The Daily Gamecock

USC alumnus brings killer clown film to The Nick

Halloween is a time of year where we celebrate all things creepy and scary, and what is creepier or scarier than psychotic killer clowns? USC alumnus Jeff Miller is bringing just that to Columbia with his film “ClownTown.”

The Nick is holding a special showing Friday, Oct. 21, at 11 p.m. of “ClownTown,” a horror film that was written and produced by Miller, a 1992 USC graduate who has written, directed and produced a number of films during his career.

The film is about a group who gets lost in an abandoned town and brutally attacked by a pack of insane clowns. Miller said that he got the idea from actual news stories that were coming out of Bakersfield, California.

“It started out, I think, as some kind of art project,” Miller said. “A husband and wife were taking pictures of themselves dressed as clowns in empty parts of town at night and posting them on social media.”

Miller said that people started to copy-cat the original couple, but some took it a step further, and reports began to come in of clowns carrying weapons and chasing kids. The events were going on around Halloween two years ago and, as someone who has worked on a number of horror films, he took inspiration from these reports.

“I saw that story and I was like ‘Man this writes itself,’” Miller said.

Much like many of his previous films, “ClownTown” is a clear horror film. Admitting that Halloween is his favorite time of year, Miller has always enjoyed and had fun with horror as a genre.

“It just kind of fascinated me as a kid,” Miller said. “The feeling of being scared or seeing movies on TV that scared me when I was little was interesting to me I guess.”

“ClownTown” isn’t Miller’s first time on a film set, and the start of his film career is back around his college years in the '90s. Miller said that he wrote many scripts when he was still studying media arts at USC, but he got involved with his first film production after he graduated. He contacted a group of filmmakers who were also USC graduates and were making a film called “Freakshow” starring Gunnar Hansen who played Leatherface in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” They ended up taking him on to help produce and the film showed at The Nick.

After helping make three films in South Carolina, Miller decided to pack up and hit the road to try his luck in the Los Angeles film scene.

“I didn’t really have any job prospects,” Miller said. “I had a friend I was going to stay with and knew a handful of people but not a whole lot of people in LA. I just kind of packed up my car and put some stuff in storage and drove out here.”

While it took a few years to get his career moving, Miller said he eventually started selling his films to distributors and gaining buzz. One of the most notable of these is “Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan” which Miller said he sold to the Syfy Channel, Netflix and Redbox, giving the film “a little bit of heat.”

Though Miller still calls Los Angeles home, he traveled to Ohio for the filming of “ClownTown.” The movie was filmed mostly in a small town called Crestline that Miller found through Robert Kurtzman, the creator of “From Dusk Till Dawn.”

“We kind of got the run of the town and got some cool locations and it saves us a lot of money versus shooting in LA where everything costs an arm and a leg,” Miller said.

The premiere for the film was last December in Los Angeles and Miller licensed it to distributors and had the movie in foreign countries before it finally came out in the US on DVD and VOD on Oct. 4. Now, Miller’s hometown is getting the chance to see his work late at night on the big screen a little over a week from Halloween.

“I love the support of the Columbia community,” Miller said before going on the say, “I’m regretting that I’m not going to be there, but it is a great feeling to have some support from your hometown for sure.”

“ClownTown” is available for purchase on DVD and VOD and students can learn more about Miller’s previous and upcoming films on his IMDB page.


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