Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 739: Horror Screenwriting - The Nature of Fear with Devin Watson

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IFH 739: Horror Screenwriting - The Nature of Fear with Devin Watson · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle
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Podcast, Episode number seven thirty nine, No One Escapes from Life Alive.
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Michael Crichton broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle
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Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker
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Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I
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just head over to www dot filmbiz book dot com. That's film bizbook
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dot com. Now, guys, today we are going to go down a
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scary rabbit hole. We are going to be talking about the nature of fear
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and horror screenwriting with author and writer Devin Watson, and we get into some
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creepy areas here. We really start getting into the psychological reasons why we're afraid,
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how we can use those in our stories, how we can scare the
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living crap out of people with our stories. So, without any further ado,
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please enjoy my terrifying conversation with Devin Watson. I like to welcome to
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the show, Devin Watson. Man. How are you doing, Devin?
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I'm doing great. How are you? I'm doing great? Man. Thank
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you so much for jumping on the show man. I truly appreciate it.
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I'm looking forward to diving into the deep end of horror screenwriting with you today.
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Now, before we get started, how did you get started in the
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film industry and the love of what you do? It was a little while
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at BOE I would say probably the late nineties. I worked on a website
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called movie partners dot com and that's kind of gone the way of the Dodo
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now, but that was basically one of the first websites out there that really
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had any kind of information on independent filmmaking around at the time. There was
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even somebody who wrote their their graduation thesis on it as like what was going
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to happen? And they were presaging like YouTube and Vimeo and things like that
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long long before it actually came around. But that was where I really got
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my start, was on the technology side of things, and eventually I'm like,
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you know, I should really start writing some stuff too, So I
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ended up reading a few books. I mean that's kind of way I am.
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Was like, don't want to learn something, I'm going to go read
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some books. So I started out with really the one book that helped me
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the most at that time was Screenwriting four thirty four by Lou Hunter, because
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there wasn't a whole lot out there at that point in time, so nineties
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definitely. Yeah. Yeah, So that's that's where I basically got my my
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my start in that. And then I wrote four or five scripts and yeah,
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they sucked. I'm not gonna lie. I try to tell people that
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your first couple of scripts are just going to be bad. But that's okay
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because as long as you get a little bit better with each one, it's
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not going to be a total loss. And you can always go back later
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and revise them if you want. If you want to see if you can
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polish them up and make them into what you had originally thought they should be,
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you can do that. And then I moved to Tennessee and that's I
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was living with my producing partner at the time, Phil Melfie, and that's
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when like basically right after Thanksgiving two thousand and two thousand and six, I
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wrote it. Basically, he said, if you write a script. I
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will Rea, and I won't. I won't just toss it in the trash
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can. I was like, okay, so on that bet. I just
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sat down over the weekend and just turned out like a real serious one that
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I wanted to do because I had had all these ideas floating around in my
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head and finally they just all coalesced and I said, okay, now I
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got to write this thing. So I got it out as fast as I
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could because I had another gig on Monday, and I was like, well,
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I only got the weekend. I got to do this. So I
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finished it late Sunday night. Phil was already asleep, but I emailed it
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to him and then I went into his room and I said, okay,
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I finished it. So he popped right out of bed and he just read
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the thing and came outside, and you know, his mouth was open because
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he knew I had started it. He didn't realize I was going to finish
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it then, and I said, well, was it really that bad?
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So he's like, no, no, it's actually really good. And you
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know, a couple of months later we actually made it should get financing for
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it, and that became the Cursed, which is still out. Sci Fi
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Channel picked it up and they like to put that in their regular Halloween rotation
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on in October. But it's also available on Amazon. So it's it's amazing
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just to see something like that get up there, and it's like, wow,
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it's up there, and you should you and you wrote it in two
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days pretty much. Yeah, so like most screenplays are written. Most screenplays
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are written in two days. You really don't need to take more than two
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days to write a screenplay, right, Not really? No, I didn't
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find out until after that you're like supposed to take three months, Like uh
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okay, Well, I mean I did revise it. I did like two
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or three more giraffes, but that was like over like the next week.
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I would just say like, well, I don't really like how this part
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went, so I want to but that's mostly just tune up, you know,
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wants to get at some point and so well, So, I mean,
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your book about horror screenwriting really dives into the into the craft of horror
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screenwriting specifically pretty deeply. What were some of the first horror films ever made
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and what can we learn from them today? Well, I believe it or
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not, one of the first actual films ever made. Was a horror film,
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so that's I think it's called The Dark Castle in eighteen ninety six,
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So horror has been around as long as filmmaking has been around. What was
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it? What was that movie about? Well it was a short obviously.
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Well yeah, yeah, it's really just about it's haunted house, dark spooky
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castle. That's really what it's about. So yeah, I mean even back
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then people were they're afraid of the dark, scary places, and they're like,
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hey, we can play on that because that's what people are afraid of
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and they want to get scared, but they can get scared safely by just
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watching a film. And I think that was was it the Looomi Ears?
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I think was a Lumier Brothers that did that one. Yeah, So when
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No Spratu showed up, when that was the first iteration was I want to
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say, in the early twenties, so still like yeah, that's twenty years
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later. So it was in Frankens and I'm assuming there was a Was there
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a Frankenstein adaptation in Silent Times? Yep, there's actually one from I believe
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nineteen sixteen that is Edison Edison Studios. That was one of the first ones,
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and that's actually in public domain now and you can watch it on archive
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dot org. It's up there, and the Dark Castle is up there.
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All it's as much of it as could be found and restored is available up
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there as well. And people have actually taken no sratu and since it's in
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public domain, they've done all kinds of things too, like they've atted their
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own film score. So like you want to hear it with like the classical
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organ pieces, you want to hear it with an orchestra, or you want
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to hear it with like goth metal. Somebody did a goth metal version of
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it. That's something too. So that's what I wrote about it. So
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and I'm assuming they were hits back then. I mean, well, first
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of all, movies were hit just because it was a movie. But horror
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really started to get Was there a specific movie back then that really caused the
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stir that really kind of like scared the living because for us, it was
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like The Exorcist, Like The Exorcists is the first one of our generation that
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I can think of that was the movie that literally just scared the but Jesus
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out of everybody, Like it just terrified I mean, Psycho to a certain
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extent too, but Exorcist is a whole other levels. Oh yeah, yeah,
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that was like the pure shock value of it. It's like, wow,
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then bad enough that Billy Graham says, there's the devil is in the
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celluloid. I can see it. Jesus, We'll be right back after a
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word from our sponsor and now back to the show literally, Jesus. Yeah.
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I think No Satsu was definitely one of the one of the first big
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ones because it also it plays into German expressionism, which which was one of
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the one of the big founding factors art wise, because just like just like
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now, a lot of films don't have enough budget, so what do you
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do? You work with what you got, and German expressionism isn't. German
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expressionism is really good for that because it doesn't rely on a lot of big,
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fancy sets or anything like that. You just you fill it in,
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filling the gaps with your imagination. Now, throughout society, throughout throughout history,
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society has really kind of shaped and cultured, and the culture has shaped
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how horror films are presented depending on what country you're from, what time period
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you're from. You know, obviously, like the Exorcists played up on in
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America specifically, you know the Judo Christianity, Christianity, Christianity, I can't
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even say the word Jewish Christian kind of taboos and and really touched on that
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culturally. How do throughout history, though, how have has society and culture
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really affected the horror genre? Well, even going way way back, you
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have like the ancient Sumerians who they created gods specifically to scare children into being
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obedient, Like if you go out after dark, this god is going to
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come and grab you and eat you. So scaring somebody. When somebody's scared,
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they will they'll do things they don't normally do. Uh. It's it's
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a it's a one way to just like you see in the Slash reflex,
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uh looking Friday at thirteenths and everything, where you see the teenage girl screaming
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and running away through the woods. It's like no, no, no,
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don't go that way. It was like, well, she's scared out of
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her mind. She's going to do She's going to do the exact opposite of
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what she should do, Like why are you going into that room alone?
