Dead Meat’s James A. Janisse Gives Us A Slice Of ‘Fresh Meat’
Prolific horror creator and ‘Kill Count’ host James A. Janisse recently sat down with FilmSpeak to discuss his horror anthology Fresh Meat following its theatrical event screenings and ahead of its VOD release.
The release of Fresh Meat marks a new journey for popular horror YouTube channel Dead Meat. Its release cements their first venture into the theatrical space, and follows the recent trend of horror creators entering your local multiplex. Instead of being a feature narrative, however, Fresh Meat combed through over 550 short film submissions before ultimately landing on 13, which were to be released for one night only. The film also features a wraparound segment, Sate The Screen, which was written and directed by Dead Meat founder James A. Jannise. The segment also co-stars Dead Meat Podcast host, co-founder of the channel, and his wife, Chelsea Rebecca. FilmSpeak recently had the opportunity to sit down with James to discuss the film’s release.
FilmSpeak: Was knowing that you've been quintessential for a lot of young horror fans, and knowing that your [love of the genre] helped build that community, involved in the process of you developing this project?
James A. Janisse: Yeah, absolutely. It all kind of goes together. And it's something that really snuck up on me because [I’ve] been doing this just about 10 years now and it found success early on, which was really cool. And it got big pretty quickly, especially since I've been doing YouTube prior to Dead Meat with a sketch comedy channel [Practical Folks] that never took off in the same way. So this kind of meteoric rise really took me aback. All the while, I was just kind of keeping my head down and just doing the work. I was obviously aware of the size and scope, especially as people would start to recognize me out in public and I would go to horror conventions and it'd be a little dicey trying to walk around. So it was a gradual process of realizing just the reach and scope.
I do think we found a lot of audience members during COVID. I often hear things like, “oh, you got me through COVID” or “I found your channel during COVID when I was looking for something to watch”, which I'm glad we could help in that regard! But we were obviously locked out just kind of like making content during that time. So once things started to open back up and we were able to go to these conventions and talk to fans directly, I think that's when it really started resonating with us how much people used our channel to get into the horror genre. But, you know, in that span of time, people would grow up from being a 16 year old, finding something on YouTube to being an adult out in the real world. And so they would come to us at these conventions, and we would just hear nonstop like “you're what got me into the horror genre”, “you're why I started looking at movies differently”, “you're why I went to film school”, and it's such an honor to hear that.
People are like, “oh, I'm sure you hear this all the time”, and I'm like, “I do, but I never get sick of it!” It's my favorite thing to hear that we were in some way an inspiration for someone to find the same love and film that Chelsea [Rebecca] and I have. And so at this point, you know, we've been wanting to move into the film space for a few years. It's very difficult to find the time to do something like that while maintaining a YouTube channel and its constant output. So I've been working on a screenplay, we've been trying to have meetings about developing other ideas, and it's all these things that are still kind of cooking on the backburners. When this idea to do Fresh Meat came along, and Hades Films could help us make this happen, we were just like all in on it. And it's shocking how quickly it came together. I will really appreciate having more time the next time we do it, but the fact that we were able to do it and it was just so exciting. And yeah, a big driving force of it was helping these filmmakers, maybe some of whom started getting into it because of the channel, helping them hone their skill and put a spotlight on the ones who really stand out and developing those talents.
FS: Every single one of the 13 you put together not only feel like they exemplify your taste, but also what people are now looking for in horror. They're all very poignant and relevant, and they played so well at our Toronto show. I just got back from TIFF a couple weeks prior, and the energy was very similar to some of those screenings I saw back then.
JAJ: I wish that it had had a longer theatrical run instead of just the one day because I hear that so much that people were like, “our audience was so into it and reacting” and I'm so happy for people who had that experience.
FS: There’s a common sentiment, at least in my screening and in my circles, that it played like a well-curated festival horror block. I know there was a voting process, but your taste really does bleed through in the selections. Was anything that you were looking for, when you were combing through these 550 plus short films?
JAJ: Variety, novelty, things that surprised me. What’s In Your Bag? alone was such a surprise. I think the feelings I had watching What’s In Your Bag? is what I'm trying to capture in the whole putting this thing together. We didn't want to just pick the most technically impressive shorts, the ones that look the sleekest and felt the most like a real movie, because then it would kind of all feel the same. So what we were more interested in was being able to show the variety of the horror genre, and being able to show all the different things that [the genre] can do, and the different themes that it can talk about. Whether that's one long unbroken shot throughout the entire thing, or an animated short, or found footage, or all these different styles. And yeah, there was the fan vote, and we did use that as a factor in deciding these shorts, but we didn't use it as the only factor because we didn't want to be a popularity contest. If it was just based on shorts, then the filmmakers who already had a large reach or who had a large network, would just automatically go in. So instead, we used it as one of many, many factors. Chelsea said this during the live stream with the other finalists that we had the other day, if we had decided on the shorts that went into the movie on a different day, it would be a different lineup. It was so close between not only the 30 finalists, but even some that we wanted to include as finalists, but we had to cut off at 30. So, it was so difficult to choose which ones made it into the film. And again, it could have been a different selection on a different day. But I'm really happy with the ones we chose, and a big part of that was the variety that we were looking for. We were always looking to surprise the audience with the next one that came up.
