Jon Keeyes has just made his directing debut with the upcoming psychological thriller American Nightmare. Starring Debbie Rochon, Brandy Little, and featuring a cameo by Brinke Stevens, American Nightmare tells the story of seven friends who, on Halloween night, find themselves targeted by a psychotic killer, after she hears them reveal their worst fears on a pirate radio program.

An homage to both Halloween and Hitchcock, American Nightmare features top-notch performances, particularly by B-Movie queen Rochon, as the psychotic and relentless Jane Toppan. By all accounts, Keeyes, who also wrote the script, handled the job of first-time director with incredible skill. Shot on a lunatic fifteen-day schedule, American Nightmare boasts a main cast of nine primary characters, as well as almost a dozen supporting characters, more than a dozen extras, and more than a half-dozen locations, more than a few of them exterior night shots. This is a heavy, demanding load for seasoned veterans, but Keeyes took it on, and more. Judging from the positive response from early test-screenings of the rough cut, American Nightmare may be one of the more eagerly-anticipated independent thrillers produced in recent years. With the film barely six months old, and still in post-production, Keeyes is already being courted by several Hollywood studios.

SCAN: "Before we jump into this, how about telling us a little bit about your background. What made you decide to make American Nightmare?"

Jon Keeyes: "I grew up in Hollywood, and my family was big time into movies. And the first thing I can remember is wanting to make a movie. I just spent my entire life knowing someday I would make a movie. So I watched movies, and watched the techniques that directors used, and watched every little detail about a movie -- what was good about it, what was bad about, watched the actors, and read tons and tons and tons of books. From the technique books to the commentary books, and over the years picked up enough information until I got to the point where I said, "You know, I think I can do this now".

SCAN: "So you eased into it?"

JK: "Yeah. (Laughs) I spent a year, thirteen months in pre-production. Because I knew there was a lot of other stuff I had to learn and I wanted to give myself plenty of time to hit road bumps early enough - to make those mistakes and correct them before we actually hit production. I had done publicity work for Universal Soldier 2 and The Faculty, which included doing writing for the presskits, and going out to the sets. I guess that's where a lot of the knowledge or a lot of what I wanted to do with this movie came from. Talking to the actors and talking to the directors and the producers, crew and cast, listening to their war stories, and learning from their mistakes. I think that saved us more than anything, trying to do this on a shoe-string budget, and still have it come out really good."

SCAN: How did you warm up to the process, being a first-time director?

JK: "A lot of it was not thinking about it. (laughs) If I thought about it too long about what I was doing, I got really scared. Because it is such a momentous task, there's a lot of responsibilities that just get thrown on your shoulders. So I think the first part was just deciding that I'm going to do this, and just going head-long into it and not looking back. I think the rest of it came from wise advice from friends and fellow directors, people like Brinke and Debbie and Robert Rodriguez. There were a lot of things about this movie that were just instinctual, and a lot of things that I wanted the actors to bring out about the characters, or things I wanted the crew to bring out about the look and feel. So it wasn't just me with my thumb on top of it. It was me conveying ideas and feelings and what I was seeking out of the scene and out of the story as a whole. And letting the actors play with that, letting the director of photography play with that through his lighting, letting the art directors do the set decoration. And just making sure that I maintained some consistency and continuity to the whole feel of things. I think that was the wisest thing that I'd done on this movie set. I think if I'd done the whole - you know there's a lot of things that happened on this movie because one of the actors had an idea, or one of the crew had an idea. And if I hadn't been open to all those things I think we would have missed some great opportunities.

SCAN: What advice did Robert Rodriguez give you?

JK: "Always remember your vision of what you are trying to achieve. An audience is putting some faith into you to provide them with a good story and it's your job to keep that in mind when you are looking through that lens piece and making your movie." More than anything, he was an inspiration [to me] through his interactions with cast and crew. He was a down to earth guy who treated the people with respect. I appreciated that and could see the high level of morale among everyone on the set.

SCAN: As you finally moved from pre-production into actual production, after something like thirteen months, did you have any major set-backs?

