An Interview With Don May, Jr. -- Grand Pooh-Bah of Synapse Films

Click here to learn more about anamorphic widescreen!

Site created 12/15/97.

page created: 9/17/99

An Interview With Don May, Jr.
Grand Pooh-Bah of Synapse Films
(continued)

Back to page 1

Doogan: What other titles do you have plans for?

DMJ: My next big one is Deadbeat at Dawn, which seems to be more amazing than I originally thought. The buzz on it is very good. It's a 10-year-old movie, that was on video for about five minutes, ten years ago -- it has been unavailable since. I saw the film at last year's Fantasia Film Festival, and Jim Van Bebber was there. I saw the audience reaction. I told Jim, "I have to do your movie. The reaction here is insane." The audience went so nuts, that they actually showed it again in Toronto a couple of days later -- they shipped the print up. He said, "Sure, let's do it." He got me so f**ked up at a party that I could barely walk, but we clicked pretty well. We bonded and an agreement was signed shortly after.

So I ended up getting Deadbeat at Dawn. Now, everyone is like -- "You're the guy who is doing Deadbeat at Dawn! I can't believe it!" People are offering me free stuff at conventions, just because I'm doing Jim's movie. I was like, "Holy shit!" It's a great, great, great film. The video release was hard to find back when it first came out. A small company, that just vanished after getting the money from the tape sales, did it. Jim and the producer, Mike King, didn't really see any money with that deal from the film. I'm hoping to remedy that for them. Mike Gingold, from Fangoria magazine, had one of those original tapes and he sent it to me. I watched the movie four or five times in the few days that I had it, I liked it so much. Have you seen it?

Doogan: No. I've heard a lot about it.

DMJ: It's great. It's really a lot of fun. Jim is one of the most amazing independent directors I've ever met. He is one of the most amazing guys to ever hold a movie camera. He does everything himself. He directs it, he writes it, he runs out in front of cars, jumps off of bridges, lights things on fire -- he just does what he needs to do to get the shot. That's what I admire about him the most. He's just a great guy, who really deserves a break, and hopefully he'll get it with his new movie, Charlie's Family. There's a lot of buzz going on about that one, too. He just isn't quite finished with it, and hopefully our Deadbeat at Dawn release will bring Jim the attention he deserves. Charlie's Family is one of the most f**ked up, scary and disturbing films I've ever seen.

Doogan: New topic: here's a question for the ages: How'd you get your hands on Brain Damage?

DMJ: Actually, you'll have to pat my partner on the back for that one. It's always been one of Jerry's favorite films, and when we formed Synapse, Jerry was determined to get that movie as a Synapse Films release! It turns out that the licensor lived only about thirty minutes from Jerry's house in Michigan, so we were able to get it! Just luck, I guess.

Doogan: Okay, so you have all this great stuff lined up. How do you get seen? I mean, who markets your stuff?

DMJ: I do most of it myself. Sometimes I'll partner up with someone like Image Entertainment. But, mostly it's myself. For someone like me, stores are like "Synapse who?" Best Buy won't return my calls... Circuit City -- same thing. But if I can get in touch with a company that has contact with those stores, like Image, then maybe I can sell some more units. That's what's happening with Brain Damage. Image just told me recently that the Musicland chain is picking it up through them, which is great news. That's the most important thing for me -- to get my stuff out there, and hopefully make some money for everyone. Image picked up Brain Damage exclusively, and they've moved the entire run already, two weeks after the release. They already ordered a huge repressing, which is great! Now, I have to yell at Image to get it into Best Buy and Circuit City, I guess! (laughs)

Doogan: Since you market your stuff, produce your stuff and do everything else yourself, describe to us a day in the life of someone who does exactly what you do. Because no one does exactly what you do.

DMJ: Today up at 6 AM... on the computer at 6:45 AM answering 175 e-mails. That's no joke -- I had this morning 175 e-mails, and only like 30 of them were junk mail. It takes me over an hour to do that. Since I do everything myself, I was working on designs for the DVD menu screens for Deadbeat at Dawn. I had to pick up the pictures for that, so that took some time, and then I talked to some distributors.

