedded into the Richmond film community. Both expressed that it is important to be in an environment with artistic freedom.
“I was a sculpture major and looking back on it is like, the things we were doing were a response to like, having to be really pretentious,” said Bolduc. “It was encouraged, I don’t know if it’s encouraged anymore, but people aren’t really making things that they think are good or that they really enjoy, they’re trying to make art and it’s all about trying to make art. And like I’m kind of a pretentious guy because I think I’m above pretentiousness, so my response to it was [to] make really filthy dirty movies that aren’t trying to be art.”
(Download an audio version of this interview)
Aside from artistic merit, the product is not seen as commercially viable. Todd Schall, vess general manager of the Byrd Theatre, found the film to be artistically challenging but hard to market in the film industry.
“It was very edgy and there were certainly a lot of talent behind it and that’s okay but I think that if you’re going to distribute it commercially, you would have a hard time finding an audience for it,” said Schall. “And I guess that’s a good of a reason than any other to provide opportunities for independent filmmakers to show their work. There’s a lot of imagery and concepts behind the film that are disturbing. But I think it’s certainly interesting and it was done with a lot of talent.”
Drew Bolduc on the set doing make-up
Bolduc at the same time felt that there’s a certain limit to where a filmmaker is suppose to weigh revenue over artistic merit and thought there is a certain point where “adjusting” hits a wall.
“The ideas of this movie, if you tell people, they’re [going to] be like, ‘Why would you want to do that and who wants to see that?’” said Bolduc. “So a lot of people make movies based on how other people think about it. I’ve had people say to me that have been in my movies, they want to make a movie next that they can show their parents. They have ulterior motives other than just really wanting to make whatever they want to do and I think Richmond film makers are the ones that are just doing whatever they want and have been doing what they want.”
These ideas seem to stick in Richmond. Video Fan is a local independently run video rental story located on Strawberry Street that offers free rentals of any locally produced films. Mike Hutcherson worked at Video Fan for six years and has noticed an increase in local films.
“We really started to carry them about 10 years ago,” said Hutercherson. “Before that you didn’t really see that many people making movies around here. It’s picked up a lot especially with the film department at VCU. I think before, because film is such a collaborative art form, if you don’t have a community, then it is way more difficult than say other types of art which are kind of like a solitary enterprise. So if there is any kind of increase is good. I think it’s always a good thing.”
Bolduc and Nelson plan to submit “The Taint” to various film festivals across the East Coast and to continue screening the film at various locations. They plan to find various online outlets to help promote the film and hopefully make more films in the future.
“I had a friend tell me once that Richmond is the cradle of mediocrity,” said Nelson. “I feel like that’s the perception that a lot of people have of Richmond, but I feel like Richmond is just the launching pad for a lot of really great work. You just need to get yourself to do it because it’s easy to just hang out.”
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You can become a fan and follow “The Taint” on facebook by going to http://www.facebook.com/taintmovie. The facebook page has updates on various press, pictures, and videos of the film and also allows you to interact with the makers directly. “The Taint” also has a twitter page which can be found at https://twitter.com/taintmovie.
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