Special Report: The Cramps - A Period Piece (2025)

Oh is it show die? People say, good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas and a hot popcorn and no monsters. In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Urn it off, and we're on earth with a girl like you want to work.

I don't know. How about maybe a beauty salon, a beauty salon? What would you even possibly know about beauty? What's wrong with working in a beauty salon? Other girls work there.

Yes, those kinds of girls. Your father, God, I bet he's rolling over in his coffin as we speak. Why can't you be more like your sister? You got cramps? It's all well and normal.

Well, some pretty not normal stuff has been happening to me. You're a pretty particular reason, poor poor Agnes. What the hell is happening to me? You're gonna help me? I don't know what to do.

It's happening again. In vagina problems. They some fickle bitches. If folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White.

On this episode, I'm talking with Brooke H. Sellers. She is the director and writer of the new film The Cramps, a period piece, it is a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this movie, as you'll hear in a few seconds when I talk with mid Sellers. Keep your eye out for this one, and I hope you enjoy this interview.

I loved The Cramps, wonderful film, and I'm super excited to hear kind of how the film came about for you. It came from a joke saying, what if we made a period piece about actual periods, And that sparked the true story of my life since I was teenager until I was forty, and it kind of was a monster that was eating me from the inside in that nobody saw, even doctors, and it kind of like just took over my life. I wanted to put that on screen, like how surreal it was like living with this pain and not being able to do anything. I couldn't go to college, I couldn't have a real job. I waited tables for twenty years because that's what I could do with this living with this pain.

So I wanted to put how surreal and crazy it was in this monster that nobody could see but was clearly there taking over my life. Were like Okay, well this is it kind of thing, and this is what I have to deal with and kind of given up, and just I wanted to show how I also wanted to show how kind of view cre it's, how they're gross and monstrous or whatever, and just kind of how it is like having a period and even worse endometriosis, and the shame of not being able to talk about it and suffering in silence because they're afraid to. It's a horror movie for every for every woman, I think, so I wanted to like put it, you know, out there for the world to see and now hopefully nobody suffers in silence, you know, like this.

I don't want people to continue to do this. So that's where all stem from. How similar are you or not to your main character of Agnes? Very similar? When casting her, we had a callback and I was telling her about, you know, the inspiration for this character and you know, my family, like from what I went through, and then she actually connected with it and told me about like how she is and her families and stuff like that.

So she definitely got it and connected with the story. And in real life, it's funny, like my husband always jokes how similar. We are like so similar even like likes and everything, like we both hate apple sauce and just little things like that. And when I was in my twenties, I was I was. She's more adorable than I was.

I was more dark and brooding, but like, she wears her coirkiness very well and very adorable and just fun to work with and definitely definitely a lot alike very many ways. Had you went for the long before? This is her first film? Actually never, she had never been in a short film and this is her first, so and she was really very awesome, especially her for her first film. I know you've done a lot of shorts before, and I'm curious, was this always intended like this is going to be a feature?

Or did you start out that game was going to be a short and then it just grew and grew and grew. After I made my film Violet Butterfield Makeup Artist for the Dead, it was in until then that I thought and my team were ready to make a feature. And I had been trying to develop this story for a long time and just couldn't get it quite right in making these short films. So I always knew that if I did this story. It would have to be a feature because it there's too much that would go into this story, and even more could have gone.

I just wanted to keep it as a at a at a normal feature length. So there's definitely a lot more that could have gone into it, but definitely wasn't wasn't ever going to be as short. It couldn't have been a short. There's too much, too much to tell. So I'm glad that this was the first feature.

It was a really important story to me, and I'm I'm glad that we got to make it and it actually happened. Well, how was that experience for you going from from shorts to feature? I mean just more and more work. For us, being like a very very very indie film team and working you know, small crew, making our feature was very different experience, and we always work with what we have, so like started off with, you know, no funds. We just we just gathered what we could our own money from our back pockets, and I you know, all the all the like most of the costumes and props or some that I already had around.

We definitely use what we have, but there was so much more going into a feature film that we hadn't done yet that we had to learn together how to do and like reach out to people for help. How do we do this? Like we just had to fucking figure it out, and we were going to. So there was a lot of people that told us, no, don't do this, don't do that, especially not to shoot on film. There were so many producers They're like, no, don't do it, don't shoot on film, don't do it, don't do it.