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Like why, seriously, what's the point of that? And then obviously there
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a Marian Gods would then showed up in Ghostbusters where they took care of them
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obviously obviously, yep. And I honestly, I mean, if you didn't
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make the bad guys truly bad, Ghoser wouldn't have been the thing that really
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would have I mean, yeah, it's it's it's a comedy, but it's
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a horror comedy, so it's it's a weird. Yeah, Ghostbusters was a
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weird because they have been horror comedies. I assume they would horror comedies prior
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to that, but but Ghostbusters just took it to it and it's in Obviously,
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Ghostbusters is a lot more comedy than horror. There there is some scary.
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There's some scary moments in that, like in the Bottom of the Library
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that terrified me as a kid. I was like Jesus, I mean,
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Slimer wasn't a scary, but still it could definitely be scary. I'm actually
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kind of excited about the new one, the one that's a direct sequel to
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the Ghostbusters with Jason Rightman's oh yeah, it looks like he's paying really nice
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homage to it actually made me really miss Harold remis a lot after watching that
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trail, I was like tearing up. I'm like, what Harold, Oh
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God, yeah, I believe me. I got it. I got a
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sear in my eye tune was like, oh, I so want to see
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this. I will, I will, I will go to the theater and
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I will see this and I will gladly watch it because it just looks so
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amazing what they did. And yeah, I think Paul Rudd uh oh,
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I guess somebody that could definitely pick up the mantle, so to speak,
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mm hm, at least from the on the comedy side of things, at
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least looking at the extended trailers and seeing him the Stapoff Marshall women. Oh
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that was so great, so great. I'm looking for I'm really looking forward
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to it. And again for for younger viewers listening, they'll be like,
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it looks like another movie. But for guys like you and me who grew
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up with Ghostbusters and saw it in the theater, were just like Jason knew
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exactly what he was doing when he wrote the script, like he he is
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touching nerves that needed to be touched. I think that was probably one of
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the the reasons why the all female Ghostbusters movie got such backlashes because it was
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so disrespectful to the original lore of it, and many people thought of it
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that way. I thought it was fine, but it was just not a
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sequel. It was just it was something else. It was something other thing
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that was you know, that lived on its own. Fine, it was
14:45
a fine, but I think it was it was weird. Okay, where
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we are going off the deep end and the Ghostbusters, Well, so I
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apologize everybody. It's just it is. It is. It's what happens when
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phil geeks get together. But anyway, now, there's so many different kinds
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of horror. What are the different kind of horror movies? Because a lot
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of people just think horrors horror, but there's many subgenres within horror. Oh
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yeah, yeah, there's Well, you've got like the kind of a surface
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layer of just the popcorn movies, as I call it, like where you
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just disengage brain and you just watch it and try not to analyze it because
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it's going to you won't get anything out of it. You want to enjoy
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it, like like watching Halloween or the Friday Thirteenth series or Nightmare on Elm
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Street the other ones you've got. You've got the supernatural type horror films like
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like basically most of your Vincent Price movies from the fifties and sixties and the
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hammer horror films where you got the something closer to what would be considered body
15:50
horror now like Frankenstein, and you have Dracula, another supernatural being that that
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was another area right there, and then you have like, uh, you're
16:03
getting stuff like a David Cronenberg like The Fly and stuff like that. Well,
16:07
basically all of his early films dealt with your body changing into something horrible
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and you can't do anything about it, and that's the horror within almost right
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right. It's like there's this, and there's there's something existential about it as
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well. If you really want to dive deep into that, there's that.
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And then you've got you know, like zombie films where the monsters are the
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well you think that's the zombies, but then you find like, oh,
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well there's still people. It's generally the humans who are the monsters. If
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A Night of the Living Dead taught us anything, it was that the people
16:45
were the monsters, not the zombies. But then there's obviously, like you
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know, vampire films, ghost films, torture, porn like the Jigsaw and
16:56
saw movies and hostile hostiles and hostile the hostile films and those kind of things.
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So there's a lot of And then of course there's the the monster movie
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to a certain extent, but like the Killer Monster movie, like Hellian Well,
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there's there's literally the Monster movie, but then you've got the Halloween,
17:17
the serial Killer. But like then there's the supernatural aspects of those things.
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So like there's a lot. Like Freddy is a combination of a bunch of
17:23
different and Freddy just the first. The first time I renunce, it was
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fairly terrifying, especially for its time, but then he became a It literally
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was a comedy routine after I think after the second one, it was like
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Freddy's hilarious. Yeah, yeah, that's I call him the He's the cruel
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gesture at that point because he's like, yeah, yes, I'm gonna kill
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you, but I'm gonna have fun doing it, and I'm gonna crack jokes
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while I'm doing it. Yeah, whereas in Michael Myers and Jason never changed.
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They're always the same, just unstoppable force that comes in. And I
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still said in one of the greatest horror movies of all time is Jaws.
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It's still it still holds to this day. You can watch it and we
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know it's a mechanical shark, and when the shark does come out, it's
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not it's not horrible, but it's definitely not you know, complete, one
18:17
hundred percent believable. But yet it's Spielberg. It's just it's absolutely brilliant.
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Yeah, And I think that from a visual perspective, I mean, part
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of what scares the Jesus out of you with Jaws is that you just see
18:33
the fin for most of the movie. It's not until you're like way deep
18:37
into the movie before when yeah, when Roy Scheider's chumming the water, he's
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not looking and that thing just comes out of the water and you're like,
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oh, wow, okay, now we got it. Now we see those
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things like twenty feet long, and it's a monstrosity. Yeah. And I
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mean, and and Spielberg's single handedly has destroyed a species because people are still
18:57
terrified by show and want to kill them and all this kind of stuff because
19:03
of that movie. And it's it's horrible. It's funny, but it's horrible
19:06
at the same time. But yeah, but he was able to able to
19:08
do that. And you watch something like Poultrygeist, which is to be Toby
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Hooper. But and I was talking to a filmmaker the other day about this,
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I'm like, you know, I'm a fan of Toby, but Toby
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really never got as good as Polster guyst ever. Again, and from what
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I heard from behind the scenes is that Steven had a hand in this.
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That's why poulter Geist is. It's a master work. Yeah, yeah,
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And what I yea from what I understand h Stephen was Spielberg was under contract
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that you couldn't direct two movies at the same time, so so he was
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like, Okay, I'm gonna go do et but here's all my notes that
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I had already done for Poultergeist. So uh yeah, Toby, Toby had
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help, I would think a little bit from that, but still he was
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the one actually doing it. We'll be right back after a word from our
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sponsor, and now back to the show. And I think the scene where
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the guy is ripping his face off in front of the mirror, the hand
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the hands were actually Steven Spielberg's. Yeah, it's interesting that Stephen has not
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gone back to horror even though he kind of started his career as a as
20:26
a scare mine. Even even in Close Encounters. Close Encounters has a lot
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of scary, scary moments in it. Even Et has some scary moments in
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it. He has that wonderful ability, but he never went back to it.
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If I ever have him on the show, I'll ask him, when
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are you going to do another horror movie? Stephen? Well, the nice
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thing is you don't. You do not have to have a huge budget to
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make a horror film, which is why it's so easily accessible to independent filmmakers
20:55
like that. Look at the Blair Witch projects. I mean that was that
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was made for like pocket change and the probably the most I guess adjusted for
21:03
inflation, it probably still is one of the most successful Ani films ever made.
