Saturday, October 10, 2015

A Corn Bred Films Halloween: Sica by Eric B. Anderson


















From the darkness, the wind whispers across Lake Tallahatchee.  It whispers my name.
Celia put down her pen and looked to the window.  The wind howled and hammered the cabin with a steady onslaught of snow and ice.  The dark interior walls were suffused in lamplight and the warmth of the fire burning in the hearth, but neither afforded the slightest comfort.  Sweat slickened her thin, aged skin, glistening in the flickering light. 
She took another drink from the glass.  The heat of the room had warmed the liquid.  She grimaced.
Bitter.
With trembling, withered fingers she picked up the pen and continued.
We have always lived on this lake.  For four generations, the Mulrays have been as much a part of this lake as the water that spills across its banks, as the woods that surround it, as the sky that hangs over it.  The roots of the weather-etched oaks that conceal our cabin hold the ground in a fierce grip, their beginnings laid against the earth like exposed knuckles, digging their fingers deeper, ever deeper.  Such is our claim on the lake.  And its claim on us.
It’s dark tonight, a black, moonless darkness that drapes the trees and the lake in a death shroud.  If this is to finally be the hour of my demise, I shall welcome it.  I have become so very tired.
“Mother?  He’s coming, Mother.”  Mary’s voice echoed down the hall.  The wood of the long hallway was lighter, newer than the weathered oak of the outer walls.  Celia heard her daughter’s footsteps shuffling slowly, cautiously closer.  She could envision Mary’s fingertips tracing the walls of the narrow hallway, dancing lightly over picture frames and mirrors, inching forward, betrayed by blindness. 
The strokes of her pen became more hurried.
The troubles began before I came into this world, and may continue long after I’m gone, though I pray this will not be the case. 
Many of the natives that predated my family feared the lake.  Early settlers had named it Tallahatchee, after the Indian tribe that first lived on its banks.  But that is not the name the natives used. 
“Sica,” they called it.  Bad.  Short and simply, “bad.”
The Micmac and Shawnee had long feared the Tallahatchee.  When my family came, the Tallahatchee had vanished, but their mark would still be felt.  None of the other tribes dared to settle near the lake.
A bulb above the kitchen sink blinked once and burned out with a sizzle.  Sweat began to seep through the thick wool of her dressing gown.  Her breaths were becoming more labored.
It was 1836 when my grandfather discovered the lake.  The area was beautiful then, a lush green thicket of trees surrounding a placid body of water.  The sun glanced off of the lake at sunrise and bathed the banks in warmth.  It is no wonder that Seamus Mulray’s westward trek ended on the banks of this lake.  Seamus and his family built this cabin, a cabin that still stands one-hundred and sixty-three years later.
The howling of the wind barely masked the cries buried within. 
Mary appeared at the end of the hall, her white hair wild, haphazardly scattered.  The purple veins in her hands marked a path to long, claw-like fingers.  Her face still bore the scars of her blinding, deep gashes that trailed into the lines that old age had wrought.
“Go to bed, my precious one,” Celia said.  The words sounded more pleading, cloying than she’d intended.
“I’m hungry, mother.  So very hungry.”
“I know, beloved.  It won’t be long.”

