Ad-supported streamer Tubi quickly became a favorite among fans of obscure films and creators alike. But with so many choices, how do you find that deeply buried gem? Today, we’ll be talking to Addison Binek about his movie Psycho Ape!
Ada: What movie made you fall in love with movies?
Addison: My dad would rent me Universal Monster movies when I was a kid, like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and Creature From the Black Lagoon. But I also grew up watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit all the time, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, Mars Attacks, and Tremors. Then, eventually started watching all the classic horror franchises like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Child’s Play. My dad took me to see Bride of Chucky in theaters, which was my first R-rated movie in a movie theater.
Ada: What tape did you always want to rent at the video store but couldn’t? Or what was your favorite cover at the video store?
Addison: I actually think I was able to rent just about everything I wanted to, haha. My favorite boxes were Dead Alive, the Puppet Master series, The Return of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and I rented them all!
Background
Ada: When and how did you first get involved with making films?
Addison: My dad had a VHS camcorder when I was a kid that he filmed home movies with. He would let me record the rides at Disney, Christmas morning, animals at the zoo, Sea World, etc. Eventually, I started filming shorts with friends, and my dad would get me a better camera for my birthday or Christmas every couple of years, and I would continue to make videos with friends.
Ada: It seems like you got into writing, acting, and directing all around the same time. Was that due to a personal preference?
Addison: Some of my favorite filmmakers are writers, directors, and editors, like George Romero, Lloyd Kaufman, and Quentin Tarantino. I always admired the fact that they could juggle all of those different jobs. So, I taught myself how to do all of that stuff, too. It also kind of became necessary because at the end of the day, it’s my project and I’m the person who’s going to work the hardest to make sure it’s as good as I can get it.
Psycho Ape
Ada: What inspired Psycho Ape?
Addison: I had a dream in 2017 where I was filming my friend dressed in his gorilla costume from Halloween, and he was chasing someone while wielding a gigantic butcher knife, like Norman Bates in Psycho. I woke up from that dream, and just the two things together. Psycho…ape! I told my friend about it, and we went out for a couple of beers one afternoon. We wrote the opening scene together of the teenage girls having their slumber party crashed by a teenage boyfriend played by a significantly older man, who is then promptly kicked out. Then killed by the psycho ape, and his costume was stolen and worn by the ape. The idea of having an ape mask on an ape mask made us laugh really hard, and we figured we were onto something.
(Writer’s note: given the cult following this movie is gaining, they are on to something.)
Ada: Was the Pixar debate scripted?
Addison: Nope, not at all. Those two characters are sisters in real life, and we happened to document on camera an actual argument that broke out while we were shooting a trick-or-treating scene. Kearsyn [Joniper] told us that she had the monologue from Ratatouille memorized. So, we filmed her reciting it, but then they just started arguing and going crazy about Pixar films.
Prop vs Food
Ada: How many bananas did you use during shooting?
Addison: I have no idea. At a certain point, we had been filming the movie for so long that I simply forgot bananas were food and not props; I could’ve eaten some of them before they turned completely black and attracted fruit flies in our kitchen before we got to shoot with them. Oops.
Ada: Was the cockroach a paid actor?
Addison: That was an extra who wandered onto our New York City set. I think he works for SAG, but we didn’t pay him, so he had to go uncredited.
Tubi
Ada: Is your work hosted on other streaming platforms? If so, how is your experience with Tubi compared to other platforms?
Addison: Psycho Ape is also on Amazon Prime and Night Flight+. Getting the film onto Tubi was way more complicated than those other two. Tubi has a “three strikes and you’re out” system now, and you have to adhere to a bullet-pointed list of demands every time you submit your film. After submitting the film once, we received an email with alterations that needed to be made. Mostly quality control stuff, but even after making those alterations and submitting the film the second time. We got another email back with more things we needed to fix.
Some of these things were for the better, like mixing the audio so that it was clearer and cleaner, but we had to chop off a little bit of the beginning because the algorithm didn’t like logos and scrolling text for the first minute or so. You can’t really appeal that kind of thing either. You just sort of have to do it or risk getting another strike. After three strikes, you’re not allowed to submit your film again.
Physical Media
Ada: How do you feel about still doing physical media releases as an independent filmmaker?
Addison: To me, putting together the DVD or Blu-ray of a finished project is probably the most fun part. I love getting the artwork for the Blu-ray made, selecting artwork that gets printed onto the disk itself, and a picture for the inside sleeve. It’s like assembling a really fun puzzle that you hope people will appreciate. Having a physical, tangible disc housed in fun artwork makes it all feel real; unlike streaming, where you have no idea who is watching it, how many people are watching it, and it’s just online on the Internet somewhere, and it could be removed at any time.
Up Next
Ada: What projects do you have coming up?
Addison: I put together a project a few years ago, I named Magnum Opus, which has been called “Boyhood meets Jackass” because I took 15 years worth of footage that featured me and my middle school and high school friends performing various stunts, pranks, and skits, and assembled the clips in chronological order, so you watch us grow older as the footage quality gets better. The footage was sourced from VHS tapes, miniDV tapes, Hi-8 tapes, and digital HD files that were scattered on various hard drives.
I am currently working on a sequel I’m calling Magnum Opus 2 – MO:Re (The Magnum Opus Reboot), which will feature a lot of my current friends in the indie filmmaking community doing dumb stuff and eating/drinking gross things at conventions that I attend, like GrossFest and Cinema Wasteland. It’s becoming a video scrapbook that I can look back on in a few years because I’ve just been documenting a lot of my traveling and silly stuff that’s been happening at these conventions, like eating an excessive amount of hot dogs, drinking mustard-flavored soda, and sucking down ketchup straight from the bottle.
We’d like to thank Addison for his time and thoughtful answers. Check out Psycho Ape now streaming on Tubi!