And we were like like, no, we're gonna do Like, we're gonna do it. It's fine if this is aren't our first time shooting on fields because we shot Violet Butterfield on sixteen millimeters and my DP by Porter he's so well versed in analog in filmmaking and just like I trust him completely, So if he is confident, I trust him. And so like he was confident, I was confident. We're very nervous, very nervous about shooting on film, but we were not because like we just we take care and I know Levi takes care of what he does and is very passionate about his work and he would never let anything happen. So as much as people told us no, no, no, no, don't do it.

We still did it and it worked in our favor. But yeah, it looks fantastic and the colors just top right off the screen, especially some of the makeup just really comes through so vividly. Oh yes, I wanted that bold makeup because these characters are very bold. They're vibrant, so like their costumes and their makeup should like reveal who they are too like on the outside, especially like the church Lady. Satanist is one of my favorite characters I developed Teddy t Berry.

She's just like and the church Lady outfits very pastel and she has these inverted crosses, but she worships the devil and it's okay, Like she's just a little sweet Satanists And I always I'm so glad to finally get to have that character out into the world out and was fun. Is Agnes apple White? Was she inspired by Agnes Applebee? Maker of Men? At all?

The way I get my names, I use them intentionally, but it's when I'm watching films like I think I was watching Speak No Evil the original, and I loved how they pronounced Agnes those like audness almness. I can't it's that Norwegian or something or Swedish or something like that. I can't remember, but the way they pronounced Agnes, I loved it, and so like that name I always stuck in my head for a while while I was developing the story, and so like I decided on Agnes because of that. And Apple White is from one of my favorite TV shows that nobody watches with me, uh, because I was very adamant about not watching it because it just sounds like a terrible show, which is Desperate Housewives, and so like in the the second season, they have family called the apple Whites that move next door, and I always just love that last name.

It just sounds so quirky and colorful, just like the Desperate Housewives show, which is very quirky and colorful. And that's how I got that mate, just from other things that I've watched. Well, speaking of interesting names, how did you find Martini? Bear? So?

I worked with Martini at my first I taught a film class at a performance arts school, and that's how I met Martini. And I met him while I was writing Violet Butterfield. And so while I was writing it, since I met Martini, I didn't even ask Martini if you wanted to be my movie, but I started writing a character that I thought he could play and then asked him after I wrote the script, and so that's when we first worked together. And after that I just wanted to work for him with him all the time. And I think more drag queens should be in movies because they're already a character in itself, and there's like it.

They make your job more easy because they are they're already the character and you just write what they what they would, how they would say things, and things that they would do, and just and they're always such huge, wonderful, beautiful personalities that you should always put on the screen and just it is better. I got a real John Waters vibe from it, especially with the two groups, and it kind of reminded me of Divine versus Mixed Stole. Is there any influence from Pink Flamingos? Actually, Female Trouble. Female Trouble was a big inspiration, especially they have the beauty salon and everything, and I love the part where they take the hair back because they wouldn't pay for the warsh and set, so the team comes and rips the hair.

It's so ridiculous. I love ridiculousness, and like the characters are just so much fun. Like the I think it's minxed. The couple that comes into the salon is like based off of Vinyl Andtani or Vinyl and Tangerine is based off that couple that comes into the salon. Well, they're like the wedding dress and like, they remind me so much of them.

But Female Trouble was definitely one of the biggest inspirations as far as John Water is. Also cry Baby for sure. That was one of my favorites growing up with cry Baby. It's interesting, it seems to live in a space that's kind of the fifties, but not the fifties at the same time. I love that kind of thermal space that it lives in.

It's more like ambiguous mid century, like kind of mostly nineteen sixties with fifties and seventies kind of blended in, so you don't really pinpoint the time period. So I wanted to be like this universe all on its own, so you pop culture or anything to date it. It's just like this own kind of universe. And like even the dialogue is a little nineteen sixties but blend with a little modern So it's just kind of it's its own thing kind of and like I don't I didn't want any rules about, you know, creating this. I don't like brule.

I just I just want to make this, y see, And I saw it as a nineties sixties kind of mid century aesthetic. But like Wilight is on the world. Is there a good place for people to keep up with the movie online? You can go to on Instagram at the Cramps film follow me Brook H. Sellers on Instagram, and then you can see it at Fantastic Fest on September nineteenth in Austin.

Do you have any other festival dates lined up? We're also playing in Film Quest in Provo, Utah. Dad is not said, but it's the festivals October twenty third through November first. Brook, Thank you so much for your time. This is so great talking with you.

Thanks Mike. Oh oh oh oh, crack oh oh, freen. Moll Frey Flail a correct