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Sam Irvin: Living the Dream of Every Monster Kid · Movie Meltdown

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Hello, this is Caroline Munro, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: It's showtime.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: The following feature has been rated R by the Motion
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences
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  Speaker 2: and parental discretion is advised.
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  Speaker 3: Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power.
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: What's up, and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian, and
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  Speaker 4: this week we round out our coverage of Wonderfest. And
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  Speaker 4: I will say this is the grand finale, because this
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  Speaker 4: week I sit down with Sam Irvin. Sam is a director,
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  Speaker 4: a producer, a screenwriter.
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  Speaker 5: And as you're about to.
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  Speaker 4: Hear, he's had a lot of different jobs and a
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  Speaker 4: lot of amazing experiences. No, really. I've been doing this
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  Speaker 4: for quite a while now. I've talked to a lot
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: of different people over the years. But there are only
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: a few times that I've sat there listening and every
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: few minutes, my mind is completely blown by some amazing
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  Speaker 4: project that they got to work on or some legendary
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: person that they've come in contact with. And Sam is
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  Speaker 4: definitely one of those people. The phenomenal amount of awesome
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  Speaker 4: experiences he's had... Well, I won't even bother going into
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  Speaker 4: it because you're about to hear all about it directly
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  Speaker 4: from him. But first, I do want to give a
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  Speaker 4: big thanks to Bo and Dave and everyone over at
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: the staff helping to keep Wonderfest running. This convention is
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: a huge machine with many moving parts, and those parts
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: are continually in motion all weekend long. And I've seen
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: firsthand what a challenge it can be to make sure
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  Speaker 4: everything goes off without a hitch. And their staff is
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: terrific because I also know there are still many hitches
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: that come up along the way. But the crew here
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  Speaker 4: just rolls with the punches and keeps the fest running smoothly.
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  Speaker 4: So much so, most of the time, the patrons don't
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  Speaker 4: even know that there was a problem. And that's what
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  Speaker 4: you want in a good convention. They are an impressive group,
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  Speaker 4: and I am glad they have let Movie Meltdown become
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  Speaker 4: part of all of this. And I say it every year,
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  Speaker 4: but if you haven't made it here so far, start
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: making your plans for next year. In the past few weeks,
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  Speaker 4: you've heard a sample of just some of the great
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: guests that they bring to the show every year. And
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  Speaker 4: if you haven't seen the huge display of vinyl model kits... Well,
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  Speaker 4: you're missing out. But you don't have to miss out
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  Speaker 4: next time. Just go to wonderfest.com and start planning your
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  Speaker 4: trip to next year's Wonderfest. Alright, but now let's get
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  Speaker 4: right into it as we focus on director Sam Irvin. Well,
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  Speaker 4: I usually start at the very beginning, so I guess
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  Speaker 4: to let people know where you were born.
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  Speaker 1: Well, my name is Sam Irvin, and I was born
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  Speaker 1: in Asheville, North Carolina, longer ago than I would like
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  Speaker 1: to admit.
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  Speaker 4: We don't have to get into specifics. I don't with
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  Speaker 4: mine at this point. I've just given up. Numbers are meaningless.
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  Speaker 1: But it was a very long time ago. So I
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  Speaker 1: grew up in Asheville and went to film school at
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  Speaker 1: the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. And
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  Speaker 1: then moved to New York right after that to work
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  Speaker 1: as Brian De Palma's assistant. That was my first job
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  Speaker 1: in the business.
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  Speaker 4: I definitely needed to get there. But we skipped.
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  Speaker 5: We skipped a bit.
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  Speaker 4: Was this true? Were you like a movie theater legacy?
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  Speaker 4: Did you have movie theaters in your family?
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  Speaker 1: Yes. My grandfather was in the movie theater business. He
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  Speaker 1: worked for a big chain of movie theaters as the
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  Speaker 1: district manager for the Southeast. And then my father, he
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  Speaker 1: and a business partner own movie theaters. So they were
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  Speaker 1: competing with my grandfather, which was kind of interesting.
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  Speaker 4: That seemed like an interesting aspect. How personal did that get?
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  Speaker 1: Very friendly competition. And so I grew up. Being able
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  Speaker 1: to go to the movies for free and seeing movies
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  Speaker 1: as many times as I wanted, which was just an
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  Speaker 1: amazing thing.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that didn't happen then.
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  Speaker 6: No.
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  Speaker 4: Now kids have that freedom.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was long before videotape and all that
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  Speaker 1: kind of stuff and owning films in a collection. You
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  Speaker 1: just didn't have that when I grew up. So it
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  Speaker 1: was very unusual. And I, at a very young age,
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  Speaker 1: maybe starting around 10... I guess I started programming kitty
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  Speaker 1: matinees on Saturday at my dad's theater and they were
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  Speaker 1: all horror movies. And I would just, I would, you know,
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  Speaker 1: order all the movies that I hadn't seen or just
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  Speaker 1: stuff that I wanted to see again. And it was
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  Speaker 1: all Vincent price movies and hammer films and all that
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  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So it was just, you know, I'm
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  Speaker 1: a very spoiled brat.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, and that's the perfect ones to kind of,
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  Speaker 4: not only for you to get caught into it, but
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  Speaker 4: all the other kids you were bringing there. Like, we
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  Speaker 4: were talking about that recently, that, like, people will still
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  Speaker 4: to this day ask, like, well, what's a good horror
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  Speaker 4: movie for kids? And, like, I always go, like, super
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  Speaker 4: old school. I'm always like Universal Classics. If you get
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  Speaker 4: into anything from that era into the 60s and they
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  Speaker 4: like that, it's in their blood. They're automatically going to
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  Speaker 4: be horror fans.
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  Speaker 1: Totally.
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  Speaker 4: That's the perfect time to hook all those kids.
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  Speaker 1: I'm talking about in the 60s. Back then, there was
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  Speaker 1: a package of syndicated television package of all the great
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  Speaker 1: Universal Classics. It was called The Shock. That little reboot.
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  Speaker 1: And local channels could program those films. And a lot
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  Speaker 1: of local areas would have horror hosts. My hometown was
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  Speaker 1: very behind the curve on that. But they would run
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  Speaker 1: the shock package on Saturday afternoons. And it was called
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  Speaker 1: Shock Theater. But there was no host. It just had
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  Speaker 1: a title card that would come up with weird music
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  Speaker 1: and then the movie would play.
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  Speaker 4: We had a version of that, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So that was like about 2 o'clock in the afternoon
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  Speaker 1: on Saturdays. So I knew if I scheduled these kiddie
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  Speaker 1: matinee horror movies at my dad's theater in the morning,
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  Speaker 1: it had to be done in time for all those
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  Speaker 1: horror kids, all those monster kids like me to race
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  Speaker 1: home and watch Shock Theater. And There were 35 prints
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  Speaker 1: available of films from the 50s and 60s that I
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  Speaker 1: could bring to my dad's theater. The Universal Classics were
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  Speaker 1: a little old for that, even though there had been
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  Speaker 1: some real art releases and re-releases and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 1: Those prints, for whatever reason in our area, were not
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  Speaker 1: easy to come by. So it was the perfect blend because...
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  Speaker 1: all the classic Universal stuff was showing on TV in
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  Speaker 1: the afternoon.
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  Speaker 4: So you didn't need to play those anyway.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't need to play them. So we were doing
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  Speaker 1: the Vincent Price, Edgar Allan Poe, Roger Corman movies. We
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  Speaker 1: were doing the William Castle movies. We were doing all
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  Speaker 1: the Hammer films. So it was just a... I mean,
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  Speaker 1: if you were in Asheville, North Carolina around that time,
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  Speaker 1: there was an ample opportunity to see a lot of
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  Speaker 1: cool stuff.
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  Speaker 6: Nice.
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  Speaker 4: And it's all you're doing.
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  Speaker 1: Well, at least half of it sort of was.
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  Speaker 4: In the theater.
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  Speaker 1: In the theater.
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  Speaker 4: So coming out of that, is that because then at
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  Speaker 4: one point, didn't you get into fanzines?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Before we get into that, I do want to
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  Speaker 1: say that there was a seminal moment in my childhood
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  Speaker 1: that determined that I wanted to be a movie director,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: which was in 19... all right, I'm going to reveal
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  Speaker 1: my age. Okay, here we go. I was born in
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  Speaker 1: 1956 and I'm 60. I'll be 63 in a couple
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  Speaker 1: of weeks. Not buying any of those people. In 1964,
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  Speaker 1: when I was eight, my family took a cross country
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: trip to California to go to Disneyland and, you know,
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  Speaker 1: and Grand Canyon, do all those sites. And because of
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  Speaker 1: my dad's, um, being in the movie business, he was
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  Speaker 1: able to get a VIP tour at Warner Brothers Studios.
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  Speaker 1: So I was able to walk onto the set of
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  Speaker 1: Blake Edwards' The Great Race, where they were shooting an
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  Speaker 1: iceberg scene and a gigantic tank of water with Jack Lemmon,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood with antique cars, wave machines,
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  Speaker 1: huge wind machines, and.
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  Speaker 4: Storms.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it was just the most incredible scene to
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  Speaker 1: see them shoot. And the eyes just popped right out
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  Speaker 1: of my head.
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  Speaker 4: It's enough to capture any kid, really.
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  Speaker 1: I literally thought up until that time, if you needed
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  Speaker 1: to shoot a scene like that, you'd have to go
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  Speaker 1: to the North Pole and wait for a storm.
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  Speaker 4: I think a lot of people still don't realize what
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  Speaker 4: they can recreate and create from scratch sometimes in studio.
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  Speaker 1: And it was just unreal. And then I also got
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  Speaker 1: to go to another soundstage where they were shooting a
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: thriller called Two on a Guillotine with Dean Jones, Connie Stevens,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: and Cesar Romero. It was actually written for Vincent Price,
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  Speaker 1: who was busy, and they got Cesar Romero and said.
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  Speaker 4: Odd maneuver, but all right.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And it was directed by William Conrad, who was the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: heavyset actor who later was on Canon TV series and stuff.
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  Speaker 4: I see him at three in the morning on MeTV
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  Speaker 4: all the time.
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  Speaker 1: There you go. And as we were just watching, William
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  Speaker 1: Conrad came over to me and he said... There's a
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  Speaker 1: part for a little red-headed, freckle-faced kid, and I'd love
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: for you to play that. And I was like, oh,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: my God. I'm being discovered the first day I walk
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: onto a film studio. And he said it was going
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: to be shooting in a week. And my parents were like, well,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: you can't do that. We are due to be in
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon on that day. And I'm like, oh.
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  Speaker 4: Disowning you all.
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  Speaker 1: You're kidding me. Emancipation.
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: I'm moving here right now to be a movie star.
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  Speaker 1: Literally. If I could have been emancipated at eight, I
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: would have. And I've never forgave my parents for that.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: But then I took, you know, my dad had an
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  Speaker 1: eight millimeter home movie camera and I just took it
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  Speaker 1: out of his hands and never gave it back and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: just started directing little movies and, you know, Dracula films
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  Speaker 1: with my brother. playing Dracula wearing a black beach towel
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: for a cape and lots of ketchup and plastic fangs
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: that they handed out at the double bill of Plague
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of the Zombies and Dracula, Prince of Darkness. You know,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like all, my childhood was, you know,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: reading famous monsters of film land religiously. You know, it
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  Speaker 1: was just very stereotypical monster kid stuff. growing up in
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: that era for sure.
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  Speaker 4: But you were already specifically it was directing like did
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  Speaker 4: it consciously or you were just doing it because you
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: needed you everybody else to shut up and do it
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: you wanted to happen in the movie or was it
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: already like in your head of like oh no this
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  Speaker 4: is what you do to make a movie is it
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  Speaker 4: was it a conscious enough.
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  Speaker 1: Thing it was very conscious yeah yep absolutely.
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  Speaker 4: Because i remember yeah we shot some sort of weird
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: sci-fi thing on a super 8 when i was a
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  Speaker 4: kid and I don't think anybody was in charge. I
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: remember we had a basic idea, and then I think
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: the film got ruined. I don't think anyone ever even
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  Speaker 4: saw this mess.
