Long Island's Nemiroff Does Double Duty As a Film Critic and Filmmaker

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Long Island's Nemiroff Does Double Duty As a Film Critic and Filmmaker

(from Sag Harbor Online 1/8/14)

Perri Nemiroff

Film critics and filmmakers usually stay away from each other as much as possible, but that’s not the case with Long Island’s own Perri Nemiroff.  She has no choice because the twentysomething Roslyn-native happens to be both.  If you read about movies online, particularly horror films, the chances are good that you’ve come across her lively reviews and interviews with actors and filmmakers.  That’s because the one-time guard on the girls basketball team at the Wheatley School in Old Westbury contributes regularly to numerous sites including Fandango, Movies.com, ComingSoon.net, and her own LittleMissCritical.com. (This week you can find her video interview with Fruitvale Station’s director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan at wegotthiscovered.com.)  In 2013, she also made impressive strides into filmmaking by producing two exceptional shorts before graduating with an MFA in Creative Producing from Columbia University.  Both the creepy Child Eater and savvy political thriller The Professor have received acclaim on the festival circuit. (I’m also partial to an earlier short that she directed at Columbia, the whimsical Trevor.)  And 2014 promises to be a big year for her as well.  Certainly for both aspiring young film critics/journalists and indie filmmakers on Long Island, Perri Nemiroff is a bona fide role-model candidate, someone to follow. Over the years she and I have done numerous press junkets together and debated horror films that she invariably liked better.  But this is the first time I have interviewed her.
Danny Peary: Were you young when you became a movie fanatic?
Perri Nemiroff: I always loved movies.  My parents always loved movies, too, so there were a lot of trips to the theater when my sister and I were kids.
DP: Including to see films from your favorite genre–horror movies?
PN: I was allowed to see whatever I wanted, and horror movies were what I was drawn to most of all. I remember when I was really little, my grandmother and I would sit on her bed and watch scary movies before my bedtime. When I graduated to the big screen, I went with my mother to see Scream in 1995. I was only about nine and was a little young to be seeing it, but I loved it and was addicted from then on.
DP: Did you scream after Scream?
PN: No, I never had nightmares. The only time I remember really being scared is when I was about five years old. I was at a friend’s house, in the living room, and we watched Killer Klowns From Outer Space. It’s embarrassing because it’s really more of a comedy, but that was my first horror movie and that was the first movie that freaked me out. I got over it pretty quick though!
DP: Did your parents take you to foreign films when you were growing up?
PN: No.  It’s frustrating because even to this day, when I try to share a foreign film or something that isn’t commercial with them, they can’t adjust to it.
DP: I get frustrated with young critics because most of them don’t see foreign films!
PN: Well, I see foreign films, but not as many as I’d like. Or documentaries.  Come Oscar time, I get mad when I haven’t seen a nominated film. I want to win my pool!
DP: As a kid were you thinking about a film-related career?
PN: Not then. I wanted to be a journalist, always. In the 5^th or 6^th grade we had to make papier-mâché models of what we wanted to be when we grew up, and mine was a person sitting at a News Channel 12 desk.
DP: Did you write as a teenager?
PN: I did a lot of writing. High school changed my writing a lot. I wasn’t in a regular English class at The Wheatley School. I took something called SWS, School Within a School. It was a bit like college in that you could sign up for all different classes.  And every class had writing assignments. So instead of going to one English class every day and getting one assignment each week, I went to five or six classes and got five or six assignments. Every day I had to write, no matter the subject. It was a lot, but I certainly got used to it and really believe that program made all the difference for me now.
DP: Did you also write about movies?
PN: I did. In that SWS program, I took classes on black and white movies, a Hitchcock class, a Woody Allen class. That program was the highlight of my time in high school.
DP: But you still wanted to be a television journalist?
PN: Yeah, I moved into Manhattan in 2004 to attend NYU and I was a journalism major as an undergrad. I really enjoyed the classes and work within the program, but they never had us cover anything entertainment-related. I also did a little writing for the Washington Square News, but then I fell out of that when I joined a sorority. I took on a bunch of leadership positions within that, so that kind of took over my time.
DP: While moving forward with your writing, were you thinking that some day you’d also like to produce movies?
