It was slightly shocking that a studio backed the movie in the first place, though, considering the concept (mean girl remorselessly kills teen beauty queen with an iconic piece of sweet candy) and the fact that most gay directors at the time were considered “fringe.” But they did, and they let Darren go for it… on a meager budget (the average studio film cost about $50 million in the mid-90s ; our budget didn’t even break $10 million). With limited budget came limited time, so we only shot for 30 far-too-short days with almost no oversight (meaning the studio did not appear to interfere with the content). But it was a great place and state to work in. There was nobody on set telling us not to do something; there was nobody telling us we went too far. We had a feeling back then that it was kind of the Wild West; Darren created this environment in which we could just be our wicked, delicious selves, and what came out of it was something that can’t be replicated — this genuinely punk sensibility — because we were actually able to say, “Fuck it. Let's do this.”