A day for me is pretty nerve racking. Even when I was with Elite, it was me, my partner, my partner's wife, and our graphic artist, and we could spread the work around. Here, it's me in my office, doing everything myself, including answering the phone -- ringing constantly. I'm designing the website, and trying unsuccessfully (laughs) to keep it up to date. I'm designing the jacket covers, the advertisements, the copy and the transfers. It's hard, and yes, there are times that I just want to punch the wall. But, in a sick, sadistic sort of way, it is fun -- I get a kick out of it.

But I have other things to do, like meeting my graphic artist twice a week to show him how I want my jackets printed up. I have to do the preorders, get the product, and cut the invoices. I personally deliver all reorders to the UPS and FedEx offices, during my lunch hour, for shipping. I try very hard to close up the office around 5 PM, but I hardly ever get to. I didn't do everything when I was with Elite, and it's a big wake-up call when you're doing everything by yourself. It's time to grow up, okay. When you're looking at everything you have to do all by yourself, you really have to open your eyes wide and see how difficult it is.

Now, I have my hand in helping with a new production facility being built in town, and we are branching off with two new lines of DVDs and videocassettes in the future, so I am basically tripling my work. But I'm doing it, and I wouldn't give this up for the world. When I get tired of it, I'll close it up and move on. If another job offer came along, perhaps I would think about it if the money was good. But at the end of the day, I just think to myself, "Ya know... this is all worth it." Someday in the future, whether I'm still in this business or not, I'll look back and at least be glad I did what I did.

Doogan: You should be glad about it. Don't you think it's amazing, the fan base of horror fans waiting for these movies on DVD?

DMJ: That's how I got into this. There was that one title that started my decent into this video company madness, Night of the Living Dead. We were just going to put it out and then move back into our regular, everyday, mundane jobs. At first, it was only a fun side project -- something we could tell our kids about, you know? Then, all of a sudden, it morphed into this huge thing. It took eleven months to do and get it out, and we realized that we couldn't keep our real jobs and do something like this.

Doogan: How many awards did you win for that?

DMJ: I can't even remember. It wasn't so much awards, as it was recognition. I know that TV Guide voted it the best laserdisc of the year, along with Snow White. We really jumped from two nobodies from New Jersey, into these "Oh, my God -- how did we do this?" guys. We were up for awards at VSDA, for "Best Transfer" against Sound of Music! Two guys from New Jersey! (laughs)

All things considered, we really jumped in with both feet to see where we'd land. We did it, and it was great and I'm glad to be part of it, but it's strange how we found all these fans. I mean, with laserdisc, it was this amazing format that all these "collectors", fans of big-budget movies, got for their Star Wars movies, or Titanic, or whatever. They wanted letterboxing, good sound with Dolby Surround, great picture, etc. They wanted that extra "something" that videotape could never provide. Laserdisc fans were perfectionists who really, really loved the big-budget movies! Then we did Night of the Living Dead in 1994, and we realized there were people who wanted other stuff. It wasn't just the middle-aged, upper middle class guy with a laserdisc player -- there were teenagers, and there were college students. Hell, I was twenty when I bought my first player. There are kids who have these things who want to see these movies. We tapped into an unknown market when we released our first few titles, and revealed all these fans of the "littler" movies, if you will, and it sort of took off.

Doogan: I would classify Night of the Living Dead as being one of the top 10 laserdiscs ever produced.

DMJ: Thanks, it was a lot of hard work. It's strange -- you had all these laserdisc fans as a base, but now all these DVD fans are coming out of the wood work that want to see The Beyond, and other movies like this. Lucio Fulci's The Beyond is out on DVD already. I mean, my God! It's in Japan -- Region 2 -- but people are buying this stuff up like crazy.

When I was at the Chiller show recently, I saw a laserdisc copy of Zombie Holocaust. Holy shit! What the hell is going on? I mean, it used to be this Elitist format -- pardon the pun -- that everyone had their big studio movies on. And then things shifted, and you started seeing Night of the Living Dead, special editions of Phantasm, special editions of Hellraiser. I'm like, "Wow. Did we have a hand in this?" Seriously, do you think that it was because of what we did, with re-mastering the horror stuff, that showed all these other companies that it works? I don't want to pat myself on the back, but...

