When Paul Porter graduated from Iola High School in 1998 he went directly into the armed forces. After two combat tours overseas with the U.S. Marine Corps, he turned his attention to a different battle — making a career for himself as a movie maker.
He now has a film degree from the University of New Mexico, a semester and a half of graduate studies at New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, Calif. and dozens of short films under his belt. Set to make his first full-length commercial film, Porter is coming home to do it.
Porter and his 15-member cast and crew plan to travel to western Kansas in May to shoot “Rabid Love,” a throwback horror film that pays homage to the genre’s films of the 1970s and 1980s.
“It’s set in the early ‘80s and it’s something that’s been done many times before: kids on a camping trip. Something starts killing them off,” he told the Register in telephone call from his home in Los Angeles. “There are some twists to change it up and make that type of story new again.”
Porter said the audience will be led to think an animal might be the culprit but wouldn’t reveal the true villain.
“I don’t want to give it away,” he said. “But there are also a couple of characters that you might think are the bad guy during different parts of the movie.”
Porter, the grandson of Iolans Don and Nancy Yancy and son of LaHarpe’s Lane Porter, said the choice to shoot in Kansas was an easy one. Unlike New Mexico and California, where he’s worked on films in the past, shooting in Kansas doesn’t require filmmakers to obtain licenses and permits, which can cost thousands of dollars.
“In L.A. it’s a really big pain (to make a movie) because you have to get approval at every level — the state, city and county — and all kinds of stuff that makes it nearly impossible,” he said. “Shooting in Kansas, you get to avoid a lot of those hoops.”
Most movies seen at the cinema are made with operating budgets in the multi-million dollar range, Porter said. “Rabid Love’s” budget is expected to be anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000.
“That’s insanely low for a movie and most people would say you can’t make a movie for that little, but you can,” he said.
Filming in the western Kansas town of Hansen, with a population of about 200, will allow his crew to get food and lodging on the cheap.
“I have another grandma out there and a lot of family on my dad’s side and we’re going to be basically taking over that town,” Porter said. “We’ll be staying at their houses and filming around town.”
The film is expected to take a little more than a month to shoot.
Joining him on his trip to his home state is the film’s lead actress and his wife Hayley Derryberry — the two met on the set of a short film production in New Mexico — as well as a some other notable cast members. The main antagonist in “Rabid Love,” Colin Cunningham, has appeared on well-known shows like the “X-Files” and “Stargate” and is currently starring in the TNT series “Falling Skies” as John Pope.
