Was Garden Party an eight-year process (the time since Brown’s Requiem)?
No, this was a project that came out of frustration with a lot of other projects. There is a famous director named Larry Cohen and he spoke with me after Brown’s Requiem and said, “You got to make another movie, that’s going to be your big test.” I did some adaptations, some original stuff and got close on a lot of projects … and I had these stories. Just written stories that were interesting to me, and these stories of these characters were there, and I thought I could make an inexpensive movie of it. What was the budget? $500,000. It started off as $200,000, but that was a little too ambitious. The name of the film, is it taken by the Ricky Nelson song? Well, it was inspired by that. I think the song was in the movie and then I titled it, it was kind of around the same time. That was the only cover Erik Smith sings in the film right? Yeah. The other songs are Erik’s. He actually wrote them. A couple were songs he wrote in high school. It’s funny, there was a review I read where this
