For almost two months now… since the reveal of the first trailer, fans, critics, and friends have emailed me, and facebooked me…

“What is The Devil’s Carnival?” I’m confused… is it a movie? Is it a play? Is it concert?

Yes… Well… No… actually, it’s none of those things…

Seeing as our tour kicks off this Thursday in Los Angeles, I felt it timely to actually address this question, and hopefully shed some light on exactly WHAT the Devil’s Carnival is… and why.

The word carnival… in essence means: An exciting or riotous mixture of something…

Exciting and riotous… two words that I think pretty well describe our Carnival… But the reality is… The Devil’s Carnival is not anything clearly definable… More so than anything, our carnival is an idea…

Just a Carnie with an Idea:

I might be the luckiest guy I know…

At 26 years old I directed a movie that opened at number 1… at 27 I directed another movie that opened again at number 1… at 28, once again…  Now, this has little to do with talent, and a lot to do with LUCK.  I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right project…

But, where does one go from there? How possibly could I trump the experience I had in my twenties during my tenor with the SAW films?

Nothing, I repeat nothing is cooler than driving down SUNSET BLVD and seeing a SAW BILLBOARD… Bus stops ads, commercials on TV, and even late night talk show hosts talking about this ‘thing…’ this experience that I had some small hand in.

I look back on my life, and relate my experiences with SAW to an amusement park and riding the BEST roller coaster first… At the time, it sounds like a great idea… but once you have tackled the biggest, baddest roller coaster first, everything else pales in comparison…

The best part about SAW was I literally had to do nothing outside of show up to set, and direct… There’s no drama, no pulling out of the hair… SAW was a well oiled machine.

LETS REWIND:

There was a moment, before I became a director, where I was sitting with a producer that I worked for. I was his assistant… he was an amazing man, and one I learned a great deal from… This producer shall remain nameless… But I promise you, you know his movies, and his work…

One afternoon, I showed up to his house to bring him something, and he was sitting at his kitchen table. He was not his jovial, fun self… In fact, he was the most depressed I had seen him. I asked him what was wrong. This producer, who I will refer to as Producer X… Looked up to me, a sad disillusioned look in his eye.

“Darren… if you learn anything from me… If you only take one lesson away from your time working with me, it is this…

Everyone in Hollywood is fighting, and climbing to get to the top of the mountain… Everyone wants to stand on the top of the mountain and look around and say I DID IT… I got here! I made it… some spend their entire lives climbing this mountain… some get there by luck… others by talent. But everyone tries to climb it. But be careful… Because there is only one place to go once you reach the top… straight down…”

Straight down…

You can’t help but fall…

At the time I didn’t realize the importance of his parable… I got what he was saying, but it didn’t connect with me at the time. I was a PA… an assistant… My job was to get coffee… drive him around in his expensive car… My job was to pick up his dry cleaning.  My job was to DUB videotapes.

Now, some years later I look back on his words and consider them the most poignant and important that I have ever heard in my time in Hollywood.

I went from my films being released in 3,000 screens, to my last being released in just 10. My current film Mother’s Day comes out in only 3 markets… No bus stop ads, no tv commercials, no press days or red carpet premiere.

My dear readers, I came to Hollywood and I rode the BEST roller coaster first. Everything else was sure to fail in comparison.

SAW II, III, IV 3,000 screens

REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA 12 screens

11 – 11 – 11 10 screens

MOTHER’S DAY 3 screens

Down… down… down… I fall…

Depression is a hell of a thing. It’s crippling… But for me, what was worse than the depression of watching my art fall from the grace it once called home, was the complacent position I took as I watched myself fall…

Over the course of a few years I went from being confident, to not only second guessing everything I did… But believing the stories I was being sold…

“We can’t market this movie…”
“There isn’t an audience for these types of films”
“too dark…”
“…not dark enough”

I remember opening up one of my favorite website recently and reading the headline – “Bousman’s fall from grace…” It was clever title for a film review on a religious film I wrote and directed called 11-11-11.

