Austin King Introduces Himself in Directorial Debut “One Night Cherub”
Austin King knows genre filmmaking. He’s a Features Programmer and Head of Submissions for Fantastic Fest, the preeminent showcase of genre filmmaking. The festival, which takes place in Austin, TX, was the reason King relocated there from his small east Texas town. His film aspirations go beyond championing the works of others, and he’s made his short film debut with One Night Cherub. The genre-bending flick had its world premiere at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival, where King picked up the Emerging Filmmaker Award. The movie then played as part of the Burnt Ends program of Fantastic Fest, with other festivals on the horizon. As a programmer, King has an understanding of what it means to be on both sides of the filmmaking equation.
courtesy of Austin King
“As someone who’s in the festival space, I know I need to target types of festivals that are at a certain level. I love my work. I think it’s amazing, but I’m not applying to Cannes. It’s not that kind of film,” laughs King. “As the person who answers all the emails for Fantastic Fest that people send from Film Freeway, I know you should always send an introductory email introducing yourself. You may get no response, but if you get someone like me on the other end who will take a look at it, maybe you’ll capture their attention.”
“I also know to not really get too bent out of shape about rejection. Obviously, we always want to be accepted into film festivals, but there are a lot of reasons something gets rejected. It’s often not because it’s bad, it’s just because it’s not right. As a programmer, you watch a lot of stuff and you start to learn what will catch someone’s eye and what will be a highlight to you as a programmer. You may not have realized that if you hadn’t watched 40 short films in three hours.”
When King set out to make the film that would be his introduction to the world as a filmmaker, he knew he wanted to tell a queer story, but not one that was a heavy drama. As much as he likes those films, King wanted to have a little fun on the playground of directors like John Waters and Don Mancini.
“There are important social messages in plenty of queer genre films, but I also like that it’s not my job to preach to you,” King says. “What I would like to do is strap a bunch of tubes to my friend and blow blood out of his back. That’s what excites me. Particularly, practical effects in the genre space. I find that really wonderful, seeing how I can play with them.”
“The other side of it is I have a deep, abiding love of camp. Camp doesn’t work if, I don’t know, someone is considering suicide. I mean, I guess I could, but I don’t think I have that kind of grasp of tone,” explains King. “I have a grasp of the tone of fear, like a silly little puppet hunting you. That’s where I find my interest in genre comes from.”
“Queer people have been making genre films as early as the 1930s. We’ve always been there, but I think what’s really great, particularly in the last ten years, is that we’ve gotten to become more explicit. We don’t have to hide things under metaphor.”
courtesy of Austin King
“A great example and a direct influence on One Night Cherub is the Chucky franchise,” continues King. “Don Mancini has been the engine driver of that franchise for a really long time and queer themes have always been there. In the past ten years or so, he’s gotten to be more explicit about the queer themes in that franchise because of the way the world has changed.”
While One Night Cherub is King’s official short film debut, he admits that there are a few other attempts that will never see the light of day. There’s a lot of pressure associated with a debut as a filmmaker. Essentially, this is your calling card. A rough summation of the types of themes you’re interested in exploring in a longer format, as well as an introduction to your style and voice.
“One Night Cherub is the first film where I was like, okay, what am I interested in?” reflects King. “Sex has always been interesting to me, particularly because I grew up in a very religious, small Texas town. I was in conversion therapy. Sexual repression is always interesting to me and I always want to kind of fight against that.”
“One of the things I love about But I’m a Cheerleader is that it takes a really traumatic experience that many people, myself included, have had, and makes fun of it. Maybe I could make that movie one day. I can’t make it today, but I love the way we can take those things that maybe hurt us and laugh at them.”
courtesy of Austin King
“And then practical effects…I just love them,” smiles King. “I love a good behind-the-scenes documentary of here’s how we did an effect. My favorite slasher franchise is A Nightmare on Elm Street. At some point, that has just become a series of special effects set pieces strung together by the loosest bit of story, which is fine with me. I like to think about, okay, well, how did they have puppet hands come out of a wall?”
While King and effects supervisor Amber Wilson weren’t trying to figure out how to have puppet hands come out of a wall, they did have to figure out how to bring the titular cherub to life.
“The cherub was designed by Eric Fox, a special effects person who lives out in LA,” King explains. “We talked about the design, what it would look like. Eric was like, it should be scary. I agreed and said it should be intimidating looking. He was like, but there should be a little nubbin penis on it, right? I was like, oh, of course, that’s a necessary element.”
“I did a lot of research and I went through a few different monsters. I could find a ton of cherub nightmare imagery. I was like, oh, no one’s really done this before. There are evil cherubs and things. Specifically, one of the things I came across is ‘The Angels Take Manhattan,’ an episode of Doctor Who. Those tend to be large angels, and we wanted something small.”
“Like I said, I’m a big fan of the Chucky franchise. A little scary guy who will just run around. It’s very fun to watch,” smiles King.
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