Don’t call John Fallon a critic.
“I hate that word,” he says, whilst drinking a Guinness. “I’m just a guy who throws his opinions out there and that’s it.”
Just a guy who just directed his first full-length feature, The Shelter, in January. I first met Fallon on the set of his last scripted work, director Christian Viel’s yet-to-be released Billy Trigger, starring Fallon and Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. Fallon plays hard-boiled mob enforcer to Williamson’s thug. His head is shaved and he has a brutish, muscle-laden physique. He is compulsively clad in a leather jacket and jeans. He is, Jack Daniels in hand, quintessentially the guy who just wants a good brew, a broad, and a flick.
Fallon and “The Hammer” Williamson
Hence, why his ratings system includes sections for nudity and gore.
It would be easy for one to mistake his bravado persona and attitude as part of a larger character, an act. Though he insists it is all legitimate.
“When I started out, it was all me. I was very rambunctious, very politically incorrect. If you read my shit now, it’s tame compared to how I was. Because I’ve matured and I’m a better writer and I’ve learned to appreciate film more, too.”
Perhaps it stems back from a lack of professional knowledge and personal, visceral love of film, specifically two genres: action and horror.
“I didn’t have a journalistic background so I just wrote whatever the fuck I felt like writing,” said Fallon. “I didn’t understand the rules.”
Joblo.com was started by longtime friend Berge Garabedian as a website with a crude philosophy dedicated to reviews from the general filmgoing public.
“Berge started Joblo as a goof,” explained Fallon. “Then one day, he shot me an email and said, ‘Hey, you know about this horror stuff, why not come do something for my site? So I said, ‘Okay, we’ll call it arrowinthehead. Don’t censor me and I’m in.’”
Arrow went up in 2000, with only Fallon as writer/editor. Since then, it has often been quoted on movie posters and in trailers, with Joblo as a whole mentioned in magazines such as Entertainment Weekly. At first, Fallon wasn’t sure anyone was reading.
“I’ll always remember,” Fallon said, “when I reviewed Toxic Avenger, I told [producer] Lloyd Kaufman to go ‘F’ himself and Lloyd Kaufman emailed me and called me on it and told me to go ‘F’ myself. We’re cool now, it was a long time ago. That was my first lesson on the website, number one: people are actually reading you and number two: be careful what you say.”
Since, Fallon has reviewed over 1000 films.
His reviews tend to be more idiosyncratic than the standard, such as when he reviewed 2002’s Teenage Caveman through an imaginary conversation with director Larry Clark. Also, they’re expletive-laden.
“I learned to curb the F-bomb,” said Fallon. “I love cussing, I’m a big fan of cussing. The F-bomb is perfect, it’s an adjective, it can be everything. But, yeah, the way I approach reviews now is creative, I want it to be creative. I have reviews that play out like recipes.”
As for The Shelter, Fallon has remained vague as to plot details. “And I will continue to be.”
Currently in post-production, Shelter finds character actor Michael Pare as a homeless drifter who wanders into an empty house. He’s “basically a scumbag, living with regrets and self-loathing. He’s a vagrant. One night, he comes upon this house. He makes himself at home. Falls asleep, wakes up in the morning with a gun in his lap. At that point, it becomes a mystery, without spoiling too much.”
What has surprised friends and family who have read the script, given Fallon’s love of gore, is the lack thereof. Rather, he has focused on a the psychological aspects of horror.
Fallon has scripted films in the past, but said only he could direct his feature-length debut. “It’s too personal,” he said. “A lot of it is looking into yourself and I had a very troubled past, I didn’t exactly have The Brady Bunch upbringing.”
Fallon has said he has completed “pretty much our first 25 minutes.”
“It’s a very creatively stimulating process, one that I am relishing.”
He intends to have the first teaser released at Cannes. “We’ll be hitting distributors hard once we have a finished film late this year.”
Fallon also recently acted in Dead Shadows, a French horror film recently released on Blu-Ray in North America via Scream Factory. “They did a fantastic job with the disk,” he said. “Really went all out in terms of heavily marketing the product.”
Recently, a teaser for The Shelter appeared on joblo.com.
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— Kenny Hedges