JOEL DEMOTT | UNITED STATES | 1980 | 90 MIN | ENGLISH
This year, the brilliant and criminally underrecognized pioneering cinema verité filmmaker Joel DeMott passed away. In honor of her body of work, we are presenting an extremely rare 4K screening of one of her seminal films from 1980, Demon Lover Diary (also a personal favorite of our late programmer Doug Jones). Often considered a prototype for films like American Movie, Demon Lover Diary is an incredible look at the inner workings of a fraught, low-budget horror set. As is tradition with Demon Lover Diary, we will forgo our own program and defer to DeMott’s own description of this absolutely not-to-be-missed masterpiece.
“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-verité 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 – bullets ricocheting off the car – 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 $3000 – and Jerry cut off his finger in an industrial “accident.” The finger netted $8000. Jerry’s only regret was that if he’d waited a year, he would have gotten $15,000 for it.”
Joel DeMott
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