PN: No, not yet. But I did a little of it at NYU. They have this great option where if you have a certain GPA, they’ll let you take a certificate program in the School of Continuing & Professional Studies. So in my third year, when I was about 20, I took a certificate program in digital filmmaking. It was basically four classes. In one class we literally studied the B&H catalog. Fun, huh? Another one was a Final Cut Pro class. Another was an elective and I chose a class in anchoring and that’s where I started doing my first on-camera stuff.  They let me sit at the anchor desk on their soundstage and read from a prompter. That was a good one.
My favorite though was an eight-week summer intensive called Digital Filmmaking. We had to shoot and edit our own shorts, so I made my first short ever. I was the writer, director, and producer and that was really exciting.  My short was called The Sushi Challenge. There’s a Japanese restaurant on MacDougal Street that had a sushi challenge, where if you ate x number of pieces of sushi in twenty minutes, you got your photo put up on the winners board. We staged it, so it was basically a montage of a friend of mine eating sushi and pretending to stuff his face.  It was very much a learning experience.  They gave me just one light to set up, and I’d never edited anything before.  I look at it now and the quality is absolutely atrocious, but people who saw it seemed to like it.   People had a lot of fun with it and it played in the New York Film & Video Festival and it was featured on Yahoo! When it played in that festival, my family and my whole sorority came. Now, having shown films at other festivals, that one seems a little small, but it was a really great day that I’ll never forget.
DP: And you were still writing. Were you excited to be published?
PN: Yeah, but the school paper didn’t thrill me. I hadn’t been into the high school paper, either. I was still waiting for the day that I could be on camera or cover something I was really passionate about.
DP: News 12 was what you were after?
PN: When I was little yeah, but when I went to NYU I saw all the different outlets in the city, so there was no way I was going back to Long Island to do television.
DP: But did you still want to do the news?
PN: Yes, I wanted to do hard news. It wasn’t until I started working in hard news that I realized it was not for me at all. I graduated from NYU in 2008. That’s when I started writing about movies, but it was only on the side. I got my first job at NY1. I was given the “News Assistant” position. Basically, they’d give me a camera and during my shift I kind of ran around all day and collected news stories. I enjoyed it quite a bit and I learned how to do all my camera work there – proper framing, focus, white balance, etc. But the way it worked is that you put in a certain amount of hours, and then you’re either hired full-time or you move on. As much as I loved it–and I still love the people that were there–I was just tired from the heavy lifting and ready to move on. And I had a really great place to move on to.
DP: Were you applying to grad school at this time?
PN: No, grad school came much later. I wasn’t even thinking of it then. There was a reporter at NY1, Cindi Avila. We worked together on a bunch of assignments and I’d always talk about movies. One day she said, “You know, my husband is the producer of the show Reel Talk,” so she connected me with her husband, Mike Avila, and about two weeks after my hours ran out at NY1, I was at a new job.
DP: What was your title?
PN: “Content Producer.”  In addition to helping produce the show, I ran Reel Talk’s Website. The team was really small.  It was just me, Mike, the on-air talent–Jeffrey Lyons and Alison Bailes—and an editor. I was just so genuinely happy working with them.  They were all very receptive and greatly appreciative of my initiative to do as much as I could.
DP: What was the content?
PN: All sorts of things, all movie-related.  If big news broke, I’d cover it.  They let me start one thing that I absolutely loved doing.  One of my favorite things in Cosmo is when they have celebrities handwrite answers to a quiz. I started doing something similar every time we had a guest come in. It was this little file square with five fun questions, and a celebrity would handwrite the answers, I’d scan it and put it up on the Website.
DP: How was it meeting the celebrities?
PN: I was total in awe watching Jeffrey and Alison doing the interviews, but it was more because I wanted to do what they were doing, not so much about meeting celebrities.
DP: So you were happy at Reel Talk?
PN: I was obsessed with Reel Talk.  I loved the team, I loved the atmosphere, I loved what we were all doing. I was the happiest person in the world for six months.  Then out of nowhere the show was canceled.  That was it.
DP: You said that during this period you were writing on the side.  Online?
PN:  Yes, I was writing a lot.  I started with Cinema Blend, in 2008. I literally woke up one morning and said, “I want to write about movies.” So I emailed all the sites that I normally looked at, and Cinema Blend was the only one to respond. They gave me a test run, and before I knew it I was writing DVD press releases every day. And that evolved into doing reviews and interviews and more.
DP: At what point did you decide to go to Columbia film school?
