by Tori Potenza, Staff Writer

Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein have been making indie movies for years, and it is clearly a labor of love. In a world where it is increasingly expensive to live, let alone follow your passions, the filmmakers feel a compulsion to continue telling stories. And with unique debuts like The Once and Future Smash, it is clear why their distinct voices are so important in the horror community. In a genre full of sequels and fueled by tropes, the filmmakers find a way to tell a story that is totally different, while giving horror fans what they have grown to love, and playfully poking fun at our niche obsessions. If you love searching for lost horror gems and fangirl over B movie horror actors, you will truly appreciate what these filmmakers are doing. 

The Once and Future Smash made its world premiere at Fright Fest in London followed by a US premiere at Screamfest in Los Angeles. I was lucky enough to catch it virtually at Chattanooga Film Fest last year. The film is about Mikey Smash (Michael St. Michaels) and William Mouth (Bill Weeden), who both played Smash-Mouth, the football-themed slasher character in the lost 1970 cult film, End Zone 2. 50 years later at a horror convention the two duke it out over who will star as Smash-Mouth in an upcoming reboot sequel. The Mockumentary style movie features iconic talking heads in horror discussing the importance of End Zone 2, and it delves into the horror convention circuit playfully poking fun at horror fans. It has so many great elements that it is hard to explain the film fully, it really is something to be experienced. 

Since its festival run however, Cacciola and Epstein have struggled to find a distribution offer that made sense with the amount of money they put into the production. So they have decided to go the crowdfunding route in order to make sure their project gets the distribution and physical release it deserves. There are just a few days left in their Kickstarter Campaign, and while it has been fully funded, any additional support would help them towards paying off the debts incurred from the production. It will also help them make a physical release of not only The Once and Future Smash, but a VHS release of their lost film End Zone 2 and plenty of other goodies for supporters. Crowdfunding has become a great way for folks like Cacciola and Epstein to fund passion projects and is invaluable for indie filmmakers like them.  I got a chance to chat with the filmmakers over zoom and talk about their fascinating project, their passion for filmmaking, and details about their kickstarter. 

MovieJawn: What was the initial idea then how did all of these other elements come together for The Once and Future Smash?

Michael J. Epstein: So we're not really big convention people, but I find the culture fascinating. And I think it's really that people who did a franchise movie in the 80s who thought nothing of it at the time are now having this reemergence where there's a lot of interest in their careers and people want to cast them in movies now. These people have started to realize these are the movies that have stuck around. These are the movies that have connected with people. We always joke that nobody's gonna go toa  King's Speech convention, like all the Oscar winners, nobody cares. English Patient, sorry.

You think about these prestige films of the time, best picture winners that nobody cares about much now.  But Friday the 13th: Part 5, there's a huge fandom.  It's such a strange phenomenon. And then I also thought it was really interesting because, I won't be too specific, but like, Linda Blair, is a famous one that's well known, if someone else who was involved in playing Reagan in some parts of The Exorcist signs a poster, she won't sign it. There's this kind of rule about who's getting recognition for what they did. 
And so I've been kicking around the idea to make something set in this world where you have a rivalry between two people who both feel that they should receive credit for playing a role. So our friend Neal Jones,he does a podcast called Without Your Head.  He's interviewed just about everybody, and he was having a guest on and was complaining that the guest was mad, that he had had another guest on recently who played the same role in the same movie, and there's debate about who actually did it and who should have credit for it. And I said, oh,  I have this idea for a story concept kind of in that world with those two types of characters.

And Neal said, why don't I reach out to my friend at Mad Monster and see if you'd be able to shoot there and make a movie, set in that environment. About 1/2 hour later, Neal gets back to me and says, OK, I talked to Evan at Mad Monster and he says, we could do it. We could have a table. We can have a panel. We can just basically do whatever we need to do there. And I thought, oh, wow, that's a resource. A lot of times when we're making movies the way we choose what we're going to do next, is based on what resources are available to us. We have many ideas, but it's sort of like which one is feasible right now. So this is a great resource.

