How ironic that I had a nightmare about Larry Fessenden the night before attending the recent screening of his new scareflick, Wendigo, at Tribeca's Screening Room here in New York. It wasn't the movie that had me so spooked in advance, it the sudden realization that despite my admiration of his previous revisionist horror films No Telling and Habit, it was uncertain whether I'd actually be into his new movie. And I had to interview him the next day.

So, in the dream I step out of this elevator and am walking through a hallway with fluorescent lights flickering. I guess David Lynch was directing the movie in my mind. Anyway, Fessenden steps out of a doorway scowling. Missing a front tooth, wild strands of hair falling over his brow, he's often cast as drug addicts and crazies in such films as Animal Factory and Bringing Out the Dead. He looks me up and down and says, "You didn't like my movie? FUCK YOU, KID!"

Then I think he started smashing things or something. Thankfully, I woke up.

I caught up with Fessenden the morning after his screening, and he turned out to be a hell of a good time to hang out with. We spent the morning in a dingy cafe over black coffee, talking about the real and imagined horrors of Wendigo. Currently playing at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, this scary fantasia of dysfunction hits theaters this fall.

filmcritic.com: So I had this bad nightmare... not about the Wendigo, but that I hated your flick and that you were a total asshole.

Larry Fessenden: Would you have still agreed to interview me if ya didn't like the film?

Yeah. I'd have asked you to explain what the hell was going on.

Good for you, man. Hey, I had this one fuckin' review said, "Looking at the face of Larry Fessenden, it looks like he wuz drinkin' since he was five years old!" (laughs) Maybe it’s true, but it's like, c'mon! (drinks coffee) This is the worst coffee, man.

Yeah, but the owner's kinda nice. He let me camp out before you showed up.

I always come here and I don't know why. The food is good, but the coffee sucks.

It was nice that Erik Per Sullivan was there last night. He's a cute kid.

He's so wild, man. Lemme tell ya. He's still so little!

He's great -- I don't really watch Malcolm in the Middle, so I have nothing to compare it to, but apparently there's a world of difference because on Malcolm he's, y'know, in a sitcom -- so it's kind of mannered, I guess.

Absolutely -- he's like the smallest kid. They tie him up and hang him in the closet and stuff, but I don't really watch that show either.

The only thing I really knew him from was The Cider House Rules. How did you find him?

Well, I was courting this local kid to play Miles, actually. The weird thing about Wendigo is that it was conceived as a no-budget movie, and I got a little bit of money which sort of upped the whole thing. And then we got these casting agents who kept offering me these very cutesy kids, and I kept saying, "No, I'm dealing with my little buddy upstate." But they felt the stakes were getting higher with all the padding and the larger crew and I needed to reconsider how I was approaching the kid. And then Erik's family sent me a reel of outtakes from Cider House Rules, and Lasse Hallstrom would say, "Action," and you'd see Erik immediately transform between takes. You'd just see his concentration. It was an interesting way to choose someone. And then when I met him, it was a blast because he's so cool. He's such a great kid.

You spend a lot of time early in the film with the father-son relationship. That really pays off at the end. How did you work on the family dynamic?

Yeah, it was amazing cuz there was very little rehearsal, which is contrary to one's hopes. I met with Patty (Clarkson), Jake (Weber) and Erik and we basically went through every scene and talked about it. They were so professional, which was an interesting experience because I make movies in other ways. I think Patty and Jake had wanted to work together. They knew each other, so they had their own flirtatious rapport. Then just one-on-one me and Jake hit it off and got our thing going. And then Erik and I had a lot of fun together. I would just tease him and call him the Little Dude.

They just sort of became this weird little family. The best thing was that Jake really dealt with Erik in this big-brotherly/fatherly way. And I know that Patty and Erik had this routine where they'd sit around talking about what were their favorite candies. Erik's mind is such that he doesn't need to be focused on the project or the lines. He actually wants to talk about other things, which is beautiful. He's not self-obsessed at all.