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  Speaker 1: When I think back on it, yeah, I'm a bit
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: of a control freak. I was like, I knew exactly
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. Nobody else, none of my
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: friends or whatever, they just didn't seem like they had
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the initiative or whatever. So I just took charge. we
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  Speaker 1: are making a movie.
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  Speaker 4: If you have the vision, shut up kids and get
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  Speaker 4: behind me. You're doing this.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. So I'm getting back to your other question about
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: the fanzine. When I was in my, like seven rounds, 1972,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I started a fanzine called bizarre and it was a
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: horror film, um, publication. You know, the first issue was very,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: pretty crude. Um, But it was, you know, offset pages
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: that were stapled, you know, that kind of thing. I've
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: seen these.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: I might have made some of these.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And the first issue was basically just reviews
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  Speaker 1: and lots of photos that I had gotten through my
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: dad's theater and movie ads and from the press books
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: and things like that that I kind of collected together.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: And I put Dr. Five's Rises again on the cover.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: Was it actual artwork?
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: It was kind of an ad, kind of a trade
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: ad that doesn't get seen a whole lot. And it
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  Speaker 1: was really cool. I loved it. But then by issue two,
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  Speaker 1: I was like, you know, nobody cares about my opinions
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: of movies. And I really wanted to start interviewing all
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: these great actors. So I started writing to them, especially
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the Hammer film writers. people in england and i would
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: write to them care of hammer film productions i had
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: their address.
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: The plan to like ask questions over the.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Mail yes okay with questionnaires yeah so for my issue
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  Speaker 1: two uh i had interviews with christopher lee peter cushing
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: ingrid pitt and uh and a Peter Sazdy, who directed
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Countess Dracula and some other films, and Taste the Blood
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: of Dracula.
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: It was such a different world. Even with just the
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: promotion end of movies at that point, the fact that
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: they would have promotions set up to mail out 8x10s
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: that were signed to anybody that won them, versus the
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: industry that it's become now. But that just used to
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: be part of the promotion machine.
• 15:17
  Speaker 7: It was.
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  Speaker 1: And these actors, especially... Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price.
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  Speaker 1: I started writing to all these people and they would
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: send me photos. They were just the nicest, nicest people
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: and would respond. And so, I mean, it was incredible.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So then I just couldn't believe my luck of getting,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you know, the, like the top people. Um, so then the,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and I did one issue a year. I worked on
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: it in the summer during my summer break. So, um,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: For issue three, which would have been the summer of 1974,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I graduated from high school and I bamboozled my parents
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: into sending me to England.
• 15:58
  Speaker 8: This is a good trick, by the way.
• 16:00
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: I have not made it.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: So I could interview these people in person. And since
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I had already been corresponding with them, I immediately wrote to.
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: Them, I'm coming. I'll be there.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be there.
• 16:13
  Speaker 8: So.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, the greatest story is Christopher Lee invited me
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to have lunch with him at Pinewood Studios when I
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: get over there. And this is the honest God's truth.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: He didn't even tell me what film he was working
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: on at that time. You know, there's no Google. There's
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: no way to even find out. And it's not.
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: Press, you know, pushing it. And like, again, it's such
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: a machine.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: So I get to Pinewood. We meet in the commissary,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: which I assumed would be plastic trays, you know, like
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: going through a cafeteria line like at school. Oh, no,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: this is a fancy restaurant with, you know, white linen
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: tablecloths and waiters and uniforms. And it was absolutely lovely.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And we're having lunch, and I'm interviewing him. And, oh,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: by the way, what is the film that you're working
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: on right now? And he says, oh, it's a film
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: called The Man with the Golden Gun. Oh, just a
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: little James Bond movie, you know. Oh, James Bond.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: You might have heard of that guy.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So after lunch, he goes, do you want to
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: come back and watch us shoot the rest of the afternoon?
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh my gosh. So, I mean, I
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: was as big, almost as big a Bond fan as
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I was horror films. And so I go back and
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: he introduced, he first, before, I guess he had been
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: released for lunch earlier than the rest of the people.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: For years.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: Reworked the day for me.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Or he finished shooting a scene and they had other
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: stuff to do without him or whatever. I'm leaving. But
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I remember he takes me back to the set and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: literally we had about an hour where no one was there.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: It was just... They were all at lunch. So.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: Were you playing with the golden man? Shooting people?
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: He was giving me this private tour of the Bond sets.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: It was unreal.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: See, if you had your cell phone camera.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: If the kid version of that was an option then.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: So, so crazy that I don't have pictures of it.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: So he's showing me Scaramanga's lair and we're walking through
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: and I go, I see There's a little alcove, this
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: very incidental walk-by in the movie. You wouldn't even notice it.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: But he played the man with the golden gun, the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: villain of the movie. And he not only had the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: golden gun, he had a third nipple.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: One of the many things you don't know about Christopher. Right.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Anyway, this little alcove had... these glass cases lined on
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the walls, and it was a collection of butterflies. Just
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: some little quirky thing that the production designer, Tony Adam,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I guess, decided this character should collect butterflies. So I'm
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: looking at them closely, and I turn to Christopher Lee
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and say, are these real? And he goes, this is
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: a James Bond movie, not a Hammer film. And the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: way he said Hammer Films was like his nostrils were
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: flaring like it was excrement on the bottom of his shoe. And,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you know, being a Hammer Film nut, I was kind.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: Of offended by that attitude.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: But, you know, to his credit, I mean, Christopher Lee really,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, he did look down on some of the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: horror films that he had done. He didn't like the
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: word horror, he was very snooty about having to split
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: hairs about, well, I like terror. I think it's a
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: much better way to describe the films. But he really
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to work with the big boys. Yeah. Now he
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: was on a freaking James Bond movie.
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: Once you're in a different category, you don't get those.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Cast calls anymore. Yeah, so now he's on this perch,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: you know, on a huge film. And so, you know,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: his ego was a little bloated at that particular moment
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: in time. But as we all know, he went on
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to work with the most incredible directors. Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Tim Burton, Peter Jackson, George Lucas... On and on and on.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, he did it. I mean, the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: guy did it. The irony of it, of course, is
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that every single one of those giant directors wanted to
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: work with him because they were Hammer Film.
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: Saw him in a Hammer Film with that guy.
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: With that guy.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Anyway, it was just kind of amusing. Okay, so then
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: people start coming back from lunch. And it's very casual
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: because they haven't started shooting yet. And so he's introducing
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: me to Roger Moore and Britt Eklund and Maude Adams
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and the director, Guy Hamilton. And I watched them shoot
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the rest of the afternoon. It was, you know, unfortunately,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: it was basically a dinner scene.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: Action-packed dinner.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, an action-packed dinner. There were no car chases, explosions.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: There was no shagging. But, you know, it was still,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I got to watch them shoot. a James Bond scene.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: Roger Moore, pretend to eat food.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, um, Christopher said,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: do you want to, um, you can, we're going back
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: to London. Do you want to lift back to London?
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah. So we go outside the studio
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and provided this, uh, Rolls Royce limousine chauffeured. And I
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: start to get into the back and there's already an
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: occupant in the seat and Christopher's getting in. And I,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and you know, and I give, course the actors they
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: have they get the prime seats yeah and i do
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: the little fold down little trundle seat that folds down
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: and faces them faces the back seat okay so the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: person sitting in the back seat with christopher lee is
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: herbe villashez oh lord the little actor from amazing yes
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: herbe from fantasy island the plane the plane um and
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: he played uh knickknack who was the um diminutive little
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: sidekick to Christopher Lee's character.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Sneaky assassin.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: He had all kinds of roles.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: And it was really the inspiration and basis for Mini-Me
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: in the Austin Powers movies that Vern Troyer played. But anyway, Herve,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: who's kind of known as a bit of a lush, well,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: let me tell you, he was about 14 sheets to
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the wind already. And we start to drive back to London,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: and Christopher Lee is like 6'6, and Hervé is about 2'1.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: And I'm watching this very strange duo, and Hervé starts
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to tell us all the stories about the prostitutes that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: he's hired since he got to London. And go into detail...
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: as to exactly what he's done with them.
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: And everyone was really needing to know these things.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: A little too much information. So at first, Christopher Lee
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: was very sort of uptight about this, and he was
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: embarrassed for me, because I'm like 17 years old. Are
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: we going to find.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: Wait, what are we doing?
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: He's like clearing his throat, and giving me looks like,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: oh God. And then he starts to get tickled. by
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: what Herve is saying. And every time Herve says... I
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: can't even say it. But anyway, this is a clean show.
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: It doesn't have to be, but that's your.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's just say another word for kitty was
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: being used a lot. And about the 14th time it
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: was used, Christopher started to laugh. And then he started
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: to laugh harder. And he just, at a certain point,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: just completely lost it. And then I lost it, and
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: we were just literally doubled over, just howling with laughter.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: And then Christopher would try to compose himself, and then
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Herve would say another nasty word that would just send
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: him into hysterics again. So when we finally got, the
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: first person we dropped off was Christopher Lee. He lived
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: on Conduggan Square. I remember it so vividly. And he
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: gets out of the car and he's all composed because
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: his wife is waiting for him. But, you know, she
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: just hasn't come out the door or anything. And I
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: just remember as we were driving away, I look out
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the back window and he just busted a gut. Just like,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: you know, just holding on to the gate on the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: sidewalk and just doubled over laughing. And that was my
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: final image of Christopher Lee pulling away from the curb.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: But that was the most amazing, amazing moment. Another thing
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: that happened on that trip, which was pretty freaking crazy.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I had been writing to Vincent Price for years and
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I'd actually gotten to meet him when he was touring
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: with his lecture tour. And he was, I think he
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: was in Atlanta or maybe Charlotte, North Carolina or somewhere
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: where we drove to see the show. And I went
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and because I had been writing to him, I went
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: backstage and immediately remembered who I was and all this stuff.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: That's impressive.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: It was always so nice to meet you. I was like, wow,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: this is incredible. So flash forward then to this first
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: trip to England. I really wanted to interview Diana Rigg
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: from the Avengers TV series where she was so iconic
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: as Emma Peel. but she was also in the Bond
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: film on her majesty's secret service. And she had just
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: played Vincent Price's daughter in theater of blood. And, um, I,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and she was one person who was a little bit
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: more elusive than some of these others. And I hadn't
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: been able to get a response from any of the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: letters I'd sent her. So I decided I'm just going
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: to go. Oh, and she, at, just by sheer luck,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: she was on stage in London at that time on
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the West end in a production of Pygmalion where she
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: was playing Liza Doolittle with Pygmalion. Everybody knows, uh, was
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the basis for, um, my fair lady when, which was
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the musical version, but this was the dramatic version of
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the George Bernard Shaw play. And Alec McCowan happened to
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: play the, was the leading man. And it is, um, um,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: as Henry Higgins. Anyway, she, uh, I just thought I'll
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: see the show and then go stand at the stage door,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: at least try to get an autograph and maybe talk
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: to her and convince her to do an interview. So
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I go in the theater, I sit down in my seat. Um,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: it was sold out. So I had, I had got
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: actually stood out in front of the theater, hoping that
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: someone would sell one of their tickets, which happens. And
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I caught this amazing ticket that was down in the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: orchestra section because it was just, you know, one person.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting there waiting for the show to begin.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: And I hear this incredibly familiar laugh right behind me.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: And I turn around and lo and behold, there is
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Vincent Price sitting in the chair right behind me. And
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: as my jaw is dropping, I haven't said a word.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: And he goes, Sam, what are you doing here? And
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I couldn't believe that he remembered what I look like.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: They remembered my name. I mean, you know, he meets
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: a billion fans, especially when he was on tour. I
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: was so impressed. I couldn't believe it. So I explained
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: to him that I was hoping to see Diana Rigg
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: after the show at the stage. He says, oh, well,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you're coming with us. You know, we're going to go
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: backstage afterwards. And oh, by the way, this is this
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: is my new wife. And I look over and sitting
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: right next to him is Coral Brown, who he is
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: just married. And they had met on the set of
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Theater of Blood. She was one of the theater critics
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: that he kills. And they were first introduced by Diana Rigg.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, the whole thing was so amazing and all
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: these bizarro connections. And so I'm like, how do you do, Ms. Brown?
