Latest / Movie Meltdown / Mick Garris and the Creative Process

Transcript

Mick Garris and the Creative Process · Movie Meltdown

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Doug Jones from the Hellboy movies and
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the Silver Surfer and Pan's Labyrinth and Hocus Pocus, Falling
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Skies and so much more. But today you are listening
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: to Movie Meltdown.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: The following feature has been rated R by the Motion
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: and parental discretion is advised.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: It's showtime, folks. Enjoy the show.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power.
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.
• 1:28
  Speaker 6: I'm Brian and this week we'll be talking with a
• 1:30
  Speaker 6: very special guest, writer-director Mick Garris. Now Mick is someone
• 1:34
  Speaker 6: I've been wanting to sit down and talk with for.
• 1:35
  Speaker 5: A while now.
• 1:36
  Speaker 6: He's had quite an interesting run in Hollywood, and I
• 1:39
  Speaker 6: wanted to get his take on how it all came together,
• 1:42
  Speaker 6: and his thoughts on what I would say are some
• 1:44
  Speaker 6: pretty fascinating experiences. Now as it turned out, it took
• 1:48
  Speaker 6: a good amount of coordinating to put this discussion together.
• 1:51
  Speaker 7: I'm telling you.
• 1:52
  Speaker 6: This now because there'll be a shift in a few
• 1:54
  Speaker 6: minutes here. We start off talking, and Mick is great
• 1:58
  Speaker 6: of course, but we're in a relatively loud room, and
• 2:01
  Speaker 6: for a few seconds Mick's mic cord had some issues.
• 2:05
  Speaker 7: So at.
• 2:05
  Speaker 6: That point, we're actually going to take our break early,
• 2:07
  Speaker 6: and when we come back, we'll be in a much
• 2:09
  Speaker 6: nicer setting, it will be quiet, I will have promptly
• 2:13
  Speaker 6: dealt with that mic cord issue, and we'll settle in
• 2:16
  Speaker 6: for the rest of a great conversation with Mick Garris.
• 2:20
  Speaker 6: So I say, we get started right now.
• 2:40
  Speaker 7: I try to start early on with people and find out.
• 2:43
  Speaker 6: I'm always kind of fascinated what brings people into film
• 2:46
  Speaker 6: and just fandom in general. So do you remember what
• 2:49
  Speaker 6: was the first movie or what experience kind of really
• 2:52
  Speaker 6: triggered it for you?
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: I was probably about six years old and my family
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: watched Son of Kong on television together.
• 3:00
  Speaker 7: Very old school. Very old school, but it was TV.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: I was, like I say, six years old, little black
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: and white set living in the San Fernando Valley in L.A.
• 3:08
  Speaker 8: I'm a native of Los Angeles.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: And I was just captivated by this, you know, it
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: was jerky and I knew it wasn't real, but it
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: was like fascinating. It was my introduction to something other
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: than the mundane. And it just really excited me. And
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: I think like most people who are involved in the
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: dark creative arts, whether it's writing or painting or filmmaking,
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: we're outsiders, you know. And it was something I identified with.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: From childhood, I was reading Richard Matheson and watching fascinated
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: by all of the universal horror movies and stuff that
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: that i grew up as a kid much before you
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: grew up as a kid well that's not far off
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: i think so uh but you know it really was
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: it was really the outsiderness of it and identifying with
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: the monster more than the the hero.
• 3:59
  Speaker 6: I think that's what most of the horror fans exactly
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: it's a weird thing that like yeah you get the
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: sympathetic you know hero that it kind of is anti-hero
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: for some movies but like.
• 4:09
  Speaker 8: Well, not many of us were class president.
• 4:14
  Speaker 7: Not the popular kids. Or we weren't on the football team.
• 4:18
  Speaker 7: The weird kids drawing monsters on our notebooks. Exactly, yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker 6: But I guess what sent you down that path?
• 4:25
  Speaker 7: Was it writing that you thought you wanted to get
• 4:27
  Speaker 7: into initially?
• 4:28
  Speaker 8: I seriously started writing at the age of 12.
• 4:30
  Speaker 7: Wow.
• 4:31
  Speaker 8: And I started drawing. My father was a trained artist and.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: He had gone to school for it, and that was
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: the first thing I started to do creatively.
• 4:41
  Speaker 8: But at 12, I started writing horror stories.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: And I was reading Ray Bradbury, and oh my God,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: I read everything he wrote within a year. And I
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: just was a voracious reader, Richard Matheson. And so I
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: completely gave up drawing to do writing. And then I
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: got my first 8mm camera. And I started making little movies,
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: and they were The Return of the Count and things
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: like that.
• 5:09
  Speaker 8: And so, not Super 8, this is 8.
• 5:10
  Speaker 7: Even more, yeah, yeah.
• 5:13
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so that's where that started.
• 5:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's been one of my running themes as the
• 5:18
  Speaker 6: show goes on, is realizing that art is just... it's
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: art and like you slide back and forth. That's why
• 5:23
  Speaker 6: I kind of spill over into music and in everything.
• 5:26
  Speaker 6: Cause it's like, I feel like we're all the same group,
• 5:29
  Speaker 6: you know, I mean, I was.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: A singer and a band and a songwriter for eight
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: years and doing all that stuff and drawing and, and, uh,
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: you know, all of the stuff, writing journalism and, and,
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: And not just in the horror genre. It all spills over.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: It's got to be good drama first before it's good horror. Yeah,
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: that's how you get it. Unless you're only about breaking taboos.
• 5:51
  Speaker 6: Just schlocky and nothing else.
• 5:52
  Speaker 8: Throwing entrails at the screen or whatever.
• 5:54
  Speaker 7: Which, there's plenty of that out there. Plenty of that
• 5:57
  Speaker 7: out there.
• 5:57
  Speaker 6: So I guess, what was the first thing that kind
• 5:59
  Speaker 6: of sent you on that? What was in your mind
• 6:01
  Speaker 6: at the time, like, this is my big break. This
• 6:03
  Speaker 6: is really going to get me my foot in the
• 6:05
  Speaker 6: door and may have Not panned out that way.
• 6:08
  Speaker 7: But what did you think was the first turning point?
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: Well, really the first turning point was when I started
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: doing the interviews on the Z Channel for the Fantasy
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: Film Festival. And I interviewed people like Steven Spielberg and
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: all that. Nobody had any idea that I'd be writing
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: for him shortly thereafter, but I was doing making of documentary.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: I started doing publicity for movies, particularly in the genre,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: specializing in that.
• 6:32
  Speaker 7: And then Steven was on my interview show.
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: And um they were looking for writers for amazing stories
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: when i was doing the making of goonies and the
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: first day of shooting that i was interviewing him there
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: and you know he asked you know what are.
• 6:47
  Speaker 8: You doing and i said well i'm trying to make
• 6:50
  Speaker 8: it as a writer oh really you don't say that
• 6:52
  Speaker 8: to steve i got.
• 6:52
  Speaker 7: This really amazing story i.
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: Got this script in my back pocket and i had
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: known steven for a while and Never, ever told him that.
• 7:01
  Speaker 8: But I was just starting.
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: To break away from doing the making-ofs and concentrating full-time
• 7:08
  Speaker 6: on writing.
• 7:09
  Speaker 7: And he said, oh, really? We're looking for writers for
• 7:12
  Speaker 7: Amazing Stories, this new show I'm doing.
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: And I learned later I was the first writer that
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: was hired to write one of the scripts.
• 7:20
  Speaker 8: So I literally went from food stamps to.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: A $ 100, 000 a year job writing for Steven Spielberg.
• 7:26
  Speaker 7: That's amazing.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: So.
• 7:28
  Speaker 7: That is the Hollywood story right there.
• 7:30
  Speaker 8: It is, and yet it happened at the age of 33.
• 7:33
  Speaker 7: Young, tender age of 33.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, starting writing at 12, it only took me 21
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: years to make a living at it. But again, you
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: do it because you love it, not because you're trying
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: to get rich.