It was not long after my great-great grandfather put up stakes on this land that the troubles began.  My father, Joshua Mulray, and his brother Michael were swimming.  The boys took to grappling with each other, trying to pull each other under, as young boys are prone to doing.  Although my father was older by several years, Michael was the bigger and stronger of the two.  After several minutes of playful wrestling, Michael got the better of my father, grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing him downward.  Even as my father began to struggle, Michael continued to hold him down, kicking at his waving arms, avoiding his frantic hands.  Finally, Joshua stopped moving.  Michael, realizing what he had done and fearing the worst, quickly grabbed the limp form of his older brother and pulled him to the shore.
My father was not breathing when he reached dry land.  Michael shook him and beat on his chest, somehow forcing the water from his lungs, but still he did not breathe.  Michael ran to the cabin, tears streaming down his cheeks, shouting for his father.  When Seamus and Michael returned to where my father lay, they found him sitting up, smiling, his cheeks flushed with color but otherwise apparently unharmed.  This of course filled Michael with both relief and rage.  The latter of the two being the stronger emotion, he shook my father and screamed at him until he was blue in the face, but my father continued to smile.  Michael later received quite a beating at the hands of Seamus Mulray, but that would be nothing compared to the fate he would ultimately suffer.
My father’s mind appeared to be elsewhere after that.  His family would talk to him directly, but he seldom answered with anything more than the same distant grin he wore the day the change occurred.  They began keeping their distance from him, fearing the worst:  that he’d gone mad.   They did not know that madness was not the worst of their worries, or that he was only waiting.
When winter came, the wait was over.  Lake Tallahatchee is set in a valley, surrounded by bluffs that are treacherous to cross in the best of conditions.  This, in part, was the charm of the area.  The lake was secluded and safe from the outside world.  Protected. 
But in the winter, it became a fortress, impenetrable.  In the winter, the natives left the valley, knowing that staying inside meant certain death.  Only the Tallahatchee had ever survived a winter in the valley.  But then, the Tallahatchee were devourers.  Cannibals.
When winter settled on my family’s land, Seamus, his wife Alice, and Michael found out what my father was grinning about.  In the lake, my father had seen what had become of the Tallahatchee, and he knew what he had become.
My father had seen death in the lake, and death was hungry.
By the time springtime rolled around, all that was left of my father’s family were the bones that he hauled into the lake at the first thaw.
Of course, my father was no longer himself from the day he entered the lake.  He was Tallahatchee, and the Tallahatchee were sica.

The Tallahatchee had survived for years on stranded settlers caught by winter in the valley or the stragglers from other tribes, left behind due to illness or injury.  In the valley, the Tallahatchee were the hunters, all else were prey. 
Ultimately, they became too greedy, too cunning, and too ravenous for their own good.  The best hunters tried to hoard food from the weakest.  The weakest were not lacking in cunning, and they soon set traps of their own, killing those that would deny them food, dividing the tribe into warring factions.  They did not see the error of this infighting until winter held them firmly in its grasp and it was too late.  My father says that in his dreams he can see the last two members of the tribe, shivering with cold, afraid to fall asleep lest the other attack.  By the time one man finally passed on, his flesh was so weak and damaged it no longer held any power, and the second succumbed himself shortly thereafter. 
But evil never dies.  It simply moves on.

Since the winter that my father first felt the hunger, more than a century and a half has passed.  My father took a bride, hoping for a son to carry on the family name, not knowing that death would not claim him so long as he continued to harvest others.  Shortly after I was born, he devoured my mother, succumbing to a craving deeper than sex or companionship.  He says he felt grief about that, but I’ve always doubted his sincerity, watching the way he attacks the last morsel of meat attached to the bone.  He must have felt something though, seeing that he has allowed me to live all of these years.
Of course, my daughter and I are hardly innocents.  I was given human flesh from the time that my mother was killed. I understand that I even partook of her, although I was too young to have any distinct memory of it.
Mary came about by accident.  It was no accident that I desired the man who became her father, but finding myself with child afterward was quite unexpected.  It made me wish that he were still with us, but of course that was not to be.  Winter was coming, after all. 
My father and I hid our cravings from Mary for years, until she was old enough to understand them, or so we thought.  We fed her the meat of an Indian woman, boiled to a deep brown, before revealing the dinner’s source.  We were not prepared for her reaction to the Indian woman’s corpse.  Mary’s eyes dangled from their sockets, her fingers drenched in her own blood, before my father and I could restrain her.  Her blindness ended up being more of a blessing than a curse, however, as we continued to feed her, and she stopped asking what it was.  I realize that the hunger had taken her, and she knew what the answer was, whether she asked or not.
Over the years, we’ve gotten efficient at gathering food for the winter.  At first it was difficult, and there were lean times, but as more and more people moved westward, there was little to worry about.  In the early 1900’s, there was a time when my father had to venture out of the valley for food, but he was a successful hunter and we seldom went hungry.  We kept to ourselves and kept up a good front for our inevitable neighbors, even growing vegetables out behind the cabin to allay suspicious minds. 
When the population slowly began to accumulate around us, we were forced to adhere to a strict rule of not harvesting any neighbors closer than five miles.  The last thing we needed was a lynch mob at our door.  We kept to ourselves, secluded from the rest of the community, and were rarely hungry.
By the 1940’s, there were roads running through the valley and we found that travelers were plentiful and nearly untraceable.  It would be more exciting to tell you that there were close calls, but the fact is that there weren’t.
But there is, as you might have guessed, another side effect to the life that was thrust upon us.  My daughter is nearly one-hundred and thirty years old, and I am twenty years older than that.  My father is eighteen years my elder. 
Most people nowadays simply assume that we are either husband and wife (although they don’t know which of us is the wife) or some other arrangement of family.  We are ancient, bony and ugly, but still healthy and stealthy as ever.  I suppose that our appearance has made hunting easier than ever.  Who would suspect us?
I may sound smug and a touch glib (and reading over what I have written, I realize that this is the case), but I am tired.  Desperately tired.

