Sean Tretta

Interview with Sean Tretta
Writer/Director of the Great American Snuff Film
by LM Campbell

Sean, when I sit down to watch my collection of snuff films, I see varying degrees of quality and mediums; 8 & 16 mm, videocamera and DV. Why do you think that every time a movie involves the subject of snuff films, they are always grainy, silent 8mm prints?  Your film, The Great American Snuff Film (GASF)explains the character’s motivations for filming in such a fashion, but I doubt that other filmmakers considered why they procreate and cultivate the notion that every snuff film in circulation appears to be filmed in the 1970’s – and that none have been created since…

It is my understanding that the original concept of a snuff film came from rumors about the Manson Family making “home movies”, depicting the murders of young women. If it had been true, the assumption is that they used 8mm or Super 8mm. The image of snuff films being made with low quality media fits well with the dark, inherently underground nature of such an act. I imagine snuff films as being bootlegs or copies made of copies, made of copies… etc. I shot GASF on mini DV, but desperately wanted to give it a film-like look whenever possible. Since I had the ability to take video and run it through a filter that made it look like old Super 8, I used it as a story element.

You mention Charlie Manson, but from the film, I sensed a comparison to Charles Ng and Leonard Lake was much more apt…

Oddly enough, it was only after we finished GASF and I was researching serial killers for another project, that I learned how commonly serial killers made snuff films. It absolutely contradicts the research that says snuff films do not exist. Rarely though, I would find reference to snuff in terms of the death videos that some recent serial killers (those that you mentioned) have made. When I sent out screeners to distribution companies, I had a lot of them believing that GASF was based on a true story (some referencing Leonard Lake and others, for example). I too was shocked to learn that some real-life killers mirrored “William Allen Grone” so closely. My concept of Grone when writing the script was this: If you look up the term “control freak”, and you browse the list of occupation associated with it, undoubtedly, you will find SERIAL KILLER and MOVIE DIRECTOR on the list… That is what I drew the character from – not Manson, no one other than the idea of a soulless person trying to stimulate the emptiness inside himself.

Everybody has a unique view on what is horrifying and unpleasant. When someone makes something such as GASF, a piece of the filmmaker’s psyche can be seen in the final product. What was absolutely mandatory when you filmed the ‘snuff’ sequences with the girls?

Personally, I’ve never seen an actual snuff film – nor would I want to… I don’t think I would handle it well. The concept for writing GASF came from my accidental viewing of the footage of Vic Morrow’s death during the filming of The Twilight Zone: The Movie. I found the footage (his beheading and the death of two children) to be the most disturbing image(s) that I’ve ever seen. An uneasiness lingered within me for a considerable amount of time afterwards. I then took that, and used it as the basis for GASF as a means for making a low-budget horror film that was actually disturbing on a real and psychological level. While filming the snuff scenes for GASF, I tried to keep things simple, I took the mindset that Grone (the snuff-film maker) was documenting the girls as a way of permanently owning their flesh and physicality. I think what’s so disturbing about it, is that Grone is basically making a home movie, much like people do; the style is the same, only the outcome is different.

“The concept for writing GASF came from my accidental viewing of the footage of Vic Morrow’s death.” That is hilarious! How do you accidentally watch a video of someone dying?

I was watching HARD COPY, or EXTRA, or one of those shows, and they showed the footage of Vic Morrow’s death. I was shocked, it came completely unexpectedly. Had I known they were going to show it in it’s uncut form, I probably would have changed the channel. It bugged me severely. I was a teenager, who had been watching horror films my whole life, and had become desensitized to the blood and guts. Regardless, seeing the footage more than likely helped to form my current sense of what is truly scary. The realities of life are far more terrifying than latex monsters and boogeymen with masks. GASF was a great way to make a disturbing film about the lack of humanity in some humans. It was also a way to make a disturbing movie without a big cast, or a lot of effects.

So, in trying to film a disturbing movie – how did you choose the shots? Why were certain aspects revealed while others not? What I mean is, you were trying to create a realistic ‘faux-snuff film’ – was what you included in GASF what you would expect to see in a snuff film, or perhaps what you personally would want to see in a snuff film?

Shooting the faux-snuff stuff was probably the easiest stuff to shoot because all you have to do is point the camera and shoot. The mere simplicity of it lends itself to the snuff aesthetic (or at least my interpretation of the aesthetic). The key is to hold the shot for a long time. People can take that sort of thing better if it’s quick and “painless”… like ripping off a band-aid instead of pulling it off slowly. GASF is about “pulling it off slowly”.

Your ‘band aid ripping’ appears far too prurient; it does not merely look like a product made by someone with only a passing interest in human suffering…

My interest in human suffering is solely for the purpose making the viewer squirm. While shooting, we thought we pulled a lot of punches in terms of what was shown. The MPAA didn’t think so; they initially gave it an NC-17 for “prolonged, sadistic depiction of torture and killing combined with abhorrent sexuality”. The “R” cut has more black bars, cuts, and audio deletions than the Warren Commission Report.

At any time of the day, you can turn on CNN, or any other fear-mongering, propaganda machines and see dead people in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other warzone/lawless shithole/ occupied-by-US-forces/5th world country. With all of this bombardment of death, why do you think snuff films are still held in awe by people?

While researching snuff films (Killing for Culture in particular), I learned that a true snuff film is deliberate – meaning that in order for footage of a death/murder to be considered snuff, it has to be created for the specific purpose of making the film. In other words, The footage of Vic Morrow’s death is not a snuff film. However, the footage of terrorists beheading Daniel Pearl is. Yet you could argue that since the terrorists are religiously and politically motivated, then it is an act of terrorism rather than snuff. All I know is that most people who’ve seen that type of footage end up wishing that they hadn’t. The single most disturbing aspect of a snuff film is the evil/selfishness of the snuff-film maker. What people hold in awe is the idea that someone would take another person’s life for the singular pleasure of it.

Killing for Culture is an excellent book. It’s funny how you used this book as research for snuff films, because it’s focus is on debunking the snuff film mythology…

Killing for Culture was great in that it helped to define what a snuff film WASN’T, just as much as what it WAS.

Tell me about the mood on set – was it like a children’s oncology ward where morbid humor is necessary to get through the dirty bits?

On set, the mood was very light. None of us had shot a feature before, and our crew consisted of me and the actors. Honestly, while shooting, things seemed so light that halfway through the shoot, I though that there was no way anyone was going to take GASF seriously. In fact, one of the actresses had a major crush on Ryan Hutman, and she couldn’t wait for the scenes where he molests her. Ninety percent of the shots had her smiling in them. It was hard to cut the scenes because it looked like she was having too much fun.

Was it a conscious decision to make both the protagonists and antagonists unsympathetic? Because, let’s face it – most to all people are completely unbearable…

The point of GASF was to make it nihilistic; therefore, you couldn’t feel for anyone. Again, the purpose was to make something that made the viewer uncomfortable in a challenging way.