| Home > Horror News > Interviews > Interview with Rest Stop 2 Director Shawn Papizan |
| Rated: 5.00/5 | Votes: 4 | Views: 155 |Submitted: 09/29/08 |
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Interview with Rest Stop 2 Director Shawn Papazian By Heather Wixson Most directors would have been overwhelmed in taking over directing duties on the sequel to Raw Feed Films highly successful inaugural movie Rest Stop. But not for Director Shawn Papazian. He embraced that pressure and the result is Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back, which might very well overshadow the original film when it’s released on DVD on September 30th. “I absolutely love pressure,” said Papazian. “It really just keeps me motivated to keep taking the next step and I always look at it as an opportunity for me to embrace fully.” RSDLB picks up about a year after the first movie ended. In the film, we meet Jesse’s brother Tom (played by Richard Tillman) and his girlfriend Marilyn (played by Jessie Ward) who decide after Tom comes back from serving Iraq, that they need to figure out just what happened to Jesse and his girlfriend Nicole. The movie definitely strays a bit from that now-feared “torture porn” label and explores the more  supernatural aspects of the story that was introduced in the first film that may have left viewers wondering just what was happening as the first film’s theme shifted near the end.“We definitely wanted to answer a lot of the questions that had been left unanswered in the first movie,” explained Papazian. “We wanted to really tie up the story of Jess and Nicole and then open up other stories, like with the Winnebago Family and with our new protagonists, and just open the door to really tell a story with this installment.” The Winnebago Family, as Papazian mentioned, is definitely given more screen-time this time around and it’s also explained in this film just how they are connected to the sadistic and supernatural character simply known to audiences as “The Driver.” Papizan served as one of the producers on the first Rest Stop but he knew that this time around, he really wanted to be able to take RSDLB to a whole new level. “I asked John Shiban (director of the original Rest Stop as well as one of the founders of Raw Feed Films) to let me step in and direct on this project,” said Papazian. “I’ve always been a creative producer and I think that I saw this story just a little differently than the first one and I was really lucky that he let me take the reigns and just go with my vision for the movie. What I really hoped to make was an artistic horror movie that had a cinematic scope to it.” “What’s really great this time is that we really end this movie with a Twilight Zone feel to it too,” added Papizan. “While we go ahead give audiences answers, we also leave them with new questions this time. Depending on how the sequel does, we’re hoping to build a franchise from these two movies.” Papazian has filmmaking in his blood, as he is the son of legendary TV producer and Emmy winner Robert Papazian. Shawn saw his opportunity to study under one of the best in the biz, his own dad, and spent years studying the “greats” of our time, like Alfred Hitchcock, and working on film sets whenever he could. “I was pretty much born on a film set,” joked Papazian. “I knew very quickly that this is what I wanted to do with my life. From the first time I ever heard someone say ‘action,’ I just knew that I really wanted to be a director.” |
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