Celia stopped.  She could sense her father’s presence, getting closer.  She grasped the box of poison in her unsteady hand and dumped the remainder of it into the half-finished glass of cloudy water.  Grimacing, she lifted the glass to her lips and swallowed it down.  Her vision was beginning to blur.  Her handwriting became an unsteady scrawl as she rushed to finish.
The trees are dead.  They have aged as we have aged, withered as we have withered.  Their branches reach to the heavens like greedy skeletons, seeking to pull down the sky.  The banks of the lake are mottled and gray.  Beneath the ice, the water is an impenetrable black.
Sica.
The snow outside is deep.  The interstate, a four lane superhighway that arcs around the outskirts of the Lake Tallahatchee valley, was unveiled early in the fall and, combined with the extreme foulness of the weather, it has sapped the traffic through our valley to a trickle.  We were overconfident, lazy, and have failed to stockpile in recent months, knowing that there was more, always more.
My father has already taken our nearest neighbors, the Cavanaughs, and we are sure to be discovered in springtime.  The extreme chill of the winter has brought the mice inside, enticed by the warmth of our fire and the fresh corpses in the cellar; another recent addition, dug by father last spring.  Father brought rat poison from the Cavanaughs.  I’ve dragged more than one hundred tainted carcasses from the cellar thus far.
It has been weeks since we’ve been able to leave our home, and between ourselves and the rats, our food supply was depleted more than two weeks ago.  This morning I discovered Mary crouching in the darkness of the cellar, the bodies of dismembered rats littering the floor around her, the smell of fresh blood on her breath. The small amount of poison in their bodies doesn’t seem to have affected her.  The sight of Mary’s face, her cheeks smeared in flesh and blood, brought the realization that immediate and extreme action had to be taken.
We are ravenous. We’ve not gone this long without nourishment before, and I know that it wouldn’t be long before we’d suffer the fate of the Tallahatchee, if I were to let it come to that.  But I will not. 
Before I go, hear my final words of caution:  whatever you might find here, leave immediately upon reading my words and burn this place to the ground.  Leave and never look back, or run the risk history repeating.  This place is bad.  This land is sica.
May God look on us with mercy,
Celia Mulray
December 2006
Celia felt a creeping pain in her belly as the poison began to take hold.  She prayed that it would be enough for all of them. 
She looked up from her writing. Mary had not moved.  She stood at the end of the hall, breathing shallowly, listening.
“He’s back, Mother,” she whispered, her face taut with expectation.  “He’s here now.”
The knob on the front door of the cabin began to open.  Celia stood, stopping to retrieve the razor-sharp hunting knife her father used to skin the bodies.  The knife scraped the surface of the table as she pressed it into her shaking palm.  Her father had returned, and he had returned empty-handed, as she knew he would.  The bone-chilling winds and whipping snow wouldn’t have allowed him to stray far enough to find sustenance.
“Mother?  What was that noise?”  Mary stood, facing the door, her head moving from side to side.
 Celia plunged the knife deep into her own belly and yanked upward.  A burst of air escaped her lips, echoing the gasp that Celia heard her father utter behind her.  Hot, wet blood slicked Celia’s hands, pain slamming into her with the force of a sledgehammer. 
Mary’s head swayed back and forth, her nose wrinkling in staccato sniffs.  She was hunting.  With stunning quickness, Mary was upon her, her face buried in Celia’s chest with ferocious zeal, her chin slathered in blood as she gnawed.
As Celia swooned toward darkness, she saw her father appear over Mary’s shoulder, his face a mask of insanity.  Mary howled in a rapacious rage as Joshua tore at her hair, growling like a rabid beast. They clawed at each other, shredding flesh and cloth in a frenzied battle for the prey that lay before them.  Joshua was stronger, heaving Mary aside with a shove.  He yanked the knife from Celia’s chest and plunged it into Mary’s throat.  Mary continued to clutch at his back, consumed by a hunger more powerful than death, oblivious to her own pain.
As darkness overwhelmed her, Celia felt her father’s teeth scraping against her bones, tearing the flesh from her ribs.

