Between them, John Matkowsky and John Huckert wrote, directed, filmed and edited the movie Hard. They did so on a next-to-zero budget and released the film to a mixed response. Now, it’s out on special edition DVD.

The Johns spoke with Mark Adnum via email in November 2004.

MARK ADNUM: Why the title HARD?

JOHN MATKOWSKY AND JOHN HUCKERT: From the quote by John Milton in "Paradise Lost" - “Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.”

It captured the journey of our main character perfectly. Additionally, It describes the road this film took to get produced and distributed. By they way, Netfix just passed on the “uncut” DVD because it is “too explicit and they have to draw the line somewhere.” We get that a lot.

MA: One more cafe-latte gay film and I'd have started a killing spree myself. There's an obvious Jeffrey Dahmer overtone here too. Why did you put this film together?

JM-JH: We wanted to do a genre film. We were studying the film noir movies of the 40’s and 50’s and wanted to do something like that, dark and intense but unlike anything we have seen before. After we decided to do a serial killer picture, we researched the genre and the whole serial killer thing. We used bits and pieces of real killer MO’s like Gacy, Dahmer, Larry Eyler, Randy Kraft, Bill Bonin and a few others, then mixed them up to come up with Jack.

We also researched gay cops and that whole subculture. Mitch Grobeson, who was the first police officer in the US to be fired for being gay, read our script and said this was his life. He came aboard as an advisor and also does a cameo in the film. We didn’t start out to make a “gay” movie, but the material pulled us in that direction.

MA: The DVD features commentary, which laughs at many of the film's indie/low-budget roots. Do you think you've made a marginal film or a potential crossover piece, and what's up next for you?

JM-JH: We are really proud of our accomplishment but we literally had no money to make this film. We used 67 credit cards we had between us (the 3 producers), plus the kindness of our investors (mainly cast, family and friends) who believed in our film and us. Looking back at it now we can laugh at all the things we had to skimp on because of both time and monetary constraints. Like only having one badge for all the cops. We had a crappy 35mm Arri BL for the 33 day shoot and we didn’t see any footage for three months after we wrapped. We couldn’t afford dailies. Imagine spending day after day of shooting a movie for a month begging, borrowing or stealing locations and not knowing if what you are shooting is being recorded properly on film. The camera made so much noise and jammed so often, we considered the possibility that all 397 short ends would have flickering, unusable images. That was hard. We were lucky and the footage came out great.

Hard premiered at the San Francisco G&L Film Festival and subsequently was invited to over 30 festivals, gay and straight, all over the world. It still gets invites. People either love or hate the film, there is no middle ground. It pushes a lot of buttons. It has been the subject of panels and discussions and even part of a college forensics class. Several police departments have instituted sensitivity training for their officers since viewing the film, so in that respect I think we made something relevant. As for crossover, well, some of the gay audiences think it’s homophobic and some of the straight audiences find it too gay. Maybe we’ve stumbled on a new genre.

What’s next is an Internet thriller called Strangers Online. It also stars Noel Palomaria.

MA: Noel Palomaria is HOT and the scenes with him in the shower and tied to a bed are quasi-porn. What gives?

JM-JH: Vates being exposed in bed by the killer is analogous of him being exposed and outed in the police force. And the condom scene was just our nod to safe sex. I think Noel was really brave for doing those scenes. They are pretty intense and Noel was worried about doing them, but he did great. Besides, what’s a gay movie without penises? Or do penises make it gay? Anyway, wait till you see Noel in Strangers Online.

MA: What's your opinion of the movie Jeffrey?

JM-JH: There is nothing wrong with happy queer movies. I guess if "trying to find the perfect boyfriend" movie is your cup of tea, well, enjoy. There are a lot of them out there. We tried to avoid that. Actually we thought Hard might be better if, near the middle of the film, we broke away from the violence and gore and had a short musical interlude, a dream sequence if you will, with pretty, shirtless boys (maybe the dead hustlers come to life) and a drag queen version of Cher singing “I Am What I Am.” Maybe in our sequel Harder. Would that be offensive?

MA: What's your opinion of the movie Dahmer?

JM-JH: Dahmer was a good psychological horror film. It tried to get into Jeff’s head more than being just a slasher flick and kinda rushed over the gay sex thing. Thus the mainstream, as well as the gay audience embraced it, as they did with the Wornos film Monster.

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