You've said that you first heard the Wendigo myth from your first grade teacher who told you scary stories.

Andrew Maclaren was this British guy who was very expressive. He would just tell stories to the class and -- y'know, I don't remember that story anymore. I do know there was this hillside in the snow, and this weird little guy running around with a deer head and antlers and he would make this sound: WENNNNNNNNNN-DI-GOOOOOOOOO! And that's all I remember. I assume it has something to do with the Algernon Blackwood story, this British writer from 1910 who wrote this incredibly spooky story called The Wendigo. Well worth reading. When I told my mother about it as a kid, she used to hide in the kitchen and go, "WENNNNN-DI-GOOOOO!" One time she freaked me out so bad that I started crying.

The funny thing is, years later when I called Maclaren and asked, "So what was that Wendigo story?", he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about! (laughs) So maybe the whole thing was a dream!

There's never really one specific incarnation of the Wendigo -- it just comes from out of nowhere in different shapes. That must have really freed you up in terms of designing this creature.

I always wanted the monster to appear in many guises: as wind, as trees and whatnot. What's fun if you search the web for the Wendigo is it's always described differently. Or you can look at books, and some say it's a little dwarf and some say its wind, and some say it's just a really bad feeling. In fact, it's rarely talked about as a deer-monster. That's Maclaren's contribution. So, that plays into my thematic ideas. It becomes this representation of fate which you can't define. Is fate benevolent or threatening? That's essentially the real question of the movie.

What were your design influences?

I'm sort of tributing the German Expressionists. I'm saying, look, can the audience participate in creating this monster? That's part of the Wendigo and part of the process of enjoying the film. I wanted to sort of allow that in a deconstructionist way, so the audience could see something that wasn't real. First of all, Wendigos aren't real. The whole movie's about this stuff that isn't real. You wish it was, but there ain't no fucking God or Wendigos. There's nothing like that shit out there. So, what do you mean, make a realistic Wendigo? What the fuck are you talking about?

The Wendigo myth doesn't come in until maybe halfway through, so I was more freaked out by the real-life things that sort of happen -- like when the father and son are out chopping wood and the kid puts his hands there. That has nothing to do with the supernatural.

Wendigo is really about the father not appreciating his life and then it might be taken away from him by a fluke. To me, that's really the most amazing theme. Y'know, you bitch and you're like, "Oh, it's raining, this sucks, I gotta pay my taxes," but then you're in a plane crash and you're like, "Damn, I wish I was payin' my taxes!" And that's just my philosophy. You only go around once. So, it's about the dad realizing, "Damn, I wish I had appreciated that I had this beautiful wife and this kid -- and I was worried about my reshoot of some sneaker ad. How stupid is that?"

Again, the Wendigo is fate. Shit has become so intense now in these people's lives that this creature has become physicalized and is running around. I mean, the Wendigo never attacks anybody, he's just sitting there monitoring them. So, in a way, the Wendigo is there to entertain the viewer while we tell how everything in the story spirals into disaster. It's like life is filled with these fluke things, and you wonder who's masterminding all this. Is it the Wendigo or the fuckin' Man Upstairs or, worse that that, absolutely nobody and we're just left to interpret it?

And the thing is, during a moment of crisis, what does the father say? He brings up the Wendigo. "Hey, kid-kid-kid, remember the -- the thing? It has magic powers!" Modern man, who has thrown away meaning and mythology and Gods and religion and everything is very cocky and confident. Then when you're fucking shot and you're gonna die and you desperately need to find meaning you revert to mythology and you use metaphor.

Your first image in the film is of Miles, in the back seat of the car, smashing together a plastic wolfman doll and a futuristic robot doll.

The idea is that the wolfman is just this old fashioned imagery -- sort of an animal monster which is obviously as old as the hills, and then there's the future-man kind of aesthetic which in a way is where we are now. These are in constant conflict, our most base, animalistic, man-nature kind of mythology thing (if ya read yer Joseph Campbell) and the futuristic dream that we'll be robot-people who will be enhanced. You've got the whole movie right in the first frame. That's the only thing I learned at NYU! (laughs) How the fuck am I gonna do that? I know! I'll use plastic dolls! It's my very affectionate gesture out of love of the wolfman, y'know -- that whole scene. That's what I grew up on.