JK: "We were actually very fortunate. A few things happened, but nothing disastrous. [Having] that lead-time was very beneficial. The only major change was when we decided to go with a high school location rather than a hospital location [for the climax]. We had a hospital all settled, and then they went into a trust battle, and we lost that, and most of the other abandoned hospitals that were available either had too much asbestos or had major construction going on. Then the Texas Film Commission called us and said, "What about using like an old high school?" And when we got down there, I realized it would be just as good as a hospital as far as the story-line was concerned. So we re-wrote specifically so that we could utilize this enormous old auditorium and stage in the middle of the school. And having just seen the dailies for this scene, it turned out to be very effective. If I hadn't had that lead-time in putting things together I never would have made it. Hell, we lost our director of photography three weeks before we started filming! But I knew what had to be done in order to find another person for the job, in the midst of everything else putting the picture together. And fortunately we found Brad Walker, and I don't think I could have asked for a better director of photography than him."

SCAN: Did you find it hard getting the performances you wanted out of the actors?

JK: "Not really. I studied psychology, I spent time with a counselor, and I think I understand people well enough to know why they do the things that they do, and used that to my benefit to work with the actors to get them either a.) into their characters, or b.) bring their characters across in a more believable way. It's really on the smaller levels in the way that the characters laugh with each other. I know there's one point where [the character of] "Bruce", played by Kenyon Holmes, is just being a complete jerk and he's kinda going off and sticking his foot in his mouth. And while everyone's razzing him about it, there are still two friends on either side of him, that just have a gentle hand on his back going, "We're still razzing you, but you're still our friend." And it comes across on a very subtle level and if you're not paying attention, you don't really see it. But it's there. And I think that people can relate to a lot of those things that often get overlooked."

SCAN: "Was this an instinctual thing, or did you learn it along the line?"

JK: "A little of both. I've studied Hitchcock, and I love Hitchcock. One of the things that everyone talked about Hitchcock [was] his way of subtly having his characters do something that is so out of the ordinary for cinema that you don't necessarily see it, but you feel it, because you're suddenly relating to these characters. And it has nothing to do with dialogue, it all has to do with subtle actions. There's a beautiful woman sitting across the room at another table, and the guys are occasionally throwing glances over there. It has nothing to do with the storyline, but every guy does it. And you can relate to that, you can understand it. And you're slowly getting drawn into the characters, and you don't even realize why, because the gestures are everyday gestures that we all do everyday and we don't recognize. And that gets lost a lot in movies."

SCAN: "Why do you think that is?"

JK: "I don't think that directors are willing to pay enough attention to detail. And I don't think there are enough directors who give the audience credit for having a brain. I think there are a lot of intelligent people who watch movies, and there is a lot of psychology going on when you watch a movie. And it takes very little, in my opinion, to draw an audience into a character, to allow them to relate to a character. And it all comes from little things that we all do, but we don't pay attention to them when we're making movies."

SCAN: "Can you think of any examples?"

JK: "Oh, yeah. The character of Tony is a very superstitious character. And I could have taken the route one of two ways. I could have bombarded the audience with "Hey, he's superstitious!" And spilled salt, extreme close up on the salt, his fingers pinching the salt. There's lots of things I could have done like that to just bash the audience over the head. But instead, we just let him do it, when the attention isn't necessarily on his character at all, but I think you start to sense it, you feel it, and it kind of creeps into you, without you ever having a recognition of it.

SCAN: Debbie ran with her character, didn't she?

JK: "Oh, yeah! Yeah! Debbie blew me away. Debbie took Jane to levels and depths that I'd never imagined for that character. I gave Debbie a lot of free reign - like I did with most of the actors. I had a very good idea of who Jane was, what Jane was going to be like, and Debbie and I spent several months talking about Jane. And we had forensic psychologists create profiles for Jane, and created a back-story for Jane. And Jane herself is based on a real serial killer also. And all of those things over four or five months of preparing and planning, I finally let Debbie loose with that character. Once she knew where I needed Jane to be in the story, she just kept digging deeper and deeper and going further and further into Jane's head and understanding who Jane was. And she spent months studying serial killers - especially female serial killers because they're so rare - until I think she brought Jane to an all-time high."