PN: After Reel Talk was canceled was the first time I was committed to writing and reviewing full time. I did that for a year or two, but because it wasn’t turning from a hobby into a career, I was getting frustrated.  I was getting more and more work every day but it was never enough.  I’d also reached the point where I felt bad criticizing other people’s films without at least trying it myself to know what it takes. Also, having seen a lot of bad movies, I thought maybe I could do better. Film school was my best option.  I looked at loads of programs, but Columbia was by far the best option. It had everything that I wanted. The program has three tracks: Creative Producing, Screenwriting, and Directing.  By then I knew I wanted to be a producer, but I also wanted to learn about directing and screenwriting, too.  The way the program works is that before all the students separate into their own concentrations, they do everything together.  My first year I was a producing/screenwriting/directing student.  But the rule is that if you go into the program saying you’re a producer, as I did, you have to stay on that track. Other students can say they want to be a screenwriter or a director and toward the end of the program can switch from one to the other as long as they fulfill that concentration’s requirements.  But I was committed to producing.
DP: Why did you want to be a producer rather than a screenwriter or director?
PN: I’m very detail-oriented and organized. I get a sick thrill out of making a list and checking things off, so that made me perfect for producing. And as creative as I am, I don’t think I’m as creative as certain people. I come up with good ideas every now and then, but once I got to Columbia it was pretty easy to see that my skills would best be put to use finding people who can make incredible films and helping them do it.  That’s why I think I had a successful run at Columbia.
DP: What does “a successful run” at Columbia mean?
PN: I felt fulfilled by the films I was involved with, and my money was very well spent.
DP: I read in your bio that you won some producing awards for students.
PN: Yeah, I got a couple of things there. In my first year, a faculty member I really admired nominated me for a New York Women in Film and Television scholarship, which meant a lot to me, and then in my second year, I received the Brick Company Producing Prize.
DP: While making films at Columbia, you were doing a lot of writing about film and doing on-camera interviews. What kind of feedback were you getting?
PN: Every site I’ve worked for has had a different pool of commenters. My favorite commenters are at ScreenRant.com. They all express very informed opinions and there’s an incredible discussion that goes on after almost every piece I write. Of course I appreciate that.  I might be bummed if someone disagrees with me but they always have a good reason for it.  And they don’t attack me.  Sometimes they say something thoughtful that makes me rethink something I wrote, and I’m always thrilled when something like that happens.
Q: What are your main outlets today?
PN: My main outlets are Movies.com, Fandango, ComingSoon.net, ShockYa.com and ScreenRant.com. I write for Collider.com and WeGotThisCovered.com occasionally, too.  I also have my personal site, LittleMissCritical.com. I’ve been doing a lot of TV lately for ComingSoon.net, which is a huge honor and is something I enjoy quite a bit.  It’s typically spending four or five minutes in a room with each celebrity from a film and after editing all the interviews together, I wind up with a piece between eight and ten minutes long. Movies.com and Fandango are connected. I’ll pitch some features to Movies.com and every once in a while, Fandango will take one. They’ve got different readerships, but both place prime importance on coming up with original content and as a writer who loves being creative and having a voice, it doesn’t get much better than that.
DP: That you’re with Fandango excites the publicists, right?
PN: I think what excites publicists is that I’m a freelancer with a bunch of outlets. They can email me and ask, “Can you pitch this film to that outlet or that other outlet?”  Or they’ll say, “Pitch it to whomever you want.” Then I have the option to do whatever I want, and I get more interviews that way. It also means I can cover all different genres and take all different types of assignments. One outlet likes me for horror, but another gives me young adult book-to-film adaptations. One outlet prefers on-camera interviews, another will send me on set visits.
DP: So you’re pretty much independent now and if there is any film you want to cover with a review or on-camera interview you can find an outlet.
PN: I guess so, yeah.
DP: I have noticed that you seem to like almost every horror film.
PN (laughing): I think I end up liking everything because whenever I write my reviews and pick my overall grade, I assess it from the standpoint of entertainment value. For instance, when I review for Shockya, I give a movie a technical grade, an acting grade, and a story grade–and sometimes it will get below-average grades in those sections, but since I still enjoy it, I’ll give it a stronger overall assessment.  It’s also important that I never forget that every movie is for someone. Even if it’s not for me, someone out there will enjoy it and I always try to take that into account.
DP: And horror movies still don’t scare you?
PN: Especially nowadays, after I’ve seen so many horror movies, nothing keeps me up at night anymore. But when I can see a scary movie and take it home with me and let it mess with me as I’m trying to go to bed, I love that feeling. I totally get a thrill out of it.
DP: Do you ever tell anyone not to see a movie?