You know, one of my first memories is drawing the Wolf Man and Dracula on the blackboard, and my grandparents took a photo of it.

Oh yeah? Do you have it?

Yeah, I've still got it somewhere.

You should put it up on your website!

It's kinda cool because you did your Frankenstein movie with No Telling and you did your Dracula with Habit, and though Wendigo's not really about the wolfman, you kind of have something going on there...

In a way, it might have been more of a wolfman movie in my dreams. The creature was more visualized even in the first cut of the film which we showed at Slamdance, but there's still a little of a werewolf vibe in our final version. At one point, the dad basically turns into the Wendigo which is now more gestural and you can take or leave what's going on. So in a way, for a weird moment there was going to be a transformation sequence. Now its more abstract, but it's still touched on.

My interest is to have the supernatural element creep into the story, the way it would if we're going about our daily lives, and we try to explain it away in other ways as it makes itself known. Now, that seems like a very cool approach because it contextualizes it. In No Telling, it's about secrets in all its different guises. Habit is about reaching out for help and not getting it, and Wendigo shows the pervasive inability for people to communicate. The day-to-day horror of mistrust and aggression.

On Habit, no one was paid and your crew was there out of love for the project. What new situation presents itself with Wendigo?

Everyone got a low salary. It was February, which is sort of a down time for filmmaking in general. So our production manager, April Blair, assembled a really crack team. The DP, Terry Stacey, obviously brought people on board and it struck me that they were more together as a result.

Beyond that, I just try to create an atmosphere where they know they're appreciated and they're accepted as individuals. And that's the same with Habit -- it was just easier on that one cuz you only had to remember seven people's names! So I kinda think these guys had fun. We were in a very unusual environment, it was in the country. There was this big house and a barn, it was kinda rough and tumble. It was like a big camping trip.

Your budget was a little bigger. Did you still feel very hands-on?

This was a little bigger without being big enough that things ran smoothly. At times, it actually felt too big. The fact is, I'm very appreciative of this crew but my aesthetic is to work as fuckin' down and dirty and spontaneously as possible. That's especially true in a movie like this, where you really want to pay attention to the environment and get a shot of that cool tree. That's very much a part of the movie. And, actually, with Terry that was very available because he's a real rock 'n' roll kind of a DP.

Ultimately, I set up these two crews and used this guy, Jay Silver (who actually worked on Habit so he was from the old guard), to do all the animations of trees and water and basically whatever else we could come up with. Much of that imagery really came about by chance. He'd literally go out in his crazy jeep, set up the camera, frame up the shot, then he'd basically just sit and read for three hours and come back with seven seconds of film.

We were also scheming certain special effects shots like when Miles is pursued by the wind monster. So we labored over that. Endless tests, endless tests, and of course all the tests looked better than the actual film! (laughs) It's a maddening way of making movies. I might add that we didn't use CGI. This was all about puppetry and stuff.

Your buddy Dayton Taylor is back to work on Wendigo. On Habit, he was sort of your jack-of-all-trades (Boom, Assistant Director, Producer) and on your new film he had a very specific responsibility. What did that entail?

I asked Dayton to head the special effects department. He oversaw all the things we had to figure out, so I would throw puzzles out to him. For instance, he came up with the idea of using fire extinguishers for the Wind Wendigo, which was great fun. He used them all over the place. And, y'know, it was actually very fucking ballsy, we had like 40 fire extinguishers just sitting around in the barn. "Hey, let's dirty up this picture a little bit! WHOOSH!" That was Dayton's favorite contribution.

In a way, Dayton was the key to the way I like to make films, which is a little more like, "Let's go up for the weekend, take some shots, have a nice meal, see what's going on." A sort of Fassbinder family of disgruntled artists trying to capture lightning in a bottle. You can't totally do that when you're on the clock.

