Shriekfest Radio! Denise Gossett interviews filmmaker Brian Belefant!

A long time ago, I was a copywriter.  I was at Scali McCabe Sloves, Chiat/Day, Stein Robaire Helm, Borders Perrin & Norrander, and BBDO, along with a couple of other companies that I thought were ad agencies because of the creative way they were named after people, but that turned out to be accounting firms or something. Somebody told me that you couldn't be a director unless you went to school for it, so I took a bunch of film classes at UCLA, NYU, and SVA, and even though some people might tell you otherwise, I managed to learn stuff. Then I started asking people to hire me to direct their commercials and some of them did.It's been about twenty years now, of me wearing a hat, wandering around on the set, and saying "cut" without getting into any trouble. I must be really good at it, too, because sometimes people ask me to do it over and over and not because I got it wrong and they want me to try again until I get it right. I even got a bunch of certificates and trophies and stuff -- including a really ugly hood ornament from the London International Advertising Awards.  And not just for commercials. I sometimes get to direct films -- which are just like commercials only they're longer and there's more talking and sometimes naked people in them -- and documentaries, which are just like commercials only the people you point the camera at usually know even less about how to make the film go than I do. 

Brian won Best Horror Comedy short film in Shriekfest 2002 and had a screenplay finalist in 2002 as well with his script "The Lakeside Slasher".