FS: The structure was incredible, and that also lends itself to how well made the wraparound was. I know you mentioned it was done over two days, and I can't believe that. I wanted to ask you specifically where that came from because you not only see the fulfillment of your name, but it almost evokes YouTube creators having to constantly feed the algorithm. Where did that thematic significance come from, and did some of the shorts potentially influence the segment?
JAJ: So the wraparound was specifically made to not have to rely on any of the shorts or the selections because we had to start making it before we made the selections. It had to be something that could be universal instead of something where it was specifically leading into one of the short. A bunch of people have asked where the idea came from. I don't consider myself an imaginative person. I think I'm very good at taking ideas and running with them and refining them, but coming up with something from nothing is not my strong point. I struggle with it, and I wish I was better at it. This was one of the few times in my life where an idea came to me and I immediately recognized it as, “Oh wait, that's good!”. I wish I could say how it came to me. I wish I could replicate that more often in my life, but it was just an idea that came to me and I immediately recognized it as like, okay, I think this works because there's a clear escalation that we can have.
It wasn't a conscious decision of [making] something that comments on the YouTube algorithm or screen time, but I think those subconsciously bled into the work. I mean, I live and breathe the YouTube algorithm. I don't say that as a brag or any kind of positive connotation. It is a shackles on my life and I hate how much of my life revolves around it. So yeah, that's going to bleed into the thing I'm writing for this. I'm really proud of it and how it came together, how quickly it came together and the cast in it, I think are fantastic, like Rich [Sommer] and Elle [Riot Fox]. I came up with that idea and I was like, “I know a seven year old actress who could really kill this”, so I'm going to write this character in.
FS: How did Rich Sommer come to be involved in this?
JAJ: So that part was originally written for Zoran [Gvojic], because I wanted it to be like me, Chelsea and Zoran in the first Dead Meat film. But he had an obligation at PAX, it was contractual and he wanted to do it and he didn't want to break that agreement that he had made previously because he's trying to build up Dead Meat Games. So it was very sad that Zoran couldn't be a part of it. When he couldn't make it, I was like, “OK, who do I know who's like an actor friend who's kind of similar to Zoran in some ways? Oh, Rich Sommer!” Actually, we had become friends a year prior because his son Pat is a Dead Meat fan. We ended up becoming friends. He did a presentation for the Dead Meat Horror Awards, and he's been to a bunch of our parties and he's just the nicest guy. He's so down to earth. He's so easy to talk to. He's just so real, which is great. That's what I'm always looking for in people. So I reached out to him and I was like, “hey, we're doing this thing. Would you have any interest?”. He had done a horror anthology before Scare Package 2: Chad's Revenge, so he was familiar with it. It was a low budget thing, and maybe this thing will not be seen by anyone, but he was all in from the moment I told him about it. I rewrote the character to suit him better because I know that Rich can play kind of a smarmy asshole really well. So I made the lines more douchey. And man, did he show up and show out! The hardest part for me acting in that was not laughing at the scenes that we filmed together because he's just so funny. And I'm so honored to have him as part of this.
FS: The [wraparound] cast is so well put-together. Even Chelsea’s cameo! She got Avengers level claps at our screening.
JAJ: I told her people aren't going to hear [her] first line because they're clapping when they see you. I wrote that part for her because I feel like [for] both Chelsea and I, a lot of our audience members see us a specific way. For me, it's the Kill Count host, and that's why I wrote the butcher to be a drastically different kind of character, being this miserable piece of shit guy. And then for Chelsea, she's so dry and hilarious and people don't always see that. They see the podcast host, the more effervescent version of her. She can do this dry sarcasm so well, so I wrote that part for her. And again, she nails it. She has some of my favorite line deliveries.
FS: On top of the main channel, you're doing the Horror Awards, you have Dead Meat Games going on with Zoran, you've done your own shorts with Pre-Game, and now you have a feature under your belt. I know you've talked about doing another Fresh Meat, but where else do you think you could take the channel?
JAJ: As far as the channel goes, I feel like it's in a good spot to just do what it does. You know, we got Kill Counts, we've got the podcast, we do interviews, we've got the Horror Awards every year. I don't know how much more we can pack into the channel, you know, just based on bandwidth, and time, and hours in a day. I'm really happy with where the channel is, and I hope it goes on forever doing what it's doing. We're very interested in developing films, especially with these filmmakers who are Fresh Meat, you know, taking these ideas that really resonate with people and expanding them, making them more robust and turning them into features. I'm always looking to act more, get on screen more. I've been halfway through a screenplay for like a year now. It's just stalled out. One day I'll finish it. But we do have these broader aspirations, since we spent 10 years talking about other people's work. And I love it! I love doing that. I love that people enjoy watching me do that. We, both Chelsea and I, went to film school! We both wanted to always make our own things. I feel it's been years that I've been like, “is this the year where I maybe ease off the kill counts, and have fewer of those, and start doing more of my own things?”. And I think Fresh Meat has really given me the inspiration to maybe pursue that a little bit more just because directing Sate The Screen, the wraparound, was a two day thing. It was such a short amount of time. But I want to do it again! It was so fun to do it. And I want to do it again with a bigger scale and with more time.
The film is a beautifully-curated and eclectic mix of submissions from horror’s freshest voices, all under the Dead Meat banner. Fresh Meat is now available to rent on the independent streaming platform Pijama, with it becoming available on more services very soon.