Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, And Wes Craven Once Collaborated On A Forgotten Horror Movie
John Gulager's 2005 goopy horror/comedy flick "Feast" was the resulting film wrought by season three of "Project Greenlight." For those unfamiliar with "Project Greenlight," it was a documentary series on HBO (previously on Bravo in 2005) overseen by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Each season, the two stars would host a screenwriting competition, seeking the best scripts they could find from amateur or unproven authors. The winner would then see their script made into a feature film. Sometimes the writer would direct their own film, sometimes a first-time filmmaker would be paired with the screenplay. "Project Greenlight" then followed the filmmaking process, from casting through final editing, detailing the way a low-budget film is made. The finished movies each got limited theatrical runs.
The idea behind "Project Greenlight" was to offer aspiring filmmakers their "big break," adding new voices to the filmmaking community. It's a neat idea, although the films that "Project Greenlight" funded were rarely successful or hugely critically acclaimed. The series also came under a little bit of fire for always selecting young white men as its winners. It was a fascinating idea, but it didn't ever produce a legit blockbuster.
The closest it came was "Feast," a $3.2 million creature feature about slimy, pus-spewing monsters eating a cast of unsuspecting humans. The winning script was written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, who would go on to write "Saw" parts IV, V, VI, and VII, as well as "Piranha 3DD," the two "Collector" movies, and several others. John Gulager was selected to direct.
"Feast" is snarky and silly, and the characters are all credited by their archetypes and not their names. "Heroine," "Heroine 2," "Bozo," "Beer Guy," etc. Wes Craven, to give "Feast" a little extra clout, served as an executive producer. "Feast" would only make $658,573 at the box office, but became popular on home video, ultimately spawning two sequels, each one more disgusting than the last. "Project Greenlight" had stayed away from low-budget horror up until its third season, but happily embraced the genre — fluids and all — when the time came.
Feast is really, really gross
"Feast" follows a group of poor saps who are trapped inside a remote Nevada bar, savaged by unusual, hungry monsters on the outside. The monsters operate entirely by appetite and aim to eat and/or hump whatever appears in their field of vision. There's a lot of blood, drool, pee, and other unspeakable fluids. They eat their own young, and when they copulate, offspring are born almost immediately. The goal of the film was to elicit incredulous laughs from a gore-loving crowd. "Feast" aims to be aggressively juvenile, and it certainly nails a "wouldn't this be gross?" vibe. It certainly managed to squeeze a lot of, uh, juice out of a single location and scant special effects. The monsters are kept tactfully off-screen for the bulk of the film's running time.
Director John Gulager is the son of film veteran Clu Gulager, who appears in the film as a bartender. B-movie luminary Krista Allen stars, as does Balthazar Getty, Henry Rollins, and Judah Friedlander. Jason Mewes had a small part as himself, a role he was able to play while in the midst of checking into rehab after a decades-long addiction. He's fine now. The cast seems to be having some fun, and most of them get to scream and are coated with glop. Little is explained about the monsters, other than that they are libidinous and yucky.
More of the monsters would be seen in the 2008 follow-up "Feast II: Sloppy Seconds." The lore is built out a little, but who cares, really? Gulager just wanted to up the grossness quotient and did so with aplomb. The series gets even more bizarre in 2009's "Feast III: The Happy Finish," which ends with a giant robot crushing someone. Before that scene, giant robots had not appeared or even been hinted at in the series. The "Feast" movies feel less like movies and more like drunken whims.
Craven, Damon, and Affleck had nothing to do with the sequels. All three "Feast" films are available to rent online.