Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Micah Delhauer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Micah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Right now, and I talked about this in the last interview, I’m finishing up my first feature, a horror movie that I produced with my brother. It’s got everything: thrills, jokes, action, a weird S&M bar in another dimension… I’m sure my mother will be very proud.

The whole thing started with the two of us—my brother and I—being sort of desperate to get a project going. We had talked some ideas out, and I had some very dear friends who owned a warehouse, so I said, “Dammit, I’m writing a script set in that warehouse and we’re shooting it next year!” We broke Mel Brooks’s rule of never putting your own money in the project, we gathered every friend we could find and when we ran out of friends we started gathering friends of friends and then distant acquaintances and then the least frightening homeless people we could find, and we got to work.

It’s been nearly five years in the making. Five. Friggin’. Years. That seems to be the magic number for indie films. I heard a lot of people saying, “Five years, five years,” and I thought, “Yeah, right. Not me, man.” One pandemic, many reshoots, and a few breakdowns later, and here we are. And oh, the lessons that were learned along the way. We’re crawling our way to completion right now, delirious, trying to suck moisture out of the sand. The last bit of sound mixing. The last tweaks to color. The last couple visual effects. I’m kinda loopy. A lot more ended up falling on my and my brother’s shoulders than we had anticipated, and while it’s been frustrating, it’s also a source of pride. Like, “Yeah, we *did* that.”

And I think the movie itself has turned out quite nicely. “Blood Magick.” Look for it at the Oscars.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a writer/director who occasionally acts, often edits, sometimes does visual effects, has sung but is long out of practice, dances when nobody’s watching, and is oddly good with puppets. I’ve worked in theatre, live events (which is like theatre but with no structure and a lot of tripping hazards), and film.

A lot of the things I’ve worked on are ephemeral projects that have come and gone without anything tangible to show for them. I’ve produced plays. I’m one of the directors at House of Spirits: A Haunted Cocktail Soiree. That’s been a lot of fun. I was the director for one of the two seasons The New York Haunted Hayride was in operation. That was less fun. I’ve done pop-up installations for a lot of big brands, big companies: Warners Bros, Fortnite, FX, ABC. All things I could tell stories about but can’t show you anything from. I’m very eager to have my feature finished so I can run up to random people in the street and go, “See? Seee?? I made thiiiiiiiiiis!!!!!!”

I’ve had the pleasure to work with a lot of really cool, weird, creative, quirky, lovely people. When I was younger, I fantasized about working on the giant gagillion dollar projects; the summer blockbusters and the Broadway hits. Now I derive great pleasure working on small projects where at any moment the roof could collapse and we could all die. I like to do things fast, I like to move from project to project. And I love being part of a repertory; a creative family.

Example: Two years ago, I was at Comic-Con working an installation for ABC—it was to promote the show “Elementary.” They had built a mini version of the school, and there were a handful of actors playing teachers. I was in charge of them. Then, the morning we opened, something happened to one of the actors. Doesn’t matter what. Let’s say there was a horrible Zamboni accident. Anyway, I turned to my boss and said, “Well, what are we gonna do?” and he was like, “Micah, don’t ask stupid questions.” Next thing I knew, I was in costume. And I love that. The show must go on, Goonies never say die, everybody’s got everybody’s back.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

You know, there is an entire culture of toxic criticism that I feel has to be done away with. All this “Top Ten Reasons Why This Thing Sucks and You’re an Id*ot for Liking It” content. Analysis, discussion, critique, those are all well and good. They’re part of what makes art interesting. But there is so much smarm and snark directed at creatives at all levels, from the people helming the big hundred million dollar projects to the one-person armies who have spent years piecemealing together their passion projects. And I know that there’s money in that kind of criticism, and it’s an easy way to get views, but it’s really the lowest barrier of entry for content creators, and it’s all destructive. And more often than not it’s coming from people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about; people who’ve learned a few fancy terms like “mise en scène” or “inciting incident” and think they’re experts who can condescend to the rest of the world. I saw a retrospective on “Creature from the Black Lagoon” where a guy was complaining that the creature was a terrible villain because he didn’t have a backstory or motivation. And it’s like “What??”

And again, so much smarm. So much snark. It discourages people. I can hear some snobby YouTuber’s sarcastic commentary in the back of my head all the time I’m writing. And that’s just talking about the passive criticism. Some people go absolutely nuts, they whip their followers into a frenzy, and then artists start getting attacked. People are driven off their platforms, their careers suffer, or worse. It’s like, can we reserve all this vitriol for the people who are doing genuine harm? You’re putting down people who have put a lot of effort into creating something, going through a process far more complicated than you can imagine. And while they aren’t entitled to your approval, they are most definitely entitled to basic respect. Rant over.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Every person who has chosen art as their focus has to constantly justify their own existence to themselves. Does it matter at all to the world that I make this piece of music, write this story about a thing that never happened, put on this play where people sing about their feeling for 120 minutes and then disappear? And we can say, “We’re making people happy. We’re making people think. We’re changing the world through art.” And that may be true. But we don’t always ourselves believe it. A big part of the creative journey is looking out the window every day, seeing Existential Dread staring in like a creepy ex-lover on Valentine’s day, and then going about our business pretending like It’s not still out there with a bouquet of dead flowers and a knife.

I like metaphors.

And when projects take forever to get off the ground (which they always do), you have to reassure yourself every step of the way that it’s worth it. People are out there creating vaccines and artificial limbs and robots that perform surgery. I made a movie where a giant bunny costume comes to life. You see where self-doubt has an easy in.

I really don’t want to scare people away from art. If anything, I want anyone who’s feeling this way to find solidarity. It’s prevalent enough that we all joke about it. I was working on a play last year, and I was backstage with the actors, and we were talking about anti-depressants. One of the actors was a child, and I told him, “This is what you have to look forward to,” and he said, “Oh, I already know all about depression.” See? Hilarious.

But again, I say all this with a positive intent. Because creatives are superheroes. This is what they deal with. Non-creatives—and really, nobody is a “non-creative,” just non-practicing—may not understand our processes, or our creations, but should at least know the Herculean effort it takes to motivate ourselves forward. We don’t do this because it’s easy. We do it because we love it, and because we kinda don’t know what else to do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bloodmagickthemovie
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/micahdelhauerfilmmaker