He is the man behind Here There Be Tygers Dollar Baby Film.

SKSM: Could you start with telling me a bit about yourself? Who are you and what do you do?

James Cochrane: I’ve been a Stephen King fan since about 1988 after I read Pet Semetary (someone gave us a whole box of books and I liked the cover to it so here I am). At the moment I work for a television company as a computer tech for High-Speed Internet- this is my means to afford the lavish lifestyle of which I am accustomed to, ie: buying way too many DVDs, purchasing the occasional limited Stephen King book and my NEW addiction collecting all things Joe R. Lansdale, and sometimes if I remember I will buy food.

SKSM: When did you make Here There Be Tygers? Can you tell me a little about the production? How much did it cost? How long did it take to film it?

James Cochrane: We filmed Tygers over 3 days here in Prince George at a school that has now been closed down due to budget cuts- it was the top floor and for some fool idea I chose to film on the side that the sun came in almost all day… it was sweaty and irritating and fun as hell! The bathroom scenes were shot in the basement of the school so we did not need to move the cast or any of the equipment which was good cuz inherently I am lazy.
Through a friend of mine who runs a casting company we had a night of interviews about two weeks prior where I met all the kids who wanted to be in it and then I chose the 3 main and the 27 background children.
Our dolley for moving the camera (as best we could) without too much shake was my roommates rolling office chair and another I borrowed from work. We filmed the classroom stuff over the mornings when it was not as hot and the bathroom/hallway stuff in the afternoons.
Overall the productions cost me upwards of about 100 dollars and I think that that is a bit high- I hate high budgets I try to stay as low on the budget scale as I can cuz I am cheap and I don’t have the balls to ask people for money- but so many of my friends volunteered and pitched in that that in itself was probably worth tones more- hell with some of the volunteers I’m still paying…joke

SKSM: How come you picked Here There Be Tygers to develop into a movie? What is it in the story that you like so much?

James Cochrane: First off my history of Tygers is one of broken memories but the short version is this: My Grade 7 teacher (one of my favourite teachers of all time) read to us from Skeleton Crew during U.S.S.R. (unsustained silent reading) and I like Tygers then but it wasn’t until Grade 10 or 11 that I finally read Skelton Crew and put two and two together that it was a Stephen King story.—- So my happy memories of youth kept this story in the back of my head.—-….and when I finally got off my ass to be a filmmaker I pulled Tygers down off the shelf (actually I bought the paperback because I only have the hard cover)—- I like Tygers for it’s sheer wonderment. I like that we can maybe fool ourselves into thinking that maybe this was all a manifestation of the little boy’s mind. I like that we see the stigma of being young and being so embarrassed that you would rather be killed then risk being laughed at for being yourself. That is scary to me—- I still think like that.

SKSM: How did you find out that King sold the movie rights to some of his stories for just $1? Was it just a wild guess or did you know it before you sent him the check?

James Cochrane: As I said earlier I have been a King fan for some time now and I had heard about it through the many readings and articles I’ve collected. So somewhere in the vastly empty head of mine I knew about these Dollar Babies. Then when Lilja of Lilja’s library mention Jay Holben’s film I realized it was time to shake the moss off my ass and produce. So I sent a little email to her and she forwarded King’s work address- which in retrospect I should have known, I mean everyone in the world knows King’s work address… and then I sent it in.

SKSM: Was there any funny or special moment when you made the movie that you would like to tell me about?

James Cochrane: If anything I’d like to mention to anyone planning on making a film one word of advice- they say never work with kids or animals and this is completely true save for this little piece of advice: you can work with kids if you have what I call KID WRANGLERS. These are adults- I’m talking 1 adult per 5-6 kids that can supervise the little buggers; keep them busy, keep them happy because a bored kid is worse than any spoiled actor out there

SKSM: How does it feel that all the King fans out there can’t see your movie? Do you think that will change in the future? Maybe a video release would be possible?

James Cochrane: I chose to do a Dollar Baby of Kings for the sole reason the test myself; To kick myself in the ass and DO something. I chose King because I love King and to try my hand at something that is his gave me the energy to do it and complete it- for him. —-As all the smoke cleared I have no plans to make a tape of this or DVD or anything else for that matter. This was my first film I have done more over the years that followed and am still doing them. I learned a lot from this one and made a lot of mistakes. —-There is a thought in the back of my head to pull out the old DV tapes and re-edit the way I work now but I’m sure that disrespects my past abit, I think. —–It is there in all it’s naked raw beginning-ness and I am proud of what I did but I don’t need to beat the world on the head with it. —-Tygers was never meant for most people to see… It took me a year to edit it (well it took me a year to learn how to edit it) and for all the people that helped me I thank them so very dearly cuz if it wasn’t for them it would have taken longer I’m sure. —- I have Tygers as a DVD for my family and friends and an mpg on my system… I will show it to everyone who asks but I won’t be releasing it into the wild.

SKSM: Did you have any personal contact with King during the making of the movie? Has he seen it (and if so, what did he think about it)?

James Cochrane: NONE and nope

SKSM: Do you have any plans for making more movies based on Stephen King’s stories? If you could pick – at least – one story to shoot, which one would it be and why?

James Cochrane: Since I am on this shooting with children kick Suffer the Little children might be a larf- if for no reason than that. —–But what I hope to have Stephen King let me do now that I am older and wiser is Ballad of the Flexible Bullet- I lve that one… I think it would be great to film and spooky.

SKSM: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Is there anything else you want to say to the fans that read this interview?

James Cochrane: —

He is the man behind The Lawnmower Man Dollar Baby Film.