Doogan: I really do think so. When I first started reviewing laserdiscs, there was nothing but studio films. There was nothing really coming out that interested me. You'd have to get the Japanese laserdiscs to get stuff like House by the Cemetery and El Topo -- and you can't even find that stuff on video here. Then Night of the Living Dead came out, and it wasn't like you were just putting it out, but you were restoring it, cleaning it up, getting THX to approve the sound transfer and...

DMJ: Yeah, we didn't start out with one little title. We came out with a full-blown special edition.

Doogan: In a way you legitimized the film too. Night of the Living Dead has always been this cheapy film that was on at midnight, with badly-dubbed video versions floating around from 80,000 distributors. You guys coated it in gold, and everyone was like, "Wow." Now Night of the Living Dead is considered one of the greatest horror films ever made, and I don't know if people really would have said that 10 years ago.

DMJ: But we always thought it was, and that's why we picked it for our first title. Now that new version of Night of the Living Dead comes out, with new inserted footage from Anchor Bay, and it's the biggest slap in the face to the movie. Anchor Bay should be ashamed of themselves for putting their name on that. What a train wreck that is (Don makes a vomit noise on the phone). A total bastardization of the original film -- completely unnecessary, and I suffered through it in an actual theater screening!

Doogan: That's a good point, but you really don't want to get me started on that. Getting back, I think with the advent of special edition discs (laser and DVD), it's almost like this new generation of film fans are going back and picking these classic horror movies up, and calling them art. Things that wouldn't remotely be considered redeemable when they first came out...

DMJ: There are still so many thousands of titles out there that I want to do, but that I'm not sure people would know anything about. When we did Tombs of the Blind Dead at Elite, which is one of my favorites films, one distributor was like, "Tombs of the Blind What?" They didn't even know what the title was. They never heard of it. There are so many films like that I want to do for Synapse. The problem is, the buyers for the distributors and store chains, who have no idea what's good and what isn't. If it isn't a box-office blockbuster, or it doesn't have "A-list" actors, they don't really care about it, which is a shame. Most of the films they've never heard of are quite a bit better than this "A" title/summer blockbuster crap they have on their shelves. Look at Image tapping into the Redemption stuff. When, in God's name, did you ever think you'd see Reincarnation of Isabel on DVD? What? Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine? Holy shit! Truth be told -- I'd rather watch those types of films more than things like True Lies or Titanic anyway.

Doogan: I love that Image is releasing the Redemption stuff. I hope they don't ever stop putting these types of films out on DVD. Devil's Nightmare is one of the greatest movies ever made.

DMJ: I know it is. It is. I'm so glad other companies are putting this stuff out. People may not be really buying it, which is a damn shame, but it's such great stuff! There's so many of these "unknown" films available for release, but the distributors are like, "What is this? We can't sell this." But really, they need to stock this stuff and get into the stores. I mean, my stuff with Synapse, and some of the other DVDs from other companies -- I don't see them in the stores. I just want these chains to wake up -- Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart... Hello! You'll sell this stuff if you put it into the stores.

Doogan: Hell, Best Buy has a section dedicated to Japanimation...

DMJ: Right. But they don't want to give people like me the time of day. I know that my stuff is not in Best Buys yet, but it's in places like HMV, Tower, Virgin and many of the major on-line retailers like DVD Express and Ken Crane's, so I'm happy. It's Best Buy's loss that they don't carry the stuff. I don't understand it. I really don't understand it. For the longest time you didn't see the coolest stuff from Image, like the Prince of Darkness letterboxed and stuff like that at Best Buy. But, now you do. Supposedly they have the majority of the DVD market. Best Buy is THE chain for DVD, and yet they don't carry half the stuff on DVD. I don't get it. You can walk down the street to your local laserdisc or DVD mom and pop store, and get this cool stuff from Anchor Bay, Elite, Roan and my stuff. You can buy them at the little store down the street, but Best Buy doesn't have it. Doesn't make any sense to me, and they are supposed to be the number one retailer for the format.

Doogan: Can people get stuff directly from you?

