In the independent horror film world there is one woman making a moniker for herself as the Mistress of Suspense. Her name is Lou Simon, and she is the CEO and founder of White Lotus Productions. In 2011 she decided to get into filmmaking, and in that time she has directed five films.
Ms. Simon is infamous in the indie film world for having three feature films funded and made back to back within three years. I recently got to talk to with her about her journey from Cuba to America, filmmaking, funding, and more.
Her Origin Story
Originally from Cuba, Lou Simon migrated to South Florida with her parents when she was a little girl, setting roots down in Miami. She was too young to understand what was happening at the time in Cuba or why her parents decided to leave; all she knew was that she had to leave her friends behind and was upset about it. Her parents had lived there before the Castro take over and knew what it was like before, but having been born into it, she always accepted it as her normal everyday reality, not knowing any different.
“It wasn’t until we got here and I saw how life could be that I thought ‘Wow, it is a lot better!’ You could go into the supermarket and have anything that you could afford on the shelf and not have to be rationed and stick to whatever you’re rationed at for the month. It’s like you can have meat, all the time? It’s not just one chicken per family, for the month?”, she recalls her early memories upon arriving and notes the difference from one country to the other.
She says that she would one day like to make a movie about the whole experience, because people here just don’t know what it’s like to come from a country that has been taken over by a hostile regime. “I don’t think people understand that when people come to this country, they don’t do it because ‘hey, it’s the cool thing to do’, no, it’s because they’re completely desperate,” she says. That’s not a project she’s planning to tackle anytime soon, though, because that would be a drama. “And dramas don’t do well on a low budget,” she continues, “so if one day I make it big, that’s the time I’d be able to do it.”
She recently left Miami with no plans of going back anytime soon, unless things change in the Florida Film industry. Florida lost its film tax incentive program, causing many Florida filmmakers struggling to find work. Many have left the state because of it. Ms. Simon lived in Georgia for three years previously and already had a home there. With Atlanta being the new film hub competing with Hollywood, it was an easy decision for her to make.
To Practice Law Or Make Art?
Ms. Simon always enjoyed writing, and started writing horror stories at the age of ten when she was given a creative writing assignment in class. She didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her life, career-wise, and was smart enough to get in, so she went to law school. “A lot of people I know go to law school because they didn’t know what else to do and they want a steady paycheck”; she includes herself as one of those people.
“The actual practice of law sucks all the creativity out of you so you have to find a creative outlet,” she says when remarking on how many filmmakers actually have a background in law. Although she still practices law, she does it part time as opposed to running a full practice now. She says she’s found a balance, “it pays the bills and allows me to still have some luxuries, like travel, which I had before I decided to pursue the life of a broke filmmaker. I think it’s important to keep your feet on the ground while you’re reaching for the stars. We’re all chasing a pipe dream, and I don’t want to sacrifice everything for that. If I don’t ever get to the point where I can say I’ve really succeeded in films, this is time that I won’t get back.”
When it comes to writing, she doesn’t understand how people did it before we had mini computers (aka smart phones) in our hands. “I carry my phone with me all the time and whenever I have a story idea, I would write it down in my notes and then if I think of something else, I’ll add to it and add to it,” she says about how her writing process usually begins. This can go on for months of adding to her notes before she feels like she’s got everything she needs to write the story.
“I’ll spend a day doing, like, a break down of the script,” she continues on and adds that she’s a huge believer in the “Save the Cat” beat sheet. Once she’s done with that, she’s finally ready to sit down and write. “I usually write about twenty to thirty pages a day,” stating that it only takes about three to four days of writing for her to have a completed screenplay. She usually does two or three drafts before she’s satisfied and the script is ready to shoot.
Let the Art Speak
With Alfred Hitchc*ck’s influence over her as her favorite director of all time, it’s no surprise that she’d be drawn to the horror, thriller, and suspense genres when it came to her own filmmaking. One of her films is a slasher film, another is more of a thriller with supernatural stuff going on, and her most recent piece is a psychological thriller. Most of her films are available internationally on Amazon and iTunes.
Funding is the most important and hardest part for any filmmaker. Without the funding your film can’t get made the way you want it to. But how does an independent filmmaker get funded? What’s her secret? “I started later in life, so I had a full blown career where I made some very good contacts and those contacts liked me…And when I said to them I was going to make a movie, they were willing to invest, not so much in the movie, but in me and my dream,” she says, stressing the importance of networking and building trust within your network. She was then able to take the profits from HaZmat and go make All Girls Weekend with it.
HaZmat is a slasher film about a reality prank show where they’re trying to set up a disturbed young man at an abandoned facility, but it backfires when he thinks that it’s for real. Agoraphobia is about a young woman, who suffers from that mental disorder and can’t leave her house, but then finds out that the house she just inherited is haunted. (For reasons Ms. Simon can’t get into, Agoraphobia isn’t available in the United States but is available almost everywhere else).
All Girls Weekend is about childhood friends, who reunite for a weekend of adventures in the mountains, but end up lost in the forest and something seems to not want them to get out. Her most recent project that is currently in post-production is entitled 3, and is so far Ms. Simon’s favorite story of hers. It’s about a man and a woman who kidnap her alleged rapist in order to extract a confession from him, asking how far one is willing to go for justice.
Words of Wisdom
“Five people, one location. Come up with that story and then you can actually make a film,” she concludes with one good rule that should apply to most areas of life: Keep it simple.
Listen to the Mistress of Suspense on the Miss Vision Podcast talking with Joia DaVida and me.
Have you seen any of Lou Simon’s films?
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