Seth Breedlove and Small Town Monsters have been one of the most prolific production companies around for years. From documentaries about UFOs to web series about Bigfoot, to dramatic recreations about American folklore, SMT have managed to do a little bit of everything. We sat down with Breedlove to talk about the 2022 Small Town Monsters Kickstarter (still going for another six days!), his favorite works, and his favorite comic book creator.
AIPT: Small Town Monsters is known for their consistent output. What’s on the agenda for 2022?
Seth Breedlove: We are doing four feature-length documentaries. One is On the Trail of UFOs: Night Visitors, which is a look at the cattle mutilation phenomenon, as well as some darker UFO-related subjects. There’s some abduction stuff and all that.
American Werewolves is a Twin Peaks–inspired look at the dogman subject. Bloodlines: The Jersey Devil Curse is a very cinematic look at a local legend. And then the last one is On The Trail of Bigfoot: The Last Frontier, which is we’re going to Alaska and tracking the Bigfoot topic all around Alaska.
For YouTube, we do a bunch of podcasts. We have Beyond the Trail, which is a monthly episodic series that Aleksandar Petakov and Eli Watson make for us. I do a series called The Bigfoot Project that I make at in Minerva, Ohio, where there’s been a lot of Bigfoot activity. And then we are in the process of filming a new series that’s going to come out on YouTube called Sasquatch Unearthed.
AIPT: Not just this year, but for the past few years you put out an amazing amount of content. What drives your passion to do this?
SB: I’m a storyteller and a fan of story, and so I know one way we keep driving ourselves forward creatively is finding new ways to tell these stories. Every year we try to take things in a completely different direction creatively and stylistically, and that’s why we end up doing stuff like Jersey Devil, which is, we have a full script written for the dramatic recreation moments and things like that. That’s very different from how we approach something like On The Trail Bigfoot, which is pretty much just like, let’s take cameras out and capture what happens.
We try to approach all the subjects, especially like the Bigfoot investigative stuff, in a really honest, non-over-the-top [way]. We don’t manufacture the evidence we find, and that is very different from the stuff on the Travel Channel. I think I speak for most of us when I say we’re just always inspired to keep doing what we’re doing because we get to do what we love, and we get to find new ways to tell stories that have been told a thousand times in some cases.
AIPT: How important for you is it to get across all points of view?
SB: I don’t know that anyone on my crew is like your typical dyed-in-the-wool believer, where they just, everything that is handed to them, they kind of accept. For the most part actually, a lot of the guys on my crew aren’t even into these subjects. They just are into filmmaking. I think that helps set us apart, too. Most of the guys that are making the movies just want to tell a good story.
But yeah, I think we want to see how these stories evolve, too. I mean, that’s a big part of involving some of my folklorist friends and my historian friends in the process, because I think they bring a really unique perspective to it, and it’s fun. That’s the stuff that drew me to these stories in the first place. It wasn’t the monsters. It’s the stories themselves and the people that are involved, and how the stories can change, and how the people can change, [how] their lives are affected by it. That’s what draws me to this stuff.
AIPT: I’m going to put you on the spot for my final question. Going to kind of ask you to pick your favorite child here. What’s your favorite work that you’ve done?
SB: I thought you were going to ask me what my favorite comic book is. Yeah, that’s hard. In terms of which is my favorite because I think it’s good, it’s The Mark of the Bell Witch. I think that is our best movie from a storytelling standpoint. I just think it reached a really high level of quality, and it’s very creative. And even when I watch it now, I’m like, “Man, we nailed that one.”
But in terms of what was the most fun working on, it’s Momo, because Momo was just so weird. We were able to do whatever we wanted with it. So yeah, it’s those two. And when it comes to comic books, I’m just really into anything by Grant Morrison. I know you didn’t ask, but there you go.
Until March 5, you can contribute to the 2022 Small Town Monsters Kickstarter, with additional rewards for early releases, posters, your name in the credits, and more!
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