DMJ: I'm not set up for that right now, but all the information you need to order my stuff from an on-line store is on the site. I have a section that says, "If you can't find my stuff locally, here are some stores online that will sell you my product." It works and has helped my sales. I put the links up on my site, and two weeks later, I'd get a hundred reorders. At the time, I hadn't had any reorders for like a month. I put up the links, and out go a hundred more pieces. It was a smart thing to do. We are going to implement an online ordering system for my titles once I get the software. It'll be a while, but I feel that we need it, because there are people living in places that don't have specialty shops that carry this stuff.

Doogan: Speaking of that, how important is the Internet for Synapse?

DMJ: We never really had an "official" website with Elite, so my first goal when I started Synapse was to exploit the Internet as "that powerful tool". My number one priority was getting up the website.

Doogan: How interactive are you going to become with your DVDs? Will you take advantage of all of DVD's capabilities?

DMJ: I want to be more interactive with menus and extras (if available), and I know that the prices of DVD compression and manufacturing have gone down. But when you do a lot of that crazy stuff where menus move, fancy graphics, etc. that costs you. For someone like me, who isn't selling 250,000 pieces, I'd be lucky to crack 1% of that probably. I'm doing 2,000 or 3,000 pieces. For me to do that, animations would be cost prohibitive.

Doogan: Do you think that people will go out and buy a title like The Matrix, not just because of the film, but because of all the stuff on it? And is it worth doing such interactive DVDs with DVD-ROM content, based on the cost of doing something like that?

DMJ: Believe me, if I released The Matrix, you could bet your ass that I would do the same thing. But I would know that I am going to sell 250,000 pieces, so the costs wouldn't really matter. I've been kinda intrigued by DVD-ROM, but the only one I've really tinkered with is Blade. Maybe I'd put scripts or pictures on upcoming discs, but again, I'm not a multi-million dollar company. Some of the ROM aspects I wouldn't be able to afford on the titles I produce, based on the numbers that I sell.

Doogan: So Vampyros Lesbos, a title that's getting crazy preorders -- is it worth it for you to throw some extra stuff on it, like an isolated soundtrack or something like that?

DMJ: I would put everything I could on it... if I was given things to add. Right now there is a trailer, and I would LOVE to include a music-only track like on Brain Damage, but the mags don't exist for me to do that. The licensor had NO pictures or anything. The movie is thirty years old, and it wasn't a major studio release, so there isn't much I can do with it. I just want the fans to be happy with what they get, and I will provide them with the best-looking transfer that is humanly possible with what I was given. There's going to be some hidden stuff on Deadbeat at Dawn -- some really cool stuff.

Doogan: Do you plan on including liner note essay booklets, or some other inserts into the packaging?

DMJ: If I had a great essay, sure. I put an insert in with Brain Damage. There will be something on the inside of Deadbeat at Dawn and Vampyros Lesbos. With Dario Argento's World of Horror, Argento was too busy with Phantom of the Opera to do something. He didn't have the time. My first two titles didn't have that kind of stuff, but you have to realize that I'm doing all this stuff by myself. The more that goes into the disc, more of my hair goes gray. I'm doing the best I can. Look at the difference between World of Horror and Document of the Dead. Document had all this supplemental stuff on it and it was very hard to do that. I was working on a special edition all by myself. I didn't have any help, and I was incredibly sick, and in and out of the hospital at the time I was doing it.

I'll grow as my sales grow. My DVD releases will start to be more ambitious as more money comes in. I'm starting out small, and I hope consumers appreciate what I'm doing. In order for me to do the big titles people want me to do, I have to do these little titles to get the revenue to get these big titles. That's the hurdle.

Doogan: Okay, sounds like Jerry's business sense is starting to rub off on you. Speaking of big titles, I hear that your most ambitious to date is going to be A Better Place -- what can you tell us about it?

DMJ: A Better Place was one of those mythical films that fans of Kevin Smith have heard of, but a lot of people hadn't seen -- including myself. I read about the film on the Ain't It Cool News site, and it sounded cool. So, I met Kevin at a signing, and I hung out there to talk to him for a while. Prom Night was one of Kevin's favorite "bad" films and he knew I was involved with the laserdisc. When I mentioned I wanted to do A Better Place, he said, "Okay." Two years later we're doing it.