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: And it was all just so incredible. And they took
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: me backstage afterwards, and we all had champagne. And Vincent
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: said to Diana, oh, you're going to have to give
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: this young man an interview for his excellent magazine. And she,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: you know, how could she say no then? And so
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: she said, come back on Wednesday, I do a matinee,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and I have an evening performance, and I have time
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to kill between shows, and I just hang out in
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: the dressing room so we can do it then. So
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that's what happened. So I was somehow really charmed. You know,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: there was just something where all the stars were in
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: alignment during those heady days. And so that was kind
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of the fanzine thing. But, I mean, I interviewed, you know,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Jane Seymour and Terrence Fisher, the great Hammer director, and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Sir James Carreras and Michael Carreras of the heads of
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Hammer Films. And the list just goes on and on
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and on and on. Yeah. And it was so successful,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: the whole trip, that I came back the following year
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and did a whole other round for my issue number
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: four and interviewed Bob Fuse, the director of the Fives
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: movies that I just absolutely adored. And, you know, it
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: was just, I think back on those days, I was
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: naive enough to think, oh, I guess this happens to
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: all fans. and uh now i look back on it
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and just think my god i was so freaking lucky how.
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: Did i luck into getting all that to come together
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: yeah i mean but it didn't derail like you could
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: have kind of just gone down that road and then
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: become like in publishing and so but it's still like
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: you were focused enough to be like this was fun
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: but i still want to you know pursue at least
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: getting into production and then eventually directing.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah for sure and And I was a big
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: fan of Brian De Palma's movies in that time. And
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: when I was in college, I organized a film festival
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: in his honor showing Phantom of the Paradise and Sisters
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and some of his early films, Hi Mom and Greetings,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: De Niro and stuff. And I looked in the trade
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: journals that my dad subscribed to and saw that De
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Palma was in pre-production on a film called Carrie. And
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: they had a little phone number for the casting office.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: And I called up that number. And they put him
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: right on. And I explained what I was doing. And
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: they were casting in California. He lived in New York.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And he said, I'm broke. I need to get to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: New York and get some stuff for my apartment. So
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: if you can give me the airfare to South Carolina,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: then to New York, and get me back to L.A.,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I'll come for the Triangle airfare. And I'm like, done.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: So he... came out and took him around to film classes.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: He was doing storyboards on the chalkboards to show how
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: he planned out his scenes. It was the most incredible thing.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: And it turned out that that casting session that he
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: was doing on Carrie was the most famous casting session
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: in the history of cinema. Yeah. Because he and George
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Lucas were jointly sitting at a table reading every young
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: actor in Hollywood.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: Who would become huge within two or three years.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: For Star Wars and Carrie. And every actor that walked
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: in the room read a scene from both movies. So,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, again, just the weird... timing of
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: like when i approached him just happened to be this
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: incredible moment.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: I'm also trying to force the image of john travolta
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: is on solo out of my head right now.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I yes or or carrie fisher as carrie that might
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: work yeah so um anyway i mean there's so many
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: great stories but but We had a midnight show of
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Phantom of the Paradise. We had everyone come in costume,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and De Palma was going to judge the best costumes,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. So it's sold out. Everybody's just totally hyped.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: De Palma picks the winner of the contest. We give
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the prizes, and we're all psyched to see the movie.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Lights go down. Boom. The death records, the dead bird
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: graphics starts to rotate on the screen. And there's no sound. God.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: And I race up to the projection booth like, what
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: the frickin' hell's going on? Turn the sound on. And
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: it turned out that the sound bulb for the optical
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: soundtrack was burned out.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: You didn't check your digital print beforehand?
• 33:44
  Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: It's a whole other world.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it was Saturday night, and now it was
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: like way after midnight, and there was no spare bulb,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and there was no place to go get one. And
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: we had to cancel the screening and send everyone home.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: It was the most embarrassing moment of my life, and
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I thought all the goodwill that I've built up with
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: De Palma has now just flushed down the drain.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, they all had the costumes. You could have
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: just acted it out. Just De Palma knows how the
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: story goes. Tell him what to do. Yeah.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: So, with a tail between my legs, and I just thought,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: this is it. I just totally freaking blown it. Luckily,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: De Palma is enough of a sadist where he actually
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: thought it was hilarious. And he, you know, and I
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: ended up the following, he, of course, went back and
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: made Carrie, and it was this huge breakthrough movie. And
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: then the next movie he was going to do was
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: The Fury, which was a much bigger budgeted studio picture
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: with 20th Century Fox and Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. Well, that was going to be
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: shot in the summer of 1977 on location in Chicago.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: So I call him up and say, could I please
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: come and work on the film? And he was like, sure,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: come on up. So I went up there. I worked
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: as a production assistant and an extra. You can see
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: me in the amusement park scene where Andrew Stevens is
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: going through and all the rides are going crazy. And
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I also got an assignment to write a journal on
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the making of the film from Cinefantastique. And now I
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: knew Fred Clark because he knew my magazine, Bizarre. So
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: that's how that whole connection kind of happened. And De
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Palma had... forgiven me for the debacle with the Phantom
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: of the Paradise screening, but he loved to tell everyone
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the story about it.
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: And then bring you into it. Oh, and this is
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: the guy.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, Kirk. Kirk Douglas, come over here. I want to
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: tell you a story about this kid. And But it actually,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: in a way, it actually worked in my favor because
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: he just, he loved to tell that freaking story and
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: embarrassed me.
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: It endeared everyone else too.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Yes. And it did.
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: Poor kid, look what he did.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: And because of, and I had learned this with my
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: own fanzine, you know, if you want to really, you know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: you need to get one-on-one interviews. So now that I
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: had the assignment with Cinefantastique, I could request one-on-one time,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: with Kirk Douglas, with John Cassavetes, with all these people.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: And it's a recognizable name, so you've got, yeah, you've
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: got the inside track.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: So, it's like, oh my God, no production assistant would ever,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, could I sit down for an
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: hour with the lead actor, the legendary, you know, superstar?
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: That would just never happen.
• 36:52
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: So, again, I just was, just getting that assignment meant
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: difference between night and day.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: So then I, that was between, that was the summer
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: between my junior and senior year. And I went back, finished,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: finished college and then. De Palma calls me in the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: spring of 1978 and goes, you're graduating next month, right?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, well, I've been
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: teaching a screenwriting course at Sarah Lawrence College, and we've
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: come up with a script called Home Movies, and we're
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: going to make it as a low-budget film this summer.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Do you want to come up and work on it?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah. I guess so. So I figured
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: I'd be going up there and just being like I
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: was on The Fury, a production assistant, and maybe an extra, whatever.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I literally finished my last exam, didn't even go to
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: my graduation ceremony. I just went direct to the airport
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and got on a plane, went to New York. And
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: we were going to shoot the film out at Sarah
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Lawrence College and stay in the dormitories. And they had
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: some of his students working on the crew, but other
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: professionals were working on it. And the movie started. Kirk
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Douglas and Nancy Allen, who was De Palma's squeeze at
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: that time. They hadn't married yet, but they were soon
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: to be married. And Garrett Graham, who was beef in
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Phantom of the Paradise, and Vincent Gardena from Moonstruck, and
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: all these great actors. And De Palma tells me, you're
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: going to be the associate producer and production manager, basically
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: throwing me into the deep end to see if I
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: can swim. Mm-hmm. And so it was just this kind
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: of meteoric, just a thing that dropped in my lap.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: It was absolutely crazily fabulous. And we made that movie.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And then De Palma asked me to be his full-time assistant.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: And I worked on dress to kill and lots of
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: projects that were in development. And we worked on about
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: a year developing blowout and whatnot. And then, Just about
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: the time that Blowout was about to start shooting, he
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: recommended me to produce a film called The First Time
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: that he was going to sort of shepherd as like
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: an executive producer. And it was being directed by Charlie Leventhal,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: who was one of his students at Sarah Lawrence College
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and the screenwriting, um, course. And, um, and Charlie Leventhal
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: had done a draft of the script, but De Palma
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: felt it could be a lot stronger. And he brought
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: in Bill Finley, the actor who was, uh, the lead
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: in Phantom of the Paradise and the villain and sisters.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: He and his wife, Susan Finley to rewrite the script. And, uh,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: And it was just, again, a kind of charm project.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: It had Wendy Jo Sperber, who you might remember as
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the heavyset comic actress. Tons of stuff, yeah. She was
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: in 1941. She was in Back to the Future. And
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Zemeckis' first film, I Want to Hold Your Hand. And
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: then she was a regular on Bosom Buddies, the Tom
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Hanks series. Just a fabulous, fabulous comic actress. And I
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: just absolutely adored her. And it also had Wallace Shawn
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and Catherine Damon from Soap. And it was just a
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: really fun little movie. So as the producer, I had
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: to put together financing on it. Half of the money
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: was being put up by the director's rich dad.
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: But we needed the other half of the money. So
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I went and had a meeting at New Line Cinema
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: with Bob Shea. Boom.
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: Boom.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Sure, we'll give you the other half of the money.
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, how do you even know what to do
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: as a producer when you're that young?
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: No.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: Most people still don't know what producers do in the world.
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: So to be thrown into it.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Thrown into it. And then just to get a slam dunk,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: like the first meeting, I'm like, oh my God, this never, ever,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: ever happens ever. So it was just crazy. But I,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I really... didn't want to go down the
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: route of producing. It's not something that I enjoy doing.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: It's the business side.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: It's a way different part of the industry. I, you know,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: continued to want to direct and I did a short
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: film called double negative that I shot on 35 millimeter
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: and it had Bill Finley, Phantom of the Paradise guy, uh,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Wayne Knight, who was Newman on Seinfeld and Bill Randolph,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: who was the cab driver in Dressed to Kill. And, um,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: an actress that I'd grown up with and had been
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: in a lot of my kids, you know, when I
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: was a kid, short films and stuff. Um, her name
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: is Dory leg. And, and then I also got, um,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Justin Henry to play the main character and flashbacks as
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a kid. And that was the, and Justin was very
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: famous at that point of being the young boy in
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Kramer versus Kramer. And we made this little film called
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: double negative, uh, And it was about a horror film
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: director who's making a low-budget horror film called Coathanger Massacre.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: And this was coming off the heels of Mommy Dearest,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: and coat hangers were a big thing at the time.