PN: Certain people I tell not to see certain movies. Especially the people I know really well, like my family, I can very easily pinpoint what they will and will not like. Every once in a while, I’ll take that leap of faith. Most recently it was Europa Report, which I loved and wanted my family to watch so badly. We were sitting there watching it, and five minutes in, my mother was nodding off. I was upset, but knew the risk I was taking. Sci-fi isn’t really her thing.
DP: So while you were becoming more prolific online, you started making movies at Columbia.
PN: Yeah. At the end of your first semester, your goal is to make a 3-5 minute short. At the end of your first year, your goal is to make an 8-12 minute short. They’re considered exercises, but I was determined to make them a little more than that. I wanted to be proud of them.
DP: You started with a small horror movie, right?
PN: That was my 3-5 minute film.  I’m still very happy with that one–FaceTime. People really responded to it and that really lit a fire under me.
DP: To me, that was an exercise, but you think of it as a film and it did play in a film festival.
PN: Very few shorts actually have a beginning, middle, and end anymore. Columbia has a standout program because it teaches students to make fully-realized stories, not just little snippets with some sort of punchline at the end.
The title character in Trevor.
DP: Trevor, your second short at Columbia, is a sweet film and I don’t think of it as an exercise.  You were the director, but did you also produce it?
PN: I put some pieces together for that, but I wouldn’t say I produced it.  The way it worked for the 8-12 minute short is that we went through a swap process.  Everybody wrote a script and they gave it to another person to direct. So I took Lindsay Tolbert’s script of Trevor.  It was her idea.  We worked on the script together a little more, and then Lindsay produced it and I directed it.
DP: I’m sure you were drawn to it because you love dogs.
PN: I responded to the animal element of it instantly. My class was about seventy-five people, so in the swap process, there were approximately seventy-five scripts out there. You’re not expected to read them all, but everybody puts up a logline and that’s what you read and then narrow your options.  From the second I read that logline for Trevor, I knew that was going to be one of the scripts I was going to go for.
DP: Trevor is a stuffed dog that its kind but deluded owner brings to the vet because it’s lethargic.  Are you a stuffed animal lover?
PN: Not like Larry in that movie is with the toy dog, but I had some as a kid.
DP: I’m sure you related to the lead character, the female veterinarian who treats Trevor for Larry’s sake.
PN: Oh, my god, absolutely. At one point in my life, I wanted to be a vet.  I got over that really quickly when I realized I couldn’t handle anything bad happening to an animal. But yeah, I guess that’s kind of how I’d behave in a situation like that.
DP: After Trevor, did you decide that you didn’t want to direct anymore and want to produce instead?
PN: Yeah, pretty much, but if someone ever says they want to hire me to direct a film, I don’t think I’d say no.   I know I’m capable of directing, but I am much more drawn to the duties of a producer.
DP: So your next short has an interesting title.

 Child Eater poster
DP: Did other students know you liked horror movies and ask you to be part of that?  Or did you go after it yourself?
PN: One of the classes you have to take in your second year is a development class, in which they pair second-year producers with students who have completed feature scripts. They put all these scripts in a book; you look through it, find something you like, look up the writer, and try to make an arrangement so you can work on the film.  In this book, it’s sectioned off by genre, and the horror genre had only three scripts in there. One just jumped right out at me and I was determined to get it.  It was by Erlingur Thoroddsen and it turned out that we were so in-tune in terms of our love of the genre. He’s one of my closest friends now.  He’s a great person, great writer, great director.  We took the script that I found in that binder through my class and while we working on it there, he said to me, “I have another short script I’ve been working on that we could do together as well.” He gave it to me to take a look at it, and that’s what we turned into Child Eater.
DP: I think it’s well-made and very satisfying as a short. What involvement did you have as its producer?
PN: Everything.  A big reason I stick with Erlingur as a director is that he trusts me and he’s very receptive to my ideas.  We very much developed the story together. He wrote it and he directed it and he chose all the shots and that kind of stuff. It’s very well-directed. You can just feel the amount of thought that went into everything he did.
DP: I am impressed by how much he has seen and taken from horror movies.  He does a good job using darkness and light, building tension, and moving the camera.  Did he takes his story from an urban myth or make it up completely?
PN: He was inspired by Nightmare on Elm Street, but it is an original story. He’s also Icelandic and Iceland has the best creepy folklore. He’s got a couple of film ideas that are directly connected to those legends that absolutely need to get made.