Friday, February 8, 2013

“LOVE UNDER FIRE: THE STORY OF BERTHA & POTTER PALMER” TO AIR ON WTTW11 CHICAGO


Corn Bred Films is proud to announce the television premiere of 
Love Under Fire: The Story of Bertha & Potter Palmer.  

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the half-hour documentary will air on Chicago’s premier public television station WTTW11 on Sunday, March 24, 2013 at 5:30 pm.  The program will re-air on Monday, March 25 at 4 pm and again on Wednesday, March 27 at 4 am.

Love Under Fire: The Story of Bertha and Potter Palmer tells the epic love story between young socialite Bertha HonorĂ© and Potter Palmer, a self-made man 20 years her senior, whose passion for one another and the city they loved inspired the rebirth of Chicago after The Great Fire that left it in ruins. Because of their efforts, Chicago rose like a Phoenix from the ashes to become the world class city it is today.

“Whether it's 1893 or 2013, Bertha Palmer’s story is timeless, especially as we honor women and their contributions for Women’s History Month,” said Director and Producer Amelia Estelle Dellos. 

This film marks the first completed film for Chicago-based production company Corn Bred Films and was made in partnership with Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, Red Car Chicago, Chicago Filmworkers, and Chicago Recording Company.  The film was privately financed with assistance from the International Documentary Association.

To view a three minute extended trailer, CLICK HERE


About Corn Bred Films
Corn Bred Films LLC is a Chicago-based Motion Picture Production Company committed to developing and producing films originated in the Midwestern United States.  For more information on Love Under Fire, please visit www.courtingbertha.com.

About WTTW
For almost 60 years, audiences have turned to WTTW for distinctive programming that informs, inspires, educates, and entertains. WTTW reaches 1.5 million weekly households over a four‐state area, making it the most‐watched public television station in America . Recognized for its award‐winning local and national productions, WTTW is committed to presenting the very best in cultural, nature, science, public affairs, and children’s programming across its four distinct television channels: WTTW11, WTTW Prime, its Spanish‐language channel WTTW V‐me, and WTTW Create, its “how‐to” channel.  For more information, please visit wttw.com.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Apocalyptic film with zombies to be shot in SEK



By Ray Nolting rnolting@parsonssun.com


A Southeast Kansas native plans on filming an apocalyptic film in the Riverton area this year.

Eric B. Anderson and his wife, Amelia Dellos, are producing the low-budget film, called “Zompocalypso.” The couple own Corn Bred Films, based in Chicago, which is dedicated to projects originating in the Midwest.

Anderson was born in Parsons and raised elsewhere. He spent a lot of time in Southeast Kansas, especially the Riverton and Baxter Springs areas, where he has family.

“I love the area down there,” Anderson said. “I just have a lot of fond memories of the area.”

Corn Bred Films is raising money now for the production through a crowd sourcing website,
http://indiegogo.com/cornbred.

What is raised will determine the equipment and other gear that can be purchased for the project, which Anderson hopes to start filming in the summer. Some scenes have been shot in the small budget movie. Some of the shooting will take place in Chicago and some in Cherokee County.

Anderson hopes to release the movie at independent movie houses by the end of the year, which would coincide with the end of the ancient Mayan calendar, the last entry of which is on Dec. 21, 2012.

The comedy/horror picture will be a story about two brothers who prepare for this apocalypse with a small arsenal, a case of expired beans and a camera. The Mayan’s didn’t predict the end of the world on Dec. 21, just that a new age would start the next day on a new calendar. The urban legend is that buried humans will come back to life as zombies on this date and destroy the human race.