21:07
It is it was a very successful indie film. And I actually I
21:11
had Eduardo, one of the directors, on the show a while ago,
21:15
and I told them, I'm like, you know, man, I love
21:17
the movie. But and this is a spoiler alert if anyone's listening, skipped
21:21
fifteen seconds ahead of thirty seconds ahead. But the only thing that would have
21:23
made that film perfect for me is at the end when the camera falls,
21:27
you would just see a pair of floating feet just go by. Oh yeah,
21:32
that would have I just got chills thinking about could you imagine if you
21:37
would have just seen some floating feet just go by. Yeah. That's very
21:41
reminiscent of the previous generation of found footage movies, like basically what I call
21:48
the second Italian Renaissance in the seventies, where you have like The Green Inferno,
21:52
Luccio Fulci, those guys just Mario Baba just cranking them out left and
21:57
right, actors dubbed and dubbed into English, and a lot of those ended
22:04
they would end on a shot of like the camera hits the ground, but
22:07
then you see one of the principal characters. It's still left. They hit
22:12
the ground and their head is just like split open and bloody, and it's
22:15
like, yep, okay, it's over. And see now you know,
22:22
us, as the species are I think on an evolutionary standpoint, we're very
22:26
fearful because we're afraid about what is gonna kill us. That's just instinctual,
22:33
Like what's around the corner is that tie? I always use the tiger is
22:37
a tiger down by the by the lake? Is the tiger gonna get me
22:40
around the corner. So you're always looking for that kind of fear thing.
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Where, in your opinion, does fear come from in our species as a
22:48
general statement, believe it or not. I believe. I believe that it
22:53
is a survival trait. It's what kept us kept us alive as a species.
22:59
Although now we can actually use that, we can leverage that as screenwriters
23:04
to really play on it. And it's like, oh you're afraid of this,
23:10
Okay, we're gonna, We're gonna. Really people are afraid of clowns
23:14
because of it, But people were already afraid of clowns even before it came
23:18
around. But I mean, to be fair, clowns, yeah, are
23:23
our abomination and need to be stopped. Oh yeah yeah, trust me seeing
23:29
seeing that clown in Poultergeist when it popped up from behind him. All right,
23:33
so let's let's before we start, let's just go over here. The
23:37
scariest moment of my youth was sleeping over the friend's house who had HBO because
23:44
we didn't have HBO because that's only for rich people. Uh. And he
23:47
was and I walked in and they like, what are you watching? I'm
23:49
like or watching this film called Poulter Guys, and I sat there for three
23:52
minutes and it was a scene where the little kid got taken down by the
23:56
clown, the life size whatever the the you know, kid size clown and
24:00
took him under the bed. That still to this day terrifies me. Not
24:06
the clowns. I mean, I don't like lose my mind if I see
24:08
a clown. I'm like, dude, that's just dude, you're a grown
24:11
ass man. Stop it. It just I'm sorry for all the clowns out
24:14
there. I can't. I just can't. It just no. But I
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went home that night other than night and the next day I went home and
24:23
I had a Sylvester like for Sylvester and Tweety, which was about the same
24:27
size as that clown. So then I put him in the corner and I
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aimed all my g I Joe's and Transformers with guns aimed at him in a
24:37
half circle so I could go to sleep. And then my mom walked there.
24:41
She's like, Alex, what's the what does Sylvester do to you?
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I'm like, well, you don't want to know. He's just shady,
24:49
h It's not it's not what he's done is what he's going to do,
24:55
what he has the potential of doing for me. And this is prior to
24:57
Chucky or anything like that. I cantally imagine I want to say something like
25:00
Chucky when I was that age, But continue, sir, I'm sorry you
25:04
were Where fear? Where fear comes from? Yeah? Where fear comes from?
25:07
Yeah, It's it's a base survival instinct. If something scares you,
25:12
you have the fight or flight response. Most of the time it's flight.
25:15
It's like, get me out here, I want to I want to get
25:18
away from this. And then what you know, he's like Stephen Kinkin do
25:23
is they tap into a very universal fear of something like for him, he's
25:33
like the fear of clowns. That's one thing fear. He has a fear
25:37
of mice or rats. So you got something like graveyard shifts, you get
25:41
things, you get stories like that, And that's where I try to teach
25:45
people in book. It's like, start with what scares you and try to
25:49
understand why it scares you. Uh, And it all just comes from a
25:52
lot of it just stems from the unknown. It's like, I don't know
25:56
what that is, but it seems really scary, so I'm gonna stay away
25:57
from it. So if you can tap that, especially with yourself, you've
26:06
got to be kind of honest with yourself, like what really scares you.
26:08
And that's even just straight up jump scares, which I think are kind of
26:14
a cheap thing to do. I don't mind if a movie does it like
26:17
once or twice. Yes, here's fun, it's fune'll roller coaster ride.
26:21
It's a drop. It's a drop, right, But if you're relying on
26:23
that constantly throughout your your film, I mean, it's gonna lose It's gonna
26:29
lose it its efficacy. It's not gonna the tenth time around is not not
26:33
as good as like the first time around. It's gonna like saying the same
26:36
joke over and over and over again, it just stops getting funny, right,
26:40
or the villain never dies and just keeps coming back and keeps going.
26:42
That's what I love about Scream. That just literally just poked fun at all
26:47
the tropes while doing them. While doing them, it was It was absolutely
26:51
brilliant work. And I think that's one of the things I think you're talking
26:53
about tapping into universal fears. M Night Shamalan's new movie Old. I mean
27:00
that's terrifying. Yeah, I mean it's like you you walk in and you're
27:03
like, oh my god, I'm growing older as as as we speak rapidly.
27:10
That is a terrifying Has that ever been on cinema before? I don't
27:15
think it has. No, I don't really. Well, there's uh,
27:18
I mean there's elements of it, but not like that, right, not
27:22
at that rate or speed or anything like that, where it's oh, what's
27:26
his name? God? What's the famous book A Portrait of a Door and
27:30
gray? It has a similar fear of aging, right right, which that
27:37
goes back, way way back. So yeah, but yeah, there's if
27:41
you can tap that, there's this existential dread of like this is inevitable,
27:45
it's happening to you and you cannot get away from it. That that can
27:51
terrify so many people just by saying, yeah, there's nothing you can do
27:56
about it. But like the Fly, like you were saying with Cronenberg,
27:59
like the fly, it is something there's like you are turning into a monster,
28:03
right and you have no It's like again tapping into doctor Jackyl and mister
28:07
Hyde again at that point to a certain extent. Yeah, and when you,
28:11
well, the time period. Okay, So Kronenberg has vehemently denied any
28:17
connection of being an allegory for AIDS, but it was very much in the
28:22
forefront of people's minds. They're like, okay, because those eighty those mid
28:26
eighties, and let's exactly when it explode it. Yeah. Yeah, So
28:30
people were like automatically connecting that in their minds, say yeah, this is
28:36
this could very well be a story about somebody with AIDS or an allegory about
28:40
it. And he's like, no, no, it's not really about that.
28:42
But yeah, you could easily make the connections yourself in your mind.
28:47
And that's one thing that good horror could do, is your audience can find
28:52
connections that you never thought of. With things like Night of the Living Dead,
28:57
a lot of people make the original Nine of the Living Dead, make
29:00
the connection that it was about mindless consumerism just people like were becoming zombies.
29:07
You know, they could find some greater social message inside of a horror film
29:11
that on its surface, yeah, it's about zombies and people pulled up in
29:15
a house and fighting with each other. But I think George actually Romero made
29:21
that even more clear. Is it Donna the Dead or when there was in
29:26
the mall. Yeah, I mean he literally was not hiding. Yeah,
29:30
He's like, okay, I'm gonna run with this. Now it's like you
29:33
say, it is okay, exactly exactly. And then you've got, I
29:38
mean, one scene to me that always sums up existential dread is this.