I said the concept only works if we have a bunch of people  who are real horror icons and horror actors and directors. And I said, I don't have access to those people. But maybe, would you be interested in trying to recruit those people? And Neal said, yes.  He has good relationships with all those people through his podcast. Then we thought, well ohh, we're in trouble now. Now we actually better make this movie. We better figure out what this movie is.

My premise was that it's a movie that was influential to all others, preceding all the slasher movies. So it's THE influential movie everybody stole from. So we're like, we need an iconic slasher character, something that would have been really memorable and influential to a number of people. So we were kicking around concepts like what is a name for a slasher character? That is, as memorable as Jason and Freddie. And Sophia just said Smash Mouth as kind of a joke, right? 

Sophia Cacciola: Yeah, that's funny. Like, what does Smash Mouth do? Where does it come from? Like, what does it mean? And it's a football term. And that sent us down this football path. We don't know anything about football, but it works so beautifully because of Jason in the hockey mask and stuff. So we're like, OK, it influenced that.

Michael J. Epstein: Yeah. And it's like there are not really any like football slashers. And people view these slasher characters as kind of anti heroes. You watch a Friday the 13th movie, Jason is kind of the star of the movie. You have some character that you have some interest in and it is compelling in some way and we thought, well, what if he's actually kind of the victim. And so we thought, OK, sports. It goes really easily that he, like, was on the football team and he got bullied and they beat him up really badly. And then the name Smash Mouth lends itself to some kind of mouth situation. So we're like smash up means roughhouse football. So we're like, OK, his mouth is all messed up like he's been. He's been injured severely and he can't move his jaw, his jaws are kind of destroyed. And that again then leads to the premise of like he wants to eat the players but he can't just eat them so they have to be blended up.

Sophia Cacciola: That’s how we felt, but back to like shooting two movies because, when we did Blood of the Tribades, which is also, kind of very 70s, but also medieval that was initially going to be a grindhouse trailer or a lost scene or something, and it was going to be a short. And by the time I had priced out costumes and locations,  I was like, it's not that much more to just make the full movie.

 So I have that in my mind for End Zone 2 as well because by the time I buy 70s costumes, rental location and get everybody there like I might as well just shoot the rest of the movie. Andwe like to increase the scale of whatever we're doing and so that makes it a bigger project. And I love that the scenes out of context are so goofy. The ones that you just smash in the mockumentary and when you watch it, it's like it's a bit more serious. Like he gets kicked in the balls and stuff, but in the movie, it's like this, scary escape scene. So I don't know. I kind of pushed for it, let's just do a full feature. 

Michael J. Epstein: And we knew we were gonna go to festivals and ask them to play both movies together. That was gonna be our premise. So we're like, let's just keep it as short as possible. if we're walking in with three hours of stuff, it's just too much. The premise is that the last part of End Zone 2 is missing. So, that's perfect. We'll just make the movie 60 minutes and that is long enough to feel like a feature film. 

There's a lot of spoofs of slashers or older horror movies where people are very tongue in cheek about it, and very, very silly about it. And we really don't want to do that. We want to let it feel like a very earnest attempt at a regional horror film from that time. Inherently, it's gonna have camp in it, but we don't want anybody involved in the film to be presenting it that way, we want everybody to act their hearts out, do it as seriously as possible. We sent them early 70s Altman, references, movies that you wouldn't  think of as acting references for a movie like this. 

Sophia Cacciola: Like A Woman Under the Influence.

Michael J. Epstein: Yeah, like, we're going for Cassavetes and all. Obviously it's not gonna end up being that, but that's that's the target by design, and then the movie just by the nature of the material, has silly moments and things like that. But we're hoping that the performances compel people to treat it like a real drama in some regard. And then when there is, you know,  a leg with a bone sticking out of it, you can laugh at that. 

MovieJawn: I watched The Once and Future Smash first, and because you were able to get all of these great talking heads that I recognize just from being a big fan of horror, I remember looking it up and being like, wait, this isn't a real movie though, right? I feel like this is actually kind of tricking me into thinking that. That's also because there's that whole thing that horror lovers love finding the lost films. So it almost worked too well!

