Artist Profile: Stacey Case (p2)

Ok, here it is, part two of my interview with musician, screen printer, projectionist etc, Stacey Case. To read Part 1, just scroll down to the next post.

I had a guy on the merch table for 3 shows, but he was flaky and ripped me off for a bit of money, so I asked the Mouth to help cause he's also involved in The Pillow Fight League. We were having a lot of fun working together in the league, so I asked him about it and he said he'd love to. He was the missing part of the puzzle. At the old place, I could only fit 5 chairs wide, with two narrow isles on the side, I could only have 5 rows, so I could only seat 25 people. I went out and bought chairs, so I said to the Mouth and my wife, that the money from Trash Palace goes back into the Trash Palace, we can pay ourselves a little, but the money should go back into it.

That probably plays into you getting filmmakers in for certain screenings, like last week...

Yeah, well what happens, is... last week, Brian Damude (the director of Sudden Fury) he was at our studio until 2:30 in the morning. I recorded it all, mainly because I forgot to shut of the recorder, and we were pretty bombed. We were drinking bourbon from the Trash Palace shot glasses, he wouldn't except the money, and he'd come back any time. Barry Pearson did the same thing, director of Plague. We offer the dough. To us they totally deserve it. They turn around and go "no no no, we love what you're doing, keep the money and let us know what it buys for the trash palace". Well that helps us buy things like "The Phantom Creeps" the serial.


I think the very first screening was TNT Jackson. One person paid. The rest were our friends. The first screening we had 7 people. the next one 11. third, 8 people. but the 4th, When mouth took over, and we were putting up posters, we had 13 people. Than 15. I didn't recognize anyone from the first time. Then we actually started making dough, and put it back into Trash Palace, so that we could put films into the next cycle. So, cycle 2 , cycle 3, now we're in cycle 4, Johnathon Culp and Greg Woods were coming the early screenings, as fellow collectors, we want to share our stuff. So I asked them what they've got, and they emailed me their lists. Now everything is being shared. And the deal is, because the money goes back to Trash Palace, I don't really pay myself personal money that I buy shoes with. I pay the programmers, if the show is sold out it's like $50. If a show does well, Greg Woods screening a couple of weeks ago, the spaghetti western night, his print was jumpy. Even though the night was good, his print was jumpy... even by Trash Palace standards. so I told him, you only get $45 tonight, because the print sucked. He was like no problem.

Which one was yours?

Adios Sabata. his was Hellbenders. It was a good film, but the print was jumpy. You find out sometimes why these prints are so cheap. Frankensteins Daughter, there's a hum through the whole film, but that's why we have a drinking game around it. If you get a couple of drinks in ya, you don't even notice it. This is the only place where you could show a film like that. I know man, this is the Trash Palace!

You're prints are really good though, that's something I always notice... the first film I saw was, the British film that I always forget the name of, with the guy from Blow-Up...

oh, Fragment of Fear

Yeah, Fragment of Fear. That was probably the worst print I saw, and all that was was a red tinge throughout, but most of the prints are great...

Well the Trash Palace is always exciting for me, cause, It fulfills my collecting urge... and what did I get on the weekend?... It was on Ebay, and I call Mouth now, and I said "Mouth, I just found this print, what do ya think?" So I see, "Born Innocent" Linda Blair. I clicked on it, and IMDB'd it, and thought this is perfect Trash Palace stuff! So I set my ceiling on what I can bid, I don't get into bidding wars. The most I'll pay for this is this, and if it goes over, whatever. For Born Innocent, my ceiling was $160. So it was sold for $161. which is always a piss off. But I was on another collecting forum, and a dude had "Born Innocent" $80 bucks, "Dinosaurus" $80bucks. So I just got those films for half price. I picked up a couple of films from the guy I got "Force on Thunder Mountain" from, and this guy has the shittiest fucking movies! One is called "UFO Target Earth", which I got for $29.99, and then I got "the Todd Killings" for $36! I was also bidding on "the Horror of It All" from 1965 starring Pat Boone!



Wow!

The other one was called "Overlord of the UFO" that was the one I wanted, but I had an issue at home, and I needed to follow the bidding, but my laptop was at the studio, my wife was online, and I thought, it wouldn't kill me if I didn't get "Overlord of the UFO". However the reviews were great, one guy was like "I laughed so hard, I cried. I stopped watching the film, I called all my friends over"

What have been some of your favourite purchases?

I'm really happy that I own a print of "The Thing With Two Heads", I'm really happy about that.

[Actor] Ray Milland is sort of a TP favorite, he's in a lot of the films


I really like that print, and I'm also really happy to be showing "Schizo" in the next cycle. It's the most gory film I have. It's long. British. I really enjoyed that film. Especially watching it the first time. I don't watch them alone, so when I reminisce about my favorite films, it's all about what happened the night I watched them. I Love watching Force on Thunder Mountain. I can watch it over and over, it just gets better. I really enjoy showing people "Tomboy and the Champ".

You've got that in this cycle?