DP: But was his villain, “Robert,” who sucks out the eyes of children, made up?
PN: Completely. We tossed around different names but stuck with Robert.
SPOILER ALERT
DP: Question: since Robert’s victims are always kids, why does he try to kill the young woman at the end?
PN: Because she’s pregnant and he wants her baby. Earlier we make a connection between her being pregnant and the stork story.
END SPOILER ALERT
DP: Why does Robert bother hiding from everyone, including in the boy’s closet, when he’s seemingly invincible?
PN: We’re working on expanding Child Eater into a feature, and we’re working on the rules. We’re giving him a backstory, and it’s only going to work if we have concrete rules set for him.
DP: In Halloween I believe Michael Myers is playing a game when puts on a mask and terrorizes everyone, because that’s what he likes to do having never grown out of childhood. Perhaps a reason Robert hides is that he’s playing.
PN: That’s definitely part of it.  He’s there for a reason.
DP: How long did the film take to shoot?
PN: Four days and four nights.
DP: Did you get money through Kickstarter?
PN: Yeah. Minimal amount of time and minimal amount of money!
DP: How exciting was it to screen Child Eater at SXSW?
PN: SXSW was, by far, the most incredible festival experience I’ve ever had. I attended as a filmmaker and as a journalist so it made for the ultimate combination. The festival’s programmers are also quite incredible. They make ever filmmaker feel so well taken care of and go out of their way to fill our schedules with meet-up opportunities. Also, there was a group of about ten Columbia students there, so being able to share my experience with them made it even more special. The week was just non-stop screenings, interviews, and friends. What more could you ask for?
DP: Was that your first real festival experience?
PN: My first film festival experiences were covering festivals as a journalist. As a filmmaker, the first festival I attended outside of New York was the Reykjavik International Film Festival with Child Eater. Erlingur is Icelandic, so it was important to him to screen the film back home. I’d never been to Iceland, so the trip itself was a thrill, and I really have to thank Erlingur and his family for that.
Poster with Betsy Brandt
DP: Your last film at Columbia, your thesis film, is called The Professor. How did it come about?
PN: When directors are looking for producers for their thesis films, the faculty helps by blasting an e-mail with the directors’ information and a synopsis of their films. I’d gone through a lot of those e-mails, and The Professor was the first that I stopped on, re-read a number of times, and then finally took the plunge and reached out to the writer/directors Anya Meksin and William Gerrard.  It’s a political thriller and though I’m not a particularly political person, the script’s tech-related component and suspense really spoke to me. From there, it was just a matter of sitting down with Anya and William, hitting it off, and then committing to moving forward with the project.
DP: The Professor is about a leftist underground group, led by a female ex-professor, that kidnaps a popular, deceitful news broadcaster to force him to read on the air the real news they wrote for him.  I think it’s well-made, and it is politically pretty brave, clearly getting across progressive ideas and political viewpoints. However, the film has a tagline that says it is about “radicalizing the media.”  In my opinion, it’s not about radicalizing the media, it’s simply about forcing the media to tell the truth. The idea is that if the media is honest then that’s enough to change America. Were you uncomfortable with this?
PN: I’m down the middle politically.  The reason that I was drawn to producing that project from the start was not because I felt it pertained or didn’t pertain to my own political beliefs.   Again, I looked at it as a very entertaining, thoughtful thriller–and also I had the opportunity to learn something different, too. The two directors are very politically minded and really believe in a lot of the film’s ideas, and I learned a lot from them.
DP: My one objection to the film politically is that one of the radicals says that the professor is the only one who makes decisions–like choosing to kill the broadcaster–and everyone else just follows her mindlessly.  Was that a controversial line?
PN: No, not really.  I remember that scene mostly for the producing challenges involved. It sounds silly, but basically it was about digging a hole for the grave. It’s very hard to dig a hole like that.  As for that line, I like it quite a bit, and find it interesting that the students would realize the situation and still go along with it, because they’re all very smart people. But they still follow her into the darkness.
DP: As soon as anybody differs at all, she shuts them down.  Her argument is that the end justifies the means. Did you have discussions with the directors about such things or did they do whatever and have everyone follow them?
PN: There were a lot of creative discussions early on, not pertaining to that though. One of the main challenges when we were developing the script was getting people to believe that the news anchor would just go along with reading their words on the air. Originally he was just hit once and was verbally coerced, and then suddenly he was doing the news just like she wanted him to do.  We had to change that and make it seem like he was scared enough to read it. We went back and forth with a lot of options before settling on what we have.
