The Trials & Tribulations Of Little Corey Gorey

After thirty-four-years of languishing in censored & low-grade release obscurity, Little Corey Gorey finally got a DVD/Blu-Ray release this year from those resurrectors of low-budget/ SOV horror SRS Cinema. The neatly titled picture is a dark teen comedy-drama-come-splattered-edged horror. I was rather taken by the film, so I decided to track down its American creator/ director Bill Morroni for an email interview- discussing how/ why he got into film, and why Little Corey Gorey- his debut film has spent so long without it’s very much deserved proper release.

M[m]: Please discuss some of your early film/ TV memories? And did any of these make you want to get involved with filmmaking yourself?

Bill The first movie I remember? I was 4 or 5, we went on vacation to Canada and went to a drive-in movie. I remember it was pouring rain, I could hardly see out the front window because the wipers were barely able to handle the downpour. Then the screen shimmered and a "Popeye the sailor? cartoon came on. It was about 1953, and I only remember the opening credits and then I must have fallen asleep. I became interested in making films while doing volunteer work at the Tacoma USO, they were making a promo film and I got to help. Turns out I love film production work. In junior college I took a non-credit course on filmmaking, it was great fun and locked in filmmaking as possible career. Playing with Super 8 was enough to wet my production itch so I took an intern job at Avis rental car world headquarters, working with their in-house production team making promotional and training films. It only lasted one semester but encouraged me to enter the NYU school of film production. I did great at NYU. My senior project turned out to be a big success for a school short. It won a bunch of awards, even sold and was used as filler on early HBO.

M[m]: You mention your senior project short- could you talk a little bit more about this? And is it still available now?

Bill Senior year, NYU. On the first day of class, the Prof orders us to make a senior film in two semesters. A fellow student had a short script that he wanted made, I read it and liked it. It's Your lucky day was completed to a timed answer print by the last day of class. This was the only film finished by the last day, everyone else had to ask for more time and some never finished. It's Your Lucky Day is a fun short that won several international awards and even sold to HBO making it a very successful little movie. I have a film copy and I think I have a VHS copy somewhere.

 

M[m]: According to IMDB LLittle Corey Gorey is your first-ever film credit. Surely this can’t be right, as the film is well filmed, well edited, and arranged. So what was your previous experience before this?

Bill After graduating NYU I made my first big mistake. Because Hollywood is where they made feature movies, that and personal family drama encouraged me to leave NY and move to LA. Turns out Hollywood is a "Who you know" kind of place and I didn't know anyone. I had to work to live, so I grabbed the yellow pages and turned to 'film'. The second place I called was Acme film lab which turned out to most make 8mm porno loops. I got an entry-level job working in the breakdown dept. Within three years I was running the largest porno lab in the world, but was still no closer to making a feature film. So I started writing my own scripts, they were all rejected, including Little Corey Gorey

 

M[m]: Do you have any funny/ weird stories from your time working in the Acme film lab?

Bill In the late 1970's I hired a skinny guy, about 22 years old to work in the breakdown Dept. He would complain that he could be making more hooking down the block on Santa Monica Blvd., but his work was good. One day he came to work all excited, bragging that he had a date with the "Big Guy".

When I asked who the "Big Guy' is he said, "Rock Hudson". I didn't believe him, Rock Hudson couldn't be gay. A few years later and they both died of Aids.

 

M[m]: Please discuss how & why the idea for Little Corey Gorey first came about?. And how long did it take to make it a reality?

Bill They say, "write what you know" and I know about child abuse. It was a natural link from me to Corey, I just had to explode the story from a cruel reality to a theatrical, slightly absurd and extreme storyline. For example, as a kid I dreamed about gagging and tying up my mother, a sort of safety fantasy. As a filmmaker, I turned a dream into a usable story. You might say it took a lifetime to make Corey, but from script to screen I spent about six years: 1 year to write the script, 1 year marketing the script, looking for financing, 1-year casting, crewing up, losing my star and financing, and finally deciding to self produce. 1 year of production because I could only buy enough stock and processing for one weekend a month and finally, 2 years of post-production, editing on an old upright Moviola, dubbing every word of dialogue, A & B rolling the 16mm negative in my bedroom. I finished the film and ended up broke, in debt and exhausted. I had spent everything almost, luckily I still have the love of a great woman, my wife Elaine.

M[m]: I believe Little Corey Gorey was finished in 1989, but wasn’t released until 1993. What was the reason for this lag in time?

Bill After you finish a film you have to find a distributor. 4 years sending out VHS copies, waiting and getting rejected. Or worse getting accepted by the likes of Truma, due diligence revealed Truma as a shark who eats films and issues excuses instead of payments. I finally found a distributor that had a positive review and we struck a deal in 1993. By two years later it became obvious that all low-budget distributors are thieves and sharks and if do not have the cash for lawyers and investigators there is no way to know if your film sold in France. Never saw a penny from the distributor, eventually, I stopped calling and he went out of business.

