Halloween, Horror, & LGBTQ with Filmmaker & Podcaster Michael Varrati

On this episode of On the Rocks, spooky season continues as we chat about all things horror and queer cinema with filmmaker, columnist, podcaster, and screenwriter Michael Varrati. We deep dive into the connection between the queer community and horror, Michael’s own journey into film, what horror movies you should see, our take on reboots and sequels, and…Christmas movies? Yes, we talk about it all…with guest co-host multimedia artist Sumner Mormeneo and your host with the sassy most, Alexander Rodriguez. Raise a glass, we are putting the spirits into spirits, it's On the Rocks!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Strawhut Media.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Hello on the Rockers, Halloween season continues with our horror
queer Chat with screenwriter, director, producer, podcaster, columnist Michael Varadi
and my guest co host, multimedia artist and horror film
devo te Sumner, More Minio and Meat, your sassy host
with the Sassy Most. Raise a glass that the drinks begin.
We're bringing the spirits to spirits on on the Rocks.

(00:26):
Thank you, Life is a bank and most pour stuck
as the starving Death.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'd like to propose a toast.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
This is on the Rock, Alexander, where I drink with
your favorite celebrities as you talk about fashion entertainment Yady
TV and well that's about the pop acork. Lean back
and raise the glass on the Rocks. Buns and bows

(00:57):
and panty hose on the Rocks podcast, the place where
we're too glamed to give it am. Send us your
thoughts and prayers tonight's actually keep your prayers or send
us the thoughts and you know it's ehots on the Rocks.
On the road, Yes, indeed, we did finish our tent
city in two month summer tour without at the fair,
but we are coming to Palm Springs for Halloween Palm Springs,
the Arenas Rock Block wrote block party rap with thousands

(01:18):
of partygoers. Headliner Grammy Award winning Motown legend Emily Houston.
I'll be your MC for the night. Hits six hours long.
Go to Halloween Palmsprings dot com for your tickets at
info and get your VIP tickets because you get to
hang out with me backstage. All of the slabs, open bar,
all the go go boys. Hope, I make it the Pride.
Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at on The Rocks

(01:39):
on air and on Facebook. On The Rocks Radio Show,
send me an email. Book me for a wedding funeral
Quinsaniera Briss I don't care, I'll show up. Info at
on The Rocks Radio Show dot com. Send us your comments,
your guest requests, and your guest questions. We have some
guest questions from you for tonight. The Show's Peace outed
by Strutt Media. You can watch and or listen to
our over three hundred and eighty three episodes for free.
You can watch us on Apple TV, Roku, Amazon, Fire TV,

(01:59):
on the out at TV up Facebook, watch on GED
magazine and I Love Gay LGBTQ stremely with Pride on
SBTV and on Channel thirty one on the East Coast.
We proudly tape at upn Goho Studios, your one stop
places for podcasting. Let's get the Show on the road.
Making his debut on On the Rocks and our designated
driver Tonight. Summner Marmonio is a multimedia artist from Orlando.

(02:20):
His paintings and performance work are greatly influenced by surrealism
and the macabre visual language of German Expressionism and in
the city of Orlando. He has been nominated for numerous
arts awards, including a Golden Brick Award Best Local Visual
Artist by The Orlando Weekly every year from twenty seventeen
to twenty twenty one, and his show The Infinite Conversation
won him the award for Best Technical Achievement at the

(02:41):
twenty twenty one Orlando Fringe Festival for pushing the boundaries
of what theater and performance art could be and as
a twenty twenty two We Got Him. He now lives
in Los Angeles, causing mischief in LA nightlife. Please welcome
Sumner Mormoneo. I had no idea like you. You know,
I know you from like Tulor on West Hollywood, but
I didn't realize like you have this whole And when

(03:03):
we say performance art, it's not like, oh, you know,
I'm sitting on the street and do a few like
finger puppets, like this immersive show that you had. And
it's because you look at you and you don't like
you don't assume it was just like deep dark sacke
to you. Where does that deep artside come from?

Speaker 4 (03:20):
My childhood?

Speaker 1 (03:22):
I call it performance art just because I come from
such an arts background. I think as my art evolved
in the performance evolved, that just naturally went into a
theater landscape. And so just by default I always thought
of it as performance art.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Still and you've done murals all over a lot of
painting work, but you made this like very dramatic post
during your drive from Orlando to Los Angeles, and it
seemed like your art kind of had a huge shift. Yeah,
at that point, can you talk about that shift and
what what medium are you most obsessed with right now?

Speaker 1 (03:55):
So in December before you're sober.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Relations that's why you're driving tonight.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Gladly And that year I took care of mental health stuff,
went to therapy, and I feel like I really where
before I got sober, I wasn't necessarily able to articulate
what was going on in my head. And so that's
where art, performance, painting, all that came into play, because

(04:24):
getting to express myself maybe surreal or abstract setting was
just easier to convey.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
What was going on.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
And then after getting healthy, I have words, and I
think rather than doing abstract ideas and art, I'd rather
be telling stories now. So since I moved here, I
had the realization like, well, I've been writing performances. I

(04:52):
like performances, but I like writing them. And then I
realized all I ever really want to do is write
scary movies. And that's subconsciously why I'm moved here.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
All right.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
By the end of the show Tonight, you and Michael
are going to agree to kill me in a movie.
That's been my lifelong dream since I was a little
little boys, I've always want to be killed in a movie. Oh,
Sterio Stereo. But your paintbrushes are just like sitting there
crying because you're like ignoring them.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
They are, they really are.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
And I'll have people ask me like, when are you
gonna paint perform here and I'm like, honestly, I have
no idea. I've been at it writing for two years
now on the second draft of something, and it's the
most exciting thing I've.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Done in a long time.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
And it's horror based of course. Of course, Now, how
has it been moving to la which is very different
from Florida? But then working on your writing? Did you
did you find it that it's easier? Was it harder
to kind of adjust and focus on your work?

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Definitely. The first year was rough just because of culture shock.
I think, there's like I don't know a lot more people,
and when I got here, job fell through and blah
blah blah, So like half a year a year, it
was rough. So trying to force myself to be creative
and get in the mindset and what work to focus

(06:07):
on when I still needed to, you know, be financially
stable too, it was rough. But the idea that I
had for the screenplay came to me on the U
haul drive. So as soon as I got here, I
went at it and it's really what kept me going
that first year. And after a year I'm coming up
on two years now, it's been almost like a saving
grace kind of thing because in No Orlando, I guess

(06:30):
I was. I would get opportunities and praise, and I
would share my work. Where this is, you know, something
I'm silently doing by myself upstairs one my dog's looking
my feet. And it's a little weird not sharing my work,
you know, getting that energy, the iyeah yeah, and the
performance too, and hyping up performances. It's it's been weird,

(06:51):
like not having that in my life anymore. But it
feels right.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, I can't wait to read my part and how
I die. I mean, I'm very excited.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
I'm gonna work it, and I'm very excited to write that.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Now.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Now, we we kind of sparked each other's interest over
our talk of horror films because you literally know so
many films, and when people say I love horror films,
especially during Halloween, you're like, yeah, okay, there's more than
you know. I know what you did last summer, there's
like actual horror films. You knew every kind of obscure
horror film. What were the first kind of horror films
that got you interested in the genre?

Speaker 4 (07:23):
Ooh, okay.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
So I was just thinking about this a few weeks
ago because for the longest time. I used to say,
when I was little, I hated horror and it's scared.

Speaker 4 (07:34):
We curse them here.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, it's just ten dollars, Chris Words.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
I got you, okay, right, and my parents had no regard.

Speaker 4 (07:42):
They didn't care.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
I remember being forced to go see Timburton Sleepy Hollow
and that's not even that's not even that bad.

Speaker 4 (07:49):
But I remember crying on them.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
It's not that bad. No, you mean, it's not that scary.
It's scared. Don't say it's not that bad, because.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
Not that scary.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Sorry, Sam.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
I remember like cowering in the watching the Texas Chainsaw remake.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Oh my god, how old were you?

