Written, directed & PRODUCED by David Mahmoudieh
PRODUCED by GEORGE LAKO & ANNALEA FIACHI
Jill's got the snake. Julia's got the flute. Alone, they have nothing. But together, they have a secret weapon to fight the darkness...
ABOUT THE FILM
Snake Dick won the Audience Award at Dances With Films, Curtas, and the Salem Horror Fest. It also won Best International Short at the South London Film Festival, and Best Short at Monsterfest, Los Angeles Super Shorts, Short Film Factory, Horror Vein, ScreamQueer and Darkveins Horror Fest. It also won two awards for Best Director at the Hallucinea Film Festival and the London Director Awards, plus two awards for Best Cinematography at the British Horror Film Festival and Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Film Festival. It was nominated at at several other festivals with highlights including FilmQuest & Scream Queen Film Festival. Plus it was an Official Selection at many more. Highlight including the Oscar Qualifying HollyShorts, the Venice Film Week, and the Nottingham International Film Festival just to name a few.
After it’s immense festival run, the film was picked up by Alter and released online having since accumulated over 2 million views. The filmmakers are currently in development for a feature length version.
ABOUT THE FILMmaker
David Mahmoudieh - Born in the UK to an Iranian father and British-French mother, David began his career in commercials and music videos, shooting award-winning work for brands including Google, Lego and Samsung, and artists such as Coldplay, Just Jack and Ringo Starr. He founded and now directs through his production company, Alpha Wolves, with clients including Yahoo, Mercedes and Porsche.
As a writer, David won the ECU Screenwriting Contest with his script Rain, sold his spec The Frail in a competitive bid and was hired by Star Trek creators Roddenberry Entertainment to adapt their graphic novel Worth into a feature.
David's first feature as a "director-for-hire", See You Soon, starred Harvey Keitel and Liam McIntyre, and secured a US theatrical release.
Most recently David has been directing on Warner Bros/The CW's hit show Superman & Lois, and was selected for Sony Television's Diverse Director's Program.
David's Oscar-qualifying short-film Snake Dick won numerous awards on the festivals circuit and has amassed a cult following and millions of views online after going viral. The film is now being developed into a feature.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH DAVID
Welcome to our Short of the Week series. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your filmmaking background?
I was born and raised in the UK by an Iranian father and British-French mother, and I grew up in a cinema - literally. We had a projectionist in the family and I would go see a movie at the ramshackle theater where they worked pretty much every other night throughout my youth. So I knew early on I wanted to work in film. I started out in commercials, working my way up from a treatment writer to director before starting my own production company, Alpha Wolves, through which I direct most of my branded work these days. I also write, and have been fortunate enough to sell a few scripts and get hired to write a few others. After almost a decade of shooting commercials, which are fun but ultimately a very disposable artform, I decided it was time to start focusing on what made me want to be a director in the first place — film and television. I did one small TV move as a “director-for-hire”, a soccer movie originally intended for Russian television that somehow got a US theatrical release, but I walked away from it with an empty feeling having had no say in the edit. Snake Dick was in large part inspired by that frustration; making something purely for myself as opposed to working to someone else's brief. Most recently I’ve found my way into episodic television, directing on the Warner Bros/CW series Superman & Lois, and was also lucky enough to be selected for Sony Television’s Diverse Director’s Program, so TV is a path I’m pursuing diligently at the moment. But most importantly, I’m an Industry Ambassador for Kids In The Spotlight, a foster kids charity that transforms the lives of foster youth through filmmaking, and I direct a film for them every year written by and co-starring the foster youth who shadow me during the process. Teaching and mentoring is something I love and am hoping to do more of. The last two films I did for the charity were Parallel, a short/PSA about unreported abuses in high schools starring Cory Feldman, and Bully, a coming-of-age drama starring Terry Crews, Ariel Winter, Liam McIntyre and Rodney Jackson Brown, the brilliant foster kid who wrote and starred in the film. That last one will be hitting festivals next year.
Can you tell us about the genesis of Snake Dick and how you came up with the concept?
Drugs... lots of drugs. Just kidding. :)
My main filmmaking influences growing up were John Carpenter, James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, David Lynch, Peter Jackson, Wes Craven, Akira Kurosawa, Paul Verhoeven and Steven Spielberg. In other words, a little bit of everything. I knew I wanted to make something that channelled all these influences, and it would need to be weird. But the inspiration hadn’t quite hit yet. Then one day I was having a conversation with my wife (the film’s ever-so-talented costume designer, Susanna Song) about how it’s harder for an armed woman to travel alone in the US than it is for an unarmed man. According to her, that’s because “men are always carrying a weapon between their legs... and its name is Freedom.” While not a revelation to discover I too had a freedom-enabling accessory between my thighs, her statement hit me in a way that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The other, rather timely factor was this creepy orange dude who, at the time, was somehow president of a country that pioneered women’s rights — all while bragging about his daughter’s breasts and grabbing women by the what-sits. Add in my love of Thelma & Louise, trashy 80’s movies, and — voila! Snake Dick was born.
How did you attach an Executive Producer to the project who also Exec Produced the Oscar nominated Minari?
The wonderful Josh Bachove is, first and foremost, a dear friend. My wife was the Costume Designer on Minari so I got to see Josh at work first-hand and knew I needed a producer of his talents in my corner. I had already shot the film by then but after showing Josh an early cut, he came aboard to shepherd us through post, help navigate our festival run and develop the feature with me. We’re very lucky to have him!