29:45
There's a scene in the original Alien when Lambert is cornered. We'll be right
29:56
back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show,
30:04
and Parker's just been killed, and it's just very slowly showing this thing creeping
30:11
towards her, this look on her face of like, oh my god,
30:15
this thing's gonna kill me, and you see its tail just go between her
30:18
legs and upper back, and it's just very very slowly shot and then you
30:25
and then right at the end of it, you hear her scream. And
30:26
then the next thing, you know, all you can hear is her just
30:30
breathing really rapidly over the speaker system in the in the ship. And then
30:33
and then you hear the thing that the alien just make a make a noise,
30:37
and her she screams one last time, and that's it, and all
30:38
you're hearing at that point is just rip, like running down the hallway and
30:41
that's it. It's like, Okay, we know she's dead now, but
30:45
that was like her biggest fear was that thing killing her, because she was
30:48
freaking out long before that happened. It is like, yeah, it's almost
30:52
like she was the chorus. She was speaking for the audience like oh yeah,
30:56
we're not that thing. Yeah yeah. An Alien and Alien itself is
31:02
a masterwork in horror and and and genre smashing with the sci fi. I
31:07
think it's I'm not sure if it was the first sci fi horror, but
31:11
it definitely is the granddaddy of it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I
31:17
think without that, because it was the haunted house in space idea where you've
31:22
got this thing working around it set all, it really put a lot of
31:26
concrete rules, not really solely concrete, but you've got these rules of like
31:32
you don't have to show the entire creature because your audience's imagination is going to
31:36
fill it in for you. And it's like, Okay, we don't need
31:38
such a huge budget to show this thing, and like, this thing looks
31:42
terrifying. I think without that, without Alien, we probably would not have
31:48
had Event Horizon because they're both the haunted house in space kind of ideas,
31:53
but instead of an alien monster running around you, the ship itself is haunted
31:59
and went to help or something approximating it, right, And then the sequel,
32:05
which was just Alien on Steroids, which is Aliens. James Cameron's masterpiece
32:09
is another genre, you know, clashing with is action horror, which you
32:15
don't see as much action horror anymore. I mean you did a little bit
32:19
now with them. Was Zack Schneider's new zombie film that came out. Yeah,
32:25
it's I think it's harder. It's not just harder to put together,
32:29
but with action you've got you know, stunts, explosions, piro, you've
32:34
got the whole nine yards, and it just ratchets up the difficulty level shooting
32:39
with also budgets as well. And yeah, Aliens again, it's like,
32:45
wow, that was incredible. I didn't think they could actually do a really
32:50
good sequel, and it's like, Okay, we're just going to go in
32:52
this other direction. And then Alien three came around and Fincher took it kind
33:00
of back to the original roots, which was haunted House. It was a
33:04
haunted house. I would have loved to actually see his version not to sell
33:07
his version. I would love to see a real David Venn director's cut,
33:12
which I don't think he'll ever ever do because he hated that process. So
33:16
it almost drew there, almost he almost left the business. But thankfully he
33:22
went on and gave us Seven Side and Fight Club and so on and so
33:27
on and so on and so on. Now in your book you talk about
33:30
the talking head problem. What is the talking head problem? Okay? The
33:34
talking head problem is where you're just running dialogue and just like constantly just talking
33:43
back and forth. It's really easy to fall into that trap where you just
33:47
have the characters talk about things to tell the audience what's going on, and
33:52
you don't have to. I mean, a screenplay is both showing not telling.
33:55
It's a screen play, so it uh. That's where a lot of
34:01
especially first time writers, they fall down is they just go very dialogue heavy,
34:07
and in a horror film it's more about just you know, here's two,
34:10
here's two, what the audience added up to four? And that really
34:16
can help. Well. I mean, look a look at how much dialogue
34:20
is in a Nightmare of the original Nightmare on Holme Street. Not a lot.
34:22
Freddie doesn't even talk really. I mean, you know, he's just
34:25
yeah he did, he didn't come. He didn't get his personality till the
34:28
second one, really right. Yeah, And and the same thing with Halloween.
34:34
Michael Myers never talked at all, and that's makes them all the scarier.
34:38
But and same thing with Jason uh never talked at all really unless you
34:44
count the very end of Manhattan. But we we try not to think about
34:49
Manhattan. Yeah, that was that was one of those ones that's like that
34:53
that ending. I can't figure it out. I remember when it came out.
34:58
I was like, really, you guys are just running out of stuff?
35:02
What just happened here? Because but yeah, you if you can keep
35:12
the people talking, there's there's definitely some need for it in certain parts,
35:16
and usually it's right in the front. Like Event Horizon had that scene where
35:22
they're on the ship and they're setting things up after they get out of stasis,
35:28
and they're just talking about like, Okay, what's happening, why are
35:32
we here? That kind of thing, and they're just trying to fill in
35:35
the blanks as quickly as possible, but just enough of the blanks where you
35:40
the audience can start to piece things together more easily later. Right in a
35:45
movie like The Thing, which is another one of those that there's just a
35:51
bunch of people locked in the place and there I don't remember there being a
35:54
talking head issue there, but there are definitely some talking heads in there.
35:59
Yeah yeah. And it's but it's it's spread out and it's it's very They're
36:04
not like going on for page after page after page. They're just there's like,
36:07
okay, we got to do this right now. And most of the
36:10
dialogue is arguing back and forth about like you know, like well, okay,
36:14
who who uh? Who let all the blood out of the out of
36:19
the storage? You like, where's the keys and all this kind of stuff.
36:21
It's it's more like them trying to figure out the mystery all amongst themselves.
36:24
But the paranoia levels are just going up. No no one thing that
36:30
I I love. One little tip I I I've gotten from James Cameron Films,
36:37
and he's the one that said it very clearly in The Terminator is when
36:42
you have backstory that you need to tell the audience instead of two people sitting
36:45
down at a table telling you like, well, you know, yeah,
36:50
there's from the future and you know there's a killer robot after you. It's
36:53
a sidebalalk instead of that, do it within action, yep, which is
36:59
a great way to do it. Yep. Kyle East did that while they're
37:01
being chased by the terminator. He was like, yes, you know,
37:05
come with me if you want to live and get in the car. And
37:07
they're running away from that thing. So nice to get Yeah. And by
37:12
the time to Raader two runs comes around and you got the T one thousand
37:15
chasing them. They're not talking at that point because look, we know what's
37:17
going on now, we got it right. But that's but that's the thing
37:22
so many people tell, you know, you just here to you know,
37:24
just dialogue that's just sitting there just like, oh god, I don't want
37:27
to. I mean, you need this backstory or else the movie doesn't work.
37:30
But it has to be done in entertaining fashion. So while you're running
37:34
away from a monster or something like that, if you can tell if there
37:36
is absolute necessity for you to tell the backstory of something, if you could
37:40
do it with in action, god, it's so much it's just more entertaining.