Speaker 4 (08:03):
I was like, I'm young, No, I know you are.
At thirty three. I must have been like thirteen to see.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah no, no, no, it's too young.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Oh okay, yeah tell me mom.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
But you love these films now.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah. So when I realized thinking about this the other
day a few weeks ago, I realized when I was
very young, I did not hate horror. I loved, loved,
love Love Like the original Frankenstein, we had all the
classic black and whites.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Our movie Viahortal monsters.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
I remember in my rotation, every time we went to
Blockbuster it was hocus Pocus or Beetlejuice. So it was
always something that I gravitated towards. I guess it just
took some sort of switch where it went from being
innocent to punk rock and let's make it actually scary.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Well that's the difference between it being artistically creative and
visual to Gore. I mean, Texas Chains was all about them, Gore,
So that's a huge Okay, Well, we're gonna talk all
about horror films and queer genres and all of that
with our guests for today. Michael Varatti American filmmaker, screenwriter, columnist,
and after known primarily for his work with in the
horror genre and the world of TV and movies. Outside

(09:15):
of his film work, he writes and speaks about pop
culture and the horror genre as it relates to the
LGBTQ experience, including San Diego Comic Con. He's written for
The Uffington Post, Vice, and the list goes on and on.
He was the host of his popular queer horror discussion
podcast Dead for Filth. He has served as a writer
director of the series The Boulet Brothers Dragula and currently
partners up with cult leader Peaches Christ for movie screenings
and their podcast Midnight Mass. He's writing and directing for

(09:38):
the upcoming Fangoria Awards. He's also he also has a
foot in the Christmas movie film Workut. How does that happen?
We're gonna talk about it. Please welcome Michael Varatti. Y,
I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Thank you for seeing that up. I think Christmas and
Halloween have a lot in common, but.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Just get right to it.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Don how well you decorate for both.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Some of us use some of the same decorations.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Well, there you go. I mean, honestly, winter is a
time of death.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
And they say that the veil, like if you're in
a paranormal and all that veil is the thinnest during
this month.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
In fairness, you know, the winter solstice. Around the world,
if you look at folklore, there are more monsters associated
with the Christmas time than even Autumn and Halloween. I mean,
if you travel into parts of Eastern Europe, you've got
devils and trolls and flesh sheeting cats. Yeah, crampis I mean,
my boy. So yeah, there's quite a bit there. I

(10:38):
think that there's some crossover, but I think there's also
crossover between the worlds of the movies. You know, people
seem to be very surprised that I do horror movies
and Christmas movies. But in their way, they're each cult
films because you have dedicated audiences who watch these movies
with certain expectations. There are rules to each of the films,
just like Randy gives the rules and scream. Every mom

(10:59):
in the mid West knows the rules of a Hallmark
Christmas of course. Yeah, there's a lot there.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
And there is comfort in rewatching the horror films that
we love that don't scare us anymore to it to
a certain level, we're still intrigued by that fear, and
we go back to them. Like Christmas movies, why do
we pull out It's a wonderful life every year?

Speaker 3 (11:15):
You know?

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Why do we watch the night maybe before Christmas? Every year?
We just have these comfort levels with these films.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, they become part of our traditions.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, and like you said, the audiences are very cultish
with each Like there's conventions now for even the Christmas
movies and the way that they'll sound off on social media,
it's like calm down.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
No.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
I mean, if you're a horror fan, you're familiar with
Fangoria and Bloody Disgusting and dread Central and all these
dedicated sites for the horror genre. Well, the Christmas movie
genre has those two and whenever I work on a
holiday film, it's like a machine. They follow all the news.
They're like, we spotted Melissa Joan Hart and Connecticut. She
must be shooting a Christmas movie. So it is interesting

(11:54):
to live in both worlds because I see a lot
of commonality, even if the movies don't seem that similar.
And it has been my experience because I do a
lot of conventions for work where I might be at
my table at comic con or a horror convention and
a punk kid comes up because he wants his Horror
Blue Race sign. But then his girlfriend, spouse, mom whoever

(12:14):
is with them, and she's like Christmas reunion, and so
they're in one house. Are two different viewers for my work?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, I absolutely love it. We had Ryan Pavey and
Brendan Elliott. Brendan Elliott on the show, and Brennan had
a big, big guy all tipsy, so he drunk Child, Shabert.
What's your first name, Lacy Shabert, Lacy Sabert, queen, right,
she's a queen of Christmas movies. But we were at
our time and she was asleep in New York waiting
to go on set early the next morning. She was
not a happy camper.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, I won't be coming lay, Yeah, but we love you.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yes, And you've written Christmas movies for like Chevy Chase,
Morgan Fairchild, Denise Richards, by the way, Yeah, I mean
that just has to be so weird that that's the
whole other part of your resume.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Uh, it isn't, It's not, you know, I think I'm
I'm very grateful for all of the work that I've done,
and every project I approach is just can I find
the story I want to tell? And luckily, with each
of those movies, whether they came to me or I
took them to the production houses that made them, I
found a story that I was excited by. And of
course Denise Richards wants to be in a movie that

(13:18):
you wrote. That makes it exciting.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Now, what does your creative process differ when you're sitting
down to write a horror film than when you're sitting
down to write a Christmas like, do you put yourself
in the mode and like light candles and have spooky
music playing and then Christmas music and gingerbread cookies for
the other process? Or do you just sit down and
just start writing and scribbling?

Speaker 3 (13:36):
And well, I think it usually surprises people to learn
when ask this question, I say that the process is
not all that different, because I think that a big
mistake when you set out to write in a specific
genre is to lean too much on the genre. I
think so often movies are written kind of incestuously, like

(13:56):
I love writing the thirteenth, so I'm gonna put all
of these nods in Friday the thirteenth into my horror movie.
So then when people go see your movie set at
a camp with a slasher, it's like, oh, we've seen this, yeah.
And what happens is people lean too much on their
likes and don't really think about what they're setting out
to do and what makes it unique. And so when
I sit down to write a script, I think about

(14:18):
the people who live in that world, and that to
me is first and foremost the most important, because when
you get up in the morning, you don't know what
kind of movie you're going to be in that day.
You may make it to Grandma's house and have a
nice Christmas, or your car may break down and you
need to use the phone at the castle that you
passed a few miles back. But your day can start
exactly the same. So I think about who the people

(14:40):
are and what their response to the scenario I put
them in would be, and that's where the movies come from.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Okay, all right, all right, that was fresh. Now do
you sit just a computer or are you scribbling on
like a notepad or I.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
Usually write primarily on my computer. I do have noe
that I write things on. I've not been ever someone
who writes Longhand very much, because I just grew up
with with the technology.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
So okay, all right, now do you as a writer?
And this always a fascinates me. There's some writers that
are so strict that they say when they wake up,
the first four hours of their day have to be writing.
Is that you or just when it hits you it
hits you?

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Well, it depends on a deadline. If there's a deadline.
I've forced myself to sit down and do that because
I have to. But otherwise I think I have to
come to it organically throughout the day. Sometimes I'll get
up with an idea and I start writing. Then sometimes
it takes later into the night. Sometimes I don't start
writing until tenant night and then write till four in
the morning. But there are writers who do need that structure.

(15:40):
I mean, it's what makes Stephen King so powerful. He
gets up and he writes for twelve hours a day,
rain or shine, and that's why there's eighty best selling
Stephen King novels. Yeah, and we're all chasing after him.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
I have an idea, once he's passed, we're still going
to have a novel every single year because he's got
vaults and vaults and vaults of stuff. Now, how about
you getting into back into the screen writing. Do you
set a certain time aside because I know you're very like,
You're very responsible.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
I try to, but I'm a little bit the same
even with painting and previous work. It would be I
have to come to it organically.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
I would have to be in a mindset or a mood.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Especially, can't come to it tired because then I force
myself and that's just shit works.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
So and sometimes we're just not in the mood like,
we're just not creative people all the time. Sometimes our
brain and our fantasy needs a little rest. Now, I
have to know, like, you're so like nice and sweet
and you're innocent looking, And how does someone like you
born in New Mexico and you were kind of like
a nomad all around the place, how does a sweet
boy like you get into horror?

