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Streaming Stars, Then and Now

Born in Queens in 1973, Jim Haggerty grew up wanting to make movies. At an early age he was obsessed with going to the movies and he still considers his family buying a VCR one of the defining moments of his childhood. After years of making wacky ten-minute cop movies starring him and his playground friends with a camcorder, he graduated from Great Neck North High in 1991 and began studying film at Hunter College.

Finding himself discouraged and disappointed with the film program at Hunter (or the lack thereof) he started to become more interested in music and switched majors when he transferred to SUNY Old Westbury in Fall of 1993, where he would eventually graduate in 1996. His interest in music and television led him to take up the guitar, intern at the Ricki Lake Show, and dabble in rock journalism as a contributing writer for popular Long Island music rag The Island-Ear.

Jim's most notable accomplishment through his college years was as host and creator of his own cable access television program, 'Jim Haggerty's Rock N Roll Party', which ran from 1995-1999 and featured interviews, music videos, and on-location live performances from popular rock music acts such as Motorhead, Iron Maiden, L.A. Guns, Slaughter, Overkill, Warrant, Raging Slab, The Sneaker Pimps, and many others. The show developed a strong and loyal local following in Long Island and Manhattan where it aired. Of course, best of all, it got Jim back in front of and behind the camera, his first love.

It was at this time that Jim started remembering his original calling to make movies. By this point he'd embarked on a music industry career, taking a job at RED Distribution (a division of Sony). While there, he attempted to make a space alien movie that never reached completion when one of the key actors just stopped showing up.

For his next project, Haggerty decided to work only with people he could trust - friends, and friends of friends. He wrote a script over the course of commuting to and from work each day on a mini-laptop and started asking around at parties, at work, or anywhere else he encountered people. Lots of people agreed to take part, but none fully thought he was serious until they were summoned to show up to his place every weekend to film.

The shoot (and the subsequent editing) took longer than Haggerty had anticipated, but by the night before Halloween in 2000 he unveiled his first completed film, "The Slasher" at a gala premiere in the Malverne Cinema - a local Long Island movie palace known for supporting local talent.

The victory of seeing the finished work projected on the big screen in front of a capacity crowd in the largest room in the theater was bittersweet, however, when Haggerty found trouble getting a distributor. As the video business was on a downward spiral with large chain stores edging out the mom and pop stores Jim grew up in, there were fewer and fewer accounts that would be likely to take a movie shot on video. Distributors liked the film, but just didn't think it could get store space in the larger outlets.

It was around this time Jim lost his beloved grandmother Ann Haggerty to cancer. He decided he would take the small amount of money she'd left him to buy a digital video camera so he could make films that would be easier to get distributed. His grandmother always believed in him and his talents and he knew that she'd want him to use the money to follow his dreams rather than just let it be squandered in day-to-day expenses. Jim dedicated his next film to her and from that point on, always at some point includes a framed photo of her somewhere in his films.

Shooting in the new digital format and with all the good vibes and excitement of both making and debuting "The Slasher," Jim began work on his second film. He had written the script for a short film called "Vampire Nightmare" shortly after completing "The Slasher". He expanded the script and played up the humorous elements to make the horror/comedy "I Dream of Dracula".

"I Dream of Dracula" was a tough birth - while it was a more organized shoot than 'The Slasher', it just didn't seem to be as much fun. There were tensions on the set and a lot of things did not go according to plan. Shooting in the stressful holiday season was also ill-advised and it took awhile for the film to be chiseled down to perfection in post-production - even after its premiere some things were added and deleted.

Despite the difficulty in making it, "I Dream of Dracula" is a film Haggerty is truly proud of. The film was reviewed by local New York entertainment paper Good Times and was screened at the Arlene Grocery Festival.

For his third film, Haggerty departed the light-heartedness of 'I Dream of Dracula' for a darker, grittier tale. 'From The Inside' is a grim thriller Jim wrote during a low period in his life.

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