When director Darren Lynn Bousman (best known for his work on Saw II–IV) and writer Terrance Zdunich took the dystopian musical stage show they had been working on and put it to film, the result was 2008’s Repo! The Genetic Opera. With an unlikely ensemble cast including Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Anthony Head, Skinny Puppy‘s Nivek Ogre, opera singer Sarah Brightman, Goodfellas‘ Paul Sorvino, The Devil’s Rejects‘ Bill Moseley, Paris Hilton and Zdunich as the GraveRobber, Repo! became a cult hit despite lack of support from Lionsgate. The film’s success was due in large part to the touring road shows Bousman and Zdunich put together, encouraging fans to arrive in costume, sing along Rocky Horror Picture Show style and expect more than just a movie screening.

Bousman and Zdunich are taking a similar approach with their new film The Devil’s Carnival, a surreal story that follows a repentant father (The Boondock Saints‘ Sean Patrick Flanery), a kleptomaniac (Briana Evigan) and a naive teenager (Canadian songstress Jessica Lowndes) to hell. But the hell Bousman and Zdunich have created is a surreal Fellini-esque carnival with Zdunich himself presiding as Lucifer. Though some of the Repo! cast has returned (Sorvino plays God, J. LaRose is The Major, Moseley is a Magician and Ogre is The Twin, for example), it also features a new eccentric ensemble that includes theatrical songstress Emilie Autumn, Slipknot percussionist M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan (who, ironically, does not play a clown), Five Finger Death Punch‘s Ivan Moody (who does play a clown) and a dwarf named Mighty Mike from the MiniKiss dwarf tribute band.

In true sideshow fashion, The Devil’s Carnival hit the road last month to help spread the devil’s morality tales (based on famous fables). Eschewing the typical Hollywood formula, Bousman and Zdunich are funding most of the film and tour themselves, which is a risky, yet confident move. With a week left on the tour, Zdunich talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the differences between making Repo! and The Devil’s Carnival, what fans can expect from the live experience and his self-published comic book The Molting.

With Repo! you did road shows like this one out of necessity since the studio wasn’t doing much to promote that film. Did you just decide to bypass a studio altogether with The Devil’s Carnival when planning this tour?

With Repo! it was reactive whereas with this it’s proactive. With Repo! we had no idea that was the road we’d be taking until we got some horrible reviews and Lionsgate said it was going to go straight to the bottom of DVD bins. We knew that it was meant to be seen live with a crowd, so we just decided on a whim to do a small tour. With this we decided to just lead with what worked, get it in front of the audience we think will enjoy, but do it much more ambitiously this time. We’re doing 33 cities in five-and-a-half weeks. Our shows end around 1 a.m., then we hop in a van and drive straight to the next city. It’s crazy, it’s nonstop and we haven’t really had a day off yet. It’s starting to show with my voice. I’m glad I don’t have to sing every night and I just have to speak.

The Devil’s Carnival is a musical like Repo…

Yeah. I hate that word just because I think it conjures up something that we’re kind of not. But, yes, there is music and people are singing. But it’s not an opera. With Repo, a majority of it was music and songs. This is about a 50/50 mix of spoken dialogue and songs. Unlike traditional musicals, in this people aren’t singing their emotions, they’re not suddenly having a feeling and bursting into song. The characters are carnies, so all the songs are in the context of a performance. They’re either barking down attendees to play a game or what have you, but all the songs function as actual performances. It helps you buy into that world a little easier than “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” or something like that.

You worked with a lot of the same people on Repo and The Devil’s Carnival, yet there are also a lot of new faces such as Emilie Autumn, Slipknot’s Clown and others in this film. How did you go about casting this film?

It’s a mix. Some of it is you want to work with your friends, especially if they’re talented and right for the roles. With some of the Repo alumni that was certainly the case. But Darren and I are fanboys at heart, so we want to work with people that we dig. Emilie Autumn, for example. I’m a huge fan of her work, so I still have to pinch myself a little bit and not be a fanboy when I’m trying to work with her and be professional. But we’ve been very fortunate with everyone that’s gotten involved. You mentioned Slipknot, that dude sells out gigantic amphitheaters and he’s willing to do our little indie horror musical. And not just do it, but he’s been on the road with us for a couple of stops, he came out in Iowa and it really does feel like a family affair. I think, or I like to believe at least, that’s because the project is cool and we’ve created an environment where people feel like we’re doing art. So they’re responding to that instead of what is typical in Hollywood, which is a paycheck or career-launching opportunity or something like that. I think the point here is that they feel creative about it and I think it shows in the final product. The entire film and the road tour was done for $300, 000. But when you watch it, no one would ever assume that. It looks like $10 million. That’s because everyone involved felt passionate about it and really went way beyond what should be expect for what we were paying them. From the makeup to the costumes, the production value is humongous and I’m very proud of it.