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Well, not right away, I mean, much like you, I
was afraid of it for a while. I always say
that early on I was a classic textbook scaredy cat.
My parents love to tell the story considering everything that
I do now that when I was younger, if the
music would even get a little tense on the TV,
I would run over turn it off. They were saints
because they had to deal with me like freaking out,

(17:04):
what matter what they were watching? Nope, click, And so
for a long time in my youth I really avoided it.
And then there was the faithful day when I was
looking through the TV guide and a show called USA
Up All Night, which used to air on Friday and
Saturday nights in the late eighties into the early nineties,
was hosting a double feature of Attack of the Killer
Tomatoes and Return of the Killer Tomatoes and a Bill, right, Yeah,

(17:28):
I mean cinema, and I was obsessed with those titles
for whatever it was. It left off the page and
I was like, I have to see it. And so
I was like, Mom, Mom, Mom, let me watch this, please, please, please,
please please, And she kind of already aware of the
fact that I was the kid who ran over and
turned off the TV, was like, all right, I'll let
you watch it, but I'm gonna stay up and watch

(17:49):
it with you. She made a big bowl of popcorn.
We make it. Fifteen minutes into the movie, she falls asleep,
and then I ended up watching both of them. And
then how it used to work is the host would
sign off and then they would just play them again. Yeah,
and I sat through and watched them again. And I
always sort of refer to that as the baptism of
into cult, like that was the moment where the kind

(18:11):
of table shifted. And I always acknowledge that, yes, Attack
of the Killer Tomatoes is horror comedy, not straight horror,
and so The Killer Tomatoes was sort of a nice
way to kind of ease in. But what it did
do is it fundamentally rewired how I perceived these movies
because I was fascinated by the fact that it was

(18:31):
so different. It was not the kind of movie that
my friends were talking about at school. It was not
the kind of movie that they were playing at the multiplex.
It was something other, something strange, and something that felt like,
in that moment, that only existed for me, and I
became obsessed with that. That was sort of like my drug,
the idea that there were these movies that were forbidden
and I want them, and for whatever reason, that want

(18:55):
over roaded the fear and I started looking for more.
What are the movies that they don't want me to
know about? What are the movies they don't want me
to see? And that leads to evil debt, It leads
to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, It leads to Freddie and Jason
and Knight of the Creeps and everything forward, and at
some point I was well into it, and I realized, Oh,
this doesn't bother me anymore because I'm kind of addicted

(19:17):
to it.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Well, and that idea of Killer Tomatoes, you know a
little bit of camp and like you said, comedy in
your work, whether you're writing about gay aliens, count Dracula
and theater groups, or you know, demon nuns. There's an
element of comedy to what you do, and we know
your work with Peaches Christ you celebrate camp. Why is
it so important to keep those horror elements in or No,

(19:38):
those comedy elements in orror.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
Well, comedy and horror are, in many ways two sides
of the same coin. Explain Well, essentially, it's all about
controlling your audience's reaction. This This filmmaker and artists that
I know, Daniel Montgomery put it the best when he said,
it's about controlling your audience's breathing because you essentially lead
them to a moment where they're either going to stream

(20:01):
or they're going to laugh. And when you think about it,
a lot of the setups of a comedy movie, if
it goes just slightly in a different direction, it's horror
and a lot of things. Because of how absurd a
lot of these horror movies are, it could become hysterical.
And that's sort of something that I think we all
have to be aware of because if you're doing a

(20:22):
gore gag and your aim is to shock, you don't
want to make it too over the top because you're
going to make your audience laugh. But sometimes that's exactly
what you want. And I think that they are ken,
whether people realize it or not.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah. Plus sometimes we get so scared we uncomfortably laugh. Yeah,
or like we're at you're at Halloween horror Nights every
single day of the week, which there's like a jump
square you like laugh like with you, especially when you're
with your friends. I remember watching the House of Wax
remake and we're all waiting for Paris Hill to get
it right, and she finally got it in the whole
theater erupted in laughter or whatever, but it was still
a scary moment. I thought she did a good job.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yes she really did.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
But that's you know, that really mixed the genre together
when it was a good film or not. But you
started writing very early. You would write like one page
stories for your parents. What kind of stuff were you
writing at that young age.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Usually it was some sort of comic book or character
related story. It would be like, oh, you know, the
Joker has taken over the super Bowl and Batman has
to say them, or some holiday oriented thing. It's Christmas,
so this has happened. I always would write these like
one page thematic stories that'd be like it's holiday here,
this is for you. So that might have set the

(21:31):
mold pretty early on the holiday writing, and they were
very nice about it. I'm sure those stories were terrible,
but they encouraged me in the way that parents do
and should. And there is something addictive about creating something
and getting feedback from an audience. And as you kind
of grow into your interest as an artist, you keep

(21:52):
wanting that there's there's a dragon that we always chase
I think has created. No matter how much of this
you do, no matter how many TVs your show plays on,
or where you know what venue your show opens at,
you always want that feedback and you want that response,
and it starts early.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I think, did you come to Christmas movies just on
your own? No?

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Actually, it's one of those things where horror brought me
to Christmas. And it sounds like something that doesn't make sense,
But I had written a couple of essentially no budget
horror movies for a filmmaker on the East Coast who
was very into the micro budget scene, and a couple

(22:37):
of them did very well. And when I moved to
LA I met a producer of holiday films and they
had a situation where they had a need for five
Christmas movies and only had four. And it was August,
and he was like, I need somebody who can write
a movie quickly and to budget, and indie horror filmmakers

(22:58):
have to do that all the time. So he read
out and was like, Hey, I know you can write,
but would you write this and pitch the idea of
me doing a holiday film? And until that moment, I
had never really thought about it. But I loved the
challenge and I said yes. And that phone call fundamentally
changed my life because I got to engage with a

(23:18):
whole new audience. I realized I love these movies. I
do earnestly love these movies. And I really think that
it just took me to places that I couldn't have
ever possibly thought.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Now growing up going from city to city, you know,
we have such a hard time growing up, coming into
our own regardless of the whole queer aspect. When did
the queer aspects start to form? And did it change
the type of entertainment that you were engaging with in
your youth?

Speaker 3 (23:44):
You know, I probably didn't directly realize it right away,
but a connection to horror was the queer awakening. You know,
I think when you talk about being drawn to movies
that have a sense of the forbidden, the sense of others.
Before I even had words for queerness, I knew that
that spoke to me, because in some way, that was me.

(24:08):
And as I became more and more interested in these
films that I felt spoke for me in ways that
the movies that spoke for my friends didn't, there became
a greater understanding that this is not just what the
public generally thinks of when they think of horror, like
the idea that it's just like for for Gore's sake,

(24:29):
or it's sensationalism for sensationals sake, But there is a
power to how the genre works, because horror uses a
mechanism of heightened reality, to critique, to lampoon, to take
on issues that the mainstream maybe was not ready for.

(24:49):
And when I was a teenager, how queerness was not
something the world was ready for. It was something I
wasn't ready for because the world told me I wasn't
ready for it, and so I kind of locked that
away and I didn't even deal with it until later.
But I think by engaging with the movies that I did,
it allowed me to understand there was a place and

(25:10):
there was a people for me, and it wasn't necessarily
monsters or the spooky craziness, although I do love all
of that, but just that there is a drum that beats, breathe.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
One hundred percent. Even look at you know, the Frankenstein
movie where look at Frankenstein's monster misunderstood moments of gentility,
the whole village wants to, you know, burn him for
who he is. It's like, give the guy a chance,
you know, and he's well.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
All of the universal monsters are queer. Well, Dracula, Hello, yeah,
I mean rising in the top of the day in
a textedo. Sure, I mean when when you look at it,
the Frankenstein monster is misunderstood. He is literally made for
a world that does not want him. The bride of
Frankenstein is made for a relationship that she rejects. The

(25:57):
Wolfman has something that he's keeping inside that he considers
to be a curse. The creature from the Black Lagoon
is living its life when people come in and try
and tell it how to be. These are all queer stories,
and so I think early on our horror spoke to
the queer experience, even if the mainstream audience didn't see it,

(26:19):
Queer people did.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
One hundred percent. And queer sensibility has always been part
of it. And even like the seventies and eighty slasher films,
you know, young guys would go see it because every
horror film had women running around topless. Meanwhile, there's a
faction of us that we're like, God damn Johnny Depp
and a crop top and night memory. I mean, come on, yes, Now,
you talk often on LGBTQ and horror panels. What is

(26:43):
it that the queer community is so obsessed with now,
with horror culture the way it is, what do they
want to talk about the most? Well?

