Macabro 2013, Opening Day: Jeremy Gardner And Adam Cronheim Present THE BATTERY

Jeremy Gardner (Ben):

“In a movie if you go to the doctor and want to get a diagnosis, they just cut to the doctor and he goes “you have cancer”. In real life, you have to go and sit in a waiting room, wait to go to the doctor’s office. And that is way more terrifying to me than just cutting into the diagnosis. I thought it would be really good to watch them wait, because they don’t have anywhere to be, nothing to do. It sets the audience up for having to wait through that long shot at the end.”

“I wanted to make a movie but where if the movie sucked and failed nobody would lose any money! I asked ten friends for $600 dollars, and said, “just give me $600 dollars and then if the movie fails and no one ever watches it, you can’t hate me because I have seen you lose more than $600”. I knew we could make something that looked real.”

“What’s the easiest thing to do? Two guys who are in the woods. Why would two guys be in the woods? Because zombies are in the cities. It organically came together.”

Jeremy Gardner (Ben):

“We didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any time. And we didn’t have any makeup artist.”

“My girlfriend went to a makeup artist office for half an hour and watched her do it. Then spent all of her money buying some makeup. She was really excited but she wasn’t going to have to do anything herself. One day our real makeup artist didn’t show up and we were about a hundred miles away, ready to shot. I just said to my girlfriend, go make zombies!”

“Of course I wanted (the zombies) to look like The Walking Dead. You know, beautiful zombies. But we couldn’t do it and ended cutting zombies out.”

(photo by Ana Karen Gerardo)

Jeremy Gardner (Ben):

“Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, not even the original, not the good one, stayed with me. When I saw it as a 10-year-old there was something really creepy about it. To me they (the zombies) represented mortality, which is why I’m still afraid of death every day. Death is still going to come after you and it doesn’t have any schedule. So I always wanted to make a zombie movie.”

“Everybody got sick of zombies, really sick of zombies. I was like “shit man, I made a zombie movie at the wrong time”. That’s why I keep saying it’s not a zombie movie but a character movie!”

“I’m writing a monster movie right now that’s really about marriage."

“I’ve had an idea for about 10 years that I’m in love with. It’s about a guy, his girlfriend leaves out and he buys a 10 feet king cobra and falls in love with this king cobra.”

Adam Cronheim (Mickey):

(To a member of the audience who asked about the sequel) “You have the budget? I mean, I don’t care, I’m dead!”

“The female zombie in that scene (when Adam masturbates to a zombie) is actually our director of photography’s wife!”

“The funny thing is that Ben and Mickey didn’t really know each other before the apocalypse. And I only met Jeremy a month before we shot this movie. So there was some realism to the relationship.”

(photo by Ana Karen Gerardo)

Jeremy Gardner (Ben):

“The only way you’re going to make a movie this small is if you have people to trust. Our crew was five people for 15 days. It just so happens that one of my best friends is a great editor. It just so happens that one of my best friends is a great photographer. We did it all in our house.”

“The only thing we weren’t sure about was the sound mix. We flew up to New York to meet a guy. We were going to hire him for the sound mix. And he was so pretentious! This guy was like an intern at a sound place and he just looked down on us so much that within five minutes of the interview my DP was like “let’s go out for a cigarette”. We walked outside and he goes “fuck this guy, I’ll do the sound mix!”

“I put an add online (for the filming) that said: You must be willing to sleep on the floor for 16 days, drink beer, drink coffee, maybe have a sandwich, and never go home.”

(Photo: Jeremy, Adam and the Mexican audience pretend they're dead)

Jeremy Gardner (Ben):

“I feel bad because I gave Mickey the whiny bitch role. It’s not Adam’s fault that I gave myself the cooler version of myself (Ben).”

“I think the music is the third character of the movie.”

“We made a location video before the movie and used one of Rock Plaza Central’s songs. We put it on Twitter, and this is why nobody can say Twitter sucks! Because the lead singer from that band said: hey, that’s cool, will you use for your movie too?”

(Photo: Jeremy, Adam and the Mexican audience pretend they're dead)