• 7:45
  Speaker 6: Did you also plan on directing, or did that just
• 7:47
  Speaker 6: sort of get like, hey, do you want to try this?
• 7:50
  Speaker 7: Or did you always have that in mind?
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: I never had a plan to do anything. I just
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: did what I couldn't keep myself from doing. And I thought,
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: you know, when I was a singer in a band,
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: I thought I'd be a rock star, and then that
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: would allow me to write movies, and that would allow me.
• 8:04
  Speaker 7: To direct movies. It was never part of a plan,
• 8:06
  Speaker 7: and it certainly.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: Happened in a much better way than that. The directing
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: just kind of was a natural outgrowth. I'd been making
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: a living as a writer, doing really well as a
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: writer for about a year, and then I was offered
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: an opportunity to direct something. Disney wanted me to go
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: under contract as a writer. And they were tempting me
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: by saying, would you like to do an episode of
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: our new Disney Sunday movie?
• 8:31
  Speaker 7: We can, yeah, ease you in that way.
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: And so I did that, but I didn't sign with
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: them because I wanted opportunities from all the studios and
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: not just family-friendly fare.
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: Which now I guess it doesn't matter because they do everything.
• 8:45
  Speaker 6: They own everything.
• 8:46
  Speaker 7: They do. And I ended up doing Hocus Pocus for them.
• 8:49
  Speaker 6: Well, I guess since you mentioned it, that is one
• 8:52
  Speaker 6: I was going to have to get to because... It's
• 8:55
  Speaker 6: amazing how it's found its footing so late in the game.
• 8:59
  Speaker 6: I guess it did okay when it came out, but
• 9:02
  Speaker 6: the fan base now for Hocus Pocus is insane.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: If you don't have a penis and you're between 4
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: and 40, it's your favorite movie.
• 9:10
  Speaker 7: Or, I mean, that's the thing.
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: We just love Doug Jones on this show. He's been
• 9:14
  Speaker 6: on many times.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: He's great.
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: So it's like, yeah, I had to just because of
• 9:17
  Speaker 6: the Doug Jones connection because he still has just fans
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: lined up because of Him in that part.
• 9:23
  Speaker 8: When I see a young woman coming up for an autograph,
• 9:25
  Speaker 8: I know what it's for.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well.
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: And sometimes I'm proven wrong and happily so because I
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: don't want to.
• 9:30
  Speaker 7: Sleepwalkers, yes. Yeah, exactly. Finally.
• 9:32
  Speaker 8: I don't want gender lines in my fandom.
• 9:35
  Speaker 7: I always like when people sort of break the norm
• 9:37
  Speaker 7: and like, I didn't expect this from you.
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And the people I most like being around are
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: the people who don't do what you expect.
• 9:47
  Speaker 7: Them to do.
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:48
  Speaker 6: I mean, on any of these, like, I was going
• 9:51
  Speaker 6: to even go back to like earlier directing like Critters
• 9:53
  Speaker 6: 2 like when you're handed part of the Critters franchise
• 9:57
  Speaker 6: and they're like I mean how much control did you
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: have going in or was the story relatively set?
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: There was a script already written by David Toohey and
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: there were things that they wanted different and things that
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: I wanted to do differently but they welcomed my personality
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: you know that movie I've not often I've never done
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: a comedy other than that other than the body politics
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: segment of Quicksilver Highway, which was not a comedic story.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: But I wrote it that way, and there's a playful
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: side of me that I've never indulged as deeply as
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: I did on Critters 2 since. And I really like
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: to do that, but it's every bit as much a
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: part of me. There's humor in everything I do, but
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: it's also the dark stuff and the deeply ingrained human.
• 10:48
  Speaker 8: Side of it is important.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: But the playfulness is something I don't want to lose.
• 10:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you've got to find a balance, I think, and
• 10:54
  Speaker 6: get a little of both of those. The other one
• 10:57
  Speaker 6: I thought was interesting, I mean, you're given Psycho 4,
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: and now we see an entire series devoted to what
• 11:03
  Speaker 6: you were kind of touching on in that movie.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, which they've intentionally avoided having anything from the original
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: Psycho Mythos.
• 11:12
  Speaker 7: Reboot and start over and pretend like... Yeah, exactly.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: So I haven't really seen everything they're up to, but
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: At first, I resisted it because it was so far removed.
• 11:19
  Speaker 8: Wait, I had Norma and Young Norman.
• 11:21
  Speaker 7: This was my project.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and they decided to take it in a different direction.
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: So I resisted it for a while. Then I really
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: got to like it, and then I just fell out
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: of it just because there's so much stuff out there.
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: I just thought it was interesting because of all the
• 11:34
  Speaker 6: directions they could have gone, I'm like, well.
• 11:36
  Speaker 7: fourth movie already kind of did that i.
• 11:38
  Speaker 8: Don't think they've seen the movie yeah it was.
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: It's i thought it was a really interesting take on
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: it too because it does and it was before everybody
• 11:44
  Speaker 6: started doing we want the backstory we want the i
• 11:46
  Speaker 6: mean it was very early in that little game so
• 11:49
  Speaker 6: it's like now everybody does that but you guys were.
• 11:51
  Speaker 7: Kind of like breaking new ground there.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: We did and it was written by the original screenwriter
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: who wrote the original psycho we had tony perkins we
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: had My executive producer was Hilton Green's assistant director. Hilton
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: Green was Alfred Hitchcock's assistant director. And it was an amazing,
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: great experience. Anthony Perkins is pretty awesome. How was he
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: as an actor? He's a great actor. But this was
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: a guy who had directed Psycho 3 and wanted to
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: do 4 and they wouldn't let him because it was
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: not successful.
• 12:23
  Speaker 7: 3 did not go over well.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: Did not go over well critically or commercially.
• 12:27
  Speaker 8: And so....
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: He suddenly handed the director of Critters 2. And he
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: did not like that? Well, he approved of me because
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: John Landis and he were friends, and the three of
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: us all had lunch to meet. But he was a
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: complicated guy anyway, very eccentric, but it was all out
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: of caring. He, more than anybody, was connected to that,
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: and so he's protective of it.
• 12:52
  Speaker 7: And he wanted... It's been most of his life. It
• 12:55
  Speaker 7: took over his career, basically. Exactly.
• 12:57
  Speaker 8: For better or for worse.
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: For worse, probably in the grand scheme. I mean, the
• 13:01
  Speaker 6: legacy is amazing, but for his acting, it.
• 13:04
  Speaker 7: Kind of suffered.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: He was a young movie star lead of romantic roles
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: and all.
• 13:08
  Speaker 7: And could have pulled it off. He was a brilliant actor.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: And he became the bad guy, the crazy bad guy.
• 13:12
  Speaker 7: He became a crazy person, yeah.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: And he was eccentric.
• 13:16
  Speaker 7: You know, he.
• 13:18
  Speaker 8: Was not your normal guy.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah. But that's, you know, the line between brilliance and
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: madness is a very fine one.
• 13:26
  Speaker 7: That's true.
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: Well, then, I guess to cross over into some of
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: the King stuff, I mean, did you meet him early on?
• 13:33
  Speaker 7: Because I think you'd worked with him for quite a while.
• 13:36
  Speaker 8: Well, I met him when he shot his cameo in Sleepwalkers.
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: We had talked on the phone and worked together on
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: the phone and all that, but it really was when
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: we got to Sleepwalkers, and that's where we met. And
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: he was so happy with the experience of Sleepwalkers, that's
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: what led to him asking me to do the stand.
• 13:54
  Speaker 7: I guess he signed off.
• 13:56
  Speaker 6: At that point, I would assume he gets approval of
• 13:58
  Speaker 6: his directors as he does.
• 13:59
  Speaker 8: He had director approval on that one, yeah.