Dayton is a very special character -- he's got a peculiar take on reality that's comforting and also off-putting. And he loved Wendigo, which was very important to me because he always offers good insight and encouragement. He's a good influence and a familiar.

It's good to have people like him around. Guerrilla filmmaking can often feel like a war!

It is war, man! (laughs) It's amazing, because movies can come out in a very elegant, controlled way, but making them is chaotic. Filmmaking is also a beautiful process -- there's nothing like it. And it's very haunting for me, because I'm never satisfied. I mean, ask anybody who worked on the movie. I'm completely tortured because you have this beautiful movie in your mind and you're trying to commit it to celluloid. It can be a most bitter fucking experience, the translation to reality.

It's funny - every now and then you catch this one thing and you say to yourself, "Yes, that was the movie in my mind." That shot, or that small scene.

Or, more often, just a few frames! And then of course, actually, on the positive side, you get things in the actors' performances that you hadn't conceived. Like Patty Clark brought something to the role of the mother that was just beyond my thinking. A warmth and a sparkle. Those are cherished things.

In an obscure sort of way, the mother catches on to the whole theme of your movie. She becomes frustrated with Miles, saying, "Oh, he makes up these stories and tells all these little lies." She's the only one who slightly notices the use of metaphor in our lives during the crisis. She becomes a crucial part of Wendigo.

Yeah. The male psyche is dominant in the film, but the female element of the film is critical. She's the one who has to quietly observe while the fucking men battle it out and trash each other. She's sort of the peacemaker, and I'm saying that this is a role that women are stuck with.

She keeps the whole thing together.

And she's the one who's monitoring. "I don't think you're paying enough attention to your kid! And what's the matter, Miles? I think your dad wants to take you sledding!" That's why she's a psychiatrist in the movie. She's the only one who gets what's going on.

This is true of all the female protagonists in your horror trilogy.

They're more stable than the men, actually. The male energy is extremely narcissistic, extremely childish. And, believe me this is a self-criticism as well. I'm not judging others. I'm saying this is my observation of my own pathetic life. Ambition and crazy wrong-minded focus is certainly what the father is dealing with in Wendigo. And that's a common thing about being a filmmaker, too. I mean, I had a kid when I was just starting a film and I've been privileged to spend as much time as I do with him. The fact remains, I'm making a movie and I'm a father with a kid.

The horror relates back to real life.

That's what's funny! My films are called horror films but I'm just saying that I'll use that label and you try to figure out what I'm saying is horrific. And that's why they're hard to market. They're not providing the accepted thrills of the horror film but what I'm doing is using that title to make you think about what the themes are. My whole idea about horror is that it absolutely exists in the everyday and that's what is horrific. I would want that to be the legacy of my work, where there is a little bit of a shake-up. And, of course, the worst thing is that then people think you're pretentious.

Or political.

Yeah. All of which are bad. Now in the '70s, Serpico was a national entertainment. It happened to be about something, God forbid, and nobody got their pants all in a bundle -- and now it's like, "Oh, that's the political guy! Oh, he's the guy telling us right and wrong! Oh, he's the pretentious guy! Why can't he just have fun?" It's like, fuck you, idiot! I mean, that's the other thing. I hate this bullshit about entertainment versus whatever-the-hell-the-other-thing-is -- I dunno, drudgery? No, it's not about that. It's about how you define entertainment. It's about how you want to pass your time. It's not about the "fun" thing to watch versus the "hard" thing -- the Fellini! "Oh, Fellini is soooo hard!" Fuck you, idiots! First of all, Fellini is entertainment and so is Godard. I mean, I'm not gonna say it’s the only entertainment just like I'm not gonna tell you to eat one thing. I swear, it all comes down to our definition of entertainment. I mean, some people used to read Homer for entertainment, and now Homer's considered the most fucking nightmarish nightmare of school drudgery!

(Jeremiah puts a finger to his temple and imitates firing off a gun. BLAM.)

Exactly. Kill me now!