The main cast has been selected, improvisational actors Chris Meister and Mike Manship, who will play brothers Dale and Darren in the movie. Anderson said some extras may be needed on the film site.

“It’s just a fun story and I can’t wait to do it.”

Anderson and Dellos both have been involved in the film industry for some time before they began their independent film studio. Anderson, a graduate of the University of Iowa, has written more than a dozen feature screenplays and several short films that have been recognized. Dellos is working as an executive producer on a documentary about Bertha Honore Palmer and the great Chicago fire for a Chicago TV station. They both have a background in marketing and public relations.

The pair have written several screenplays together, including the romantic comedy “Other Plans” and the urban drama “Save Me,” both in development in a partnership with Rock On! Films. They also co-directed and produced the documentary “Red, White & Blue: A Tale of Two Americas.”

To view the brief “Zompocalypso” trailer, go online:


Corn Bred Films: This Just May Be The Music Flick You’re Looking For

Corn Bred Films: This Just May Be The Music Flick You’re Looking For

Terrence Flamm
As co-founders of the Chicago-based Corn Bred Films, husband and wife Eric B. Anderson and Amella Dellos spin tales of mismatched lovers, ambitious politicians, serial killers, old school newspaper editors, and zombie-fighting country bumpkins. Anderson and Dellos work together, individually, and with other directors and writers on a wide-range of full-length films, shorts, corporate videos, and documentaries. Ultimately, they hope to put the Midwest on the same footing as the East and West Coasts in terms of film production.

One big step in that direction is a working arrangement to create higher budget projects with Rock On! Films, the New York company formed by director Joe Eckardt. In a recent email interview, Eric B. Anderson explained how the partnership came about.
“Joe Eckardt and I shared representation in the early 2000s, so that’s how we met,” Anderson said. “When Joe decided to launch Rock On! Films and needed content to produce, he reached out to me and it’s been a very rewarding partnership so far, with Rock On! co-producing five scripts with Corn Bred.”
One of those projects is You May Be Right, a comedy about a talented but unsuccessful singer named Eddie who fronts a Billy Joel cover band called Glass Houses. Considering that most of the group’s gigs are performed before sparse crowds in dive bars, Eddie’s wife Brenda seems justified in suggesting that he seriously think about a more lucrative career. Especially now that she’s pregnant. But when the actual Billy Joel crashes his car on the Long Island couple’s front lawn, Eddie decides it’s a sign that Glass Houses is destined for greatness. You May Be Right is still being developed, and so far Joel has no involvement with the film.

“Joe [Eckardt] has had conversations with him about another project, so we’re hopeful,” Anderson said. “That’s something we’re still working on, but since we’re using cover versions, we’re optimistic we’ll get it all worked out.” Most of the songs are alt-rock takes on songs Joel recorded for Glass Houses. Anderson was particularly impressed with the band Hussalonia’s interpretation of the Joel’s 1980 chart-topping album.

The idea for You May Be Right came from another writer, who had based the story on an real life Billy Joel car accident. Eckardt optioned the script with the intention of directing and producing the film, but eventually became disenchanted.
“Joe felt there was the seed of an idea in the original script (which is why he optioned it) but the execution didn’t work at all,” Anderson recalled. “So he asked me to take a crack at a page one rewrite. I took the key element, the car accident, and turned it into something very different. The script went from a sort of ‘dramedy’ to the loopy musical comedy that it is now.”
At first glance, You May Be Right seems similar to the Mark Wahlberg movie, Rock Star, in which a singer from a cover band winds up performing with the actual group. Anderson deliberately steered away from that angle, concentrating instead on Eddie and Brenda’s emotional struggle, and the question of how far one should go to follow his dream. The action is set in New York City and involves Eddie and his friend Ronnie’s comically absurd pilgrimage to the clubs Joel played in, the homes where he lived, and the places where his album covers were shot. Anderson concedes the locale is unusual for his proudly Midwest-centric company.
“So it’s heavily rooted in the New York area,” he said. “Now, I recognize that goes against Corn Bred Films’ core mission, but in this case, the script predates the launch of Corn Bred Films and the story necessitates that it be filmed in New York. If there’s an opportunity to film anything in Chicago, I will definitely be advocating for that.”
Anderson and Eckardt have hopes their collaboration will be widely distributed. Although You May Be Right is still in the development stage, some of the roles have already been cast. Corbin Bernsen will portray a character named Captain Jack, Jason Mewes plays Ronnie, and America Olivo will bring the combative Brenda to life.
“I’m happy with the casting thus far,” Anderson said. “And I’m looking forward to rounding out the rest of the cast.”