• 14:25
  Speaker 9: It's intermission time time for refreshment.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: During the next 10 minutes, you're invited to visit the
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: refreshment stand, where you'll be greeted with fast, friendly service.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: You'll find hot dogs, juicy hamburgers, and mouth-watering, delicious pizza.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: There are refreshing hot and cold beverages, ice-cold cola, and
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: orange drink. Goes great with an order of crispy French fries.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Then there's a wide selection of your favorite candies and
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: other delicious snacks. And there's always a fresh batch of
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: hot buttered popcorn to go with the rest of the show.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: So visit the refreshment stand now during this 10-minute intermission
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: and add to your enjoyment of the movie. We're happy
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: to have you with us tonight and hope you'll come
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: back often.
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: This episode is sponsored by World of Leathercraft, specializing in
• 15:42
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• 16:29
  Speaker 2: May I have your attention, please? I have been asked
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: to explore the serious side of Alfred Hitchcock. Very likely,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: I suspect, because I am Alfred Hitchcock. I have chosen
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: to do this through the following serious statement. I want
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: you to see Psycho, a motion picture, exactly the way
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: I originally made it, uncut, with every scene intact, especially
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: the famous shower bath scene, which the TV version did
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: not dare show. This occurs 44 minutes from the start
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: of Psycho. Watch for it. And remember, No one will
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: be admitted to see Psycho except from the very beginning.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: I now leave you with this final serious message.
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: Suggested for mature audiences.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: Hello, creeps. It's me, the Crypt Keeper. And you're listening
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: to Movie Meltdown.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: The greatest movie geek show on Earth.
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: It's part of your problem, you know.
• 17:41
  Speaker 9: You haven't.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Seen enough movies.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Now, on with the show. All the times have come.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: But now they're gone.
• 18:26
  Speaker 10: Seasons don't fear the reaper Nor do the wind, the.
• 18:31
  Speaker 9: Sun or the rain Come on baby Baby take my
• 18:37
  Speaker 9: hand We'll be able to fly.
• 18:44
  Speaker 7: Baby I'm your.
• 18:45
  Speaker 6: Man Ah we we haven't addressed the stand i did
• 18:53
  Speaker 6: want to at least get to that at some point
• 18:55
  Speaker 6: sure i guess as you're you're handed this project i
• 19:00
  Speaker 6: mean you look at the book how can you not
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: be intimidated by i mean that the phone book that
• 19:06
  Speaker 6: it is like i.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: Was totally intimidated by it you know the good news
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: though was that it was one of my favorite books
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: of all time yeah we had Just done Sleepwalkers together,
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: and the reason he came to me with it was
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: because he really liked what we had done with Sleepwalkers,
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: especially before the MPAA got old.
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: And even more intimidating than that book is when a
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: 460-page script shows up on your doorstep.
• 19:35
  Speaker 6: I mean, you are essentially making four or more movies.
• 19:38
  Speaker 6: Edited down, you're making four movies.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: It was four movies, but you still have to shoot
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: it like one. You shoot out all the location in
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: one place, then you move to the next place. A
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: movie isn't shot in order. Especially something this lumbering.
• 19:52
  Speaker 6: Picking up all those shots in that location from four
• 19:56
  Speaker 6: hours from now. In the running time.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: That's huge. Not only was the page count really intimidating,
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: but Also the scope of it. I had only done
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: things on a small scale. You know, Critters 2 was
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: the biggest scope of anything I'd done before that.
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'd say Epic is probably an understatement.
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: Understatement to be sure. And here we're doing like 600
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: extras on the streets of downtown Las Vegas. You know,
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: the end of the world, basically. And I'd never done
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: anything approaching that scale. And even though it was a
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: healthy budget for a television miniseries in 1994... It's still
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: a very demanding project and CGI had just started being used.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: We used a little bit of it there and it
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: was still pretty primitive and all. The only way you
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: can make a movie is to do it one day
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: at a time. It's like being a recovering alcoholic. You
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: take it one day at a time.
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: Actually, something like that, yeah. I guess that's the only
• 21:05
  Speaker 6: way to not be overwhelmed by it.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: And to not be overwhelmed by it is to have
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: a script that you know is great, and you break
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: it down into what the shooting schedule is going to be,
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: and you chip away at it. And literally, there was
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: no light at the end of the tunnel. All I
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: saw was tunnels. including the Lincoln Tunnel literally and figuratively
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: but you know it was incredibly intimidating and all you
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: can do is the best work that you know how
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: to do and surround yourself with the best people you
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: know how to surround yourself with so it was on
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: the road it was shot on locations all over the
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: US in six different states.
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: Primarily huge cast you know.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: 126 speaking parts And, you know, primarily shot in Utah,
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: but also a couple of weeks in Nevada and also
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: a couple of days in New York and a day
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: in Maine and, you know, in California for a day.
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: So really difficult stuff to do and just the choreography
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: of things like the Las Vegas sequences and things. Very intimidating,
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: but all you can do is, you know, envision that.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: Like Rodin envisioned the thinker out of that giant boulder.
• 22:25
  Speaker 6: Look around and find it in there.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you chip away everything that's not the thinker. Yeah.
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: And so that's kind of the job.
• 22:35
  Speaker 7: Of specifics, I did go back.
• 22:37
  Speaker 6: I just ended up re-watching it in the past year.
• 22:39
  Speaker 6: think i forgot about that opening sequence was that don't
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: fear the reaper yeah the the just the roving camera
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: was that your concept originally or did it just happen
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: as your you know did you stumble upon.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: That idea or well it was it was what the
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: plan was and you know it was written to to
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: not to be shot in that way but it was
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: written in a way that to me felt like well
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: there's a And just the descriptions felt like a nightmare
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: and a floating dream. And because we had so much
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: work to do, the film was shot in 16 millimeter,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: and we carried a Steadicam with us every day, as
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: well as a crane with a remote control head on it.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: Because laying the rails that you use for dollying, the
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: dolly track and everything is time consuming. for that much stuff.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: Every shot, you know, you have to do that. Plus,
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: you're going down long corridors and things and you don't
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: want to be able to see the dolly rails. So
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: a Steadicam gives you that kind of floaty, dreamlike feeling
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: that really works and that's a really haunting song as well.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: And so the combination of practicality and imagination were kind of,
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: it was the perfect marriage to open this in a
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: really stark and Shocking way. And another thing about that
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: opening scene is one of the things that ABC said
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: to us, their standards and practices was no open eyes
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: on the corpses. So we we push right into that
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: woman's face. She's dead and clouded over eyes. And it
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: was our finger to the standards and practices. That's what
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: I was going to ask.
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah, because that also is the beginning of it. It's
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: not even late in the running time for that night.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: We're in the titles.
• 24:34
  Speaker 7: Right, yeah.
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: You're right there when the kids are still finishing dinner
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: and be like, hey, mom, what?
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: Oh. Wow, look at that dead lady.
• 24:40
  Speaker 7: What is all this?
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: It's a lot of dead bodies there to kick things off.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, the good thing is they knew, look,
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: we're doing Stephen King. People know it's Stephen King, so
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: we're going to stretch the envelope.
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: A little bit.
• 24:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you signed on to do Stephen King. You should
• 24:54
  Speaker 6: know what you're getting yourself into. So speaking of him, how,
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: I mean, again, you've worked with him quite a few
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: times over the years. I guess in the beginning there,
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: the first couple of projects, how was he, is he
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: someone that you collaborate with on these projects or is it?
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: He just sort of comes in and oversees it?
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: It's a real collaboration, but the writing work is usually
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: done first when he's done the scripts. In the case
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: of Sleepwalkers, I was brought in. We talked on the phone,
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: and we'd talk about some changes, and he would actually
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: fax them to me. The next day, there'd be this
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: great scene, five pages that had been faxed to me.
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: We might have to stop and explain to the kids
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: what a fax was.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: A fax, yeah. Nah, the hell with it. Google it,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: you'll be fine. Yeah. But we never met until he
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: shot his cameo for Sleepwalkers. And then the experience was
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: such a good one that when it came time for
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: The Stand, he asked me to do that. And the
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: script was already written, but... he was there for probably
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: half of the shoot off and on and, and very
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: much a collaborator, but in the sense of encouragement, there,
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: there's never been a time in our work together where
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: he has told me, you know, I think you should
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: shoot it like this, or I think this or that,
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: you know, I'd go to him and ask his opinion
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: of things, um, just because what a great resource to have. But, um,
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: He really knows the job of the director and the
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: job of the producer and the job of the screenwriter
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: and the like. And I welcome his input. But, you know,
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: I've said this before, but a lot of people think
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: that because I've worked with him so much that I'm
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: his bitch.