Michael J. Epstein: We're very secretive.

Sophia Cacciola: I think the first half hour of the movie does play very seriously. And then it gets more and more ridiculous. One of my favorite genres is giallo and I feel like every year somebody finds a new 70s giallo movie in some garage. So it's like it's not unheard of to be rediscovering things.

I think also on IMDb we were able to put up End Zone 2 and that tricked all the press initially.

Michael J. Epstein: When we first did it, we were very secretive about it being something that we made. And so we just sent the movies. We didn't say anything really. And it has that restoration notice at the beginning of End Zone 2. But we tried to have it have the spirit of something that Vinegar Syndrome or Severin would put out. 

People really did think it was real. A lot of the press interviews we did initially thought it was real. 

MovieJawn: What was it was like pitching this to the talking heads and convincing them, essentially to, change history and talk about this movie? How did you pitch that and how did you get them to be on board with the tone and story?

Sophia Cacciola: It was definitely hard to pitch because the whole concept is more than a sentence. It's a paragraph of a concept, and then we're asking them to be themselves. And then poking mild fun at their own careers, so the people that we ended up with really got it and really understood it when they came to do it. We were still shaping the tone of the movie when we did our first batch of talking heads. And they were so naturally realistic. They really sold it. It was crazy.

We didn't need to give them much feedback. They were all so funny and so natural with their lines and some of them, like just adding extra things like Adam Marcus, poked extra fun at himself, about what's Canon in Friday the 13th. 

Michael J. Epstein: We have to acknowledge that the reason that any of them did it is Neal. They knew Neal and so they trusted him when he pitched it. I was amazed at the people who said yes.

Sophia Cacciola: And a lot of them came to the premiere and had fun at the premiere, and it was great.

Michael J. Epstein: I think one of the most frightening moments for me of this entire process was the LA premiere and having lots of the talking heads come to it and just being scared that they were gonna be mad, because they didn't fully understand the context but, as far as I know, everybody has loved it. They've all said they want to do work with us again. 

Sophia Cacciola: What's amazing, too, is now when they go to conventions The Once and Future Smash is next to like Friday the 13th. It's pretty mind blowing that they're proud of it in that way. 

Victor Miller was a funny story though. Neal had interviewed him years ago. Because he lives near San Francisco we could only afford to send me to go. So I just flew up for the day. We explained how it was going to go. He seemed fine on the phone. And I got there and he was so hilarious. And he’s like let's do this in front of my Emmys. He was like, that’s the thing! He was really funny, and just really deadpan with it. And that was a huge get because people are just like, wow Victor Miller, you pulled him out of the woodwork.

Michael J. Epstein: We had this joke running through the whole movie about how in the first End Zone movie the mother was the killer, you know, secretly it’s the surprise twist. So we got Victor Miller to say that he basically stole that.

So yeah, I'm blown away that these people agreed to do this and had fun doing it. 

Sophia Cacciola: Yeah, I fell in love with them all too, and I’m always thinking, what could I cast them in?

MovieJawn: I feel like I have seen a lot more people directing together, especially couples and families. So I’m wondering, what is your process like co-directing? Are there elements one of you enjoys more than the other? How do you balance that out?

Sophia Cacciola: Well, before we were even dating, we were in bands and creative projects together. I know a lot of people are like, I could never work with my partner, but it was built into our relationship. And if you’ve ever tried to do a big project like this, two brains are better than one as long as you are on the same page because it is so much work to do a movie. 

I do a lot of the prep for locations, wardrobe, I hire the crew usually. Then, on set, I’m more focused on the technical elements, the camera shots and stuff like that. If actors need anything more emotional, usually I send Michael in to actually do what people think of as the “directing”, like telling the actors they're great or that they need to do a take again.

Michael will do the edit and I will come in and be like no, no, no. And you do more of the writing so it’s split up in a lot of different ways. 

Michael J. Epstein: But that said, we both do all those things to some extent. But yeah it’s that kind of working relationship that in terms of filmmaking just kind of naturally falls together over the course of making a few. 