37:45
Yeah, always good. Yeah, if you're going to have to explain
37:49
something, at least give them something to do so it doesn't look so boring
37:52
and it's like, oh, yeah, they're doing something important that's going to
37:54
help advance the plot somewhere. But at the same time, and they're also
37:59
giving information in but not in an in a so direct way, so that
38:04
that really helps. That really helps keep your audience from falling asleep. For
38:08
one thing, and the other thing I can't stand when I'm watching not only
38:15
horror movies, but horror movies in general screenwriting is when they're so on the
38:17
nose with stuff like I know, look, I know, like if you
38:21
and me are in a scene and you and me are brothers and we really
38:22
need to talk about that we're brothers, or that we that the story is
38:28
reliant that we that the audience knows that you and I are related. You
38:31
know, you don't go hi, brother, how are you from the same
38:36
mother? Like, you don't that, but I've seen that as opposed to
38:39
doing something in the dialogue that's like, oh, you know, because you're
38:45
always Mom's favorite, that that one line says that, Okay, that's established
38:49
that we're brothers now, as opposed to saying hello brother, Yeah, well
38:53
a good line about that. Uh, it's at the beginning of the Abyss,
39:00
he gets off, he gets off, he gets off the video call
39:04
with his wife. But at that point we don't know that, and he's
39:07
like, God, I hate that bitch. And then the other guy says,
39:09
probably shouldn't have married her then, So such a brilliant line. And
39:14
Cameron is and I've said this on the show many times, Cameron is one
39:16
of the most underrated screenwriters. I think one of the most underreated screenwriters in
39:21
history, because he's such a predominant. He's known as a director and obviously
39:25
one of the most successful to actually the most successful, depending on the gross
39:30
numbers, one of the most successful directors of all time. But his writing
39:36
is his read the scripture Aliens, and it's a master work. It's some
39:39
absolute master work. Oh yeah, yeah. I try to point people towards
39:44
things and say like, you can't well, obviously, that's a big thing
39:50
in screenwriting is watch movies that you watch movies, if they're good or bad,
39:55
watch them because you can't learn. You're not gonna learn as much from
39:59
the good as came from the bads. Like, well that's what you don't
40:00
do. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back
40:09
to the show, but also read the screenplays and went behind it, so
40:15
then you can see, especially if you can get a copy of the production
40:17
drafts that actually was used, so you can see what they cut out.
40:22
I mean, you try to figure out why they did that, why it
40:23
was cut out for time or anything like that, so then you can fine
40:27
tune your process when you write, saying Okay, this might not work,
40:30
but I'll leave it in and try to keep it lean and mean if you
40:36
can. Yeah. And I think that it's a lot harder to learn from
40:40
really good scripts than it is to learn from really bad scripts, because when
40:45
you read Tarantino or Cameron or you know, or some of these master screenwriters,
40:50
they make it look so easy that you're like, well, it's kind
40:54
of like looking at a painting by Da Vinci, Like it's not that easy.
41:00
Yet, when you watch a bad movie and you're like, oh,
41:02
that that character shouldn't have said that, or the plots, you learn a
41:07
lot. It's a lot easier to fix bad than it is to emulate perfection.
41:10
Yeah, Yeah, like a Plan nine from outer Space or Monos Fans
41:15
of Fate or anything like that. The room, the room, yeah that
41:19
on that one. I'm still scratching my head about. It's like, okay,
41:22
it got made. I don't know. Really. The Room is arguing
41:25
one of the greatest films of all time, and you can only watch it
41:28
with other people. If you don't watch it with other people, it's sad,
41:31
but especially if you can watch it with other filmmakers, which is what
41:35
I last time I saw it was at sun Dance with my crew while we
41:37
were shooting a movie, and none of them had seen it before, and
41:40
we're all just yelling at the screen. Why are you using the same stock
41:44
footage shot twice? Is he humping her belly button? Why is there a
41:47
football scene? What is going on? It's so great? And Tommy Wuiso's
41:55
never going to say. He's like, well, I guess it's one of
42:00
those Well you just don't understand it. No, He's like, no,
42:04
this is all part of my plan. I wanted to make a spoof.
42:07
No, you didn't. You wanted to make the greatest movie of all time.
42:10
And the reason why it's the greatest movie now is because you actually intended
42:15
it to be that. If you intended it to be a spoof, it
42:16
would have died on the vine. Yeah, I can see that. I
42:22
mean I can take away a lesson from Kubrick as well. You don't have
42:25
to serve all the answers on a silver platter to your audience. Kubrick.
42:32
Yeah. The Shining in two thousand and one premiered. That was the Cineramatome.
42:38
I think there were a lot of a list stars from the time watching
42:44
it and they came out. One of them it was Rock Hudson. He
42:47
said, like, what the hell did I just watch? And people were
42:52
always calling or writing to him asking questions about what what did this mean?
42:57
And what did that mean? And he actually loved those kinds of things because
43:01
he said, like, if you're walking away from a film and you're asking
43:04
questions and you're starting a dialogue about it, then I've done my job.
43:07
So I mean, it's just Shining is a perfect example of that. I
43:10
mean, if you want to talk about horror movies, argue one of the
43:14
greatest horror movies of all time, even though it is very far removed from
43:17
King's original work, but as a piece of art, as a piece of
43:22
cinema, what he did is a master work. And I always found that
43:28
movie to probably be one of the scariest, not particularly because there's a lot
43:32
of jump jump scares and there's maybe a couple, but it is that it's
43:37
terrifying on a psychological level. And I found out because I'm a Kooper count
43:44
that he actually went to ad agencies and learned about subliminable, subliminal advertising,
43:51
so he would sneak there's stuff inside of the Shining that's built just to screw
43:55
with a psychologically Oh yeah, yeah, the devices, no, the stuff
44:01
that he did in the Shining where it's just like it's terrifying and you can't
44:06
put you can't point at it. Like in Freddie you're like, oh,
44:08
Freddy scares the hell out of me, or Jaws like, oh that scares
44:13
the hel Me or the haunted house. But in China you're just like,
44:15
it's about a dude losing his mind and is about to kill his family,
44:19
which is also a terrifying idea that your father could lose his mind and kill
44:25
you, Like that's also a very very primal, primal fear that's I'm close
44:34
to you, that you love and that loves you, is suddenly he's just
44:37
going to snap and try to kill you, right, Let alone, your
44:39
father or your mother, but I think specifically the father figure in throughout humanity.
44:45
I think, isn't there some sort of thing that the baby when it's
44:50
born within like the first few weeks, looks more like the dad evolutionary that,
44:54
so the dad doesn't kill it thinking that it's something somebody else's baby or
44:58
something along those lines. Yeah, it's something really deep seated. But then
45:02
adding all the craziness, and then I mean, I'm assuming you saw Room
45:06
was it Room? Two? Yeah? Yeah? Two three seven? Oh
45:08
my god, what a great movie. Like you just sit there going,
45:12
well that that makes sense, like why did he do that? Why is
45:15
that window go nowhere? What are you doing Stanley? Yeah, Well that's
45:21
That's the funny thing about Kubrick that I always I loved is that he was
45:23
just a stickler for detail with everything, and it's like, if it's in
45:29
there, it's in there for a reason that he had in his mind.
45:31
So if you find it, he wanted it there. Yeah, you're not
45:37
gonna make mist You're not gonna make mistakes. He doesn't make those kind of
45:40
like oh that just kind of fell into it, like no, he's he
45:43
spends three years forty five six years, seven years prepping a film, so
45:47
it was insane. Now, one thing that horror movies have a lot of
45:52
is disposable characters. Yep. Can you explain why there's so many disposable characters
45:58
in horror movies? Okay, So to me, the disposable character is one
46:02
who if you can get them to convey some important piece of information, that's
46:07
great. But usually you want something like the victim, Like you need somebody
46:13
to be the victim of something. I'm trying to remember that one well in
46:19
Jaws. In Jaws, the very first the very first victim at the beginning
46:22
of the movie, the girl. Yep, we don't know who she is.
46:25
All we know she's a pretty girl swimming in the ocean at night,
46:29
which obviously is not a good idea, right, And then you see her
46:32
just get yanked a little bit, and then she's trying to stay above the
46:35
water, and then boom, she's gone. She's there to convey the information
46:39
to the audience, like there's something in the water. It's big, and
46:43
it's hungry, and it ate her very quick, very very quickly. The
46:47
beginning of the movie Prophecy, That's what I'm thinking of. Christopher walk In.