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: Still pretty scary.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: And his sleazy producers, played by Bill Finley and Wayne Knight,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: decide that the movie is so bad that they'll make
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: more money if they steal the negative from the lab
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: and collect the insurance. And the leading lady, who is
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: also working as their secretary, she overhears this plot and
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: she runs to the director and says, we've got to
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: save our movie. So they beat them to the crime
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: and go to the lab and steal the negative first
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and put dummy negative in there and then they set
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: up surveillance cameras to get the producers on... Stained operations. Yes.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: And beat them to the crime. And anyway, it got... uh,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: got accepted at Sundance and got a lot of buzz
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: and it opened theatrically in New York and LA played
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: in front of Scorsese's after hours and John Borman's Emerald
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: forest and, um, got reviewed in the New York times,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a really nice review. So that became my calling card
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: to launch my career as a director and get my
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: first feature film going called guilty as charged. with Rod Steiger,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Heather Graham.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: That's what I was going to say. Even as you
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: get into your first couple of features there, you pull
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: in some of the most amazing cast, you know, just
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: like how that came together that early on.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I, you know, I loved, I, I felt like
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I want my casts to have like recognizable people in
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: every role.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: And that's what I was going to say, looking forward
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: in the rest of years, like it becomes this little
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: family of like every time. I'm like, Hey, look, he's
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: back again. Like, And I like a lot of directors
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: create sort of that little troupe of actors that turn
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: up in all of their stuff. But you already had
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: planned that out that early on.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I had. And I was really impressed with people like
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: John Waters who would get these, just these eclectic groups
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: of people together in his movies. And so I wanted
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: that eccentricity to my casting. And so on the First film,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Guilty as Charged, we had Rod Steiger, who played a
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: madman who kidnaps murderers who've gotten off and fries them
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: on his own electric chair, as one does. And it
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: also had Heather Graham, who's just coming off of Drugstore Cowboy,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: before Boogie Nights. And Lauren Hutton, Isaac Hayes, who I loved.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was Oscar winning, got Best Song Oscar
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: for the theme from Shaft. but he had also been
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: an actor in things, but also escaped from New York,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: which was one of my favorite John Carpenter movies. So, um,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: so he was in it. Um, and we had Zelda
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Rubinstein from Poltergeist.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: Amazing on her own.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: And, and then, um, you know, Steiger fries a whole
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: bunch of different criminals in this electric chair. And I'm like,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: and this is a year after, um, Wes Craven's Shocker
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: had come out. And that starred Mitch Pelleggi. And I said,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: what if... Who is fried in the electric chair in
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: that movie for people who haven't seen it. And I'm like,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: what if we got Mitch Pelleggi? We could fry him again.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: And he thought the idea was hilarious.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: This is going to become my thing, I guess. Every
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: movie I know.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: So... We did that, and Erwin Key was it. I mean,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: it was really magical. And it was written by Charlie
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Gale and produced by Randy Gale, and they were the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: brothers of Bob Gale of Back to the Future fame.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: And we got Steve Bartek to write the score. Now,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Steve Bartek was a member of Oingo Boingo with Danny Elfman,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: but he's even more famous as Danny Elfman's orchestrator to
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: this day. And he is really the... He's the one
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: who was classically, musically trained, whereas Danny Elfman kind of.
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: He's just a weird prodigy kid.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he kind of hums a tune into a.
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: He had a brother in a band, and that kind
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: of lucked out for him, and he just happened to
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: be a weird prodigy kid.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, he hums a tune into a
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: tape recorder and hands it over to Steve, and then
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Steve expands it for a full symphony orchestra. Well... Steve
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: did this incredible score to the movie and we got
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the Seattle Symphony to record it. And literally when you
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: hear it, you realize, you know, wow, Steve is a major,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: major force behind Danny Elfman scores because this is, you know,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: it feels like a Danny Elfman score. And so again,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: it was just a charmed production and it got really,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: really nice reviews. And I was just absolutely blown blown away.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: The LA Times just absolutely raved. Kevin Thomas just went
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: crazy for it and compared Steiger's performance to Vincent Price
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: in Theater of Blood. Boy, that was like, yes!
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: It's all come full circle.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, and then the review, I'm pretty 90% sure it
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: was the Variety review compared it to Bride of Frankenstein,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: which is my favorite film of all time. And, I mean,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, my God, this is unbelievable. So
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: it was just, you know, it was a really good
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: launch of my directing career, except that it didn't do
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: a damn thing in theaters. And there was no money
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: for the distribution. It was put out by a very
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: small company called IRS Media. It was also the production company.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: It was part of IRS Records, Miles Copeland's company.
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: Which, at the time, I saw that, and I was like,
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: they really did put out, like, that little stretch there, specifically, like,
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: early 90s, like, IRS put out so many, like, really
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: impressive and influential like between music and movies yeah that
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: at the time didn't make tons of money for any
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: of them but there's so many bands that i look
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: back and i'm like yeah they were on that label
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: there and they were like they really were kind of
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: like finding new talent yeah and it just wasn't paying
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: off for them but like the things that came after
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: that from irs it's yeah it's pretty.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Amazing so it wasn't the big breakthrough box office hit
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: that i was hoping but uh but it is a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: cult kind of cult film and people keep discovering it
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: to this day on on home video and stuff and
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it's actually streaming for free on amazon prime right now
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: you can see it for free.
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: Get on that kid yes.
• 49:04
  Speaker 11: In america violent crime is out of control A mugging
• 49:11
  Speaker 11: occurs every three minutes.
• 49:13
  Speaker 12: Hey lady, you can hear me in there. Open up.
• 49:16
  Speaker 11: A murder is committed every ten minutes. Someone's got to
• 49:23
  Speaker 11: do something. And someone is.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Who are you?
• 49:29
  Speaker 7: Justice.
• 49:31
  Speaker 11: He's a vigilante.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: You've certainly picked an unusual hobby. Hobby?
• 49:36
  Speaker 12: Oh no, my dear, this is not a hobby.
• 49:40
  Speaker 11: And he's turning up the juice on creeps.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: Old enough to kill, old enough to die.
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: Crooks.
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: You can't help being a coward and a murderer.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: This doesn't change anything.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Maybe this will. And killers.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: Tonight's your night.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: The way I look at it, when your time comes,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: your time comes.
• 50:03
  Speaker 10: Bingo.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Bingo.
• 50:05
  Speaker 11: In a mind-shattering Shocking, isn't it? Side-splitting Ben Callen Callen
• 50:13
  Speaker 11: beats I know you're bacon.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Hair-raising Just pull the wig!
• 50:18
  Speaker 12: Yeah! Spine-tingling Justice is done High-voltage comedy.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I can get you something real special for your last.
• 50:31
  Speaker 7: Meal Rod Steiger Lauren Hutton Heather Gray.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Lyman Ward. And Isaac Hayes.
• 50:41
  Speaker 9: How about some Kentucky Fried Chicken?
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, good chicken. Guilty as charged. Good evening. It's intermission time.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Our service is.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Friendly and quick.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: You'll find hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, your favorite candies, hot
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: and cold beverages, and other delicious snacks. So add to
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: your fun of watching the movie. Visit our refreshment stand
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: right now. We're glad to have you with us tonight.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: We hope you'll come to see us often. It's great
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: to get out to the movies.
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: Don't you guys like horror?
• 51:30
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: Don't you think everybody should join the Meltketeer Horror Club? Yes.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: I think you should go to MovieMeltdown.com right now and
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: just click on the Patreon link and join up. And
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: then all these amazing horror-themed episodes we've got coming up
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: that you can listen to at the lowest level. I
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: try to keep it so everybody can join in. So
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: you can throw more money at us if you want.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: But mostly, as long as you kick in a couple
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: of bucks, you can always listen to to the horror
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: episodes and experience the horror with us. So join the
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: club now.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Don't you want to be cool? Yeah.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, really don't you want to be cool? All
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: the cool kids are doing it.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: Wait, just by being a movie geek, you're already not
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: a cool kid and neither are we. So all the
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: geeks are doing it. Join the club now. Cool is
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: a relative term anyway. Certainly is today. So yeah, get
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: on board. Join right now and you can partake in
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: that and all of our other ridiculous discussions about horror.
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: What is the minimum again? Two bucks.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Two dollars. Two dollars. Two dollars.
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: That's all you need to listen to the episodes. So,
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: I mean, it kind of keeps us alive. I was
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: discussing the horrible situation it's been to try to keep
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: things going earlier to these poor bastards. Like, yeah, it's
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: not just like, hey, I'm rich and I want your
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: money anyway. It's, It really does keep the show going
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: to the level that people don't realize. It's kind of
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: the only way it's survived this last year and a
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: half or so since we started this.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: It's... Yeah.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: So, it is not only greatly appreciated, but it gives
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: us kind of a good way to come up with
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: something specific to put out there just for these people
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: that we... no actually care enough to kick in. So
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: you get a lot of great stuff for that $ 2.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: I'm saying I like, I like being able to craft
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: something for a very special group. So you guys are
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: super cool. And then you get these awesome episodes. So
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: one more reason, go join up now. So go to
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: our Patreon page, join the meltdown club, become a milk
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: a tear. You get cool stuff and you can help
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: us keep the meltdown rolling. Damn the man, save the meltdown.
• 53:53
  Speaker 10: In the mood for hot coffee? When you are, nothing
• 53:56
  Speaker 10: else will satisfy. Coffee has a flavor, an aroma, a
• 54:00
  Speaker 10: deep down satisfying goodness all its own. And our coffee
• 54:03
  Speaker 10: has something extra, the care with which we brew and
• 54:06
  Speaker 10: serve it. You'll enjoy the show more while you're enjoying
• 54:09
  Speaker 10: steaming hot coffee.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Come and get yours now.
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: We should have our coffee. I know you like coffee.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: Oh my God, is this a segue to something?
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: What?
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: You don't want to run out to Heine Brothers right now?
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Actually, you know, now that you mention it, I'm drinking
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: some fine coffee here, but I feel like enjoying a
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: nice hot cup from my local Heine Brothers might actually
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: be an even better idea.
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: Well, really, you don't even have to leave the house. Like,
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: you could just have it, like, ordered right to your doorstep.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I can do that now? It's not just something
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: you can do. You can also get a deal from
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: your friends at Movie Mountain.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: No way. Movie Meltdown?
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: That's the show we're on, right? Yeah, this one right now. Oh,
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: that's awesome. Hey, insert a sound of me kicking over
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: this table with this substandard coffee.
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: There.
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: Right there.
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you heard it. And then let's run out, jump
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: in the car, and then screech sound effect as we
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: head on down to our local Heine Brothers.
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: There.
• 55:10
  Speaker 11: Man.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: Subtle.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Subtle segue.
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: I want to tell you about the Heine Brothers coffee subscription.
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: Wherever you are, home, work, or out on the road,
• 55:20
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• 55:24
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• 55:28
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• 55:31
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• 55:34
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• 55:37
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• 55:41
  Speaker 4: code MELTDOWN for $ 5 off any gift subscription. And if
• 55:45
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• 55:47
  Speaker 4: or any of that that might make it a little harder,
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: just go to MovieMeltdown.com and look on the right-hand side
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: of the page, and you'll find a link to take
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: you right to HoneyBrothersCoffee.com.
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: That's right, the Meltdown Caffeinated Movie Geeks.
• 55:58
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• 56:08
  Speaker 1: This was my father's world, Mr. Barnard.
• 56:12
  Speaker 6: The shrieking of mutilated victims became the music of his life.
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: The blood of a thousand men and women was spilled
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: within these walls. Limbs twisted and broken, flesh burned black.
• 56:29
  Speaker 7: Starring Vincent Price, truly a master of the macabre. John Carr,
• 56:35
  Speaker 7: in a challenging role. Barbara Steele, more blood chilling than
• 56:40
  Speaker 7: in Black Sunday. And introducing taunting, Luana Anders.
• 56:47
  Speaker 6: I'm going to torture you, Isabella.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: I'm going to make you.
• 56:52
  Speaker 6: Suffer for your faithlessness to me.
• 56:58
  Speaker 7: You have it! All the violence of angry seas. The
• 57:06
  Speaker 7: unseen forces of the unknown. The unforgettable memories of a
• 57:10
  Speaker 7: long-forgotten childhood. All these you will feel in your very blood.
• 57:22
  Speaker 9: Do you know where you are, Bartolome? You are about
• 57:26
  Speaker 9: to enter hell.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: No!
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: The world's largest bourbon festival, Bourbon and Beyond, will make
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: its anticipated return to Louisville, Kentucky, Friday, September 20th through Sunday,
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: September 22nd. Expanding to three days full of incredible music,
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: unique culinary events, and unmatched experiences from the region's best
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: distilleries at the new Highland Festival Grounds and Kentucky Expo Center.
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: In addition to an unforgettable lineup of bourbon and chefs,
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: the weekend also includes musical performances with a unique mix
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: of rock, roots, bluegrass, and folk. Headlined by Foo Fighters,
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters, the Zac Brown Band,
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: John Fogerty, Daryl Hall and John Oates, and ZZ Top
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: celebrating their 50th anniversary. Additional acts include Nathaniel Rateliff in
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: The Night Sweats, Trey Anastasio Band, Leon Bridges, The Flaming Lips,
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: Alison Krauss, Ethan Sharpe in The Magnetic Zeros, Live, Grace Potter,
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: Little Steven in The Disciples of Soul, and Joan Jett
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: in The Blackhearts, just to name a few. In total,
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: more than 45 artists will play on three stages, including
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: the side-by-side Oak and Barrel main stages, bluegrass stage that
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: will be curated by the genre's leading authority, The Bluegrass Situation.
