During the summer and into the school year, senior Michael Adler embarked on a journey to bring his ambitious ideas to the masses. He ended up filming and editing a 40-minute movie in about three weeks. This interview was conducted before the movie came out, and all in all the movie was received well. At least, better than the movie from last year. I started off the interview asking him what influences him as a filmmaker, and what follows is an excerpt from our conversation.

M.A.: Well as a young boy I grew up on my dad’s taste of “Monty Python”. More like TV shows, “Seinfeld”, that kind of thing. I didn’t actually watch movies when I was younger, more like that Disney stuff. I was well into Alison in Wonderland and The Lion King. And you know we come to America, [and] I was exposed to movies. I watched a lot of movies on the Disney Channel. Brink is a classic. I then started to buy my own movies. I’ve been majorly influenced by Life Aquatic. I love everything about it. Wes Anderson is a genius. Darjeeling Limited was pretty good, The Royal Tenenbaums is up there. Recently I’ve been watching a bunch of horror movies, old stuff. Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead. I’m also taking film classes at this film conservatory called BAPA, shout out to David Stern, also a big influence on me.

I.G.:What is the overall tone you are going for with the Homecoming Video?

M.A.: The Homecoming video, I’ll just give a summary of the plot, it takes place in WJ like all the other ones the SGA has to save Homecoming. Basically the History Department is super popular that’s just the premise…and the Science Department is not as popular, its struggling, and some Students find the vaccine, the cure, for Mono. Which puts the Science Department on top, and the History Department gets mad at them for this. They are trying to figure it out, then a mysterious figure gives them a liquid and they put in it in the vaccine..and it creates a virus. They turn into zombies. Every Zombie jokes we could throw in, we did. There’s a thriller scene. If we hadn’t done that, people would be angry. So basically at the end the SGA is running around trying to find out how to stop it…and it ends in a giant battle scene. The vision was to be entertaining…the biggest problem was making it flow. We’re dealing with teenagers here. But yeah…its good. I feel like this a promotion….GO SEE THE MOVIE.

I.G.: What are some of the difficulties you have faced in the process of making this video?

M.A.: Well I didn’t have full directing authority over the film. All people would be putting in there input so we had to compromise. It worked out for the most part but sometimes it was not as good as it could have been. That happened the most often..people questioning the authority of the director. People did not cooperate. Then there was this whole deal with administration, and while they were really good, Dr. Garran was great, very lenient, it was a difficult task getting people together for the big scenes. We ended up filming the movie the first three weeks of school.

I.G: Who is the best actor amongst the SGA? Who is the worst?

M.A: Oh shoot. Who is the best? Sam is the best by far. Which is ironic since the other three are in stage. Sam..I mean his character wasn’t that difficult, he was playing himself, he’s really good at playing himself. He was made to play Sam Lichtman. He would have look or say something that would make the scene way better. In a sense like that, I would say he was the best. With teachers, Mr. Wiggins was amazing. Dr. Garran and Mr. Merrill were also really good.

I.G: What are some of your favorite movies?

M.A: The Life Aquatic as I mentioned, Evil Dead too…The Seven Samurai. I love the Samurai genre in general. Easy Rider too…it’s been awhile since I’ve since that. That was delicious.

I.G: What films did you reference in the video?

M.A: Well Zombies obviously, we wrote the script ourselves. We did reference Superbad though…and not much else (Laughs). Oh and there is some Kill Bill.

I.G: When you say “we”…who did you write the movie with?

M.A: Well it was team of writers over the summer. The team was the SGA, me, Senior Officers Andres and Jacqui helped out. And my friends Max and Jackson. I believe my friend Adam actually came up with the idea for a zombie movie…and we rolled on with that. It took a little long but it worked out.

I.G: What was one of the last movies you saw in theaters?

M.A: Well I saw (500) Days of Summer, which I came in sort of expecting this love story. And it was, but I liked it. The music was good, the girls are hot. And I also saw Inglourious Basterds…

I.G: And what did you think of that?

M.A: I thought it was good. The story was just mindless violence, there wasn’t much of a message. It was just pure entertainment. Quentin Tarantino just lived up to his image, he knows how to make an entertaining movie. There were some amazing shots. I wasn’t bored at all. The Bar Scene and the Scene with the Cow were my favorites…he managed to make a simple scene where they were just talking so interesting.

I.G: Well hey man thanks a lot for the interview, good luck with the movie

M.A: No problem, and thanks.