Otto Baxter and documentary filmmakers Peter Beard and Bruce Fletcher spoke to Yahoo UK about the director's journey to making his first film.

Otto Baxter’s musical horror-comedy short The Puppet Asylum debuted at FrightFest in August to much critical acclaim, but it’s the filmmaker’s six-year journey to bring his movie to the screen that proves even more inspiring.

The filmmaker has spent much of his life in front of a camera. As an advocate for the Down syndrome community, he has appeared in many news reports and documentaries helping to raise awareness about the condition, but now he is ready to tell his own story, on his own terms.

Baxter does this in two ways: through his semi-autobiographical horror film The Puppet Asylum, which he wrote and directed, and the making-of documentary Otto Baxter: Not A F****ing Horror Story that he filmed with Peter Beard and Bruce Fletcher (both come to Sky Documentaries and NOW from 23 September).

Mentioned in the latest TV Tonight but worth flagging up separately.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPMAEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    A demonic baby wails into being. A terrified mother recoils in horror. A sadistic Victorian gentleman puts the monster baby into a freakshow. Someone gets hit in the face with a decomposing human heart. This is The Puppet Asylum, a potty-mouthed horror musical from the mind of Otto Baxter: it is gruesome, hilarious and absolutely wild. It’s also autobiographical, to a point.

    Baxter is the dapper 35-year-old man who wrote, directed and starred in the film – he also happens to be the first British film director who has Down syndrome. It’s just the latest development in a life spent breaking barriers and subverting expectations: Baxter once performed as a character named Horrora Shebang in a drag troupe known as Drag Syndrome and he was the subject of a BBC documentary (2009’s Otto: Love, Lust and Las Vegas) about his quest to lose his virginity. He is also a working actor, with a number of film and stage credits under his belt, including a critically acclaimed turn in Waiting for Godot as well as a Bafta-nominated short.

    …

    The genesis of The Puppet Asylum came from his firm friendship with Beard and Fletcher, who are the two filmmakers behind the 2009 documentary about him. They served as producers on The Puppet Asylum, and direct an accompanying behind-the-scenes documentary on the film called Not a F***ing Horror Story. The relationship runs much deeper, too: the three men spent years working together to develop Baxter’s ideas, following every creative thread he dangled. And there are a lot of them.

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