Speaker 3 (26:50):
I think that they just want to finally speak to
the truth that we've known was there all alone. For
every conversation I have that talks about the universal monsters
having always been queer, That horror has been queer since
before cinema. If you look at Gothic literature, if you
look at Bram Stoker writing love letters to Walt Whitman

(27:11):
as he's writing Dracula, these things have always been there.
But the way the world operated was the gatekeepers didn't
want us to talk about it, or they just didn't
know it existed. There were well intentioned people who might
have been on our side, but the history didn't support it,
because the history wasn't written by us. But we quietly

(27:31):
kept it and we kept track. And now we're seeing
the work of so many people bringing this history to light,
bringing these stories to light, and also pointing to things
that we have always sort of embraced as a community
and said, hey, this is queer. It's always been queer.
It's not just a nightmare on Elm Street too. It's

(27:51):
all of these things. And we've been here all along.
And I think that what is really happening now is
that once the floodgates have sort of opened, we have
just kind of made the decision we're not going back.
And I always say, it's it's not so much about
how far we've come, it's about how far we need
to go. Even though there have been huge leaps and

(28:13):
strides in the last decade in terms of visibility and representation,
there are a lot of letters in the LGBTQI acronym,
and there are so many people who have yet to
see themselves on screen. And until we get that representation
across the board, we still have work to do.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Well, and then we have like Bloomhouse, which is really
doing an excellent job and really promoting our queer community.
Then we have a film like Freaky and I know
some people you know, thought different things. We had Misha
Osherevich on the show, Love Misha and then we talk
about the them, and we had Darwin on the show,
very different experiences filming, but that wasn't considered a successful

(28:53):
horror film.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Do we still need to go support these films? What
should we be challenging these films to be different? Because
they had consultant from GLAD for these films, they continue,
GLAD continues to play an important part in any type
of filmmaking talking about our story, So why weren't they successes?

Speaker 3 (29:10):
I think that we have to reframe how we think
about these things. I think so often because we weren't
represented or didn't have the visibility we wanted for so
long that anytime something comes out, we put this monumental
pressure on every release and it's then kind of this
thing where if that release doesn't do well, well, that's it.

(29:32):
We're never going to get another one. And that fear
is valid, that is a very valid fear. But I
think we're never going to reach true parody until we
understand that we're allowed to have queer movies that fail.
We're allowed to have queer movies that aren't good. We're
allowed to have queer movies that maybe don't necessarily represent
us in the best light, but are good stories. And

(29:54):
I think that instead of making every movie the Soul
flagship mission to represent every letter under the lgbt QIA acronym,
just make a story that you believe in and that
you as an artist can stand behind, and the audience
will find it. And especially when you look at horror,
that's been the journey of horror all along. Horror is

(30:16):
the only genre that if it comes out today and
doesn't do well in ten weeks, it may yeah. In
twenty years, it.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
May be a cult class.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
In thirty years, it may. That's the gift of this
genre is people are looking for the hidden gems, they're
looking for the cult appeal. They're looking to find the
things that maybe we're unheralded and unsung, because we as
horror fans are often unheralded and unsung, and so we
go looking for those things. If a drama comes out
and falls flat, good luck because there aren't Cramer versus

(30:46):
Kramer conventions, but there are horror conventions.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
That is very true. A joker too, What.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
That was fresh too?

Speaker 2 (30:57):
How did the Baba Duke become this gay icon? How
the hell did that happen? They didn't even market it
that way.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, the Bobba Duke became a gay icon because it
dressed like Diane Keaton.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
Was on Netflix. Yeah, they accidentally put it in the
LGBTQ category.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Oh yeah, it was a miscategorization.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
That is so funny. We didn't even give it a minute.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
No, we love a meme, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
I mean, and come on, he looks he looks like
a name. It looks like a dandy after an all nighter. Yeah,
that just came home from the afters. Yeah fears, Yeah, yeah,
I celebrate his tenth year anniversary. And the filmmaker behind it,
you know, they asked her if she wants to do another, and.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
She's like, no, it's it's it's good no. But she
very smartly and kindly when that meme broke out. When
Shot Factory decided to release a new edition of the
Bobbadook for Pride with the Rainbow packaging, Jennifer Kent, the
writer and director of The Bobba Duck, was like, go
for it, and that just makes me love her forever.

Speaker 4 (31:55):
So love it, love it all.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Right, let's get back to you a little bit.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
You went.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
You studied acting in school in Ohio. How did that
morph into getting behind the camera in the horror industry.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Well, I do think that if you were going to direct,
not all directors will agree with me. It's good to
have a knowledge of what actors are experiencing in front
of the camera. I do enjoy acting. I certainly have
done my fair share of weird roles in no budget
horror movies. And you know, if someone is looking, I'm
always kind of willing to come out of retire acting retirement.

(32:29):
But I had just really enjoyed the experience of learning
the mechanics of being on a set on both sides
of it. I always knew I wanted to write. Storytelling
was always the plan, that's kind of always the main
through line. But actors are storytellers. Directors are storytellers. Editors
or storytellers, and in a landscape that's so collaborative, the

(32:52):
best way to make a movie is to understand how
all the different artists work. And so when I took
the acting for the camera courses it can State University.
Partially it was for the hammy reason of like, I
want to be on camera. But I did two courses
on it. The first one was I want to be
on camera. But that teacher Ron Thomas, whose class I
really really enjoyed, when he offered a second version of it,

(33:16):
I was like, I got to go back. There's things
that I don't know yet that I want to know
because theater acting in camera acting very different. There are
different like ways to like sell a scene with just
a look, et cetera, et cetera. And I just was
fascinated by his process and I would like to think
I learned a lot from him. If he's still out

(33:37):
there hearing me bandy his name around twenty years later,
he's probably like, shut up, but I am very what.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
A successful student though, look what you've gone on to do.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Well, thank you.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Okay, now let's just get to some reality. Though we
know independent horror films are not knowing like you said,
for high budgets, not a lot of a listers. Sure
could be smaller distribution, smaller fan base, and you thinking, well,
I want this to be my career in that genre,
knowing that it might not be the most lucrative in
terms of other kind of movies. It's like, I want
to be a doctor, but I'm going to be a pediatrist.

(34:10):
You know what I mean. You must have really felt
passionately to jump in it with all feet, and you
have said yes during your career short films, directing films,
writing films, producing for TV, the holiday movies. You just
continued to say yes. So this passion must have been
pretty big for you to be like, well, I'm probably
not going to become a millionaire in my first few
years of making horror films.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
I mean, well I become a millionaire, ever, that's the question.
But I think that when you do this and you
do it from a place of love, you can't not
do it. I mean, if I was a pediatrist but
I had that in my heart, I would go home
and you know, shoot a movie on my iPhone because
I can't help myself. And that's really something I've learned

(34:54):
about myself. Every time I think that the challenges are
too insurmountable or the stresses are too much, and I
make the declaration myself I'm done with this. Two days later,
I'm sitting with my team and I'm like, Okay, but
what if we went out into the wood and Bigfoot
was not you know, you know whatever. I've never pitched that,

(35:16):
but maybe I did right now, right now. But that's it. Yeah,
I can't help myself. I think that creativity is as
much an addiction as anything else.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, Dreams was your first kind of big project that
was brought to camera for something that you wrote. It
was part of an Edgar Allan Poe anthology. That being
your first kind of big Oh that's my that's my
stuff on screen. What did that? What did working on
that project teach you most about the future of the
industry that kind of maybe shocked you or was new
for you.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Well, first off, I you have done your research, so
thank you very much. Dreams was a fool's Errand really,
when you think about how that movie came together because
Bart Masternardi, who put together the Tales of Poe project
with his collaborative partner Alan Rokelly, they wanted to do
an anthology of modern day Edgar Allen poets stories and

(36:11):
I had worked with Bart on a film that was
shot in Mushron, Pennsylvania, and while we were on set,
he brought up to me that they were looking for
the third story and he said, but I would like
something a little more abstract, and I was like, I
have an idea, and Dreams is set in a dreamscape
and it's an entirely silent picture and that's crazy, you know.