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: To find out more details and order tickets, go to bourbonandbeyond.com
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: and start planning your musical weekend getaway today.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: This is Roger Corman and you're listening to Movie Meltdown.
• 59:07
  Speaker 12: It's part of your.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: Problem, you know, you haven't seen enough movies. All of
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: life's riddles are answered in the movies. And now, on
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: with the show.
• 59:29
  Speaker 12: And then.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Second film, I mean, I won't go into every film
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: I've done. I've done over 40 now.
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: The first one's kind of mulled the whole system there.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: But I will say the second one, another production company
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: loved Guilty's Charge, and they hired me to do a
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Showtime original movie called Acting on Impulse. And It was
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: this cool story about a Scream Queen actress whose producer
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: has been murdered and she's implicated in the murder and
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: she goes on the lam to try to prove her
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: innocence and find out who really killed the producer. And
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: it starred Linda Farentino, who I loved in After Hours,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: and C. Thomas Howell, Nancy Allen from my department days,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: and I brought in a I had just met at
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: a Hollywood party Cassandra Peterson, who was Elvira.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: I was going to say, there's two castings in that
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: that I definitely wanted to get into. I saw that was, yeah,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: where you, I guess, crossover. So you hadn't. Met her
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: before that party? You didn't know her before?
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't know her before the party. It was
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: a party thrown by Terry Sweeney, who was a regular
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: on Saturday Night Live. He always did Nancy Reagan in drag.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: He was the first openly gay.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm kind of remembering him.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was the first openly gay cast member on
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: that show. And I knew him because his lover was
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Lanier Laney, and also his writing partner, who I had
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: gone to school with at the University of South Carolina.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: And so I knew them and I got invited to
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: this party and Cassandra Peterson's there. And I'm like, Oh
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: my God, Elvira misses the dark. I will. And I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: went over and introduced myself. I love your hosting gigs.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: I loved your first movie. And, um, and she said,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: and when, what do you do? And I go, well,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: I'm a director. I did this film, my first film
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: recently called guilty as charged. And she goes, Oh, I
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: saw that in the theater.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: I loved it so much.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: If I ever do another Elvira movie, I want you
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: to direct it. I'm like, what?
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: There you go. Little did you know.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm like, is this what happens at Hollywood parties?
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Have you had too much to drink? Missy, what's going
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: on here? And so I didn't quite believe it. But,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: you know, we struck up a friendship. So when I
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: did my second film... I asked her to do a
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: one-day little tiny cameo part where she played a bouncer
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: at a country western bar. It was not as Elvira.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: And she borrowed a blonde wig from Daryl Hannah and
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: did this kind of Dolly Parton turn where she cards
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Linda Fiorentino and C. Thomas Howell and Nancy Allen going
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: into the bar and improvises some funny lines. And we
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: had a great time, and she enjoyed it. And so
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: I kept kind of in touch with her for the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: next several years. She did an Elvira TV series pilot.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: And she invited me to the taping of that. It
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: was a three-camera thing in front of a studio audience
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: sort of deal. But it didn't get picked up. So
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: there were trials and tribulations. Okay, so about, I guess
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: it was 1999-ish, she calls me up and goes, well,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: we are finally going to do another Elvira movie. My
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: husband and I have given up shopping it around we're
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: just going to finance it ourselves we're mortgaging our house
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: we're going to do this but um we we i'll
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: be honest with you we're interviewing several director possibilities but
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: i want.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 13: You told it was me i know i'm like damn
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 13: it should have got her to sign something that i
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 13: know she's drunk but she said you know we want
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 13: to definitely give you a shot and i'm come you
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 13: should come in and meet with us so i go
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 13: in And she hands me the script.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: It's called Elvira's Haunted Hills. And she goes, now, Sam,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: this is going to be a spoof of the Vincent Price,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe, Roger Corman movies. Are you familiar with those?
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, Cassandra. A little.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: A little bit.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: So I said, stand back, girl. That's amazing. This is
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Vincent Price's monologue at the climax of Pit and the Pendulum.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Do you know where you are, Bartolome? You are about
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: to enter hell. Hell, the Neverworld, the infernal region, the
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: abode of the damned, a place of torment, Gehenna, Naraka,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: the pit, and the pendulum, the razor edge of destiny,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: thus the condition of man, bound on an island from
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: which you can never hope to escape, surrounded by the
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: waiting pit of hell which must destroy him finally. She
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: looked at me like I was nuts and said, you're hired.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: Obviously, I've chosen the right person.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And by some miracle, that monologue, I had been assigned
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: in junior high school. The assignment was to do a
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: monologue from our drama teacher. And they wanted us to
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: do Shakespeare or, you know, whatever. And I'm like, I'm
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: not doing that. The classics. Yeah. And so I went
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: to the teacher and said, could I do a monologue
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: from Pit and the Pendulum?
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: Master, Thespian, Vincent.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't say that. I just said, can I
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: do a monologue from Pit and the Pendulum? And they
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: were thinking, Edgar Allan Poe.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: Poe is a master.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: And they were like, okay. And what I was doing
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: was going to be quoting Richard Matheson's script. So... And
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: back in those days, it was before videotape and everything,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: but I recorded audio of movies on reel-to-reel tapes like
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: all us Monster Kid geeks. So I had Pit in
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: the Pendulum audio, and I would back and forth, back
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth, transcribe the whole damn monologue.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: and memorized it, and it just has stuck with me
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: my whole life, and came in very handy, because it
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: secured me that, that directing job on Avar's Haunted Hills,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: so that's how that came about.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: And it is interesting, just because it's such a shift
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: from that first movie, like, she, she got, kind of made,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: at least mainstream, like, the fans already knew her from
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: the show, but like, That movie, she was like fully
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: became just pop culture at that point.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: And it's such an 80s movie. Like when you watch
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: it now, the only thing that's Elvira in it is Elvira.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: Like there's no horror to it. It's just. her in
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: the car and everything else is more of an 80s
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: fish out of water look how weird it is that
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: I'm in this dumb neighborhood like everything else is just
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: such an 80s movie so.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: And that first movie was financed by NBC and they
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: inserted they made them add all of the teenage kids
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: and just all these sort of commercial elements to it
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: and so yeah Elvira's Haunted Hills is not a direct
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: sequel the first one just took place in the present
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: day ours takes place in the 1800s figure it out
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: we don't know yeah we don't know how this happened But,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: you know, it was basically just taking the Elvira character
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: and dropping her into a Vincent Brice movie.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: Which you can kind of do in any scenario, really.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: As that first one. Like, it doesn't make sense that
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: she's there, but it's Elvira.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: It works.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I always felt like she should have done a
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: ton more movies. And every one of them should have
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: been dropping her into a genre.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: Into a different genre, yeah.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: Like, let's drop her into a Godzilla movie. Let's drop
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: her into a Frankenstein movie. Let's, you know.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: That action cop movie with Elvira.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: It just.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I think it was a huge missed opportunity to
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: not do more of that type of thing. But that's
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: what it was for Elvira's Haunted Hills.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: Now, she.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: cassandra the first horror film she ever saw was house
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: on haunted hill it scared her out to death and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: she couldn't wait to see all the all the other
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: vincent price movies the same thing with me the first
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: first horror film i saw was pit in the pendulum
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: first run at my father's theater in 1961 and i
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: was five years old and it scarred me for life
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: in a very good way and uh And so we
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: both had that in common, that Vincent Price was our
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: introduction to horror. And she had gotten to know Vincent.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I had gotten to know Vincent. And so this whole
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: movie was a labor of love for us, a love
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: letter to Vincent. And the same way that Mel Brooks'
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Young Frankenstein was an ode to the Universal Frankenstein horror movies,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: this was our ode to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: Price movies, and we dedicated it to Vincent Price, and
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: it was just fantastic. Basically, she goes to a castle,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: and the castle is run by Lord Helzibus, who is
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: an amalgam of all the Vincent Price characters, from Pit
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and the Pendulum, House of Usher, to Melugia, Haunted Palace,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: all of those. And all the afflictions that he had
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: in each of those, he has every one of them
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: in this.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: Crammed together.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: Yep. And so we wanted to get somebody pretty formidable
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: to play this Vincent Price like character. And, um, we
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: first approached, we wanted to get Christopher Lee.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: Of course.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Uh, his manager wouldn't have it. He was like, nope,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Christopher doesn't do these kinds of movies anymore. It's behind him.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: So that didn't work out. Uh, they tried to approach
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Mick Jagger, which would have been very interesting. Um, She's
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: very good friends with Richard Chamberlain because she had done
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: a movie with him in the 80s, that sort of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Indiana Jones kind of movie.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: Oh, Alan Quartermain.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, Alan Quartermain.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: There's two of them.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: They're interchangeable in my brain.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: She did a small part in the one with Sharon Stone.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: I think she might be in both of them, too.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, maybe she is in both of them.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: Was a weird span for Sharon Stone.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. But she became very close friends with Richard Chamberlain,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: so we talked to him a little bit about playing it,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: but he wasn't really quite into it, and I don't
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: think was as passionate about horror and all that.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: It would be a weird fit, I feel like.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: I can see him trying it, but I don't know
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: if it would have gone well.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then a relative on her husband's side, who
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: was a director, Robert Dornhelm, recommended Richard O'Brien from Rocky
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Horror Picture Show. And suddenly we were like... That is
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: a brilliant idea. And for people who don't know, Richard
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: O'Brien played Riff Raff, but he is... It's his thing. Yeah,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: it's his Rocky Horror. He wrote the play. He wrote
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: the music. He wrote the lyrics.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: He stole the theme song.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: He was still kind of pissed about it because I
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: talked to her recently.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: She's still bitter.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 7: Oh, Lord.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: But he also wrote the screenplay for the movie version
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: and was referring to the movie. I mean, you know,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: he is Rocky Horror.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: Rocky Horror. But an absolutely brilliant guy and really funny
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: and loves Vincent Price stuff. So he totally got what
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: we were doing and couldn't wait to do it. And
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: it just couldn't have been better. So, I mean, it
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: was the perfect casting.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: Is he ever not?
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: Richard O'Brien.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: He always just seems like weird Richard O'Brien. There's no
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: off mode to that.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Not really, but at the same time, I mean, I
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: absolutely loved him.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: I love everything he does in a weird way. Definitely
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: all the Rocky stuff, but even since then, he always
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: turns up in the weirdest things, and he's still just
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: a shade of strange Richard O'Brien.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, with 40 movies, you
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: make these quick families when you're working on a film
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: you get very close with everybody and you have all
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: good intentions of staying friends with people yeah but you
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: just you're on a different project everybody goes in separate
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: ways and and it just doesn't so there's only really
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: a few handful of people that you really really stay
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: in touch with and and that friendship continues and it
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: certainly did with cassandra peterson And it has with Richard O'Brien,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: even though very, very, very long distance, because he lives
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: in London, and I never get to see him, but
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: we do exchange emails pretty regularly and stay in touch,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: which is really cool, because I just think he's such
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: a cool guy. So that was really fun, and we
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: had Mary Shearer from MADtv, and Scott Atkinson, Dr. Bradley Bradley,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: who was magnificent in it. Anyway, it was just a
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, probably the most fun I've ever had making
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: a movie. Yeah. And we were able to, Cassandra originally
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: had gone to Romania to scout castles. She thought we
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: were going to shoot in a castle.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: Is where, especially at that time, that was like where everything,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: like every full moon feature was made in Romania.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Including two films that I did, Oblivion and Oblivion 2.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: Which I was going to get to at some point.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: But yeah, definitely.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: She thought we'd just shoot at castles. And I had
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: already toured the castles when I was over there for...
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: working on Oblivion, on our days off, we'd go to castles.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Every castle there claims it's Castle Dracula.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: Of course.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: If Vlad the Impaler, you know, visited a place for tea,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: you know, oh, Castle Dracula. So, anyway, I said, no,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: we're not going to shoot in a castle. The castles
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: are remote on tops of mountains. A lot of them
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: don't have electricity. They have dirt roads. They're not accessible.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's impossible. And, by the way, when was
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: there a real castle in a Roger Corman, Edgar Allen
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Poe movie?
