Kendra Meinert|Green Bay Press-Gazette
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When your creepy clown gets mentioned in Entertainment Weekly in the same sentence as Bill Murray, you know you’re onto something.
Gags is still in the shadows but back in the national spotlight as excitementramps up for the feature-length movie about the Green Bay clown who first went viral in 2016. “Gags,” from local director Adam Krause, will make its world premiere Tuesday at Music Box Theatre in Chicago during Cinepocalypse, the Midwest’s largest genre film festival.
Organizers scour such prestigious film festivals as Tribeca, Sundance and South by Southwest to find their titles, so for Gags, with his soiled costume and ominous clutch of black balloons, to make the cut is notable. It explains why Krause was flooded with emails from distribution companies and other festivals when the Cinepocalypse lineup was announced.
In a story in Entertainment Weekly last month, the magazine highlighted a handful of films that would be screening, including the documentary “The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned from a Mystical Man” and “Gags.” Horror film actress Lauren Ashley Carter (“Jug Face,” “Darling”), who plays a reporter in “Gags,” is interviewed in the story.
In a podcast on Chicago's WGN Radio this week, Cinepocalypse co-founder Josh Goldbloom said when “Gags” was submitted, “It kind of blew us away. We had no idea what to expect from it.” New York-based website Daily Grindhouse picked it as one of its five most-anticipated films at the festival.
“It’s getting very real,” said Krause, who first began creating the Gags story in 2015. “It’s pretty cool how much people have stuck with us. A lot of people might have just said, ‘OK, I’m bored with this. ‘Gags’ still hasn’t come out and I’m going to move on to the next thing.’ But we have a pretty solid fan base who has just been patiently waiting.”
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Gags has racked up more than 63,000 followers on Facebook, thanks to a marketing campaign in 2016 in which mysterious photos of the clown lurking in Green Bay unsettled residents, made headlines worldwide and set off a string of scary clown sightings across the country. Krause’s horror short about the clown, also titled “Gags,” debuted in 2016. That same year, Chicago producers approached him about turning it into a full-length film to be shot in Green Bay.
The viral marketing campaign has proven to be the gift that keeps on giving, helping to give Gags instant name recognition.
“It’s always had that going for it. You bring up that clown craze of 2016 and people just associate Gags with that,” Krause said. “I’m excited for people to see ‘Gags,’ because we have an interesting take on the whole clown horror film (which saw a resurgence of interest after last fall’s remake of Stephen King’s “It”). We take it in a direction that I’ve personally never seen a film go, and that excites me. We had a lot of fun with it.”
Filming in Green Bay after dark
The 85-minute “Gags” takes place on a single night in Green Bay during what Krause has called “the Gags the clown pandemic” — when the pictures first went viral and people were freaking out. It follows four groups: police officers managing the craziness in the city; the news reporter and crew trying to find the clown to get their exclusive; a group of high school students using Gags as a reason to dress up as clowns and pull pranks; and “the headhunters,” people who aren’t happy about the clown creeping out their community.
Carter described it as “horror-comedy” to Entertainment Weekly.
“We have the creepy moments. It is a horror film, but we have very likable characters. We have very fun characters,” said Krause, who co-wrote it with filmmaker John Pata. “The whole movie itself kind of pokes fun at just how ridiculous that clown craze was. In 2016 that was like top news for three months. We have some fun with that.”
Carter and the actor who plays her camera man had such comedic chemistry as their characters chase the Gags story that they often went off script and ad libbed funny lines that made it into the final cut.
Don’t, however, let the laughs fool you.
“In the end, it’s a horror film. It deals with a creepy clown stalking the city who is up to no good and has kind of an evil plan going on,” Krause said. “I’ve watched the film well over 100 times, and there’s still scenes that get to me. They’re creepy. We shot one scene in Gather on Broadway that I actually think is the creepiest scene in the entire film.”
“Gags” was filmed during three weeks in May 2017. Ninety-five percent of it was shot in downtown Green Bay and all of it at night. The crew and a cast of 50-plus actors, including 10 leads, had only about seven hours of darkness each night in which to work. It was always a race to beat the sun coming up.
Much of the third act was filmed in the old Larsen Canning Co. before the latest phase of renovation on the buildings.
“Aesthetically, it just looked amazing. It’s this big, vacant, abandoned factory. It’s very creepy and had a lot of creepy settings,” Krause said.
It was also grueling to film in, he said. Cast and crew had to wear respirators due to the air quality. With no electricity or restrooms on site, special arrangements had to be made, and debris was an ever-present obstacle.
Despite the rustic shooting locations at times, Krause said the actors from Los Angeles enjoyed the “small, quaint vibe” of Green Bay and marveled at how helpful the Green Bay Police Department was during filming. When shooting one night extended into the street, officers quickly came to briefly block off the street. Evan Gamble, who stars in AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead,” couldn’t believe it. He told Krause that would take two weeks of paperwork and countless signatures in L.A.
Where Gags goes from here
Post-production on the film was an intense process — and a learning experience for Krause, who had previously only worked in short films. Audio, visual effects, color and the addition of pick-up shots after a test screening in Columbus, Ohio, in October, all meant repeated scene-by-scene viewings.
“The workload that comes with making a feature compared to short films ... and anyone could predict this, it’s just tenfold. In post-production, you have to watch the film over and over and over.... It really tests you,” Krause said. “My first feature-length film, I have it completely memorized with how many times I’ve watched it. But it’s worth it. It’s all part of the process. You’ve got to watch it 200 times to make sure the person who watches it once really enjoys it.”
Krause, along with some members of the cast and crew, will be at the world premiere Tuesday and will do a Q&A after the 9:30 p.m. screening.
“The day of I’m going to be a wreck. That’s how I am. Right now, it’s a half-and-half mix of excitement and nervousness, but the day of, the anxiety is going to kick in,” he said. “Obviously, you’re a filmmaker because you love making movies and this art form really appeals to you, but you also want people to enjoy what you’re making.”
As an independent film, the next step is to find a distributor for “Gags” so a wider audience can see it. One of the best ways to do that is to enter it in film festivals to help get the attention of distribution companies and generate offers, Krause said.
He has his fingers crossed that a distributor will grab “Gags” in time that it can be released by October for the Halloween season. He also has plans for a Green Bay premiere, possibly in late summer. He wants his hometown — and Gags’, too — to be able to share in the experience. Think red carpet, black balloons.
After so much time together, it’s strange for Krause to think of life post-Gags.
“This clown has been such a big part of my life for the last two years it’s not even funny,” he said. “It’s been a lot of hard work. It’s going to be very rewarding to see the film on screen and to hopefully be there to experience people enjoying the film.”
But does it really have to be the end of Gags? It’s not like talk of a sequel hasn’t come up, Krause said.
“I love the film. I love the character. It provided me an opportunity to make a feature-length film. I’ll forever be grateful to Gags the clown for that,” he said. “But I’m excited to work on another project, just from a creative standpoint. ... But I will always come back to Gags if the opportunity is there.”
