BUTCH: At a mere 22 years old my first guest tonight has written, directed and produced 3 short films and 2 features in and around Philadelphia with a third feature film coming up soon.  His second film, a dark, lush 19th century piece, A Chronicle of Corpses, opens October 24th in New York City.  Take a look….

BUTCH: You’re In Bed with Butch, and the extremely young (he giggles) -- I hate him -- Andrew Repasky McElhinney.

ANDREW REPASKY McELHINNEY: Hi.

BUTCH: Hey, good to see ya’, how you doin’?

ARM: All right. 

BUTCH: So thanks for coming on the show.

ARM: You’re welcome, it’s my pleasure.

BUTCH: Now, how old were you when you first made a film?

ARM: I was in the 9th grade at Abington Friends School, so that was back in ’94, when I started doing the short films, then I shot my first feature, Magdalen, summer ’96, here in Philadelphia.

BUTCH: Oh my God, 9th grade you started, like, working on this?

ARM: Unhun.

BUTCH: Uh, I mean, what was the inspiration?  Like, how did you think to start doing films?

ARM: I don’t know…  It was sort of manifest destiny.  I think I always wanted to do it.  I always used to put on plays in the cellar with my sister.  They just they got bigger and bigger and eventually involved crews and lights and everything and…

BUTCH: Wow…

ARM: I’ve always had this little aesthetic I’ve been working on and its very much my own thing, “very Andrew,” as they say.

BUTCH: Right.  I can’t believe you have so much under your belt already.  So I guess, um, let’s talk about the movie that we just saw a clip of, A Chronicle of Corpses.  Now, um, you know, that was the very last…

ARM: …last feature that I completed.  It opens in New York October 24th and then rolls out across the country to different theaters and then video.  I’m working on doing a new film right now, Flowers of Evil which is in pre-production, and we hope to start shooting pretty soon, as soon as we’re finished raising all the capital to do it right.

BUTCH: Right, oh wow, that’s awesome.  Okay, so Andrew has managed to connect with an extremely talented actress, who is also an accomplished soap star, Marj Dusay, who has starred in Santa Barbara, is it Santa Barbara…?

ARM: Yeah.

BUTCH: …Santa Barbara? 

ARM: Yeah, Santa Barbara.

BUTCH: Santa Barbara and The Guiding Light.  She was also featured in Andrew’s first feature film which we’re going to show in a minute, Magdalen.

ARM: Actually she was in A Chronicle of Corpses.

BUTCH: Right, she was in the … yeah…

ARM: Yeah, she’s -- I wrote the role for her.  She met me when Magdalen played in New York and she came to a screening and I was like “I love you” and she was like “you probably don’t know who I am,” and I’m like, “No, no, no! -- you’re really brilliant, I’ll call you in a year -- I’m going to write you this 10 minute monologue.”  So, a year passed, I called her up, she took a week off from All My Children and came down and did A Chronicle of Corpses.  Marj was just fantastic to work with.

BUTCH: Oh that is unbelievable!  So you, you were a big fan of hers?

ARM: Oh absolutely, I still am.  Because I grew up -- my grandparents use to baby-sit us, my sister Pookie and I, so we’d watched the soaps with them -- so I sort of grew up watching Marj…  Actually, there was a role in Magdalen, I wrote with her in mind, her voice, you know, but at the time I never thought to approach her.  But I always wanted to work with her so it really was a ambition come true and she’s one of the greatest people I’ve met in the business.

BUTCH: Right, that’s awesome.  Um, okay, so can you -- I want to show another clip.  I want to actually show a clip of Magdalen.  Can you talk a little bit about that?

ARM: Sure.  Magdalen was my first feature.  We shot it in ’96 and it was finished in ’98 and it played in New York and Philadelphia and then over in Europe.  It’s about a woman, played by Alix Smith, who was also from Philly at that point, who works in a bar, and for money she tells people stories.  And we shot it at Campbell’s Pub in Chestnut Hill which is a bar I like to drink at--

BUTCH: Right!

ARM: ‘Cause the film I had made before Magdalen was a picture called A Maggot Tango and that was all early morning shoots, because there was a lot of nudity and it was all outdoors and we had to do it when the cops weren’t around and on that shoot I was like “the next one’s going to be at a bar late at night because I can’t do these mornings!”

BUTCH: Right.

ARM: So that’s how Magdalen came about and then I thought, well, let’s do an 1807 period piece and so we did A Chronicle of Corpses.

BUTCH: Nice, okay, take a look at Magdalen.

BUTCH: ….All right, wow.  Now your themes are, um, like dark and I mean they’re dark but they’re like kind of tongue-in-cheek, like they’re…

ARM: They’re fun.  I mean there’s a lot of humor in the movies.  I guess I do--, they’re sort of operatic.  I think that’s a really fair assessment.  I mean I’ve always been into musicals and the opera so I think that’s an influence, and, I mean, the other thing I want to say about my films, is that I work with a fabulous crew.  My DP, Abe Holtz, my lighting designer John Draus -- they’re brilliant and they really help create these worlds; so a lot of the success of these movies should be credited to them -- them and my editor, Ron Kalish.

