5 Questions for Philly Filmmaker – Adam Lippe

by Le Anne Lindsay, Editor

Adam Lippe is now on the other side of the aisle, he’s a former Philly Film Critic who has recently written/produced/directed a feature length Horror-Comedy – WAIT, WAIT DON’T KILL ME, which premiered on The Colonial Theatre (Phoenixville) Digital Screening Room on August 21st and will continue to show on their platform through Sept 19th.

Synopsis: On the hottest day of the year, an unknown virus spreads throughout inner-city Philadelphia. The infected victims, crazed by dehydration, begin attacking other residents of the neighborhood in gruesome ways. When the military is brought in to contain the situation, but realize they can’t come up with a vaccine quickly enough, they fence off the area and let everyone die. Stuck in the basement of their building and separated from their family members, a group of locals band together to try to survive.

Wait, Wait, Don’t Kill Me is a darkly humorous horror film, seemingly ripped from the headlines, where government officials make life and death decisions based on the race and class of the victims of a terrifying viral pandemic. The film is a unique blend of satire, social commentary, rambunctious violence, and goofy jokes and animation.  Click Stills to Enlarge

WWDKM Movie Tony Cheng as Bobby and Keet Davis as Gilberto Aguilar

WWDKM Movie Andrew Hunsicker as The General

WWDKM Movie Derrick Graves as Infected Dentist

WWDKM Movie Angelique Chapman as Cheryl Aguilar, on the phone

 When I sat down to screen “Wait, Wait, Don’t Kill Me”, I didn’t realize that I shouldn’t have done so with my Chinese take-out, as the first half of the movie is a gore fest of Zombie-like infected people slashing, beating, eating and mutilating the unsuspecting, not yet affected in their community. I’d say with decent effects and camera angles for a first film.

The gore dies down in the 2nd half of the film, when we hone in on the group that bands together in the basement, a mix of races, all low income, frontline workers or students – Gilberto (Keet Davis) is the soul of the movie, don’t understand his obsession with a BBQ sauce anthem, but otherwise, he’s the moral compass and the one to sound the alarm instructing those in the apartment building to come to the basement to hide out. He’s got his 10 year-old daughter, Iris (Kennedy Cill) with him, as his wife Cheryl (Angelique Chapman) is busy dodging “the infected” on her way home from work.  There’s also Kate (Reesa Roccapriore) who was the first to see her roommate get slashed and eaten; a grocery store clerk, Bobby (Tony Cheng), who witnessed his bosses gruesome demise; a gay couple Quenton (David Marr III) & Gray (Will Hutcheson) new to the building; Erin (Jann Punwattana) a pretty, self-involved, center of attention type; and an older man, Dennis (Jeffrey Farber) with a controversial profession.  I won’t go into all the other B plots revolving around this horrible epidemic taking over Nicetown Philadelphia, but basically Lippe has create a COVID-19 social commentary wrapped in a quirky survival flick.

Which brings us to the continuation of Tinsel & Tine’s 5 Questions Series…

T&T: In a nutshell what was the main inspiration for your film and/or the theme that is the heart of your film?

Adam Lippe: Initially, I had a conversation with someone who was talking about wanting to make a zombie movie. I told him that everyone makes zombie movies, and you should make a viral pandemic movie instead, because you get to make up your own rules. You can determine how people react to the disease and what it does to them, instead of just being limited to the “fast zombie” vs. “slow zombie” dichotomy.  So I wrote an elaborate draft filled with copious amounts of carnage but also social commentary and satire. I wanted to explore what would happen if there was a viral outbreak in the inner-city and the likelihood that the government might be more willing to think of those citizens as collateral damage. I also wanted to play around with the idea that all of this chaos was just another pile-on in the character’s lives. Characters in horror films mostly just have this one thing to focus on, whatever supernatural calamity they’re dealing with. But in Wait, Wait, Don’t Kill Me, it’s like an additional annoying obstacle. So, the characters behave in less of a histrionic fashion than might be expected, considering the circumstances.

But they’re still average people, and I think when you make a horror film, if you’ve bothered to write real characters, you’re interested in seeing these people suffer through the absurd situations you’ve devised. The movie drifts in and out of the horrific and ridiculous quite frequently, and that’s entirely by design. So we get to see how a normal person has to adapt on the fly, no matter how strange the circumstances get.

 T&T:  Tell us a bit about the music of your film? OR Does food play a big part in your film? Or answer both.

AL:  For the grisliest sequences, I was looking to juxtapose the footage with lighter music, things that were poppy and/or silly. So, for instance, there’s a brutal montage in the film that’s scored to a song, “Your Delicious, Evil, Soup,” composed and performed by Cookie Rabinowitz, that was always designed to sound like a knock off of Harry Connick Jr. Sort of lounge lizard mixed with cheesy adult contemporary. I actually wrote the lyrics for that song (out of necessity, not out of ego). The song is about a game kids in school would normally play in the lunch room, where they put all the available condiments in a bowl of soup and dare each other to eat it. I thought it would be an amusing idea if you were an adult, still trying to behave like a kid, and you did that same gambit, but in a restaurant.