Sophia Cacciola: It’s really hard at our level of having no money and self funding films. You have to do it all. So you have all of those skills and to be good at all of them is really hard. Michael enjoys writing, I don’t enjoy writing. I enjoy having my ideas in things and giving feedback. I love technical camera shit. So that’s what I put my energy into learning. So we diversify our skills a bit. Being able to split what we’re focusing on has been really good. 

Michael J. Epstein: And we can fill in for the other where needed. 

Sophia Cacciola: Like I can do a basic edit, I hate it. But I can. I can’t sit there for 10 hours editing one minute of footage, it's too much for my brain. I explode. 

MovieJawn: I see how easy it is for people to give up on their passions, especially in the dumpster fire of a climate we live in. So how do you keep stoking the fire and fueling the passion?

Michael J. Epstein:  Lots of crying. 

Sophia Cacciola:  I think that brings us around to the crowdfunder too, because definitely a major reason to quit is you cannot get your money back. Our last film is through a distributor and we never saw a check or report. So that is part of the reason why we were like, we're not gonna give it to some crook. I would rather at least know if it's not making money, then I know it's not making money. It's not because they've withheld information. 

For me, that is why we're just going to self distribute because we took it around and we just didn't get any offers that we thought were better than previous offers we've gotten for other films. So we're like, It's in our hands. 

That's another part of being an indie filmmaker I hate, the business side and the marketing side because I want to do the creative. I wanna be on set shooting things. The nasty part of it is you have to then sell it because you cannot keep making films at a loss unless you have millions of dollars, you know? Which we do not. So that brings us around to the fact that we're doing a crowdfunding campaign just so we can get the Blu-ray physical out. 

We felt like this movie really lends itself to having a nice release. We have so much bonus footage, so much from the cutting floor. We did commentaries with the actors. It's just crazy. Out of all of our movies. This is the movie that needs a nice release just to exist, and we weren't going to be able to do that on our own. Even if we got a traditional distributor, they don't really put out Blu rays anymore either, except for the biggest thing. So that's why we were running the campaign. 

And as far as the future, we have ideas for films we want to make this year, and it just comes down to money. When we started we were making films for like 20 grand. And I realized with inflation, what I used to be able to make with 20 is 50 grand now and that is the bare minimum. We don’t get paid, everybody getting paid barely minimum wage, if they are getting paid at all. That's kind of the minimum right now. I even realized that like, damn, I can't make a movie for 20 grand anymore. You can, but I wanna keep growing. I want all my movies to be better. 

Michael J. Epstein: Well, we always tell people, making movies is a terrible idea. 

Sophia Cacciola: I just say that to everybody. We don’t go on vacations, we barely see our families, like all of our money goes into these hair-brained creative projects, you know?

Michael J. Epstein: We’re like don’t make movies. It’s a bad idea, and you shouldn’t do it unless you just feel like you have no other choice but to make movies. And I guess that’s the thing, we feel like we have no other choice. 

Sophia Cacciola: Yeah, there’s like three or four movies that I really want to make, and I’m sure next year there will be another three or four. 

Every seven years or so, I’m always like, let’s learn a new skill. Let’s do different art. And I’ve been doing this for a long time, what’s the next thing? I can’t think of what it is and I think it’s because film encompasses a lot of art forms. It’s visual, it's sound. I think that’s why I’ve stayed satisfied. 

Moviejawn: And I believe I saw the campaign is fully funded now and there are a few days left. So I wanted to give you more space to talk about the campaign. I know you mentioned a physical release and maybe even a VHS release, which would be great. So what are your next steps?

Michael J. Epstein: We approached it kind of backwards, right. Most people do a campaign before they make their movie. They're like, I want to make a movie, give us money. We did the opposite where we made the movie first and we funded it. We kind of self funded it. We thought the idea was that the movie would be done at the end of 2020 so we’d have a very fast turnaround, so we can take on some debt. The movie will be out in 2021 and we’ll pay off the debt. It will be great. 