(36:33):
It's that thing where you don't know what you don't know.
And I think that's why it worked. If I had
to do that now, knowing everything I know about the
process of filmmaking and the process of screenwriting and the
challenges of trying to do something like that with no money,
I would have been like, there's no way we can
do this. But I didn't notice say that we couldn't
do it. So I wrote the most ambitious script that

(36:57):
I could because I wanted to tell the best story
that I could, and I gave it to Bart and
Bart was like, all right, let's figure it out. And
from that we got this wild, weird, fever dream of
a segment that ended up starring people I grew up
watching Adrian King from the original Friday at Thirteenth, Amy
Steele from Friday Thirteenth Too, Caroline Williams from Texas Chainsaw

(37:18):
to they populate the world of Dreams and what a
gift for a horror fan to get to have that
as their first sort of big screen credit. And the
lesson I learned from that was it was unconventional and
it shouldn't have worked. And then my whole career in
many ways has been kind of defined by it in

(37:40):
the way that when someone tells me, well, it shouldn't work,
that doesn't mean that it couldn't work. And I always
take that lesson with me into projects I do, for
better or worse. Sometimes that blows up in my face,
but I've stayed the course because I learned that you
just got to commit to.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
The Another project you worked on is The Bulllet Brothers Dragula,
and I always call it the drag Queen or the
drag Queen Show that Could, because when you see the
first season, it is so different than the current season.
They're in season six right now. It's gone from YouTube
to Netflix. Now it's on AMC Plus and Shutter. But
you're part of that growth. You did two seasons and

(38:21):
then Titans.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Yes, how did.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
You get involved with it? How is that project different
creatively for you? Than any other thing.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Well, I got involved. I had met the Bulet brothers
through our mutual friend of ours, Darren Stein, who's the
writer and director of movie Jawbreaker, and Darren.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
One of my favorite films of all time. Why is
that not a Broadway musical?

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Well, I do know that Deren's been working on a
Jawbreaker musical off and on over the years. So if
you are out there right into your senators or whoever
make it happen, Courtney Shane on stage, Darren, I'm shouting
this out for you.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Come on, Kamla, make it part of your platform.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
But Darren had introduced us and the Bulets also, you know,
were aware of my connection to Peaches Christ and there
was this whole sort of like world of queerness and
horror that intersected, and we shared a lot of common
interests in certain esthetics. And when they were in a
post on season two, they asked me to go to

(39:21):
lunch with them and they said, look, you know, we
opened the show with these kind of vignettes, and we
closed the show with these death vignettes, and we are
looking for someone to write and direct them for the
next season to kind of take it into a different
cinematic place, and I was like, that could be me,
And with the conversation sort of went on for a
while because there was a pause between season two and

(39:43):
season three, and I sort of thought they forgot about
it or had moved on. But then in the eleventh
hour I got the phone call and we kind of left.
The spooky train had left the station. And it is
in many ways the little show that could, and its
huge colossal growth is owed entirely to the fact that
those two just work so hard. Anytime I get asked

(40:06):
about this show, I always have to say it exists
and it succeeds because of the Boulet brothers. They surround
themselves with a lot of really wonderful people who are
really hard workers. They had the vision they sat there
on that first season that was a YouTube show in
a bar with you know, one camera, and like, you know,

(40:30):
yes it was, and they were like, this can keep
getting bigger, this can keep getting spookier, This can get
as grand as we envision it, and they made it happen.
And when you're on a show like that, you kind
of get caught up in the maelstrom of that belief.
And I think much like the conversation about dreams. Dragula

(40:53):
had this monolithic rise because when they started they didn't
know what they didn't know. They were nightclub promoters who
took a chance on making a show. So the things
that anybody else would tell you can't do that on television,
they didn't know not to do that, And because they
produced it themselves, they didn't have someone to tell them
not to do that. So they did. And they just

(41:16):
continue to make wild, unheralded queer television. And I just,
you know, I'm grateful that I got to be part
of the ride. I really, I cannot just praise enough
their work ethic. They had the vision and they made
it happen.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
It was fresh first meeting with them. I mean, obviously
they don't go around looking like that every day, Like
were they like in sweat and a T shirt? Like
was the first meeting a little kind.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Of oh okay, Well No, I mean I knew what
they looked like out of Dragon because we had met
socially numerous times and we still get together, you know.
We last my saw them, we had barbecue, which I'm
sure they were probably like, don't tell people.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
That, but no, it's so not that image.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
I want to see a picture of that.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah, but I love them. They are in my social
life as well, and I think that it is great
that they are sort of one of the last mysterious
bastions of horror. Because we know what Alvira looks like
out of Dragon, we know that Joe Bob Briggs is
John Bloom, we know kind of the secret identities of
all of our Queer Justice League, but the Bulet Brothers

(42:26):
have yet to really kind of be seen out of Dragon,
and I love that.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
No, I know that you love the show a lot.
What is it about the show that you love so much? Well,
I guess it's the performance art, too, is a big
part of it.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
I have a close connection to the show because back
in twenty seventeen, after season one, when I first found
out about the show, one of my good friends and
co workers at the time, we're in the morning band
on our way to work on a scenic stuff for
Universal Studios. My friend was showing me the show on
YouTube and auditions are open for it. That friend was

(43:01):
Victoria Black, who went on to win Titans. So back then,
when I was doing performance hard, I had a monthly
event in Orlando called Escape, and we would have her
headline the event once in a while, and that's where
she really brought out her production stuff to test out
in showcase. So I go way back. I was like
pretty much Daddy Black like for a while in Orlando.

(43:24):
So I've been along for the ride ever since. And
I remember when he was showing me, it was like,
it's not just like drag queens. It's like it's like,
like you could do it talking about me, and I
was like a gay like competition performance show that I
could do that doesn't exist. And then I went home,

(43:45):
I watched it on YouTube, immediately fell in love. And
then season two came out all rooting for her, and
I do want to say I loved it from the beginning,
but the jump from season two to three, Bravo, because
that jump made it like that cemented it.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
I can't take credit for that. I mean, like I said,
there's so many dedicated people who work so hard on
that show, and they with each season they look for
ways to up the ante. And now I do remember
the first thing that you see in season three is
that ambulance crash that was the homage to Halloween four,
and I have very very distinct memories of the night

(44:22):
that we wanted to shoot that because I wrote and
directed that, and we were in the middle of nowhere
and we had, you know, all sorts of vehicle issues
and there it was the fourth of July, so there
were fireworks going off and messing with sound, and it
was just like one of those nights that every filmmaker
knows about where it's it's like, this is never gonna end.
But then at some point at four in the morning,

(44:45):
when those two and they're weird gungey hospital gowns and
they're like long spooky hair stepped out on the pavement.
I was like, oh yeah, all right, let's talk a
little a little film hot topics, reboots and pretty coquels,
legacy returns.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
We've seen new durations of Exorcist, Beetlejuice, Scream, Child's Play,
Rosemary's Baby, Amneyville, House of Wax, List goes on and
on and on. Truth speaking, Has anything ever come close
to the original? Why do we have to rehash some
much stuff all the time?

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Has any in the history of remakes.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
In the last thirty years the last.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Thirty years, I don't know. I do even though I'm
a Sam Rami Diehard. I think twenty thirteen's Evil Dead
is a stunning piece of work, and I will totally
own that I didn't think it when I saw it
the night in the theater I saw it because I
was so committed to what the Sam Raimi vision of

(45:45):
Evil Dead was. I remember walking out of the theater
being like, that's not what I wanted. But Beta Alvarez,
who made that movie smartly, kind of new that you
don't know what you want, and I'm going to give
it to you, and he gave us an unhinged, un
relenting crazy movie that for the next ten years I
kind of kept thinking about, and that that's Evil Dead.

(46:09):
Evil Dead is a manic bananas sequence of gore and
terror that it says it's like the most unrelenting horror film.
I believe that's the tagline on the poster, and it
is like he understood that to make proper Evil Dead movie,
you don't need the comedy, you just need the mania.

(46:30):
And when I realized that he told us a new
story rather than rehashing the old ones and did it right,
it made me kind of respect filmmakers who get these
ip properties and take the wild swings. I think that
this kind of push against remake culture is more people

(46:53):
don't want what they grew up with messed with, or
they have this fixed sense of nostalgia. But your nostalgia's personal.
No one's ever going to be able to recreate your childhood,
no matter what you think. So if somebody goes out
and makes something unique with something that's somewhat familiar, why not.
I mean John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the

(47:15):
greatest horror movies of all time, and that's a remake
of a Howard Hawk's film. David Cronenberg's The Fly is
one of the greatest horror movies of all time, and
that's a remake of a nineteen thirties horror film. It
can be done. You just have to trust the artists,
and studios have to trust the artists. That's the big thing.
I think too often they lock them into you have
to give us what we've already had. But we already
had that. Let this person tell a story.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Why was the Exorcist sequel so boring? How do you
get Alan Burston and Linda Blair and you have a
franchise like The Extorsist? How do you muck that up?
What went wrong there?