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: And the fun of those movies that you're tributing, like
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: where they were kind of cheesy and had a big,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: a bunch of sets.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: It was all recycled by Roger Corman.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: It was all sets. And it was, you know, and
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the castles were matte paintings. And, you know, I said,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: we've got to really embrace that. And the reason to
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: come to Romania is the cheap labor where we can
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: afford to build the sets. Cause we can't afford to
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: do that in the U S. So, That's what we did.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: And we had the production designer who had worked with
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: me on the Oblivion films, did the most amazing sets.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: I sent him the Corman films, and by now, you know,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: videos around, and I could actually show him stuff. And
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, notice in the Pit and the
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Pendulum that they built the slab and a little bit
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: of the walls and stuff. But in the big wide shots,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: they had matte paintings to sort of expand out the thing.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: And he was like, oh, great. Okay, so we have
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: some great old-time matte painters that worked in the studios
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: here in Romania in the golden era. And we'll get
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: them out of retirement and do matte paintings. And I'm like, great. So...
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: I get over there. You know, this was all over
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: the phone and pre-production and stuff. So when I get
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: over there, he meets me at the studio and this
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: production designer, Radu Korcheva, and says, good news, bad news.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: First of all, all the matte painters have died.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: It's a dying industry, literally. We can't find any.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: It is dead.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: But come with me.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: And he takes me to the soundstage and opens the
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: door and we walk in and there, my friends, is
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: the Pit and the Pendulum set.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 9: Wow.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: From top to bottom. Unbelievable. It literally reminded me of
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: the day that Christopher Lee had taken me around the
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: tour of the Pinewood sets for a James Bond movie.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: I've never seen such a huge set and It was
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: unbelievably gorgeous. They had painted Hieronymus Bosch murals on the walls.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: It was just unbelievable. I cried. It was so beautiful.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: I can see that.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Then they showed me the castle interiors. And I had
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: actually drawn a little crude drawing of what I wanted
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: with the staircase coming down with no banister. And they
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: had done it just perfectly. Everything was made to order
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: beyond my wildest dreams. And so that was wonderful. there's
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: only been a few movies where I've been able to
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: really design sets from the ground up. And it was
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: guilty as charged. That great dungeon is very sort of, um,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: German expressionistic. And with oblivion, we built the whole Western
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: town from the ground up. It was a cornfield when
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: we got there. Uh, and that Western town is still
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: being used to this day and stuff. There was, um,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: I saw it a few years ago in the Hatfields
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: and the McCoys miniseries with, with Kevin Costner. I mean,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: It's amazing that that thing is still around, and it
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: was stuff that I designed. I don't want to take
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: away from the production designer, of course, but it was like,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: we want the saloon here.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: Because of you, yeah, it all came together.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: And then Elvira's Haunted Hills. I mean, those were the
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: three movies that really come to mind where I was
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: able to build from the ground up, and just amazing experience.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I saw Oblivion when it, again, when it
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: first kind of came out on video at that point.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: And was, again, it was such an original idea at
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: that time. And now we've seen several other people kind
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: of revisit that in bigger budget ideas.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: Well, for those who don't know, Oblivion, it's a Cowboys
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: and Aliens kind of movie. And on our poster, we
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: had a copy line that said Cowboys and Aliens. And
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: lo and behold, a few decades later, there's.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: Somebody came along. Somebody made a movie called.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: Cowboys and Aliens. But I have to be honest. I mean,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: even ours was, you know, inspired by things like Westworld
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: and Valley of Gwangi. Or, you know, there's always, there's
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: been mashups of Western movies.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: I've even seen just artwork doing similar, you know, Cowboys
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: fighting generic looking flying saucers.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: So it's definitely been out there in that, you know.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: For sure. but we took it to a really fun
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: sort of tongue in cheek level. And we had, um,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: George decay from star Trek doing, you know, the town drunk.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: And I was going to say, this is also kind
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: of the, is it too much to say stunt casting
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: when you have Miss Kitty?
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: I know we had Julie Newmar playing Miss Kitty who
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: runs the saloon. She's a feline alien who, who says perfect. And, um, Yeah,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: that was definitely stunt casting. And we had Carl Stryken,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: who's lurching the Addams Family movies, and in Twin Peaks,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: he came in and played... gaunt, the undertaker who has.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: He's amazing just as a presence.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: Yes. And Isaac Hayes was in it. Who's that by,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: by then was like a repertory player for me. He
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: had been in guilty as charged and acting on impulse
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: and then did the two oblivion films with me. And, um,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Just a fantastic guy. My God, I adored him. And
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: then who else? Oh, and we had Maxwell Caulfield in Oblivion.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: His character doesn't show up until the second part, too. And... Gosh,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: it was just so much fun doing those Oblivion films. Lord,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: we had a great time.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: At that point, you start working in different types of
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: special effects than you'd probably dealt with. How much was
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: that to kind of juggle.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: In this new process? It was fantastic. And I got
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: to do stop motion animation.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: The dream of every monster kid.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: Every monster kid. I got to do my Harryhausen homage
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: with giant scorpions and It was just, again, another dream
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: come true. And that literally was practically the very last
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: gasp of stop motion animation. Because, you know, everything became
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: digital very quickly after that. So I was really, really
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: happy to have gotten that experience too.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: And were they put together by Full Moon?
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: Or was it just distributed? Because, again, that was such a.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: They sort of found their stride at that point. Were
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: they kind of good to work with on that level?
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: No, they found money. They had a deal with Paramount
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: at that time. Those movies had a real budget for once.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: And we made them both simultaneously. I convinced Charlie. I
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: was like, if we're going to build this whole... western
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: town and all this stuff we you know let's get
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: let's maximize.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: Our investment level this is the back to the future
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: two and three plan.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Well for me it was harking back to three and
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: four musketeers yeah the richard lester thing which was really
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: that he pioneered that broke it up into two pieces
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: yeah i mean that was intended to be one movie
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: but that was kind of the what i was thinking
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: of it's like man let's just so peter david who
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: wrote this first script He quickly put together a second script,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: which was really great, and thank God. And Peter's a
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: big Star Trek writer, a very legendary writer guy, and
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: he just did a fantastic job. And so we turned
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: it into two movies and shot it set by set.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: If we were shooting in the saloon, we'd shoot all
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: the saloon scenes for both movies and just went through
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: the schedule that way.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: That's impressive juggling there, too.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: Now, when we got done shooting. Um, we, you know,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: Charlie was like, just edit number one, focus on the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: first one. And then we'll, we'll shelve all the footage
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: for number two. And we'll get around to that. Cause
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: we'll release that, you know, a year down the road. And,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: and so we cut together number one and we got
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: Pino DiNaggio to do the score who, who, you know, I,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: had met in my De Palma days. I mean, God
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: Pino did the score for Carrie and Dressed to Kill
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: and Home Movies and Blowout. And he had done Don't
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: Look Now, the great Nicholas Rogue movie. I was a
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: humongous fan of his and still am. And somehow, by...
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: coincidence charlie band knew him charlie is it has italian background.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: His family has been yeah invested in so much of
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: what was going on there yeah that doesn't surprise me
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: so so i mentioned to charlie how when we were
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 4: talking about a composer and i i said god you
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: know some of my favorite composers are you know and he's.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: Oh i know pino and you know i'm like oh
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: my god so that's how that all came about and
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: uh So, again, it came together exactly as I wanted.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was just perfect. Well, then Charlie has
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: me go off and direct Magic Island, which was a
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: time travel fantasy film for his sort of family.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 4: Off to kids' label.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: Kids' label. Moonbeam.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: And we went down to Mexico and did that with
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: Zachary Ty Bryan from Home Improvement and French Stewart from
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Third Rock from the Sun and Andrew Divoff. As Blackbeard,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: and he had played Red Eye, our villain in the
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Oblivion films. And, you know, again, paramount money, nice budget.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: We do it all the way it should be done.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: And then after that's all done, we come back. Now
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: we're going to do post-production on the second Oblivion films.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: And we start editing that, and the whole Paramount deal
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: goes down the drain. And suddenly Full Moon has no
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: money whatsoever. So Charlie is.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: Actually, it was right around that time we were just
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: getting around to getting the composer for Magic Island. And
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: instead of... I wanted Pino to do it. But now
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: they had no money. So Charlie was like, okay, well,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: my brother... I.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: Got a brother that does nothing but these scores.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: So my brother, Richard Mann, who does digital scores, one-man show,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: one-man musician in his recording studio in his garage, is
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: going to do the score for Magic Island. And I'm like, okay.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: And Richard's a good composer. And the music was great
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: on Magic Island. And so, as we're finishing part two
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: of Oblivion, you know, Charlie's like, well, my brother's going
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: to have to do it because we have no money. And, uh,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, and it was, he was,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: Richard was great for Magic Island, but for Oblivion, it
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: had already been established with this orchestral Pino D'Onozio music.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: And one of the things I wanted, I just, this
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: nightmare scenario hit me in the face. One of the
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: things that I was with, I love three and four musketeers,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: the Richard Lester films that had been shot together. And
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: a similar situation had happened with those. They put off
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: doing the post-production on four musketeers to focus on the
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: three musketeers. And Michelle LeGrand did the score to the
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: first one. And for some reason, Michelle LeGrand wasn't available
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: or too expensive or whatever happened. And they ended up
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: getting Lilo Schifrin to do the second one. And I
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: love both composers, Michelle LeGrand and Lilo Schifrin. But the
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: tone just completely changed in The Four Musketeers. And I
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: really missed having the continuation of the flavor that Michelle
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: LeGrand had started. So I was like, No, we are
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: not going to have Charlie's brother do this. Not because
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: he isn't good, but because it isn't going to be
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: the same flavor. And I had tempt scored part two
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: with all of Pino's cues from the first one. And
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: so I went in with a music editor and we
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: very carefully edited all of those cues to fit everything perfectly.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: And I went to Charlie and I said, we're going
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: to use... pinot score again and so most fans.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 4: Won't be that upset by that and.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what ended up happening so it is a
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: recycled score but very artfully artfully edited and stuff and
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: there were there were a two or three little cues
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: that didn't get, ended up getting used in the first one.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: So it does have a couple, you know, a couple
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: of original things that people hadn't heard and stuff. So
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: I was really, really happy that we went in that direction.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: Once you get on that series, you don't vary it.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, even huge John Williams kind of process, like
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 4: the Star Wars one still just kind of, it's rare
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: that there's like a really different thing. It's not, you know,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 4: it's every once in a while you get, you know,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: your Phantom Menace score moment. But other than that, it's like, Yeah,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: that's John Williams. Yeah, this is Star Wars. Like, it
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 4: still kind of falls into that same category.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, the only other, like, older casting option I
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: wanted to go into was Paul Bartel.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: Ah.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: Because I love Paul Bartel.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 4: So, like, anybody that's worked with him, I was like, okay,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: do you have Paul Bartel stories? Like, he's just an
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: amazing actor and a director. So, like, anything he was
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 4: connected to.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: I was such a huge fan of Eating Raoul.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 9: Mm-hmm.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Paul Bartel and Mary Warnoff, that I, in my second feature,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: Acting on Impulse, I had gotten to know Paul. I
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: actually don't even remember how I first met him. I
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: think it was at a party. But I asked him
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: to play a director in the movie. And I'm like, well,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: now I have Paul Bartel. I've got to get Mary
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: Warnoff in here somewhere. It's a deal.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: It's a deal. A package deal.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I wanted them to end up. with a scene
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: together but they it didn't work out schedule wise so
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: we had her play the receptionist at the hotel so
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: they didn't actually cross paths in the movie but uh
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: but it was still i could claim that i worked
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: with both they were both there and uh so that
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: was fantastic and paul was just unbelievably nice guy you
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: know where i did meet him now that i think
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: about it was at a film festival. With Guilty as Charged.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: It went to the Seattle Film Festival and Houston World
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: Fest and a few other places. I can't remember exactly
