Don Coscarelli on Kenny & Company
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It’s not horror, but I must confess that my favorite Don Coscarelli film is Beastmaster. I haven’t seen all of his movies, but as a reviewer of films and discs I am slowly but surely working through the considerable Coscarelli catalog.
You might recall our review of Bubba Ho-Tep here on the site, and I’m sure you’re looking forward to our write-up on his Masters of Horror entry, Incidents On and Off a Mountain Road. Today, Anchor Bay DVD is putting out Coscarelli’s first theatrical feature, Kenny & Company.
The story follows the kids in a typical suburban neighborhood for a few eventful days in their lives, all of which lead up to Halloween night. Kenny (Dan McCann) and his pal Doug (Michael Baldwin) are typical kids — pulling pranks at every opportunity, riding skateboards, chowing down on junk food, and dealing with others in their orbit (mainly parents, teachers, the pretty girl at school, the big bully, and a shrimpy, barely tolerable tag-a-long).
I enjoyed the film, with the exception of the soundtrack (I am not very tolerant of music I don’t like… while most folks will endure a terrible tune, I tend to dive for radio knobs at the first note of a hated song). Much as I wish I never had to say anything negative, I did have to bring it up to Coscarelli, because I wondered where it came from — “It was the same composer who did Phantasm. That was his 70s tribute, I guess!” he said, laughing.
Maybe he should have gotten star Reggie Bannister, who plays a teacher in the movie, to do some tunes. “He was in [an earlier movie I co-directed and produced] Jim The World’s Greatest, and he was recommended to me as an interesting actor and personality. I went and met him at a beer bar where he was performing and playing guitar. He was just so impressive in person. I was 18, and he bought me a beer — we were friends for life after that.”
(Note to self: Start plying budding filmmakers with alcohol, then hand them my script.) Speaking of scripts, I was curious to know whether the voiceovers from the lead actor in Kenny & Company were the original intent, or if they were added later.
Most people think the voiceover is a sign of lazy filmmaking, but I tend to love them — Casablanca, Sunset Blvd., Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, and heck, even TV shows like Quantum Leap and Magnum P.I. used the device to great effectiveness — but knowing the general disdain, I was curious to know if Coscarelli had any hesitation.
“No,” he said. “I planned the voiceover from the beginning, and the script was written with the narration. It was my first attempt in exploring that and believe me, since that time I got that same criticism. Not so much from Kenny & Company, but with other projects, whenever I’ve wanted to go to voiceover, everybody rags on it. People tend to criticize narration, especially if you’re in a script conference and people go, ‘See it, don’t say it!’ And yet, I love a movie with a good narration. It’s refreshing.”
It’s also refreshing when you watch the movie to see how kids once were, when they were still allowed to be kids — nowadays it seems every baby is born with a BlackBerry in one hand, a full schedule, and a working knowledge of C++.
“Things really have changed since then,” Coscarelli agreed. “One of the things that I noticed recently was that back then… ‘back then...’ [laughs] during my childhood, after school we wouldn’t go play video games or watch television. We would run in packs on the street and get into interesting and funny activities. It’s a little different now. Kids are more constrained by our society. [Kids can’t even walk to school alone anymore] My mom never accompanied me to and from school.”
One of the things I liked on the Kenny & Company DVD was the newly-produced Making Of Featurette. As I was watching it, I wondered if Coscarelli could still make a movie like that today. And I swear, one minute later, on the DVD, he said, “I don’t think I could still make a movie like this today.” (Eat your heart out, Jeane Dixon.) I asked him about that myself, and he said if he were to try, “The approach would have to be different. It would be more from an adult perspective because that certain attitude you have as a child evaporates as you get further away from it.”
He has nothing but fond memories of making Kenny & Company. “It was real organic atmosphere. The whole thing was kind of like out of an Andy Hardy movie, you know, ‘Let’s put on a show!’ type of a thing. In some respects, we made that movie so simply and I’ve been thinking about trying to recapture that. I wonder why it wouldn’t be possible to come up with a good minimal concept, much like they did, say, with Open Water. A movie with just five or six people… I think that would be fun.”
The DVD featurette has interviews not only with Coscarelli, but his producing partner Paul Pepperman, stars Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, and many more… but not, surprisingly, “Kenny” himself.
“It was a little challenging getting everyone together,” he explained. “Michael Baldwin isn’t based in
Even though it’s not a horror movie, Kenny & Company will certainly hold interest for all of Coscarelli’s fans, whether they’re pierced and tattooed, or not. “It’s a movie I’m very proud of, and I think it’s just a nice little slice of life. It’s unlike anything I’ve tried since; it’s not only of the 70s, but the style of the film is 70s-like — I grew up with a lot of movies that were ‘slice of life’, like Five Easy Pieces and Last Picture Show, which were not plot-driven.”
The movie is certainly 70s-like, but there are no overt pop-culture references, no famous me-gen songs, very little slang, etc. That may or may not have been a conscious effort on Coscarelli’s part. “We of course made it in the 70s but I was, in some ways, trying to reflect the 60s. That’s probably why it has [a timelessness],” he said. “I grew up in the late 60s, and that’s what I was drawing on when I directed the movie in my early 20s.”
We are Horror.com, so we’ve gotta steer away from the cute kiddies and go for the throat now. I thought it was interesting to learn that Coscarelli got the horror-movie bug when he saw the audience jumping and reacting to the Halloween scenes in Kenny & Company, and how that led to his desire to write and direct Phantasm.
“Yes, that’s absolutely true,” Coscarelli confirmed. “It was the first scare I ever got on a movie and it was quite amazing, to have that kind of an impact. It’s seductive, really, and that’s why I thought I could do it on Phantasm — and make many of them!” [laughs] That, he did. There are four Phantasm films, and Coscarelli, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is in negotiations to make another.
Coscarelli knows it’s a ploy — “The marketing hook is, ‘The movie before Phantasm!’” — but he has a good point — “It is certainly interesting to see the Phantasm stars in another genre. You can see Reggie Bannister having fun, and it’s pretty shocking to think we have a movie with [the then-11 year old] Michael Baldwin even younger than he was in Phantasm!”
Perfect timing: Michael Jackson has been found innocent, and his Blockbuster video card is burning a hole in his pocket.
For the rest of us, Kenny & Company is a fun look back at Coscarelli’s work before it involved skull-slicing spheres, malevolent morticians, and a kick-ass Elvis Presley doing battle with an undead mummy.
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By Staci Layne Wilson