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Well, I think how do you muck it up? I mean,
it's the question they've been asking since nineteen seventy three
when they made the original Exorcist. Almost immediately when heretic,
the Exorcist two came out, a movie I personally love
because it takes wild swings. Audiences did not respond well
to that movie, and every sequel to The Exorcist in
some way, shape or form has been sort of met

(48:11):
with derision because it is a tricky premise. You know, essentially,
how many ways can you do an exorcism? You know,
you have a possessed kid and you gotta get the
devil out of them. If someone like William Freakin does
it exceptionally right the first time, you're forever going to

(48:33):
be chasing that. And I think that's the issue. And
it goes back to what I was saying about Evil
Dead is so many people keep trying to just go
back to what worked about the first one. He already
did it, and he did it best. I'm not saying
we can't have an Exorcist movie that works, but you
gotta get out of the house. You gotta get out

(48:54):
of possessing little girls. I mean, maybe you got to
get out of Catholicism. I think that could be the
real issue. It's sort of like, how many priests can
show up and do an exorcism? What's an exorcism look
like in a different culture?

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Well, and how scary would that be? Because when you
can confine it to the Catholic Church and you don't
have anything to do with it, like, great, that's not
in my wheelouse, that's not in my environment. The truth
is exorcism rights for exorcism exist in every single religion,
from Buddhism to Judaism, Catholicism, eat Egyptian lore. And the
Vatican first came up with their extorcism ritual in fourteen

(49:28):
ninety nine. In nineteen ninety nine they updated it. Why
would they feel the need to update it unless something
major was going on?

Speaker 3 (49:34):
That's true, bump bump.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Bomb, But it's scarier to think of exorcism. It could
affect anybody, regardless of your religious beliefs or you know,
not believing. Yeah, so yeah, I think that that would
be a good take. What is your take on Reboot?
Because I know that you love films and you come
from a little younger generation than me.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
I welcome them because I'm going to see them regardless.
I'm excited regardless of what it is. I think very
much what was just said. I remember seeing the last
ex Orsus and I was really enjoying it the first half,
and then there's a switch where it turns into what

(50:15):
we've already seen and then maybe just the little too
close to like a play by play, and that's when
it got kind of cringey and just not good. So
I don't know why not, but you got to do
something original, So.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
We talk about being original. Topin Bell just announced that
he's coming back to Saw for the next one. I mean,
I've lost track of the numbers at this point. I
think they've run out of like room on the movie
poster for Saw XX five to five whatever?

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Right, this one's eleven?

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah, Okay, so that's a franchise and I haven't seen
the last maybe three, right, but it seems like they
have the same kind of formula going. How does it?
How come it's working for that franchise? Uh?

Speaker 3 (50:57):
I mean, for as much as I cry out for
do something bold and do something new, we also know
that audiences are a creature of habit, and there are
certain things that are the warm cozy blanket when they
come back, even if that warm cozy blanket is a
spooky old man in his dangerous draps. You know, I

(51:18):
think part of what really cemented Saw into the zeitgeist
for people is that, without fail for like eight or
nine years, there was a new one every Halloween. So,
taking it back to your very early question about the
connection between Christmas movies and horror movies, one of the
reasons that Christmas movies becomes so kind of ingrained into

(51:42):
people's lives is when people like them, they make them
part of their annual tradition. So if you see a
Christmas movie, like you watch it every year. I have
to watch It's a wonderful life. I have to watch
Love actually, And so for some folks it's Halloween. Halloween
means Saw and a new Saw. Whether it's fully worked
or fully didn't, they showed up because it meant something

(52:04):
to them. And for a certain generation, that was Halloween.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
And don't you think sometimes we subscribe to films that
we don't actually like, like Home Alone watching it every Christmas.
I don't really like that film. I don't. I don't
think it's that great I'm sorry, I hate kids to
begin with.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Home Alone is a saw movie that kids.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
I mean, are you vicious?

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Well, he's vicious and he sets these crazy tracks.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
He's righty mentally unstable.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Yeah, when you were talking about Christmas and horror movies
kind of being one of the same, I was going
to bring up Home Alone if you just switch the music, yeah,
and the tone a little bit.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
I think there's a trailer out there that kind of
pictures it. I mean, there's a scary trailer made for everything.
Like Mary Poppins. I've seen that scary trailer and that
I just loot that. I've seen Silence of the Lambs
as a romance, and that that one did well.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Mary Poppins is terrifying. This woman comes out of the
disco and you're just like, I can't be bothered to
watch my kids. So here's spooky lady and.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
She's kind of a bitch by the way, Yeah she's
not very nice.

Speaker 4 (52:58):
Yeah bitch.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Okay, on this Christmas or horror or movie or Christmas
or Yeah? Is Nightmare Before Christmas a Halloween or Christmas movie?

Speaker 3 (53:08):
What if it's a autumn movie? Okay, all right, maybe
maybe it's a transitional movie because the movie ends or
begins with the end of Halloween and it builds up
to Christmas Eve. So maybe it's a November film. Maybe
that's the thing that none of us are saying.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
That's the bridge.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yeah, people people like to say that November is unexciting. No,
not for Jack Skellington, not.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
For my waistline. I'll tell you that much. Harry Potter
Christmas or Halloween movie?

Speaker 3 (53:37):
What's Harry Potter?

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Or are you not a fan?

Speaker 3 (53:40):
I'm not a fan of her. No, but yeah, I've
never seen the movies. Actually I read the books when
they came out.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
There's a horror element to them. Are very scared.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
When I was at Halloween Horror Nights recently, to get
to one of them, a couple of the mases, you
have to walk through the hogwarts that they have. And
I had this moment when I was done booing. JK
Rowling and I did my partner. We can test that
I actually booed as we walk through the architecture. Made
me think of Hammer horror movies or that Van Helsting
movie with Hugh Jackman, and I was like, this would

(54:13):
be cool if you could kind of like divest sort
of the wizard stuff and just shoot like a were
wolf movie on these streets. So I think, you know,
there is an ambiance to it. I liked those books
when I read them. I do know that a lot
of them have there are vampires and wear wolves and
you know, witches in killing spells. I think it's a

(54:33):
little more Halloween than Christmas.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Okay, I don't know why, but I think Christmas.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
A lot of people. I've just read an article. A
lot of people think it's Christmas because it's warm, fuzzy,
there's candles. Yeah, I mean Christmas. They all go home.
I think there's one movie that really centers around Christmas.
But other than that, they really so they do.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
They brush over Christmas, Halloween, sorry, they brush over Halloween,
but they always have a they let the Christmas time
or even some of the movies. So I think that's
why it was fresh.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
All right.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
This one's kind of a deep question. You know, watching
horror films, a lot of them deal with the afterlife.
You can deal with spirituality, like with exercise, things like that,
and you know there's a glamour element to that. Has
your relationship with horror films affected your relationship spiritually or
religion wise.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Well, I'm not personally a very spiritual person, but I
do think that horror films in many ways so many
people I know, make us more empathetic to the world
around us, because, you know, especially queer folks, we know
what it's like to be treated as the subversive element.

(55:46):
We know what it's like to be treated as the monster.
And you know, when I do these talks at universities
or at conventions, there are folks who are like, Okay,
I get the connection between the otherness and queerness and horror,
but I don't always love when that comes up that
it's always the monster that's referenced. You know, some queer

(56:08):
folks get upset about that, and I understand that, But
horror in general is a genre of otherness. I think
that if you look at the final girl, which I
don't know a gay man who's not obsessed with a
final girl in some horror franchise, the final girl is
almost always othered in some way. The example I always use,
and people who have listened to Midnight Mass have heard

(56:30):
me say this many times. But Laurie Stroden the Original
Halloween is a great example of this because she is
not like the other two girls. They're popular, they're sexual,
they're all the things that she like really yearns to
be but can But then when that night comes, it's
the thing that makes her different that helps her survive.
And when you look at Sydney and scream, she is

(56:51):
dealing with trauma. You know, she is made fun of
for being who she is or being the daughter of
who she is. And they all in some way represent
something that makes them the outsider but also makes them
the survivor. So I always say to queer folks, if
you don't want to identify with the Frankenstein Monster, and

(57:12):
you don't want to identify with the creature from the
Black Lagoon, and I do, but I get that you
are Nancy from a Nightmare on Elm Street, you are
Lorie Strode, you are Sidney Prescott because you also have
to be a survivor. And I think that I love that.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
I've never heard that kind of for me.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
That's one of the things that's empowering about this genre.
And it has less to do with maybe a connection
to religion, but it does have to do with an
awareness of the world around us, and because when you
feel like you have to be aware for your safety,
and you have to be vigilant to survive. You're also

(57:56):
sensitive to other people who do as well.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Do you believe in the pir normal? Do you believe
in ghosts and things like that?

