‘BMBR Interviews’…Adam Deyoe and Eric Gosselin
Part 2
You guys ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for Yeti 2. Would there have still been a film if it had not reached it’s goals?
Eric: There wouldn’t have been a second movie without kickstarter. There was no way we were going to sink in thousands and thousands of dollars of our own money. I’m pretty happy with how our pledge video came out.
The Yeti 2 intro credit sequence is frankly incredible, as is the overall art style. How was this conceptualised and created?
Eric: We had lots of discussions about the style of movie. I really love the 80s aesthetic, bright colors and neon lights and all that.
Adam: Mike L. Taylor did the the main title design. It was too complicated for me being brand new to VFX. We just told him how we wanted it to look and he knocked it out of the park. The rest of the titles I did myself and based the look of it off of the opening song that was written for the film by Adam Malamut. I looked at some old VHS boxes and the cover to some old video games and decided I wanted to try that weird grid thing. I’m really happy with how it turned out!
I think it was one of the first VFX things I ever did in my life.
How did you cast the movie? You’ve some very interesting names in there.
Eric: For the most part we just cast our friends and people we thought were cool. Adam and I love Whitney Moore from Birdemic and I’d had her on a podcast I did and thought she was super cool, and Adam had worked with her on Birdemic 2.
She’s really incredible because Birdemic is so awful, and then there’s Whitney in the middle of it actually acting. She’s the only believable person in that movie and she’s taking what she was given and pretty much making it work. That was so fascinating to me.
Phoenix I also had on the same podcast and she’s so cool and sweet and one of her dreams was to be in a Troma movie.
The casting of Dr. Lust appears to have changed since the original Kickstarter page…
Eric: Dr. Lust was originally supposed to be played by adult film star Dana Dearmond, who’s a friend of ours, but she got food poisoning on the morning we were supposed to shoot with her. Luckily, Phoenix belonged to this Facebook network of nude and adult performers and on literally no notice got us Liryc Suicide. Liryc saved the day by agreeing to be in our dumb movie, even though she didn’t know any of us.
She probably thought we were creeps.
How long did it take to write the screenplay for Yeti 2? How, if at all, did it evolve during production?
Eric: Jim and I wrote it over the course of a month or two. Hard to remember exactly. We’d get together during the day and really had the best time working on it. We were constantly cracking each other up. It pretty much stayed the same from the last draft until shooting. The first movie had a lot of improv, but this one not so much because we liked the script.
Adam: I just remember having lunch with Eric and Jim after they finished the first full draft and they read the whole thing aloud to me. I laughed the whole time. We made a few changes and had some punch ups from friends after that, but nothing huge.
Yeti 1 Was written by our friend Moses but then I believe Eric, Moses, and I rewrote the whole thing over the course of a weekend or two. But I could be mistaken. You should interview Moses about that.
Moses: Hi! (This isn’t really Moses.)
How was life on set with Yeti 2 compared to the first film?
Eric: Yeti 1 was filmed mostly over the course of a weekend, with little bits here and there afterwards. It was fun, but Adam and I were going nuts trying to shoot all the pages. We usually had 2 cameras running at all times so we could get the master shot and coverage done quickly. There was a lot of improvising from the actors because they never had much time to learn their lines.
Part 2 was much more professional. We did a script readthrough with the whole cast, then once we were on set we’d rehearse a couple of times before we started shooting. We’d shoot for 12-14 or so hours, have breaks for meals. We really didn’t want to burn the cast out because the shooting schedule was 2 weeks long. It was a ton of fun and everyone really got into it and was super supportive.
Adam: Both films were a blast to make but I think Yeti 2 couldn’t have gone better. We killed ourselves making the schedule work with the least resistance and fairest hours we could. It really worked out great. We had AMAZING food on set basically donated by our friend Ebru who runs a few restaurants in LA so that really kept morale up.
“…Allister was very hung over during the last day of shooting. We had to do the sex scene between he and Adam and he was hot and sweaty and smelled terrible.“
How did you stay motivated? Were you ever close to calling it quits?
Eric: I’m pretty sure Adam wanted to kill himself multiple times during post production, so I’ll let him answer that. As far as being on set, it was very very smooth and everyone had a great time, except for when Mike, our Yeti and Allister, was very hung over during the last day of shooting. We had to do the sex scene between he and Adam and he was hot and sweaty and smelled terrible.
Both he and Adam (Adam Malamut) were pretty miserable.
Adam: Yeah, post on that movie took about a year. It was brutal towards the end doing delivery when everything would go wrong and technical difficulties piled up. The real problem, going back to money, was that we had no post budget. I think we had 750 – 1000 bucks for Yeti 2. So I worked on that movie pretty much every day for 6 months and didn’t take another job. I just worked on the movie. It was hard… I wanted to do it as it was incredibly fun and fufilling, but financially it killed me.
