All or Nothing: Local filmmaker Charles Campbell's bet on himself and his new horror film 'Ten Dollar Egg'
- Nate Adams
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
It’s a rainy Wednesday night at a restaurant in Manchester, Michigan where local filmmaker Charles Campbell is enjoying a burger and talking about the filmmaking process on the biggest bet of his nearly thirty year career, a macro budgeted horror movie called “Ten Dollar Egg.”
Hailing from Lansing, Michigan, Mr. Campbell has a swagger and stern perseverance when it comes to his process and how he became the director and writer he’s always envisioned for himself. In the mid nineties, after dropping out of Georgia State University, where he was majoring in political science and corporate training to eventually become a lawyer, he ventured out to LA and got his certifications in UCLA in directing and writing before coming back to the his home state and attending Central Michigan where he got his masters in film theory and criticism. “I was in a law library studying for the LSAT exam and had a little clock and timer sitting on the desk with a stack of books taller than me and that’s when I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer because I didn’t want to read (like that).”
Campbell, 67, used his resources and connections, including that of a scholarship from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, to help him attend Los Angeles Community College and UCLA where he would go on to make several short features and fall in love with the business. It was a revelation that really came to him after the passing of his mother, who died of cancer six months before his best friend also died of brain cancer. “Me and God did this battle,” he says over dinner, “and that’s when I discovered my gift and passion for writing.”
That passion is what has birthed the filmmaker's biggest gamble: a scrappy little indie horror feature called “Ten Dollar Egg.” Shot eight days over the summer of 2024, on a budget that barely fit within SAG guidelines and raised through a vigorous grassroots campaign, Mr. Campbell is staring down the barrel of how he plans to complete the film in time for the festival circuit this fall and to perhaps secure distribution. “We’re a very independent film that needs to raise funds for post-production and the rest of the journey is to be determined.” To help with that, the filmmaker has launched an INDIEGOGO campaign: “We know the economy is in flux, but if we get enough people to donate $10 or $20, that will really push the movie over the finish line.”
The director has been here before: his previous film, an underground railroad-set drama “All or Nothing” was also made on the indie-blueprint model and required a lot of finessing and creativity to get it finished.
Mostly shot in and around Manchester, MI, a small town 25 minutes west of Ann Arbor, the shoot for “Ten Dollar Egg,” as Mr. Campbell tells it, was challenging. “We were working 18-hour days with four main locations and a crew of about 15.” “Nobody, aside from the SAG actors, really had a sense of what they were in for.”
The story of “Ten Dollar Egg,” is one Mr. Campbell is trying to keep under wraps, but it centers around a blues singer by the name of Mama D, played by local actress Gayle Martin, who is being forced to close her diner because, as Mr. Campbell puts it, there’s no more special “ingredients” for her secret recipe. And then on the day Mama D is supposed to close her diner, a group of troubled young people wander in and raise hell. And it’s at that moment Mama D decides to keep her diner open. “It came to me in a dream. As they all do” Campbell says of his writing process, “With the economy getting tight as it was, when I was writing, I saw the price of everything, including eggs, going up.”
Mr. Campbell has big aspirations for where the project could end up, with the recent success of the “Terrifier” franchise being his north star. "I’ve got some connections at Netflix and we’ve got producers getting ready to pitch the movie around the town.” “We are currently planning a test screening,” Campbell says, “where we intend to get audience feedback and we will know which direction we want to go.”
But Campbell isn’t stressing too much (yet). “The journey for being a successful filmmaker or any artist is paved with many challenges and hurdles. I would drive myself crazy if I were trying to compete against people who have already excelled in their niche. It’s about improving on what I do and making the best art I can. If it resonates with audiences, then ‘Ten Dollar Egg’ is going to find its way to the top. It’s that mantra that helps keep me grounded.” “There’s never enough money when making a movie. You can have $50,000 or $50 million. Sometimes the more money you have, the less creative you are.”
The writer and director hopes that, one day, “Ten Dollar Egg” can become a cult classic, and to use the film as a blueprint for what he can do for little money and “a whole lotta creativity and storytelling.” He already has plans for a sequel and jokes that he might call it “Twenty Dollar Egg,” Nowadays, Mr. Campbell lives with his partner Deborah and dog Mr. T. He’s got a children’s book on the way, and then getting “Ten Dollar Egg” released. “It’s going to be exciting to see what we got.”
If you would like to contribute to the INDIEGOGO campaign - you can do so by clicking this link.
Some of the quotes in this article were edited for length and clarity.