Speaker 3 (58:03):
I want to. I always say that I'm more of
a Skully than a Molder, with the exception that I
want that all to be true. I think Scully's thing
was always it can't be true, and I disagree. I
just think you exhaust all the logical explanations first, and

(58:24):
when they're exhausted and there's no choice but to say
that's a ghost, then I want it to be a ghost.
But I'm not like, I'm not going to straight up
like walk into her Scolder in this room, clearly we're.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Haunted or air condition? Have you ever had any kind
of experience that you couldn't explain?

Speaker 3 (58:45):
Have I ever had an you know, I don't know
off the top of my head. I'm sure I've encountered
weird things. Were they supernatural? I don't know. I can't say.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
Has your connection with horror films change the way you
look at spiritual and religion the paranormal?

Speaker 4 (59:04):
I think I came.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
I think either path was kind of separate in concrete.
So I think I came to it already kind of
figuring I was an atheist, and then even getting sober,
I went to meetings with the Satanic Temple.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
So people have such a misunderstanding what the Satanic Temple.

Speaker 4 (59:25):
They really do.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
So I was already pretty strongly like in that lane.
But I think similarly the empathy aspect to horror movies
is what I gravitate towards and grief and you know,
just heavier subjects in general, is why I gravitate towards
horror and yeah, so I don't know if it's shaped anything,

(59:49):
but it's brought a sense of comfort and empathy.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
You bring up another thing it, which is grief. Obviously,
horror films are centered around death. Some of them are
campy deaths, some of them are in consequential death or
not inconsequential. And then there's movies like Hereditary, Yeah, that
are all about this power of grief and how scary
grief actually is. Those movies freak me out the most,
like things like Rosemary's Baby, where it's really in your

(01:00:12):
head and it deals with your emotion and your mental health.
That's the freakiest thing well, and.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
They're really prevalent right now. I think that if you
look per decade at what's popular in horror, you can
kind of see culturally where we're at. And right now
we're dealing a lot with trauma response in our horror
movies and generational trauma, and I think it's because we
culturally have just experienced a lot of generational trauma and

(01:00:39):
a lot of trauma laden issues and are still responding
to and living through a lot of things. That is
not to say that trauma has not existed in horror
all along, because of course it would, but how we
address those issues. I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis got memed
and kind of made fun of unjustly on the last
press tour for or Halloween because she kept talking about

(01:01:02):
the trauma. But when you look at the original Halloween,
they're not really thinking about trauma. But they did just
construct a whole new trilogy about a woman who had
to live with that for forty years. And that's very
specific to the world we're living in right now. Because
I'm here to tell you that twenty years ago, the

(01:01:22):
idea of like what if we explored how much this
fuck somebody up? The studio would be like what.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
And the relationship to their family. You're so right, that
was very much explored, and I think we're going to
continue to see that, especially after COVID. A lot of
us had trauma during COVID, feelings of isolation, We have
death in our family from COVID, and I think that
that's all valid. But to your point, I think, and
that's why I still think there's a need for the

(01:01:49):
campy gory classics just to keep it balanced out. We
don't need so much of one thing. And there are
smart films out that way that do that well. So
if everybody starts to try to do that, it's just
not going to come across. Well. Michael, with your career
going to so many different directions screenwriting, podcasting, directing, producing,
how do you know what to say yes to and

(01:02:10):
how do you know what direction to go into next?

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
I don't know. He just know's just talking about this
the other day that we really laugh at one of
the big pieces of lingo of the generation that's younger
than us. Everyone's like, it's a vibe and we're not
fully tapped into what that means all the time. But
I think that when I pick a project, it's a
vibe vi like, No, it's true. I think sometimes when

(01:02:35):
things come my way, I'm just like, yeah, that makes
sense for the here and now. Obviously, you know I
am a working writer, producer, director as well, and sometimes
it's just like, does this financially and viably make sense
with the time constraints too. You know, I'm not going
to pretend like it's all you know, altruistic art. But

(01:02:57):
the ones that really, you know, stay the course and
speak to my heart, they're the ones that, you know,
if someone asks me about it or brings it up,
can't shake it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
What's a personal moment from your career that has been
a big success to you because you overcame a challenge,
not because it was critically successful, not because it made money,
not because you know it was a new credit for you,
but something that personally and professionally challenged you that you
were able to get well.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
With my production partner Brandon Kirby, I founded a label
called June Gloom Productions, and June Gloom Productions was created
with the intent of making queer horror and queer social
commentary movies. And when we founded the company, it was
because we weren't really seeing the kind of movies we
as queer artists wanted to see. And not only was

(01:03:47):
it a means for us to produce our own work,
we've helped other people make some films as well. But
outside of producing a film in the UK called The
Latent Image, which was the first feature film that we
produced as a company, we hadn't done anything in house
that I had written and that was a feature length
and we did this movie called There's a Zombie Outside,

(01:04:09):
which I wrote and directed, and we did it entirely independently.
And so to me, that was a big moment because
it is the thing that you don't ever think that
you can do, and it's the thing that the industry
tells you you can't do, you can't make a movie
on your own. Well, we stayed the course, you know.
We made many short films, We produced short films for

(01:04:30):
other people, we produced mini series, and we did this,
and we worked on this, and we produced a feature
that we believed in for another filmmaker, and it gave
us the awareness that we could do it, and we did.
And now taking on the next one seems less scary,
even if the project is scary, because we climbed that

(01:04:52):
mountain and we're still here, and that to me is
worth way more than if the movie ever. You know,
when an Oscar or you know is available in every
blockbuster across America, there's a dated reference for you.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
A girl. I'm excited for whatever's next because I love
the late image.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
Oh great, Yeah, I'm so glad you saw that. I
love that movie. Alex Burrell, who wrote and directed that
movie and created the story with the lead actor, Josh Tonks,
they met up with me when they came to the
US and when they've made the short film, and they
just kind of stayed the course and they're like, when
we make this feature film, we want you to be involved.

(01:05:34):
And we tried to make it twice before it actually
got made because of the pandemic. We were gonna shoot
it in Canada in May of twenty twenty. Guess what
didn't happen. But I love that movie. I'm really proud
of the film and the success that they had with that.
And it's a sexy movie too. I think I'm allowed
to say that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
What are you watching like on a regular night at home?
You have no assignments, nothing, We're just let's just turn
this on.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
So I do watch a lot of horror movies. I
really watch, especially this time of year, older horror movies.
I'm finding that there are so many films from the
thirties and forties that I haven't seen, and they may
not be new, but they're new to me and that's exciting.
And I love all of those guys, you know. I
want to see Bello Legosi and Boris Karloff and Chris
bal Lee. Again, there's a certain flamboyance of fright that

(01:06:24):
we just don't get today because everybody is so committed
to making everything so real, and I don't need it
to be real. I just need it to be fun.
But as far as just kind of fun watches outside
of horror, my partner and I this year decided that
we were going to watch Riverdale after the rest of
the world find that show. Well. I had a few

(01:06:47):
reasons why I wanted to, but I had also heard
that it had a lot of weird kind of veers
into genre. And we are in the middle of season
six right now and we are aiming to finish it
this year, and I have to say it has caused
me to clutch my pearls more than Once, and then
the other thing that we're watching, which is kind of
a fun sort of intersection between the worlds of horror

(01:07:09):
and holiday is I always knew that Hallmark had this
witch series called The Good Witch, very popular, yeah, but
I had never seen and I knew that they had
done like multiple movies and then spun it off into
a seven season show. And at some point I just said,
you know what, I want to know what Hallmark's version

(01:07:29):
of a witch is. Assuming we would watch one or
two of the movies. We watched all seven movies. We're
now in the middle of season two. I just did
La Comic Con and Catherine Disher, who plays one of
the main characters on the show, was at the table
next to me, and I think that she was there
because she was the voice of Jean Gray on the
X Men comics X Men cartoon, and that's why people
were like lining up to have her sign things. But

(01:07:52):
I was just like, listen, Martha Tinsdale, the Mayor of Middleton,
is my new hero. And so that was was just
and you know, we got to talk about because she
had also been in a vampire show in the nineties
called Forever Night. We you know, I feel a kindred
spirit to her because she does the Hallmark thing and
she does the horror thing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
So yeah, Okay, are you excited about Practical Magic too?

