Emergence of a Paradigm: Richard Taylor To The Max

Cheap Talk With The Director Of The Misled Romance Of Cannibal Girl & Incest Boy

There is a place, a place where sexy, cannibalistic girls rip fetuses from the wombs of wayward mothers in front of abortion clinics; where happy-go-lucky bow-tie-wearing hayseeds get their heads stomped into chili with a pair of Doc Martens; where disembodied penises vie for screen time with costume-emporium pirates; and squeaky-voiced, turtle-neck-wearing miscreants get their jollies from playing human bowling balls. Welcome to the world of Richard Taylor, the Duke of Down & Dirty Denver Cinema.

Not since Nick Zedd christened his anarchic film style as the "Cinema of Transgression," or John Waters convinced his friends to sully a household by licking an enemy’s furniture, has underground film seemed this gleefully absurd.

Richard Taylor - and his frequent co-writer Zack Beins - are two young lads from Colorado. Their on-a-whim production troupe Bizjack FlemCo have produced more than twenty-six short films and videos, including About to Bust, My Bloody Valentine, The Gay Pirate Adventure and the now-legendary Unicorn (a film Taylor insists is the prequel to his cult sensation The Misled Romance of Cannibal Girl & Incest Boy).

Some of these shorts can be found as Special Features on the DVD for Cannibal Girl & Incest Boy, ironic when one considers the fact that these shorts are only a few minutes shorter than Cannibal Girl itself. Such is one of the many zany facts that make watching Taylor’s videos so enjoyable.

Taylor started early, making his first short film, The Silver War, while in high school. Even then he had a love for old school formats that seem vintage in a day and age when everybody shoots on digital. The Silver War was made for a high school production class. “It was about…silverware (knives, forks, spoons) in a war with each other,” says Taylor. “I took out every pair of silverware we had at my house and used them as puppets.”

A true example of the DIY spirit at work, Taylor’s film was what some of us might call experimental or unscripted. “I remember I was sitting in class, editing the movie when my teacher came over and asked, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Editing a movie.’ He said, ‘You just can’t make a movie, you need a script! What you’re doing is making home movies.’ So, after making the movie and editing it I made up a script for him.”

The teacher accepted Richard’s film and it was picked for the Films Showcase. It won the Best Non-Computer Animation award at DAFFY (The Denver Academy Film Festival for Youth).  As a result, the film was shown on public access television, “which was way cool for me as a kid,” Taylor exclaims. “To see your film on TV! Even public access.”

Like so many loyal underground filmmakers, Taylor surrounds himself with a reliable stable of talented and creative collaborators, most notably the aforementioned Zack Beins. The group met in high school and college, respectively, and have been a team ever since.

For all this talk about DIY filmmaking, the reality is that film costs money and unlike most young aspiring directors, Taylor has worked with actual celluloid for a couple of his projects. Which raises the question, how does a Denver-bound dude with a day job afford to shoot on rolls of film and transfer to video without financial assistance? The answer is found in networking portals such as MySpace and other areas of the Internet, which Taylor believes to be the best outlet for garnering a fan base and finding collaborative individuals.

This was likely the case with the process on The Misled Romance of Cannibal Girl & Incest Boy. Having shot on Super-8, Taylor turned to a chum in the business for professional assistance. “My friend Beth Charlesworth from jolly old England worked at a Post house and did all the Film to Video transfer for us.”

Taylor adds, “The only scary part of that was we had to send our film overseas and took a risk in doing so.”

Such are the risks an artist must take when working in the shoestring world of bargain-basement deals and favors for free.

Cannibal Girl may not be the only completed project in this prolific boy’s brazen film canon, but it is the most impressive, having garnered critical acclaim from Goregirl.net, Bastardsofhorror, and the web-famous Bloody-Disgusting.

After spending “Over one thousand American dollars” on completing the film, Taylor set up a PayPal account and started selling DVDs on demand through the film’s MySpace page. This technique paid off, and seemingly overnight the film managed to obtain temporary hosting/distribution through Xploited Cinema.

Of course, Taylor isn’t a one-man miracle machine, nor is he strictly a writer/director. On YouTube his presence is felt on an almost intolerably silly and comically creepy level, in the video Face Facely’s Mystery Package. In the skit Taylor plays Facely, a young man whose mouth is veiled by the front of his shirt, giving the impression of an oversized turtleneck. And, as with many of his projects, Taylor’s longtime buddy Zack Beins is right there with him, co-writing, co-directing and co-starring in the wacky, no budge proceedings.

“Do you realize,” I ask Richard. “That with Face Facely, you popularized the notion of a man’s love affair with a blow-up doll more than a year before Lars & The Real Girl became such a big deal?”

