Utter Trash--Worm Miller

As the Worm Turns

An interview with filmmaker Worm Miller

By Bob Ignizio

I’ve watched quite a few “no-budget” films since starting Utter Trash. While many of them display a good deal of originality and creativity in overcoming their lack of funds, even the best of them usually require a caveat along the lines of, “it’s pretty good considering the budget.” So it was a pleasant surprise indeed to see ‘Hey, Stop Stabbing Me’, a film made by a group of friends collectively known as Amazing Schlock Productions. It’s a film that I can recommend without hesitation to anyone who appreciates oddball comedies. This destined-to-be cult classic was directed and co-written (with the film’s star Patrick Casey) by Worm Miller. Since that film’s completion, Miller and Casey have moved to Hollywood where they sold another of their screenplay collaborations entitled ‘A College Sex Comedy’. Unlike most screenplays sold to Hollywood, this one actually got made and will soon be released with the new moniker ‘National Lampoon’s Dorm Daze’.

Worm Miller was born in a small suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1978 (“’Animal House’, ‘Dawn of the Dead’, ‘Piranha’, ‘Superman’, ‘Halloween’, oh yeah! Of course, I did not see any of those movies that year, seeing as I was a small infant,” says Worm). Worm was the only child in his neighborhood and says he, “spent a majority of my time alone. This of course led to much drawing, TV watching, making shit up for my own amusement, and of course becoming very warped and strange. When I was very young I originally wanted to be a cartoonist or comic book artist/writer, because I always enjoyed making up stories. Eventually my family got a video camera and things just spiraled from there.” Worm started making short films in the third grade, and by the eighth grade he had made his first feature. Of his early works, Worm says, “I don’t ever want anyone to be able to see the movies I made in high school and before, EVER. I think if I happened upon someone watching one of my high school films I’d have to eat their heart out or something.”

Without any formal training, Worm’s only film school was trial and error. Eventually he wound up working on a cable access television program. Worm says, “For four years the whole Amazing Schlock crew was working on a local television show called ‘YRU-Up,’ which we ran and produced entirely ourselves. It had a lot of pre-taped skits and that sort of thing, and we had to churn out fresh crap every Friday. We got good at working fast and having no budget. I directed and edited about 95% of the material we did for that show, and that was hands down the best training I could have ever received. Infinitely more valuable than any school could hope to be.” Worm did eventually major in film studies, which he says, “Just involved a lot of paper writing and watching movies, which I found very valuable.”

All the trial and error and TV work paid off with a film Worm is actually happy with, ‘Murder Made Easy’. He says, “It was the first time Pat [Casey] and I worked together creatively (I had previously been using him purely as an actor), and it was our crew’s first attempt to make one of the films actually good. We made it when we were all 19, and while not as good as ‘Hey, Stop Stabbing Me’, I think it’s probably the best movie ever honestly made by people under 20. I don’t like bragging, but I do honestly think that. I was not impressed at the time, but now that I’m 25 and I watch it again, I think, ‘Huh, this is pretty darn good.’ It would help a lot, too, if one could see how bad the movie I made right before it was…which one never ever will!” Of his early efforts, ‘Murder Made Easy’ is the one Worm would most like to see released.

Later, Worm and his Amazing Schlock cohorts made the film ‘I Was a Teenage Frankenstein’s Roommate’. Although that film was released on VHS, Worm says, “It did no business and we got one fan letter and one threat of a lawsuit from the widow of the guy who produced the original ‘I Was a Teenage Frankenstein’.” Not exactly encouraging. Nonetheless Worm and friends forged onward. The film they had intended to make, however, just wasn’t working out. Since the actors and crew were already assembled, Worm and Patrick Casey quickly wrote a new screenplay that would become ‘Hey, Stop Stabbing Me’. Worm says, “We wrote it in about two weeks or so. We were nearing our senior year which meant we were nearing graduation, and we had all these funny ideas based on what we’d heard life was going to be like when we graduated, and how ill-prepared we were all going to be.”

Still, one aspect of the screenplay proved problematic: the ending. Worm says, “Our original idea for the movie was that it shows a man’s journey from graduation, to getting freaked out by the outside world, to wussying out and going back to school. But no one liked that ending, so we shot a new one. The original is on the DVD, and it actually makes more sense with the rest of the film, but the current ending is probably funnier.” Amazingly, Worm says the entire film (new ending and all) was completed for around $300. Worm says, “We’ve never really had a budget in the true sense of the word; that being a predetermined amount of money set aside just for the film. We’re too lazy and our movies are too cheap for that to be necessary. Since we specifically design each movie around locations, people and props that we know we already have, Pat and I just spend our own money (or mooch off my mom more often) as we go along.”

Unlike ‘I Was a Teenage Frankenstein’s Roommate’, ‘Hey, Stop Stabbing Me’ has turned out to be something of a success for Worm and company. He says, “We’d originally planned on not making any more Amazing Schlock films, but the ‘...Stabbing Me’ DVD is getting such good press, and we’re getting an insane amount of viewer feedback.” Since the completion of ‘...Stabbing Me’, Worm and Pat both moved to Hollywood. Strangely enough, “now that we’re in Hollywood and not in MN anymore, making a movie is harder. The irony! But because of the DVD I think we’re going to do another one. I miss directing and Pat misses acting, and we miss our whole movie gang. So once we’re done with our current gig, I’m hoping we can get back in the saddle. We’ve got a couple ideas we’ve been kicking around.”

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for the release of ‘National Lampoons Dorm Days’, which Miller and Casey wrote the screenplay for (originally titled ‘A College Sex Comedy’). Worm says, “Actually, we wrote the movie to shoot ourselves. It was to be our last college film and we were going to shoot it in Pat’s dorm at Boston University, but we totally failed and ended up making “Magma Head”, our only short film, instead (on the ‘...Stabbing Me’ DVD). When we moved to LA after graduation we almost instantly sold the script to Hill & Brand Entertainment (‘King Cobra’), who was trying to branch out from horror to comedy. The Hillenbrand Bros made the film and somehow got involved with Lampoon once it was done. Honestly, we’ve asked before and have never gotten a really clear answer how Lampoon came on board. It’s like no one knows. Besides, no one tells the writers anything.” Undaunted, Worm and Pat are currently hard at work on another screenplay they’ve been hired to write.

Despite his Hollywood experiences, don’t expect Worm’s next directorial effort to be a big budget epic. I asked him what he’d do if someone gave him a respectable sum like $5 million to make a film. Worm says, “I think I’d want to make two 2.5 million dollar movies. We could make two really kick ass movies for that. We made ‘...Stabbing Me’ our junior year of college, basically just for fun. We could have tried to raise money and this and that, but we were just screwing around like we’d been doing for a decade. Some people get together and play touch football, we make movies, you know? Anyway, point being, I like to think that the reason ‘...Stabbing Me’ stands out the way it does on the low budget comedy landscape is because we were a bigger movie team working on a smaller movie. I think we have the capability to make a studio worthy film, but at the same time, smaller movies are WAY more fun. There’s more rock’n’roll to it.”

One last thing. Regarding the cover art for the ‘Hey, Stop Stabbing Me’ DVD, Worm says, “For anyone who reads this and becomes intrigued by the movie, and then looks it up on-line and sees the cover art: it is NOOOOOOT a ‘Scream’ parody! Repeat; NOT A SCREAM PARODY! I can not stress this enough. We had nothing to do with the cover design. Originally, I kind of liked it. I thought it was an eye catching design, but every website I see the movie for sale on has it listed as a spoof. I wish I could go back in time and suggest they use the poster Sean Hall designed for our website. It represents the film a lot better.”