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: Well, I mean, we were actually on a recent episode.
• 26:42
  Speaker 6: The guest was referencing like having him on the set
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: and how nerve wracking that would probably be. And I
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: was like, well, you've actually done that. So you're a
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: good resource.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: It's not nerve wracking at all. It's the opposite. It's
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: an encouragement that he offers. And he's a really good guy.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: And he is an artist first and foremost. And he,
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: you know, you read his book on writing and you
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: know how encouraging he can be about the creative process.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: And for him to be a part of it and
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: on The Shining, he was around even more often.
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: He was the executive producer on both of those.
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: Well, that's what I was thinking. Your early projects were
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: post the Kubrick Shining. So I guess that, I mean,
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: that's probably his most famous issue with. His stuff being
• 27:28
  Speaker 6: turned into a movie.
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I think it's well known that it did not really.
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: I guess from that point on, everybody kind of approaches
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: it as, you know, okay, we're working with you. What
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: do you want to do?
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: Well, not always. You know, there were movies after that
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: that he wasn't crazy about. But, you know, he's been
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: very philosophical about it and really smart about it in
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: that people say, oh, look, you fucked up this book.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: And no, the book's still right here. You may not
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: like the movie, but they didn't do anything to my book.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: They didn't tear pages out of every copy in the
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: library and put them back.
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: I've always had issues with that because I hate when people,
• 28:06
  Speaker 6: it's an argument I get in all the time with
• 28:07
  Speaker 6: the book's better option. I'm like, those are entirely different
• 28:11
  Speaker 6: forms of entertainment. Like you can't, really compare better like
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: you can like well often you can well you can
• 28:17
  Speaker 6: like the way the story goes better but I'm like
• 28:19
  Speaker 6: it's a different medium so like you can't.
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: A good book can make for a bad movie yeah
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: but in the hands of someone else it can make for.
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: A good movie yeah it's it's just again I feel
• 28:30
  Speaker 6: like they're so different in what you how you ingest
• 28:33
  Speaker 6: them you know.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: It's like well they're different media and yeah yeah Richard
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: Matheson once said to me when we were working together
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: on Amazing Stories that something that's stuck with me ever
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: since is books are internal and film is external yeah
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: and that's a huge difference and people who can work
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: in both media you know it's it's it's really uh
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: an amazing opportunity to be able to tap both of those.
• 28:59
  Speaker 6: It's a totally different way of telling the story because
• 29:01
  Speaker 6: yeah you're you're leaving so much up to the reader
• 29:05
  Speaker 6: as an author of a book but like you have
• 29:08
  Speaker 6: to make sure everything is on the screen as you're
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: throwing the screenplay together. So it's a totally different approach.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: The thought process a character goes through has to be
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: represented visually. As somebody who works in both media, it's
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: an interesting conundrum or challenge or exciting opportunity.
• 29:27
  Speaker 6: Well, I was dealing with, I guess at that point, King,
• 29:30
  Speaker 6: but you didn't. You came from California, but you really
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: didn't grow up around celebrities or the like.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: No, I mean, I was born in LA, in the
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: San Fernando Valley, but in very blue collar circumstances. And no,
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: there was no celebrity in my childhood or my upbringing.
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: And it was all just really you know, I started
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: doing the interviews and stuff when I was a musician
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: first with, with, you know, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, when
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: I was a teenager and then, uh, moving into my
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: interest changed to film after I'd been going to school
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: and like not film school. And then I did the
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: Z channel show and did all those interviews. And, and
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: often they were people I knew because of publicity jobs
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: I'd met them on. And, uh, So yeah, I definitely
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: earned my way into that world. It wasn't because I
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: was an LA native. Yeah.
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: Was it unnerving those first few times? I mean, now
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: as time's gone on, you've worked with so many amazing
• 30:35
  Speaker 6: people over the years, but in the beginning, was it
• 30:37
  Speaker 6: still that same thing that everybody else goes through?
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: Oh, of course. Of course. And worse because I'd never
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: been a television interviewer before. I'd done print interviews for
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: newspapers and magazines, but To be interviewing Steven Spielberg for
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: a TV show. Hi, I'm Mick Garrison. This is the
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Fantasy Film Festival. And it felt so ridiculous to be
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: talking to a camera and not a human being when
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: you're doing the introductions and the like. But what's great
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: is they were just conversations. The shows that we did
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: then and then later on in post-mortem, it would get into...
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: We weren't selling anybody's new movie or doing... promotion or
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: anything they were conversations and it really that that nervousness
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: really wore off quickly as as they were put at
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: ease and and that put me at ease and yeah
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: became a particularly in post-mortem where it was people who
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: do the same job talking to each other rather than
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: a nervous kid and A journalist talking to his idols.
• 31:43
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it is.
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: And that's kind of what I've taken to so much
• 31:46
  Speaker 6: with this format over the years.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: It is.
• 31:48
  Speaker 6: And it's why I've almost avoided adding a camera because
• 31:50
  Speaker 6: I think that, number one, it adds an extra weird
• 31:53
  Speaker 6: little thing that then people are super self-conscious about what
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: they look like in that moment. But it also adds
• 31:58
  Speaker 6: a weird technical angle that you have to have all
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: this other stuff involved for it to not look horrible.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 32:04
  Speaker 6: Whereas this is so much more relaxed.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: You don't want to carry lighting rigs around.
• 32:07
  Speaker 6: And you need somebody else running everything. So you've got
• 32:10
  Speaker 6: other people sitting there where this, just, yeah, just sitting
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: down and having a conversation is such a different experience than, yeah,
• 32:16
  Speaker 6: going through the press junkets that everybody else is usually
• 32:19
  Speaker 6: thrown at.
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: So, yeah, it's.
• 32:21
  Speaker 6: It's always way more interesting.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: And where the interview subjects say this, try and think
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: of a way to say it differently to 27 different people.
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: Over and over and over.
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: Translated through a Japanese translator.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: There's that.
• 32:33
  Speaker 6: Over and over. But then, yeah, I guess as you
• 32:37
  Speaker 6: got into doing those kind of interviews and stuff, was it,
• 32:42
  Speaker 6: I don't know, it.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: Took you a while.
• 32:44
  Speaker 6: I think you even mentioned it took you a while
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: to make it. in quotes, before you got into the business. Well,
• 32:49
  Speaker 6: to make my living.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: As a writer, I was 33 when that first happened.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: But it was writing for Steven Spielberg. That's a good jump.
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: My world changed. I was on food stamps when that happened.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: But the fact was that I kept doing it because
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: I loved it, not because I hoped to make a
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: living at it, but I didn't imagine what happened would
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: happen you know that the first guy to hire me
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: as a screenwriter was steven spielberg darn the luck yeah
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: but again a lot of people do it to make
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: a living and you know if you haven't done it
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: by 33 you're going to give up for most people
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: yeah but i love the process of writing and i
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: love movies and that's why i did the journalism and
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: stuff to learn to to evolve and to to see
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: if i could attain some knowledge from these people who
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: were the gods to me you know.
• 33:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah it's such a process and for most people in
• 33:50
  Speaker 6: the entertainment industry, that fight, as you said, like the
• 33:53
  Speaker 6: making it before a certain cutoff or like, that's how
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: long do I keep doing this? So I guess then
• 33:59
  Speaker 6: I wanted to know what, what kept you going? Like literally,
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: I guess, what were the jobs you were doing in
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: the in-between time that kind of kept you surviving when
• 34:07
  Speaker 6: you weren't.
• 34:08
  Speaker 8: Getting food stamps?
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: I was working at Tower Records, you know, I was
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: working in record stores and, and, moonlighting, writing for Cinefantastique
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: and different magazines, which you certainly can't make a living
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: off of.