Yeah, I really enjoy showing that film, cause, that's like the Force on Thunder mountain. I didn't even open that one, I tried to watch it a couple of times, but I didn't want to open he box. The packaging was pristine, never been opened. When I read reviews, I thought, OK, it's a 4H club kids film where a girl brings a bull back to health. OK, that's fucked up. I have to get this film! Nobody has ever heard of this movie, I guarantee it! I'm looking forward to showing that again. "This is a Hijack"... the dialogue... every archetype that could appear in the film.... if it's a white guy, it's a SUPER white guy, it it's a black women, it's a SUPER black women, if it's a gay man, he's SUPER gay. So when they all start talking to each other, like, the Macho guy will say this to the black women, and the gay guy will come in,.... who ever wrote the film must have been dying laughing.... People were laughing so hard, you couldn't hear the next line. Mouth thinks that "This is a Hijack" should play every cycle, just like Force on Thunder Mountain, it's that good.

I don't know if you get the same reaction from people, but I'm always impressed by how many genuinely good films you have, something like Sudden Fury, which might be one of the best thrillers I've ever seen, period. And I worry that I'm gonna miss that every week, do you get that reaction from people?

yeah, right now there is..um.. Neil, one of our regulars, he's going through with drawl cause he has to go to London Ontario for school.

He feels like he's missing out?

Oh, he's dying! It's killing him, messages every week on Facebook, I think he's gonna, I think he's given in, he needs to come once a month. He can't not come. He's gonna bring some extra money to buy trash palace posters for his dorm.

What else do you get out of putting on the Trash Palace?

I work so hard out of that studio, and there is a bunch of reason why I like Trash Palace, but it makes me keep my shop clean. It'll be a whirl wind all week of printing shirts and cutting paper. Stuff's everywhere, and I make all the guys on a Friday afternoon clean up. It's not just for the Trash Palace, but we gotta clean up. Take the garbage, do the dishes, clean up. and when everyone comes back in on Monday, we have a clean shop again. When I have down time, I work on the Pillow Fight League and trash Palace.

I'm putting on a show. I want nice posters, a good snack bar. I want Lights and signs, good sound. Reasonably comfortable seating. From putting on so many shows, I want wide isles, I want everyone to have a seat. so that's why we only sell advance tickets. Like on the "Educational film night", if that hadn't of been advance tickets only, there would have been 100 people in line outside. I don't even want to go there. Don't want to deal with it. I don't want to tell anybody, no you cant come in. It's a bit of a nuisance to have to go get a ticket, but from my perspective, it's better to know you have a seat.

I actually find that cooler, it has a great secretive feel to it. You have to go somewhere else to find the tickets for the place for another night.

People come in and everyone knows. It's fun to have a secretive side to it, but bottom line is it's for the audience. Everything we do is for the audience. Installing the bathrooms, like, if I was just a print shop, I wouldn't have installed them. Big deal, I'll go up two flights of stairs. So you've seen all the stuff we do with the money. We buy new prints, installing the flood lights so that you can see down the stairs. A snack bar sign. The food, beverages. JC, Greg and mouth will be like, Yeah we did great! and I'll be like, guys, before you even look in the till, you know, there a bunch of fives, than some toonies and loonies, you can't even count that money cause that's just the float. And here's the receipts for what was purchased today to do today's events.... here's whats left.
So that brings us to today. We've got a show in two days.


What's on this week?

This week we've got Massacre at Central High [it was great, this week, Nov 7th, it's "The Swimmer"]. It's kinda like Heathers, but with guys. It's revenge, and it's violent. In it's time it was unique. There was no other film like it. Like Schizo, in 75', a slasher film, there was no other film like it. It wasn't cookie cutter yet. There were no template for those films yet. Massacre at Central High, is the first of it's kind. And it did well. People will really enjoy it.

Anything else? Well, you got a nice history. cause I've never really told it from the beginning, like, that long.

I originally thought about it, I thought, yeah, I can ask him all these questions about the Tijuana Bibles, The Weirdies, Merch Guy, But I thought, you know, I'm gonna want to talk about Trash Palace. And that'll take up the whole interview, so I figured it would happen this way.

Well, everything else, even with the Bibles, and band stuff... The Bibles were put together to write music for my films. That's where it came from. At the release of my short films on Video in 99 at the ELMocombo. We didn't play it, cause we weren't a band, we were a studio project. later that Summer with Splice This, a Super 8 festival, they asked if we wanted to play, and we did, and it was fun. So we recorded a 7' and our second show was the release party. That whole thing Blew up.

Well, then you guys blew up fast then. The first show was 99', and went until...

2006. january 2000, by that point we had one song with vocals recorded. I submitted it to Cave Stomp, Garage Rock 3 day festival in New York city. Organized by Bomp records, the were having an online battle of the bands. You voted for a song, and whoever got the most votes got to open up for the Troggs, who wrote Wild Thing. I submitted "suplex" to that, and at our hotmail account we got an email out of the blue that said, want to come to Europe? I was like holy fuck. So we ended up winning Cave Stomp, got to open for the Troggs, we very quickly wrote an album, "Apartment Wrestling" our first album. Toured Europe that September, wrote out second record, toured the following year. Europe kept us going. Record a record, go to Europe, Record a 7' go tour Europe. So we did 5 tours. Our 5th tour was our biggest, longest, and best. And we had our best record.

And, didn't you say there was something with the Cramps?

that was on our wish list. We had done everything we wanted to do. All we had left, was to play Tijuana Mexico, play Japan, and open up for the Cramps. If those things happened we'd reform, that's why we used the word Retired. We didn't Break up.


Thanks again for you time, Stacey.