Director’s Spotlight
Starting outside of the Hollywood system. Byron Conrad Erwin is an artist of visual storytelling. Through several decades of filmmaking, he’s shown his versatility by directing not only horror, but also drama and comedy – often melding multiple genres within the same movie. On some of his films, he serves as a director, editor and even scoring the music.
As a teenager making home movies in the 1970s, Erwin was fascinated with monster and science fiction movies, as short film titles such as Bizerk, Day of the Kites and Men in Black (not to be confused with the Spielberg production) attest. It’s no surprise that his feature-length debut would be a horror movie, the ambitious thriller Inside Job, a film that grew out of a student project while Erwin attended college. During film school, he worked as a negative cutter for National Geographic Television and Discovery Channel.
Erwin has written and directed many short films and one feature before becoming the senior director at a television commercial production facility. He is most proud of his animated short film In Those Days which took seven years to produce since every frame was hand drawn with no computer assistance. Erwin is an accomplished musician and artist, and scores most of his projects, including In Those Days.
Erwin, who is best known for directing the cult-classic feature film Lynch Mob, starring Tony Darrow (of HBO’s Sopranos) and Dolan Wilson (of Walk The Line) and was released in 2010 in theaters across the country, refined many of his techniques for tension and suspense that would come into play in Lure (2010). Mixing the absurd with the profound, Erwin’s intimate style makes us reflect and laugh at the same time.
Although Lynch Mob began his horror career, Erwin chose not to box himself into that line of filmmaking. Instead, he utilized his newfound popularity to attack two more ambitious productions: Cardboard Castles, a drama about what happens when two girls are left alone in an abandoned old house and Tiger Lily, a heart-warming story of a young woman’s struggle when she is diagnosed with cancer.