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: No, certainly not anymore either.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: And my last job before I started making my living
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: as a writer was doing publicity. I was at a
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: PR firm that handled different movies and things, and then
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: I worked for Avco Embassy at the time of The
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: Howling and Escape from New York and The Fog, which
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: was a great place to be because I hired myself
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: to do the making of.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: And then.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: the head of Avco Embassy moved over to Universal, and
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: so I happened to go to Universal. He brought me
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: in there to do special genre publicity for E.T. and
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: American Werewolf in London and Videodrome.
• 34:57
  Speaker 6: It's just good timing all together. Yes, because that's also
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: when that new level of fandom started. It still isn't
• 35:03
  Speaker 6: the way it is now.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: It's out of control now.
• 35:05
  Speaker 6: But, like, yeah, we just started getting... There were always
• 35:08
  Speaker 6: old-school fans, but, like, the 80s bred that new... extra
• 35:12
  Speaker 6: layer of people that were putting together fanzines, that were
• 35:14
  Speaker 6: watching extra footage at the end of a videotape, which
• 35:17
  Speaker 6: now it's hard to even imagine, but when they used
• 35:20
  Speaker 6: to do that, if you leave.
• 35:20
  Speaker 7: It on for an extra 20 minutes, yeah.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Fangoria was new. Those magazines, there were a few of them,
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: but not many. There was no internet. So when you're
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: talking about publicity, one of the ideas I had was
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: to do this Fear on Film roundtable. There's three movies
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: we were working on from Universal that were genre films.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: It was The Thing, American Werewolf and Videodrome. So I thought,
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: wouldn't it be interesting to get those three directors on,
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: talk with them for half an hour, and then give
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: it to TV stations around the country, which is exactly
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: what we did. And because I'd done the Z Channel interviews,
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: I hosted it and did the interviews, and it's kind
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: of turned into this kind of classic thing now with
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: these three great filmmakers talking about their films in 1981
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: Did the stations know what to again at that point
• 36:10
  Speaker 6: it was so early on did they know how to
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: make use of it or.
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah well often they would take clips from it and
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: put it on their news shows or and late at
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: night um there were there was open space.
• 36:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah for the national anthem.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah it wasn't 24 hours on every channel and
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: so USA Network ran it several times whenever just to
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: fill a half an hour slot where they didn't sell
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: commercial time or something and universal would just give it
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: to them and and it you know was not widely
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: seen then but people would run across it like you'd
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: see an infomercial you.
• 36:47
  Speaker 6: Know and again that's where those fanboys you know they're
• 36:49
  Speaker 6: up in the middle of the night looking for the
• 36:50
  Speaker 6: midnight movies anyway so they're gonna they're gonna take to
• 36:53
  Speaker 6: that yeah well then i guess again in that sort
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: of in between time I don't think we'd addressed the
• 36:59
  Speaker 6: family situation. Were people supportive that you were still like
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: trying to make the dream happen? Because sometimes that's a
• 37:05
  Speaker 6: fight with entertainment industry as a whole. It's like everybody
• 37:09
  Speaker 6: just wants you to get a real job and get
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: past it.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, there was never a time where my
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: family thought, gee, he's 33 and still working in record stores. But,
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: you know, I had a real job as a publicist.
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: And was working at studios and the like and making
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: a decent living at that. That's at least a.
• 37:29
  Speaker 6: Real job by that point.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a real job.
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: There's plenty of people that just do that for a living.
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and what I do now, not many people would
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: consider a real job.
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: It's a different world.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: So, you know, I had a pretty supportive family about it. But,
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: you know, again, I was in my 30s, so I
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: was on my own. But the only member of my
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: family who went into the arts, my father studied art.
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: at art school and was a talented artist who did
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: it after he was in his thirties you know he
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: just became a realtor and and and did not say
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: they didn't even do it on the weekends.
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: People are that yeah i think that you have people
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: do i'd see a lot of people that like we'll
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: talk about well i was in college i did all
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: these paintings and what do you not do it now
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: like why how can you just let go of that.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: Well you know i started out drawing before i started
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: writing once i started writing that quit drawing and hit
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: I think you either have the fire or you don't.
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: And fires can be extinguished. And that's not necessarily a
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: bad thing. It's not a shame when a talented person
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: directs their talent in a different direction. It's a shame
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: when they feel they have to and they give it
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: up because of the pressures of raising a family. My
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: dad had four kids and had to support four kids.
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: And I don't know that he really missed doing the
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: art after a certain point. Yeah.
• 38:51
  Speaker 6: I guess that is with some people. It's different if
• 38:54
  Speaker 6: you channel into a different artistic form. It always is
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: sad when they just give up and go get a
• 38:59
  Speaker 6: real job.
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: Well, it's really hard to make a living in the arts.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: And harder now. Even though there are so many more outlets,
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: they don't pay. I mean, the internet, you know, YouTube,
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: you're not making any money doing movies to YouTube. And
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: as a new filmmaker, how do you find your audience?
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: You know, if you Studios are basically making, you know,
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: they're not making movies nearly as much as they're making
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: events and amusement park rides, something that you can't watch
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: on your phone.
• 39:30
  Speaker 6: That's the only way to get people out of the
• 39:32
  Speaker 6: house is to add a new level to it.
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: So storytelling, it's either television or it's online where it's
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: almost impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. So
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: it's a great time to be creative. But it's a
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: terrible time to make a.
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: Living being creative. It's not a lucrative time to be creative.
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: Or it's, you know, people are finding ways to do it.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: It's changing. It's democratic, which in the arts is not
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: necessarily a good thing. The fact that anyone can make
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: a movie means that anyone can make a movie. And
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: that means the people who are great at it, this
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: is great. And the people who are terrible at it
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: have just as much access to your eyeballs.
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: In a way, that's fair. Well, again, that's the sidebar.
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: I think it's fine because it gives everybody freedom. And
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: I think even the people who may have originally not
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: ever gotten a chance to now get a chance to
• 40:23
  Speaker 6: might rise to the ranks of the real filmmakers. But
• 40:27
  Speaker 6: I think it also, everything can get lost very easily
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: because now there's such a flood of.
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: Stuff out there. Yeah, yeah. How do you choose the
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: good stuff? You know, you rely on recommendations from friends
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: or websites or, you know, it's just very difficult. There's
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: so much out there. And production value is something, yeah,
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: you can do amazing things with the tools, with your
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: phone and your computer that you could never do before.
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: nothing will replace the ingenuity of a good script or
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: the talent of a good cast.
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: And that's the key. I think there are still those
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: handful of people that are out there and still are
• 41:04
  Speaker 6: talented enough to make that work. So I always love
• 41:06
  Speaker 6: when one kind of pushes through and had no budget,
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: and yet they still put together a.
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: Good enough project.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 41:13
  Speaker 6: But there's a lot of junk that comes along.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: There is. And for young filmmakers, the first thing I
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: always say is, don't hire your best friends to act
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: in your movies unless they're the best actors you've ever seen.
• 41:26
  Speaker 6: And they better be good.
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because that's the first way for your movie to
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: look amateurish is to have your buddy. Well, he's really
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: funny at parties. Yeah, well, good.
• 41:35
  Speaker 6: Doesn't always translate.
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
• 41:38
  Speaker 6: Well, then that was another one I was going to ask.
• 41:39
  Speaker 6: Because you've done feature films and you've done episodes of television,
• 41:44
  Speaker 6: so it used to be a very different medium before.
• 41:47
  Speaker 6: Now that the lines are blurring, TV's gotten almost cinematic.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Oh, very cinematic.
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: And episodes, what used to be, it was really weird
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: when you did something like The Stand, whereas now they're
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: shooting series like Daredevil, and it's just a 15-hour episode
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: of a show.
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: I don't know. I guess from both angles, as a
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: business or artistically as well, how do you look at it?
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: Well, for me personally, I feel that the best writing
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: is being done for television. Yeah. And a lot of
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: the best filmmaking is being done for television because it's
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: the best storytelling. You still get really good stuff in
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: the theaters. My particular realms of interest don't necessarily include
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: comic book movies, $ 200 million comic book movies.