Taylor doesn’t answer my question, opting instead to direct me to Face Facely’s MySpace profile, conveniently located at myspace.com/facefacely. This seems admirably typical of Mr. Taylor’s attitude. Unlike some pretentious arthouse types who would swear off any sort of acclamation by saying something stone dumb like, “True art is thankless” or “My film requires no flattery,” Richard just remains modest, reaffirming his already all-too-obvious nature as a simple and endearing dude who wants to indulge in the simple, humble pleasure of making movies…for Fun. It’s every horror fan’s dream, to get down and dirty with stage blood and tubes and spray bottles and just have a blast.

This is nothing new for him. Back in 2006, Taylor and Beins traveled from their native Rockies to New fuckin’ Yawk to work with Troma Entertainment, on Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. Troma - run by Co-Founder and frequent Director Lloyd Kaufman - has been making movies not unlike Taylor’s for over thirty years, beginning with the mid-70’s sex romps Squeeze Play and The First Turn-On, before hitting their stride with enjoyably cheesy punk rock features like The Class of Nuke ‘Em High and The Toxic Avenger. Kaufman, an iconic personality in his own right, pioneered the techniques that Taylor loves so much, such as using a watermelon as a substitute for a human head in a car accident scene.

And when you peek around the curtain just a little bit you can clearly see that Taylor is mimicking Kaufman in many ways. Not so much in plot or narrative structure or anything directly related to the thematic material or aesthetic qualities of a Troma flick, but in the showmanship that Kaufman is known for, the overly-ebullient morale, the wacky faces and, of course, the business acumen.

Taylor’s MySpace profile for Cannibal Girl (myspace.com/incestcannibal) is an advertising agency’s wet dream, with pictures of the DVD release splattered in catchy phrases like, “Head-Splittin Special Edition,” and “AND SOOOOOOO MUCH MORE!!!!” And you get a free sticker when you buy the movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All of this is a positive, mind you, because it shows that even the care-free movie lover just out to have some fun is still resourceful enough to be serious about the industry side of things. The echoes of Kaufman are all the more suitable now because, after Taylor attended numerous Tromadance festivals and worked on Poultrygeist AND convinced Kaufman to cameo in Cannibal Girl AND pimp the shit out of it in Troma-style commercial spots, Cannibal Girl was picked up by Troma to appear on the forthcoming volume of their Best of Tromadance DVD.

As you may suspect, Taylor is “totally excited” about the release. “Not only will it be in the Troma library of films, it will be released worldwide!” And he is quick to add, “I have no idea when they plan on releasing it, so you can pick up the film NOW with tons of bonus features from me personally at: myspace.com/incestcannibal.”

Now with FREE STICKER!!!!

Taylor recently completed an adorably ribald little video called Jack to the Max that follows the life of a man’s cock after it gets tired of his constant masturbation and moves out of his life in search of something new. For this project, already up on MySpace and YouTube, Taylor says he drew on “personal experience.”

Jack to the Max is a must-see, especially if you are at work and your uptight Conservative boss is standing over your shoulder, trying to survey your turnaround rate and overall performance. Just be sure to have your pants around your ankles and a bottle of obviously disguised booze in a translucent glass handy. They love that. Nothing like a floppy rubber cock to get the slave drivers to pipe down and return to their offices.

One enthusiastic YouTuber named BabetteBombshell raves, “[Jack to the Max is] a piece that rises head and neck above the rest…Truly a stand-up feature…I had a ball…You can be cocksure that fans will be aroused and cum to give this flick a warm hand. Every inch a classic!”

Taylor is now developing the screenplay for his first feature-length film, with the snazzy title Atom the AMAZING Zombie Killer. I ask him nothing about the details of the movie, lest I spoil what he inevitably has in store for those of us gutsy and smart enough to look forward to his wonderful blend of bloodletting and balls-out humor. The film will be shot on mini-DV or HD and will feature a peppering of Super-8 film as well. In the meantime he is working on something called the Zombie Hate Brigade’s music video and, from what little evidence I have to go on, furiously masturbating several times a day. He is also dating his Jack to the Max co-star Ashley Sprague. So…perhaps I should recant on the vigorous jacking comment. Oh, well.

In any event, Hollywood is on its way to Richard Taylor. And when they get there you can be sure that we will be treated to a plethora of glorious projects, like a cartoon series entitled Monster Punks and, naturally, a half-hour sitcom starring Face Facely.

Bizjack FlemCo are now accepting donations to fund Atom the AMAZING Zombie Killer. With the first draft done what’s left but fun? Head on over to their MySpace profile and drop some coin.

www.myspace.com/atomthezombiekiller
www.myspace.com/richardbizjacktaylor
www.myspace.com/incestcannibal
www.myspace.com/facefacely