The indie-film renegade blazes a trail through violence, drugs, cults and insanity with his latest gritty offering.
With his latest gritty, low-budget, countercultural feature, underground filmmaker Christopher Bickel has once again blazed a trail through a landscape of violence, drugs and insanity. In Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, Bickel tells the story of a record store employee who becomes obsessed with collecting the rare vinyl albums of a mysterious cult. Adara Starr portrays Max, who, along with her coworkers (Sanethia Dresch, Morgan Shaley Renew and Shelby Lois Guinn) and a fellow enthusiastic collector (Joshua Outzen), throws caution to the wind in pursuit of the deepest of cuts.
Before long, they find what they’re looking for and a whole lot more. As their quest takes them into the sphere of Pater Noster (Mike Amason) and his followers, the young vinyl enthusiasts find themselves on a blood-soaked journey of Lovecraftian proportions.
The film recently dropped exclusively on Night Flight Plus (www.nightflightplus.com), and on the occasion of the launch, HUSTLERMagazine.com spoke with Bickel to discuss the origins of his latest project, the musical aspects of the film and his ongoing interest in working within very small budgets.
HUSTLERMagazine.com: What was the inspiration for having your protagonists be record store employees/vinyl enthusiasts?
Christopher Bickel: When I was coming up with the ideas for doing the movie I realized that, for somebody like me, who’s so into record collecting and has had the experience of working in a record store, there’s sort of a niche market of people that have been part of the culture of record stores. There’s only really two movies that have catered to that niche, High Fidelity and Empire Records. So I figured, here’s a hole for people that are hardcore record geeks; there’s not really a lot of movies that represent them, so I wanted to put that in there.
It helped out with the fundraising for it too, because I was able to email-blast all these indie record stores and be like, “Hey, like, I’m making this movie. It’s a horror movie. It’s gonna be real gory, but it’s sort of about the whole experience of being an employee in a record store.” And a lot of these independent stores kicked in, like, 200 bucks, so at the end of the movie, there’s all those logos from record stores.