• 42:34
  Speaker 6: There's a few of those getting made now.
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: For me, usually the more expensive the movie is, it's
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: in direct proportion to how much less I'm going to
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: like it.
• 42:43
  Speaker 6: Sometimes that's the case.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: Some of them are great. You know, there's really great exceptions.
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: Guardians of the Galaxy was fantastic.
• 42:51
  Speaker 6: Most of the Marvel stuff's been really good.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but the superhero stuff is not my cup of tea. Yeah.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: I love it when they send things through a blender
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: and come out differently, like Guardians of the Galaxy.
• 43:03
  Speaker 6: Guardians, nobody saw that coming.
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: Really witty and smart, and that was one filmmaker's vision.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: They let him make it his way.
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: And somebody who had no money and spent... He was
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: one of the ones that pushed through.
• 43:14
  Speaker 7: You look at those.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he came out of trauma.
• 43:16
  Speaker 7: All of him.
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: He came out of trauma.
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: Even up until right before that, he was making... really
• 43:21
  Speaker 6: low budget super and yeah super is like amazing and
• 43:25
  Speaker 6: so well written and great acting and it shows like
• 43:27
  Speaker 6: it's all you have to do is.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: Put that together and it came from a writer yeah
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 43:31
  Speaker 11: He's just a great writer really good writer good guy
• 43:34
  Speaker 11: too i love james it's very cool but um yeah
• 43:37
  Speaker 11: i guess as as you look at these like projects
• 43:40
  Speaker 11: is it Is that the sort.
• 43:42
  Speaker 6: Of thing you would rather end up doing now as
• 43:45
  Speaker 6: more of like an online, like something for Netflix or
• 43:47
  Speaker 6: Amazon or one of those?
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: Well, that would be amazing. I've written a pilot that
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: we thought was going to go based on a King
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: story that so far hasn't moved ahead. But I'm right
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: now in the prep stages for Nightmare Cinema where it's
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: a feature film, but it's for any platform. I can
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: play theaters.
• 44:07
  Speaker 6: That's probably how you have to do it now.
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: It can be streaming. If we do multiples of them,
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: we can do it as a series on Showtime or
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: Netflix or whomever. Or it could also act as a
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: pilot for another anthology series. So we're just hoping to
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: be in the finalizing stages of that like any day now.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: But that's something. It's a very low budget, but really
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: great storytellers. We've got filmmakers from around the world doing
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: stories they want to tell without getting creative interference.
• 44:47
  Speaker 6: You mentioned the anthology thing. You've either put together and
• 44:50
  Speaker 6: created or been a part of a lot of different
• 44:52
  Speaker 6: ones over the years. Why is it you're so drawn
• 44:55
  Speaker 6: to that idea? Is it something specific?
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: They're all different movies. Each one's individual. I In my
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: formative years, when I was a kid, I watched a
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: lot of series television. But as an adult, as a
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: young adult, I never watched a series. I loved movies,
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: but I never got into series. I didn't watch the
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: popular series of the time. And then along comes Tales
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: from the Crypt. In my case, my first job was
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: Amazing Stories. And working with them, I did a Tales
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: from the Crypt. I did a Freddy's Nightmares. It just.
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: It stands on its own. It's got a beginning, a middle,
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: and an end. It's only in recent years that television
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: has fascinated me and everybody else. Just because it's changed
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: so much. The quality is so magnificent. The level of actors,
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: the level of filmmakers. And you have to make cinematic
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: storytelling now. Whereas in television, it used to be just
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: turn on all the lights and... Close-up master reverse, and
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: here it does.
• 46:02
  Speaker 6: We're fine. Even sitcoms aren't like that anymore. No.
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: I mean, have you seen The Detour?
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: It's great.
• 46:09
  Speaker 6: It's hilarious. It's not a normal TV show.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: It's not normal TV. You know, Louis is masterful.
• 46:16
  Speaker 6: Again, one mind coming up with it and following through.
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: And I didn't know until much later, he... went through,
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: he wanted to be a director before he wanted to
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: be a stand-up comedian.
• 46:27
  Speaker 6: You kind of see it.
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: He's really, really great.
• 46:31
  Speaker 6: Well, and then on that, I didn't know if it
• 46:32
  Speaker 6: was more on the anthology thing, if it was a
• 46:34
  Speaker 6: running time, if you felt like stuff works better with
• 46:38
  Speaker 6: a tighter running time sometimes.
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: No, not necessarily.
• 46:41
  Speaker 7: Just case by case.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: It's just, you know, I love a contained story.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: Um i've grown to love other things you know breaking
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: bad stuff like that you know dexter that that continues
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: that that kind of whipped my head around you know
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: it it made me want to watch series tv yeah
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: and uh things yeah.
• 47:00
  Speaker 12: Last 15 20 years it's been a whole new world
• 47:03
  Speaker 12: yeah it changed and you know to see american horror
• 47:06
  Speaker 12: story to see all these things that you never would
• 47:10
  Speaker 12: have seen in the 90s, you know?
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: And things that go way further than the stand did,
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: you know, on commercial TV.
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: Well, that's another one I was wondering, and I've wondered
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: this about a lot of directors, but it's because you've
• 47:23
  Speaker 6: done both versions, I wanted to ask you. You have, like,
• 47:27
  Speaker 6: feature films, and you've got, you know, a 90-minute running
• 47:29
  Speaker 6: time to put your stamp on, you know, what you're
• 47:31
  Speaker 6: trying to do and your artistic expression. But then when
• 47:34
  Speaker 6: you come in, specifically when you do, because you've done
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: a few that are just one-offs in the middle of
• 47:39
  Speaker 6: the run of a series.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: I'm about to do one next week.
• 47:42
  Speaker 6: How do you, as a director, how do you approach that?
• 47:45
  Speaker 6: How do you put your artistic stamp on something that's
• 47:48
  Speaker 6: part of a bigger story and part that you're not
• 47:50
  Speaker 6: going to be there for as you continue on? How
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: is it that you'd handle something that segment?
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: Well, it really is just stepping in and trying to
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: make it you don't want it to not match yeah
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: you know that usually there's a look of show meeting
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: that you have before you get into it although a
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: couple of the things i've done they've forgotten oh we
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: didn't tell you but they usually invite me because of
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: the work that i've done and and i found i
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: only do just the last few years i've done like
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: one a year one or two a year yeah and
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: It's really fun to work with young casts and work
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: with the changing technology, the tools and everything to keep
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: fresh at that and to try things. But the shows
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: I've been able to do, they've been encouraging of me
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: doing my style. But, you know, it's never going to
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: be really far removed from it. But like the last two,
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: I'm about to do episode three of a new series
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: next week. So they haven't really set their style that much.
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: So there's still room for it. And then in Shadowhunters
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: last year, I did episode two. So they hadn't even
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: finished building their sets yet for episode one. So I
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: was the first one to shoot the set. So I
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: ended up setting the style for how that was done.
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: So I've learned that it's really great, much more fun.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: I didn't expect to want to do episodics of other
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: people's series, but the the people you you're working with
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: new people and and all this stuff it's it's really
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: you know still exciting.
• 49:24
  Speaker 6: It seems really interesting yeah but such a different angle
• 49:27
  Speaker 6: that you're coming from.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: It's also a lot less responsibility than being a boss
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: you know when you're the the creator or showrunner like
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: with masters of horror you're on top of every show
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: But even that was easier than most, which have a
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: big staff and which, you know, say a writing room
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: and all that. I was the only writer on staff
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: on Masters of Horror because they were all done independently.
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: But yeah, the idea of just going in for three weeks,
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: prepping and shooting and cutting is like, and then you're done.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: And then they change everything.
• 50:01
  Speaker 6: No control.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but you don't have the frustration of ownership.
• 50:04
  Speaker 6: It wasn't your baby either. You just came in and
• 50:06
  Speaker 6: were handed these pieces.