The more traditionally scored scenes; they were by Geoffrey Waterman, who provided beautifully unnerving dark wave music that would also occasionally alternate between curious and uplifting moods. It’s a real boon to the film.

As for the food elements? It’s oddly more prevalent in the film that I would have thought. Not just the aforementioned “Your Delicious, Evil Soup” song, but that same song is also used as the orchestral theme for a really terrible cooking TV show, “The Sauce,” that the main character, Gilberto, likes to watch with his daughter, Iris. Gilberto is a garbage man with aspirations to become a chef, so he spends a lot of the early parts of the film trying to get up the nerve to make etouffee. Eventually the ingredients in the etouffee become a plot point in and of themselves, as well as a way Gilberto bonds with several different characters. And more than one character is forced to eat elements of said dish when they don’t have any other edible options.

T&T:  Was there a point where you almost didn’t finish your film? And if so, what pushed you forward?

AL: The movie began shooting in May of 2015, but we ran out of money in August 2015 and only shot one more day between then and April of 2017. There were all sorts of sensible reasons to quit making the film, the financial toll it was taking, the emotional toll, and the physical toll. But I kept pushing through, all the way to finishing post-production in March 2020, because the nightmares about not finishing the film were more harrowing than the sensible ones telling me to stop. You never know if you’re going to have the money, the time, or the passion to make another film, so I knew that I had to keep going until it was done because I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I’d just quit.

If this ends up being my only film, and let me just say that I did the first film thing all wrong, 40 locations, 45 speaking parts, 100 extras, then I wanted to make sure it was as close to what was in my head as I could make it. [At least within my budget and skill level.] The final film is relatively close to the shooting script (apart from sequences that were deleted for pacing reasons). And they say that if you get 25% of what was in your head onto the screen, then you’ve succeeded. Well I certainly managed to get at least 25% of what I was originally picturing into the movie.

 T&T: Give a quick shout out to your creative team and anyone who helped get your film from an idea to the screen.

AL: When a film is this ungainly and takes so long to put together and finish (it was originally written in 2013-2014), there aren’t going to be a lot of people who are able to stick with you all the way through, so I have to give special credit to two people: First was actress/script supervisor Justine S. Harrison who certainly provided emotional encouragement throughout the process. Second was animator/poster designer/storyboard artist Ellen Marcus who even suggested a 2^nd animated sequence that helped tie some scenes together, a sequence which ended up being my favorite thing in the entire movie.

As for the production itself, there are so many people who were involved, so I can’t help but leave certain people out. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention DP John Presutto whose instincts and ability to break down a scene just from a basic description of the blocking solved many problems that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out myself. Then there was producer Ed Feldman who was instrumental in helping find locations, planning the more complex shooting days, and putting out [figurative] fires on and off set. There was also editor Mark Wawrzenski, who always went above and beyond what was asked of him.

I am also grateful to the extra special patience and reliability of the actors who showed up more than 2 years after their first shooting days, like Keet Davis, Angelique Chapman, Will Hutcheson, Tony Cheng, Reesa Roccapriore and Peter Barkouras. And those same people who continued in 2019 for the ADR sessions, to which I would add Andrew Hunsicker, Preston Smith, and many others. David Lee Denny Jr. deserves recognition simply for being the film’s #1 fan and supporter, helping me get a SAG contract in 2014 and sticking with the film until the very end, through thick and thin.

T&T:  What were the Pros and Cons of Shooting in Philly?

AL: The pros were that, because the tax credit in PA has been so compromised and so difficult to access (especially for a low budget film), very few projects are made here, which means that locations will not cost you thousands of dollars a day. People aren’t as savvy about the industry in PA, and they’re just glad that they have the opportunity to help out on or appear in a movie. If I had shot the movie in NY, where I had considered doing it (the movie was mostly cast out of NY, with the actors bussed in and housed in AirBnb’s when there were consecutive shooting days), I would have not been able to afford doing even 1/3 of what I accomplished here.

The cons were that the actors aren’t as experienced in Philadelphia because there are fewer opportunities for them. When you get headshots from people with their resume on the back, you just see the same six or seven productions on there, which tells you there’s not enough work to go around. If actors do live in Philadelphia, they have to spend most of their time working in New York City anyway, bussing back and forth between the cities. Until the Pennsylvania legislature can make it so it’s worth it for bigger productions to be made here and be more supportive of the theater arts, actors are going to have a hard time practicing their craft and improving. I’m aware that whenever this pandemic is over, worrying about a tax credit is likely to be the last thing on a politician’s mind. But it’s a pretty foolproof way to bring money into a community, through food/restaurants, lodging, and jobs for the cast and crew.

Wait, Wait, Don’t Kill Me   Running Time: 102 Minutes
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Produced by Ed Feldman. The cinematography was by John Presutto. It was edited by Robert Larkin and Mark Wawrzenski. The score was written and composed by Geoffrey Waterman. With a song composed and performed by Cookie Rabinowitz. The animation was by Ellen Marcus.