46:52
Yeah no, no, actually the one from the seventies. It's the
46:55
Environmental has armand Esante in it. Actually. Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
47:00
The very beginning, you have these guys that are hunting out in the woods
47:05
with some dogs, and the dogs kind of go over a cliff with they're
47:09
on ropes or something, and then you hear the dogs just like start freaking
47:14
out, and then you don't hear anything, and they start climbing down and
47:19
you see it from one of the they've got like spiel Anker helmets on,
47:22
so they're they're going down into this like curbass, I guess. And you
47:29
see really from one guy's perspective after he's been yanked down in there and he's
47:35
on the ground, he's all he's already bloody, but you just you hear
47:37
something coming at him and he's just screaming his head off as he's about to
47:40
get torn apart by this mythical beast thing that's insane. Now, what are
47:50
some of the common pitfalls in horror screenwriting? Uh? The one things I've
47:54
seen a lot of is it's it's actually not just horror, but it expands
48:00
everything. Uh, writing too much description in scene action, where it's like
48:06
like, okay, look at what is It's called scene action. Things are
48:08
happening, make it happen. Don't describe the books on the bookshelf or anything
48:15
like that. It's like they don't care about that unless it's unless it's really
48:17
important that your character has red hair and it's going to become important later.
48:21
Don't don't even bother divulging that information. You don't have to, right,
48:27
And that is absolutely true. And that's why I always called screenwriting the high
48:30
coup of writing narrative writing, because it's it's you've got to say a lot
48:36
more with less, and that's the that's the that's the art of it,
48:37
as opposed to a novel, where you can do a page of the book
48:42
and the leather bound glisten duffy. Yeah, I I. I try to
48:51
tell people the first five pages in a horror script are the most important.
48:57
You got to get to the point really fast, which you don't have to
49:01
get the entire point. You say, like, there's something dangerous in the
49:04
woods that's killing people, Okay, explain in five pages, show in five
49:09
pages what makes it so dangerous to go in the woods, or don't go
49:15
into that house. You know, somebody somebody got murdered in there, like
49:20
thirty years ago and it's haunted. You got that first wave. If you
49:22
can even do it in less that's even better. Well Jaws is a perfect
49:27
example. Yeah, And if you can keep it under five, great,
49:30
And then once you've got that, then you could you got a good framework
49:34
to build on because then you can say, like, all right, how
49:37
much do we show or not show? Well? The nice thing about horror
49:38
is it's about not showing as much as it is about showing. Yeah,
49:44
I mean, it's cock I'm sure it's just not the first to do this.
49:47
But he always said that you'll you want to hear the murder behind the
49:52
door, you don't want to actually see it because it's going to be a
49:54
lot more terrifying that way. And it's it's very very true. I mean
49:59
that after work of the psycho shower scene, we'll be right back after a
50:04
word from our sponsor, and now back to the show, which is you
50:15
don't ever see the knife go inn, but we do in our mind.
50:20
Yeah, and then you see the blood trickle the train. Yeah, yeah,
50:27
I mean there's a document there's a documentary just dedicated to the shower scene.
50:30
Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. It's so good. It's so
50:34
good, just the deep analysis of it, it's like, wow, Okay,
50:37
that's pretty awesome. The same thing with reservoir docs the ear scene,
50:45
because they pan away when he's about to cut the guy's ear off and all
50:51
you hear is him screaming, and then later on you see the guy with
50:54
the ear saying hello. Did they actually I remember that, I'm not sure
50:59
if i'mar in the lore. Did Quentin shoot the ear and then shot that
51:02
other version just to see it or you or he's had that idea, like
51:07
you know, it's let's pan away, which obviously just makes the scene so
51:10
much more oh gruesome and terrifying and oh it's it's it's absolutely insanity. Oh
51:17
yeah, and uh that's that's part of with horror what I call the like
51:23
the million il m theory of your audience's imagination has the power of a million
51:30
il ms that like you could not pay, you do not have enough money
51:36
in your budget to pay for the kind of effects that you'd want. But
51:39
by simply moving it away, panning away, or not showing it, but
51:44
you just hear it, you know, sound is half the pictures, so
51:45
if you can if you can get a good foldy mix, then then that's
51:51
a lot easier to do and a lot cheaper to do than say, coming
51:54
up with a bunch of gore and makeup effects and things like that. You
51:58
can probably show the after effects you want. But no, there is a
52:01
story. I mean, this movie we were to talk about a little bit
52:07
of a side note here, but Taxi Driver not arguably a horror movie,
52:12
but definitely a disturbing one and definitely a pretty bloody one as well. Talking
52:17
about filmmakers, the lore is, and I actually heard this Quentin Tarantina was
52:23
telling this story and he didn't even know if it was real yet, because
52:27
I don't think he'd ever confirmed it with Marty or not. But the way
52:30
the story goes is that in Taxi Driver, they went through the rating process
52:38
in nineteen seventy six and it came back as X rated, and then the
52:45
studio executive said, you're going to have to cut this or this out or
52:47
else this movie is not going to get released. And Marty at that age,
52:52
at that time, was so distraught that someone was going to, i
52:55
mean kill his master work that he got a loaded gun. Uh sat in
53:04
his room and got drunk with the loaded gun, and uh a bunch of
53:09
his friends came over, which were like the Palma I think Stephen uh E.
53:15
Coppola. They all came over because they heard what was going on,
53:19
and they talked him out of not going to kill the executive. Yeah,
53:28
but then the other the way he got a wound. That did you know?
53:30
You know how he got the R rating? I think, what didn't
53:34
you read just resubmit it. Nope, he he did resubmit it, but
53:37
he just took one point off the red in the blood, so the blood's
53:43
a little bit more burgundy as it is opposed to a bright red. That's
53:47
all he did. He didn't cut, that's it. And he did not
53:52
cut. He did not cut a frame, and that's that's. Yeah.
53:58
I can believe that has something that would have happened. The funny thing Texas
54:04
Chainsawn Masker got an X rating when it first came out, and it was
54:07
like, but so it's so gory. I'm like, if you go and
54:10
watch it, nobody actually except for except for one guy gets hung up on
54:15
a meat hook and leather Face gets himself in the leg with the chainsaw.
54:22
It's like a tiny cut. Really. Uh, there's no real I mean,
54:27
there's no gore on screen. Really, it's like got skeletons you've got.
54:31
It's disturbing. It's a disturbing yeah right, it's it's all the implied
54:35
horror of things, the implied terror of Like there's a scary guy. He's
54:38
wearing a human base for his as a mask, and he's got a chainsaw
54:43
and it's like yep, okay, yeah x rating. Now, what advice
54:50
do you have for screenwriters wanting to add twists and turns to their horror screenplay?
54:54
Which I arguably one of the best twists of all time is Six Sense.
55:00
Uh. And if you haven't seen that movie, I'm sorry, we're
55:02
gonna now ruin it for you. It's not our faults as it came out
55:06
in the nineties, not our fault. But yeah, that's one of the
55:07
greatest twists of all time? Is there any And then of course m Knight.
55:12
I think he's been fighting to get back to that ever since. Uh,
55:15
and he kind of I think he almost pigeonholed himself into like Okay,
55:20
now, every single script I do has to have an insane twist at the
55:22
end of it or else it's not an M Night Shyamalan thing because it was
55:24
just so powerful. But I'm a huge fan of M. Knight. I
55:28
think he's he says his missus, but everybody has his business. Well,
55:31
I would say, if you want to include a twist, just make it.