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: And you want to make people happy too. As a filmmaker,
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: you're an entertainer. And it may be behind the camera
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: instead of in front of the camera, but the object
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: is still to make. the viewers happy. And those viewers
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: include the creators of the show. You're trying to help
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: them engage their vision and bring something of yours to
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: it that maybe will make it even more than what
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: they expected. So it's fun.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:34
  Speaker 6: Well, and I also wanted to address the writing end
• 50:36
  Speaker 6: of it. I mean, you're, you're doing writing seminars now. Uh,
• 50:38
  Speaker 6: I guess, how do you, you've written quite a bit
• 50:41
  Speaker 6: of it. I mean, how do you approach, you know, Yeah.
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: How do you approach a writing project? I guess either
• 50:47
  Speaker 6: either novel, but then specifically as you go to screen
• 50:50
  Speaker 6: and it's such a different version, as we said, like
• 50:53
  Speaker 6: how do you approach?
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: Well, it depends if you're being hired to write something
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: or if you're doing something on spec. If you're being
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: hired to do something, it's because you've pitched a take
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: on it that they like or that you've come in
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: with a story that a studio wants to pay you
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: to develop. That way you have to do every step
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: of the way. You have to plan it out. You
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: have to do a treatment and then an outline and
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: all this before you ever go to script. Most of
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: my writing is on spec. And so I just sit
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: down with an idea on page one and then I
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: write it to the end. And I don't have any interference.
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: I never outline. I just write it and, you know,
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: in a couple of weeks I've got my screenplay. And
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: it will either engage someone or it won't. And there
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: are more that have not been sold than have been sold.
• 51:39
  Speaker 6: I think that's pretty standard with all writers.
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: But that's the thing about writing. It costs you nothing
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: but time. All you do is write your story and
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: then put it in the hands of the people who
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: sell it for you or do it yourself. And it'll
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: either work or it won't. And you have to be
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: willing to let your babies die. Sometimes it's really exciting.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: But that's the great thing about books is that there
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: are no considerations other than me and the reader. There's
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: nothing between communicating to the reader. There's no budgets. There's
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: no egos. There's no pitching. There's no location problems. There's
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: no ratings board. You know, you have an idea and
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: you either sell it or you don't. And I've got
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: a great relationship with the Cemetery Dance publishers that have
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: been incredibly encouraging most of my.
• 52:32
  Speaker 6: Books that's again another industry that's changed so much that
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: has changed so much now you don't even have to
• 52:38
  Speaker 6: have i mean i have a friend of mine just
• 52:40
  Speaker 6: wrote a book that he'd been willing to write forever
• 52:43
  Speaker 6: and like there's new setups now where they print it
• 52:45
  Speaker 6: per order right as you go and i'm like that's
• 52:48
  Speaker 6: amazing or it's an ebook deal yeah a lot of.
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: Them don't even get out there the last uh dark
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: screams collection from cemetery dance which i have a novella
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: in It's only available as an e-book, and that's through
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: Random House.
• 53:04
  Speaker 6: It's not even a printed version anymore.
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I'll tell you, almost every book I read,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: I read on my iPad on the Kindle app. I
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: can travel and have a thousand books on my iPad.
• 53:16
  Speaker 6: Or they're switching to audio.
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: Or audio, which I haven't been able to get into
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: the audio book thing. It's different. It's more time consuming
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: and it's somebody else's voice.
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: And it's hard for me to pay attention the way
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: I do when I'm reading.
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: Unless they do a whole production on it. Yeah. One
• 53:34
  Speaker 6: of my favorites was, yeah, I was just going to
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: say that was one of the few I got on
• 53:37
  Speaker 6: cassette back in the day.
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, it was a drama.
• 53:39
  Speaker 6: It was made, it was beyond normal, like radio production style.
• 53:43
  Speaker 6: Like it was so impressive. And before there was even
• 53:46
  Speaker 6: a movie of it. So yeah, it's such a good representation.
• 53:50
  Speaker 6: Well then I guess going into the, the, the book
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: and stuff. And I mean, have you got, that that
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: you're kind of promoting to people or what what is
• 53:58
  Speaker 6: how many things i don't really push anymore well just
• 54:01
  Speaker 6: you know when you're telling people what you have coming
• 54:03
  Speaker 6: up i've got.
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: A new book coming out uh at the beginning of
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: june called ugly and it's a novella um and it's
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: i've kind of created a sub-genre of hollywood horror you
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: know this the last book was not a horror novel
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: it was but it was still a hollywood kind of
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: hollywood desert noir murder mystery called salome.
• 54:25
  Speaker 6: It's a good subgenre to have.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it really came out well, and they're very happy
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: with it. And this one is, it's not a Hollywood story,
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: but it's an L.A.
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: Story.
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: It's a plastic surgery story called Ugly. That's very L.A. Yeah, very.
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: It's very Beverly Hills in particular, this one. It's about
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: an esthetician, a plastic surgeon. who is offended by ugliness.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: You know, if he sees somebody that's not perfect, all
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: he can think about is how he can fix them.
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: I guess you would get to that point.
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And he's arrogant and rich and drives, you know,
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: the Maserati and all. He's everything I hate in a
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: human being. And yet, you write from inside his point
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: of view and make him, you know, sympathetic to a degree. Anyway,
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: a lot of my books are tinged with satire and
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: observational stuff from an industry that I, that i live.
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: In so are you still drawn more towards the filmmaking
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: or do you want to again you bounce back and
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: forth but is it is it something one versus the
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: other for you or everything.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: Well i do the the fiction as a release you
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: know i i you know i'm glad i don't have
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: to make my living from that because in the.
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: Book especially now it's a different world.
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: It's a very different world And, you know, I came
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: into it late in my career. The books came, you know,
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: just a dozen years ago or so. And, you know,
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: I consider myself first and foremost a filmmaker. But it's
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: nice to see filmmaker novelist, you know, or author. It's
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: nice because it's something that I've always, like I said,
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: since age 12 wanted to do and have done, you know,
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: and being published regularly now is really kind of a
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: great accomplishment and something, you know, I never thought I'd
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: see a row of books that I wrote on my bookshelf,
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: you know, and now this, I think, is my eighth book.
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: That's awesome.
• 56:28
  Speaker 6: Well, then I guess we usually kind of do a
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: segment just of what we've been watching lately, so I
• 56:33
  Speaker 6: will throw it to you. Have you seen anything interesting
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: as of late?
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the last couple of genre films I've seen have
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: been the best I've seen in a long time. The
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: Invitation that Karin Kusama did. Have you seen that?
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: I don't think so. Is it a recent?
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, just in the last month. It came out
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: theatrically in some places, but it's also on demand and
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: it's really good. What's great is, for me, good horror
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: is good drama first. It's not about the splatter. It's
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: not the gore scenes and all that. Not that there's
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: anything wrong with that because that but it's a different
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: point of view it's a different approach this is a
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: great very adult very human horror story and then green
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: room which is also incredibly intense and uh really dark
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: and neither of them are supernatural in any way but
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: they are all the more horrifying for that you know
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: because they are so plausible and believable And both of those,
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: you know, it's been a long time since I've seen
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: horror movies that I could get really excited about. You know,
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: there are very few that have a point of view
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: other than let's gross out the audience. Or, you know,
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: there's good stuff out there, but these are two exceptional ones.
• 57:51
  Speaker 6: That's what I've said. Again, there's so much being made
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: now that.
• 57:55
  Speaker 7: Like, there's a lot of.
• 57:57
  Speaker 6: Watchable stuff.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: Sometimes it just kind of mediocre. So when you get
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: one that, that kind of pushes through and you're like,
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: Oh no, this is really well put together and a
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: good concept.
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah. You know, and I've got a 70 inch TV,
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: the 4k and all of that. And, and I don't
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: want to watch a movie on my iPad unless I'm
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: on an airplane.
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: I don't.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: And so if it's not streaming on something like Netflix
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: or Hulu or a place where I can watch it
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: as close to a theatrical experience as possible, uh, then
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: I'm not too, I'm not prone to do that. So
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: it's going to be harder for me to look something
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: up on YouTube and put it on my watch later
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: queue and then run it on the big TV.