SCAN: What kind of "look" were you going for?

JK: "I think "hyper-reality" is a very good way of [describing the look]. I wanted to really create a feel of two worlds: the world of the friends and the world of the killer. Or the outside world, really. Essentially, people live in two worlds. They live in their own little happy safe world, which is their house and their car and their group of friends, and they never expect anyone to intrude upon that world. And then you have this outside world, and though most people won't admit it, it's a very scary world. There's a lot of people who are scared to go out, they're scared of strangers, they're scared of large groups of people -- and that's something that I originally wanted to start working on in terms of how the movie looked. Essentially, what you have is a killer intruding upon the world of these seven friends. It became very important to me to create on various levels that feeling of intrusion, or the feeling of the two worlds. [In] the coffee house, where we are introduced to the group of friends sitting in their own little area, facing each other, sort of cut off from the rest of the house. And then you have a killer sitting right next to them and listening to them. I wanted to set up the whole movie like that. I wanted to keep their world, their safe little world very tight, and whenever the outside world intruded upon them, whether it be the killer, or Caligari on the radio, I wanted to go very wide, and show that intrusion.

"And when Brad Walker, the director of photography, came aboard - he's just incredible with lighting. And so we took it to the next level of lighting the two worlds. So that everything dealing with the friends is very warm, lots of reds, oranges, golds. We made the outside world very cold, using lots of blacks and grays and blue. In the coffee house scene, around that group of friends, it's very warm, and once we leave the couches, it cascades into darks and blues where the killer is, and we maintain that feel throughout the entire movie. Each of the times the characters are drawn into Jane, we've got them standing on the edge of the shadows, where she's standing in the blues and the blacks, and they're standing in the golden hues. Whatever friend is about to face their fear from Jane, their drawn into that shadow, either because she forces them into it, or invites them into it, all the way up to the climax, where some particular characters have to face the killer and they're completely in her world. Everything is dark, everything is blue, and all golden hues and warmth is gone completely because they're now completely in her world. Visually, it's very hyper-reality, but I think it lends greatly to the feeling of the two worlds and getting drawn out of a happy cozy safe world into a very dark and dangerous world. [In set design] we made the area in Jane's world very harsh, lots of bricks, lots of slate, lots of things that break the world apart. Instead of lots of very clean walls, everything became very disorienting and asymmetrical. And I think the scenes set in the ruined, abandoned high school will be the best example of this."

SCAN: You worked an average of 14 hours a day over the period of three weeks, how were you able to maintain the energy?

JK: "I think it was just the determination that I was going to make a movie. There were moments when my insides were screaming "I can't do this, I can't do this!" And then the little kid inside that always dreamed about making a movie would step forward and say "Hey, you've got to keep going!" There were nights when I slept two hours and I got to the set and I wanted to fall over. But as soon as we were on that set and the magic was going and the lights were getting set up and the actors are rehearsing and the make-up's getting put on, there was just something so magical about that and the adrenaline would start flowing, the brain would start firing away and any of that tired was gone. I think it all had to do with how much I wanted to make a great movie. That sort of determination and having that dream come true creates the energy to keep going.

"I mean, making a movie is something I've dreamed of my entire life - since I was four years old. And actually doing it was the most fulfilling experience ever. It was more than I hoped it could be. Seeing the story I created come to life and actually put onto film, there's nothing I will ever be able to compare that to."

SCAN: Now the inevitable "Dear Abby" question: Do you have any advice for new filmmakers?

JK: "Study, study, study. Learn as much as possible, read as much as possible. Find the films that you enjoy, find the directors that you respect, and read about them. Read interviews about them, study as much as you can about them, and learn from that. Spend a lot of time learning from the mistakes other people have made. Give yourself a lot of lead-time. If we hadn't spent nine months in pre-production, we would have hit too many road-bumps along the way and I don't think the movie would have come off."

For more information please visit The Official American Nightmare Homepage