Deering has had a longtime love for theater and filmmaking. A freshman film major at Columbia College in Chicago, he confessed that theater was his addition in high school.
“I was helping with the plays every day after school for all four years,” he said. “I also took two film and video classes, which is what made me start thinking film might be a cool subject to look into in college for a career. Throughout high school I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life.”
Deering describes himself as very close with his parents. He said that their support of his career path means a lot to him, especially since it is a hard field to break into. It was his father’s video camera that started him with his first movie in 2003.
“I don’t even think we gave it a name,” Deering said. “It was that bad.”
His first creation was a stop-motion — a frame-by-frame animation technique to make an object look like it is moving on its own — that he made with his action figures.
It was Allen Murphy who inspired Deering to make the spoofs Evil Iguana has been posting on YouTube over the past year.
“All while I was growing up, if I had a camcorder within reach, I’d grab it and mess around with it, at the expense of my parents who had to buy new tapes,” Murphy said.
Around the same time Deering made his stop-motion film, Murphy made a video of his own mocking the hit thriller “Final Destination.”
“A few friends of mine and I were staying over at someone’s house when we found his mom’s camcorder,” said Allen of the birth of his film, “Final Destination 3.”‚ “We just wanted to make a movie where we got to die in different funny ways. What better way than make the next sequel to the Final Destination series?‚ Granted, they made the real “ËœFinal Destination 3′ a couple years later, but I like to joke that ours was better.”
“He should have (copyrighted his movie) because it was so much better than the real ‘Final Destination 3′,” Deering joked.
The film Murphy came out with was a plot-driven parody as opposed to a pure spoof, but it got Deering interested in making more movies.
“I had no idea I wanted to do movies. I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was actually thinking about becoming a cop,” said Deering. “It was making these movies and then seeing everyone’s reactions to them — getting the good, positive reactions about our videos, because I mean if they were crap and people were like making fun of us I totally would be a cop right now.”
Deering said that sometimes they are even recognized in public as the stars of the Evil Iguana YouTube videos.
“I remember specifically one time me and Allen were at some like festival thing by our house and a couple girls ran up and asked for our pictures, which is really weird, because we’re not used to that,” he said. “But honestly, every once in a while, someone will be like, “ËœHey, I’ve seen you somewhere,’ and I’m like, “ËœProbably from YouTube,’ and they’re like, “ËœYup, that’s it.’ It’s really not that big yet. Most people walk past going, “ËœWho’s that loser?'”
The Batman movie
In their upcoming film, Batman is still wanted by the police and the Joker just recently escaped from prison. In their follow up to Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film, the Joker realized that the reason why his social experiment didn’t work in sending Gotham City into madness was because he tried to corrupt the entire city at once. In the Evil Iguana Joker film, the Joker singles out one family on Christmas Eve, trying to show that if he makes them have one bad day, it can make any person turn out maniacal like him.
Good guys Batman and Commissioner Gordon, with Joe Korbel and Kyle Bridges reprising their roles respectively, are trying to stop the Joker before he succeeds in hurting the family.
Deering was excited to don the green hair once more.
“I’m really looking forward to (the new movie),” he said. “The script that Kyle wrote is like really dark and twisted. It’s completely out of our norm, so we’re trying to make sure everything is perfect so we don’t screw it up.”
Murphy is more nervous about the film than Deering.
“I have mixed feelings about it,” he said.‚ “This film is our first venture into a more dramatic theme.‚ The script is excellent, the talent I believe is there,” Murphy said. “Unfortunately, as I’m sure we all know, people tend to be very critical of movies they see.”
Before, all the movies Evil Iguana created were spoofs or pure comedies, so Murphy said he felt that any shortcomings they had in their films were forgiven because they were making fun of other movies. With their new Batman drama, Murphy said that his theory has been not to include any material that they feel has not been created perfectly.
“Nothing is worse than watching a poorly made film that is trying to take itself seriously,” Murphy said. “This is an experiment for us, and I have my share of concerns. But, in the end, I’m having a blast doing it, and that’s all that matters.”
Murphy is the cameraman for the new movie.