Larry Fessenden


Laurence T. Fessenden is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the founder of the New York based independent production outfit Glass Eye Pix. His writer/director credits include No Telling, Habit, Wendigo, and The Last Winter, which is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He has also directed the television feature Beneath, an episode of the NBC TV series Fear Itself entitled "Skin and Bones", and a segment of the anthology horror-comedy film The ABCs of Death 2. He is the writer, with Graham Reznick, of the BAFTA Award-winning Sony PlayStation video game Until Dawn. Films he has acted in include Bringing Out the Dead, Broken Flowers, I Sell the Dead, Jug Face, We Are Still Here, In a Valley of Violence, Like Me, and The Dead Don't Die, Brooklyn 45, and Killers of the Flower Moon.

Early life

Fessenden was born in New York City. He attended St. Bernard's School, then Phillips Academy, from which he was expelled.

Career

Fessenden regards the old Universal Monsters as a substantial influence for him. As an actor, screenwriter, director and film editor, he has worked, in addition to feature films, on such television projects as the NBC horror anthology Fear Itself, directing the episode "Skin and Bones". He wrote the screenplay of Orphanage with Guillermo del Toro, an English-language remake of El Orfanato.
Fessenden has worked as a mentor to young directors, such as Jim Mickle and Ti West. He has been a producer on projects including Ilya Chaiken's Liberty Kid, Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, James McKenney's Satan Hates You, West's The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, Joe Maggio's The Last Rites of Joe May, and Rick Alverson's The Comedy. Under his low-budget horror banner ScareFlix, Fessenden has produced films including West's The Roost and Trigger Man, Glenn McQuaid's I Sell the Dead, Maggio's Bitter Feast, and Mickle's Stake Land. More recently he has produced for prolific horror auteur Mickey Keating with Darling and Psychopaths.
As a character actor, Fessenden has appeared in numerous films, including Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory, Brad Anderson's Session 9 and Vanishing on 7th Street, Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, Neil Jordan's The Brave One, McQuaid's I Sell the Dead for which he won best actor at the Slamdance Film Festival; Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, Mickle's Mulberry Street and Stake Land, Joe Swanberg's All the Light in the Sky, and Ted Geoghegan's We Are Still Here. Fessenden also starred in the Sundance Film Festival picture River of Grass, which was Reichardt's debut feature, and Margarita Happy Hour directed by Chaiken. He has appeared on television in Louie, The Strain, and as himself in National Geographic's Brain Games.
In 2010, Fessenden partnered with Glenn McQuaid to launch Tales from Beyond the Pale, a series of macabre audio dramas now available as a 47 episode podcast. In 2011, he released his third rock album with the band Just Desserts, an on-going partnership with songwriter Tom Laverack. In 2012, he executive produced and was interviewed in the documentary Birth of the Living Dead, which examines the legacy of Night of the Living Dead. In 2016, he produced, acted, and served as cinematographer in his son Jack's feature debut, Stray Bullets. The same year also saw Fessenden release a book titled Sudden Storm, A Wendigo Reader.
Fessenden has also established a strong presence in the video game world. In 2015, he and Graham Reznick collaborated on writing the video game Until Dawn. Fessenden also played the role of a mysterious stranger armed with a flamethrower in the game itself. The game earned positive reviews and would go on to receive the "Original Property" award in the 2016 BAFTA Games Awards. Fessenden and Reznick also set a Guinness World Record for "Longest script for a graphic adventure videogame," with their script reaching 1,000 pages. The two writers would team up again in 2016 to develop a spin-off game known as Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, and later in 2018 for the Until Dawn prequel, The Inpatient.
Fessenden has run the company Glass Eye Pix since 1985 with the mission of "supporting individual voices in the arts." Glass Eye Pix continues to nurture young talent, most recently producing the debut features of Robert Mocker, Ana Asensio, and Jenn Wexler.
Fessenden's Frankenstein-themed feature, Depraved, which he wrote, directed, edited and produced, was released on Friday the 13th of September, 2019 through IFC Midnight.
His werewolf film Blackout premiered at the 27th International Fantasia Film Festival in July 2023.

Filmography

As actor

As writer

As producer

YearTitleNotes
1994River of GrassAssociate Producer
2004The Off SeasonExecutive Producer
2005The RoostExecutive Producer
2006AutomatonsExecutive Producer
2006The Last WinterProducer
2007Trigger ManExecutive Producer
2008I Can See YouExecutive Producer
2008Wendy and LucyProducer
2008I Sell the DeadProducer
2009The House of the DevilProducer
2010Bitter FeastProducer
2010Satan Hates YouProducer
2010Stake LandProducer
2010HypothermiaProducer
2011The InnkeepersProducer
2013BeneathProducer
2014Late PhasesProducer
2015DarlingExecutive Producer
2016Certain WomenExecutive Producer
2016CallbackCo-Producer
2016Stray BulletsProducer
2016The StakelanderProducer
2019DepravedProducer
2019FoxholeProducer
2023BlackoutProducer
2023Crumb CatcherProducer

As director

YearTitleNotes
1978JawsShort film
1979The EliminatorShort film
1980White TrashShort film
1980The FieldShort film
1981LifelineShort film
1981A Face in the Crowd
1982HabitVideo
1985Experienced Movers
1986ChinatownDocumentary short
1987MismatchDocumentary short
1989Stunt: A Musical Motion PictureShort film
1989Hollow Venus: Diary of a Go-Go Dancer
1991No Telling
1997Habit
2001Wendigo
2002Searching for the WendigoDocumentary short
2006The Last Winter
2008Fear ItselfEpisode: "Skin and Bones"
2013Beneath
2014Frankenstein Cannot Be StoppedVideo short
2014The ABCs of Death 2Segment: "N is for Nexus"
2019Depraved
2023Blackout

Awards and honors

Awards