{"id":2600,"date":"2019-02-18T17:57:08","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T17:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=2600"},"modified":"2019-02-19T02:45:58","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T02:45:58","slug":"don-coscarelli-true-indie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/don-coscarelli-true-indie\/","title":{"rendered":"Don Coscarelli: True Indie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writer, filmmaker, and producer Don Coscarelli spent the last forty years carving a path through the heart of genre cinema, averaging roughly one entry in the <\/span>Phantasm<\/i><\/strong> franchise per decade, with stops along the way to tame some beasts (1982’s\u00a0<\/span>The Beastmaster<\/i><\/strong>), track Lance Henriksen through the deep wilderness (1988’s\u00a0<\/span>Survival Quest<\/i><\/strong>), witness an elderly Elvis Presley and JFK fight a mummy (2002’s\u00a0<\/span>Bubba Ho-Tep<\/i><\/strong>), and follow two bumbling burnouts to the end of the world (2012’s\u00a0<\/span>John Dies at the End<\/i><\/strong>).\u00a0<\/span>[Ed. Note: The Coscarelli-produced Phantasm: Ravager<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>used\u00a0Endcrawl<\/strong><\/a>, which publishes this site.]<\/span><\/p>\n

A Personal World<\/h4>\n

In 2018, Coscarelli published his memoir\u00a0<\/span>True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking<\/i><\/b><\/a>, a feast of anecdotes, wisdom, and contemplation from almost half a century of filmmaking experience. Ask anyone who\u2019s met the man and they\u2019ll tell you that Coscarelli is warm, welcoming, and happy to talk movies and rub elbows with fans new and old. It seems his approach to writing a book is very much the same \u2014 reading <\/span>True Indie<\/span><\/i> feels like someone you\u2019ve known for years casually tell you about the time they set themselves on fire while blasting a shotgun from the trunk of a moving car. <\/span><\/p>\n

The first few chapters of <\/span>True Indie<\/span><\/i> follow Coscarelli and his childhood friends around his hometown of Long Beach, California.\u00a0Their neighborhood hijinks include stealing wood to make a boat, riding bikes around town, building a world of their own. It\u2019s easy for the reader to put themselves in the shoes of these characters, and it\u2019s no surprise to learn that these early years established a framework for everything Coscarelli has done as a filmmaker. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMovies and television are all about world-building,\u201d he writes in an email interview with <\/span>The End Run<\/span><\/i>. \u201cThat’s why it’s so fun. Orson Welles once said a movie is like the greatest electric train set a kid could ever have. It’s all about building that train set, creating the characters and how they interact with one another. What they wear, what they drive, what kinds of weapons they use when things get out of control. It’s better to worry about someone else’s reality instead of your own.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n