You have about a week left on the tour. How has the reception been so far?

So far it’s been a success. Every night has been a great performance and some have been greater than others in terms of audience attendance. But we haven’t had a night where people haven’t come out and acted like lunatics and that’s what we want to be a part of.

Aside from showing the film, what else is going on on this tour?

Every stop is a little different. But the basic lineup is we have some sort of local performer open up with either burlesque or we’ve had knife jugglers, glass eaters and other sideshow carnie stuff. We have a live MC that travels with us and she sort of narrates a portion of the evening, which includes a ten-minute featurette of Repo stuff no one’s seen. It kind of shows how we, at least, make dark musical films. It’s a look behind the process which, of course, leads into The Devil’s Carnival. Then Darren and I do a Q&A at the end, then we hang out and meet some of our fans. Every night is an event,  not just a film, which is what we aim to do.

Do you plan on releasing this on DVD or will you just keep touring small theaters with it?

Eventually, yes. We’ve had a lot of discussions about that the future really is dependent on how this tour goes. Right now it’s going well. We’re trying to create an event that can’t be downloaded, not just because we don’t want people stealing our shit, but because it’s something you want to be here for. You wouldn’t want to just watch it on your phone or however you choose to listen to music and watch movies now. So we’re trying to create an event that makes you want to go to the theater. As such, right now we’re keeping it very exclusive. Ultimately, of course we’re going to have some other form where people that aren’t here can see it. But we’re trying to figure out some way to package the event. I don’t know if that’s going to resemble something like the Blue Man Group, where this thing goes on, or if it’s going to be a DVD experience that somehow tries to be as unorthodox as what we’re doing. I think “here’s the disc, go spend 20 bucks on the DVD” would sort of be missing the point of what we’re doing with it. Once we have it figured out, we’ll let people know.

Is there a studio involved with it at all at this point?

It’s completely independent. We have Darren’s production company and some investors in Florida called the Film Funding Alliance who are responsible for financing. This thing is conceived as a series, sort of our anti-Glee, but I’d like that to be a Glee that’s on the road where we come out maybe a couple of times a year and the story continues. I haven’t seen anything like that, so not only as an artist, but as a fanboy, that’s something I want to see. So that’s what we’re working and if some more formal Hollywood-type system gets behind it, we’re not opposed to that. But I think they wouldn’t know what to do with this.

When you refer to it as a series, do you mean you have plans to do sequels or do you mean the live experience will change with the same film being shown?

This is actually part one and it’s a mythology that centers around Aesop’s Fables. So it has that sort of Tales from the Crypt-esque element where the universe is set up in such a way that you can keep using music to explore more than 600 fables, with the heaven-and-hell mythologies wrapped around it. It’s one part film series, one part rock concert.

In between this and Repo you’ve been doing a comic book series called The Molting. What are your plans for that story?

I’m through issue 7, but there’s been a bit of a hiatus because of The Devil’s Carnival. It’s an independent project and I’m not only writing it, but illustrating it. It’s a gigantic undertaking. Right now I think I’m about 350 pages into what will ultimately be a 600-page graphic novel. I’m going to continue doing that. The releasing of issues might be a tad sporadic, but unless my hands get chopped off I’m going to keep plugging away at that.

I’ve been doing it my way and there are pros and cons to that. The biggest con is money and outreach, of course. I’m actually printing it as opposed to making it an online comic because there’s something about reading something tangible and smelling the ink that I suppose gets me off, so I’ve been resisting letting it go a different way. But I’ll probably look into finding a distributor to bind it and help me deal with that larger format because it really is written as one complete work.

The Devil’s Carnival. Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. Starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Briana Evigan, Jessica Lowndes, Terrance Zdunich, Emilie Autumn, Ivan Moody, Marc Senter, Bill Moseley, Nivek Ogre, Dayton Callie and Paul Sorvino. Not rated. www.thedevilscarnival.com.