I must also shout out my other producers, George Lako, Annalea Fiachi and Exec Producers Steve Fusci and Fiona Campbell-Westgate, who all brought their own unique skills to the team. I'm super grateful for all of them.
What were some of the main obstacles you experienced when making Snake Dick and how did you overcome them?
The usual headaches: time, budget, resources and, of course, the unexpected. Let’s start with time. This was a one-day shoot. The location was more than half our budget and the availability of our cast meant we could only get them and all the other components we needed together for a single night. Murphy’s Law seemingly loves short-film productions, evidenced by the fact that very night turned out to be the shortest night of the year — effectively giving us roughly 8hrs of darkness to get everything. Thankfully I had a small but perfectly formed crew who were willing to hustle for the cause. Special props goes to our incredible DP, Chris Saul, who was able to light the set in a way that gave our actors some flexibility in the blocking without compromising the very particular look we wanted. Now for the unexpected… we had initially planned on using a real snake, then augmenting it with VFX. A friend of the producer was good enough to bring their pet python to set, but it ended up being too cold in the desert night so the snake had to go home and we shot without a live reference in spite of all our planning. Luckily we had assembled an incredible VFX team, headed by Fiona Campbell-Westgate who at the time was working on Avatar 2. That was both a huge blessing and challenge because, naturally, we had to be patient given her current commitments — especially as she was rendering her awesome skills for the love of it. She brought in VFX artists Stephen Cunnane and Ryan Wieber, who combined to create the snake, and then Chris Wells did the burning cityscape. Due to this being mostly favors — coupled with the onset of the pandemic — it was almost a year from the date we shot the short to having a fully finished version. But that's shorts, I guess.
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences. Festival Circuit vs Online Release with Alter, the highs and lows of both.
Well, as we completed our film in the height of Covid, our first festival was supposed to be Fantastic Fest… until it got cancelled. After that we had to decide whether to wait until the following year and try for Sundance (the following January), or accept the invites we had from a few other festivals we loved. At the time no one knew how long the pandemic was going to last and whether other festivals would cancel too, so we took the offer to do a “virtual premiere” at Warsaw International Film Festival, and we’ve played at over 80 festivals since. One of those was HollyShorts, where the film was scouted by Alter. Amazingly, we were on the festival circuit for a whole year before we got to see the film in a physical theater. That honor went to Dances With Films, where we played in the Midnight Block and went on to win the Audience Award. That was definitely a high, seeing the film in LA, in a packed house at the Chinese Theatre where I had attended my first ever screening in the US. We also recently got invited by Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in France to be part of a special screening called Bloody Girls on Friday 9 February at 9.30pm in their main Cocteau theater (1,300 seats!) so that will be a nice way to close out our festival run for the short.
What advice or hacks would you give to other short filmmakers?
Work within your resources. So many of my friends or other filmmakers who reach out for advice send me their 30 page script with 20 locations and 10 characters. By all means, if the story calls for it and you have the resources to pull it off, go for it. But if not, figure out what you can get your hands on and build your story around that. A short is ultimately a means to an end, so start with your means. Sure, there are exceptions, but the most important thing is that your short is well-executed. It needs to look and sound amazing, and it needs to have engaging performances. If it doesn’t, it’s going to be very hard to stand out amongst the ever-growing number of high-profile shorts being made each year. This is especially true for US-based filmmakers, as we don’t have access to government-funded film funds or nationalized programs like most of Europe and the UK. For us we either have to self-fund it or find private investment. So figure out what you want to say, then — before you do anything — figure out what you can realistically gather to say it. In my experience, short filmmaking is making the dream and reality meet somewhere in the middle, and turning that crossing-point into something more magical than its compromises. I always say it’s better to do a simple idea greatly than a great idea simply. At least that's been my experience.
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
Breaking into any industry that’s already over-saturated is tough, but it’s also an opportunity to stand out from the norms. The advice I always give everyone is make the movie you’ve always wanted to see. Don’t chase trends, like making a horror movie because you think it’ll be "easier" to sell or turn into a feature. Make a horror movie because you love horror or that particular idea. The only way anything is going to turn out great is if you love it, so start there and the rest follows. The best advice I ever received in life was “Don’t chase carrots, just be a good rabbit.” In other words, focus on creating good stuff, on constantly improving your craft, and in time the carrots will come to you.
You're developing Snake Dick into a feature. How's that going?
Still going! I just got done with the feature script, which took a while as there’s a world-building component to it with potentials for sequels, etc, and I wanted it to be super tight. I also recently become a father to a beautiful baby daughter and, knowing she was on the way, was curious how that experience might affect my approach to the material. That may sound strange, but given the subject matter I had a feeling fatherhood would give me a new and better-informed perspective with a little girl in my life. Sure enough, her being in the world definitely altered my outlook on a few things and sharpened my focus on others — especially knowing she would one day likely watch the film. Now the script is complete and the strike is over, I’m excited to get it out there…
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
Kelsey Bollig's upcoming short Inked is incredible and is going to clean up on the horror festivals circuit. Eric Palperth’s and Tyler March’s animated short Sucks To Be The Moon is a barrel of laughs and creativity. Matthew Berg’s Marked is a brilliant example of the “two-person-in-a-room” short done to perfection. Also, everyone needs to see my good friend Graham Denman’s micro-budget feature, Greenlight, which he made for a measly 50k! Easily the best feature film of its kind at that budget-level. And finally, I need to recommend the 2001 feature, Intacto, starring the late great Max Von Sydow. Barely anyone I know has seen it, which is a travesty as it’s one of the best and most original films of the early 2000's.