55:35
Try to make it something that's going to take it to a whole,
55:37
nole level. It's like, Okay, you think you're watching this straight up
55:40
slash reflect and at the end you put a twist in where it's like,
55:45
oh, well, this guy is actually killing people for a reason. Every
55:51
bad only say. Every villain is telling their own story. They're the hero,
55:54
They're the hero of their story. Absolutely. I got to try to
55:59
use the classic one I use is Vader from Star Wars is like, yeah,
56:04
he's in his mind, he's he's actually a good guy because he's trying
56:07
to stop the world, stop the galaxy from collapsing into chaos, and well,
56:14
yeah, it didn't quite work out for him. But or Ricardo Mon's
56:20
upon Cohn in Star Trek two probably one of the greatest villains ever on screen
56:27
that I've ever seen. He feels like he is righteously justified in doing everything
56:34
he did to Kirk because he stranded him on that planet. The planet was
56:40
basically destroyed and turned into a desert, his wife died, all this other
56:46
stuff. It's like, yeah, yeah, the minute I get out of
56:50
here, I'm coming for you. So you don't have to just have a
56:54
generic villain. That's one way to actually add a twist to it. My
57:00
Bloody Balancine is a good example of that horror genre. You can even make
57:05
the villain sympathetic in that way where look, I can kind of understand why
57:09
he's why he or she is doing this well, I mean Hannibal, I
57:13
mean Hannibal Lecter, I mean, oh yeah, I mean you. He
57:16
almost becomes a hero. Not in Sounds and the Lambs kind kind of becomes
57:22
Okay, you could argue it, but he's definitely an anti hero if he
57:25
is a hero at all. But he is not the main villain built Buffalo
57:30
Bill is in the first Silence of the Lambs, but the other movies that
57:32
came afterwards, he's essentially the hero of those. Hannibal and I mean,
57:39
the brilliance of that character and of Anthony Hopkins' portrayal is in silence and limbs.
57:45
You're rooting for Hannibal. You you want him to get out do you
57:50
arguably want him to eat some people? And it's disturbing. It's a disturbing
57:54
as an audience member that you're rooting for a cannibalistic, stereal killer. Right,
58:01
well, you got the the he prefers to pre range rude. So
58:06
it's like, oh, well, he's taking care of her problem we all
58:08
have, right, he's not eating the little girl in the puppy Yeah,
58:15
but I mean he also has very well, I guess you could say refined
58:17
tastes because yes, faba beans obviously yes. And also it's like, okay,
58:22
well he he ate that one, the one floutest in the orchestra because
58:27
he wasn't playing right to be you wanted the orchestra to sound better. But
58:32
you know, but we laugh. But that's in a great character, like
58:37
a great thing for that character to be because in his whacked out world that
58:43
makes sense. Oh in the ending, I mean when he's like, I'm
58:45
gonna have an old friend for dinner, one of the greatest ending lines in
58:47
movie history. You want him to eat him, You want him. That
58:52
guy was such a Prick. It's just absolutely a brilliant portrayal, and that
58:57
that one the Oscar. I think it is one of the few horror movies
59:00
that won the Oscar. I don't think what is it the first I'm not
59:02
even sure it actually it's swept pretty yeah, all the five majors. Yeah,
59:09
yeah, so and then actually I think that tied, but it was.
59:14
It was one of the first ones I think that actually got serious recognition
59:17
by the Academy. And just by it's not like we go back to Poltergeist
59:23
or something like that. It's like, oh, here's here's a fun summer
59:27
horror film. It's like, no, this is real serious, dark stuff,
59:30
psychological horror that you the monster is a human, but he's super intelligent,
59:37
both both Buffalo Bill and Hannibal lecture. But you h you really,
59:45
yeah, you want to cheer on him. You want Buffalo Billy at Cot.
59:51
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back
59:58
to the show. I mean, that's just kind of given even I don't
1:00:04
know, I keep going back to how was it Clerks too with when they
1:00:09
were parodying the whole scene with the Goodbye horses with that, But yeah,
1:00:16
I mean even Buffalo Bill. He's he's a smart guy. So you're dealing
1:00:21
with highly intelligent people who are also uh, well, in one case cannibalistic,
1:00:27
the other one is just making a suit of suit out of women,
1:00:30
and uh they're so terrified. It's just such a terrifying Yeah. And and
1:00:37
and for screenwriters listening to make a villain, just a couple of decisions changes
1:00:46
Hannibal from the guy we're rooting for to an absolutely despicable person. And in
1:00:52
the in the hands of a worse screenwriter and a worst director and a worst
1:00:57
performer, Hannibal could have been a throwaway character who had no depth. There
1:01:01
we really didn't love. What makes us love Silence of the Lambs it is
1:01:05
not only the plot, but it's Hannibal and his interactions with Clarice. But
1:01:09
Buffalo Bill does nothing redeemable. Where Hannibal, even when he's escaping and he's
1:01:19
like, you know, terrifying that, you know, eating those guys and
1:01:23
they kicked the dog in many ways, and that's the things like, if
1:01:27
you want you want to make a villain villain, just have him kick a
1:01:29
dog or slap a baby, and he's an automatic villain. Or she's an
1:01:32
automatic villain. Well that's what the that's what the screenwriter did with Hannibal.
1:01:37
But Hannibal was the dog, so you wanted the dog to get revenge in
1:01:40
many ways, yep. I I did kind of go there with the curse
1:01:45
as well. We had this one character that was a little girl that was
1:01:52
the daughter of the acting sheriff, and the monster gets her, and later
1:02:00
on the sheriff, the acting sheriff played by Lewis mandel Or, he finds
1:02:07
basically her hand and that's it. That's all it's left to her. At
1:02:12
that point, it was like, yeah, I killed a kid. Okay.
1:02:16
It's like I had to go there because I had to give him enough
1:02:20
strong enough reason to number one, I was trying to kill two versial one
1:02:22
stone with us, so it was intended. Yeah, I was trying to
1:02:28
make sure that he had a strong enough reason to go after this thing to
1:02:31
believe that it was real, but also to let the main character off the
1:02:36
hook, because he kept thinking that the main character was the one doing all
1:02:38
this, all this killing. So I was like, well, I guess
1:02:43
I'm just gonna have to well, person, I killed the cat and then
1:02:45
I killed her so I didn't say the cat I killed it. No,
1:02:52
I'm going to ask you a few questions to ask all my guests, sir,
1:02:54
what are three screenplays every screenwriterh read? Oh? Good one. I
1:03:00
really think Aliens James Cameron script is a good one to read, especially if
1:03:07
you can get a copy that's got everything, especially stuff that was like you
1:03:10
eventually cut out. That's a really good read. A little longer, but
1:03:15
not bad. North By Northwest by Hitchcock. Yes, definitely want to read
1:03:22
that one. And I do want to say, read Clockwork Orange. Read
1:03:34
the script for Clockwork Orange. But at the same time, if you haven't
1:03:37
read the novel that it's based on by Anthony Burges, just get that too,
1:03:42
just so you can see how far Cooper deviated. Yeah. Yeah,
1:03:47
But as far as it being close to the material, it's like, okay,
1:03:50
I can see, I can see where he drew this from. You
1:03:52
want to if you want to, if you're especially if you're getting into adaptations,
1:03:54
you that's a good one to look at when you want to compare the
1:03:58
two because you have basically a record of here's what Anthony Burgess wrote and here's
1:04:02
what Kubrich wrote, and that's what's on the screen, so you can actually
1:04:05
follow that path. And I watched I watched Clockwork Orange the other day for
1:04:10
the I hadn't seen any years and I just watched just the first fifteen minutes.
