DEMON LOVER DIARY

Director Joel DeMott / 1980 / USA

There are too many occasions when we are forced, either in films or on television, to sit through documentaries about the making of a film. Directors, it seems, like to add their own modest contributions to acting out the wonderful world of the movies. Audiences apparently accept these things with a mixture of gossipy voyeurism and tolerant indifference. Distribution companies love to get them on network television, for they know their value in advertising the parent product.

Demon Lover Diary will never get on network TV Nor for that matter will its parent The Demon Lover.

"Don and Jerry, factory workers who grew up on comic books and B-movies, are fulfilling a lifetime dream they're producing their own low-budget horror movie. Jeff and Joel, lovers and cinema-verite filmmakers, and a friend of theirs named Mark, have come out to Michigan to help the dream come true they're shooting The Demon Lover for Don and Jerry. Two weeks after production starts. Jeff and Joel and Mark are fleeing Michigan, with their lives and a complete film record of the events in jeopardy. The subject of my film isn't just the ups and downs of making a horror movie. It's about cultural snobbery, the disintegration of friendship, puppy love, violence, boredom, money .. a diary about encountering the Midwest when you're from someplace else.

A note I wouldn't want anyone to think the horror movie wasn't Serious Business. After all Don and Jerry's method of financing it is a model for all filmmakers Don mortgaged his furniture and car — which netted $3,000 — and Jerry cut off his finger in an industrial "accident". The finger netted $8,000. Jerry's only regret was that if he'd waited a year, he would have gotten $15,000 for it."

Joel DeMott

Back To Index