DP: Do you want us, the viewers, to have her fail or succeed in her mission?
PN: Personally, I want viewers to leave still weighing all the options. I love that you get three perspectives on this one thing–hers, the broadcaster’s, and the member of the group who is reluctant to kill the broadcaster.  It’s so thoughtful. I love walking out of a movie leaning toward one person’s opinion, but still considering the opposing viewpoint as being a justifiable option. To me, that’s a major achievement for the writer/directors.
DP: In the movie The East, the eco-terrorist group has no leader but is a collective. Everyone is smart and has his or her own viewpoint and though they’re extremists they can all be called patriots and heroes, just as it is with your professor.
PN: I love that movie. That’s another movie where I was expecting a completely polarizing viewpoint, but after hearing all the backstories, I also believed the group’s hurting people and its eye-for-an-eye mentality seems justified.  I was almost hoping that they pulled off their acts, to some extent.  I love when I can side with many different characters in one movie.
DP: In your film, I question why they don’t all wear masks because once the reporter has seen them they have no choice but to kill him.  I would think they’d be smart enough to all wear masks and then let him go, because his death doesn’t really matter once he’s read what they gave him to read.
PN: That was something that we discussed but you don’t necessarily want to put a mask on all your actors’ faces, especially when one is Betsy Brandt!
DP: You have a solid cast.
PN: We were so fortunate with our cast. Betsy and Rick Peters, who plays the broadcaster, are our big names.  She’s from Breaking Bad [and now The Michael J. Fox Show] and you may remember him from Dexter, although I recently saw him on a rerun of Veronica Mars.  We reached out to them ourselves, and sent them scripts. We were incredibly fortunate that the two of them responded and that their manager was willing to work with budding filmmakers. Also, as students it’s a pretty big undertaking to fly two actors from Los Angeles and house them in New York.  A very necessary learning experience for me though!
DP: And now you’re taking The Professor to festivals?
PN: Yes, we began with the L.A. Short Film Festival in September.  That was quite the place to start and we’re very happy about that. It was just so exciting to see everyone again and share this first screening with them. It went well. The audience responded appropriately to each beat of the film, so that’s got to mean we did something right! The film also recently screened at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. We have high hopes for it. We’re relying very heavily on the fact that what happens in this film is very current.
DP: And is The Professor going to be a feature?
PN: The directors have a feature script they want to explore.
DP: What are you currently working on?
PN: I’m forging forward with writing, interviewing and reviewing for the online sites.  And on the producing front, I’m dedicating a lot of time to Child Eater as a feature.  We’ve been working on a script for months now, and it’s in very good shape. It’s really a very good expansion of what you see in the short, fleshing out information that we wanted to include in the short but the film’s length did not permit.  It’s been a challenge, but we’re hopeful the feature will become a reality very soon.
DP: You’ve never been star-struck but have there been other filmmakers you’ve met who inspire you?
PN: In all the time I’ve been doing interviews, the only person I asked for a picture has been Wes Craven, because I love his films.  I also recently met Jason Blum, the producer of Insidious 2. I really admire his production company and as a budding producer myself, he is where I want to be.   So it was exciting to see him.
DP:  When young people tell me they want to make a living being a film critic, I’m tempted to tell them to do something else.  But you’ve had success and are on track to do what you want, so what advise can you give young Long Islanders who are following you into film criticism?
PN: I’d say they need to be persistent. I never stopped. Ever. And when I wasn’t getting enough work, I just fought for more, all the time. Whether that meant picking up different outlets, or doing the less exciting jobs, like writing DVD news releases instead of interviewing people, I just did it, all the time. I guess what puts me in a different category than some people is that I just have an immense amount of support from my family. I couldn’t have continued doing this without them.  They helped me financially and boosted my morale. They’ve always been fighting for me just as much as I’ve been fighting for myself.
DP: Was there a frustration element?
PN: There’s still a frustration element every day. The critiquing and the interviewing is very much turning into a real job for me at this point, but I’ll always want more. I’ve been very career-driven since I was a kid.
DP: Where can you go with what you’re doing?
PN: I have two goals.  On the producing side, I want to make horror movies.  On the film journalism side, I just want to maintain a steady flow of reviews and interviews. At this point my obsession is going to junkets–there is nothing that makes me happier than waking up and knowing it’s a junket day–and talking to people about their movies. I can talk about movies all day long.