And I got it… 11-11-11 might not have been my finest hour as a director. But as I read the review the sickness I felt in my stomach also grew… Just five years ago I was directing movies that had an ARMY of people supporting them, marketing them, and nurturing them… Now, I had a film that opened and closed in the same weekend… and as filmmaker I was powerless….

And what was worst was I felt lost… I was relying on people, a system to release these film, nurture them… promote them… Something… Anything…

MOTHER’S DAY, in my opinion, is one of my best films. I couldn’t be prouder of how it turned out. From the cast, to the script, to the editing… It just clicked for me. When I turned in my director’s cut, I couldn’t have been prouder. We tested the movie… It tested AWESOME, and I was SURE this was going to be the movie that put me back on the map… Put me BACK in the place I was when I fell from the SAW royalty…

Right? WRONG…

MOTHER’S DAY has sat on a shelf for two years while it ping-ponged distributors… And there I sat. Powerless to stop it. Powerless to change the fate of a movie I worked SO hard to make. The fate of this film, rested on the shoulders of a legion of other people… And I had to sit back, and wait, while ‘they’ decided what its outcome would be.

And then there’s REPO! You all know the story behind that, so I won’t bore you with the details. But TEN YEARS creating something, and in one moment… One decision, the fate of its release is decided upon… and the rest is history….

So how does this relate to THE DEVIL’S CARNIVAL?

The Devil’s Carnival is our answer to what I feel is wrong with the system… The Devil’s Carnival is our response to the machine that so many filmmakers and artists find themselves tirelessly navigating. The Devil’s Carnival is about putting your fate in your hands, and not relying on the machine to tell you what will work, and what wont…

I love making movies… I love telling stories… I love creating things that have the potential to live long past I die… What I don’t love is the phone call “Hey Darren, sorry, the marketing department can’t figure out how to sell this movie to mainstream America…”

If you have read any of my other blogs, you will note that I understand the necessity and importance of the “business” side of the movie BUSINESS…

If a movie doesn’t have an audience it can not make money… If it can not make money, it is a failure. No matter HOW great your film is, if no one sees it has failed as a ‘business’ venture.

I seem to thrive in that GREY area. I am drawn to films and music that fall outside of the box…

I am drawn to things that are different… things that are not always mainstream… Surely there is a way to capitalize on others with like minded interests?  Surely there is a way to monetize the strange and bizarre.

However, as much as I truly love Hollywood, I hate the fact that I spend years creating something only to be told by a group of people – “sorry, we can’t really find a home for your movie…”

What this does, is it cripples originality. Instead of artists creating out of the box, unique pieces of art, we copy other things that are familiar, and safe… Why? Because we know that there is a formula that works… and if the formula works, why change it?

I just bought a house. Buying this house has made me question a lot of things… I need to work to continue to pay the mortgage… If I don’t pay the mortgage I lose the house… The rational side of me thinks, I should start reading the stack of remake scripts sitting on my desk.

The rational side of me thinks… Dammit, why did I just turn down this sequel? Those are safe bets, right?

Then the artist in me rears its ugly head… FUCK THAT… do what you love. Do what inspires you… Do what you want, surely there are others like you who will embrace the insanity that drives you…

And so THE DEVIL’S CARNIVAL was born.

An experiment. A test… a movement….

Let’s put all our eggs in this one basket. Let’s go for broke. Let’s do something completely out of the box and different, and strange, and beautiful, crazy, EXCITING and RIOTOUS…

Let’s do what moves us. What makes us happy, what WE want to see.

Terrance and I met and made a list of all the things we wanted to see in a movie. In a musical… in a work of art… We decided not to care was this commercial, or was this safe, or would this appeal to the masses… we just wrote and filmed something we LOVED, and moved us… for once forgetting about the ‘game’… or the mountain in which we could fall further from…

We set off on a journey to do this without permission, without seeking approval… PUNK ROCK filmmaking… Hopefully people would get it, and join us on our journey… Maybe they wouldn’t.

All we knew is we believed in it, and hopefully others would to. Hopefully there were others out there that had the same attitude, that shared the same feelings, that wanted to do something outside the system that makes the decisions on what gets seen, and what doesn’t.