SKSM: Could you start with telling me a bit about yourself? Who are you and what do you do?

Jim Gonis: I’m originally from New York; I was a film student at NYU when I made “Lawnmower Man.” I moved to Los Angeles a few years later to be a screenwriter. For the past eight years I’ve been working at Playboy in a department called Playmate Promotions, which is like model booking. However, I’m still writing. I became a King fan in 1980 when I read “The Stand,” it’s may favorite novel and I’ve read it four times.

SKSM: When did you make The Lawnmower Man? Can you tell me a little about the production? How much did it cost? How long did it take to film it?

Jim Gonis: The film was shot in 1985 but I didn’t manage to finish it until after graduation. It was for an undergraduate class called “Junior Narrative.” The original budget was $700 but ended up at $5000 due to various logistical problems. In our very small group of students, we each had very little experience shooting color negative and synchronized sound, so this was pretty ambitious. After all the raw footage was shot I struggled for a long time to edit it myself but finally had to hire an outside editor, which helped tremendously — I had spent so much time on it that I lost perspective, and the editor, Andy, really tightened it. Then finding a negative cutter, composer, mixing the sound, doing an answer print, all these things took time while I was still a full time student, preparing to graduate, getting my drivers license, things like that…which is why it wasn’t finished until a year after graduation. I already had my grade from the course, so I didn’t have to spend the extra money to finish it, but I just had to complete it after all that work and talent had already been invested.

SKSM: How come you picked The Lawnmower Man to develop into a movie? What is it in the story that you like so much?

Jim Gonis: When I first picked up “Night Shift” I started with the shorter tales, and that was among the shortest so it was the first one I decided to read. It blew me away, it was so unremittingly random, graphic and horrifying. When it came time to consider making a short film, my group of about four other film students, we went through so many ideas, all of them original, but none of them exciting enough. And in the class, time was running out to decide on an idea. The problem was, I didn’t really like short films and couldn’t come up with an idea that I liked. But when I thought about adapting a story, my mind first went to King, then to that first story I read. (The mid-1980’s were the boom period for King adaptations, remember.) We were sitting in a car driving around Manhattan, frustrated and desperate for inspiration, when I threw the idea in the air, and it rolled along from there. Because I came up with the idea to adapt it, I ended up with the director’s role, but it was intensely collaborative with such a small crew. By the way, there is a comic book adaptation by Walt Simonson that we worked closer from than the original story itself.

SKSM: How did you find out that King sold the movie rights to some of his stories for just $1? Was it just a wild guess or did you know it before you sent him the check?

Jim Gonis: Someone had told me about it after the fact, and I made the really stupid mistake of sending him cash! (I didn’t have a checking account yet at that age, but it would have been ideal to have a returned check signed by him.) I think I sent a videotape copy of the film in the same package.

SKSM: Was there any funny or special moment when you made the movie that you would like to tell me about?

Jim Gonis: The funny moments now are when I re-watch the film and notice small errors — there is one shot when you can hear me say “action”…and the shot where the mower flies off the balcony, the tripod case is in the background (though it’s not very visible). And, since some scenes were shot months later than the first shoot, the hair length of the actor who played Parkette is sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, so I notice these things and laugh. And, why didn’t I try to find a larger, more threatening lawnmower?! I do recall one very late summer night when we were shooting only the mower going through the house, and just trying all these gonzo things like taping smoke bombs to the underside of the mower to look like exhaust, and backlighting it; and throwing wood chips against it to look like it was eating through a chair. That was fun, and we used most of those shots.

The memories that are “special” just involve all the people I got to work with on the process — really generous actors; committed film students; the talented craftsmen I turned to for postproduction; and many friends and acquaintances who took the time to drive, get food, and allow us to use their home as a location! When you’re involved in what is more or less independent film making, even on such a small scale, you rely so much on people for so many things, and all that generosity is what stands out in my memory. It’s kind of miraculous in hindsight; I’m sure most indie filmmakers can relate.

SKSM: How does it feel that all the King fans out there can’t see your movie? Do you think that will change in the future? Maybe a video release would be possible?

Jim Gonis: I’m grateful that your site is now making it possible to for fans to see it. Finally! Although, I suspect a great majority of the short student films that get made are far better in many ways, yet never get much of an audience, so I feel very lucky that my film — just by virtue of being a King adaptation — still gets mentioned on websites and in books. Think of it, next year will mark the 20th anniverary of the shoot, yet here I am still answering questions about it! I think it also helped that the feature version was so unfaithful, that any truer adaptation would be apt to attract more attention.

SKSM: Did you have any personal contact with King during the making of the movie? Has he seen it (and if so, what did he think about it)?

Jim Gonis: After it was finished I sent him the tape but didn’t receive any feedback. A couple of years later he did a signing in New York so I finally met him and asked his opinion, and it was generally favorable — I think he said he got a kick out of it, something like that. Wish I could recall his exact words.

SKSM: Do you have any plans for making more movies based on Stephen King’s stories? If you could pick – at least – one story to shoot, which one would it be and why?

Jim Gonis: I’ve been away from production for so long, and I’m sticking to writing now. But I like those early “Night Shift” stories the most, and if I had to pick one it’d probably be “Battleground” — very exciting, cinematic and fun story. And I’d get a stop motion team for all the effects, no CGI! But then it’d probably take me about 20 years to finish.

SKSM: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Is there anything else you want to say to the fans that read this interview?

Jim Gonis: “God bless the grass!” (Interpret that as you will, I know the smoking laws are different in the Netherlands.) Thanks for watching my film, hope you enjoyed it. And thank you, Bernd, for putting it on your site.
Best,
Jim Gonis