REPO Man wrote:Any place on this island that's considered "run down" would 99% of the time not be rented out to tourists. My mom used to clean cottages and more often than not, those rentals are nicer than homes people live in year round.
That's okay. You don't have to make Marurun's movie. You'd probably do a better job making your own.
As a resort area, it'd be easier to rent out the cottage they used in Nights in Rodanthe than the cottage where an autistic self-described weirdo directed a slasher movie where tourists get gutted by a masked killer. The kind of people that vacation here would rather stay in a motel that in such a cottage.
I don't see why any of these people need to know that you made a movie anywhere. People probably shoot porn in some of these rentals. Nobody is going to care if you shoot a horror movie in one. Though, given your budget, I wouldn't expect you to be shooting anywhere you'd have to pay to use. I wouldn't.
As long as Hatteras Island is essentially enslaved by an industry built exclusively around tourism, that's going to guide every decision they make. Hell, the local movie theater's been closed for about a decade now! Why? Aside from the fact that the people who worked there basically treated the place as their own personal party space after hours,
I know it's not intentional, but you are saying that the people who worked at the theater chose to treat it as their personal party space after hours because of tourism. Clearly some subset of people make some decisions based upon something other than tourism.
Also, sounds like you have party people on Hatteras Island. Sounds like a good casting opportunity...
And I may have mentioned this but homeowners are more concerned with turning rentals into AirBnBs, including places that locals would rent as year-round residences. That's what happened to my brother's ex-girlfriend "Veronica". Basically the landlord decided not to renew the lease so as to turn the place, an absolutely GORGEOUS two-story place across the street from the bookstore with an amazing view of the sky over the Pamlico Sound, into a short-term rental for tourists with money to burn. Now, Veronica and her kids are staying with her mother at her mother's boyfriend's place, which is also apparently getting turned into... you guessed it... a short-term vacation rental iirc. Locals are getting priced out and soon there'll be no one to work at all the businesses.
Sounds like a great subject for a dramatic movie. Reminds me a bit of
The Florida Project, which was excellent.
Maybe selling many of my ideas that don't require an NYC setting would work in more open-minded towns that have the same aesthetic. But starting my career in NYC would make more sense. It have a thriving film industry, hundreds of aspiring thespians, just as many other kinds of creative types and it's overall easier to get the permits, equipment, crew and cast needed to put an idea on the fast track to being fully formed.
It's easier to get permits in New York City than to just shoot on Hatteras Island and just not worry about permits?
The Coen brothers wrote
Blood Simple based upon what they thought they could shoot easily with what they had access to. Sam Raimi, Roger Corman, George Miller, and Christopher Nolan, and Lloyd Kaufman have done the same thing.
There, I could describe an idea for a giallo-style slasher about a maniac in a plague doctor mask to people more easily. Here, telling folks you want to make a giallo-inspired murder mystery in the vein of the early works of Dario Argento, they'd stare at me blankly. I'd have to infodump hard and in layman's terms just to make it make sense.
Your actors don't need to have a deep understanding of film history. You're the director. They just have to understand their characters. The kid in
The Shining didn't know what kind of movie he was making.
* Lovecraft is niche at best, and in my town that's a hard sell. And that's even if you lean in with Lovecraft being a racist POS. Seriously, a few years ago I tried to talk about the Black Lives Matter protests with my dad and refused to listen to me, kept trying to talk over me and even dropped the N-word. And par for the course, he's a typical local, at least in his generation (he was born in '65).
Nobody has to understand that they're in a "Lovecraft" movie to be in a "Lovecraft" movie. And a casual look at history will tell you that plenty of racists have made or acted in movies.
* My only free time is on my days off, one of which I spend running errands and doing chores. I haven't even found time to get up to Walmart to buy more pants, which explains why one of my two pairs of jeans has an increasingly large hole between the crotch and ass.
You won't have more free time in New York. Your rent will be significantly higher and your hourly pay won't be much higher, assuming you do similar work there to support yourself.
* Not every small town in the south is the same.
* Not every small town in North Carolina is the same.
Nobody is claiming otherwise.
You claim to know your home town so well, but you say you only have acquaintances.
Post some of your screenplays here and maybe we can offer more specific advice.
Systems: TI-99/4a, Commodore Vic-20, Atari 2600, NES, SMS, GB, Neo Geo MVS (Big Red 4-slot), Genesis, SNES, 3DO, PS1, N64, DC, PS2, GBA, GCN, NDSi, Wii
I've seen that before. 