We just didn’t care. This was for us… our Repo fans… this would not be about the business… This would be about the art.

What happened next was nothing short of miraculous

Other artists signed on to the project. Actors we could NEVER afford. Musicians we never thought we could get…

Crew members who would make more NOT doing our project than by doing it began signing up…

Our carnival began to grow. What was supposed to be a ‘short film’ turned into a production. A crew of 20 became a crew of 100. A cast of 5 became a cast of 30… A 25 minute short film became an hour… five songs became twelve.

When we rolled cameras the first day, we knew this was NOT just a short film. This was something more important. This was a statement.

We were able to create something outside of the mold. Outside the system… With the blood, sweat and tears of like minded artists who were fueled by passion, not dollar signs.

We didn’t have a company building our merch… We did it. We didn’t have a label producing our album… we did it. We were making a movie with friends, and family. For a moment in time it was only about the art… and nothing else.

On Thursday the fruits of our labor will finally be revealed… Some will love it, others will despise it. There will be those who dress up in costumes and become part of the experience, and there will be those that turn their noses up at it calling it self indulgent crap. I welcome both responses…

In my 10 years of making movies, this is the single most rewarding experience as a filmmaker… As everything you see, from the posters, to the CDs, to the trailers, to the movie itself came from friends who dedicated their time and talent because they believed in what we were trying to do with THE DEVIL’S CARNIVAL.

There is no puppet master pulling the strings on this one. No studio who will take out bus stop ads, or billboards on Sunset Blvd.  Sadly, the team who promoted Saw will not be promoting this, we have someone better… We have people who live and breath outside of the ‘norm’… The majority of our publicity comes from the fans… as they are too part of the Carnival… They do helped create this, and fuel this.

This began with a group of people wanting to do something different, and be completely independent in our decisions, and that is what you will view at The Devil’s Carnival.

You will hear the music that was recorded in Joe Bishara’s home studio. You will view sets that were built and painted in Derrick Hinman’s backyard and costumes that were designed in Dawn Ritz’s apartment. You will watch a movie that was edited in my garage with visual effects from a guy working out of his studio apartment whom I met on Craigslist.. You will view these events in theaters that Spooky Dan personally booked, and we will travel there via a van that our producer Sean E secured after calling all his friends for favors. We will stay in motels that my beautiful wife found and obtained. You will see merch that was created by close friend Sean Scoffield, that will then be sold to you by our script supervisor who is joining us on the road tour… This movie is a family affair.  A bunch of friends doing something that moves us… compels us…

The Devil’s Carnival is a labor of love… Not just my labor of love, but also everybody who worked on it.

The Devil’s Carnival is an escape. A reason to leave your houses, and apartments, and see something different, something unique, something out of the box.

The Devil’s Carnival is a live show, one you are all very much apart of… Not just because of the opening acts, but because YOU give it life by your interactions.

The Devil’s Carnival is a movie, one that just four months ago,was an idea. Something that we hoped we could pull off with no money and little resources.

More so than anything The Devil’s Carnival is proof… Proof that any artist, filmmaker, musician, playwright can change their fate… Just because someone passes on your art – does not invalidate your work… Just because no one wants to buy your painting, your script, your movie, does not mean no one wants to see it…

5 years ago we were told there was no audience for Repo! Our response: get in the fucking van and find an audience…

When TZ and I first starting pitching the idea for The Devil’s Carnival we were once again laughed at, and told find something more commercial… Our response…. Fuck you, we will just go make it ourselves… And make it we did… Now we are bringing it to you!

THE DEVIL’S CARNIVAL will not change the system, nor are we trying to reinvent it… But together, with all of your help we can navigate around it… and we will…

BUY TICKETS HERE!

See you at the Carnival….

dlb

Alexa Vega Briana Evigan clown darren bousman Darren Lynn Bousman dlb Emilie Autumn Film School five finger death punch horror ivan moody Joe Bishara Laura Bousman Mothers Day movies Ogre OhGr Repo! The Genetic Opeara Repo! The Genetic Opera Sean Patrick Flanery Skinny Puppy slipknot Terrance Zdunich The Devil's Carnival The Devils Carnival