Lake Michigan Monster (2018)
For Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, making an idiosyncratic little comedy movie was almost simple as having some tasty Wisconsin-made sparkling water awaiting him after shooting a scene for it.
Or as he says of his directorial debut, Lake Michigan Monster, which he also scripted, co-produced and stars in as the quirky Captain Seafield, obsessed with offing a leviathan in the Great Lakes, “As it turned out, the most rewarding part of any shoot was nailing a scene, knowing full well there would be a passionfruit La Croix waiting for me in the sand.” The Whitefish Bay High graduate may be a bit coy about the challenges he faced making his Monster but the hurdles he negotiated were worth it. The nifty flick has already nabbed many film festival awards and is currently featured on Apple TV's Arrow Video Channel after a recent premiere courtesy the Oriental Theatre.
Tews cites his inspirations: “Guy Maddin, Monty Python, The ‘Burbs, early Sam Raimi, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Yentl.” As for the creation of the Monster specifically, Tews recalls, "The idea for the picture came one rainy afternoon whilst sitting on Wine Rock along the shores of Lake Michigan listening to pirate metal with Erick West (Monster character Sean Shaughnessy). We were smoking Djarum Black Clove Cigarettes and drinking $3 sweet red wine when I turned to my companion and said, ‘What if a mermaid washed up on shore and we were the only ones around to see it?’”
Readers will have to watch Monster for themselves to see the closest thing to a mermaid. Tews exhibits, as a first-time indie filmmaker, a resourcefulness that includes shooting it in the black and white mode that harkens to the movie's cliffhanger forebears. Or, as Tews explains, that may not have been as thrifty a movie as it may first appear.
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Time and Money
“Well I saved money regardless because I didn’t pay anyone,” he explains. However, the black and white ‘grain train’ style allowed for [co-producer, editor, special effects creator] Magic Mike [Cheslik] to do over 300 effects shots in a timely manner. So black and white didn’t save us money, because again, I’m not what you’d call ‘empathetic,’ but it did save us lots of time. This, of course, was all out of necessity, as well. All we had was Beulah Peters’s [playing Monster’s Nedge Pepsi] old barnacle-ridden camera and our wits. And then, of course, once Magic Mike got involved, we really wanted to make this thing look like it was dug up out of the Earth. This, I think, makes the picture stand out from the other six billion movies made every year.”
Tews need not downplay Monster's singular look, but he is still a bit awed by the acclaim it has thus far garnered. Regarding the many prizes it has won at over 30 North American and European film festivals, he proclaims, “The big win was the Gold Audience Award for Best International Feature at the Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal. To be honest with you, I am not sure how Lake Michigan Monster won. I am quite certain they accidentally played a far superior film in its place.”
He may have more plaudits in store for his next movie collaboration with Cheslik, too, In anticipation of a 2021 release date, Tews describes the forthcoming Hundreds of Beavers thusly: “a supernatural, no dialogue, physical comedy set during the height of America’s fur trade, shot on location in Northern Wisconsin and in the depths of hell.” If Beavers follows Monster's lead, it will be populated with many of Tews’ close family, of whom he boasts, “My brother, Patchen., will write the next great American novel. My sister Redding, will host “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” My father Wayne [playing Ashcroft in Monster], who wrote and performed Monster’s theme song, will become an unsuccessful leader of a jug band. My mother, Jill, who did the dubbing for my Grandma in the film, will also become an unsuccessful leader of a jug band. And my older brother, Cutter, the most artistic of us all, will become the most renowned loan officer in South Carolina history.”
He may be kidding some about his kin, but, he’s not joshing when he urges, “Take heed, landlubbers! The Lake Michigan Monster is now terrorizing the Apple TV app’s Arrow Video Channel and swallowing up the great galleons, YouTube and Google Play! Grab some brews, grab some buds, and prepare yourselves for an evening of Milwaukee monster movie mayhem!”
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