 

M[m]: The recently released version Little Corey Gorey on SRS Cinema is its first fully uncut version. What elements had been cut out of past releases, and I’m guessing this was in all of the releases worldwide?

Bill I have no idea where Corey was released. According to my "distributor" it was only sold to Thailand and never made any money. Over the years my memory has faded so I do not remember exactly what the distributor wanted cut but it was not much because I could not afford to make many new video transfers.

 

M[m]: How did you come to work with SRS Cinema?

Bill Email, I got a message expressing interest in Little Corey Gorey, we talked, negotiated, and made the deal. It took a while to complete the conversion to High Definition and Ron was very understanding about my memory issues but we got it done and I am very happy with Ron, SRS, and the quality of the transfer.

M[m]: One of the key plot points in Little Corey Gorey is metal music, are you a fan of the genre yourself? And if so who do you rate as some of your favorite projects?

Bill I like classical music, especially Mozart. Corey would have liked metal.

 

M[m]: On the subject of music, the heavy metal band Lust supplied music for the film, and they appear in the film. How did you get in contact with the band, and how did they come to do music on the film?

Bill They answered an ad for music that I posted on a local production weekly.

 

M[m]: Have you any thoughts/ ideas for new films?

Bill I have a few short scripts and feature scripts, some of which I really like and would consider making, but my production days are over. Three days into my last production I had to cancel the production, disappointing the cast and crew. I had no choice, I was tripping over cables, forgetting production props, and could not remember the word for that thing, "on sticks, a box with the thingy on the front..." I was trying to remember the word 'Camera'. Frankly, you can not direct with dementia, even if it is still just mild.

They liked the script and sent me a copy of their album. Every song I used was straight from that album. It was almost spooky how the song's lyrics seemed written for Corey. Lust agreed to give me theatrical rights for the album in exchange for producing and shooting their rock video, a good deal for everyone.

 

M[m]: It was sixteen years before you made your second film Safe House. Why did it take you so long to follow up on your first film?

Bill Exhaustion. Money. My loving wife. I am not rich, spent most of my life living paycheck to paycheck so I could not ask my wife to sacrifice while I make another film, that probably won't make any money. Also, I could no longer afford to shoot film and standard definition was not acceptable for feature film production so I had to wait for Hi-def video to become affordable. Once Sony came out with the FX-1 HDR camera I was able to justify the newly reduced cost of production and started working on the Safe House script.

M[m]: Other than Little Corey Gorey, you have three other credits to your name- Safe House(2009), Roll Call(2011), Ol'School( 2015). Would you be able to talk a little about each of these?.

Bill Safe House won a bunch of awards, Roll Call bombed on the award circuit, and Ol'School was just a remake of Roll Call (I'll explain later). After years of waiting in vain for "Distribution" to supply enough $ to make another movie, I realized that the arrival of HD Video made making a feature affordable, no film costs and much cheaper post-production costs. So I wrote Safe House because it was a great low-budget idea, basically one location (my house) and a small cast and no expensive special effects. I started trying to sell Safe House and answered an add for a script. Baron and I chatted and he said he also needed a director so he sent me three of the worse scripts I ever read. I sent him a copy of safe house and the next thing I know Baron and I are making Safe House. During the shoot, I got to talking to an extra playing a cop. He was looking to make a movie with some of his old actor friends, so we wrote and produced Roll Call, a comedy that proved the old adage,"Dying is easy, comedy is hard". I edited the movie and frankly, I am a great movie assembler but a mediocre editor.

Ol'School was just not funny enough and my partner found a big-time editor friend who thought the movie could be saved if he directed a re-shoot of the opening and re-edited the movie. I agree and send him the master. They re-shoot the opening at Universal using his friends and contacts then he started re-editing and promptly died in a car accident. The End. Not quite, the most important ingredient for making a feature film is an understanding wife or girlfriend. If the woman you love does not support your dream you are in trouble. I was lucky, I have a love that has stayed by me always.

 

M[m]: Are you still a fan of low-budget horror, and if so what stands as some of your favorite films/ directors?

Bill Yes, low budget any genre is fun but my favourite films are any of Bill Wyler's movies, Some like it hot, Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17, Irma l'duce, etc.

An extra thought:

It cost me about $85,000.00 to make Little Corey Gorey and I still owe my great cast and crew and Mr Beck and his sound studio. I hope social media, the Internet and cheap HD video will open new paths to producing and selling a feature. My god, you can shoot a feature on your cell phone and do all the post-production on your lab top or even an iPad. The finished Digital File can be downloaded from the cloud or mailed on a hard drive directly to the theatre and digitally projected. Filmmaking is no longer the domain of the rich, you don't need a college degree, and your Dentist dad doesn't need to 'invest'. Like the old Andy Hardy movies where all the kids get together to produce a musical in the barn, anyone in the world can make a feature, if they have the heart, energy and good friends... oh, and lunch money for the crew.

Thanks to Bob for the interview & Ron from SRS Cinema for making the whole thing possible. Little Corey Gorey is now available via SRS as a region-free DVD/ Blu Ray here , and this is  our review of the film.