Wall Street Journal

Tracing One Film From Inspiration to Release

Though it took just 26 days to shoot, the post-apocalyptic survival saga "Stake Land," which opens Friday at IFC Center, is part of a long, creative journey for its director and co-writer, Jim Mickle. Mr. Mickle made the low-budget film with New York-based independent producer Larry Fessenden and actor-screenwriter Nick Damici, who stars as the vampire-slaying "Mister." During a recent conversation with the trio, the filmmaker outlined how he's been working up to "Stake Land" for literally half his life.

1. September 1996

Fifteen-year-old Jim Mickle of Douglassville, Pa., discovers the Midnight Madness program at the Toronto Film Festival.

"I got interested in movies in junior high and it started with horror films. My dad used to take me up to Toronto every year. He met a screenwriting professor at Temple University. They would go on these long-distance dates. I was my dad's wing man. I went four or five years in a row with my dad and she became my step-mom.

"I'd make my dad stand in line for these midnight movies. My famous moment was meeting [Italian cinema legend] Dario Argento in the bathroom at a urinal and shaking his hand nervously and not washing my hand after that."

2. September 1998

Mr. Mickle starts film school at New York University and gets a job at Kim's Video on St. Mark's Place. "It sucked. It was a nightmare."

While working at Kim's, he sees "Habit," a Lower East Side vampire movie written, directed by and starring Larry Fessenden, a New York independent film producer focused on contemporary horror and other genres. Mr. Mickle sends Mr. Fessenden an email, introducing himself.

Mr. Fessenden: "It was incredibly endearing and very formal, telling me how much he loved 'Habit' and if he could work for me. For a long time I thought he was a kid who worked on 'Habit.' I didn't put it all together."

3. April 2001

Mr. Mickle goes to Connecticut to work on a classmate's student film and meets actor-writer Nick Damici.

"We were staying at these cabins. Nick was a bus driver with a heart of gold, sticking up for this kid and showing him how not to get bullied. I remember thinking, where the hell did you get that guy? We got involved in one weird situation after another with the guy that owned the cabin. He invited us to sing karaoke in his living room with his family, and this is like two in the morning. He had three or four teenage daughters and he'd wake them up and bring me and Nick in to hang out. It was the weirdest thing ever. And at some point Nick and I are sitting on the guy's couch, and the guy is drunk, singing some song, and the teenage girls are looking at us, smiling awkwardly, and there's this Barbie car with a Barbie doll with its head torn off, and Nick was looking at me and said, 'I feel like I'm in a David Lynch movie'. And that was the moment I thought, this guy's kind of cool. Nick wrote a script based on that shoot, a slasher movie."

Mr. Fessenden: "It's called 'The Phlebotimizers'. It's the most notorious unmade script ever. Nick told me, 'It's a beautiful script, it's a romance.'

4. 2002

Mr. Mickle makes "The Underdogs," a short film about a mailman sent to a strange town where dogs have overtaken the townspeople. The film remains unreleased.

5. 2002-2005

Mr. Mickle works consistently as a grip on a string of New York productions. "I did eight romantic comedies back-to-back. I was ready to kill myself. I met my girlfriend Linda on 'Transamerica.' She was the producer. We're still together."

Meanwhile, Mr. Damici takes fourth billing opposite Meg Ryan in Jane Campion's "In the Cut." "I played the killer. I begged Jane to let me kill [Ms. Ryan's character]. She said, 'I'm not killing my heroine!' I said, 'Jane, at least let me shoot her.' I did get to smooch her."

6. August 2005

Messrs. Mickle and Damici begin shooting "Mulberry Street," about an apocalyptic rat invasion. Most of the movie is made in Mr. Damici's apartment on Mulberry Street. It's released in 2006.

7. 2007

Mr. Mickle: "I got together with Larry and talked about doing a web series. And the next day, Nick sends me the first 10 pages of 'Stake Land.' Then he sends me two dozen of these things, that are all 10 minutes, little mini-comic books.

Mr. Damici: "There's at least 27 stories there. We took it all to Larry. He said, 'This is too good. We've got to make a movie out of it.'"

Mr. Fessenden: "I had made a three-picture deal to produce low-budget movies for MPI, a company out in Chicago that had been very pleased with the Glass Eye production of Ti West's 'House of the Devil.' So we had three different movies planned. One of them was a cornfield movie. I called Jim and I said, 'Dude, let's do this. Let's shoot in that cornfield.' This is now six or seven years wanting to work in some way with Jim. Now I had some money. So Mickle read it. He said, 'It's pretty cool. But listen, I have this other thing. It's "Stake Land."' It became our tentpole movie of the three movies. Everybody got very excited about it."

8. August and November 2009

"Stake Land" shoots on location in Douglassville—"in my dad's backyard," said Mr. Mickle—and the Catskills.

9. September 2010

"Stake Land" wins the Midnight Madness audience prize at the Toronto Film Festival.

Mr. Mickle: "We got into Toronto and played the last night."

Mr. Damici: "When you got the award, you were trembling."

Mr. Mickle: "I couldn't keep it together. To get to come back there, not as an insider guy but someone who was greatly influenced by that, and to get awarded … Nick waved the Canadian flag."

10. April 22, 2011

"Stake Land" opens in New York.

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