• 58:40
  Speaker 6: Do you, I don't know, do you respond to stuff
• 58:43
  Speaker 6: at home versus the audience? It is, it's not a
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: total dying area. There's still resurgences.
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: Well, I still go to the movies at least a
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: couple of times a week. And you know, The audience experience,
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: particularly in horror and comedy, where it's shared and external,
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: is great. That said, I don't want to go to
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: a movie on Fridays. or saturday night where it's a
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: full house and all of that i almost always go
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: to the movies in the daytime where it's not a
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: giant audience you know it's still a theatrical experience but
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: it's the good part of the audience rather than the
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: texting and screaming and talking.
• 59:25
  Speaker 6: And yeah i've realized i don't get much of that
• 59:28
  Speaker 6: but i kind of do the same thing like i
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: usually like first showing of the day on the yeah
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: on the weekend maybe i'm like so i don't get
• 59:36
  Speaker 6: that and i've heard it's not even as everybody likes
• 59:38
  Speaker 6: to blame teenagers but i'm like really everybody i hear
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: specific stories about they're all old enough to know better
• 59:44
  Speaker 6: absolutely just absolutely no respect for.
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: Audiences there are theaters that take the rains and that,
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: you know, there's the art and the Arquette cinemas in,
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: in LA, they all are hosted and they all tell you,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: you know, if somebody's bothered, please do not use anything
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: that emits light. Yeah. Don't do a, you turn off
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: your cell phones and all of that. And if you
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: have a problem, come and talk to one of us. And, and, uh,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: you know, it's, It's a good thing. It costs you
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: a couple of bucks more to go to that theater.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: But for that experience.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 6: Put up with those people.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, with perfect projection and great sound and all of that.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: And you don't have somebody tweeting everything in the movie
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: next to you. You know, it's great.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 6: Which is its own weird thing. Like now there are
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 6: those special theaters that are doing like a second screen.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 6: Like it's approved and encouraged for everyone. Like I don't
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 6: understand that either.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: AMC threatened to, they said they were going to do that.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: And the backlash was so hard that they took it back.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 6: I'm wondering if that will be a thing. Like, again,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 6: I'm like that, but I'm just, I'm of the old
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 6: last era of that generation. I'm wondering if kids coming
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 6: up now like that will just be normal and they're
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: okay with that.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I hope not because I hope there's
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: respect for the form, you know, and it's just incredibly
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: selfish and stupid. And you, you spend $ 12 to go
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: to a movie and you're not watching it or you're
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: all of that stuff. It's just like, go home and
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: watch it on tv or watch it on your fucking
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: phone don't pay attention.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: To it yeah that's it is kind of insulting to
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 6: the filmmaker to the actors to everybody involved that you're
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 6: like not paying attention.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: To it what's the point you know it's pretty sad
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: watch it at home where you can talk with anybody
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: you want.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 6: To so go out and see movies and be respectful
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 6: yeah we want to sound we won't end because it
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 6: is a positive experience We won't end on that. Again,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 6: let's tell people where to find you. You've got so
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 6: many things in the works. You've got the novella coming out.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 6: The Ugly will be out.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: Amazon is always a good place or CemeteryDance.com. They're the
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: publishers who've done most of my books, not all of them.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: The old interviews that we did for Postmortem and the
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: old Z Channel interviews and a lot of the making-ofs
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: I've done over the years and the early part of
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: my career are all posted for free at mcgarrisinterviews.com that's
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: cool and it's a nice source for film students and
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: stuff to see interviews with people like carpenter and and
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: william friedkin and wes craven and all that it's pretty
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: exciting stuff and um dead of summer is the show
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: i'm about to go do episode three four and uh
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: we'll see nightmare cinema should be kicking in this summer
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: as well so there's A lot of things in the
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: works and a couple things I can't talk about yet.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: That usually means they're good projects, so that's okay.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's nice to still be doing what I'm doing
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: and feel like I'm a young filmmaker. Each time I
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: feel like I'm starting over again and I... there's a
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: lot to be said for fear in the creative process.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 6: I think it's so much attitude too, because yeah, just
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 6: in what I've seen, like you have such a positive
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: attitude towards working versus somebody.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: I'm lucky I'm still doing it. A lot of my
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: peers have not been able to continue and it's, it's
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: a rough game out there. And, and, uh, every day
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: I'm grateful for the opportunities that I've gotten.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: That's cool.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 6: Well, so that's it. Keep trying kids.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's advice.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: And you do it because you love it, not because
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: you think you're going to get rich doing it.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: So I guess that's what you tell up-and-coming filmmakers at
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 6: this point.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: Well, you'll come to the seminar. We'll see what happens.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: Because you love it. Yeah, well, that's it. If you
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: expect to get rich by being a screenwriter, good luck.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: But the likelihood of that, these days especially, is fairly limited.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: But if you're writing, you can... I wrote... At least
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: as much when I was working for a living doing
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: a regular job.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: Because you can do it at night and on the weekends.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: And they never saw.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 6: The light of day most of the time.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. But they did open doors. Yeah.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: So that's cool.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 6: Well, thank you for being here with us.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: My pleasure.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: Once again, thanks for having me. Yeah, I think it's
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: time for you to get out of here.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: So we will wrap it up.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: Otherwise, thanks for joining us. Thanks for sitting in, man.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: Really good to see you. Thanks for driving.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 6: Alright, so obviously a big thank you to Mick for
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 6: sitting in with us this week. But I also wanted
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 6: to say thank you to another group of people, because
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: the bulk of this week's episode came together at the
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: Western Kentucky Film Festival.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 7: Now, I went there to meet up with Mick, and
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 7: while I was there, I met quite.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 6: A few of the people who organized the film fest.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 7: And everyone was great.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: I was impressed by just how dedicated they all were.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 6: A really great group that put a lot of time
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: and effort into building this film fest. And I'm definitely
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: interested to see where they're going. And you should be too.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: So to see what they'll be putting together in the future,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: go to WesternKentuckyFilmFestival.com and see how they build on this.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 7: Year's great event.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 6: So thank you to them for inviting Mick and for
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 6: letting me at least get minorly involved.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: Well, that about does it for this week.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 7: We will return next time. Same geek feed.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 10: This is my life, and this is how it reads.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 10: For every chapter, a thousand memories. A murder, a mystery
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 10: where everybody bleeds. A fantasy, a thriller with romance and disease.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: Diary entry night for May 62.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 10: We've had some ugly babies, but none with work.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 7: Diary entry 62, end of May.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: It looks as if the nose and.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: Chin are left only here to stay. Here to stay.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 7: Here to stay.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 10: My lips start smiling and my knees start knocking.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: I'm a failure.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 10: And if I seem half-hearted, it's because I'm broken-hearted.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 9: I'm a failure.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 10: This is my life and this is how it breathes.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 10: A documentary that nobody believes. Albert Steptoe in Gone with
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 10: the Breeze. Mother played by Peter Beardsley, father by John Cleese.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Diary entry 68, end of the year.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 10: The cop on Apollo 6 has given the offer. 11
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 10: December 68, captain's log.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: Proposed trip to Mars is cancelled due to fog. It's
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: due to fog.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: It's due to fog.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: If my lips start smiling and my knees start.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 7: Knocking, I'm a failure.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 10: And if you see my heart, it's because I'm brokenhearted.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 9: I'm a failure. I'm a failure.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 10: This is the play, it was I who wrote the script.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: It's Harry, Miss June, in.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 10: Tales from the Crypt. It was going to be a film,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 10: but the camera person slipped. They later found him scolding
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 10: a banana.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 11: A diary entry, 10th of April, 89.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 10: The world is going mad, but me, I'm doing fine.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: I'm doing fine.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 9: I'm doing fine.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 10: Back to bed, back to reality. Back to bed, back
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 10: to reality.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 9: Back to bed, back to reality.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 10: Back to bed, back to reality.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: Boy, that was an experience. Yeah.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 5: edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 5: The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 7: Talk hard!