Four years later, obviously things didn’t work out as planned, so we are sitting on a lot of debt associated with the production of the film. We didn’t want to say, let’s pay off the movie using the campaign, that’s too ambitious.  Right now we want to make physical media. We want the movie to have a proper release. We want to be able to cover all the things required to get the movie out there. 

That was important to me. I really want a proper, physical media release. So we needed 10 grand to be able to do that. We're like if we can get 10 grand, at least we can release the movie on Blu-ray. And then in addition to that End Zone 2 is so perfect for being the kind of movie that you would have seen on VHS. So we are doing a limited VHS run as part of the campaign. I don't think we're gonna sell it after the campaign. 

We also have a novelization of End Zone 2.  I was so obsessed with movie novelizations as a kid. I remember reading Gremlins, and the whole book is just about what's going on in the head of Gizmo and Stripe. It's like, what are they thinking? Why are they doing this? And you watch the movie and it's nothing like the book. You can't show that on the screen. But they also have to fill the space in the book. So they have to add all that kind of stuff.

I thought it would be really fun to do a version of End Zone 2, where we have a lot more of what the motivation is, what the characters are thinking, what their insecurities are, what their relationships are like and so on.

Sophia Cacciola: And because with the last 30 minutes, it has the true ending. That's the main reason I was excited about the novelization. because everybody asks us, what would be the ending. And it's like, well, you gotta buy the book to see what the ending would have been. 

People have asked us for other things like action figures and stuff. 

Michael J. Epstein: But yeah I mean one of the amazing things about the movie is that a week after it premiered in LA, we had a screening and a friend of ours brought some people and were just like, want to see a movie our friends made? And she came and enjoyed it and a week later she dressed up as Smash Mouth. It was an amazing costume. She was inspired by the movie. A friend of ours said he bought a starting lineup football player figure and he was gonna like, paint it and mod it to be Smash Mouth as well. So people, you know, to my surprise, people have connected with it in such a way that they want to engage. 

So anyway, getting back to the campaign, we needed 20 grand and we reached that right away. So it's a modest goal. We knew it was a modest goal, but that's the minimum now. It's really like, well, we have deferred costs, we owe some people some money. You know, we have lots of. Well, obviously we have lots of debt associated with it. We want to hire a publicist, maybe to do some stuff. So those are kind of the next things. 

Our dream is to pay off all of our debt on it and I think we've been saying it with the Blu-ray and all that stuff, I think that it'll come to about like $70,000. I don't expect the Kickstarter campaign to reach $70,000, but.

Sophia Cacciola: I'll be happy if it hits 20. I'm happy now at 15. I'll be delighted if it hits 20. That's great. Yeah.

And that's where we are at, because we wanna shoot my like I always say, this stuff in interviews and then like, I read it five years later, I'm like, oh, we didn’t do that. But my ultimate goal for this year is to shoot two movies at once in December. So like one kind of bigger budget and one down and dirty. My friends, all in the same location, so that's my grand plan. 

 So then you know, going back to the business side then like I have two movies, 1 to take around the festivals and one to like maybe just throw out there you know and see how it does. My brain is always cooking, but like, that's my latest idea because again like once you rent the location and get people there and all that stuff is the bulk of your cost. So if you could sneak another movie in there it would be much cheaper. I have so many talented friends that will just come out for a week and do something crazy with me. 

I had such a great time chatting with the two filmmakers. You can see the passion shine through as they talk about their movies. It was also a great reminder about the art of filmmaking and the passion behind it. The film industry does not go easy on its filmmakers and it takes a lot of blood sweat and tears to blend up the kind of creative vision people like Cacciola and Epstein have. Supporting their work, and work like theirs is an important way to make sure that filmmakers with a distinct creative vision can have their work seen. It is also a reminder as to why physical media is so important, giving space to these works when streaming services constantly put them up on the chopping block. 

Once and Future Smash and End Zone 2 are films that deserve an audience and if you want to support their work and ensure you get to have access to things like the End Zone 2 VHS and book, make sure to head over to their Kickstarter Page while you still have a chance. 

If you would like to get access to the extended interview you can check it out over on the MovieJawn Patreon page.