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Maybe?

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
So we're gonna the original screenwriters coming back, which is
a good sign the cat.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
I love Practical Magic.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
It's one of my doesn't every game like it?

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Yeah, It's one of my favorite witch movies. It's one
of my favorite seasonal movies. Those two are no, those four.
You have to include Diane West and Stockard Channing when
you talk about that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Of course, if they don't come back, don't don't bother
making the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
No, I think that movie is so special, and I
think it's a great moment in time for Nicole Kidman
and Sindra Bullock. So I'll be interested to see what that.
I would love to see them altogether. Again, are you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
A fan of Practical Magic? Don't say you haven't seen it?

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Just the baby was fresh.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Every day has seen Practical Magic.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
I've seen it once. It's just it's not one of
my go tos. I remember liking it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
It is a very hallmark version of Witchcraft, and yeah,
and things like that, Like, you can't compare that to
the craft, No, it's true. Okay, what are your top
three favorite horror films?

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
My top three favorite horror films. It changes all the time.
I really love Night of the Creeps. It is a
movie that was made in the eighties about two boys
who are trying to pledge a fraternity and they have
to steal a cadaver, but the cadaver has alien slugs
in it and when they thought out, it creates a
zombie out break. It's ridiculous, but it's also very shockingly emotional.

(01:09:44):
The movie, it kind of is a throwback to kind
of creature features of your but like made with that
John Hughes Coming of age hinge, and you could tell
John Hughes was sort of the point of reference when
they made it. But I wrote about this movie for
a book called My Favorite Horror Movie, and it's the
film that I chose for my chapter. There is a

(01:10:04):
relationship that exists between the two lead boys where the
boy who is the lead played by Jason Lively Blake
Lively's brother. He wants to get into this fraternity to
kick the attention of a girl and his friend really
like he's not interested in all that, but he wants
to support his friend, and you see this kind of
over the course of the movie. He's doing it because
he loves this person, not necessarily in a queer way

(01:10:27):
or a gay way, or although that man he doesn't know. Yeah,
that read could be had. But in the eighties when
this movie was made to have a male relationship that
was presented in a way that wasn't animal house, that
wasn't like boys being chauvinists, or boys like slapping each other,
like look at her boobs, or like this kind of

(01:10:47):
piggy sort of thing, where there was genuine caring. And
at one point he tells his friend, I love you. You
didn't get that with men in movies at that time.
And even though I didn't realize when I on USA
up all night, shout out to Ronda and Gilbert wherever
they may be. Gilbert, but I think that I needed

(01:11:09):
it before I realized I needed it. There's an Italian
movie called Delamorte de la Mare released in the US.
A cemetery Man darring Rupert Everett at his most beautiful.
He is a cemetery watcher who make sure that the
dead stayed dead. It's a beautiful movie, absolutely wild, my God,
in my third movie gotta be something with Witches, right.

(01:11:31):
I love Witches Despiria the original because Dario Argento can
do no wrong. Someone's going to disagree with me and
you're allowed, you're incorrect.

Speaker 4 (01:11:42):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
And what's the horror film that needs to be reboot?

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
Reboot?

Speaker 4 (01:11:46):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
What's a horror movie that needs to be rebooted? I
think that I would love a new entry in My
Bloody Valentine. I love that movie. I know that they
I know that they did the remake in the thousands
of three D, but I don't know. There's something about
ha Warden, the killer in that movie, with that like
minor gear, his extra spooky Valentine's Day. I love holiday horror.

(01:12:07):
I just love the idea of that kind of being
the unsung season. And Canada, Canada is great. I don't
just Canada. They make some of the coolest horror movies
and they don't get enough love.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
All right, Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right? What are
your top three horror films?

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
I hate this question.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
I know this is a hard chase. Most people say,
what's your top five? Well, you can put a lot
into five, but three is very limiting.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
Today today I'm gonna go with Psycho.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
I'm gonna say Nightmare on Elm Street. And I'm not
on like a slasher trend. It just happens to be
in there, the others, the others.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Okay, yeah, okay, all right, that's my top three.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
Okay today, all right, different tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Yeah yeah. Now, which movie do you think can be reboot?

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
I think, contrary to popular belief, Nightmare on Elm Street.
If it was redone and went in a direction of
not trying to replicate Freddy Krueger, but just actually have
a sick person behind there, I.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
Think it could be.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
I think you what if it was about like a
copycat who was obsessed with the nightmarey f M Street
movie and it became like a movie within.

Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
A movie, like New Nightmare. I've never seen Nightmare.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
It's good meta horror. I don't know. I think that
Robert England, of course, is unimpeachable as Freddy. He's so
good in that performance. But I don't know that we
couldn't have someone new play for I know Kevin Bacon
really wants to play Freddy Krueger. I've always said that.
I think Amy Sedaris would be a great Freddy. Oh god,
she could be unhinged energy. My god, I'm sorry, I'm

(01:14:03):
in amy. Do it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
All right, gentlemen, this has been such a fun chat
about everything that we love. Yes, Michael, what is your
message to your queer horror community?

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
I believe that the best thing that you can do
is be yourself, accept it Halloween. Be something fabulous because
the trick and treats you.

Speaker 4 (01:14:23):
Baby.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Okay, what are you gonna be for Halloween this year?

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
You know I never revealed before it's time?

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
Okay, okay, what's your message to the queer horror community.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
My message, I would say, support not just indie horror,
but especially queer indie horror. I know so many people
who will say, oh, have you seen this?

Speaker 4 (01:14:51):
Have you seen this? Go out to see this movie?

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
And I do.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
But what I'm doing in between all those major releases
is I go see every single indie horror movie in
theaters and anything released on streaming. And not to compare
the two, because it's such different budgets, different movies, but
everything I love most.

Speaker 4 (01:15:13):
Is usually an indie horror.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
So I would say look into those films just as
much as you would any other.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
All right, Oh, I have one real past question but
how was Roseburn doing in Crampus? I mean getting paid enough? Hey,
you know what, she gave it her all though you
have to admit it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
Rosebyrn always shows up. Roseburn always understands the assignment. She's
always done. Yeah, she's one of my favorites. And let's
be real. If the director of Trick or Treat asked
me to be in Crampas, I'm there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Yeah, okay, all right, Where can people find and follow you?

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
You can find me at Michael Varati on x and
Instagram also at midnight. Mass comes out every other Wednesday
at midnight and as of the time of this where airing.
The Fangura chainsaw Awards are on Shutter on Sunday, October thirteenth,
nine pm Eastern Standard time. Do the math and we'll
see their spooky spooky.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
And that's a huge to be part of Fangoria. I
mean that was a magazine I picked up as a kid.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
It's an honor. This is my my third year being
part of the chainsaw Awards, my second year directing, my
third year writing. It is truly exactly what you said,
you know. I remember going to the gas station and
seeing the the Beanngoria on the shelves and being scandalized.
You know, some some kids were like, you know, titillated
by seeing the Playboy, But I was like, what is

(01:16:35):
this basket case? What's that?

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
I would get Fangoria and starlug.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
Oh yeah, same publisher.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Yep, yep, yep yep. Sumner, Where can people find and
follow you?

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
I'm really only active on Instagram. It's Sumner ah at
Sumner A s U M N E R A h H.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Will you go to start a platform like only things?

Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
Only things?

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:16:56):
I'm into that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
Yeah, those, I'm into that. Thank you, gentlemen. It's always
a grab bag of fun here every weekend on the Rocks.
We never know what we're gonna talk about. A big
thank you to our engineering station owner Tony Sweet. Who's
coming up next? Taylor Armstrong from Real Housewives of Orange
County and Beverly Hills is coming on. Please like share
subscribes who can continue to bring in this fabulous programming
coming your way for free until next time. Stay happy,

(01:17:18):
stay spooky, stay healthy, stay sexy, and if you drink,
stay tipsy. Who This has been another episode of On
the Rocks, Sweet and Sliders. Mike DM on Twitter and
Instagram and On the Rocks on air. We find everything
on the Rocks for free at On the Rocks Radio
show dot com. Subscribe, like, review, and share until next week.

(01:17:39):
Stay fabulous,