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: which festival it was that I met Paul, but it was,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: it was at one of those and we struck up
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: immediate friendship. He was gay like I am. And so we,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we hit it off in terms of just,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: you know, pointing out all the eye candy and, you know,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: stuff like that and hitting up the gay bars in
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: the local place, wherever we were. And, um, he was
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: just fantastic. And his, he lived in the Hollywood Hills and,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: He collected art. He had David Hockney paintings of himself.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: And he had some original Andy Warhols. I mean, it
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: was just incredible. And, you know, Mary Warnoff is an
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: artist herself. And so he had some pieces of hers.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: And just an incredibly nice guy. And was someone that
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: I really... became very friendly with and that friendship continued
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: up until the time that he unfortunately passed away much
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: earlier than, than he should have. And, um, and I'm
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: not in touch with Mary as much, but, um, do occasionally,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: you know, hear from her. Um, we did, Femme Fatales did, uh,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: a story on me and, and also on Elvira's haunted
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: Hills and interviewed Elvira had sort of a whole cover story, um,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: for that big issue. And Jason Paul column was the
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: journalist who interviewed us and got everything together. And he decided,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: you know, for this big issue, let's get a photo
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: session of Sam and all of his scream Queens, um,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: And so we have this incredible photo shoot at my house.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: At that time, I was living in studio city and
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: I have an original cat people, six sheet in the
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: living room, the, the Val Luton. And that was sort
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: of the backdrop to this photo shoot. And, I called up.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: We got Cassandra Peterson there. We got Julie Brown from
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: Earth Girls Are Easy. I love Julie Brown.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 4: That's another one I could have easily talked about for hours.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about her in a second.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 4: I love Julie Brown.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: She's one of my absolute closest friends, and I've directed
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: her in so many projects. But anyway, she came. Um,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: and I, at that time I was directing Julie in
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: episodes of strip mall and one of the other characters,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: one of the other cast members in strip mall was
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: Stella Stevens. We got Stella Stevens to come over and
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: we got Mary Warren. I have to come over and
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: Musetta Vander who played lash the dominatrix and the oblivion
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: films and, uh, Brink Stevens who had played a waitress
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: in acting on impulse with me. And, uh, So anyway,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: I think that was all the ladies. But it was just... Oh,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: and Nancy Allen was supposed to do it. And then
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: they had a last minute conflict and had to cancel.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: So she was almost part of it. But at any rate,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: all this was... because of Mary, you know, going back
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: to the Mary Warnoff thing, you know, she came over
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: and participated and it was really fun. And, and it was,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: you know, many years after I had worked with Mary
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: so briefly on, on acting on impulse, but she very
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: graciously said yes. And, um, anyway, I just adore her.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: I think she's magnificent.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 4: That's, that's quite a lineup right there.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was fun. Yeah.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 4: My, my, uh, Julie goes all the way back to
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 4: her album.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, and, um, homecoming queen's got a gun. I.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 4: It's funny. I haven't, I still, I keep waiting for
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: her to come this far in to do like a
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: convention or something. I still have it physically crossed over,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 4: but I did, it was, I guess Facebook or something
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: somewhere years ago. I, I ended up like just messenger
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 4: and saying, you know, Hey, you know, I've liked you
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 4: from this far back. And I got talking about something
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 4: on the, um, the, like the, cause I'd gotten into
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 4: like the fan club or whatever. Um, And I started
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 4: talking about these messages that she would send out. And
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: she's like, I don't even remember these. So I'm like, well,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 4: I'm a geek. I have them. So I made copies
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 4: of them and sent them to her. Because it was
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 4: like the standard thing they were sending out to everybody.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 4: But I was describing some of the weird stuff that she.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: Put in it.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 4: And she's like, I don't even remember doing this. So
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 4: it's sad that she didn't have a copy of it.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 4: But I did, of course.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: Wow. That's amazing.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 4: So I'm like, I don't know.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: I almost feel like there was a moment in time
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: where she had an assistant or somebody doing posts for her.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: And it could have been during that period.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 4: Because she had no idea.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: I'm like, well, you need a copy of your fan letters.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I met Julie on, I did a film called
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: Out There. It was a UFO comedy for Showtime. It
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: was 1995. And it starred Bill Campbell, who was the Rocketeer.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: And Rod Steiger came back and played a general, which was,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: I think, that entire character and wardrobe was stolen later
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: for Mars Attacks.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a little bigger budget, I suppose.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, and there were other things in Mars Attacks that
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: seemed to be drawn from our film. Like our aliens were...
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: The Achilles heel of our aliens were accordion music, and
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: they exploded into styrofoam popcorn packing chips.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: Tim, we're going to have to have a talk is
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: what we're saying.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: So anyway, but in Out There, again... a dream cast
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: that I've put together of just all these crazy eclectic people. Um, uh,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: Bill Campbell, Rod Steiger, Billy Bob Thornton did a day. Um,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: we had Jill St. John from diamonds are forever. And now,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: you know, um, we had PJ souls from Carrie. Yeah.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: We had, uh, oh my god it just went on
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: and on and on Dick Sargent from Bewitched it was
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: his last film um I'm Donnie Mose from Happy Days
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: but um anyway I was like Julie Brown these girls
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: are easy.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: She definitely needs to be in whatever alien feature we
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: need to do we need to get her so um
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 4: I luckily.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: One of the producers uh knew her got her to
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: come in for a meeting and I was just genuflecting
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: and fawning all over her and we just became best
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: pals she and cassandra peterson are are literally my best
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: friends we just pal around all the time and many
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: times we pal around the three of us yeah and
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: they had known each other um julie had a show
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: on mtv called just say julie was.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 4: Again i think like cutting edge like i look at
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 4: stuff that came after that and i'm like she was
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 4: doing Such a weird, relaxed version of this show that
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 4: then I saw so many people kind of take from.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 4: And then Julie's never really went anywhere. Like she never
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 4: really got as big as she needed to.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: Be in my opinion, too. But it was a it
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: was a sketch comedy series. And she and she had
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: Elvira on as a guest one time. And so they
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: already knew each other. And it's just weird. We're just
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: all pals. But so I've directed Julie and out there.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Fat Rose and Squeaky, which was a film with Louise Fletcher,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: Cicely Tyson, and Julie. I did a Christmas movie that
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: Julie was in called My Santa. And then I did
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: a bridal comedy with her called Mothers of the Bride.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: And I directed a bunch of episodes of Strip Mall,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: which was the series that Julie created and starred in
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: for Comedy Central. And there was a gay comedy series
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: I did called From Here On Out, and she did
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: a cameo in that. um anyway i just try to
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: use her whenever i can it's she's just she is
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: just magical she she's hilarious and brings anything any character
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: to life.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah it's it has been good to keep seeing her
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 4: pop up on you know she turns up in clueless
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 4: and then turns up in like she's still doing sitcom
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 4: appearances so i'm just like i'm so glad to see
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 4: her still working but again i just she should have
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 4: been she'll be.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: Brown she should have been huge i agree i agree
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: She's also done stage musicals.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've seen some of her ads. She'll advertise them.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: On her website. She took Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun,
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: the novelty song, and expanded it into this whole crazy musical.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: And she stars in it. And the other lead, she
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: always has a drag queen play that character. And there's
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: a club in Los Angeles called the Cavern Club. And
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: they performed it there. I've seen it many times. And
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: then she's also done a musical version of Earth Girls
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: Are Easy, which she wrote.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 4: Which, again, should have been her as the lead in
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 4: my mind. I'm assuming that's studio involvement.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But she does play the lead in the musical version.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: And it's also really great. And so anyway, she's just.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 9: Fabulous.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: I consider her royalty.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: Well, some of those that you mentioned is what I
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 4: was going to say. You've hit so many different types
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: of things over the years. There is a weird... Christmas
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 4: theme going on there. Is that purposeful?
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: In recent years, I have kind of gotten into a
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: niche of being a director for hire on Lifetime thrillers.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: and Hallmark.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: That is an industry all its own.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, and Hallmark Christmas movies. And I have done, I've
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: lost count, I think I've done six or seven Christmas movies,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: and I'm doing two more this year, at least two more.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: Back to back, I'll be doing those later this summer,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: and I just did a romantic bridal comedy for Hallmark
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: that we shot in Palm Springs. It's going to air
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: in July. And last year was my busiest year ever.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: I directed six movies in one year. Good Lord. And
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: five of them were sort of Lifetime-ish thrillers, and one
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: of them was a Hallmark Christmas movie. So it's like
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: that's my life. I'm either killing people or giving them–
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: person's presence well and.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 4: Then like they're throwing in like the the stuff for
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 4: like world series and super bowl and like there's just
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 4: these weird offshoot projects very weird.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Offshoot there was a production company that hired me for
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: a little while and they were in good with fox
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: sports and and had all these sports shows they were
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: doing i have no interest in sports and.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: I mean, many geeks out there. We understand.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, when I say no interest in sports, when
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: people talked about the Super Bowl, I would be like,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: that's bowling? That's a bowling league? What?
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 4: I remember that show with the puppies. It's that one, right?
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: And I got hired to direct the opening of the
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl. So I'm like, okay.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 5: I'll do it.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: But it was... I forget what year, but we went
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: to New Orleans and it was just, you know, again,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: this is like not really having to do with sports.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: It was like a music video. And we created a
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: parade in New Orleans. We shut down the whole Bourbon
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Street and hired a thousand extras. It was a huge
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: budget thing. And it was dueling musicians where we had,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: saxophone player down in the intersection of a street and
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: then up on one of the balconies overlooking it was
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: an electric violinist or something and it was like dueling
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: banjos and deliverance and they were going back and forth
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: and I had no idea what that had to do
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: with the Super Bowl but this is the concept they
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: wanted and I directed it and it was one of
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: the biggest budgeted, most numbers of extras and craziness that
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: I've ever done, and it was fabulous. I absolutely loved it.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: Then I did the opening for the 100th anniversary of
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: the World Series. They hired Sheila E., who wrote a
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: special song for the occasion.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 4: Impressive in her own right.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: And we did a music video of her in 10
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: different settings, one representing each of the decades of the
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: 100 years of the World Series. And had her in
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: different costumes. So like in the fifties, she was a
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: waitress at a fifties diner, that kind of thing. So
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: each decade sort of had a stereotypical sort of setting and,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: and style. And, um, so again, a huge budget, all
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: these elaborate sets and extras and dancing. And, and it
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: was just so much fun. It was, it was just
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: a dream to, to do that. Um, also going back
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: to the Superbowl, I also directed, um, Oh, shoot. Who
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: is the guy who's the dad on the American Pie
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: movies who was from SCTV with the big eyebrows?
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 4: Eugene Levy.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: Eugene Levy. Thank you.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 4: I knew it was in there somewhere. My brain's getting useless.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: Anyway, the fabulous Eugene Levy. We hired him to do
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: these comedy sketches that were going to be sort of
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: sprinkled throughout coming in and out of commercials for the
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl where he played this sort of crazy scientist
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: who was coming up with gimmicks to how to make
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: football more interesting to watch. So there would be like,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: he'd had an experiment where he put rocket, uh, motors
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: on the football. So when they threw it, it would
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: kick in and go shooting.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 4: And, you know, just like the XFL or what? Did
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 4: they try that stuff?
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: Like, And, of course, each experiment blows up in his
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: face or, you know, does something wacky.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 4: He's the Wile E. Coyote of this industry.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: He is totally. That was the concept. You got it.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: And those were hilariously fun to do. That year, they
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: were going to have Will Smith introduce one of the teams.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: And so I forget it. who was introducing the other team,
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: but I didn't get to direct that, but I got
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: to direct Will Smith for about 10 seconds.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 4: That's all you need, really. He's Will Smith.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: They said, you know, he's a very busy guy. He's
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: just going to come in, do the introduction, and leave.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: So we rehearsed it with a stand-in. We got all
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: the lighting, everything perfect.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 4: Who got to be the stand-in for Will Smith?