Kevin made a joke that he wanted to do a Prom Night-like disc. He even signed a book for me that said "Don, I want to do a Prom Night-like disc." Funny thing is, Prom Night doesn't have really any extras, but for A Better Place we're going all out.

Doogan: What's going to be on it?

DMJ: We did a brand new transfer. To do that, we used the best telecine ever, the Spirit Datacine from Philips. It's not only the best, but it's the most expensive telecine unit in the world. Supposedly, James Cameron used this same make and model to digitally compose scenes for Titanic. We got a great deal on it, so I used it, more as an experiment for 16mm really, and now the film looks better than I expected it could -- it looks like a 35mm production.

It will be presented in multiple aspect ratios, a-la Dr. Strangelove, to properly show the compositions the way they were originally intended. We re-timed it, and now it looks better than the theatrical prints. We are adding additional scenes, and are remixing it at Skywalker Ranch. Because View Askew has connections at the Ranch, we were able to get a 5.1 mix. Both director Vincent Pereira and myself are very proud of this one. I'm also excited because I get to go to Skywalker Ranch -- I can't wait!

Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are doing a filmed introduction, and there's going to be a commentary track with director Vincent Pereira, and it will contain additional scenes not included in the film festival prints. We'll throw in anything else we can dig up. Another really cool thing is that Eion Bailey, one of the film's stars, now has a big role in the upcoming David Fincher film, Fight Club, which will be a huge push for us.

Doogan: Eion Bailey must like those violent stories. Which, actually, brings the point up -- has it been a problem distributing the film because of A Better Place's "high school violence" story line, especially in the wake of the Columbine incident?

DMJ: Yes. It was an unfortunate incident, and bad timing. I had the film since January 1999, before the Columbine incident. After it happened, I knew it was going to be a problem. I remember calling up Vincent Pereira and asking him, "What the hell are we gonna do now?" It was just a bad, bad time to be doing a film like this. I knew the film's content may even be a problem even before the shootings, but I don't really mind controversy. Teen high school violence is kinda frowned upon across the board, you know?

I loved the film though, so I wanted to do it, regardless of the content. But because of Columbine, after I sent screeners out to potential VHS distributors -- people we're freaking out! Even though it's a film about anti-violence (it's probably one of the most anti-violent films ever made) using violence, some distributors take a look at the film and are immediately worried about the content. People were like: "Uh, no... we can't do this right now." We'll have to wait for the Columbine incident to cool off, and continue delaying the film for a bit. I haven't even officially announced the disc yet anyway. We do have a big distributor who is interested in the film now, but I can't really talk about any arrangements at this time. It's not exactly something people would think Synapse would do but, like I said before, I'm trying to expand my audience a little, and introduce people to films they have never seen before.

Doogan: Pop quiz. It's Nuclear Armageddon. You are able to save one movie, and one movie only, for all of time. What movie is it and why?

DMJ: Too easy... The Last Picture Show. It's my favorite movie of all time, and I think it always will be. There has never been a movie made that is better than that film. Maybe, in the future, something else will come along that I like better, but not yet. That's a surprise, I bet, coming from me. But that is my all-time, God's-honest-truth, favorite film. I cherish that film on disc. If my place caught on fire, that would be the disc I'd pull from my collection.

Doogan: Considering your library, that'd be a helluva job.

DMJ: Out of my 750 laserdiscs, that I have, I'd pull it -- I swear. I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me. I'm so happy it was recently announced for DVD, because I hate all those damn side breaks! (laughs)

Doogan: Hey, that's the glory of movies. Everyone has a favorite. Everyone has a favorite movie that defines us, and becomes a piece of us. But that's shocking. Considering you're a horror film connoisseur and historian, I'm... wow, simply shocked.

DMJ: Well, next on my list would be The Exorcist, of course, so don't be so shocked.

--END--

If you, or someone you love, has an interest in Synapse Films, cult movies or anything else you think Don would be interested in, drop him a line at: donmay@synapse-films.com or visit his webpage at: http://www.synapse-films.com. Just don't get him mad -- he doesn't have time for people that piss him off. He's like David Banner that way, man. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.