Last week, we at Infamous Horrors got to interview two incredibly talented filmmakers Adam Leader and Richard Oakes about the film Feed Me. How it was like to have the excellent company XYZ Films back your project. Feed Me is out now on digital platforms.
AJ: How did this film all come together? Because there’s a lot going on and there’s a lot of mixture of horror and comedy to it, and that seems to piss a lot of people off in the horror community, right? When you mix all those together. So tell me, how did this concept all come about?
Adam Leader and Richard Oakes: Me and Rich were on a shoot together. We’re shooting a music video and I had this true story like I’m into a serial killer crime and documentaries and psychology, all that stuff. And I said it to Rich, like, you know, this true story about the cannibal that somehow convinced the man to willingly let him eat him. Rich was like, Yeah, why don’t we make a film based or inspired by that? And he was like, Yes, let’s do it. Because being our second film, we kind of decided from the get go, we are going to wear our hearts on our sleeve, so to speak, as a director duo, and do what we want to do and make the movie that we want to see instead of trying to pander to what other people might want. Which we sort of made that mistake with our first movie, but this was just pure us and it’s our sense of humor. So I, you know, that kind of dark comedy, splashed on top of an underlying story about very real grief and, I guess mental health and all that kind of stuff is our thing. Story driven people with a ridiculous sense of humor.
AJ: How did the casting come about? Cause the two leads are fantastic, especially the guy who plays the cannibal he has to deliver to be believable, right? Because he is so funny in this and he almost kind of chews the scenery a little bit to an extent. So how did the casting process for Feed Me all come together?
Richard Oakes and Adam Leader: Well, it didn’t <laugh>, this film was written for Neil. We’ve been friends with Neil for a long time. He acted in our first film. I’ve had him in other films. We’re all best friends, so we wanted to write a film. Cause Neil did an amazing job in our first film, but he was very much, emotionless robot, do you know what I mean? And so to speak, right. He was like, it was great, but I didn’t really get to act, I didn’t get to be my flamboyant self. And we’re like, Tell you what, we’ll make you something. <laugh>. I think he read the script and went,<laugh>, maybe you’ve given me more than I was asking for this. He stepped up to the plate and brought everything we wanted with it and more. As far as Chris, I worked with him on previous projects. He’s worked with Neil on previous projects, so it’s all very incestuous and uh, there wasn’t necessarily a casting thing. We were like, we know the people we’ve worked with before. We’ve written this film with these people in mind. And um, Chris came to mind and Neil was like, Yes, I wanna work with Chris again. They get on like a house on fire. It’s all kind of just jokes and everyone having fun together and it works. There’s a good, there’s a good atmosphere. Then we also locked those two in Lionel’s house for the whole time. They were the only two people that literally lived there. So they stayed there. That was their home during the filming and just left them to their own devices. And I think, yeah, it kind of brought some insanity with it, which was exactly what we wanted.
AJ: How does it feel to have a production company like XYZ Films behind you guys in this? Cause they are getting out there and they seem to be on a winning streak at this time, at their point of distribution. So how does it feel to have them backing you guys as well?
Adam Leader and Richard Oakes: Like, we should pinch ourselves and I don’t, I’m not trying to kiss, I’m not trying to kiss ass here. Honestly. We’ve wanted to work with, with XYZ for a long time, you know, and, and we, we didn’t go in like we were proud of the movie we made for sure, Right. But we didn’t, we kept our expectations low. Like we always aim for the top, we’ll always aim for what we want, but be prepared to, you know, not give our hopes up. And we reached out to them pretty much first that, oh, it was first we wanted to work with them and they said, We like the film, Let’s talk. And me and Rich were like two kids on Christmas day. We were like, What? This is insane. So, to be picked up by XYZ for distribution, like it really is, is a dream come true for us. And not only that, I think they’ve surpassed our expectations that we had. They are seriously just a wonderful company to work with and they’re really supportive of the artists. They’re not corporate and controlling. They very much want to push your flamboyance or your creativity or your craziness. They’re like, Yes, just do what you do. And we are there to push that and that’s what’s amazing about them. And we’d, we’d love to keep that relationship going into the future.
AJ: What’s next for Feed Me After this? What else do you guys have planned for it?
Adam Leader: We’re gonna continue. So we’re still on the festival circuit, We’re literally talking to you from Spain right now. We just screened a festival in a beautiful town called Galia in Spain. And then we are heading to Belgium in a couple of days to Razor Reels Festival, then back to San Sebastian in Spain and then Barcelona. So we’ve got a bit more on the festival circuit to do. Thankfully we can be there in person for then we’ve got, Rocko, Sangre and Argentina. We’ve been at Santiago in Chile, like all these amazing festivals, which is overwhelming for us. So we’re, I guess enjoying the festival run and, obviously excited and, and the anticipation for the, the, the actual digital release in America in two days from now on the 27th of October. So it’s all very exciting, man.
AJ: And what is next for you guys on your upcoming projects, if you have many lined up?
Adam Leader and Richard Oakes: Yeah, we’ve got a script done for the next film. It was actually written before Feed Me, but um, we put it on hold while we were looking for funding for that, cause it was a bit of a bigger project. And then while we were looking for funding for that, we were like, let’s make Feed Me cause it’s a bit easier to do. So we’re going, but we’re going to go back to that. It’s been a year and a half extra since we wrote that, so we’re just refining the script, getting it a bit closer to what we want before we put those wheels in motion. It’s all seeming to open up and that’s great for us and we’re excited about the future.