BUTCH: That’s great.

ARM: I have a great team.

BUTCH: Now, I mean, is this, what we see in your films, how you pretty much view the world?  Or is it just more of an outlet for you?

ARM: It’s a little of both.  I mean, I guess I do have sort of a dark personality but I also, you know, I like to laugh and you know, I mean, I think it’s sort of a droll macabreness I do -- I’ve got a lot of personal fixations.

BUTCH: You seem like a nice guy.

ARM: Yeah, I’m friendly.

BUTCH: Now, like, you’ve may, like, hate this question, but do you consider yourself like an Indie filmmaker?

ARM: I don’t think independent film really exist anymore.  I mean I think it’s gotten to a point where you have certain major-minors, uh, the mini-majors -- you know, funding films and people are not really doing it themselves.  I kind of like to think that I’m just running my own studio here in Philadelphia.  Anyway, you know, that’s my take on it.

BUTCH: Yeah!

ARM: But certainly, I mean, independent film, especially in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s did a bunch of terrific stuff so it’s a great heritage.

BUTCH: Yeah, okay.  Who are some of your favorite directors and films?

ARM: You have about an hour?

BUTCH: Only a half hour.

ARM: I mean I watch a tremendous amount of movies, I love Edgar G. Ulmer, I love Stanley Kubrick, I love, um, Robert Bresson, I mean they are all just great, the list never ends, I mean I just love love love movies.  I’m a junkie for the cinema.

BUTCH: You seem like a John Waters kind of guy.

ARM: Yeah, I watch John Waters.  I really like Multiple Maniacs. I saw it right when I started out, and it was like “wow,” I could do something very similar to this.  I think my films are a little, I don’t want to say more serious but they’re certainly, there might be a little more -- less out and out comic romps than Water’s -- more pretentious for lack of a better word.  We make different types of movies.  Don’t get me wrong I like Water’s sense of humor a lot.  Mine’s a little dryer however, I think.

BUTCH: Is it true, like my producer said, that you have never, ever worked with tape just film?

ARM: No, that’s really pretty true.  I don’t like video tape.  I don’t like DV, I don’t like HD.  I like the look of film, I like the way the light hits it and you can paint with light in film and you can’t really paint with light with video tape.  

BUTCH: Right, right.  I mean from the very beginning, just film.  Amazing.

ARM: Well, I wanted to be a film director.  I didn’t want to be a video director.

BUTCH: Okay, so, some other stuff that you do.  What is the Chestnut Hill Film group?

ARM: The Chestnut Hill Film Group is a 28 year old repertory screening series in Chestnut Hill.  If you go to my website, www.armcinema25.com, you can see the schedule.  In the fall and in the spring we show films every Tuesday night and it’s repertory, so it’s a little bit of everything.  I’m one of the programmers for it.  There’s a committee that selects the films, and we get about 150 people out and it’s free and it’s a great community event.

BUTCH: Nice!  Okay, there’s something called Features at the Five?  What is that?

ARM: Yes, that’s another thing I do.  That’s in the Spring between the two big film festivals and we are Philadelphia Indie Premieres, mostly video work, smaller scale films, sort of creating an outlet, a venue -- cause I know when I started out, I had nowhere to show my stuff and a lot of people wouldn’t give me the time of day.  So I thought, you know, I can’t go around funding other people’s films yet, but I can give them a place to screen and we’re really excited to go with our next season this June, at Features at the Five II.

BUTCH: Yeah, very cool.  All right, so let’s give out the information to the viewers once again, to find out about the Chestnut Hill Film Group, Features at the Five, or anything Andrew’s up to pretty much, log onto www.armcinema25.com.  Okay, also A Chronicle of Corpses is now playing at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, New York City.

ARM: In the East Village.

BUTCH: Yeah, East 3rd Street and Avenue A in the East Village.  All right.  Okay.  So now tell me like what’s going on with the new film that you’re making?

ARM: It’s called Flowers of Evil, it’s a contemporary drama about two young kids in love and all the trouble they get into, and the mistakes they make and it’s a lot of fun and it’s romantic, hyper-romantic, and it’s comic and still a little dark because it is, you know, teens and sex and drugs and its about going to midnight screenings of slasher films.  We hope to shoot pretty soon, we’re just finishing up raising the money and I know it’s the best thing I’ve ever been involved with.  It took me 3 years to write the script, untold drafts, it was called Certainty for a while, and finally I think I got it right and I just can’t wait to do it.

BUTCH: Yeah, Flowers of Evil, yeah, with a title like that it might be a little dark.

ARM:  The title’s from Baudelaire.

BUTCH: All right Andrew.  Now, the last question -- Are you single?

ARM: Yes I am.

BUTCH: You are?

ARM: I’ve a perpetual broken heart.