Episode 96: ‘Dead & Buried’ with ‘Riot Girls’ Director Jovanka Vuckovic

Episode notes

Jovanka Vuckovic is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. In the past two decades, she has worked as a visual effects artist, earning a Gemini Award, and cemented a reputation as a genre film authority—she was twice named one of the most important women in the history of horror, serving for a time as editor-in-chief of famed Rue Morgue Magazine. In 2016, she spread her wings into the US film market, joining the DGA after directing a segment of XX, the first-ever all-female horror film anthology from Magnolia Pictures, which had its premiere at Sundance 2017. Her debut Riot Girls, written by Katherine Collins, will see its release this year. The film tells the story of two young women who must save a young man from the clutches of a little psychopath on the wrong side of Potter’s Bluff — a town divided after a mysterious disease wiped out all the adults.

The movie that Jovanka has chosen to discuss is a grossly underappreciated classic – 1981’s Dead & Buried. Jovanka talks about how she named the small town of Potter’s Bluff in Riot Girls after the Potter’s Bluff of Dead & Buried. She even goes as far to say she envisions that both films exist in the exact same town. Jovanka also opens up about her intense fear of death and how that influences her films. And she and April discuss the struggles of getting a movie made as a female filmmaker.

You can see Riot Girls in theaters and on demand on September 13th.

And if you haven’t seen Dead & Buried yet, you simply must!

With April Wolfe and Jovanka Vuckovic.

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Produced by Casey O’Brien and Laura Swisher for MaximumFun.org.