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I have no idea. And literally, we were just
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: waiting for the moment Billy Bush was there from whatever
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: the show was, Extra or Entertainment Tonight, whatever show he
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: was working.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 4: Whatever those interchangeable weird entertainment shows are.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: Whatever show he got fired from because of the Trump incident.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: Whatever that show was, that was the show he was
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: working for at the time. He was there with his
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: film crew to shoot us shooting Will Smith. I mean,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: it was the most elaborate kind of. You know, all
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: this crew and an entertainment show, you know, shooting us.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: And so we're waiting and he was running late and everything.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: And so then finally, you know, his handlers come running in.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: It's like the arrival of the President of the United
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: States or something.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 4: He's way more important.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: And literally, Will comes in, hits his mark. I go,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: I'm Sam Irving, your director. Shake his hand. Thank you
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: very much. We have the cue card.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 4: And action.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: Action. And cut. And then he leaves. And then he
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: just bolts out the door. And it was literally one take. So,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not even sure it was ten seconds.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: It might have been eight.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 4: One take Will Smith.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 5: He's on it.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 4: He's a professional.
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: But, man, I directed Will Smith.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 4: Not everybody gets to claim that.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: And then we had Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore did
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: a little sketch. They were sitting on... Didn't they have
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: a movie?
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 4: They had a couple of movies. They did another one recently.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: A romantic comedy or something.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they've had two or three together.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: So that was one of their romantic comedies was coming
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: out at the time. I think it was maybe the
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: first one, if they did more than one. I don't think.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: I knew they.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 4: Did more than one. Amnesia movie or whatever that one was.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 4: I don't know what it was.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: But they were sort of promoting that. So this was
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: kind of a little cross-promotion for that. But they did
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: a little romantic comedy bit. like they were sitting on
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: the back row of the bleachers at the Super Bowl
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: and ended up, you know, and, you know, winked at
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: the end and maybe mentioned their movie or something like that.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: So again, it was, but it was also literally a
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: drive-by shooting kind of deal because we rehearsed it with stand-ins,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: we had the cue cards, they raced in.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 4: Here they come, here they come.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: And shook their hand and action and we did maybe
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: a couple takes on that one. And then they were
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: out of there. So, but it was, you know, it
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: was just fun. I mean, those were just kind of
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: crazy things. I love working for that company. And so
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: you get invited to do the most bizarre things in
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: this industry at times. Very random.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 4: That's what I was fascinated by. Like, especially as you
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 4: get into like, you know, once you're established, like, how
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 4: it pans out and how you get from one job
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 4: to the next because it's hard enough kind of breaking
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 4: in but even then there are people that I see
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 4: that like they have to start doing different kinds of
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 4: jobs and some people feel like they have to and
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 4: some people really embrace just the freedom of whatever's coming
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 4: next or what people offer me and So yeah, I, I,
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 4: it just seems like it's, it's sort of a different
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 4: take everybody has on, on what they, so it's good
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 4: to hear you're having your busiest year ever. Like it's crazy.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: And who knew at this age that I would be
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: that busy. It's really nuts. Um, I did a series
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: that I'm very proud of called Dante's Cove. Yeah. Directed three, all,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: all three seasons of that. It was for a gay
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: network called here TV and it was a supernatural gay series. And, um,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: which was very close to me because I'm gay, but
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: also huge fan of, of that genre, obviously. And, um,
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: but what was exciting for me is this was back
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: in 2005, six and seven.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 4: It was before people were probably ready for it at
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 4: that point.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it was ahead of the curve a bit.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: There'd been a, you know, there were a couple of
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: gay shows. I mean, obviously Will and Grace and there
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: was Queer as Folk.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: Um, but what, You know, a lot of those shows,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: especially Queer as Folk, were kind of dealing with social, gay,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: LGBTQ issues. Yeah. You know, coming out.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 4: In a very serious way.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And what I wanted to do with our show
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: is just, I wanted it to be total matter of fact,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: not do the political stuff. and and go into all
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: of that this was just going to be a really
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: fun supernatural show that just matter of factly happened to
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: be mostly populated with gay people and uh And so
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: that's what was really exciting. And in a way, in
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: an overall way, it was making a political statement.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 4: By not making a gimmick, it's just telling a story.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And just making it all matter of fact and
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: making it a popcorn entertainment show. And it was really
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: a cross between... you know, dark shadows and Buffy the
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: vampire slayer or something like that. And, and we just
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: had a blast. It was really, really fun. It was
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: also very sexy. We had nudity and all kinds of
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: stuff that we could do.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 4: That's what I was trying to, I was like, what
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 4: network was that? I was trying to figure out where
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 4: they could show this.
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a premium channel like HBO. And so
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: we could have the nudity, but, um, but here TV
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: was a subscription based channel. Um, The head witch was
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: played by Tracy Scoggins, who was on... Lois and Clark.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 4: Lois and Clark. Probably the most mainstream thing.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 4: But tons of horror and sci-fi.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: And had done Dynasty and those shows. And I love,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: whenever she was interviewed about her character, she said, well,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: it's a cross between Joan Collins and Barnabas Collins. And
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, that is so.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 4: There's the copy for your whole promotion.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: That is the show. So... Anyway, we had a great,
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: great time with that show. And we had, in the
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: first season, we had Stephen Amell, who went on to
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: be Arrow, big star on that show. And so, you know,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: it was great fun.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 5: Definitely.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 4: Well, and still, technically still writing. Still, it's all, again,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 4: come full circle. The fact that you just were looking at,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 4: there's a Rondo sitting very close to us right now. So,
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 4: still tied it all together and did an interview with
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 4: Elvira and just got a Rondo Award for it.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, well, I don't, I've kind of, a lot of
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: films that I wrote that tried to get off the ground,
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: passion projects that I wanted to get off the ground,
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: many times those didn't happen. and so they're very soul-crushing
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: when you have your you know blood sweat and tears
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: put into something and you work on it for years
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: and it still wasn't finding the financing and all that
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff and at this point i've just kind
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: of i i am very very very lucky right now
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: that i am getting called to do these director for
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: hire gigs and as long as that's happening i'm Great.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: I am in my element when I am working. I'm
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: not in my element when I'm trying to find work.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 4: That's the fight everybody gets into, yeah.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: So I am just riding the wave. If I'm being
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: hired to direct, great. I will do that till the
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: cows come home. And what I do first... for labor
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: of love projects is writing, and the writing now has
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: become writing articles for horror magazines. I did an incredible
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: in-depth study for Little Shop of Horrors magazine on the
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: making of Frankenstein the True Story, which was a 1973
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: NBC Universal miniseries of Frankenstein.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 4: It was.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: Actually... uh, had a whole sort of, um, subliminal, well,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of, um, gay element to it that
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: not everybody picked up on, but it was definitely there.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: The screenwriters were a gay couple, very famous gay couple, um,
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: Christopher Isherwood and Don McCarty. There's even been documentaries made
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: about them. Christopher Isherwood wrote the book that The Berlin
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: stories that Cabaret was based on. He wrote the book
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: A Single Man. It got made into a film with
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: Colin Firth. He did... There was a very autobiographical book
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: called Christopher and Me that Matt Smith played Christopher Isherwood
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: in that film. Anyway, brilliant novelist and screenwriter. He did
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: a number of different scripts, this being one of them.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: And his partner... Don Bacardi is a very famous artist,
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: and they collaborated on this Frankenstein script, and it's absolutely brilliant.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: And the uniqueness about it is that the creature, when
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: he is created in this film, he comes out beautiful.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: And it's played by Michael Sarazin, and the Doctor was
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: Leonard Whiting, it was Romeo and Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: And eventually the creature starts to deteriorate. And so you
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: have this fabulous arc now where, uh, the creature has,
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: you know, emotional, this, this emotional arc of somewhere to go. Um,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: so anyway, it was a, it was a brilliant film.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: It was very moving for me as a kid. I
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: picked up on the subtext of the gay elements in it. Uh,
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of people were like, eh,
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: I think you're reading into it. No, I interviewed Don Bacardi,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: who's still alive, and he was like, oh no, we
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: were putting it in there, we were lacing it in
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: there like crazy. And the producer of the film was
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: also gay, Hans Stromberg Jr., and he had discovered Vampyra
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: and created her whole show, so he's basically the granddaddy
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: of all horror hosts.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: And he was a huge... His dad was a big
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: producer at MGM, produced the Thin Man movies, and... Mask
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: of Fu Manchu with Karloff, and Karloff was a family friend. Anyway,
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: this gay son, his favorite film of all time was
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: Bride of Frankenstein, which is the same with me. There's
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: just all these things that were really interesting. He not
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: only discovered Vampyra, he then became head of programming for CBS,
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: and he developed helped develop and champion the Munsters. He
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: cast his friend Yvonne DiCarlo as Lily Munster. He put
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: the two white stripes in her hair as an homage
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: to Bride of Frankenstein. On Route 666, he instigated the
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: whole episode with Karloff and Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr.,
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: where he got Karloff to put on his monster makeup
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: again for the last time.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I just.
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: There was so much to write about that I did
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: this whole issue. I guest edited the whole issue and
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: ended up winning the Rondo Award for Best Article of
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: the Year. And then did, as you said, for Scream Magazine,
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: did this amazing interview with Elvira that won my second Rondo,
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: which we did the ceremony last night. And I was really,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: really proud of that. And then completely away from the
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: horror genre altogether, I did a book. a biography of
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: Kay Thompson who wrote the Eloise children's books. She starred
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: in funny face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. And
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: she was a big whirlwind behind the scenes at MGM.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: She was the head of the vocal department, a big
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: musician worked with Sinatra and Judy Garland was her best friend.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: And she was the godmother of Liza Minnelli and guided
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: her entire career and lived with Liza Minnelli for 20 years.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: Just an amazing unsung heroine of the 20th century and,
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: directed John F. Kennedy's inaugural gala, directed the most important
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: fashion show of the 20th century that introduced all these
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: great designers and helped propel American designers into being recognized.
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, just unbelievable stuff. And that book got published
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: in a big way by Simon & Schuster, and I'm
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: really proud of that one. And so... I love writing
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: about showbiz, and that's what I do between movies.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 4: Well, that's kind of what led me to this. It's
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 4: that same thing. I just sort of love talking about film,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 4: and anybody who just wants to talk about film in general,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 4: I'm drawn to, and we kind of click in a
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 4: weird way.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 4: So, especially somebody who has the amazing amount of stories
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 4: and crossovers that you've had.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 4: Definitely thank you for for sitting down and sharing them
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 4: with me and everyone else now so is there stuff
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 4: coming up or do you want to what what should
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 4: people look for or come find you or what what's
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 4: anything you want to plug.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: Look me up on facebook and um i have a
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: pretty extensive bio that's pretty updated on wikipedia and of
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: course all my credits are on imdb um i've got
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: the Lots and lots of Lifetime thrillers and Hallmark Christmas
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: movies and romantic comedies coming up. So just watch those
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: channels and you're bound to bump into me. Definitely.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 11: All right.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 4: Well, thank you for being here. Otherwise, that about does it.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 4: We will return next time. Same geek feed. Thanks for listening.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Brian.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 4: That was great.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 7: Thank you.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 9: When day is done and shadows fall.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: I dream of you.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 9: When day is done, I think of all the joys
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 9: we knew. That yearning, returning to hold you in my arms.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 9: won't go dear I know dear without you night has
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 9: lost its charms when day is done and grass is
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 9: wet with twilight's dew my lonely heart is singing with
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 9: the sun.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, I miss your tender kiss the.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: Whole day through.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 12: I miss you most of all when days die.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 4: It was just sitting there the whole time. How did
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 4: it get there? That's weird.
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 10: I know.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: It did fall on its side, but I mean, on
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: a rug?
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 4: Enough, yeah. It's not from the table. That's weird.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 8: When I was in the bathroom, you got up and
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 8: shook it.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, not that you can prove. Let's go back
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 4: to the footage.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 8: This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 8: edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 8: The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 8: the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 7: Talk hard!
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: This program is a proud member of the Battleship Pretension Fleet.