We didn’t have money to hire a special FX guy aside from a friend who did maybe 15-20 percent of it. We didn’t know how we were going to pull off the other 150 digital FX shots in the film. So I went on youtube and watched basic tutorials on how to use after effects.
This was something I had never touched before. And after weeks and weeks of this I started doing the FX myself. I looked at specific tutorials based on what I needed in a shot. Rinse and repeat. I may have not made any money doing this, but I learned a ton and didn’t need to pay to go to school to do it!
What were the biggest challenges/surprises of filming?
Eric: One of the biggest challenges was shooting in the 90+ degree LA heat with a very sweaty man in a Yeti suit. I felt so fucking bad for Mike Price. It was not fun at all for him. That suit is so fucking thick! His face was constantly falling off because the spirit gum wouldn’t stick to his face because he was sweating so much.
Adam: Biggest surprise was that Dave who played dick didn’t feel comfortable kissing another woman on screen.
So we made him kiss Eric.
The dummy head in Faunz’s office. Can’t help but feel I know it from somewhere. Is it just a random prop?
Eric: Ha! Finally someone notices it! I saw that at the thrift store we were buying props from and had to buy it. I think I still have it in my closet somewhere.
Adam: I hate that thing. I think it’s a mold of Boris Karloff or something. Eric spent like 20 bucks on it. TWENTY BUCKS!
Lloyd Kaufman makes a hilarious cameo in Yeti 2. What is he like to work with, both in front of and behind the camera?
Eric: Lloyd is very nice and always down to help people. He doesn’t learn his lines very well, though. Barbara Tuckman?
Adam: Lloyd has been in all of our movies! He’s down to be in almost anything. He’ll even come to you! He’s a great guy and incredibly helpful.
Just thinking about him makes me smile. Working with him is easy breezy. BUT he does like to improve and that can take things to a whole new level that you might not wanna be on!
What has the reception been like to Yeti 2? How do you yourselves view what you have created?
Eric: We’re very happy with it. Most people who have seen it seem to react pretty positively towards it.
Adam: I really love the movie and I never like the movies we make afterwards. You spend so much time with something and by the time it’s done you have moved on to other projects or ideas. But Yeti 2 has never felt that way. I really love it.
I understand there has been some controversy surrounding Amazon distribution of Yeti 2…
Eric: Yeah, it sucks. They changed their content restrictions and a bunch of low budget movies got axed from their streaming service. We were just about to go free on Prime, but alas not anymore.
Adam: We’re trying to find a way around this. We want people to see it! But yeah, it’s kinda devastating.
Any plans to re-release Yeti 1?
Eric: That’s totally in Troma’s hands. We signed it away to them.
Adam: We wanna remake it in a way. But not in the traditional sense. More talk on that later if we can get Yeti 2 back out there into the world, and there is demand for it.
Are there plans for a physical release of Yeti 2?
Adam: We just got a shipment of hundreds of Blu Rays! We will be selling them for around $20! It has a ton of special features and is SUPER slick. You can contact us through Email, Twitter or our facebook page as of now. We will let you know if it ever gets on Amazon!
Nice!
Also, will the soundtrack be made available? It’s fucking awesome.
Adam: SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE HERE: https://yetilifeonthesoundtrack.bandcamp.com/
NICE!!
Before we wrap things up, I’d love to know what are your thoughts on the so called ‘Bad Movie’ genre. Are you guys fans yourselves of so-bad-they’re-good movies?
Eric: I love love love bad movies. I love Birdemic, I love Troll 2, I love Splatter Farm. The worse and more inept the better, as long as they’re not boring. There’s nothing worse than a boring movie. When I was in highschool I was obsessed with going to my local video store and pouring through their horror section. I would try to find the worst of the worst. The shittier and hokey the better.
They’re probably better at instructing film students than watching a good movie. It shows you what not to do.
Adam: Couldn’t agree more. I loved watching Mystery Science Theater at 2 am in high school and then trying to seek out those films without the commentary. I worked at a video store so it wasn’t hard for me! George Hardy from Troll 2 is actually in Eric and my second movie together Street Team Massacre.
And finally, the question on everyone’s lips…If you could choose to be reincarnated as a mythical creature with one fetish obsession, what creature and obsession would you choose and why?
Eric: I’d like to be a Krampus with a foot fetish. I don’t have a foot fetish, but I think it’d be nice to have one.
Adam: I’d like to be a Dracula with a dick fetish. I don’t have a dick fetish, but I think it’d be nice to have one. It’d be nice to have a dick too.
Guys, that you so much for speaking to BMBR, and for contributing so earnestly to Rule 34. Your work is deeply appreciated.
Eric: Thanks, baby.
Adam: THANK YOU!!!!
Before watching Yeti: A Love Story, then purchasing Another Yeti A Love Story: Life on the Streets, and then buying its awesome soundtrack, check out some more behind the scenes photos of the development of Yeti one and two (three will begin production soon, right guys? RIGHT GUYS?!)