In the meantime, Anderson and Amella Dellos also remain fully committed to creating work that is exclusively theirs, under the Corn Bred Films banner. Dellos served as Executive Producer for the PBS special Love Under Fire: The Story of Bertha & Potter Palmer (she’s also working on a feature film titled Courting Bertha), and Anderson is particularly keen on Zompocalypso, a comedy/horror flick he’s directing about a pair of dim-witted brothers determined to ride out the effects of the Mayan-predicted 2012 apocalypse.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

WIRED blogs about the Zompocalypse!


Filmmakers Launch Campaign for Zombie Apocalypse Comedy

By   |  January 31, 2012 |  2:59 pm |  Categories: movies

 

They showed up to audition for a commercial about life in 2015, but once Chris Meister and Mike Manship started riffing about turkey calls, bathtub electrocution and the “re-zombification of Dick Cheney,” producer Eric Anderson realized he had a couple of real characters on his hands.

The pair’s goofy rapport, documented in the video clip above, inspired Anderson to write Zompocalypso. The film, which Anderson is looking to finance through an IndieGoGo campaign, will focus on two bumpkin brothers who hole up in a farmhouse equipped with weaponry and a box of stale beans to brace themselves for a zombie attack.

“As I sat there and watched these guys — who had never met each other before that moment, mind you — improv for a half hour about surviving a zombie apocalypse it dawned on me that this could make a very funny film,” Anderson notes on the film’s IndieGoGo page.

Anderson, who will direct the movie, and his wife Amelia Dellos hope to raise $10,000 for their Corn Bred Films production through the site. But no matter how much they raise, the filmmakers plan to bring Meister (on the left in the video above) and Manship (right) to Joplin, Missouri by early summer to begin filming on the backwoods zombie film, which Anderson describes as “an improvised found-footage comedy with a sprinkle of horror… The Blair Witch Project as directed by Christopher Guest.”

Check out a teaser for the film below, then head to the IndieGoGo page to help Anderson and his horde make their zombie apocalypse comedy.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

The Countdown is On for the Zompocalypse!


The Mayan calendar tells us we have less than a year left until the world as we know it ends, and a brave new world begins.  No one knows what the new world will look like except, perhaps, our friends Darren and Dale, who plan to spend the next year preparing for the coming storm in hopes of "twarting" the Zompocalypse.

Please watch their videos and kick in $5 (or more) to support their efforts. Then please post our link and share this email to give the gift of preparedness to all of the conspiracy theorists and zombie aficionados in your lives (I'm looking at you, Uncle Eddie).


<< CLICK THIS LINK...IF YOU WANT TO LIVE >>


ZOMPOCALYPSO tells the heartwarming story of Darren and Dale (brothers, best friends, and possibly cousins), convinced that the end of the Mayan calendar is about to bring on the "Zompocalypse."

The duo retreat to their family's remote farmhouse to await the coming storm. As sh*t begins to get increasingly real, the brothers prepare themselves to become the last known survivors of a brave, new, and possibly undead world.




Friday, September 23, 2011

Introducing: Corn Bred Films

Or re-introducing, depending on whether or not you've noticed us as we've launched over the past few months.  We've decided to start a blog to give friends, fans and colleagues a peek inside our projects, our goals, and our thoughts in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

What is Corn Bred Films? Corn Bred Films is a Chicago-based Motion Picture Production Company committed to discovering, developing and producing films originated by artists living in the Midwestern United States.  We chose the name Corn Bred because a) we're both born and bred Midwesterners and b) we intend to find and nurture projects that originate in the Midwest.  So if you're in Idaho, you're out of luck.  Missouri?  You bet.

Hey, that's us!
If you want to find out more, we invite you to check us out at http://www.cornbredfilms.com.

Hope to see you back here soon!  We'll keep it interesting, or die trying.*






* Odds are, we won't actually die trying.