Gravedigger Dave's Halfway House to premiere this Sunday at Zeitgeist

It's Time to Check In at Gravedigger Dave's Halfway House

Matt Rasmussen as Gravedigger Dave

A couple years back (2? 3?) I saw a film short at the DuSu Film Festival here in the Twin Ports. One of the films was titled Boots, a ghost story of sorts involving a haunted house and a contractor. Little did I know that this was a small slice from what would become a much larger film featuring haunted spaces and places here in the Northland.

This Sunday, March 1, will be the opening premiere of that larger film, Gravedigger Dave's Halfway House.

Producer/director Keith Hopkins had this to say about the film.

"In total I’ve been working on this project for 5 years. One of the segments, Boots, screened as a short film at DSFF several years ago. The filming of the documentary segments began in 2019. While I’ve been making videos and working in TV since 2005, I really started working towards being a film director in 2015.

"My premise for Gravedigger Dave’s Halfway House was to present a series of ghost stories, most of which I believe to be true, but some of which are fiction. The audience’s task is to separate fact from fiction as they’re watching the film. My motivation stems from my father, who loved telling ghost stories around the fire. It’s been my goal to channel his storytelling style and put it on the screen."

The GDHH ghost stories all take place in St. Louis County. Many of the stories are semi-familiar but Gravedigger Dave attempts to reconstruct their eeriest features on film.

When I was young the notion of haunted houses and ghost stories was always intriguing. My grandmother had books like Stranger Than Science and questions about what's real and what is not always manage to take root in fertile, open minds. Rod Serling's Twilight Zone fed the hunger for thrills, and today we have Ghosts on Netflix.

In fact, the purpose of my first novel was to create a story that would interest teenaged boys so they would become readers, hence I created a haunted house story, The Red Scorpion.

So Keith Hopkins isn't far from the mark to make an attempt to capture area ghost stories on the silver screen. You can read here the interview we did with Hopkins in November.

Ramona Marozas, who plays the Ghost Woman, said, "Keith Hopkins is sharing fiction and non-fiction ghost stories, and leaving it up the audience to interpret. That's genius. I've never seen anything like it and love it. It creeps me out. It also creeps me out that I myself could be so creepy. It took director Keith Hopkins to pull that out of me acting wise. I come off as someone who needs an exorcism who is stalking real life people."

The lead storyteller Gravedigger Dave is played by Matt Rasmussen a co-worker of Hopkins at KBJR. "I enjoyed every single second of it. It was the experience of a lifetime. I hope the character lives on for generations to come."

When Hopkins and Rasmussen became friends they found out that they both love horror movies and anthology films. "He showed me what he was working on, and we put together a five minute piece (with Rasmussen as Gravedigger Dave) that became huge, one of his best shorts. We did a second which led to this full length movie."

Again, the Premiere is this Sunday at the Zinema / Zeitgeist. Details here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/197803451407729/

Related Links
Duluth Armory Becomes Stage for the CW Duluth Television Program
A Visit with Local TV Producer Keith Hopkins About His Upcoming Film Gravedigger Dave’s Halfway House
For more Scary Stuff Visit with The Bleeding Critic

A Visit with Local TV Producer Keith Hopkins About His Upcoming Film Gravedigger Dave’s Halfway House

In early 2018 our local TV station created a five week series called "A Night at the Armory" featuring several local musicians in this historic building where young Bob Dylan caught a look--a spark--from Buddy Holly just days before "the music died."

The concept for this show was ignited by a spark in the mind of producer Keith Hopkins as he drove past the historic site. The idea became a reality and the show produced a number of very special moments.

In 2019 the producer/filmmaker has been pursuing another passion, this time related to ghost stories. Over the past year he's been interviewing Northlanders about local paranormal occurrences for an upcoming feature film. Some of these spooky locations include the Duluth Depot, Greyhound Bus Museum, William A Irvin, and Ely Steakhouse are just a few of the locations appearing in the movie. The film blends documentary with narrative storytelling, and challenges the audience to determine which stories are true, which are fictions.

The film is titled Gravedigger Dave’s Halfway House, and what follows is an interview with its creator Keith Hopkins.

EN: How did you come to take an interest in film and television media? How long have you been involved with local television production?

Keith Hopkins: I've been working in TV and film production since 2005, and in Duluth since 2014. I initially wanted to be an illustrator. I grew up loving comic books (and still do). But reality set in when my drawing skills were obviously lackluster. So I began to think about where else I could apply my passion. I realized that what interested me about comics wasn't the illustrations necessarily, but the sequential storytelling, which you also see in film editing. Although movie making had always seemed like something unattainable, I decided to look into it and really fell in love.

EN: What prompted you to do a film about ghosts?

KH: My dad was an expert teller of ghost stories around the campfire. He and others would swear that some were true, and some were obviously made up. But the search for a REAL ghost story always excited me, and my dad is definitely where I got that interest. I don't tell a great verbal story, and sometimes my movie pitches come out as incoherent babble. But I do think I have a certain talent in the editing room to create a creepy ghost story. I'm always trying to mimic my dad's sense of pacing to create tension, even though I'm working in a different medium.

EN: Once you pay attention, Duluth does have quite a few “ghost stories.” Without giving away too much, what is Gravedigger Dave’s Halfway House about?

KH: Gravedigger Dave's Halfway House is about the ghost stories of St. Louis County. Between the Duluth Depot, William A Irvin, Ely Steakhouse, Greyhound Bus Museum, and plenty more, the area is rich with history of things that go bump in the night. But part of the fun of listening to a series of ghost stories is trying to figure out which are fact and which are fiction. So there is a mixture in this film. Some are shot in a documentary style but are not true. Others are shot in a narrative style and are absolutely true. The audience will need to pick up on the little clues that are dropped throughout the movie

EN: What were your biggest challenges with this project?

KH: The biggest challenge was finding the right plot for the film. I had been making paranormal short films for several years and wanting to put them in an anthology before I settled on the 'fact or fiction' angle. But once I committed to that plot device things really accelerated. This movie is being made with a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, and my pitch in the application was to make a movie that blended entertainment with regional folk lore. However, crafting that pitch was far from easy. I wrote many other outlines for paranormal feature films that I never showed to anyone because I knew they weren't quite right. And to write a 100 page outline for a film just to throw it in the garbage can be a difficult thing. But it was important to me that I make the right movie, not just any movie.

EN: What is the length and where will it be shown? I assume the DuSu Film Festival next spring… Will it be online?

KH: The movie is roughly an hour and fifteen minutes long. I'm going to hold a premiere at Zinema in Duluth on March 1st 2020, and then I will definitely be submitting to Duluth Superior Film Festival for a June 2020 screening.

EN: How many people were on your production team?

KH: About 50 people helped in the production of this film.

EN: Thanks for sharing. We'll be looking forward to Spring.

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Related Links
http://hexagonmotionpictures.weebly.com/
Duluth Armory Becomes Stage for CW Duluth Television Program
Trailer for Gravedigger Dave's Halfway House
If you're into paranormal and supernatural, you will enjoy my small volume of short stories titled Unremembered Histories: Six Stories with a Supernatural Twist.  It's a ilttle expensive online ($12 at Amazon) but if you want a copy and you see me locally, it's $5. Money back if you do not enjoy it.