1:04:16
How that was ever released is beyond me. How that got passed censors,
1:04:21
how that got a studio put money behind that. It is if I
1:04:27
got released today, it would be it would there will be an uproar that
1:04:32
nobody would even understand. And he was doing it in the seventies. It's
1:04:38
absolutely remarkable, really, is right. And I think part of why he
1:04:43
was able to get away with that was after two thousand and one, which
1:04:46
was huge budget he was he really couldn't find because of the you know,
1:04:55
box office numbers and everything with that, he wasn't able to get the kind
1:05:00
of budgets that he wanted similar so he's like, well, what can I
1:05:05
do? That's I can just kind of runn and gun it almost Yeah,
1:05:10
it's an it almost looks like an indie film. I know exactly what you're
1:05:12
saying. Yeah, yeah, And he didn't have exactly a really huge budget
1:05:16
on it, but he was because of that, he was I think,
1:05:19
got a lot more control leniency at least from the from the studio producing it,
1:05:27
and then Warner Brothers was the distributor, and I think there was some
1:05:33
problems. It did get initially an X rating. He did have to cut
1:05:40
a few bits and pieces. That's one of the reasons why the wayam tell
1:05:43
overture scene isn't as it's super fast because he originally did sorry, he really
1:05:49
did shoot it just regular speed, but it's like, okay, if we
1:05:54
speed it up, it's gonna be harder for people to you know, make
1:05:57
out stuff in there. So because he was having like a menaje ato it
1:06:00
was it was Yeah, it's pretty graphic, Yeah, with two underage girls.
1:06:03
So no, I didn't even realize it was Jesus Christ, that's true.
1:06:06
Yeah, we got away with stuff is beyond me. Yeah. The
1:06:12
the book, the book was a lot more uh graphic about that. It
1:06:15
was not wants to say, completely contensual. So yeah, so that again,
1:06:23
that's another one of those things like here's how you can skate around stuff.
1:06:26
Nowadays you can release video on demand digital uh plenty of platforms and without
1:06:31
ratings, without ratings. Yeah, and that's that's kind of nice if you
1:06:38
wanted to. But if you ever want your things to go, you want
1:06:41
your film to go onto like say you want to get it on HBO or
1:06:44
something like that, Yeah, I get read yeah, or or even even
1:06:48
show Time. I mean, I'm still looking at David Lynch's revival of Twin
1:06:55
Peaks and it's like, Okay, that a big budget and he actually finally
1:07:00
got to do a lot of things he wanted to do with that show and
1:07:02
still further kind of explore the horror in that too, which was nice.
1:07:09
And he even added Kubrickian moment as well in one episode. I call it
1:07:12
the kupb Brickian moment when they're flashing back to the creation of Bob with the
1:07:16
nuclear test blasts, and that whole sequence is like, yeah, this is
1:07:20
like the Stargate almost Stargate sequences too. That's a one. Now, what
1:07:27
advice would you give a screenwriter trying to break into the business today? You
1:07:31
don't have to go and hit studios up you. I mean, nowadays,
1:07:38
now camera technology what it is and everything else, you can you can be
1:07:44
a Robert Rodriguez if you want. You can. You can write it,
1:07:49
you can polish it, you can actually put it up yourself. If you
1:07:51
want. There are a lot more alternative avenues now then, like oh I
1:07:57
got to go get an agent, and I have to get representation, and
1:08:00
I have to do all these writing assignments and things like that. You don't
1:08:02
necessarily have to do that. These days, they're filmmakers popping up all over
1:08:08
the place, and especially like this past year. Uh it's with the with
1:08:14
the lockdown happening and everything. One thing that I noticed was a lot of
1:08:18
solo filmmakers were making essentially existential horror films and putting them up short films,
1:08:25
putting them up on YouTube, and they were They're actually pretty amazing because it's
1:08:29
like, well, I got nothing better to do, I got a camera,
1:08:30
it's me and I'm trapped in here, so let's make that happen.
1:08:33
Yeah, that makes something that happen. Now, what is the lesson that
1:08:36
took it the longest to learn, whether in the film industry or in life.
1:08:41
M Uh, basically, Uh, there's what you know, and there's
1:08:46
a whole lot of stuff that you don't know, and it's going to take
1:08:49
you a long time to figure it out. So if you're in your twenties,
1:08:54
uh, you don't think you know everything I mean, you think you
1:08:58
know everything, but you're probably not going to figure it all out and see
1:09:00
it maybe your mid thirties, and then even then it's not everything I know.
1:09:05
Yeah, but that could be said every decade. You think you knew
1:09:10
everything, but you don't. But I would agree with you. Yeah,
1:09:12
it's going to take a minute that this is not going to happen overnight.
1:09:15
You're going to learn a whole bunch along the way. And can you tell
1:09:18
me about the work that you're doing with the Able Artist Foundation. Ah?
1:09:23
Yes, that is Stephen Lattinis is a film composer who he's blind. He
1:09:30
has a red nightis pigmentosa. And one day we actually we talked on the
1:09:36
phone and he said, Hey, I'm thinking about trying to do this nonprofit
1:09:40
that helps disabled musicians be able to you know, get not only access to
1:09:47
hardware and software and things like that for composing, but also to promote the
1:09:55
work of disabled musicians. We'll be right back after word from our sponsor and
1:10:03
now back to the show. And he ended up, well, I and
1:10:11
one other person, Stacey, we sat down and we actually came up with
1:10:16
the design and we built the thing out and we're actually just doing a refit
1:10:20
now on the whole thing, because now we're doing he's doing contests and grants
1:10:26
and everything else is really expanding very fast now. But yeah, an anybody
1:10:30
that's a partner company on there gets they offer all of their services and stuff
1:10:38
for basically fifty percent off, like the minimum you have to you can offer
1:10:42
a fifty percent. So once you're a verified disabled person, which there's a
1:10:46
verification process and it's actually not that hard to do. Once you do that,
1:10:51
then you have access to all these massive discounts on software and I think
1:10:58
even hardware and even so cool. Yeah, and it just keeps growing.
1:11:03
I think we're still getting suggestions from people. It's like, hey, you
1:11:06
got to hit these people up. It's like, okay, Well, and
1:11:10
Steven's really grown out from that to the point where he's he's become almost a
1:11:16
spokesperson now for disabled musicians and don't composers and everything, and that's that awesome.
1:11:27
And where can people find your movies and your books? Oh, they're
1:11:30
available on Amazon dot com. Yeah, there's The Curse, and there's also
1:11:35
that's the movie my main feature, and then horror screenwriting. The Nature of
1:11:41
Fear is unavailable on Amazon. I do have some short films up on YouTube
1:11:46
as well that I did. There was one I worked on him was supposed
1:11:50
to be a pilot for a web series called Asphalt She Wolves. Nice great
1:11:55
title, which is yeah, that was actually my my my writing partner on
1:11:59
that, producing partner help with that. And then Golden Opportunity, which is
1:12:05
more of a sci fi dystopian. It's kind of weird that I when I
1:12:12
look at back on it now, we shot it a few years before Trump
1:12:16
came president, and then I look at it and go like, this is
1:12:20
what could have happened. Very cool, man, Devin Man, thank you
1:12:27
so much for beating on the show. Man. I enjoyed our going down
1:12:31
the rabbit hole of horror, of horror and horror scriting, writing, and
1:12:34
just geeking out a little bit with another film geek. So I appreciate you
1:12:39
man, Thank you so much, No problem. I want to thank Devin
1:12:42
so much for coming on the show and dropping his terrifying knowledge bombs on the
1:12:47
Tribe today. Thank you so much, Devin. If you want to get
1:12:50
links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show
1:12:54
notes at any film also dot com Forward Slash seven thirty nine. If you
1:12:58
haven't already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe and leave
1:13:02
a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot,
1:13:05
guys. Thank you again so much for listening to guys. As always,
1:13:09
keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there,
1:13:13
and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle
1:13:15
podcast at Indie film hustle dot com. That's I N D I E F
1:13:19
I L M h U S T l E dot com.